Author: NuclearAdmin

Jim Green

National nuclear campaigner – Friends of the Earth, Australia

January 2013

• Introduction
• Generations I-II
• Generation III
• Generation IV
• Pebble Bed Modular Reactor
• Plutonium Breeder Reactors
• Fusion
• Thorium
• Further Reading & References

INTRODUCTION

New nuclear reactor types are being promoted with claims that they will produce less nuclear waste than conventional reactors, reduce weapons proliferation risks, and reduce the risk of serious accidents. While there is certainly scope for considerable improvement on all three fronts, the claims should be treated with some scepticism.

It is uncertain whether new reactor types will be developed, with the very large R&D costs being one of the major obstacles. Reactor types with the greatest likelihood of deployment are those which are relatively minor modifications of existing reactor types; as such, any advantages over existing reactors will be marginal.

If new reactor types are developed, they are unlikely to be commercially deployed for some decades (other than those which are minor modifications of existing reactor types).

While new reactor types are being promoted as advantageous in relation to waste, weapons and safety, closer inspection of R&D programs suggests that the primary aim is to lower the cost of nuclear power.

Indicative of this emphasis on improving economic competitiveness is the list of objectives of ‘advanced’ reactor types provided by Hore-Lacy (2003) from the Uranium Information Centre and 
the World Nuclear Association:

• a standardised design for each type to expedite licensing, reduce capital cost and reduce construction time,
• simpler and more rugged design, easier to operate and less vulnerable to operational upsets,
• higher availability and longer operating life,
• economically competitive in a range of sizes,
• further reduce the possibility of core melt accidents, and
• higher burn-up to reduce fuel use and the amount of waste.

To the extent that the nuclear power industry is able to improve its cost competitiveness by means other than technological innovation, this will reduce the incentive to develop new reactor types. Methods of improving cost competitiveness in the absence of technological development are:

• reducing regulatory requirements and the attendant costs;
• the imposition of carbon taxes or other disincentives to the use of fossil fuels; and
• further subsidisation of nuclear power e.g. with R&D funding and favourable insurance arrangements such as the US Price Anderson Act.

Improving the economics of nuclear power may come into conflict with the other stated objectives in relation to weapons, waste and safety. Most importantly, there is little reason to believe that minimising proliferation risks will be a priority in the development of new reactor types. A number of the ‘advanced’ reactor concepts being studied involve a ‘closed’ fuel cycle which involves reprocessing and thus the actual or potential separation of weapons-useable plutonium (or weapons-useable uranium-233) from irradiated fuel or targets.

Passive or ‘inherent’ safety systems can improve overall plant safety, such as the use of gravity rather than (failure-prone) pumps to feed coolant into the plant as required. However, overblown and unsubstantiated claims about future reactor designs with (some) passive safety systems has attracted scepticism and cynicism even from within the nuclear industry, with one industry representative quipping that “the paper-moderated, ink-cooled reactor is the safest of all” and noting that “all kinds of unexpected problems may occur after a project has been launched”. (Quoted in Hirsch et al., 2005.)

Importantly, safety depends on social as well as technological factors. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Interdisciplinary Study states: “We do not believe there is a nuclear plant design that is totally risk free. In part, this is due to technical possibilities; in part due to workforce issues. Safe operation requires effective regulation, a management committed to safety, and a skilled work force.” (Ansolabehere et al., 2003, p.9.)

Serious, unresolved problems remain on all three fronts – regulation, management, and workforce skills. The safety culture varies considerably within and between nations operating nuclear power plants. As the MIT study notes: “It is still an open question whether the average performers in the industry have yet incorporated an effective safety culture into their conduct of business.” (Ansolabehere et al., 2003)

The World Nuclear Association (2009) offers this sober view of the development of ‘next generation’ reactors: “There are two worldwide programs to develop next-generation reactors, which both enjoy wide international membership and support. However, progress is seen as slow, and several potential designs have been undergoing evaluation on paper for many years. One initiative is the Generation IV International Forum, consisting of a group of governments; the other is Inpro, led by the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

GENERATIONS I-II

Among commercial nuclear power plant types, four generations of reactors are commonly distinguished.

Generation I were prototype commercial reactors developed in the 1950s and 1960s. They mostly used natural uranium fuel and used graphite as moderator. Most, but not all of them have already been decommissioned although some Magnox reactors are still operating.

The vast majority of the 441 power reactors in commercial operation worldwide today belong to Generation II. They include the following (with parentheses indicating the number in operation, fuel, coolant and moderator)

• Pressurized Water Reactors (268 in operation – enriched uranium dioxide fuel – water coolant – water moderator)
• Boiling Water Reactors (94 – enriched uranium dioxide – water – water)
• Gas-cooled reactors (Magnox and AGR) (23 – natural or enriched uranium – carbon dioxide coolant – graphite moderator)
• Graphite Moderated Boiling Water Reactors (12 – enriched uranium dioxide – water – graphite)
• Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (40 – natural uranium dioxide – heavy water – heavy water)
• Fast Neutron Reactors (4 – plutonium and uranium dioxide – liquid sodium – no moderator).

(For a description of Generation II reactors see World Nuclear Association, 2005. For description and critical analysis, see Hirsch et al., 2005.)

GENERATION III

Throughout the world there are around 20 different concepts for the next generation of reactor design, known as Generation III. Most of them are “evolutionary” designs that have been developed from Generation II reactor types with some modifications. A smaller number of proposed Generation III reactor types are more innovative.

Only in Japan are there any commercial scale reactors of Generation III in operation – the Advanced Boiling Water Reactors, which are modifications of existing reactor types.

The next most advanced design is the European Pressurised Water Reactor, which is being built in Finland and may be also sited in France. According to Hirsch et al. (2005), this design is a slightly modified version of current reactor designs operating in France and Germany, with some improvements, but also with reduction of safety margins and fewer redundancies for some safety systems.

Other examples of Generation III reactor types are: various pressurised water reactor types, the pebble bed modular reactor, boiling water reactors, heavy water reactors, gas cooled reactors, and fast breeder reactors.

Hirsch et al. (2005) conclude that: “All in all, “Generation III” appears as a heterogeneous collection of different reactor concepts. Some are barely evolved from the current Generation II, with modifications aiming primarily at better economics, yet bearing the label of being safer than current reactors in the hope of improving public acceptance. Others are mostly theoretical concepts so far, with a mixture of innovative and conventional features, which are being used to underpin the promise of a safe and bright nuclear future – while also not forgetting about simplification and cost-cutting.”

GENERATION IV

Under the leadership of the US, the “Generation IV International Forum” (GIF) was established in 2000. The GIF also includes Argentina, Brazil, China, Canada, France, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Switzerland, the UK, and EURATOM.

A parallel initiative is the IAEA-led International Projects on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycles (INPRO), established in 2000. (www.iaea.org/OurWork/ST/NE/NENP/NPTDS/Projects/INPRO)

Generation IV reactor types generally represent considerable departures from conventional reactor technology. Development to the point of commercial deployment will necessarily involve major financial investments over a period of some decades.

While electricity generation is the primary focus, there is also some interest in the development of reactor types suitable for hydrogen production and nuclear waste treatment.

Currently, there are six reactor designs being considered, including:

• Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor System
• Lead-Cooled Fast Reactor System
• Molten Salt Reactor System
• Supercritical-Water-Cooled Reactor System
• Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor System
• Very-High-Temperature Reactor System

Hirsch et al. (2005, p.55) summarise the gap between rhetoric and reality in relation to Generation IV designs: “A closer look at the technical concepts shows that many safety problems are still completely unresolved. Safety improvements in one respect sometimes create new safety problems. And even the Generation IV strategists themselves do not expect significant improvements regarding proliferation resistance. But even real technical improvements that might be feasible in principle are only implemented if their costs are not too high. There is an enormous discrepancy between the catch-words used to describe Generation IV for the media, politicians and the public, and the actual basic driving force behind the initiative, which is economic competitiveness.”

It is beyond the scope of this paper to describe and analyse all of the Generation III and IV reactor types but some of the best-known types are discussed below – the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, plutonium breeder reactors, fusion power, and thorium-powered systems.

PEBBLE BED MODULAR REACTORS (PBMR)

Of the more innovative Generation III reactor types, the best known is the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR). (Thomas, 1999; Harding, 2004; Hirsch et al., 2005.)

PBMRs are helium cooled and graphite moderated and intended to be built in small modules. Pressurised helium heated in the reactor core drives turbines that attach to an electrical generator.

While the PBMR is in some respects innovative, it also shares features with high temperature gas cooled reactors (HGTR). The HTGR line has been pursued until the late 80s in several countries; however, only prototype plants were ever operated (in the USA, UK and Germany), all of which were decommissioned after about 12 years of operation at most.

A South African nuclear utility has been at the forefront of developing pebble bed reactors but the project has been postponed indefinitely as a result of economic factors as well as technical factors, some with safety consequences. Unless the South African project is revived, that leaves only China developing pebble bed concepts (with one small prototype operating and one 200 MW ‘demonstration reactor’ planned or in the early stages of construction).

These articles discuss the demise of PBMR technology in South Africa:

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-PBMR_postponed-1109092.html

http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-demise-of-the-pebble-bed-modular-reactor

http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectionCode=76&storyCode=2052590

http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectioncode=76&storyCode=2052589

PBMR proponents claim major safety advantages resulting from the heat-resistant quality and integrity of the small fuel pebbles, many thousands of which are continuously fed from a silo. Each spherical fuel element has a graphite core embedded with thousands of small fuel particles of enriched uranium (up to 10% uranium-235), encapsulated in layers of carbon.

