The Nuclear Echo post-Copenhagen – Ziggy Switkowski

Dr Ziggy Switkowski, a Ph.D. in nuclear physics and Chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), believes that nuclear power should be the at the centre of Australia’s long term energy strategy. Prior to this current appointment, Dr Switkowski served as a senior executive in a number of Australian and international organisations, including Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Telstra Corp. Ltd., Chief Executive Officer of Optus Communications and Chairman and Managing Director of Kodak Australasia. Ziggy Switkowski addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 1 December 2009 to explain why Australia should adopt nuclear power.

THE NUCLEAR ECHO POST-COPENHAGEN

ZIGGY SWITKOWSKI

The views expressed herein are my personal views. They do not represent the position of ANSTO – the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation – the government enterprise whose mandate covers basic research in nuclear structure with the use of neutrons, production of radiopharmaceuticals, and cooperative projects with industry and other laboratories in the application of nuclear techniques.

ANSTO is not authorised to do work in the nuclear fuel cycle.

The Federal Government policy is that Australia does not need to consider nuclear power in its energy strategy and is expressed by Minister Martin Ferguson as follows:

“…nuclear power is not needed as part of Australia’s energy mix given our country’s abundance and diversity of low cost and reliable energy sources, both fossil fuel and renewable. The Government has a clear policy of prohibiting the development of an Australian nuclear power industry, but the government also understands that nuclear power is an important part of the energy mix in some countries where energy demand is growing strongly but which lack the abundant and diverse energy resources available to Australians.”

Context: climate change

My position on climate change is that the science is sound, although the computer models used to forecast future trends are very complicated and dependent upon many assumptions.

The earth is currently in an extended warming period with temperature increases expected to accelerate and continue beyond this century.

Alarming forecasts of climate change and volatility are directionally right – more severe droughts, intense bushfires, unreliable rainfall and water flows, floods, hailstorms, rising sea levels, species destruction, melting icebergs, receding glaciers and so on.

However, the effects of climate change to date have been dramatised and exaggerated – for example, the real impacts of cyclones, thunderstorms, rising sea levels, bushfires have been similar for past 100 years, but the century ahead looks certain to be different.

Currently CO₂ concentration in the upper atmosphere is 388 ppm and is increasing by 2ppm each year following a very steady trend. Most probably this will increase by a further 100ppm in the next 50 years during which Australia’s contribution will be 1ppm.

The average global temperature will increase by 2 degrees in that time.

The IPCC scenario pointing to the need for a reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions of at least 60% by 2050 relative to 1990 levels is scientifically based.

Many countries have adopted the -60% target; few know how to ‘connect the dots’ to achieve this.

Australia presently contributes just over 1% of annual global GHG emissions. Major emitters are US, China, EU, Japan, Russia, India, Indonesia. These economies account for 75% of global emissions – the other 200 countries, including Australia, produce the rest.

Climate change is locked in for next 20-30 years. Steps taken today will affect climate trends much later this century.

Energy outlook

The demand for energy is increasing at two per cent per year. This implies a doubling of the world’s energy needs by 2050 and this is true for Australia as well. Increasing energy use is synonymous with economic growth, prosperity and rising standard of living.

There is little difficulty in meeting demand growth; the challenge is to do so in an environmentally responsible way with diminishing dependence upon coal. Rules are evolving with costs being imposed upon carbon emission and fossil fuel use.

Climate change is one key driver but energy security, diversity of supply and sustainability is often more important in national strategies.

Baseload electricity

Most electricity demand is for continuous reliable supply around the clock. This is met by what we call baseload supply. The options available for the production of baseload electricity are well known and limited:

• Burning of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil
• Hydroelectricity
• Nuclear power

As we have little tolerance for brownouts and blackouts and require that 80 per cent of our electricity capacity be always available – to power appliances, buildings and homes, hospitals, public transport, traffic lights etc – only the options noted above work.

The heirarchy of emissions is as follows (100 is worst, 0 is perfectly clean): brown coal(100), black coal(70), gas(50), solar(10), nuclear(10), wind(10), hydro(2).

