The pros and cons
If we are looking for a long term clean future, what is the rush when Australia's pollution in miniscule?
A nuclear future for Australia in the 2040-2050's would be a great compliment to other energy providers.Here’s why there is nonuclear option for Australia to reach net zero
DrAlan Finkel
Any call to godirectly from coal to nuclear is effectively a call to delay decarbonisation ofour electricity system by 20 years
Fri22 Mar 2024 01.00 AEDT
Share
The battle lineshave been drawn over Australia’s energy future.
Withthe nation signed up to net zero emissions by 2050, the Albanese Labor government is committed to renewables. The Coalition wants nuclear.
Theopposition leader, Peter Dutton, has avision for meeting Australia’s energy needs that would include large-scale nuclear power plants and small modular reactors, a technology that is not yet proven, but which the shadow minister for energy, Ted O’Brien, says could be “up and running within a10-year period.”
While nuclear powermight experience a resurgence globally and eventually have a role in Australia,right now, no matter how much intent there might be to activate a nuclear powerindustry, it is difficult to envision before 2040.
The reality isthere is no substitute for solar and wind power this decade and next, supportedby batteries, transmission lines and peaking gas generation.
Any call to godirectly from coal to nuclear is effectively a call to delay decarbonisation ofour electricity system by 20 years.
Let’s unpack thepros and cons of nuclear power, the obstacles to getting it up and running inAustralia by the mid-2040s, and the longer-term prospects.
The pros
From a purelyengineering perspective, there is no better source of zero emissionselectricity than nuclear power. The reasons are many.
Compatibility. Nuclear power plants can dispatch electricity whenrequested and they are directly compatible with the 50 cycles a secondalternating current (AC) electricity system.
A nuclear plant’sclosure was hailed as a green win. Then emissions went up
In contrast, solarand wind power generators do not have inertia, do not have system strength,cannot dispatch when requested and do not provide synchronous AC power.Nevertheless, these features can be integrated into the system through modernpower electronics and battery systems.
Themining footprint of nuclear is small. Thereis no need for battery materials such as lithium, manganese, nickel or cobalt.Nor is there need for rare earth elements such as europium, terbium, neodymiumand many others.
Thesafety record of nuclear power is excellent
Nuclear uses modestamounts of copper, steel and concrete.
The footprint foruranium mining is small because only 1 tonne of uranium in a nuclear powerstation is needed to produce the same amount of electrical energy asapproximately 100,000 tonnes of coal in a coal-fired power station.
Thereal estate footprint is small. Approximatelythree square km of land is needed for a 1 gigawatt (GW) nuclear generator,although there would always be an additional exclusion area surrounding thesite.
Incontrast, solar farms need about a square kilometre of land area for each 50 megawatts of generation capacity. Thus, a 3GW solar farm producing the same annual generated energy as a 1GW nuclear plant would require about 60 square km.
Windfarmsneed almost 10 times more area than solar farms per megawatt although most of the land between the turbines can continue to be used for agriculture.
In principle,nuclear power plants can be located close to existing transmission lines oreven at old coal-fired power stations. In practice, this may not be possiblebecause of surrounding populations, or the power stations being repurposed bytheir owners.
Thesafety record of nuclear power is excellent. Thatis despite high profile accidents such as Three Mile Island, Chornobyl and Fukushima.
The deaths from accidents and airpollution per unit of electrical energy generated are comparable with solar and wind power, in the extremely low end of the range at less than 0.05 deaths per terawatt-hour. Hydroelectric power is the next lowest at 1.3 deaths per terawatt-hour. Coal has the highest rate, at 25 deaths per terawatt-hour.
The cons
There arechallenges for nuclear power in Australia, most notably timetable and cost.
Legislation. Commonwealth legislation passed by the Howardgovernment in 1998 prohibits nuclear power. Australia is the only country inthe G20 to have a legislated ban on nuclearpower. This would need to be lifted before anything else could happen.
Publicsupport. An August 2023 poll by theResolve Political Monitor found 40% of people backed nuclear power, 33% were undecided and 27% were opposed. It is likely that no matter how small the opposition, it will be vocal.
Ramprate. Large nuclear power generatorscannot ramp up and down rapidly like batteries or peaking gas generators. Thisreduces their compatibility with a predominantly solar and wind poweredelectricity grid. It is expected, though, that small modular reactors (SMRs)will be better in this respect than large, conventional reactors.
Fallinginvestment. The various operational,political and cost challenges faced by the nuclear industry have led tonuclear’s share of global electricity generation falling from more than 17% in1996 to 9% in 2022.
Startingfrom scratch. It is unlikely that Australiawould switch from being a laggard to a leader. That is, we would not proceedbefore we saw a licensed SMR (not a prototype) operating in the US, Canada, UKor another OECD country.
After that, wewould need to beef up the regulatory system, find the first site, find andlicense the first operator, approve and issue construction contracts, establisha waste-management system, establish the decommissioning rules anddecommissioning fund, run the environmental and safety regulatory gamut, traina workforce, respond to the inevitable protests and respond to the inevitablelegal opposition all the way to the high court.
Only then couldconstruction begin. It is difficult to imagine all this could be accomplishedand provide an operational nuclear reactor in Australia before the mid 2040s.
The cost of wind versus nuclear
Coal-firedgenerators and nuclear power generators can dispatch electricity at full powermore than 90% of the year. In practice, because demand fluctuates, the typicaldispatch level from the Australian coal-fired fleet is about 60%.
For comparison,what would be the capital cost of a wind farm to dispatch 60% of the year? Asimplified approach would be to ignore market economics and the variability ofsolar electricity in the system, and assume a 30% capacity factor for the windenergy. With these assumptions, for a windfarm to dispatch 60% of the year, wewould need to install 2GW of wind turbines. The first 1GW of turbines woulddispatch when the wind is blowing. The second 1GW of turbines would be used tocharge a 7GW-hour (GWh) battery, to be discharged into the grid on demand.
Usingfigures from the CSIRO’s GenCost draft 2023-2024report, the cost in this simplified model would be around $7bn per GW. Other, less costly, integration configurations are available. In comparison, based on the latest cost estimates for the Hinkley Point C plant under construction in the UK, the cost for nuclear power would be $27bn per GW.
The big opportunity in thinking small
In Australia, wewould be looking to use SMRs because of the enormous cost and constructiondelays of large-scale nuclear plants. But we will want the reassurance of firstseeing SMRs work safely and well in the UK, Europe, Canada, the US or anotherOECD country.
The trouble is,there are no SMRs operating in the UK, Europe, Canada, the US or any other OECDcountry. Nor are any SMRs under construction or approved in an OECD country.
There is no data tosupport any claims about how much SMRs will cost when deployed as operatingpower stations.
Still, introducingnuclear power when we can, starting in the 2040s, would bring benefits. Mostimportantly, nuclear power generation would reduce the ongoing mining footprintfor the regular replacement of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries andthe expanded electricity generation to support decarbonising our exports andpopulation growth.
For these reasons, itwould be worth removing the ban on nuclear power so that we can at leastthoroughly investigate the options.