The safety advantages of PBMR technology include a greater ability to retain fissile products in the event of a loss-of-coolant accident. While this configuration is potentially advantageous compared to conventional reactors, it does not altogether avoid the risk of serious accidents; in other words, claims that the system is ‘walk-away safe’ are overblown. The safety advantages can be undermined by familiar commercial pressures; for example there are plans to develop PBMR reactors with no containment building.

In relation to weapons proliferation (Harding, 2004):

• The nature of the fuel pebbles may make it somewhat more difficult to separate plutonium from irradiated fuel, but plutonium separation is certainly not impossible.
• Uranium (or depleted uranium) targets could be inserted to produce weapon-grade plutonium for weapons, or thorium targets could be inserted to produce uranium-233.
• The enriched uranium fuel could be further enriched for weapons – particularly since the proposed enrichment level of 9.6% uranium-235 is about twice the level of conventional reactor fuel.
• The reliance on enriched uranium will encourage the use and perhaps proliferation of enrichment plants, which can be used to produce highly-enriched uranium for weapons.

PLUTONIUM BREEDER REACTORS

Fast neutron reactors use plutonium as the primary fuel. They do not require a moderator as the fuel fissions sufficiently with fast neutrons to maintain a chain reaction. The various possible configurations include ‘breeders’ which produce more plutonium than they consume, ‘burners’ which do the reverse, and configurations which both breed and burn plutonium. (World Nuclear Association, 2005B.)

There are various possible configurations of breeder systems. Most rely on irradiation of a natural or depleted uranium blanket which produces plutonium which can be separated and used as fuel. (Hirsch et al., 2005, pp.33-35; von Hippel and Jones, 1997.)

According to the World Nuclear Association (2004), worldwide experience with fast neutron reactors amounts to just 200 reactor-years and only “some” of that experience involves reactors in breeder mode. According to an IAEA scientist, the introduction of breeder reactors into the competitive electricity market is not expected before 2030, at which time breeders are expected to provide 1-2% of nuclear energy output, and this prediction may be “optimistic” (Oi, 1998).

Small breeder R&D programs are ongoing in a few countries (e.g. India, Russia, France) but in other countries the technology has been stalled or abandoned (e.g. the UK, the US, and Germany) or never developed in the first place. Japan’s plans for breeder reactors have been limited and delayed by accidents including the sodium leak and fire at the experimental Monju reactor in 1995. (Leventhal and Dolley, 1999.)

One reason for the limited interest in plutonium breeder power sources has been the cheap, plentiful supply of uranium. That situation may change, but while breeder technology certainly holds out the promise of successfully addressing the problem of limited conventional uranium reserves, it is doubtful whether the wider range of technical, economic, safety and proliferation issues can be successfully addressed.

Breeder technology is highly problematic in relation to proliferation because it involves the large-scale production and separation of plutonium (although separation is not required in some proposed configurations). (Feiveson, 2001.) The proliferation of reprocessing capabilities is a likely outcome.

Interest in breeder and reprocessing technology in South Korea and China is arguably driven in part by concerns over Japan’s plutonium policies (which involve the large-scale separation and stockpiling of plutonium). (Burnie and Smith, 2001.)

FUSION POWER

Fusion fuel – using different isotopes of hydrogen – must be heated to extreme temperatures of some 100 million degrees Celsius, and must be kept dense enough, and confined for long enough to enable fusion to become self-sustaining.

A major fusion R&D program is underway called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. (www.iter.org) It involves the European Union, Japan, China, India, South Korea, Russia, and the USA. An experimental plant is to be built at Cadarache in the South of France.

Australian interest in fusion is concentrated in a coalition called the Australian ITER Forum. (www.ansto.gov.au/ainse/fusion/index.html)

Fusion power remains a distant dream. According to the World Nuclear Association (2005C), fusion “presents so far insurmountable scientific and engineering challenges”.

Australian proponents of fusion claim it is “intrinsically clean” and “inherently safe” (Hole and O’Connor, 2006). However, in relation to radioactive waste issues, the World Nuclear Association (2005C) states: “[A]lthough fusion generates no radioactive fission products or transuranic elements and the unburned gases can be treated on site, there would a short-term radioactive waste problem due to activation products. Some component materials will become radioactive during the lifetime of a reactor, due to bombardment with high-energy neutrons, and will eventually become radioactive waste. The volume of such waste would be similar to that due to activation products from a fission reactor. The radiotoxicity of these wastes would be relatively short-lived compared with the actinides (long-lived alpha-emitting transuranic isotopes) from a fission reactor.”

In relation to safety issues, the World Nuclear Association (2005C) points to potential problems identified by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): “These include the hazard arising from an accident to the magnetic system. The total energy stored in the magnetic field would be similar to that of an average lightning bolt (100 billion joules, equivalent to c45 tonnes of TNT). Attention was also drawn to the possibility of a lithium fire. In contact with air or water lithium burns spontaneously and could release many times that amount of energy. Safety of nuclear fusion is a major issue. But the AAAS was most concerned about the release of tritium into the environment. It is radioactive and very difficult to contain since it can penetrate concrete, rubber and some grades of steel. As an isotope of hydrogen it is easily incorporated into water, making the water itself weakly radioactive. With a half-life of 12.4 years, tritium remains a threat to health for over one hundred years after it is created, as a gas or in water. It can be inhaled, absorbed through the skin or ingested. Inhaled tritium spreads throughout the soft tissues and tritiated water mixes quickly with all the water in the body. The AAAS estimated that each fusion reactor could release up to 2×1012 Bequerels of tritium a day during operation through routine leaks, assuming the best containment systems, much more in a year than the Three Mile Island accident released altogether. An accident would release even more. This is one reason why long-term hopes are for the deuterium-deuterium fusion process, dispensing with tritium.”

Some proponents of fusion falsely claim that fusion power systems pose no risk of contributing to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In fact, there are several risks (Gsponer and Hurni, 2004; WISE/NIRS, 2004; Hirsch et al., 2005):
* The production or supply of tritium which can be diverted for use in boosted nuclear weapons.
* Using neutron radiation to bombard a uranium blanket (leading to the production of fissile plutonium) or a thorium blanket (leading to the production of fissile uranium-233).
* Research in support of a (thermonuclear) weapon program.

Fusion power R&D has already contributed to proliferation problems. According to Khidhir Hamza (1998), a senior nuclear scientist involved in Iraq’s weapons program: “Iraq took full advantage of the IAEA’s recommendation in the mid 1980s to start a plasma physics program for “peaceful” fusion research. We thought that buying a plasma focus device … would provide an excellent cover for buying and learning about fast electronics technology, which could be used to trigger atomic bombs.”

THORIUM

The use of thorium-232 as a reactor fuel is sometimes suggested as a long-term energy source, partly because of its relative abundance compared to uranium.

Some experience has been gained with the use of thorium in power and research reactors – but far less experience than has been gained with conventional uranium reactors. The Uranium Information Centre (2004) states that: “Much development work is still required before the thorium fuel cycle can be commercialised, and the effort required seems unlikely while (or where) abundant uranium is available.”

According to the World Nuclear Association (2006): “Problems include the high cost of fuel fabrication due partly to the high radioactivity of U-233 which is always contaminated with traces of U-232; the similar problems in recycling thorium due to highly radioactive Th-228, some weapons proliferation risk of U-233; and the technical problems (not yet satisfactorily solved) in reprocessing. Much development work is still required before the thorium fuel cycle can be commercialised, and the effort required seems unlikely while (or where) abundant uranium is available.”

Thorium fuel cycles are promoted on the grounds that they pose less of a proliferation risk compared to conventional reactors. However, whether there is any significant non-proliferation advantage depends on the design of the various thorium-based systems. No thorium system would negate proliferation risks altogether (Friedman, 1997; Feiveson, 2001).

Neutron bombardment of thorium (indirectly) produces uranium-233, a fissile material which can be used in nuclear weapons (1 Significant Quantity of U-233 = 8kg).

The USA has successfully tested weapons using uranium-233 cores, and India may have investigated the military use of thorium/uranium-233 in addition to its civil applications.

The proliferation risk is exacerbated with existing and proposed configurations involving uranium-233 separation from irradiated fuel. As the World Nuclear Association (2006) notes: “Given a start with some other fissile material (U-235 or Pu-239), a breeding cycle similar to but more efficient than that with U-238 and plutonium (in slow-neutron reactors) can be set up. The Th-232 absorbs a neutron to become Th-233 which normally decays to protactinium-233 and then U-233. The irradiated fuel can then be unloaded from the reactor, the U-233 separated from the thorium, and fed back into another reactor as part of a closed fuel cycle.”

(A research reactor in India operates on U-233 fuel extracted from thorium which has been irradiated and bred in another reactor.)

The possible use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium to initiate a thorium-232/uranium-233 reaction, or proposed systems using thorium in conjunction with HEU or plutonium as fuel present the risk of diversion of HEU or plutonium for weapons production.

Kang and von Hippel (2001) conclude that “the proliferation resistance of thorium fuel cycles depends very much upon how they are implemented”. For example, the co-production of uranium-232 complicates weapons production but, as Kang and von Hippel note, “just as it is possible to produce weapon-grade plutonium in low-burnup fuel, it is also practical to use heavy-water reactors to produce U-233 containing only a few ppm of U-232 if the thorium is segregated in “target” channels and discharged a few times more frequently than the natural-uranium “driver” fuel.”

One proposed system is an Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) in which an accelerator produces a proton beam which is targeted at target nuclei (e.g. lead, bismuth) to produce neutrons. The neutrons can be directed to a subcritical reactor containing thorium. ADS systems could reduce but not negate the proliferation risks.