CO2 remains resident in upper atmosphere for 100+ years.

If we insist upon reducing our use of fossil fuels, and cannot assume reliable water flows into the future, the only option open to us (and most economies around the world) is nuclear power. Many countries have already reached this conclusion which is why there is a strong revival of the nuclear industry globally.

Copenhagen ahead

Representatives from the 192 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will gather in Copenhagen from 7-18 December to try and reach agreement on global action to combat climate change for the period after 2012 – the successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

What will Australia’s energy and climate change representatives be reminded of when they join the discussions?

• 15 per cent of global electricity is already produced from nuclear power at 440 reactors in 31 countries
• Two thirds of the world’s population get some of their electricity from nuclear reactors; and most of the other one third aspire to a similar position
• Countries which had paused in their deployment of nuclear power – Sweden, UK, Italy, USA – are reactivating their programs while others such as Germany and Spain have reopened debate
• Neighbouring countries most affected by the fallout from the Chernobyl reactor fire – Ukraine, Russia, Finland – are increasing their nuclear networks and others like Poland and Belarus are about to start down this path
• The UK – a beacon of climate change leadership – is committed to accelerate its nuclear build program, replacing its current fleet of 19 reactors as its Energy Secretary, Ed Milibrand, forecasts 40 per cent share of electricity generation in the 2030s – double current levels
• In Latin America, Brazil has announced an ambitious construction program and Argentina has restarted its deployment of small scale systems
• The US delegation will echo President Obama’s view that the US cannot meet its climate change goals without more nuclear power
• And the chairman of the IPCC will extend that comment to the world in general
• The countries with the most ambitious nuclear outlooks are China, India, Brazil and Russia. The most dynamic developer of uranium resources is now Kazakhstan (now second to Canada in uranium exports). Some of these countries present interesting geopolitical challenges and opportunities for Australia

With the exception of Italy which can purchase nuclear electricity from France, no economy of Australia’s size or larger is without nuclear power (ie 14 countries).

Indeed, Australia now stands alone among the world’s top 25 or so economies in excluding consideration of nuclear power in our long term energy and climate change strategy. (Denmark is the largest economy without (direct) nuclear power in their planning.)

Case studies

France:Following the first oil crisis in 73/74, France committed to an accelerated nuclear build program. The first reactor from this strategy started production in 1977 and by 1990 France produced three quarters of their electricity by nuclear power.

Today, 58 reactors generate nearly 80 per cent of France’s electricity as well as exporting energy to neighbouring economies such as Germany and Italy.

In 2008, the French established a Council on Nuclear Energy chaired by President Nicolas Sarkozy to oversee both the domestic industry and global commercial development of a technology of significant export potential and geopolitical consequence.

Italy:Beginning in 1946, Italy had been a pioneer in civilian nuclear power but a year after the tragic disaster in Chernobyl, a 1987 referendum determined the phasing out of all nuclear energy. (Globally, new construction of reactors halted in western economies for almost 20 years.)

By 2008, Italy had become the world’s largest net importer of electricity with prices 30 per cent higher than the EU average. And 60 per cent higher than in France from which it imported nuclear generated electricity.

In May 2008, the Italian government confirmed it would commence building new nuclear power plants within five years to reduce the country’s dependence upon oil, gas and imported power. The phasing out of nuclear power has been described as a “terrible mistake” by the Italian Minister of Economic Development, Claudio Scajola.

Italy, the world’s seventh largest national economy, now has a new vision – to be the European energy hub via a diversified strategy including gas pipelines, liquid natural gas and nuclear power.

The government plans an electricity mix in 2030 of 50 per cent fossil fuels, 25 per cent renewable and 25 per cent nuclear meaning 8-10 reactors will have to be in operation by then. A new nuclear authority will be set up by year end; locations for the new plants are expected to be identified within six months and construction to start by 2013.

