10 February 2020 On January 31st, just three days before he offered his resignation as Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, Senator Matthew Canavan made his long awaited, if predictable, announcement: Australia’s long lived intermediate radioactive waste will be stored, and the low level waste deposited, at the Napandee site in the Kimba region of South Australia. Canavan’s decision was a natural follow on from his December 13th announcement that with just 47 per cent of voters in favour, the Flinders Ranges site of Wallerberdina was no longer under consideration. As such, the Kimba decision was predictable. However it still came as a jolt to most of the farmers and others rightly fearful of the plan to host nuclear waste which even the government now admits will remain toxic for an unimaginable 10,000 years.
The early November Kimba vote of 61.17 per cent in favour on the proposed project followed the four year divisive government campaign. On December 5th, Kimba region farmer Terry Schmucker explained the vote’s long history: ‘We have already been through this once already where everyone was on equal terms. The minister at the time had already ruled there was not broad community support. However the landholder that nominated his land the first time then renominated a different part of his farm and his friends and family within the Kimba council moved for a vote of only the council area. The community funding has now been restricted to the Kimba council area only because of this — people are looking at the large inducement, not the radioactive waste issues.’ He concluded that ‘if the 50 km radius was applied at Kimba like it is at Hawker the vote would fail at these waste sites.’
After their 20 year struggle to successfully obtain their native title rights, which included the Kimba region, the Barngarla people were astonished at their own exclusion from the vote. As Jeanne Miller movingly explains in Kim Mavromatis’ four minute film, as Aboriginal people with no voting power they are put back 50 years, ‘again classed as flora and fauna.’ The Barngarla case against the Kimba Council will return to the Federal Court on February 21st. After the Kimba region announcement, most predictable was the delight of the man due to profit the most from the arrangement in monetary terms. Jeff Baldock of Napandee is to be paid four fold for the 160 hectares of his land that the federal government plans to acquire.
Not much doubt, however, that Baldock and his family over future generations may get much more in repercussions than bargained for. At our privileged gathering on 5th February in Adelaide’s CBD, every time a guest referred to ‘intermediate long lived nuclear waste’, Dr Helen Caldicott, an internationally known anti-nuclear campaigner, insistently corrected the term to ‘high level’ nuclear waste. Somewhat surprisingly, on February 6, ANSTO (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation) senior nuclear officer Hef Griffths voiced the same opinion. Speaking to the ABC’s Paul Culliver, Griffiths admitted France classifies waste from reprocessed spent nuclear fuel as high level nuclear waste — and when the waste gets shipped back to Australia it is reclassified as intermediate.
Unsurprisingly, there has been more media coverage of this issue in the Murdoch owned Adelaide Advertiser since Senator Canavan’s anouncement. One opinion piece to one (extreme) side, more facts than usual have been reported. Unswerving however has been the insistence by many correspondents of the repetition of the government mantra that the project is all about medical nuclear waste. The reality is that over 90 per cent of the waste, measured by radioactivity, is intermediate long-lived waste including the nuclear spent fuel rods and also the parts of the previous nuclear reactor. And no, X-rays and radiotherapy aren’t nuclear medicine.
After their 20 year struggle to successfully obtain their native title rights, which included the Kimba region, the Barngarla people were astonished at their own exclusion from the vote. As Jeanne Miller movingly explains in Kim Mavromatis’ four minute film, as Aboriginal people with no voting power they are put back 50 years, “again classed as flora and fauna”‘. To avoid any unnecessary repetition of details regarding the medical waste argument I suggest that any interested reader would do well to read the respondents’ questions and information to my last published article. In addition, there is always the valuable Friends of the Earth scientific information source.
