Climate, technology and chaos Blog

It is worthwhile starting this description by repeating the slogan, that if an energy transition does not reduce emissions, then it is not worth doing. Even if its cheap and innovative.

In a previous blog, I have tried to demonstrate that Peter Dutton has made a major mistake by saying that “energy is the economy”, and ignoring all the other factors that make the economy.

Dutton also seems to point to a major weakness in his own nuclear argument saying:

The Coalition’s energy policy is the only plan for cheaper, cleaner and consistent energy.

This is an odd argument to make when many people have pointed out the problems with this:

• There is no costing of nuclear energy being given by Dutton and his party at all. This implies they do not know for sure it is cheaper.
• They merely assert it must be less costly than renewables.
• However, we have costings for Renewables from reputable sources that insist they are cheaper than nukes [1], [2], [3, 4] and costs of Renewables has been decreasing.
• In the last 20 or so years the costs of nuclear have regularly turned out to be much greater than the builders estimated. Some projects have been discontinued because of this unexpected extra cost, and there can be no guarantee that the next set of projections will not be under-estimates as well.
• This greater than expected cost requires an increased the price of electricity to pay the extra cost back.
• Claims of cheapness are merely optimism about nuclear and pessimism about everything else.
• There are people and companies wanting to build renewables, but Dutton claims that nuclear will have to be paid for by the taxpayers. Any mistakes or bad planning will be costs to taxpayers and there is no competition.
• There is no evidence that any private enterprise is even vaguely interested in taking on the costs and dangers of building.
• Then, we are trying to build at least 7-14 reactors at the same time. Just as large amounts of normal building cause price increases due to materials and labour shortages, so we can expect such increases from building reactors simultaneously. The only countries with experience of building large numbers of reactors together, at the moment, are China and Russia, and it is probably unlikely that Australians wish to entangle their energy future with either of those countries.
• Nuclear also has ongoing costs, not just of keeping complicated systems functional and avoiding fat tail accidents, but of mining, fuel provision, transport and waste disposal.

More importantly, Dutton ignores the time factor:

• He makes a big deal of energy costs now (which is high all over the world for many reasons) but nuclear energy would not arrive for at least 15 years (at the very best) and time of construction blow outs seem normal, given other people’s experience, so its likely to be later still.
• Therefore, even in the unlikely event nuclear reactors will provide cheap energy, this cheapness is hardly going to relieve price issues now.
• We don’t know how long any particular nuclear reactor can exist before the probability of danger overwhelms the probability of benefit. He is estimating 80 years. That is not 80 years of continual action as they need servicing, and at the end of life the cost of decommissioning is usually very expensive and takes a long time. These costs should be factored into the upfront costs rather than being ignored.
• Without increasing immediate emissions-reducing power, like renewables, then nuclear will not help reduce emissions, because fossil fuels will have to be used to make up the decline in energy supply as coal phases out. If we don’t start reducing emissions now, then they will accumulate and make climate change worse.

Dutton also ignores the systemic nature of energy.

• Even 16 nuclear energy sources will make up a small part of the system, especially by the time they are built, unless we reduce energy usage significantly.
• Because they are a small part of the system, even if they were incredibly cheap, it is probably unlikely they will reduce energy prices.
• If Australia expands its energy consumption, which is pretty likely, then it almost certainly will need more cabling, even if the nuclear stations use the old coal wires. So one of his arguments for cheapness is likely to be wrong, and the idea that no new cables will be needed shows the inability of the Coalition to look at the system as a whole.

So given this nuclear program is unlikely to reduce emissions, or produce cheaper electricity for a long time, if ever, the main plan for justification is to attack renewables and contemporary prices.

Prices only slowly rose under the Coalition and are massively expensive under Labor. This could be true, but its easy to keep electricity prices even, if you are not doing anything at all to reduce emissions, and think that increasing emissions is actually ok because you deny climate change. He adds to alarm.

The Albanese Government has us on a path towards the hollowing-out of industry and business in our country….. And it’s all because a weak Prime Minister is making decisions aimed at stopping Labor voters defecting to the Greens.,… Labor’s energy policy train wreck is only making it more vital that we include nuclear.

I don’t think anyone with any political awareness, could seriously think Labor is trying to take over Green’s policies. But it does seem from this, that Dutton’s arguments depend on exaggerated rhetoric

Nowhere in the world has a renewables-only policy worked.

This may be true, although people disagree, South Australia will likely shortly become mainly renewables with some gas firming, but no one, certainly not the Labor party is aiming for a Renewables only policy. The question is whether nuclear is the best form of emissions reduction.

He argues:

Germany too has invested heavily in renewables.

Wind and solar account for more than 30 per cent of its mix. But when Russia invaded Ukraine and cut off gas supplies to Europe, Germany was left in a precarious position. It ramped-up its coal-fired power generation.

This shows what many people have said previously, that Germany’s energiewende depended way too heavily on coal, lignite and gas (partly because it did phase out nuclear and energy corporations went for the cheaper and more profitable option of heavily polluting lignite), and Germany should never have made the decision to depend on overseas supplied gas, especially from Russia. However, since then Germany has attempted to boost its Renewable Capacity. It is certainly not going back to nuclear.

As we said earlier the point of the energy transition is not cheapness, although renewables seem cheaper than nuclear, it is emissions reduction. This is almost the only thing that counts. But of course the Coalition use the well known drug dealers defense – ‘We sell good drugs’ – as

[products] will be produced in other countries with weaker environmental standards than Australia.