Motivated by hardcore economics (plus the desire for more energy independence and the requirement for a cleaner energy mix), from a standing start Italy will be producing 13GWe in the 2020s from nuclear power. That’s about 30 per cent of Australia’s electricity capacity today.

A public opinion poll in July 2008 found 54 per cent supported nuclear power in Italy and 36 per cent opposed it (compared to 82 per cent opposition in 2007). Such shifts in positive public attitudes to nuclear power have become familiar including in Australia.

Advantages of nuclear power

Most countries confronting the challenge of adding new and clean energy capacity have concluded that nuclear power must be in the mix because:

• Nuclear technology is well established, available off-the-shelf today, and not dependent upon heroic assumptions of cost or technology breakthroughs in the future
• Nuclear electricity is truly baseload, optimised for 24/7 operation, and connects into national electricity grids just as gas or coal fired power does
• Whole of life (i.e. from uranium mining to reactor decommissioning and long term storage of spent fuel) greenhouse gas emissions are very low and similar to solar and wind.
• Generating costs are already comparable to coal and gas in much of the world, and will be in Australia with moderate carbon costs ($A15-40 per tonne of CO2/year). Nuclear power has high upfront capital costs but low whole-of-life generating costs. It should be our lowest cost option in the 2020s.

• The nuclear power industry in most countries fully funds its lifecycle costs including waste management and decommissioning.

Australia‘s energy strategy

Australia’s energy and climate change strategy is based upon expected contributions from four pillars: energy conservation and productivity, accelerated deployment of renewable energy, a substitution of coal by gas, and the presumed success of clean coal technologies and associated carbon capture and storage (CCS). (The emissions trading scheme is not a strategy so much as a market mechanism to incent progress in each of these areas.)

There can be no question as to the merit of pursuing each element in this approach. Many countries are pursuing a similar mix but with the added element of nuclear power.

But with Australian household demand for energy increasing not reducing, renewables contributing less than two per cent to our current energy generation capacity, and CCS yet to be demonstrated as a scalable, cost effective and safe process, we may be the only country whose total energy strategy is based upon such fragile assumptions.

Much has been made of the fact that Australia is blessed with abundant sunshine and wind as if this might be a source of comparative advantage. The opposite may be the case.

Sunshine and wind are more democratically distributed than fuel resources such as oil, coal, gas and uranium. Most countries have plenty.

That we appear to have proportionately more is a statement of our low population density – something that translates into a small economy and fewer intellectual and commercial resources to exploit the technologies.

As we transition to a low carbon economy, our traditional sources of competitive advantage – ie abundant and inexpensive fossil fuels – will be overtaken by new generation technologies such as nuclear power where we have no presence.

And our competitive advantage will disappear.

More than 80 per cent of the world’s energy is produced from fossil fuels. To presume this global level of dependence will change quickly, fails to appreciate the huge growth in oil, coal and gas demand that will be driven by the emerging economies of China and India, or the challenge inherent in displacing technologies like the internal combustion petrol engine with cleaner alternatives.

In allowing coal to be demonised as a dirty fuel, and barring any consideration of nuclear energy as an option, our policy makers may be shaping an energy future disproportionately dependent upon technologies which may compromise the reliability, productivity and low cost of our current world class electricity system.

We may be pursuing a complex, high risk, speculative  path when international experience points to a simpler road forward – i.e. augmenting  our proven coal and gas fired facilities with equally proven nuclear power, initially to meet growth in energy demand, and eventually displacing fossil fuel infrastructure at the end of its working life.

Some nuclear stats

• Australia – 38 per cent uranium reserves, 20 per cent global production – fuel for about 1/5 world’s reactors
• 31 nuclear powered countries; global industry is 54 years old
• 440 reactors increasing to 1000 by 2050 under moderate assumptions; 30-40 under construction now
• 150 ocean going nuclear vessels (submarines, aircraft carriers, ice breakers)
• 15 per cent global electricityproduction; 23 per cent OECD;
• China, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Japan, S Korea – nuclear powered in our Region
• 10-20 new countries by 2020. Could include Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand

EU – most progressive community re Climate Change – has 31 per cent nuclear power

London – half baseload electricity is nuclear generated

France – 80 per cent nuclear powered – a country of vineyards, cathedrals, and nuclear reactors.