The hosts of the Kimba Rally for Sunday February 2nd, expecting 100, were overwhelmed and delighted with the crowd, a physical count revealing five times that number. Mrs Waniwa Lester, widow of the late Yami Lester blinded by the 1953 British nuclear tests at Emu Junction, travelled the 467 kilometres from Adelaide with me to attend. Weeks in the planning, it turned out the rally took place two days after the Minister’s actual announcement of the nuclear site. MC Peter Woodfold, President of No Radioactive Waste on Agricultural Land in Kimba or SA, summarised the local divisive campaign in his speech, saying ‘if you want to know what intimidation is, you stand between people and money.’ Perhaps most moving of all the excellent speeches were those from other farmers, James Shepherdson and Tom Harris. As reported in the Stock Journal, Shepherdson said the community had not initially been told that the facility would be used to temporarily store intermediate-level radioactive waste, in addition to the storage and disposal of low-level waste. He said funding injections, such as a $20 million government community fund, did not outweigh potential problems with grain quality. ‘Farmers are under scrutiny and at the beck and call of buyers and brokers, and to risk what is an $80m income for this district every 12 months, for a one-off $20m payment, that’s absurd,’ he said. Kimba farming land is an important part of South Australia’s just 4.5 per cent agricultural cropping land. Tom Harris revealed with some distress the current doubt by insurance agents regarding his insurance viability because of its proximity of his farm to the nuclear storage site; this may jeopardise his sons’ succession. Reflecting the determination of local No campaigners, ACF ‘s Dave Sweeney warns that the fight is far from over. Various hurdles along the way in which opponents can be involved include the required Environmental Impact Statement and then the assessment the regulator ARPANSA (The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency) must make. The inclusion of other opponents is more likely when transport routes are finally revealed. Coming from a long established Eyre Peninsula family, P Boylan is clear: all of SA’s West Coast will be affected and must have a say. Peter Woolford goes further, in view of the extraordinary ramifications of this decision for the whole state, a referendum is needed. No, it’s not over yet. Nor will it be. On an issue that will have implications for every generation to come, just 452 local residents cannot be allowed to speak for 1.7 million South Australians. |
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Archive for February, 2020
The sorry Kimba nuclear waste saga- Michele Madigan spells it out (and it’s not over)
February 13, 2020High Level Nuclear Waste: Believe Canavan’s Queensland mate or official sources?
February 13, 2020DEFINITION OF HIGH LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE :Source : US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) :
High-level radioactive wastes are the highly radioactive materials produced as a byproduct of the reactions that occur inside nuclear reactors. High-level wastes take one of two forms:
1) Spent (used) reactor fuel when it is accepted for disposal.
2) Waste materials remaining after spent fuel is reprocessed.
Source : International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) :
High-Level Radioactive Waste (HLW) is produced from the burning of uranium fuel in nuclear power reactors. It is of two kinds:
1) Spent nuclear fuel.
2) Waste resulting from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.
Due to its high radioactivity and very long half-life, HLW has to be well contained and isolated from the human environment.
RADIOACTIVE WASTE 10,000 X MORE RADIOACTIVE THAN URANIUM ORE
Source: Nuclear
Waste Management Org , Canada :
Australia’s extreme bushfires – forests might not recover
February 13, 2020Wildfires have spread dramatically—and some forests may not recover. An explosion in the frequency and extent of wildfires worldwide is hindering recovery even in ecosystems that rely on natural blazes to survive. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/01/extreme-wildfires-reshaping-forests-worldwide-recovery-australia-climate/
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BY JOHN PICKRELL, JANUARY 30, 2020, Pungent and damp, the so-called tall, wet forests of southeastern Australia are home to the tallest flowering plants on Earth. Eucalyptus regnans, the Latin name of the mountain ash, means “ruler of the gum trees”—which is fitting, given these giants can reach more than 300 feet high.
Many of Australia’s gum trees, particularly those in drier forest types, are famously able to tolerate fire, throwing out new buds and shoots within weeks of being engulfed in flames. But even these tenacious species have their limits. Old-growth forests of the mountain ash and a related species, the alpine ash, are among the gum trees that are less tolerant of intense blazes. In the state of Victoria, these trees had already been severely depleted by logging and land clearing. Now, the bushfires that have burned more than 26 million acres of eastern Australia in recent months are putting the forests at even greater risk. Some of the forests razed this year have experienced four bushfires in the past 25 years, meaning they’ve had no chance to recover, says David Lindenmayer, an ecologist at the Australian National University in Canberra. “They should be burning no more than every 75 to 125 years, so that’s just an extraordinary change to fire regimes,” he says. “Mountain ash need to be about 15 to 30 years old before they can produce viable amounts of seed to replace themselves following fire.” The loss of these dominant trees is a significant problem, since they provide vital habitat for threatened animal species such as the sooty owl, the giant burrowing frog, and a fluffy arboreal marsupial called the greater glider. (Also find out how Australia’s fires can create big problems for freshwater supplies.) |
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“Ecomodernists” – Ben Heard, Oscar Archer, Barry Brook, Geoff Russell, – Australia’s pro-nuclear fake environmentalists
February 13, 2020
