The Ziggy Switkowski Report: Is Nuclear Energy in Australia's Future?

Ziggy Switkowski. courtesy of ANSTO
Australia will release a report tomorrow regarding its future nuclear energy possibilities. Although Australia has nuclear reactors for research and medical isotope production, Australia has no commercial reactors for electricity production.

Ziggy Switkowski is the head of Prime Minister John Howard's nuclear energy taskforce. The group will release a 150-page report tomorrow that will recommend investment in commercial nuclear energy. The commercial viability of nuclear power would be increased if there were a carbon "price" to fossil fuel pollution, such as an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax.

The Age says that the Switkowski report was initially expected to discuss a number of issues, including vehicle emissions, now focuses more narrowly on nuclear energy. This is unfortunate. Vehicle fuel efficiency and emissions are major issues that are key to any reform of energy policy.

Leslie Kemeny writes in support of nuclear energy development in Austalia.

Consider the immense contribution to greenhouse gas emission minimisation made by nuclear energy in 2003. In that year the global electricity produced by the world's 435 nuclear power stations was 2398TWh, or 16per cent of total electricity generation, or 5per cent of total primary energy production. The amount of avoided carbon dioxide emissions because of the use of nuclear energy in 2003 was 2.4 billion tonnes. This is 10per cent of total emissions. Japan's 54 nuclear power stations alone save the equivalent of Australia's total greenhouse emissions. And the secret of this success is uranium fuel imported from Australia.

Kemeny also cites the need for educational resources:

Sixty-four years after the first experimental demonstration of the feasibility of peaceful nuclear power production at the University of Chicago, Australia is likely to endorse this great energy source as a major platform for its energy policy and thus commence participation in the new energy paradigm.

Nuclear energy was born in a university. Sadly, at the moment Australia is desperately ill- equipped to face the educational and technological challenges of a nuclear future. The re-establishment of an Australian school of nuclear technology at the University of NSW in close proximity to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering, seems mandatory. Further training facilities of this type could, perhaps, follow in Darwin and Adelaide. It is believed that such issues are also discussed in the Switkowski report.

A well-educated younger generation is an absolute prerequisite for Australia's entrance into the nuclear millennium. Training in nuclear science and engineering will provide the nation with the work force required for the nuclear industry. It will also help to dispel the many urban myths and pseudo-scientific perceptions in the undisciplined mind about peaceful nuclear energy.

Being that Australia is a major fossil fuel user and exporter, not everyone is happy with prospects of commercial nuclear energy.

Coal is Australia's largest commodity export, so the coal industry in Australia exerts a particularly strong influence on policy in that country, with respect to climate change and to non-fossil fuel sources of energy. Australia is one of the two major industrialized countries that refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol [the U.S. is the other one, and China and India were exempted from the Protocol]. [China and India should be bound by future carbon treaties - WSL]

ABC News Australia reports:

Finance Minister Nick Minchin is urging the Government to consider the damage carbon taxes would do to Australia's coal and gas industries.

The Government task force into uranium mining and nuclear power will release its draft report tomorrow and the Prime Minister has also set-up an inquiry into carbon trading.

Senator Minchin has argued nuclear power in Australia would only be economically viable if there are carbon taxes on fuels like coal and gas.

He says carbon taxes would harm Australia's most important economic advantages.

"One of the things I strongly believe is that Australia's great international competitive advantage is access to relatively cheap sources of power," he said.

"That's why we've attracted to this country energy intensive industries that create wealth and create jobs, we should not wantonly or carelessly give up that very significant advantage."

The Melbourne Herald Sun reports:

The nation's cheap energy sources make the nation internationally competitive and should not be thrown away in the pursuit of nuclear power, Finance Minister Nick Minchin has said.

Senator Minchin, who earlier this year said nuclear power would only be viable in Australia if its abundant coal and gas reserves were taxed "out of existence", has said he will be interested to read a government-commissioned report due out tomorrow on whether Australia can sustain a nuclear industry.

The report is expected to conclude atomic energy is not economically viable in Australia at present, but could be feasible within 15 years as the cost of clean coal rises.

"One of the key issues is the economics of nuclear power, and - far and beyond all the evidence available to us - it is much more expensive power than that produced by coal or gas," Senator Minchin has said.

"But I'll be very interested to see what (panel head and former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski) says about the future and whether that cost differential is likely to be narrowed in the years ahead."

Asked if a tax on carbon fuels would make them uncompetitive in comparison to nuclear power, Senator Minchin has indicated he would not support artificially raising the price of power.