Energy superpower

Oil Uranium

40% global energy                       15% global electricity; 6% all energy

(about the same as coal+gas)

$US6b/day                                 $US5b/year (1/400 x oil)

$ Energy density = 1                    70 – much more cost effective as a fuel

Saudi Arabia – 12% share oil                    Australia – 20% share of U production

Reserves – 100 years                             100 years

Limited capacity headroom            Easily stockpiled; hard to squeeze supply

Oil is overwhelmingly more important economically in today’s world.

In energy terms, uranium may overtake oil as the key fuel later this century.

Australia can lead as a supplier nation and many believe further opportunities exist in fuel enrichment, reactor construction and management, storage of spent fuel.

Possible nuclear scenarios for Australia

During the 1950s and 1960s, Australia was a senior member of the global community of countries with substantial nuclear expertise. The Australian Atomic Energy Commission (now ANSTO) was established in 1953 and conducted world leading research into the nuclear fuel cycle.

In 1970, the Liberal government halted development of the country’s first power reactor planned for Jervis Bay. In 1983, the Labour government limited further development of Australia’s uranium resources leading to the “Three Mines Policy” ultimately reversed in 2007.

The Three Mile Island nuclear core meltdown in 1979, and the tragic Chernobyl reactor (chemical) explosion and fire in 1986 brought the industry to a halt globally.

Discussion of nuclear energy basically stopped in Australia during the 1980s and 1990s and returned to our national conversation only in 2006, following the UMPNER Task Force Report. But two decades of policy development were lost.

The 2006 UMPNER study described a scenario where Australia installed its first reactor in 15 years time, during the 2020s, and built a fleet of 25 reactors by 2050 which could then provide a third of our electricity needs.

This outlook is now too conservative.

With nuclear and environment regulators around the world striving for consistent, simplified rules and reactor vendors introducing more standard, efficient and safer designs, an estimate of 15 years to commission Australia’s first reactor is needlessly cautious.

For example, the plan in Italy anticipates less than 10 years. France achieved five years in the 1970s. Even Egypt, new to the nuclear field, has just signed a contract with Australia’s Worley Parsons to project manage the construction of its first 1200 MWe reactor for generation of electricity in 2017 – eight years hence.

Australia could, and should, plan for its first nuclear reactor by 2020 aiming for a fleet size of 50 large reactors producing 75GWe by 2050. (Forecast is for between 1140 and 3500GWe nuclear generation in 2060 implying around 1000 reactors of this size around the world by mid-century).

With a moderate amount of hydroelectricity, renewable and residual coal/gas generation, this could meet all Australia’s electricity needs – reliably, safely, cleanly and cost effectively.

• It solves our GHG challenge in the electricity sector completely.
• It ensures an industrial strength energy infrastructure with baseload integrity.
• It provides for energy security and independence given Australia’s extensive uranium reserves.
• It creates a modern industry of high technology and with sophisticated jobs.
• It establishes the energy platform which can charge electric cars and produce hydrogen fuel dependably and cleanly as will be required in the latter part of this century. (Indeed as recharging electric vehicles will drive off peak demand, pressure on baseload generation will grow proportionately faster at double the growth rate of overall demand)

A new generation of reactors is being developed at the lower end of power output.

Instead of 1000 MWe which is becoming typical of modern fission systems, compact reactors producing 50-200MWe are expected on the market around 2015.

These have the appealing features of being gas cooled (and therefore do not require access to water), are modular and can be incrementally extended as more power is needed, have a small footprint (perhaps the size of two shipping containers), could be built underground, and are much less intimidating than a full scale installation.

Reactors of such dimension have been used on nuclear submarines for decades – albeit with a different cooling and fuel configuration.

Applications for such systems could extend to providing the electricity for Australian towns of up to100k population remote from the grid, powering industrial sites (mines and smelters etc), and partnering desalination plants.

