Wow! People have some very different viewpoints on nuclear power. Engineers seem to like it (?appeals to their liking for technology and things to build?). Some investors are highly supportive of it for making money. Those with an eye on world peace could be said to be not so keen. There is Angela Merkel moving Germany completely out of the nuclear power game and Japan struggling to live with and clean up its mess while not having many options for power going forward. The quietest ones are those who say: We don’t need it here. We can get all the power we need easily from renewables at much less cost and little risk.
Technology is changing in the nuclear power arena. We do need to understand that.
Some countries more than a few especially those with few energy options are racing for nuclear power resources. China. India. Quite a few others. It’s big whether we like it or not.
Anyway they were all there last night and all spoke their minds in strong clear well-articulated voices.
Here is some of what was said:
Firstly the guest speaker Assoc Prof Marianne Hanson:
[u]
Nuclear power considerations[/u]
[ul]Accidents
Waste disposal
Targets for terrorists
The risk of weapons proliferation[/ul]
[u]Accidents do happen[/u]
[ul]Can’t guarantee risk free
Chernobyl (number of deaths – somewhere between 31 and 900000)
Three Mile Island
Fukushima[/ul]
The problem of ensuring safety: Profits before safety.
Japan/ Fukushima:
The appropriate siting of nuclear power station
[ul]Densely populated
On a fault line
In the country where the word tsunami originated
3rd largest concentration of nuclear power plants in the world
We don’t know the reactor is anywhere near safe yet
All three reactors melted down
The nuclear industry is interested in profits so safety is not top of the list
Human error lack of safety standards both emerged at Fukushima in a country with meticulous reputation for safety
Need safety before any talk of profits
Engineers had made reports of structural problems
Culture of not being open to dissent or talk of problems in the nuclear industry
Ties between the Japanese government and the nuclear industry very strong
Almost one-eyed dimension to maintain the nuclear industry no matter what the costs or safety costs
TEPCO’s protective wall was 6metres high; the tsunami was 14metres high
An arrogance that we can tame nature; the reality is we aren’t always able to control the natural environment[/ul]
It’s not in the nuclear industry’s interests to make the public aware of the risks. It’s in their interests to play up the industry benefits and dowplay the risks.
[u]Waste disposal carbon costs slow to build[/u]
[ul]Spent fuel can remain hazardous from a few years to hundreds of thousands of years
Long term management of waste needed; can we guarantee this?
US Department of Energy has so much radioactive waste it is struggling to contain it
Some loose nuclear material went missing from Russia at the end of the Cold War.
The cost of effective waste management might outweigh the benefits
Arguments about avoiding carbon emisisions: the nuclear fuel chain (mining milling transport fuel fabrication enrichment reactor construction decommissioning) will result in carbon emissions
Uses masses of water for cooling in a water-constrained world
Nuclear power plants are very very slow to build[/ul]
[u]Targets for terrorists?[/u]
How real a danger is this?
[ul]Note ease with which saboteurs entered nuclear weapons installations in the US and Germany recently. They walked around for about 3 hours undetected and went and demanded attention eventually
Taliban takeover of Pakistan military base last week and held for a couple of days before Pakistani forces reclaimed.[/ul]
We do need to be worried about nuclear materials in Pakistan India North Korea Iran.
Even in the US it could fall into the wrong hands.
[u]The risk of weapons proliferation[/u]
The [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Non-Proliferation_Treaty]Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty[/url] is the relevant treaty here.
At least 40 countries are now indicating they want to move to nuclear energy because of a shortage of energy.
Problem is it is easy to move from nuclear energy to nuclear weapons.
US Russia Britain France Russia were the early nuclear countries. Israel India Pakistan have since developed them and Iran North Korea Syria Burma are somewhere in the pipeline.
The world now has 22000 nuclear weapons down from 70000.