See also this webpage on the proliferation risks of thorium: https://nuclear.foe.org.au/thorium-and-wmd-proliferation-risks-2/

A thought for thorium

Nuclear Engineering International, 03 November 2009

www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectionCode=76&storyCode=2054564

The question of thorium fuel comes up every so often, says [Albert Machiels, senior technical executive at the USA’s Electric Power Research Institute]. “I really cannot claim that there is a great interest in thorium fuel – it is more a matter of curiosity. …

Experts disagree about whether thorium fuel is more proliferation-resistant than uranium. …

Many in the industry remain sceptical with regard to thorium. Now that uranium infrastructure is in place, developing a thorium fuel cycle is a  ‘big risk,’ ‘unnecessary’ and a ‘distraction,’ according to some in the industry.

I put the question to Thorium Power; if thorium fuel is so good why aren’t we using it? Their response:

“Essentially the answer is because the nuclear industry started using UO2 on a large scale first and they’ve had 50 years to improve it and become comfortable with it. Due to a highly conservative nature of nuclear utilities (‘why change something that works just fine’), there has been little incentive for a commercial utility to switch from UO2 fuels even though ThO2-based fuels have many advantages.”

For this reason, if thorium fuel is going to take off it will need to be introduced in light water reactors first, notwithstanding the interesting reactor concepts currently being developed that use thorium. In accelerator-driven systems, or ADS, a particle accelerator knocks neutrons off a heavy element such as mercury, and those neutrons cause thorium to breed fissile uranium- 233. In molten salt reactors, thorium dissolved in a 650°C fluoride salt coolant breeds uranium-233, which undergoes fission.

“ADS and breeder reactors, such as molten-salt reactors, are so far in the future that if thorium has to wait for one of those developments it’s not going to happen. The point of entry must be the existing infrastructure, at least for the United States,” Machiels says.

Comparison of thorium and uranium fuel cycles

UK National Nuclear Laboratory Ltd.

A report prepared for and on behalf of Department of Energy and Climate Change

Issue 5, 5 Mar 2012

http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/meeting-energy-demand/nuclear/6300-comparison-fuel-cycles.pdf

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The UK National Nuclear Laboratory has been contracted by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to review and assess the relevance to the UK of the advanced reactor systems currently being developed internationally. Part of the task specification relates to comparison of the thorium and uranium fuel cycles. Worldwide, there has for a long time been a sustained interest in the thorium fuel cycle and presently there are several major research initiatives which are either focused specifically on the thorium fuel cycle or on systems which use thorium as the fertile seed instead of U-238. Currently in the UK, the thorium fuel cycle is not an option that is being pursued commercially and it is important for DECC to understand why this is the case and whether there is a valid argument for adopting a different position in the future.

NNL has recently published a position paper on thorium [1] which attempts to take a balanced view of the relative advantages and disadvantages of the thorium fuel cycle. Thorium has theoretical advantages regarding sustainability, reducing radiotoxicity and reducing proliferation risk. NNL’s position paper finds that while there is some justification for these benefits, they are often over stated.

The value of using thorium fuel for plutonium disposition would need to be assessed against high level issues concerning the importance of maintaining high standards of safety, security and protection against proliferation, as well as meeting other essential strategic goals related to maintaining flexibility in the fuel cycle, optimising waste arisings and economic competitiveness. It is important that the UK should be very clear as to what the overall objectives should be and the timescales for achieving these objectives.

Overall, the conclusion is reached that the thorium fuel cycle at best has only limited relevance to the UK as a possible alternative plutonium disposition strategy and as a possible strategic option in the very long term for any follow-up reactor construction programme after LWR new build. Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that world-wide there remains interest in thorium fuel cycles and as this is not likely to diminish in the near future. It may therefore be judicious for the UK to maintain a low level of engagement in thorium fuel cycle R&D by involvement in international collaborative research activities. This will enable the UK to keep up with developments, comment from a position of knowledge and to some extent influence the direction of research. Participation will also ensure that the UK is more ready to respond if changes in technology or market forces bring the thorium fuel cycle more to the fore.

REFERENCES

• Ansolabehere, Stephen, et al., 2003, “The Future of Nuclear Power: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study”, web.mit.edu/nuclearpower
• Burnie, Shaun and Aileen Mioko Smith, May/June 2001, “Japan’s nuclear twilight zone”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 57, no.03, pp.58-62, www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj01burnie
• Feiveson, Harold, 2001, “The Search for Proliferation-Resistant Nuclear Power”, The Journal of the Federation of American Scientists, September/October 2001, Volume 54, Number 5, www.fas.org/faspir/2001/v54n5/nuclear.htm
• Friedman, John S., 1997, “More power to thorium?”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 53, No.5, September/October
• Gsponer, A., and J-P. Hurni, 2004 “ITER: The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor and the Nuclear Weapons Proliferation Implications of Thermonuclear-Fusion Energy Systems”, Independent Scientific Research Institute report number ISRI-04-01, http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0401110
• Harding, Jim, 2004, “Pebble Bed Modular Reactors—Status and Prospects “, www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid171php#E05-10
• Hamza, Khidhir, 1998, “Inside Saddam’s secret nuclear program”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October, Vol.54, No.5, www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so98hamza
• Hirsch, Helmut, Oda Becker, Mycle Schneider and Antony Froggatt, April 2005, “Nuclear Reactor Hazards: Ongoing Dangers of Operating Nuclear Technology in the 21st Century”, Report prepared for Greenpeace International, www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/nuclearreactorhazards
• Hole, Matthew and John O’Connor, June 8, 2006, ” Australia needs to get back to the front on fusion power”, www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/we-need-to-get-back-to-the-front-on-fusion/2006/06/07/1149359815047.html
• Hore-Lacy, Ian, 2003, Nuclear Electricity, published by: Uranium Information Centre Ltd and
World Nuclear Association, Seventh edition, www.world-nuclear.org/education/ne/ne4.htm#4.3
• Kang, Jungmin, and Frank N. von Hippel, 2001, “U-232 and the Proliferation-Resistance of U-233 in Spent Fuel”, Science & Global Security, Volume 9, pp 1-32, www.princeton.edu/~globsec/publications/pdf/9_1kang.pdf
• Leventhal, Paul, and Steven Dolley, 1999, “The Reprocessing Fallacy: An Update”, presented to Waste Management 99 Conference, Tucson, Arizona, March 1, 1999, www.nci.org/p/pl-wm99.htm
• Oi, Noboru, March 1998, “Plutonium Challenges: Changing Dimensions of Global Cooperation”, IAEA Bulletin, www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull401/article3.html
• Thomas, Steve, 1999, “Arguments on the Construction of Pebble Bed Modular Reactors in South Africa”, www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/spru/environment/research/pbmr.html
• Uranium Information Centre, 2004, “Thorium”, Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper # 67, November, www.uic.com.au/nip67.htm
• von Hippel, Frank, and Suzanne Jones, 1997, “The slow death of the fast breeder”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol.53, No.5, September/October.
• WISE/NIRS, February 13, 2004, “The Proliferation Risks of ITER”, WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor, #603, www.antenna.nl/wise/603/index.php
• World Nuclear Association, January 2004, “Energy Analysis of Power Systems”, world-nuclear.org/info/printable_information_papers/inf11print.htm
• World Nuclear Association, 2005, “Nuclear Power Reactors”, www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf32.htm
• World Nuclear Association, 2005B, “Fast Neutron Reactors”, www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf98.htm
• World Nuclear Association, 2005C, “Nuclear Fusion Power”, www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf66.htm
• World Nuclear Association, 2006, “Thorium”, www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf62.htm
• World Nuclear Association, 15 December 2009, ‘Fast moves? Not exactly…’, www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_France_puts_into_future_nuclear_1512091.html

Notes by Jim Green jim.green@foe.org.au

See also:

• For a detailed 2019 discussion, see Appendix 3 (p.79-95) in this submission to an Australian parliamentary inquiry.
• Nuclear Monitor, May 2019, Integral fast reactors: fact and fiction
• Nuclear Monitor, May 2019, Whatever happened to the ‘integral fast reactor’?
• Integral fast reactors and weapons proliferation
• Nuclear Monitor, Aug 2017, ‘Pyroprocessing: the integral fast reactor waste fiasco’
• Nuclear Monitor, Sept 2018, ‘Generation IV nuclear waste claims debunked’
• Nuclear Monitor, May 2019, Integral fast reactors rejected for plutonium disposition in the UK and the US

Why would anyone want to know about IFRs?

Because well-known climate scientist James Hansen is promoting them (and an Australian scientist, Barry Brook). Australian nuclear lobbyist Ben Heard (whose lobby group ‘Bright New World’ accepts secret corporate donations) led a united push to develop IFRs during the 2015-16 SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission. To its credit, the Royal Commission flatly rejected their arguments, stating that “fast reactors or reactors with other innovative designs are unlikely to be feasible or viable in South Australia in the foreseeable future. No licensed and commercially proven design is currently operating. Development to that point would require substantial capital investment. Moreover, the electricity generated has not been demonstrated to be cost-competitive with current light water reactor designs.”

Barry Brook, Tom Blees et al.

Some of the comments below (re Barry Brook, Tom Blees and George Stanford) refer to comments posted at the Brave New Climate BNC blog/website:

* http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/12/integral-fast-reactors-for-the-masses

* http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/21/response-to-an-integral-fast-reactor-ifr-critique

The second of those webpages is a critique of an earlier version of this FoE webpage. Sadly, there’s nothing in the critique which allays concerns about IFR and WMD proliferation and nothing on proliferation risks that hasn’t already been addressed in this FoE webpage.

