We're wasting too much energy on nuclear talk

Late last Friday - a timeslot where ministers are known to announce policies they are most proud of - the Minister for Energy, Angus Taylor, ordered a parliamentary inquiry into nuclear energy.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Minister for Energy
 and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor. 

In a country currently engulfed in a gas price crisis, caused by the voracious appetite of the gas industry to export cheap gas and sell Australians expensive gas, are we really willing to believe that the solution to expensive gas is even more expensive energy from nuclear reactors? While renewables keep coming down in price, nuclear is only the energy source that keeps getting more, and more, expensive over time.

And if policymakers are trying to solve an energy crisis in 2019, why would they select a form of power generation that has a legacy of expensive delays and failures and, optimistically, takes a decade to build? It just doesn't add up. Globally, reactors have taken decades. Of all nuclear reactors currently under construction, two-thirds are behind schedule and nearly half of those were delayed again in the last year.

Read the story from The Canberra Times by Richie Merzian - “We're wasting too much energy on nuclear talk.”

Mark Diesendorf dispels nuclear/renewable energy myths

Nuclear energy and renewable energy are the principal competitors for low-carbon electricity in many countries. As renewable energy technologies have grown in volume and investment, and become much cheaper, nuclear proponents and deniers of climate science have become deniers of renewable energy.

Associate Professor
Dr Mark Diesendorf.

The strategies and tactics of renewable energy deniers are very similar to those of climate science deniers. To create uncertainty about the ability of renewable energy to power an industrial society, they bombard decision-makers and the media with negative myths about renewable energy and positive myths about nuclear energy, attempting to turn these myths into conventional wisdom. In responding to the climate crisis, few countries have the economic resources to expand investment substantially in both nuclear and renewable energy. This is demonstrated in 2016 by the UK government, which is offering huge long-term subsidies to nuclear while severely cutting existing short-term subsidies to renewable energy.

This article, a sequel to one busting the myth that we need base-load power stations such as nuclear or coal, examines critically some of the other myths about nuclear energy and renewable energy. It offers a resource for those who wish to question these myths. The myths discussed here have been drawn from comments by nuclear proponents and renewable energy opponents in the media, articles, blogs and on-line comments.

Read the energypost story by Mark Diesendorf - “Renewable energy versus nuclear: dispelling the myths.”

(Associate professor, Dr Mark Diesendorf, was brought to the Goulburn Valley by Slap Tomorrow to talk about renewable energy and some 150 people gathered at Mooroopna’s Westbank about three years ago to hear him then say with confidence that Australia, and the world, could abandon fossil fuels completely and embrace a combination of renewable sources - Robert McLean)

Energy conversation 'heats up'

Humanity is a voracious user of energy and as conventional sources worsen climate change the conversation about what we do now is really heating up.

NASA scientist Dr James Hansen, who in the early 80s warned the U.S. Congress of the difficulties arising from climate change, is an advocate of nuclear energy arguing that is will both help address climate change and air pollution.

Stanford University’s Professor Mark Jacobson has responded to a recent article from Dr Hansen arguing that nuclear energy is not needed to resolve the world’s climate crisis.

Read the EcoWatch story - “Mark Jacobson to James Hansen: Nukes Are Not Needed to Solve World’s Climate Crisis.”

Nuclear pundits overlook critical issues on 'carbon-free' energy

N

uclear energy pundits overlook a few critical issues when advocating the importance of this “carbon-free” energy source.

Josh Frydenburg - nuclear energy fan.

The world’s carbon dioxide levels are already well beyond what is considered safe and so we have no more time for talk or procrastination of any sort.

We are presently in what has been described, and accepted as by the world’s climate scientists, as the “critical decade”, that ever so brief window when we must stop, and if possible reverse the world’s carbon emissions.

The nuclear energy boosters never talk about the fact that it would take another decade to design and build a nuclear energy plant and along with that never avoid any talk of embedded energy.

Nuclear power and its claimed zero emissions, an easily disputed argument, despite these apparent and obvious drawbacks still has many supporters even in the face of staunch facts that Australia could easily be powered by renewable, decentralized energy.

However, little has changed in Canberra’s corridors of power with Australia’s new Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, appointing a strong advocate of nuclear energy in the key resources and energy portfolio as part of sweeping changes to his cabinet and ministry.

Josh Frydenberg, an ally of Tony Abbott who was previously assistant Treasurer, has been named as minister for resources, energy and northern Australia, as part of a reshuffle that sees the portfolio split from industry, innovation and science, which goes to former education minister Chris Pyne.