One interesting part of this speech is that Dutton is almost claiming that nuclear can work with renewables,

The Coalition… sees renewables and nuclear as companions – not competitors, as Labor does.

rather than repeating his earlier position that large-scale renewables will be suppressed and fossil fuels increased to make up for the suppression. How far we can trust this really is a change of anything other than camouflage is uncertain.

The other argument he makes is that renewables are unpopular.

From Bunbury on the west coast to Port Stephens on the east coast, furious residents are protesting offshore wind farms due to their impacts on fishing, tourism and livelihoods….In February and September, farmers flocked to Canberra to rally against the roll-out of industrial scale renewables and transmission lines on their prime agricultural land.

It is correct that there is resistance to wind (in particular), although much of it seems to be about neoliberal implementation practices and lack of consultation or explanation. However there is a political force and encouragement over these protests from the Coalition and from oil company think tanks, and the Coalition, perhaps unsurprisingly, is not interested in encouraging dissent against offshore or onshore mining, that could destroy bore water supplies harm fishing, tourism and so on. Dutton has previously made clear that no protest will be acceptable over nuclear because of “national interest”.

The question arises could Australia use nuclear energy? The answer is clearly yes, but it has to be done along with increasing renewable energy. OR emissions will not decrease, and money is being thrown away for nothing.

By itself nuclear is just expensive and slow to get up. It will need subsidies, if power is to remain cheap and available, whatever the Coalition argue.

There is no point in building 7 nukes, that will almost certainly not produce enough energy to make a difference.

Nuclear is also experimental in the sense that we do not know what will happen when a country with no nuclear power plants tries to build 14 or so at the same time.

More importantly than providing baseload, we need to deal with the problem that large scale solar will produce massive amounts of excess energy which has to be stored. Storage is the number one problem for emissions reduction. If we get enough storage then we might not need ‘baseload.’ However it is also correct we do not know if this is possible at the moment, it just looks probable.

Any kind of transition which actually lowers emissions will be costly, that includes nuclear. To pretend otherwise is dishonest. This possible dishonesty is especially marked when the Coalition have not produced any costings and have simply denied everyone else’s costings with no evidence. Saying that they:

will release our costings in due course – at a time of our choosing. Not at Chris Bowen’s or Anthony Albanese’s choosing – but our choosing

simply implies their costings have been difficult at best, or they want to make sure these costings are not open to long, careful criticism.

Dutton concludes:

Let me conclude on this point; we can’t switch nuclear power on tomorrow – even if the ban is lifted.

Like other countries, we need to ramp-up domestic gas production in the more immediate term to get power prices down and restore stability to our grid.

I think that statement renders the position clear, For the Coalition, nuclear functions to increase emissions now and, likely, forever. Presumably we don’t challenge petrol for cars either. There is no talk of the electrification of everything, or of reducing emissions from other sources. The aim seems to be to keep fossil fuels burning and emissions up.

If there is, as he claims, something visionary about this plan, it is spending lots of money, not changing and everything being ok, probably because climate change is unreal and fossil fuel company profits must be maintained.

BNEF has just released a paper called “Australia’s nuclear-powered distraction threatens net zero” I will link to it as soon as I can find a link. This is based upon articles about the article

Summary

The issue is not really whether a case could be made for nuclear in Australia, but whether the Coalition policies will deliver:

• More emissions, and
• More expensive electricity.

That would seem to be the case from the mess of their policy, and their repeated requirement that we trust them to give details after the election.

The plan, even if completely successful will certainly not add that much to Australia’s energy supply, and there is no point going with small amounts of nuclear if we are going to increase emissions through rolling back on renewables.

Political Obstructions?

Despite nuclear energy technology having been banned in Australia since 1998, under Coalition PM, John Howard, with three of the high population states also banning it, the federal Coalition opposition has proposed seven sites for nuclear plants which they claim could be operational as soon as 2035, which is improbable. As Bloomberg states, it will be “a slow and challenging” effort to overturn existing bans, and to force people to accept nukes on the sites selected without consultation.

Nuclear is expensive

Nuclear could reduce emissions, but it is usually a very expensive technology in markets with limited experience, unsupportive politics and uncertain regulation — such as Australia. We have already mentioned that cost overruns are normal even with experienced builders. Another problem is that people cannot be held to contract prices as we do not want cheaply built and unsafe reactors, so we have to assume they are not deliberately underquoting.

Renewables are cheaper and easier

The usual estimates are that renewables are cheaper than Nuclear. Bloomberg said that going by existing nuclear industries in western nations, the cost would be “at least four times greater than the average” for Australian wind and solar plants with storage today.

Furthermore, Australia has plenty of wind and solar resources with large areas of semi-vacant land, and lots of people vying to build wind or solar power. There appears, as yet, to be no one volunteering to build nuclear in Australia, certainly not seven power stations worth by 2035.

To repeat, SMRs do not exist commercially so we have no idea what they would cost, or how much energy they would produce. So it is pointless budgeting for them.

Australia’s coal fired power stations will largely be phased out by 2035. So, to avoid power supply shortfalls and high electricity bills between the gradual shutting down of coal energy and the beginning of nuclear, we have to increase renewables and energy storage. If we do not do this, then electricity prices will increase massively or emissions from Gas will increase.

Nuclear will also add significantly to the costs of energy. To pay off the huge capital investment, which it seems will be carried by taxpayers, prices will have to rise.

Conclusion

if the debate serves as a distraction from scaling-up policy support for renewable energy investment, it will sound the death knell for decarbonisation ambitions – the only reason for Australia to consider going nuclear in the first place.