Here’s a letter which sums up some concerns:

Old-style spin
Letter published in The Advertiser, 18 Nov 2009
BARRY Brook promotes what he optimistically labels “next generation” reactors with old-style spin (“Follow Britain’s lead on nuclear power”, The Advertiser, 10/11/09).
For example, he repeatedly has claimed the non-existent “integral fast reactors” he champions “cannot be used to generate weapons-grade material”. Unfortunately, that simply is not true. Worse still, Brook persists with that claim although he knows it has been contradicted by, among others, a scientist with hands-on experience working on a prototype integral fast reactor in the US.
Brook and other promoters of “next generation” reactors have another credibility problem. They acknowledge the need for a rigorous safeguards system to prevent the use of peaceful nuclear facilities to produce weapons of mass destruction, and they acknowledge the existing safeguards fall well short of being rigorous.
None of them, however, is willing to get off his backside to support important, ongoing efforts to strengthen safeguards. This simply is irresponsible. Moreover, it is hypocritical for Brook to criticise Friends of the Earth and other groups which have worked long and hard to strengthen safeguards – with absolutely no help from such people as him.
Brook also berates Friends of the Earth for failing to acknowledge “technological developments that solve the long-lived nuclear waste problem”. Those developments, however, involve another non-existent technology, called pyroprocessing.
South Korea recently announced its intention to embark on a research and development program which aims to provide a “demonstration” of the viability of operating reactors in conjunction with pyroprocessing by the year 2028. That is almost 20 years – just to demonstrate the concept.
Brook offers nothing but false and extravagant claims based on non-existent technology. We deserve better.
Jim Green, Friends of the Earth, Melbourne, VIC.

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What are IFRs?

* reactors proposed to be fuelled by a metallic alloy of uranium and plutonium. ‘Fast’ because they use ‘fast’ unmoderated neutrons.

* coolant: liquid sodium

* electrolytic ‘pyroprocessing’ to separate actinides/transuranics (inc plutonium) from spent fuel and to re-irradiate (both as an additional energy source and to convert long-lived waste products into shorter-lived, less problematic radioactive wastes).

Pyroprocessing is troubled / failed technology – see this 2017 article by physicist Dr Ed Lyman.

Here is one description of pyroprocessing:

“Pyroprocessing differs completely from conventional spent fuel reprocessing (and its associated proliferation dangers) because it doesn’t produce a pure stream of separated plutonium. In pyroprocessing, spent fuel is cut into pieces, heated, and turned into a powder. This process burns off volatile fission products such as krypton and xenon as well as some semi-volatile fission products such as iodine and cesium. (The hotter the process, the more is burned off.) The powder is then transformed into a metal and placed in a molten bath of lithium and potassium chloride salts. An electric current is run through the bath to dissolve the radioactive metal and to separate its elements in several stages, beginning with the recovery of uranium. This operation continues until the concentration of transuranics (plutonium, neptunium, americium, and curium) in the molten salt reaches a level where they also can be separated from the bath, along with a significant amount of fission products (cerium, neodymium, and lanthanum). It then can be directly refabricated into metallic fuel for use in fast reactors without any further processing or purification.”

http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/why-south-korea-needs-pyroprocessing

Here is another description of pyroprocessing:

The pyrometallurgical process (“pyro” for short) extracts from used fuel a mix of transuranic elements instead of pure plutonium, as in the PUREX route. It is based on electroplating— using electricity to collect, on a conducting metal electrode, metal extracted as ions from a chemical bath. Its name derives from the high temperatures to which the metals must be subjected during the procedure. Two similar approaches have been developed, one in the U.S., the other in Russia. The major difference is that the Russians process ceramic (oxide) fuel, whereas the fuel in an ALMR is metallic.

In the American pyroprocess, technicians dissolve spent metallic fuel in a chemical bath. Then a strong electric current selectively collects the plutonium and the other transuranic elements on an electrode, along with some of the fission products and much of the uranium. Most of the fission products and some of the uranium remain in the bath. When a full batch is amassed, operators remove the electrode. Next they scrape the accumulated materials off the electrode, melt them down, cast them into an ingot and pass the ingot to a refabrication line for conversion into fast-reactor fuel. When the bath becomes saturated with fission products, technicians clean the solvent and process the extracted fission products for permanent disposal.

Thus, unlike the current PUREX method, the pyroprocess collects virtually all the transuranic elements (including the plutonium), with considerable carryover of uranium and fission products. Only a very small portion of the transuranic component ends up in the final waste stream, which reduces the needed isolation time drastically. The combination of fission products and transuranics is unsuited for weapons or even for thermal-reactor fuel. This mixture is, however, not only tolerable but advantageous for fueling fast reactors.

Although pyrometallurgical recycling technology is not quite ready for immediate commercial use, researchers have demonstrated its basic principles. It has been successfully demonstrated on a pilot level in operating power plants, both in the U.S. and in Russia. It has not yet functioned, however, on a full production scale.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=smarter-use-of-nuclear-waste&print=true

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DEVELOPMENT AND INTEGRATION OF IFR COMPONENTS

Complete IFR systems don’t exist.

Blees cites five reactors with some IFR characteristics.

Brook gives this summary of the state of development of IFR components: “IFRs are sodium-cooled fast spectrum nuclear power stations with on-site pyroprocessing to recycle spent fuel. Fast spectrum power reactors exist … Indeed, even sodium-cooled fast reactors (a type of Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor, ALMR), the type an IFR facility would likely use, already exist (others include lead- or gas-cooled). Metallic alloy fuels (uranium-plutonium-zirconium), operating within a reactor, existed, in the Experimental Breeder Reactor II at the Argonne National Laboratory. Just because they are not currently used in any operating nuclear power plant doesn’t mean they don’t (haven’t) existed). The only thing that doesn’t currently exist is the full systems design of the integrated plant.”

In short:

* Fast neutron reactors (breeders) exist but experience is limited and they have had a troubled history (accidents, and their WMD proliferation potential).

* The pyroprocessing and transmutation technologies intended to operate as part of IFR systems are some considerable distance from being mature. See the references below for further discussion.

* South Korea is investigating IFRs but plans to spend the next 18-19 YEARS just to ASSESS their viability.

For a properly functioning IFR system, the individual components would need to work and the components would need to be integrated, with potential technical and social obstacles. For example, there’s no point having the capacity to irradiate significant quantities of fissile material from outside sources if states and/or nuclear utilities won’t surrender fissile material or if IFR operators don’t want to irradiate outside sources of fissile material. And its no good overcoming those potential social obstacles if the technology doesn’t meet its proponents’ expectations.

The possibilities are endless, e.g.:

* Pyroprocessing is scrapped in favour of conventional reprocessing.

* IFRs are rolled out in the absence of rigorous international safeguards.

* The potential non-proliferation benefits of IFR are not realised because they are not used to irradiate outside sources of fissile material to any degree.

* IFR proponents envisage each IFR reactor having on-site pyroprocessing (thus minimising transportation of nuclear materials and the attendant risks of accidents, terrorism etc) but one can readily imagine centralised processing facilities being preferred on economic grounds.

The MOX plant and the THORP reprocessing plant at Sellafield (UK) provide two recent examples of nuclear plants which have been conspicuous failures despite considerable historical experience with the basic technology, despite the UK’s lengthy and extensive experience with many facets of nuclear technology, and despite the UK’s relative economic strength and relative technological/industrial strength.

Potential advantages of IFRs

IFRs would breed their own fuel (plutonium) and would therefore not be dependent on outside fuel sources (e.g. uranium) except for the initial fuel load. Hence less demand for uranium with its attendant problems (finite resource, social and environmental impacts of uranium mining) and less demand for enrichment and thus enrichment plants.

Recycling of plutonium extracts more energy, and gets rid of the plutonium with its attendant proliferation risks.All the above could potentially be achieved with conventional reprocessing and plutonium use in MOX (uranium/plutonium) reactors or fast neutron reactors. IFR offers one further potential advantage: irradiating long-lived waste radionuclides, which wouldn’t produce any extra energy but it would convert (some/most) long-lived radionuclides into shorter-lived radionuclides.

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PROBLEMS WITH IFRs

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IFRs and WMD PROLIFERATION

IFRs can be used to produce plutonium for weapons in the same ways that conventional reactors can:

1. Production of weapon grade plutonium in the fuel, using a shorter-than-usual irradiation time. As George Stanford notes, proliferators “could do [with IFRs] what they could do with any other reactor – operate it on a special cycle to produce good quality weapons material.”

Conventional PUREX reprocessing can be used to separate the plutonium from irradiated fuel/targets/blanket. Blees notes that: “IFRs are certainly not the panacea that removes all threat of proliferation, and extracting plutonium from it would require the same sort of techniques as extracting it from spent fuel from light water reactors. The bottom line is that fissile material has to be subject to oversight …”

Another option is to separate reactor grade plutonium from IFR fuel and to use that in weapons instead of weapon grade plutonium.

2. Production of weapon grade plutonium by irradiating a uranium or depleted uranium targets/blanket, and separation using PUREX reprocessing. Unlike research reactors, power reactors aren’t generally designed to facilitate the insertion and removal of targets/blankets, but where there’s a will there’s a way.

As with conventional reactors, IFRs can be used to produce large quantities of fissile material for nuclear weapons, which must weigh very heavily against them in any rational comparative assessment of energy options. Whether IFRs are somewhat more or less proliferation resistant than conventional reactors is a marginal debate.

