It always makes me shudder when the 'nuclear' option is mentioned - can’t believe how ill-informed/miss informed many are about nuclear energy. People need to stop thinking along the lines of one type of generation – that’s old school thinking - there are many flavours that we in Oz are lucky to have available: coal, natural gas, thermal, abundant wind and solar opportunities, currently untouched tidal options, hydro, etc. They’ll simply be switching on/off at different times of the day and managed that way much the same way it is already done – no biggie.
Simple facts about going nuclear, and why it currently doesn’t make sense for Oz:
1. Small/mobile reactors: they aren’t only inefficient, they produce more waste and have a very short life-cycle compared to the big reactors. So they are very costly to run and then leave highly contaminated, long lived waste
2, Big nuclear: getting a new nuclear power station off the ground has been estimated to take 20 years, and since most only have a life-cycle of 30 years, they are prohibitively expensive to build, maintain, and then create HUGE volumes of contaminated, long lived waste – not only the spent fuel rods, just about every metal, plastic and concrete widget in the place needs to be isolated and/or buried FOREVER. And, the site itself needs to be managed in caretaker mode indefinitely. That’s one of the reasons China is investing in more coal fired power stations.
3. Location and Coolant: Most, but now all, reactors need plentiful supplies of water or some other coolant, and need to be built near populated areas to avoid loss – Australia is a dry continent. Using sea water creates other issues. Then, try to pick a place on the Eastern Seaboard where a coastal community will agree to one being built – good luck with that. Also, we are known world-wide for having ‘clean & green’ crops and seafood … see that go out the window for trade.) Then there is always the looming prospect of New Zealand going ‘pop’ and we get the resultant tsunami … just like Fukushima.
4. Infrastructure – nuclear energy was a by-product of the Manhattan Project. In a somewhat unique scenario, they had this thing and needed to find a use for it = ‘Hey Mr Oppenheimer, this stuff will heat water really quickly, reckon we just came up with a use for it other than blowing big holes in the ground!’ Jokes aside, the countries involved in the Atomic/Nuclear industry have a history going back to the 1940’s, and the dirty, dangerous legacy that goes with it. To set up that type of full scale industry here is not only ridiculously expensive, it would pollute pristine environments for little to no net gain. The major problem is with our Politicians being wined & dined by the USA/UK/French fraternity just so they can make money at our extreme expense - like the coal lobby.
5. Transparency: the nuclear industry is anything but transparent and honest. In democratic, advanced economy countries, nuclear energy should be managed and operated by the Federal Government. History has shown, private companies cannot be trusted with it, particularly when their sole function in life is to cut corners and make money. Most exist because they are highly subsidised by their Governments.
6. Besides the monetary, health, and environmental costs, nuclear energy is NOT carbon neutral – there are no free lunches: mine operations and the machinery needed to dig uranium out of the ground, transport it to a processing plant to create yellow cake and then into rods for the reactor. It all takes fossil fuels, large volumes of water, and ironically huge volumes of electricity, AND THEN, creates enormous volumes of low/medium/high radioactive waste that then needs to be transported somewhere for dumping – yes, it is effectively dumping crap into a deep hole and hope it doesn’t get disturbed for millennia.
7. Cost and Efficiency: a recent article in the Financial Review, about a CSIRO report, found: ‘… a small reactor typically costs as much as $16,000 per kilowatt-hour, 50 to 100 per cent more than large-scale nuclear. By contrast, wind and solar come in under $2000 per kilowatt-hour …’. So, nuclear is more than 8X expensive and then leaves a filthy legacy for future generations. Improvements in technology for wind/solar and others are happening almost on a monthly basis, increasing generation and storage/capacity.
8. Fusion energy: optimistic at best. So far, pie in the sky.
If it comes to burning coal or going nuclear, I’ll take coal every time, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The future of power generation in Oz will simply be a mix of things (sans nuclear), with an ever decreasing reliance on coal and gas. If they ever create so-called ‘clean coal’ then we’re gonna be extremely lucky!