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Aboriginal First Nations and Australia’s ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’
Jim Green – Nuclear Monitor | 10th July 2018 Australia’s Aboriginal people have long been mistreated by governments and industry in the pursuit of nuclear projects. The attitudes of ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ or ‘ecomodernists’ towards Aboriginal people is as disrespectful as those of governments and industry, argues JIM GREEN. The plan to turn South Australia (SA) into the world’s nuclear waste dump has lost momentum since 2016 though it continues to be promoted by some politicians, the Business SA lobby group, and an assortment of individuals and lobbyists including self-styled ‘pro-nuclear environmentalists’ or ‘ecomodernists‘. In its 2016 report, the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission established by the state government promoted a plan to import 138,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste (about one-third of the world’s total) and 390,000 cubic metres of intermediate-level waste. The state Labor government then spent millions on a state-wide promotional campaign under the guide of consultation. …….. The Royal Commission Royal Commissioner Kevin Scarce ‒ a retired Navy officer ‒ didn’t appoint a single Aboriginal person to the staff of the Royal Commission or to his Expert Advisory Committee. Aboriginal people repeatedly expressed frustration with the Royal Commission process…… No analysis but favourable conclusions Despite its acknowledgement that it had not systematically analysed the matter, the Royal Commission nevertheless arrived at unequivocal, favourable conclusions, asserting that there “are frameworks for securing long-term agreements with rights holders in South Australia, including Aboriginal communities” and these “provide a sophisticated foundation for securing agreements with rights holders and host communities regarding the siting and establishment of facilities for the management of used fuel.” Such statements were conspicuously absent in submissions from Aboriginal people and organisations. There is in fact an abundance of evidence that land rights and heritage protection frameworks in SA are anything but “sophisticated.”……. Enter the ecomodernists
Ben Heard from the ‘Bright New World’ pro-nuclear lobby group said the Royal Commission’s findings were “robust”. Seriously? Failing to conduct an analysis and ignoring an abundance of contradictory evidence but nevertheless concluding that a “sophisticated foundation” exists for securing agreements with Aboriginal rights-holders … that’s “robust”? Likewise, academic Barry Brook, a member of the Commission’s Expert Advisory Committee, said he was “impressed with the systematic and ruthlessly evidence-based approach the [Royal Commission] team took to evaluating all issues.” In a November 2016 article about the nuclear waste import plan, Ben Heard and Oscar Archer wrote: “We also note and respect the clear message from nearly all traditional owner groups in South Australia that there is no consent to proceed on their lands. We have been active from the beginning to shine a light on pathways that make no such imposition on remote lands.” In Heard’s imagination, the imported spent nuclear fuel would not be dumped on the land of unwilling Aboriginal communities, it would be processed for use as fuel in non-existent Generation IV ‘integral fast reactors‘. Even the stridently pro-nuclear Royal Commission gave short shrift to Heard’s proposal, stating in its final report: “[A]dvanced fast reactors and other innovative reactor designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in the foreseeable future. The development of such a first-of-a-kind project in South Australia would have high commercial and technical risk.” Heard claims his imaginary Generation IV reactor scenario “circumvents the substantial challenge of social consent for deep geological repositories, facilities that are likely to be best located, on a technical basis, on lands of importance to Aboriginal Australians”. But even in Heard’s scenario, only a tiny fraction of the imported spent fuel would be converted to fuel for imaginary Generation IV reactors (in one of his configurations, 60,000 tonnes would be imported but only 4,000 tonnes converted to fuel). Most of it would be stored indefinitely, or dumped on the land of unwilling Aboriginal communities. Honoured in the breach Heard says he “respects” the opposition of Traditional Owners to the waste import plan, but that respect appears to be honoured in the breach. Despite his acknowledgement that there was “no consent” to proceed from “nearly all traditional owner groups in South Australia”, Heard nevertheless wrote an ‘open letter‘ promoting the waste import plan which was endorsed by ‘prominent’ South Australians, i.e. rich, non-Aboriginal people. One of the reasons to pursue the waste import plan cited in Heard’s open letter is that it would provide an “opportunity to engage meaningfully and partner with Aboriginal communities in project planning and delivery”. There is no acknowledgement of the opposition of Aboriginal people to the waste import plan ‒ evidently Heard believes that their opposition should be ignored and overridden but Aboriginal people might be given a say in project planning and delivery. A second version of Heard’s open letter did not include the above wording but it cited the “successful community consultation program” with Aboriginal communities. However the report arising from the SA government’s community consultation program (successful or otherwise) stated: “There was a significant lack of support for the government to continue pursuing any form of nuclear storage and disposal facilities. Some Aboriginal people indicated that they are interested in learning more and continuing the conversation, but these were few in number.” Beyond offensive Geoff Russell, another self-styled pro-nuclear environmentalist, wrote in a November 2016 article in New Matilda: “Have Aboriginals given any reasons for opposing a waste repository that are other than religious? If so, then they belong with other objections. If not, then they deserve the same treatment as any other religious objections. Listen