IFR advocates propose using IFRs to draw down global stockpiles of fissile material, whether derived from nuclear research, power or WMD programs. Well and good, but reprocessing/MOX/breeders promised the same thing but have demonstrably increased rather than decreased proliferation risks (discussed later). Some specific problems:

* WMD proliferators won’t use IFR to draw down stockpiles of their own fissile material let alone anyone else’s. They will use them to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

* The proposal confronts the familiar problem that the countries with the greatest interest in WMD production will be the least likely to forfeit fissile material stockpiles and vice versa.

* The proposal may (or may not) also face practical limitations. Numerous states/utilities etc would gladly get rid of their stockpiles of spent fuel (and perhaps other nuclear materials), but what is the incentive for the operators of IFR plants to irradiate/transmute/destroy nuclear materials produced elsewhere and what are the costs/risks of so doing? Presumably the incentive is financial, in which case what’s the cost and who’s paying?

Brook says “The net effect of the IFR will be reduced availability of bomb material worldwide. What is your solution to eliminating the existing stockpiles if it is not via fission transmutation?” In response:

* IFRs could be used to get rid of fissile material from outside sources but that doesn’t mean they necessarily will (except for their initial fuel load).

* Whatever benefits arise from the consumption of outside sources of fissile material must be weighed against the problem that IFRs could themselves be used to produce fissile material for weapons.

* If it seems unduly pessimistic to be suggesting a neutral or negative effect on non-proliferation grounds, witness the increased proliferation risks from reprocessing/MOX/breeders – systems which were also meant to reduce proliferation risks by consuming fissile material.

* Stopping / minimising the production of fissile material is obviously the single most important step forward. As for stockpiles, all the options are problematic.

* Plutonium should be left in spent fuel because spent fuel provides the best protection against diversion (radioactivity and heat).

The intention is to avoid separating plutonium from irradiated IFR fuel except in a stream that incorporates the plutonium with a waste stream (which is preferable to conventional PUREX reprocessing). This would be unsuitable for nuclear weapons. However:

* the plutonium could be separated from the waste radionuclides with further reprocessing (using conventional PUREX reprocessing).

* the plutonium/waste stream would be suitable for use in ‘dirty bombs’.

Blees says: “Spent LWR [light water reactor] fuel can be put through a PUREX process to extract virtually pure plutonium, though its isotopic composition will be far less than ideal for weapons.” Reactor grade plutonium, whatever its source (LWR, IFR etc), can be used for weapons even though it is less than ideal.

This paper:

Proliferation Resistance Assessment Of The Integral Fast Reactor

Harold F. McFarlane, Argonne National Laboratory

www.ipd.anl.gov/anlpubs/2002/07/43534.pdf

includes the acknowledgment that

“The reactor … could be used for excess plutonium consumption or as a breeder if needed …”

and acknowledges uncertainties and proliferation risks:

“The key to objectively assessing the proliferation resistance of the IFR concept is to recall that much of what Bengelsdorf and Wymer said years ago still pertains in large measure today, i.e., that some elements of the technology still remain to be developed and demonstrated. The reactor aside, neither the recovery of transuranics from the molten salt system nor the remote fabrication of fuel has been demonstrated. Even the concept for transuranic recovery has evolved through two generations since those early assessments were done. For every chemist worried about degradation of proliferation-resistant characteristics, there is another worried about obtaining a product sufficiently decontaminated to be useful in fuel fabrication. The assessment of this fuel cycle should be an ongoing analysis that keeps up with the research rather than one based on the presumptions of either the advocates or the critics.”

Proponents of IFR paper over the cracks in their arguments by imagining, in Blees’ words, “rigorous international oversight” to prevent misuse of IFR for WMD production. But there is no rigorous international oversight. The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, has noted that the IAEA’s basic rights of inspection are “fairly limited”, that the safeguards system suffers from “vulnerabilities” and it “clearly needs reinforcement”, that efforts to improve the system have been “half-hearted”, and that the safeguards system operates on a “shoestring budget … comparable to that of a local police department “.

IFR advocates acknowledge the need for a rigorous safeguards system (and implicitly or explicitly acknowledge the WMD potential of IFR), but there’s no evidence of them getting off their backsides to engage in the laborious task of trying to bring about improvements in safeguards.

Do IFR advocates accept the need for a rigorous safeguards system to be in place before a large-scale IFR roll-out? What is their timeframe for the establishment of a rigorous safeguards system? How do they propose to hasten progress, which has to date been painfully slow?

Another argument from IFR advocates is to explicitly or implicitly acknowledge the WMD potential of IFR but to argue that proliferators would most likely find a simpler method to produce fissile material for bombs. Blees says: “In point of fact, anyone hoping to make a bomb from plutonium will likely try to obtain an isotopically more pure plutonium by creating it from U-238 at a small research reactor.”

But IFR can be used to produce isotopically pure (weapon grade) plutonium, either in the fuel or targets/blanket. As for using a research reactor instead of IFR, proliferators might do just that, depending on the options available to them. Historically, would-be weapons states have simultaneously pursued multiple different methods/technologies e.g. R&D into both plutonium and highly-enriched uranium production, and diversifying fissile material production sources. For example, India has for decades operated research reactors to produce a reliable supply of fissile material for weapons, but India nevertheless uses its uranium/plutonium/thorium power program to further its WMD program (as evidenced by its refusal to allow safeguards to be applied to numerous reactors).

Another variable is how much fissile material is wanted – if a large amount, then power reactors (inc IFR) will be favoured over research reactors (see the debate between Fainberg and Holdren in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 1983, January and May editions).

As an aside, a large number of research reactors exist which are too small (<1MWt) to produce Significant Quantities of plutonium – though perhaps over a long period of time they could produce enough plutonium for one weapon.

Blees says: “As for breeding high-quality … plutonium, virtually any reactor (including research reactors) can do that by wrapping a U-238 blanket around the core and letting it get bombarded with neutrons for a while, then removing it and extracting the Pu with the PUREX method. It requires relatively brief exposure, which is NOT what one would have in a reactor core operated for power purposes.”

Thus we have an (implicit) acknowledgement from Blees (if any was needed) that IFR can produce high purity, weapon grade plutonium. And we have the problem that weapons proliferators simply won’t use IFR as Blees would want them to, i.e. they will use IFR to produce plutonium for weapons regardless of the implications for power generation. The same argument applies to irradiated fuel – IFR proponents want plutonium to be separated from irradiated fuel in a mixed plutonium/waste stream but proliferators will use standard PUREX reprocessing to separate the plutonium for use in weapons. The same argument applies to breeders vs burners, as mentioned above – IFR proponents would use IFR to draw down plutonium stockpiles, proliferators will use them to increase plutonium stockpiles. So on at least three counts, IFR proponents are making implausible claims about the likely use of IFR by WMD proliferators, and papering over the remaining cracks in their arguments by imagining “rigorous international oversight”.

Blees offers this: “Almost 80% of greenhouse gas emissions come from nuclear-capable countries anyway …” Brook says: “If you deploy IFRs … first in nuclear club countries – those that already possess, or are capable of making, nuclear weapons, then there is no additional proliferation risk.” However:

* in weapons states or weapons-capable states, IFR could facilitate vertical proliferation, which in turn motivates horizontal proliferation.

* why would Brook’s proposal not be rejected or seriously curtailed as with every other proposal for selective deployment of (‘sensitive’) ‘civil’ nuclear technologies?

* are we to assume that the current weapons capable/incapable status of all countries is locked in forever (which is both unlikely and problematic)? Will countries that obtain weapons-capable status then be given the option of IFR technology? Couldn’t that (if only marginally) encourage states to develop a nuclear weapons capability? Will countries that move in the opposite direction be asked/forced to abandon their IFR programs and couldn’t that (if only marginally) discourage disarmament?

So we begin with IFR rhetoric including the claim that they are proliferation resistant, but we’re left with the argument that, to paraphrase, IFR can in fact be used to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons – but so can other reactor types, and in any case some countries already have nuclear weapons.

Blees trots out the tired old lie that: “Every country that’s developed nuclear weapons has done so separately from, and usually prior to, nuclear power program development.” In a few countries, power reactors have been directly involved in WMD programs. In numerous countries, power programs have indirectly facilitated WMD programs – these links are no less important for being indirect. The links between nuclear power and weapons are detailed at https://nuclear.foe.org.au/power-weapons/. To give some sense of the scale of the problem, of the 60+ countries to have developed a nuclear industry of some significance (including power and/or research reactors), over 20 have used their ‘peaceful’ nuclear facilities for some level of WMD research and/or production. Of the 10 states to have built nuclear weapons, five did so on the back of their ‘peaceful’ nuclear programs:

* Pakistan and South Africa by misusing enrichment expertise/technology acquired ostensibly for their power programs.

* India using research reactors to produce plutonium and, later, using its uranium/plutonium/thorium power program in support of its WMD program.

* Israel using a research reactor.

* North Korea using a so-called ‘Experimental Power Reactor’ to produce plutonium for bombs.

Conventional reprocessing with plutonium and uranium use/reuse in MOX and/or breeders held the same promise as IFR – reducing proliferation risks by getting rid of plutonium once and for all (as well as other potential advantages, namely reducing demand for uranium and partially addressing waste management problems). In practice, the result has been very little use of plutonium or recycled uranium, but very extensive stockpiling of plutonium separated from spent fuel. Proliferation risks have been increased not reduced because the separated plutonium can be used directly in weapons. Global stockpiles of separated civil plutonium amount to 270+ tonnes and counting – enough for 27,000 nuclear weapons. That problem is alarming because of its scale, because it is so completely unnecessary and indefensible, and because its resolution could hardly be simpler – suspending or reducing the rate of reprocessing such that plutonium stockpiles are drawn down rather than continually increasing.

