The Nuclear Debate
Blog Post | Blog of Scott Ludlam
Wednesday 16th December 2009, 1:01pm
by TimNorton in
Nuclear power was the hot topic recently when two Senators for Western Australia – Mathias Cormann from the Liberal Party and Scott Ludlam from the Australian Greens – led a public debate at Perth Town Hall.
Thursday 3rd December saw three speakers on either team, including Senator Cormann, Dr Ian Duncan and Professor Manfred Lenzen on the pro-nuclear side and Senator Ludlam, Dr Irene Kirczenow and Mr Dave Sweeney on the anti-nuclear side, moderated by the ABC’s Chief Political Reporter Peter Kennedy.
You can now listen to the complete debate in high definition on our website.
“The phrase ‘let’s at least have the debate about nuclear power’ must be one of the most over-used in politics,” Senator Ludlam said.
“We've actually had the debate over and over again and the ‘no’ case has strengthened over time.
“However, I welcome the opportunity to present new information which will give pro-nuclear advocates something serious to think about.”
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We need nuclear too
Greens - Nuclear Debate
Well, I'm disappointed. As you well know, climate change (CC) is much too dangerous to play around with, or take chances on. We need to throw everything we've got at it. Everything! Your arguments against nuclear power (NP) are almost puerile in the face of the potentially devastating effects of climate change.
You asked in the debate for solid examples of nuclear success. Well, we are very fortunate in that we have a solid, real world example in France.
In France a little over 75% of their electricity is provided by NP; the rest coming mostly from Hydro and a little gas. I'll use France then, to address your main points against nuclear.
You claim NP is too slow – Yet in a decade, from the mid '70's to mid the '80's, France built 34, 900MW nuclear power plants (NPP) to supply just over 75% of their electricity. TEN YEARS! Thats fast enough for me. The building has continued – they now have 58 NPP's.
You claim NP is too expensive – It doesn't have to be. Because France had standard design, guaranteed completion and a supportive population, costs were kept down and their nuclear build-out far from leading to economic ruin, secured their energy independence and therefore their future prosperity. The power France provides for it's people is the lowest cost power in the EU.
You claim NP is too dangerous – One of your speakers, Dr Kirczenow, spent most of her time talking about the health related dangers of radiation from NPPs. Frances population is concentrated on a land mass a little smaller than NSW with a population density 13 times greater. Drop into this the 50 odd NPP's they now operate and lets look at how this has effected their overall health comparative to non-NP Australia. Since it is generally accepted that life expectancy and the child mortality rate is a good basic indicator of a populations relative health, these are the measures I use.
According to unicef, life expectancy in France is 81 yrs. In Australia it is also 81yrs. No effect there. The child mortality rate in the under fives in France is 4 per 1000 children. In Australia it is 6 per 1000. Again essentially the same. It seems to me their children are just as healthy and live just as long as our children do. This leads me to believe Dr Kirczenow was simply scare mongering.
On top of this we must consider the relative dangers of NP against the dangers of inadequately mitigated CC. France has amongst the lowest emissions per capita in the EU, vying only with Switzerland - approx 50% NP and 50% hydro, and Iceland – approx 100% hydro. The two European countries which have been most aggressively pursuing renewables, Germany and Denmark have the highest emissions.
I am very concerned that our current renewable technology is not proving as effective as we need it to be. You have to ask yourself, which do you believe is more dangerous, a 100% renewable future which does not have the power to halt climate change, or a future including nuclear power which does.
A couple of corrections...
...to my previous comment.
“...58 NPP's.” Should have read “...58 reactors.”. Several reactors can make up one NPP.
And final sentence...
“...a 100% renewable future...” should have read “...pursuing a 100% renewable future...” Obviously if we reach 100% renewables soon enough we will avoid dangerous climate change. The very real danger is, relying on renewables alone, will not get us there anywhere near soon enough.
Not sure about nukes
I admit to some ambivalence. I believe Australia at least could theoretically go 100% renewables but doubt it's possible for much of the world. Except with massive international investment and effort that has the full support of the global energy industry real change looks doomed to fail. What we have in Australia is an energy sector dominated by fossil fools - that aren't merely failing to take up the challenges of climate change but actively oppose it. They want desperately to disbelieve the science. They want even more desperately for the general public to disbelieve the science. They have undue influence over mainstream politics. In the absence of alternatives it's not just politics that's subject to a fossil fuel stranglehold; commerce and industry as well as our current lifestyles are dependent on electricity and oil and I wouldn't put it past them to demonstrate that stranglehold by orchestrated shutdowns should genuine policy that makes their businesses uneconomical come into force.
I have to agree with a lot of what 'greens voter' has said. Failure to deal with climate change looks far more certain to cause greater and more permanent damage than well run nuclear power. I'd love to see roads paved with solar cells, peel and stick solar that's cheap as chip wrapping and recyclable batteries than can run ships and trucks and planes but it's not happened yet. I support ongoing R&D but serious action should have begun on low emissions energy a decade or more ago and we can't wait. Deep buried nuclear waste in well chosen geological regions doesn't scare me nearly as much as failure to deal with AGW. However I'm not sure that nuclear in Australia won't face just as much opposition from those fossil fuel interests as going renewables. Even so, I think that, like it or not, Australia needs to start getting used to the idea of at least some nuclear power stations.