politely and move on. “Calling them spiritual rather than religious makes no difference. To give such objections standing in the debate over a repository is a fundamental violation of the separation of church and state, or as I prefer to put it, the separation of mumbo-jumbo and evidence based reasoning. “Aboriginals have native title over various parts of Australia and their right to determine what happens on that land is and should be quite different from rights with regard to other land. This isn’t about their rights on that land. “Suppose somebody wants to build a large intensive piggery. Should we consult Aboriginals in some other part of the country? Should those in the Kimberley perhaps be consulted? No. “They may object to it in the same way I would, but they have no special rights in the matter. They have no right to spiritual veto.” Where to begin? Russell’s description of Aboriginal spiritual beliefs as “mumbo-jumbo” is beyond offensive. His claim that Traditional Owners are speaking for other people’s country is a fabrication. Federal native title legislation provides limited rights and protections for some Traditional Owners ‒ and no rights and protections for many others (when the federal Coalition government was trying to impose a national nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land in SA in 2003, it abolished all native title rights and interests over the site). National nuclear waste dump The attitudes of the ecomodernists also extend to the debate over the siting of a proposed national nuclear waste dump. Silence from the ecomodernists when the federal government was passing laws allowing the imposition of a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory without consent from Traditional Owners. Echoing comments from the Liberal Party, Brook and Heard said the site in the Northern Territory was in the “middle of nowhere”. From their perspective, perhaps, but for Muckaty Traditional Owners the site is in the middle of their homelands. Heard claims that one of the current proposed dump sites, in SA’s Flinders Ranges, is “excellent” in many respects and it “was volunteered by the landowner”. In fact, it was volunteered by absentee landlord and former Liberal Party politician Grant Chapman, who didn’t bother to consult Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners living on the neighbouring Indigenous Protected Area. The site is opposed by most Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners and by their representative body, the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Association (ATLA). Indigenous Protected Area Heard claims there are “no known cultural heritage issues” affecting the Flinders Ranges site. Try telling that to the Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners who live on Yappala Station, in the Indigenous Protected Area adjacent to the proposed dump site. The area has many archaeological and culturally-significant sites that Traditional Owners have registered with the SA government over the past decade. So where did Heard get this idea that there are “no known cultural heritage issues on the site”? Not from visiting the site, or speaking to Traditional Owners. He’s just repeating the federal government’s propaganda. Silence from the ecomodernists about the National Radioactive Waste Management Act (NRWMA), which dispossesses and disempowers Traditional Owners in every way imaginable:
Uranium mining Silence from the ecomodernists about the Olympic Dam mine’s exemptions from provisions of the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act. Silence from the ecomodernists about sub-section 40(6) of the Commonwealth’s Aboriginal Land Rights Act, which exempts the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory from the Act and thus removed the right of veto that Mirarr Traditional Owners would otherwise have enjoyed. Silence from the ecomodernists about the divide-and-rule tactics used by General Atomics’ subsidiary Heathgate Resources against Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners in relation to the Beverley and Four Mile uranium mines in SA. Adnyamathanha Traditional Owner Dr Jillian Marsh, who in 2010 completed a PhD thesis on the strongly contested approval of the Beverley mine, puts the nuclear debates in a broader context: “The First Nations people of Australia have been bullied and pushed around, forcibly removed from their families and their country, denied access and the right to care for their own land for over 200 years. Our health and wellbeing compares with third world countries, our people crowd the jails. “Nobody wants toxic waste in their back yard, this is true the world over. We stand in solidarity with people across this country and across the globe who want sustainable futures for communities, we will not be moved.” Now, Traditional Owners have to fight industry, government, and the ecomodernists as well. Silence from the ecomodernists about the divide-and-rule tactics used by General Atomics’ subsidiary Heathgate Resources against Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners in relation to the Beverley and Four Mile uranium mines in SA. Adnyamathanha Traditional Owner Dr Jillian Marsh, who in 2010 completed a PhD thesis on the strongly contested approval of the Beverley mine, puts the nuclear debates in a broader context: “The First Nations people of Australia have been bullied and pushed around, forcibly removed from their families and their country, denied access and the right to care for their own land for over 200 years. Our health and wellbeing compares with third world countries, our people crowd the jails. “Nobody wants toxic waste in their back yard, this is true the world over. We stand in solidarity with people across this country and across the globe who want sustainable futures for communities, we will not be moved.” Now, Traditional Owners have to fight industry, government, and the ecomodernists as well. |
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In water-scarce Australia, cooling water for nuclear power would become an impossible burden
February 13, 2020In summary, in a hot dry continent like Australia, providing cooling water for a nuclear power plant would prove a huge cost and distortion to the water industry.