If 0.5% (half of 1%) of these (110 nuclear weapons used in a local altercation between India and Pakistan for example) were used big modelling studies of the consequences have shown we would see:
[ul]50000000 deaths initially
Widespread famine affecting all of us in the whole world possibly to the point of human extinction[/ul]
The current push well supported by leaders at the very top is to push to eliminate nuclear weapons completely – move to zero nuclear weapons.
There is a need for a central body holding nuclear material (see initiative by[url=http://www.time.com/time/world/article/08599204063300.html] Warren Buffet re UN nuclear fuel bank[/url] for countries with non-military nuclear programs).
Potential to have more nuclear arms states is rising with the push from more countries to have nuclear energy technology for peaceful purposes.
Iran Syria North Korea Burma have taken advantage of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’s provision that countries can have nuclear for non-weapons purposes but now they are developing nuclear weapons.
Warren Buffet believes that the chance of a terrorist acquisition of nuclear material is very high.
[u]Australia as a source of renewable energy[/u]
“A square 30km by 30km filled with solar collectors and installed on marginal land could supply all of Australia’s electricity demand.” Professor mark Dussendorf University of NSW.
Growth rates for renewable energy are promising – China Germany Europe..
A recent study of global energy requirements from Stanford University and the University of California at Davis suggests that the human community’s entire energy needs could be met by renewable sources by 2030 but we’d need to start putting the infrastructure in place now.
[u]The verdict[/u]
An analysis of costs and benefits is needed.
Safety issues will be paramount – how can we protect against human failure?
Nuclear energy carries risk to a much larger degree than other types of energy. Nuclear is capable of huge disasters. The magnitude of risk is off the scale.
[u]Question time[/u]
Q. How does eliminating nuclear weapons by countries help the risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons by non-state actors?
A. No state is going to get rid of their nuclear weapons if the state down the road is making them. However we can detect now when nuclear weapons are being made (Syria Iran Burma..)
Nuclear arsenal reduction is done on the basis of phased mutual balanced verifiable reductions very very gradually much as we have gone from 70000 to 22000 now.
We have to secure the loose nuclear material. This is where the idea of a UN nuclear fuel bank comes in.
If the norm is for countries to have zero nuclear weapons it is easier to put pressure on states to stop them developing their own nuclear weapons (harder when countries like the US have nuclear arsenals).
We can use sophisticated conventional weapons to take out states developing nuclear weapons.
Q2. In Germany they think it is possible to change to wind solar natural gas and be self-sufficient without nuclear. Germany has heaps of solar. Germany is putting solar power stations around the Adriatic Sea and collecting the energy in salt storage then changing it to DC to send to Europe. There is so much power being generated they can feed it into Africa as well.
A. Transporting power around the Earth is probably the more challenging technical issue than collecting solar power.
Q3. Fukushima is an old system 40 years old technology. The new technology could probably have handled the earthquake and tsunami.
A. All 3 plants melted down at Fukushima.
The Japanese said they are not going to start up ??nuclear power plants – they’re going to let them lie??? [[url=http://japannuclear.com/]Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Tuesday that Japan[/url] will have to scrap its old energy policy to boost renewable energy while becoming less reliant on nuclear power. The policy initially called for increasing nuclear capacity from 30% of all power to 50% by 2030.]
In the world now there are 100 nuclear reactors either planned or in development.
When uranium went to $130/pound reprocessing it became very viable. Previously it wasn’t economically worth reprocessing so there was a problem storing the spent fuel.
Now no-one wants to bury it in deep storage because it’s too valuable. The French are reprocessing spent fuel 50 times and consider it a renewable.
Chinese [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble_bed_reactor]pebble-bed technology[/url] encases the uranium in graphite balls.
We’re seeing problems with designs 30-40 years old because these old plants are still making money they are kept going rather than shutting them all down.
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope_separation]Laser separation of uranium[/url] was developed in Australia and bought out by Hitachi a Canadian company and some others. Laser separation of uranium makes reprocessing of uranium possible. Does away with problems of storing spent fuel the problem of plutonium. Countries will be required to give back their spent fuel for reprocessing.