Nuclear Power
We had been told just how clean nuclear power and how efficient and cheaper they are, and how much more renewable power is to nuclear power, but that is not really true. And another thing in generating nuclear power, the out put of electricity to the ratio of fuel source is really low, as low as solar is, but cost five or more times in reality.
The cost for nuclear power is higher in reality than renew ables, even after all this time that they have operated for in countries that operate them, and the people are paying for it, not just through their power bills, but through there taxes.
All nuclear power plants have been subsidised (And still are in one manner or another) so if you take off the subsidy, then add on the cost of the removal used nuclear rods, then the cost of any thing up to a 500Yrs + of storage would raise the real cost of nuclear power to house holds by 30 to 40% to current costs.
Then, can you trust them, the plants as being safe. A good third of them world wide are built either near or strait over a geological fault line, and no building is absolutely earthquake proof, no matter what they tell, only resistant. So what would happen if a nuclear pond ruptured in an earthquake, keeping in mind we are still in a quite period of geological activities. If there was measuring devices in the last high active time, the would be reading at 10+ magnitude, which has not been recorded in humans time here. If that don't worry you, we are coming near to the end of our quite geological time fairly soon. So what happens then?
Nuclear Power
Smiley, you are probably correct with what you write, but many of us are trying to look at realistic alternatives to coal fired peak power generation.
Unfortunately I have not seen any writings of an expert who has come up with an alternative for peak power generation.
The articles I have read, all state that current renewable power generation technology will never hope to produce the electricity Australians will require / demand during the next few decades. The State Government experts have also told them the same, so new power stations coming on line will be gas fired, with coal fired remaining active to carry a percentage of the peak load.
There are alternatives to coal, and these would be:
a. Have the Federal Government finance the conversion of coal fired generation to gas fired generation.
b. Install increased capacity power generators on existing dams
c. Build more dams for both water supply to cities, and install hydro generation infrastructure
The situation will only get worse as Australia population increases by 60%+ over the next few decades, resulting in a shortfall of probably 50% electricity for what the public will demand. Unless some State Governments get off the backsides soon and start to increase generation capacity, they may as well look at getting new jobs.
Re: Nuclear Power
Grant, its actually pretty easy to increase our generation capacity, regardless of its source. Just increase the price of power.
Australians have some of the cheapest power in the world.
The only reason why you expect the governments to do it is because power is and has been under priced.
Saying on one hand power must be kept cheap and then on the other hand governments must do something about our lack of generation is the ultimate hypocrisy.
Power is presently so cheap we don't have any second thoughts to wasting huge amounts of it.
Power is so cheap, market forces are insufficient to motivate people to build enough power stations to resolve the problem you highlight. So it will all end up in a mess as you correctly predict, unless the government's (collectively) realise the stupidity of discouraging the private sector with their crazy policies on power pricing.
Government attempts to keep power cheap, quite obviously and inevitably lead to the problems you raise. This sort of thing happens all the time. It is the same kind of thing that caused the GFC, principally the US government wanting home loans to be cheap, which led to policy which caused a response in the financial sector with looser credit terms which in the end blew up in their (and incidentally everyone else's) faces.
If power is appropriately priced then power stations will rapidly be constructed and even better we won't be so cavalier about wasting it.
One interesting alternative to a carbon tax, is to simply put a floor under the wholesale price of energy, but allow the upper price to fluctuate with demand. So instead of the bottom price of wholesale power being around 3.5 cents per kWh (as presently) it could easily be say ratcheted up over a couple of years to say 20c/kWh.
Then the problems you highlight will evaporate.
Why nuclear power?
Coal can release up to 1000g CO2/KWh into the atmosphere when generating electricity.
Gas releases about half that, close to 500g CO2/KWh.
Renewables do not release any CO2 themselves while operating but while they are not operating or when they are operating below capacity eg on a still night or calm cloudy day they need fossil fuel back-up; which at best, is gas. What this means is, while wind or solar are constantly coming on or off line so are the fossil fuel generators; so for every KWh renewables fail to reach their capacity, anything up to1000g of CO2 is being spewed into the atmosphere.
Nuclear power is reliable, base load power. It does not require any fossil fuel back-up and it does not produce a single gram of CO2 while generating electricity.
When considering emissions over a plants lifetime, solar's embodied emissions exceed nuclear's many times over time. Wind works out about the same; but lets not forget that the wind figures do not include the gas back-up plant which must be built, maintained and operated during wind's (but not nuclear's) life-cycle. As discussed above, when you take fossil fuel back-up into account, nuclear wins, hands down.
We are at a point, where we cannot in all conscience, accept any technology which requires - either directly or indirectly – the burning of fossil fuels during energy generation. Due to their variable nature, wind and solar require the burning of fossil fuels. Nuclear does not.
These are the reasons I have come to support nuclear power. It is not from some sort of idealist reverence for the technology. I am not blind to it's short comings - although I am learning that it's short comings are far fewer and less serious than I once believed. It is because, I can see nuclear power is currently our only mature, ready to go, baseload, CO2 free energy option, and that the consequence of not accepting it is climate change.
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