The introduction of nuclear power via these smaller installations may be the path which wins Australian community and political support earliest.

Reservations

Opponents of nuclear power in Australia point to a long list of objections.

Their concerns mostly mirror those raised elsewhere – ie we have no unique reason in resisting the introduction of nuclear energy. (Availability of lots of sun, wind etc does not support relevant claims of our being “different”)

Despite such concerns, two thirds of the world’s population lives with nuclear power, and this proportion will increase. That is, many countries have on balance supported increasing deployment of nuclear energy – but not yet Australia.

Still, it’s important to acknowledge the reservations voiced by Australians not yet convinced of the merits of a domestic nuclear industry:

• Management challenge of long lived radioactive waste – no national repository operational anywhere in the world
• Costs of nuclear power and project management especially of first installations; rising capital intensity (Finnish reactor costs x2 original estimate and behind schedule)
• Timeliness – first reactors at least 10 years away. Nuclear cannot be a solution for 2020
• Location of reactors – NIMBY (In Australia, 50 reactors require 12-25 sites plus one national repository for spent fuel rods available by 2070)
• Risk of another catastrophic accident – eg Chernobyl
• Sovereign risk – lack of bipartisan support
• Proliferation, terrorism
• Access to water

In the following, I’ll elaborate on three specific concerns and suggest solutions.

Specific issues

Location of reactors

The criteria for siting reactors include proximity to the main electricity grid, availability of water (including sea water) and access to consumer and industrial markets.

In larger networks, reactors are typically built in configurations of 2-4 operating units.

An Australian national network of 50 reactors would require from 13-25 sites which, in the main, could be co-located with existing power stations which automatically satisfy the criteria above.

The two most energy intensive states in Australia are NSW and Victoria. The former has a land area of 809 thousand square kilometres (km2), the latter is 238 thousand km2.

Country         Area (000 km2)      Population (m)        #Reactors

UK               245                        61                          19

France          551                        58                          59

Japan           378                        127                        55

S Korea         100                        48                          20

Italy              301                        59                8-10 ( by 2030)

All countries in the table have population densities much greater than any found in Australia, and in the cases of Japan, S Korea and Italy, have more difficult and less stable geologies. Yet all have identified satisfactory locations for their reactors in numbers much greater than would be contemplated in Australian states.

The task of finding suitable locations in Australia is simple, even if the political and social challenges may be difficult, at least for the first step. Coal-fired power station sites are close to ideal: remote from urban settlement, adequate real estate, available cooling water, easy grid connection, good construction access, trained workforce and culture etc.

In countries with a long history of nuclear energy (eg France, Finland), local communities and councils often bid for the right to host the next reactor. The package of sophisticated infrastructure, high tech jobs and subsidized electricity is compelling especially in an environment accustomed to nuclear networks.

Storage of spent fuel

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined that used nuclear fuel can be stored safely and with no environmental impact indefinitely and certainly for at least 30 years beyond the licensed operating period of a nuclear power plant.

Accordingly, most spent fuel is kept on site either in pools of water which cool and shield it, or in dry storage – ventilated concrete casks about five metres high alongside the plant. This can continue beyond the reactor’s 40-60 year operating life until the spent fuel is transported by road or rail to national repositories for long term storage.

A single large reactor serving a million people produces a volume of nuclear “waste” equivalent to that of the size of a passenger car per year. This is judged to be very small. No national storage facility is currently complete; several will open in the next 10 years (eg Finland, Sweden).

The industry for civilian power is 54 years old so some reactors are now approaching the end of their useful lives and decisions for disposal of spent fuel and decommissioning of reactors will be addressed in the decades ahead.

In Australia’s case, design of a national storage facility for spent fuel assemblies could probably begin around 2060 when the global experience with such structures will be extensive. Or earlier, should Australia develop a fuel leasing business to approved international clients with high level waste disposal in engineered repositories a part of the service.

Criteria for selection of a deep geologic disposal site require low seismic activity, no nearby water flows, and for reasons of public reassurance a reasonable distance from population centres. Much of our continent satisfies such requirements.