IFR advocates demonstrate little or no understanding of the realpolitik imposed by the strife of commercial, political and military interests responsible for, amongst other things, unnecessarily creating the problem of 270+ tonnes of separated civil plutonium and failing to take the simplest steps to address the problem.

Blees says “Nuclear power isn’t going to go away, like it or not. Wouldn’t it be far more effective to work for an international regime and the safest, most proliferation-resistant design of nuclear power plant to be standardized and deployed under comprehensive and dependable supervision.” Anti-nuclear people/NGOs have a long history of working to improve safeguards even though that work implicitly acknowledges ongoing operation of nuclear facilities. IFR advocates have, by and large, abstained from that laborious work and are therefore, by and large:

* irresponsible in their actions (promoting dual use technology but failing to take responsibility for the WMD proliferation risks)

* hypocritical in their criticisms of opponents of nuclear power / IFR.

As for Blees’ comment that nuclear power isn’t going to go away, everyone would agree that nuclear power is likely to be around for some decades at least, like it or not. Beyond Blees’ banal observation, the future of nuclear power is of course contested and uncertain.

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WASTE

IFR still produces radioactive waste – albeit (in theory) a more manageable waste stream than conventional reactors. But to lessen the long-term hazards, the short-term public health, environmental and proliferation risks are increased through reprocessing, plutonium recycling etc. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Interdisciplinary Study states that:

“Decisions about partitioning and transmutation must … consider the incremental economic costs and safety, environmental, and proliferation risks of introducing the additional fuel cycle stages and facilities necessary for the task. These activities will be a source of additional risk to those working in the plants, as well as the general public, and will also generate considerable volumes of non-high-level waste contaminated with significant quantities of transuranics. Much of this waste, because of its long toxic lifetime, will ultimately need to be disposed of in high-level waste repositories. Moreover, even the most economical partitioning and transmutation schemes are likely to add significantly to the cost of the once-through fuel cycle.”

Ansolabehere, Stephen, et al., 2003, “The Future of Nuclear Power: An Interdisciplinary MIT Study”, web.mit.edu/nuclearpower

SAFETY

Brook says IFR reactors would be “safe from melt down”. But technologies fail, and well-intentioned humans err. And even if we generously assume that safety mechanisms will certainly prevent a serious accident, there’s still the problem of sabotage or outside attack resulting in a large release of radioactivity.

Easy to make wild claims about non-existent reactors since such claims cannot be tested or disproved. As a nuclear industry representative has noted about non-existent reactor types: “We know that the paper-moderated, ink-cooled reactor is the safest of all. All kinds of unexpected problems may occur after a project has been launched.”

Australian nuclear engineer Tony Wood notes that probabilistic risk assessment failed to anticipate the world’s worst reactor accident (Chernobyl) and the worst reactor accidents in the UK (Windscale) and the USA (Three Mile Island).

In response, Blees says: “And this one’s a doozy: “…probabilistic risk assessment failed to anticipate the world’s worst reactor accident (Chernobyl)…”” But as mentioned it is simply a statement from a nuclear engineer – a statement Blees does not dispute.

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MORE INFO ON REPROCESSING, TRANSMUTATION etc.

* briefing papers on GNEP and new reactor types at www.energyscience.org.au

* Hisham Zerriffi and Annie Makhijani, August 2000, The Nuclear Alchemy Gamble: An Assessment of Transmutation as a Nuclear Waste Management Strategy, www.ieer.org/reports/transm/report.pdf

* Arjun Makhijani, Hisham Zerriffi and Annie Makhijani, “Magical Thinking: another go at transmutation”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March/April 2001, Vol. 57, No. 2, pp. 34-41.

* The more ambitious aspects of GNEP were deprioritised under the Bush presidency and that will continue under Obama: Past, present and future: Who’s voting for GNEP?, August 01, 2008, www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectioncode=188&amp;storyCode=2050691

* The future of GNEP www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/reports/the-future-of-gnep

Jim Green, 2007

National nuclear campaigner – Friends of the Earth, Australia

1. Acknowledge immediate deaths that were undoubtedly caused by a nuclear accident. Ignore long-term deaths from exposure to lower levels of radiation. For example, immediate deaths from Chernobyl were about 50, credible estimates of long-term deaths range from 9,000 to 93,000.
2. Consider nuclear power reactor accidents and ignore the impacts of accidents across the nuclear fuel cycle, e.g. serious and sometimes fatal accidents at uranium mines, uranium enrichment plants, reprocessing plants etc.
3. Ignore the greatest danger of nuclear power, a problem that is unique among energy sources – its direct and repeatedly-demonstrated connection to the production of nuclear weapons.
4. Make wild claims about the safety of ‘new generation’ reactors. Impossible to prove or disprove these claims, since the new reactors exist only as designs on paper. One cynic from within the nuclear industry has quipped that “the paper-moderated, ink-cooled reactor is the safest of all.”
5. And, among many other ways to ‘prove’ the safety of the nuclear industry, claim that a nuclear accident did not effect any member of the ‘community’… without mentioning that a number of nuclear industry workers were harmed or killed. For example, the Lucas Heights nuclear agency ANSTO pretends that no research reactor accident has ever harmed a member of the surrounding community, which is a disingenuous way of avoiding mention of five or six fatal research reactor accidents that have killed workers.

Jim Green − national nuclear campaigner, Friends of the Earth, Australia

April 2014

The never-ending debate over the Chernobyl cancer death toll turns on the broader debate over the health effects of low-level radiation exposure.

The overwhelming weight of scientific opinion holds that there is no threshold below which ionising radiation poses no risk. Uncertainties will always persist. In circumstances where people are exposed to low-level radiation, public health (epidemiological) studies are unlikely to be able to demonstrate a statistically-significant increase in cancer rates. Cancers are common diseases and most are multi-causal. Other complications include the long latency period for some cancers; and limited or uneven data on cancer incidence and mortality. The upshot is that cancer incidence and mortality statistics are being pushed up and down by a myriad of factors at any point in time and it becomes impossible or near-impossible to isolate any one factor.

While the overwhelming weight of scientific opinion holds that there is no threshold below which radiation exposure is harmless, there is less scientific confidence about how to quantify the risks. Risk estimates for low-level radiation exposure are typically based on a linear extrapolation of better-understood risks from higher levels of exposure.

This ‘Linear No Threshold’ (LNT) model has some heavy-hitting scientific support. For example a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states: “Given that it is supported by experimentally grounded, quantifiable, biophysical arguments, a linear extrapolation of cancer risks from intermediate to very low doses currently appears to be the most appropriate methodology.”¹ Likewise, the 2006 report of the US National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation (BEIR) states that “the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and … the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans.”²

Nonetheless, there is uncertainty with the LNT model at low doses and dose rates. The BEIR report makes the important point that the true risks may be lower or higher than predicted by LNT − a point that needs emphasis and constant repetition because nuclear apologists routinely conflate uncertainty with zero risk. That conflation is never explained or justified; it is simply dishonest.

The UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) and the International Commission on Radiological Protection recommend against using collective dose figures and risk estimates to estimate total deaths. The problem with that recommendation is that there is simply no other way to arrive at an estimate of the death toll from Chernobyl (or Fukushima, or routine emissions from the nuclear fuel cycle, or weapons tests, or background radiation, etc).

Indeed UNSCEAR itself (PDF) co-authored a report which cites an estimate from an international expert group − based on collective dose figures and risk estimates − of around 4,000 long-term cancer deaths among the people who received the highest radiation doses from Chernobyl.³ And UNSCEAR doesn’t claim that low-level radiation exposure is harmless − its 2010 report states that “the current balance of available evidence tends to favour a non-threshold response for the mutational component of radiation-associated cancer induction at low doses and low dose rates.”⁴

The view that low-level radiation is harmless is restricted to a small number of scientists whose voice is greatly amplified by the nuclear industry (in much the same way as corporate greenhouse polluters and their politicians amplify the voices of climate science sceptics). In Australia, for example, uranium mining and exploration companies such as Cameco, Toro Energy, Uranium One and Heathgate Resources have sponsored speaking tours by Canadian junk scientist Doug Boreham, who claims that low-level radiation exposure is beneficial to human health. Medical doctors have registered opposition to this dangerous quackery and collusion.⁵

About 50 people died in the immediate aftermath of the Chernobyl accident. Beyond that, studies generally don’t indicate a significant increase in cancer incidence in populations exposed to Chernobyl fallout. Nor would anyone expect them to because of the data gaps and methodological problems mentioned above, and because the main part of the problem concerns the exposure of millions of people to low doses of radiation from Chernobyl fallout.

For a few fringe scientists and nuclear industry insiders and apologists, that’s the end of the matter – the statistical evidence is lacking and thus the death toll from Chernobyl was just 50. (If they were being honest, they would note an additional, unknown death toll from cancer and from other radiation-linked diseases including cardiovascular disease). But for those of us who prefer mainstream science, we can still arrive at a scientifically defensible estimate of the Chernobyl death toll by using estimates of the total radiation exposure, and multiplying by an appropriate risk estimate.

The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates a total collective dose of 600,000 person-Sieverts over 50 years from Chernobyl fallout.⁶ Applying the LNT risk estimate of 0.10 fatal cancers per Sievert gives an estimate of 60,000 deaths. Sometimes a risk estimate of 0.05 is used to account for the possibility of decreased risks at low doses and/or dose rates (in other words, 0.05 is the risk estimate when applying a ‘dose and dose rate effectiveness factor’ or DDREF of two). That gives an estimate of 30,000 deaths.