Greg Hunt retains his spot as environment minister, to continue his bluster around Direct Action as a result of Turnbull’s pact with the Liberal Party’s far right wing, and Turnbull has also appointed Jamie Briggs to be Minister for Cities and the Built Environment, in an appointment welcomed by the Green Building Council and others.

Read Giles Parkinson’s story on Reneweconomy - “Turnbull appoints a nuclear fan to head energy policy”.

Bishop wants to talk about the 'sliver bullet'

Nuclear power is frequently touted as the silver bullet to mitigate the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop - she wants
people to engage in conversation about
nuclear power caption

And now Australia’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, has joined the chorus, humming with the argument that Australia is well placed to take advantage of nuclear power.

Minister Bishop has declared that nuclear energy remains an option for Australia, describing it as an "obvious direction" as Australia considers how to cut carbon dioxide emissions after 2020.

Ms Bishop called for a an open discussion about the feasibility of nuclear power, given Australia's abundance of uranium, but accused Labor of resorting to a scare campaign when the issue was raised during the Howard government years.

Her enthusiasm for a process which is, admittedly a low producer of carbon dioxide emissions, conveniently overlooks several pertinent points.

Australia has no nuclear power stations at all, although the country has a rich resource of uranium, the prime energy source used in nuclear power stations, and the country would need up to 20 such power plant.

Building a nuclear-fired power station is not something that takes just a few months and best estimates put construction time at about 10 to 15 years – quite simple time that cannot be wasted building something that brings with it huge embedded energy costs.

The other issue that simply has to be considered is cost – small change will not even build the fence as any nuclear power plant that will seriously impact on Australia’s energy needs will cost in the $billions and Australia doesn’t need just one, we need maybe up to 20.

To talk about nuclear power now is simply political convenience and claptrap and in doing so denies the reality that Australia’s energy needs can be easily meet through the use and integration of various forms of renewable energy.

The story headed: “Julie Bishop reopens nuclear debate as route to cut carbon dioxide emissions” published in The Age is about pandering to populism with nuclear power being about the retention of centralized power, rather than the democratization of renewable energy that allows communities and individuals to do their own thing.

Enlisting nuclear power to solve our energy dilemmas and address global warming

Is the answer to our energy needs
and global warming to be found in
nuclear energy?

The Saturday, April 28, gathering Beneath the Wisteria will see the continuation of discussions about our use of energy with regard our response to climate change.

Many alternatives have been proposed. But discussions have rarely seriously focused on nuclear energy.

This argument demands we now genuinely consider this alternative.

A guest post on BRAVENEWCLIMATE by physicist and a radiologist, Bill Sacks, and English professor with a specialization in critical theory, Greg Meyerson, was an illuminating discussion entitled “Lessons about nuclear energy from the Japanese quake and tsunami”.

It was written about month into the Fukushima crisis. Both authors are based in the U.S.
A quick consideration of their thoughts can be found can be read here – “The nuclear energy solution”.

A longer and more thorough explanation is “Nuclear energy: The only solution to the energy problem and global warming”.

A preface to the above says:When humanity looks back on the few centuries of capitalism, it will be immediately apparent that a particular economic and social system, into which history led first Europe and then the rest of the world, not only hijacked myriad resources of limited supply, without concern for their longevity, but also disposed of the waste products in a careless way, destined to greatly diminish the livability of the planet. This global human process that will have occupied no more than the blink of a geological eye may yet prove to have made living conditions immeasurably more difficult for humans, as well as for other animals and plant life, for a much longer duration than the destructive process itself -- perhaps many millennia. These conditions will, if they come to pass, faintly echo the hostile world environment tens of millions of years ago, long before the very appearance of humanity on the world stage. The thorough elimination of such a system, by the vast majority of humanity who suffer at its hands, cannot occur too soon for the sake of the human species.

Nuclear vs Nuclear vs Nuclear

Guardian columnist George Monbiot was once opposed to nuclear power, but having learned about integral fast reactors (IFR), he is now an advocate of this energy source –in his latest column he said:

We can’t wish nuclear waste away: we must choose one of three options for dealing with it.

George Monbiot

Duncan Clark’s article in the Guardian today should cause even the most determined anti-nuclear campaigner to think long and hard about the choices that confront us. He reveals that David McKay, chief scientific adviser to the government’s energy department and author of Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air, has endorsed a remarkable estimate. The UK’s stockpile of nuclear waste could be used to generate enough low-carbon energy to run this country for 500 years.