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Nuclear cost and water consumption – The elephants in the control room, Open Forum, Peter Farley | December 20, 2019 “…..Cooling Water A key issue with nuclear plants is cooling. Because of the cost of shutdowns and the degradation of materials by irradiation, the plants are designed to run at lower peak temperatures (260-320 C) than coal (500-670 C), gas turbines (1,300-1430C) or internal combustion plants (2,000 C). The thermal efficiency of a plant is directly related to the difference between the peak temperature and the cooling medium – what is termed Carnot efficiency. Lower temperature means lower efficiency, as less of the heat energy is converted into work and more is removed by the cooling system. So for a given amount of electrical energy delivered, more cooling is required in a nuclear plant. Furthermore the warmer the cooling water or air the more coolant is required. Thus the Barrakah plants require 100 tonnes of Gulf seawater per second for each generator. In higher latitudes with seawater temperatures in the range of 2-12C, water requirements can still be 40-60 tonnes per second per GW. Just to put that in perspective Melbourne Water supplies 15-20 tonnes per second to the entire Metropolitan area of almost 5 million people. Even so, the water temperature is raised by 7-10C which is enough to kill any fish larvae unfortunate enough to be sucked into the cooling intakes. It is enough to change the local environment for all sea life, so finding a suitabable site is very difficult. There are currently no nuclear plants operating using warm seawater for cooling although Barrakah is soon to be commissioned. The problem there is not just the temperature but the accelerated rates of corrosion and biofouling which will mean the heat exchangers need to be larger, pumping losses will be higher and maintenance bills higher still. Perhaps the area near Portland in Victoria might work, but then the 500kV line would have to be triplicated to carry away the power, further adding to the cost. Plants at the edges of the grid have a whole lot of other issues so a South Australian plant would be extremely difficult to integrate. On land in very cold climates, a small number of air cooled plants have been built but the offset is that about 5% of the output of the power plant is used to run the fans. However in warm climates it is virtually impossible to run an air cooled nuclear power plant. It would require in the order of 450-500 tonnes of air per second to be moved over the heat exchangers per GW of electrical output. At typical air velocities for cooling fans that would have a fan area of 75,000 square meters or if each fan was the cross section of a shipping container, 17,000 fans. It is enough to change the local environment for all sea life, so finding a suitable site is very difficult. There are currently no nuclear plants operating using warm seawater for cooling although Barrakah is soon to be commissioned. The problem there is not just the temperature but the accelerated rates of corrosion and biofouling which will mean the heat exchangers need to be larger, pumping losses will be higher and maintenance bills higher still. Perhaps the area near Portland in Victoria might work, but then the 500kV line would have to be triplicated to carry away the power, further adding to the cost. Plants at the edges of the grid have a whole lot of other issues so a South Australian plant would be extremely difficult to integrate. On land in very cold climates, a small number of air cooled plants have been built but the offset is that about 5% of the output of the power plant is used to run the fans. However in warm climates it is virtually impossible to run an air cooled nuclear power plant. It would require in the order of 450-500 tonnes of air per second to be moved over the heat exchangers per GW of electrical output. At typical air velocities for cooling fans that would have a fan area of 75,000 square meters or if each fan was the cross section of a shipping container, 17,000 fans. In other cases straight through cooling is used from large rivers or lakes. The Murray at the South Australian border is often down to 9 GL/day or even less. 9 Gl/day is about 105 tonnes/second, and so a single unit nuclear power plant located on the Murray would often need the entire flow to cool it, while heating the water by 8-12 C. This is obviously an environmentally impossible situation. That is why cooling towers are the most common cooling method because they are the most efficient. Evaporating water carries away much more heat than liquid flows. In typical Australian conditions the nuclear plant would evaporate between 20 and 24 GL per year per GW so a two unit 2.2 GW plant like Plant Vogtle currently under construction in the US would need 44-50 GL/ year. That is more than the 4.7 GW of coal in the Latrobe Valley and almost 30% more than the entire demand served by Barwon Water which includes 320,000 people and all their business homes, parks and gardens. At current spot prices for irrigation water that would be an additional cost of $50m per year. In summary, in a hot dry continent like Australia, providing cooling water for a nuclear power plant would prove a huge cost and distortion to the water industry. There are many other issue with nuclear power, including a lack of flexibility, large and long duration backup requirements for refueling and outages and large spinning reserve requirements, but these can be explored at another time…….https://www.openforum.com.au/nuclear-cost-and-water-consumption-the-elephants-in-the-control-room/?fbclid=IwAR2M3NxMjfrDJNWTG9tatKSARHGUKWVcG_CE-bSW5wtnAbwhGnYxd1ElugU |
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A reality check on the cost of nuclear power for Australia
February 13, 2020|
Nuclear cost and water consumption – The elephants in the control room, Open Forum.com.au. Peter Farley | December 20, 2019
Cost There are four nuclear plants being built around the world where public information on costs is reasonably reliable.
