Australia should embrace nuclear power

by Leslie Kemeny

In May 2011 on the 25th anniversary of the nuclear accident in Chernobyl, in the Ukraine and only two months after Fukushima the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradai summed up the present global civilian nuclear power situation as follows: “Today, nuclear power is the only real alternative to fossil fuels as a source of sustainable and reliable supply." To this he added; “Fukushima represents a potentially significant setback to nuclear power", but stressed that “confidence would be re-established in due course", and added: “Chernobyl and Fukushima will be shown to be aberrations".

Today the new paradigm in clean energy technology for planet earth is nuclear power. Already Australian uranium is supplied to 15 nuclear-powered trading partners, providing them with low cost energy security. The uranium will avert 15 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over the next 20 years. This fuel has an energy density some 20,000 times greater than the hydrocarbons, and has sustainability of thousands of years. The post-Fukushima acceptance of global nuclear power continues to be endorsed by Australia’s Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson .

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown that, given correct action to promote a stable policy regime and creating an adequate industrial base by 2020, nuclear power could grow by 320 per cent to 1200GW(e) by 2050. Achieving this would mean completing about 20 large reactors each year and growing nuclear power’s contribution to 24 per cent of global electricity supplies. During this time, the global energy demand would have doubled. For Australia, the “decarbonising" project would mean the gradual replacement of 25 ageing coal-fired power stations by around 25GW(e) of nuclear power. This would eliminate around 200 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

On a technical level, the industry must meet safety challenges on a new plateau: to survive combinations of extraordinary events beyond their design basis. These must include natural disasters, terrorist attacks and as-yet unimagined crises and difficulties in their locality. The limits of legally required preparation and response are to be rewritten. Industry leaders and energy experts were agreed that the nuclear industry would change in the years after the Fukushima accident but the immense global need for the technology would not.

In the future, nuclear plant regulators will need to focus on the ability of a single company to tackle a nuclear emergency at a time when the infrastructure of a whole nation has been compromised. Commercial co-operation with the government will be an aspect of such a saga during extended plant blackouts and under difficult radiological conditions. Such issues will be studied and it is certain that emergency power arrangements will be strengthened in many countries.

Recently, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s International Energy Agency released a major report which commended the role of nuclear power in combating climate change and providing global energy security at the end of the hydrocarbon fuel age. In summary, it stated: “Nuclear power is the technology which must be accelerated, promoted and relied upon if the world is to stabilise carbon dioxide emissions at an acceptable level". The astute Minister Ferguson has recently chaired an IEA meeting and fully endorses this view.

Sixty years ago, Australia was all set to become the first nation south of the equator to build and operate a nuclear power station. As well, it was preparing to play a dominant part in the global nuclear fuel cycle industry. Reflecting on these issues at a scientific conference in Melbourne last October, leading global energy expert, Professor Chris Llewellyn Smith (director of energy research at Oxford University) urged Australia to embrace civilian nuclear power. He stated that nuclear power is the logical pathway to clean, secure and cost-effective energy.

He also commented on the fact that nuclear power policy was a hard sell in this country, due to fear, pseudo-science, political vacillation, poor education and the dominant hydrocarbon energy lobby. Risk-conscious Australians were urged to remember that: “The nuclear accident in Japan has not killed anybody. There may be one or two people who will die of cancer, but we are talking of very small numbers, if any." In February 2013, the World Health Organisation endorsed Llewellyn Smith’s view. In a special report report it stated: “Radioactivity released by the Fukushima accident posed a low risk to Japan’s population. It expects no observable health effects but a marginally raised expectations of cancer risk in two towns."

Tim Flannery, an Australian government Climate Commissioner, should heed these issues and embrace nuclear power. The desirable consequences for the community of this growing nation would be a huge carbon offset, elimination of the carbon tax, cheaper clean energy and a globally competitive and productive economy.

The Australian Financial Review