On the other hand, LNT may underestimate risks. The BEIR report states that “combined analyses are compatible with a range of possibilities, from a reduction of risk at low doses to risks twice those upon which current radiation protection recommendations are based.” Likewise the BEIR report states: “The committee recognizes that its risk estimates become more uncertain when applied to very low doses. Departures from a linear model at low doses, however, could either increase or decrease the risk per unit dose.” So the true death toll could be lower or higher than the LNT-derived estimate of 60,000 deaths.

A number of studies apply that basic method − based on collective radiation doses and risk estimates − and come up with estimates of the Chernobyl cancer death toll varying from 9,000 (in the most contaminated parts of the former Soviet Union) to 93,000 deaths (across Europe).

UN reports in 2005-06 estimated up to 4,000 eventual deaths among the higher-exposed Chernobyl populations (emergency workers from 1986−1987, evacuees and residents of the most contaminated areas) and an additional 5,000 deaths among populations exposed to lower doses in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.⁷

The estimated death toll rises further when populations beyond those three countries are included. For example, a study by Cardis et al reported in the International Journal of Cancer estimates 16,000 deaths.⁸ Dr Elisabeth Cardis, head of the Radiation Group at the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, said: “By 2065 (i.e. in the eighty years following the accident), predictions based on these models indicate that about 16,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancers may be expected due to radiation from the accident and that about 16,000 deaths from these cancers may occur. About two-thirds of the thyroid cancer cases and at least one half of the other cancers are expected to occur in Belarus, Ukraine and the most contaminated territories of the Russian Federation.”⁹

UK radiation scientists Dr Ian Fairlie and Dr David Sumner estimate 30,000 to 60,000 deaths.¹⁰ Dr Fairlie notes that statements by UNSCEAR indicate that it believes the whole body collective dose across Europe from Chernobyl was 320,000 to 480,000 Sv, from which an estimate of 32,000 to 48,000 fatal cancers can be deduced (using the LNT risk estimate of 0.10).¹¹

According to physicist Dr. Lisbeth Gronlund: “53,000 and 27,000 are reasonable estimates of the number of excess cancers and cancer deaths that will be attributable to the accident, excluding thyroid cancers. (The 95% confidence levels are 27,000 to 108,000 cancers and 12,000 to 57,000 deaths.) In addition, as of 2005, some 6,000 thyroid cancers and 15 thyroid cancer deaths have been attributed to Chernobyl. That number will grow with time. Much lower numbers of cancers and deaths are often cited, but these are misleading because they only apply to those populations with the highest radiation exposures, and don’t take into account the larger numbers of people who were exposed to less radiation.”¹²

A 2006 report commissioned by Greenpeace estimates a cancer death toll of about 93,000.¹³ According to Greenpeace: “Our report involved 52 respected scientists and includes information never before published in English. It challenges the UN International Atomic Energy Agency Chernobyl Forum report, which predicted 4,000 additional deaths attributable to the accident as a gross simplification of the real breadth of human suffering. The new data, based on Belarus national cancer statistics, predicts approximately 270,000 cancers and 93,000 fatal cancer cases caused by Chernobyl. The report also concludes that on the basis of demographic data, during the last 15 years, 60,000 people have additionally died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident, and estimates of the total death toll for the Ukraine and Belarus could reach another 140,000.”

Those are the credible estimates of the eventual death toll from Chernobyl. Another defensible position (or non-position) is that the long-term cancer death toll is unknown and unknowable because of the uncertainties associated with the science. The third of the two defensible positions, unqualified claims that the death toll was just 50, should be rejected as dishonest or uninformed spin from the nuclear industry and some of its scientifically-illiterate supporters … and from every last one of the self-proclaimed pro-nuclear environmentalists − James Hansen, Patrick Moore, Mark Lynas, George Monbiot, James Lovelock, etc.

References:

1. Brenner, David, et al., 2003, ‘Cancer risks attributable to low doses of ionizing radiation: Assessing what we really know’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 25, 2003, vol.100, no.24, pp.13761–13766,

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14610281

2. US Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation, US National Academy of Sciences, 2006, ‘Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII Phase 2’, www.nap.edu/books/030909156X/html

3. The Chernobyl Forum: 2003–2005, ‘Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts and Recommendations to the Governments of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine’, Second revised version, p.16, www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf

See also: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/

4. UNSCEAR, 2010, Report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation on the Effects of Atomic Radiation 2010′,

www.unscear.org/docs/reports/2010/UNSCEAR_2010_Report_M.pdf

5. Doctors’ response to Toro Energy’s junk science:

www.mapw.org.au/news/cameco-stop-promoting-radiation-junk-science

Doctors’ response to Cameco’s junk science:

www.mapw.org.au/files/downloads/Medical%20Statement%20-%20Toro%20-%20final2.pdf

6. IAEA, 1996, “Long-term Committed Doses from Man-made Sources,” IAEA Bulletin, Vol.38, No.1,
https://nuclear.foe.org.au/wp-content/uploads/600k-p-Sv-IAEA-Bull.pdf

7. Chernobyl Forum, 2005, ‘Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts’, www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf

World Health Organization, 2006,

www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr20/en/index.html

www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/

8 Cardis E, Krewski D, Boniol et al, ‘Estimates of the Cancer Burden in Europe from Radioactive Fallout from the Chernobyl’, International Journal of Cancer, Volume 119, Issue 6, pp.1224-1235, Published Online: 20 April 2006,

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16628547

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.22037/pdf

9. Cardis, Elizabeth, 2006, www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2006/pr168.html

10. Ian Fairlie and David Sumner, 2006,’ The Other Report on Chernobyl’, www.chernobylreport.org

11. www.ianfairlie.org/news/new-unscear-report-on-fukushima-collective-doses/

12. Lisbeth Gronlund, 17 April 2011, ‘How Many Cancers Did Chernobyl Really Cause?’, http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/4704112149/how-many-cancers-did-chernobyl-really-cause-updated

13. Greenpeace, 2006, ‘The Chernobyl Catastrophe − Consequences on Human Health’,

www.greenpeace.org/international/en/publications/reports/chernobylhealthreport/

www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2006/4/chernobylhealthreport.pdf

References to literature on renewable electricity and sustainable energy options more broadly.

Last updated January 2019

Please advise of other useful studies, dead links etc. jim.green@foe.org.au

INDEX TO THIS WEBPAGE

1. Australia ‒ Renewables Growth, Wind, Solar
2. Australian Deep Emissions Cuts Studies
3. Australia ‒ Information Sources on Renewables (and energy efficiency etc.)
4. Economics of Renewable Energy in Australia
5. Renewable Energy Jobs in Australia
6. South Australia
7. Responses to Anti-Renewables Propagandists and Paid Lobbyists
8. Global Growth of Renewables
9. Economics of Global Renewables
10. International Deep Emissions Cuts Studies
11. International Deep Emissions Cuts Studies ‒ Mark Jacobson / Stanford Research
12. Other International Literature
13. Country Studies
14. Countries with High Percentages of Power from Renewables
15. Canada
16. China
17. Europe
18. India
19. Japan
20. USA

1. AUSTRALIA ‒ RENEWABLES GROWTH, WIND, SOLAR

Australia could be at 86% wind and solar by 2050 – on economics only

Giles Parkinson, 10 July 2018

Australia could source 86 per cent of its electricity from wind and solar by 2050, based on economics only and regardless of any climate or emissions policy, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The global research and news group says that level of wind and solar could be reached quicker, and will need to in order to match the Paris climate target of 2°C, let alone 1.5°C, but the transition to wind and solar is inevitable.

See also this article in The Age.

Powering Progress: States Renewable Energy Race

Climate Council of Australia, 16 October 2018

The renewable energy boom is accelerating in Australia, and across the world. In the absence of meaningful commonwealth government leadership, state and territory governments are leading Australia’s electricity transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and storage.

This report rates states and territories based on their performance across a range of metrics. These include each state’s percentage of renewable electricity, the proportion of households with solar and policies that support renewable energy.

Australia at 19% renewables – NEG 2030 target to be reached in 2021

Giles Parkinson, 6 July 2018

Australia’s electricity grid reached a 19 per cent share of renewable energy in the year to June 30, and with a host of new wind and solar capacity to be added in the next two years will meet its 2030 target for emissions in the electricity sector nine years early.

The latest analysis from The Australia Institute, in its regular energy market audit, is just the latest in a string of reports that highlight how ineffective the Coalition government’s emissions target are.

Clean Energy Australia renewables jobs and investment data – 2018

Renewable energy sources accounted for 16.94% of electricity generation in Australia in 2017, comprising hydro 5.74%, wind 5.72%, small-scale solar-PV 3.43%, bioenergy 1.65%, other solar 0.41%.

Renewables percentage contribution to total electricity generation: Tasmania 88%, SA 45%, Vic 16%, WA 14%, NSW 11%, Qld 8%.

Renewables smash records in 2017, but 2018/19 will be bigger

Sophie Vorrath, 30 May 2018

The Clean Energy Council has detailed a year of remarkable deal-making and record-smashing project activity in Australia’s large-scale solar and wind sectors in its latest annual snapshot of the national clean energy market.

Clean Energy Australia Report 2018

Looks back at a 2017 when 16 large-scale renewable energy project, totalling around 700MW of new generation capacity, were completed and connected to the National Electricity Market.

Among those, four large-scale solar projects were completed in 2017, taking Australia’s total installed large-scale solar capacity to 450MW at the end of the year, from just 34 MW at the end of 2014.

For the wind sector, the 547MW of new capacity added in 2017 was the third highest amount added in the history of the Australian industry, bringing total generation capacity across the country to 4816MW. …

And while 2017 was a record year, CEC chief Kane Thornton says it is “just a glimpse” of what is shaping up to be an unprecedented level of activity in the next couple of years.