"I've always said one of Australia's great competitive advantages is our access to relatively cheap reliable energy," he has said.

"That makes Australia highly competitive internationally and means we can have here a range of energy intensive industries which employ Australians and create wealth.

"And we shouldn't wantonly or carelessly give up that advantage."

A group of prominent scientists plans to review the nuclear report amid concerns the panel was cherry-picked to endorse nuclear energy.

Unfortunately, some of the nuclear advocates in Australia have positions on climate change that are baffling.

The Age reports:

Senator Minchin's comments against making polluters pay for their carbon dioxide emissions in a large-scale way were backed by one of the Government's strongest backbench advocates of nuclear power, West Australian Liberal Dennis Jensen, who said he was still a climate change sceptic.

Why someone who says he supports nuclear power would advocate against an increasing body of climatic evidence, against limits or taxes on carbon emissions is hard to figure out. On the one hand, he accepts the science regarding nuclear energy's excellent and improving safety record but, on the other hand, he rejects the science regarding climate. Someone like this ought to get along just fine with the Kim Beazley [Labor Party leader in Australia who is against nuclear power] types who believe that climate change is happening, but argue against the single largest displacer of carbon emissions, nuclear energy.

Actually, it probably boils down to politics. Jensen is probably a libertarian on the economic right who is against any regulation of pollution. [I don't know why nuclear energy is attractive to some libertarians, because it is by nature a highly-regulated industry]. By contrast, the Greenpeace types and their followers on the political left in coal-producing countries like Germany and Australia are against measures that would allow a semblance of the current standard of living to continue if fossil fuel consumption and the consequent pollution were dramatically cut.


Sign reads: "For Nuclear Phaseout. Against New Atomic Energy" - SPD

There's an unproductive symbiosis between the two viewpoints on the libertarian right and on the neo-luddite left that tends to result in continued fossil fuel dependency.

Many anti-nuclear advocates admit that climate change is occurring, but their proposed solutions aren't capable of replacing fossil fuel plants. The subgroup of nuclear advocates [like Jensen above] who deny climate change are denying a very major argument in favor of nuclear energy. Can anyone say "counterproductive"?

Neither position makes sense. Science says that fossil fuel pollution needs to be drastically cut. Science says that the safety record of nuclear power in western Europe, Canada, and the U.S. is excellent. Nuclear energy is an industry that is more closely scrutinized than practically any other [sorry, libertarians, that's the way it is], and it can produce the large quantities of emissions-free electricity that western society demands [sorry, neo-luddites] while containing its pollutants to small volumes that can be stored or reused.

Unfortunately, Al Gore's latest statement doesn't help. [Ian Hore-Lacey says it doesn't help either]. Gore is visiting Australia and talking about climate change.

"Early in my career I was enthusiastic about nuclear power. I'm not now," the climate campaigner said in Sydney.

"I'm not an automatic opponent to any nuclear power plants [but] I think that a realistic view is that they will play only a small and limited role. The reason why they're likely to play only a limited role is mainly economic."

As a major advocate of climate change mitigation, and the son of Al Gore Sr., who strongly supported nuclear energy, Gore ought to know better!

Atomic Insights keenly follows the coal situation, and there has been an excellent series of posts this year entitled "Smoking Gun" that delineates situations in which coal-fired interests have spoken against nuclear energy or attemped to block it in the legislative arena in order to maintain their financial well being.

Below are links to the excellent "Smoking Gun" series of posts from Atomic Insights [and one from WSL]. I've linked to them because Australian Finance Minister Nick Minchin's above comments just about fall into the "smoking gun" category.

• Peter Beattie - Queensland Premier does not want to encourage the nuclear industry because it might "undermine its lucrative coal industry" -January 2006
  
• Peter Beattie - March 2006
  
• Barnaby Joyce - Queensland Senator does not want to promote competition to Queensland's export coal industry - August 2006
  
• Jim Doyle - Wisconsin governor who supported construction of coal-fired power plants resists overturning Wisconsin's ban on nuclear power construction - September 2006
  
• Dick Armey - promotes coal-fired power plants in Texas, as opposed to [emissions-free] "politically unpopular" nuclear plants - October 2006
  

By the way, regarding costs, Atomic Insights made an interesting post over the weekend regarding an increase in the cost of pulverized coal and the relatively high capital costs of building a coal plant in North Carolina.

Update - evening of November 20th:The Switkowski report is online [actual report - large PDF file] and an editorial by Switkowski is presented by ABC News Australia.