These are Plant Vogtle in the US (US$27.5bn, 2.2GW), Framanville France (€12.4bn+, 1.6 GW), Olkiluoto in Finland (around €10 bn+, 1.6 GW) and Hinckley Point in the UK (₤22 bn+, 3.2 GW). There are two further plants whose power costs have been published, Akkuyu in Turkey US$127/MWh and Barakah in the Emirates US$110/MWh. It should be emphasised that none of these costs are the full cost recovery. For example in the British case it is estimated that some $10 bn has been spent by others on upgrading the grid and backup power supplies. In Turkey the cost of the plant is just that, and doesn’t include civil works, grid connections, cooling water supply. In the US plant Vogtle has benefited from some US$8bn of federal government loan guarantees and an unusual form of financing where customers have paid about 8% premium on their bills for 10-12 years before the plant is to be commissioned. All of the plants get catastrophe insurance and some security from their government and most have inadequate bond structures for long term waste storage. They also rarely pay for cooling water. Many have preferential supply agreements which will require other cheaper sources of power to turn off to allow the nuclear plants to keep running. However, even on the published information, nuclear power plants in democracies are running at about A$13m/MW. In our case we do not have an experienced nuclear workforce, Australian construction costs are higher by 20-30% for large projects – and there are 5,000 tradesmen on site at Plant Vogtle out of a workforce of 9,000 as nuclear power plants are very large projects. We do not have the heavy fabrication facilities required, and these cost hundreds of millions to build For example the Osborne Naval Shipyard design for 1/10th of the throughput of a nuclear fab shop cost $380m. Even the inspectors would have to be imported. So it is reasonable to suggest that new nuclear in Australia would cost at least A$16m per MW including subsidised construction finance, resulting in a first day of operation cost of a 2.2 GW plant of A$41 bn. Amortised over 50 years station life at a very low weighted average cost of capital at 5.5% – lower than plant Vogtle – that still works out at about $2.4 bn/yr. Due to the variability of demand in Australia the plants would be unlikely to be able to achieve a capacity factor above about 80% – halfway between the US and France and higher than Korea. So over a typical year a two unit 2.2 GW plant would be expected to generate about 15,500,000 MWh meaning the fixed costs per MWh would be $2.4bn/15.5m or $156/MWh. The daily running costs of US nuclear plants average out at US$40/MWh. This is lower than France and almost certainly lower than any new nuclear plant in Australia could achieve due to the much larger American skill base, higher utilisation and lower operating temperatures. The best case for Australia would be A$60+ for maintenace and operation. Thus an Australian nuclear power station could be expected to deliver power at a cost of A$216/MWh. Now if you use the cheaper Barrakah design at about US$5,300/MW and allow for 15 years of inflation at 1.5% to allow time for the project to come online, and a modest 10% Australian premium, power here could be produced at about A$10.4 bn per GW. After a slightly lower capacity factor of 75%, about the same as Korea, and a realistic WACC of 6.5% the ammortisation amounts to $107/MWh with a similar A$60/MWh operating and maintenance cost and the total delivered cost of power is a mere A $167/MWh. This figure aligns closely with the figure quoted by the CEO of the Barrakah plant some years ago at US$110/MWh The costs of a renewable alternative It should be noted that many of the arguments about relative costs are based on the figures used in the Finkel report. These are well out of date. Nuclear power has become even more expensive and actual renewable contracts in Australia are down 40-50% on the Finkel figures. Thus if we dispersed 2 GW of wind $3.6 bn, 1.2 GW of tracking solar $1.8bn, 2 GW of rooftop solar $2.5 bn, 1 GW of waste/biomass/geothermal $2.5bn and 1 GW/15GWh of pumped hydro $1.8 bn and 1 GW/ 2 GWh of batteries $1.2bn across the NEM the total cost would be $13.5 bn. Annual generation would be 17,500 GWh – more than the nuclear plant – and minimum available output would be 2.5 GW+. Typical hot day peak demand at 5pm would be about 4GW. About 30% of generation would go through storage at 85% efficiency, so net output would be around 16,500 GWh. Some would be curtailed so we can assume a similar annual output to the nuclear plant. However the operating costs average around $18 and the capital, even if amortised over 30 years are only $59/MWh for a total of $77 including backup. In summary, for 1/3rd of the investment, in one third of the time, we can get renewable power and backup for 1/3rd of the cost of nuclear power……https://www.openforum.com.au/nuclear-cost-and-water-consumption-the-elephants-in-the-control-room/?fbclid=IwAR2M3NxMjfrDJNWTG9tatKSARHGUKWVcG_CE-bSW5wtnAbwhGnYxd1ElugU |
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Flaws in the Australian Senate Committee’s nuclear report
February 13, 2020Parliamentary Committee Supports Nuclear – But Only If Everyone Is Into It , Solar Quotes, December 19, 2019 by Ronald Brakels “……..The Parliamentary Nuclear Committee used 214 pages to come to the wrong conclusion. But arriving at the right conclusion can’t be easy if you have no ability to smell bullshit in your own research.