Australia has another problem with our uranium resources that the rest of the world wants. In some states of Australia is is illegal to explore for uranium.
Gavin Martin: I’ve bought shares in a uranium exploration company [url=http://www.energymetals.net/]Energy Metals[/url]. The Chinese have now come and bought up a big proportion of this company and shut it down for exploration but they have applied for and just received a licence to export uranium out of Australia. Ownership is with China Guandong Nuclear Power Holding Company.
[Energy Metals’ largest shareholder (with 60.6%) is China Uranium Development Company Ltd a wholly owned subsidiary of major Chinese utility China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Company (CGNPC). CGNPC currently has 5 operating nuclear power stations with existing generation capacity of 5000 MWe and more than 20000 MWe of capacity currently under construction across various locations around China. CGNPC is one of only two Chinese companies that has been granted the right to import and export uranium.]
Now India wants Australia’s spent fuel for reprocessing. We won’t sell it to them. We don’t do reprocessing. We ship it to the US. So India buys our spent fuel from the US.
It’s part of this whole question of mineral exports where we’re digging it up and sending it all to China (and …)
China will be coming back to us and says: All that coal we buy from you: We want it with carbon credits pre-paid.
Q. Is there ever a chance to separate nuclear power away from nuclear weapons proliferation?
A. Fast nuclear reactors are coming up where fuel is reused and reused until it is almost useless.
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle]
Thorium[/url] burns up completely. Your keep feeding it through the reactor and you can’t make bombs from it. The “only” problme is it has very high radiation levels.
India has the first thorium nuclear power station in the world. Waiting for news on how it is working.
In Australia we have one of the largest thorium deposits 300000 tonnes near Dubbo.
Because something is a problem today doesn’t mean it will be a problem tomorrow.
Australia wiped nuclear engineering out of our universities 20 years ago.
When did Australia not dig up and ship out without processing?
Iran has been covertly enriching uranium for the last 20 years.
The nuclear “solution” takes 20-30 years to kick in.
The world is moving to standardize on 1400Mw designs for nuclear power stations on a 5 year program.
Australia is not going to build a nuclear power plant. The order books of the (overseas) companies that build nuclear power plants are full of orders from overseas countries.
Q. Industries like aluminium smeltering need huge amounts of power. The coal-fired power stations sitting around Gladstone are to make aluminium.
A. Baseload power can be provided in Australia by a system using solar collectors heating salt to steam and storing it in porous concrete blocks. These could smelter aluminium.
S. A study on nuclear power in Australia commissioned just before Howard Government went out of office (Bronwyn Bishop Martin Ferguson were on it). Can’t find the study anywhere.
We dig stuff up and send it elsewhere for next to nothing.
Q. Uranium is as pure as the driven snow. It is in the hands of human beings that it is a problem. Human beings have a desperate need to kill each other. If they didn’t have nuclear weapons they’d use something else like bacterial armouries.
A. Australia doesn’t have bacterial weapons. The US does in its [url=http://www.fas.org/bwc/usbiodefense.htm]Biodefence Program[/url] (anthrax smallpox..)
There has been a large decline in wars and war deaths in the last 20 years around the globe. In the 20th century there were 100million deaths but now a large decline. In the past 10 years civil wars have gone down too. Also the number of deaths in battles is going down. The story is getting more positive.
Guest speaker Assoc Prof Marianne Hanson is also the Director of the[url=http://www.polsis.uq.edu.au/rotary/]Rotary Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution[/url] at the University of Queensland.
Franz Stoopman engineer: What they want with nuclear power is money. They cut maintenance and staff for profits.
The Fukushima plants have ‘[url=http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/647][/url]neutron embrittlement’ of the metal because they are so old.
It is not clear who was asking and who was answering through much of this – the discussion was flying all over the place.)