If global warming is a serious issue, then given the choice of managing the legacy of nuclear waste produced at 1000 (or even 5000) well engineered and carefully controlled reactor locations globally versus managing the consequences of runaway climate change at the end of this century, the decision should be straightforward.

Cost

In countries without Australia’s abundant reserves of coal and gas, nuclear power is already cost competitive with local alternatives. This is the case in most of Europe.

In an era when carbon is explicitly costed via an ETS or tax, nuclear becomes the lowest cost alternative at a carbon dioxide cost from $A15-40/tonne/year, a range anticipated by our CPRS to be reached before 2020.

In 2006, UMPNER concluded that nuclear power would be the lowest cost, cleanest and safest form of electricity production in Australia in the 2020s. Still, the potentially higher cost consequences of all non fossil fuel alternatives need to be put in perspective.

In a typical household bill, the cost of electricity is around 15 cents per kilowatt-hour.

In very approximate terms, a third of this covers generating costs, a third for transmission and distribution, and a third for retail marketing, billing, service etc.

If generating costs were to double – the upper limit of the first nuclear generators – total costs would move to 20c/kwh. (The figure will be higher for wind, and much higher for solar energy).

But of course, the increase would occur over a decade or more, and would not extend to 100 per cent of the generation much of which remains fossil fuel based in current forecasts.

So, suppose 50 per cent of electricity generation is ‘clean energy’ by 2025 at a 100 per cent generating cost premium, then our annual household energy bill would increase by about one per cent  per year more than it would otherwise without the new technologies and without a carbon cost. In fact, the one per cent will be overwhelmed by much larger movements in our total energy costs.

In my view, most of us will be prepared to pay higher energy (and utility prices in general) providing:

• The environmental and climate change justification is clearly explained
• Cost increases are phased in over a reasonable time – ie some years
• Our disadvantaged folk are protected

Post Copenhagen

The meeting in Copenhagen will emphasise the central roles of the major emitters – US, China, EU, India, Russia – perhaps the only economies that matter to the challenge of global warming. Each of these countries or communities has ambitious plans for additional nuclear power. Furthermore, the Asian region may well lead the world in nuclear deployment in the decades ahead.

Global sentiment regarding nuclear is shifting along a path that I expect Australia to follow:

• Initially reluctant acceptance of the technology as the best available solution to energy security and climate change challenges
• Increased commitment to a proven, cost effective platform which promises to be the technology choice through the end of this century
• Enthusiastic promotion of the technology as next generation designs offer more efficiency and less waste (Generation 3), fuel recycling and elimination of byproducts with weapons application, viz plutonium (Generation 4).

Our current national debate about greenhouse gases and an emissions trading scheme is the first step of a larger agenda. The main game is to design an evolutionary path along which the Australian economy progressively reduces its dependence on fossil fuels while enhancing its productivity and competitiveness.

Assembling a range of novel, niche energy technologies may be interesting and intellectually satisfying but is inefficient when better industrial-grade solutions are available.

Nuclear power must be in the mix, and we should be prepared for it to be most of the answer within a few decades.

To start –

• First, we must have bipartisan agreement on the legitimacy of nuclear power in our planning.
• The work of the 2006 UMPNER Task Force should be updated perhaps by the Productivity Commission as issues of relative costs are becoming more important and better data are now available.

(The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering is already undertaking a comparative analysis of generation options available to Australia in 2050)

• We must authorise and resource our nuclear regulators to design appropriate protocols and regimes for a fast growing domestic nuclear industry.
• We must re-establish the tertiary level education and training capabilities that such an industry would demand. International collaborations will be important.
• We should start the determination of prospective sites for the first reactors.
• Our goal should be to have nuclear electricity supplying our grid from our first reactor by 2020.

Ten 1000 MWe reactors by 2030 could deliver 25 per cent of our electricity needs. This is becoming a global target. Then 50 reactors by 2050 could produce 90 per cent  of our electricity – comparable to France.