One Solar Panel Does Not Cause 0.8 Tonnes Of CO2 Emissions
Take a look at this table included in the report, taken from a publication that advocates nuclear power:
Casually looking at that you might think CO2 emissions for both nuclear energy and solar PV are pretty low. But if we stop for one minute and use basic mathematical ability that’s available to anyone who doesn’t have to take their socks off to count to 20, then we can see that a Parliamentary committee saw fit to include a table in an official report that gives ridiculous results.
Looking at their minimum figure for Solar PV (Utility scale), I see they are claiming a large solar farm will result in at least 18 grams of CO2 emissions per kilowatt-hour generated. While generating electricity from PV doesn’t result in any emissions, they are involved in the manufacture of solar panels, so they aren’t completely emissions-free. However, they are a lot bloody closer to emission free than this table suggests.
These days a typical standard sized solar panel is around 300 watts. In a solar farm in Australia on a fixed mount it will generate around 12,300 kilowatt-hours over 25 years. This means they are saying the solar panel will result in a minimum of 222 kilograms of CO2 emissions. If we use their maximum figure it will result in 2.22 tonnes of CO2, all for a panel that weighs about 18 kilograms. So they are saying manufacturing and installing one solar panel results in emissions equal to burning 80-800 or more kilograms of coal.
Jinko Solar, the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer, has a figure from 2017 of just 2.19 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour generated by a solar farm. As this has been decreasing year by year it will be even lower now. However, this is just for the solar panel and doesn’t include emissions from the construction of its ground mount or inverter, so I’ll double it to 4.4 grams. This means the actual emissions per kilowatt-hour are probably less than the best figure on the table and more than 40 times less than the worst figure. Even if we triple the Jinko figure it still comes to less than their median emissions for nuclear energy and less than 4% of their maximum figure for PV.
It’s clear the committee had no ability to detect figures that were bullshit — or they simply didn’t care.
Renewable Energy Increases The Cost Of Nuclear
Here is section 1.50 of the report:
I note the committee has failed to understand the economics of nuclear power if they think it works well with solar and wind energy. This is because if a nuclear power station produces half the energy its capable of, it almost doubles the cost of that energy. This is due to nuclear fuel being very cheap1 per kilowatt-hour, so very little money is saved by ramping down, while nearly all other costs remain the same.
This means nuclear power, which is already too expensive when operated in the most economical way — almost continuously at full normal power — becomes even more expensive when used in a grid with a significant amount of solar energy and/or wind power capacity. Australia already has more than enough to adversely affect the economics of nuclear energy and, even if we approve and build a nuclear power station in one quarter the average time it has taken overseas this century, things will be much worse for its economics by the time it’s complete….. https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/nuclear-energy-australia/
A tiny percentage of South Australian people coerced into the decision on nuclear waste dump
February 13, 2020This is a decision which will affect all South Australians, not just a tiny percentage of people who have experienced four years of federal government promises and pressure to acquiesce.
the Minister failed to mention the main component of the project — long lived intermediate level waste from the Lucas Heights reactor
Farmers and Traditional Owners decry SA nuclear more https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/farmers-and-traditional-owners-decry-sa-nuclear-vote, Michele Madigan,20 November 2019
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- On 12 November, Senator Canavan, federal Minister for Resources, took a question from the rather more junior Senator Alex Antic. The questioner wondered whether there was any recent progress on the federal nuclear facility proposed for Antic’s own state of South Australia.
Union spokespeople are under no illusion that accidents are inevitable and about who will be automatically called for the cleanup. As Jamie Newlyn, South Australian Branch Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia, warns: ‘MUA members work in critical points of the logistics cycle and therefore the safe handling and above ground storage for decades is of great concern to the MUA … ‘
A day of high temperatures and strong winds last month did nothing to deter opponents of the federal government’s nuclear plans from the latest Port Augusta Rally. Terry Schmucker, who owns a farm in nearby Poochera, had no vote in the recent poll. He was scathing about the inability of the nuclear industry to guarantee project safety when ANSTO has been unable to prevent radioactive leaks even on site.