If the material we have seen until now as waste is instead seen as fuel, it has the potential to solve three problems at once: the UK’s contribution to climate change, possible future energy shortfalls and a significant component of the massive bill – and massive headache – associated with cleaning up the current nuclear mess.

The technology with the potential to solve these problems is the fast reactor, ideally the integral fast reactor (IFR) about which I wrote in December.  It exploits the fact that conventional nuclear power plants use just 0.6% of the energy contained in the uranium that fuels them. IFRs, once loaded with nuclear waste, can, in principle, keep recycling it until only a small fraction remains, producing energy as they do so.

The remaining waste is both unusable for anyone who might hope to make a weapon from it and presents much less of a long-term management problem, as its components have half-lives of tens, not millions, of years. An IFR plant could melt down only by breaking the laws of physics: if the fuel pins begin to overheat, they expand, stopping the fission reaction.

GE Hitachi has offered to build a fast reactor to consume the plutonium stockpile at Sellafield, though not yet the whole kit (the integral fast reactor). It has offered to do it within five years, and to carry the cost if it doesn’t work out. This is the proposal the government is now considering. I would like to see it go further and examine the case for the full works: an integral fast reactor (incorporating a reprocessing plant) that generates much more energy from the waste pile.

We are confronted not just with a choice between nuclear power and gas or coal – whose consequences I have explained elsewhere, but also with a choice between different nuclear technologies. This is a choice that has to be made, because we have a monstrous pile of nuclear waste, a legacy of both the irresponsible short-termism of those who ran previous generations of nuclear power plants and of the nuclear weapons industry. We cannot wish this waste away. It exists and something must be done about it.

There are currently three serious options on the table. The first is to bury it. We get nothing from this except a bloody great hole in the ground and a bill to match. The second is currently the government’s favoured option: mixed oxide processing (Mox).

This has already proved to be an expensive fiasco. It produces (when it works at all) fuel that hardly anyone wants, at great cost, and more waste plutonium than we possess already. Its contribution to the electricity supply is feeble, raising the energy extracted from nuclear fuel from 0.6% to 0.8%. Most importantly, it can deal only with plutonium waste, whereas IFRs also consume depleted uranium. Even the government admits that “the value of the fuel to reactor operators is significantly less than the cost of its manufacture”.

The third option is fast reactors, ideally integral fast reactors. This is the one I favour, and unless you can provide me with a powerful reason why it should not receive serious consideration, it is the option I will continue to promote.

Whichever of the three choices we make, we will be choosing a nuclear technology – and a major contract for a nuclear operator. We will be favouring one branch of the nuclear industry at the expense of two others.

If, for example, we prevail on the government to develop IFRs, not Mox, Areva, which hopes to profit from mixed oxide processing, will be sorely disappointed. The same goes for whichever company might have secured the contract for burying the waste.

So which of these options do you support? None of the above is not an answer. Something has to be done with the waste, and unless you have invented a novel solution, one of these three options will need to be deployed (or, conceivably, a different nuclear power technology, such as thorium or travelling wave reactors). But it is a choice that opponents of nuclear power are refusing to make – and that is not good enough.

Let me give you an example. After I first wrote about integral fast reactors, Dr Ruth Balogh, the nuclear issues campaigner for West Cumbria & North Lakes Friends of the Earth, sent a furious letter to the Guardian. She accused me of “proposing a technical fix for nuclear waste.” Yes, that is exactly what I’m proposing. Does she have an alternative in mind? A non-technical fix perhaps? No fix at all?

She went on to lambast both deep disposal for nuclear waste, the design for which, she claims, has “more than 100 flaws” and the Mox plant, whose evident drawbacks she lists. She then goes on the propose … a grand total of nothing. Her solution is to attack the people suggesting an alternative to both the treatments she abhors – without suggesting one herself. That’s not just irresponsible. It’s dumb.

She then suggests that IFRs could cause a “nuclear catastrophe at Sellafield” big enough to cause the “ruination of the western Lake District”. If she can propose a mechanism which does not break the laws of physics by which an IFR plant could achieve this, I will ask the Guardian to provide space for her on this site to explain it to our readers.

But all of us, if we have a serious interest in doing something about nuclear waste, should make this choice. What do you want to see done with it and why? Simply shouting down other people’s suggestions won’t make it go away.