After the rally, Aboriginal Co-Chairs of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance (ANFA), Dwayne Coulthard and Vicki Abdulla, led a strong contingent to present ANFA’s petition to the office of South Australia’s Minister for Energy and Mining, Dan van Holst Pellekaan: ‘South Australia has legislation that makes such waste facilities illegal: The Nuclear Waste Storage (Prohibition) Act 2000 … We ask you to act now and protect South Australia and its people from Minister Canavan’s site selection process that has caused so much distress to South Australian communities … ‘
No, Senator Canavan, South Australians don’t believe that 452 people in one small town have the right to agree to burden us with all the nation’s nuclear waste — and forever.
In fact the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation has just set another challenge. With the results of their own Australian Electoral Company internal members vote showing 83 No and zero Yes votes, the Barngala have issued a statement which reads in part: ‘BDAC has written to Minister Canavan advising him of the result. BDAC has requested that given the first people for the area unanimously have voted against the proposed facility that the Minister should immediately determine that there is not broad community support for the project. ‘
With the arrival of the voting papers for the proposed alternative Flinders Ranges site on 14 November, the intensity of the division between potential yes and no voters in the small towns and hinterlands of Hawker and Quorn seems to have hit fever pitch. The potential yes voters welcoming of a new ‘industry’ to the area seem to disregard the effect a nuclear facility will have on the major tourism industry and Adnyamathanha heritage; not to mention the threats to groundwaters in an area subject to seismic activity and floods.
This is a decision which will affect all South Australians, not just a tiny percentage of people who have experienced four years of federal government promises and pressure to acquiesce.
Australian Government report states that Lucas Heights spent nuclear fuel rods (for Kimba dump?) are High Level Wastes
February 13, 2020This is an extract from a government report from1993.
The report calls the nuclear fuel rods from the decommissioned Hifar reactor High Level waste.
This would be dumped in the Flinders or Kimba.
Stop the lies, stop the dump.
“The report of the Research Reactor Review examines, among many other things, the issue of the management of spent fuel rods from the HIFAR reactor, which had been accumulating at Lucas Heights since 1963. The Report says:
The spent fuel rods at Lucas Heights can only sensibly be treated as high level waste.
The pretence that spent fuel rods constitute an asset must stop’ (p. 216)
waste. … The pretence that spent fuel rods constitute an asset must stop.”
(McKinnon Review, Principal Conclusions p.xxiii, July 1993)
Australian federal govt can override State laws and impose a nuclear waste dump
February 13, 2020Under section 109 of the Australian Constitution, if a state parliament and the federal Parliament pass conflicting laws on the same subject, then the federal law overrides the state law. Section 122 of the Constitution allows the federal Parliament to override a territory law at any time
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Tim Bickmore Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges, 26 Oct 19, SA Despite this reference to the Federal Act over-riding State laws; however there may be constitutional grounds rendering the FA invalid ie State’s Rights are enshrined in the Constitution & there is no provision for, nor mention of radioactive waste or nuclear power.
This deficiency was recognised decades ago [1959] as described by former WMC ODM exec Richard Yeeles (also adviser to 2 State Premiers inc current one) to the NFCRC….
“… Pointing to ‘other aspects of the application of nuclear science which put beyond all doubt the national character of the health and safety problems to which they give rise,’ the Committee raised the scenario that ‘it would be possible for dangers to health to occur in one state which would affect another state,’ such as ‘the spread of radioactive materials following a disaster.’ It also instanced, with considerable foresight as subsequent events would confirm, that ‘disposal of radioactive waste is an important problem demanding strict control. Waste from one state may need to be stored in another.’ In conclusion, the Committee advised the Government and the Parliament that: In the interests of health and safety, complex uniform regulations, standards and conditions are necessary in relation to the construction of reactors, operation of reactors, processing of fuel elements, use of isotopes, transport of radioactive material and the technical, industrial and medical standards of persons engaged. To facilitate such arrangements, ‘any doubts would be removed by an express power with respect to nuclear energy’ to be provided for in the Australian Constitution. – Report of the Joint Committee on Constitutional Review, November 1959.The advice of the Joint Committee on Constitutional Review to amend the Australian Constitution to facilitate the development of a national nuclear industry was not taken up by the Menzies Government, or any subsequent federal administration.” p20 http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/…/Richard-Yeeles-19-05-2015.pdf https://www.facebook.com/groups/941313402573199/ |
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