“Perhaps most significantly, the large-scale renewable projects either under construction or which had attracted finance add up to more than seven times the amount of work completed in 2017,” he said in comments at the launch of the 2018 report.

“These 50 projects add up to 5300MW of new capacity and 5750 direct jobs.”

Australia can supply 50 per cent of its power needs from clean energy by 2030

Sheradyn Holderhead, The Advertiser, 15 Feb 2018

AUSTRALIA could reach 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030 without significant new storage, given the projects in the pipeline in the state, a new report shows.

The Climate Council report found that the country was on the verge of an energy storage boom because the cost of lithium-ion batteries was rapidly dropping. Despite wind and solar PV already comprising 57 per cent of power generated in South Australia, the report found that renewables produce just 16 per cent of the national electricity supply.

Climate Council energy expert Professor Andrew Stock said the transition to renewable energy and storage was inevitable and happening now. He criticised the “lack of ambition” in the Federal Government’s National Energy Guarantee and said it placed the renewables and storage boom at risk.

Solar installs through the roof, as Australians deliver record growth

Sophie Vorrath, 18 January 2018

Extraordinary figures continue to roll in from the year that was for renewable energy in Australia, but easily the most outstanding so far are the numbers – and “eye watering charts” – that have just come in on national solar PV installations for 2017.

The latest tally from PV market analysts SunWiz has revealed a record smashing total so far of 1.25GW of solar PV installed across 2017, making it out and away the biggest year for the market in Australia ever, eclipsing the former record set in 2012.

Renewables record: solar and wind power blow gas out of the water
16 October 2017

Solar and wind powered more homes than ever before last month and produced more energy than gas, the latest Renewable Energy Index shows. Solar and wind combined generated a record high of 2,363 GWh of electricity, compared with 2,186 GWh for gas.
The analysis, compiled by Green Energy Markets, reveals renewable energy from all sources made up 21.9% of electricity generated on Australia’s main grids — avoiding the equivalent of 9.3 million cars-worth of carbon pollution.
The Index also shows the renewable energy sector employed 17,521 people throughout September, with Queensland again coming out on top with 6,810 renewable jobs.

Record year for renewable energy as costs fall and hydro returns to form

30 May 2017

A record share of Australia’s electricity came from renewable energy in 2016, largely thanks to improved rainfall in key hydro catchments and a series of new wind and solar projects, according to a new report released today by the Clean Energy Council.
The Clean Energy Australia Report 2016 says more than 17 per cent of Australia’s electricity came from renewable energy during the year – the highest proportion at any time this century, putting Australia well on track to deliver the 2020 Renewable Energy Target (RET).

Surge in renewables set to balance Australia’s future energy equation

Brian Robins, 29 June 2017

Australia’s energy future will be increasingly reliant on renewable energy sources, with the operator of the nation’s energy markets conceding that even with a forecast 30 per cent rise in population over the next two decades the amount of energy travelling across the grid will be little changed.

Central to the forecast from the Australian Energy Markets Operator, which runs the nation’s wholesale gas and electricity markets, is the view that more households will install rooftop solar systems as their prices decline, amid an ongoing trend towards installing more energy efficient appliances.

Australian solar capacity now 6GW, to double again by 2020

Giles Parkinson, 27 April 2017

Australia’s total solar power capacity has reached 6GW and is expected to double over the next few years as Australian households continue to invest in rooftop panels to reduce electricity bills, and the large-scale solar sector takes off after years of promise.

The latest industry analysis on installed capacity – released by the Australian Photovoltaic Institute – shows that rooftop solar capacity has now reached 5.6GW and large-scale solar capacity is now at 496 MW, and growing fast.

Renewable Energy Options for Australian Industrial Gas Users

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has recently published a major report on options for renewable energy to replace gas in industry.

ARENA, Sept 2015, ‘Renewable Energy Options for Australian Industrial Gas Users’, prepared by IT Power for ARENA.

‘Towards the next generation: delivering affordable, secure and lower emissions power’

Climate Change Authority and Australian Energy Market Commission

1 June 2017

Report webpage or PDF of full report.

Description: The Minister for the Environment and Energy, the Hon Josh Frydenberg MP, asked the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) and the Climate Change Authority to jointly provide advice on policies to enhance power system security and to reduce electricity prices consistent with achieving Australia’s emissions reduction targets in the Paris Agreement. In developing its advice, the Authority and the AEMC were asked to draw on existing analysis and review processes and be informed by independent modelling. This report outlines the AEMC and the Authority’s findings on these important matters.

Australia’s energy sector is undergoing a significant transformation. This change is being driven by new technologies, business models and consumer preferences. It also reflects the intent of governments (particularly the Commonwealth Government as well as the state and territories) to reduce emissions from energy generation to meet emissions reduction targets or, in some cases, to support renewable technology industries.

2. AUSTRALIAN DEEP EMISSIONS CUTS STUDIES

Business Council of Australia

The Business Council of Australia’s 2020 report argues for a rapid, renewables-led decarbonisation. This is an extraordinary and welcome turn-around given the BCA’s former role as energy troglodytes. The report is online.

How to run the National Electricity Market on 96 per cent renewables

David Osmond, 3 March 2020, RenewEconomy, https://reneweconomy.com.au/how-to-run-the-national-electricity-market-on-96-per-cent-renewables-91522/

Windlab has conducted a simulation of a 96% renewable national electricity market (NEM). The goal of the study was to show that very high renewable penetration levels can be achieved by expanding wind and solar generation, which is firmed by existing hydro and readily achievable levels of storage. It differs from other 100% renewable studies as it is based primarily on actual wind, solar and demand data from AEMO. Other studies have relied on simulated data. …

To summarise, this study has indicated that a very high penetration rate of renewables on the NEM is possible with readily achievable levels of storage and interconnector upgrades.

100% Renewable Electricity in Australia

Andrew Blakers, Bin Lu and Matthew Stocks (Australian National University), February 2017, ‘100% Renewable Electricity in Australia’.

Abstract: We present an energy balance analysis of the Australian national electricity market in a 100% renewable energy scenario in which wind and photovoltaics (PV) provides 90% of the annual electricity. The key outcome of our modelling is that the additional cost of balancing renewable energy supply with demand on an hourly basis throughout the year is modest: A$25-30/MWh (US$19-23/MWh).

For a summary article click here.

100 percent renewable energy by 2030

November 2017

Australia can have an electricity grid entirely run by renewable energy by 2030, according to a new research paper by Renew, formerly the Alternative Technology Association (ATA).

The paper, 100% Renewable Grid by 2030, says the target can be achieved by accelerating the installation of wind and solar power by 80% backed up by pumped hydro energy storage facilities and extra transmission lines.

Lead author Andrew Reddaway, energy analyst at Renew, said reaching full renewable energy by 2030 was cheaper and less risky than building new coal-fired power stations.

Renew’s forecasts towards a fully renewable grid in the national electricity market are based on recent research by the Australian National University. The paper considered recent trends and developments in projects such as Snow Hydro 2.0

Read the report 100% Renewable Grid by 2030.

Summary article here.

Australia could be 100% renewable by 2030s, meet Paris targets by 2025

Sophie Vorrath, 10 September 2018

Australia could reach the equivalent of 100 per cent renewables for its electricity needs by the early 2030s by doing nothing more than maintaining the current pace of wind and solar development, a new research report has found.

The report – published by a heavy-hitting team of Australian National University researchers, including solar PV and pumped hydro expert Andrew Blakers – says keeping up the current rate of renewable energy deployment would also meet Australia’s entire emissions reduction task “for the whole economy” by 2025.

To reach these conclusions, the team analysed data for the federal government’s own Clean Energy Regulator, showing that during 2018 and 2019 the nation would install about 10,400MW of new renewable energy.

ANU Energy Change Institute director Professor Ken Baldwin said that at that rate, Australia would eclipse the Renewable Energy Target, reaching 29 per cent in 2020, and by 2025 would reach 50 per cent – a number the federal Coalition likes to say is “recklessly high”, even for 2030.

Perhaps even more importantly, staying on the current trajectory would see electricity sector emissions reduced by 26 per cent in 2021, and the Paris economy-wide emissions reductions target of 26 per cent met five years early, in 2025. …

The ANU forecast compares to recent modelling from the Australian Energy Market Operator, which shows renewables making up 46 per cent of NEM generation by 2030 in their “neutral scenario”, and 61 per cent of generation by 2030 in their “fast change” scenario.

ANU report here and article by ANU scientists here.

New report shows 100% renewable by 2030 can save Australia money

Giles Parkinson, 19 April 2016, RenewEconomy

A new report from the Institute for Sustainable Futures in Sydney says a rapid transition to a 100 per cent renewable energy system can save Australia money – with avoided fuel costs to quickly offset the extra capital expenditure of building wind, solar and other renewable energy installations.

“The transition to a 100 per cent renewable energy system by 2050 is both technically possible and economically viable in the long term,” the report says. And by 100 per cent renewable, it means all energy use, including transport and heating.

The report canvasses two renewable energy scenarios, one based on a high level of renewable energy in the electricity grid, but with transport largely reliant on fossil fuels. The second is the Advanced Renewables scenario, which canvasses a totally renewable electricity system by 2030 and a fully renewable energy system by 2050.

Australians can have zero-emission electricity, without blowing the bill

6 Dec 2016

Paul Graham ‒ Chief economist, CSIRO energy

In a report released by CSIRO and Energy Networks Australia ‒ titled Electricity Network Transformation Roadmap Key Concepts Report ‒ we show that Australia is so far making rocky progress on reducing emissions, maintaining energy security and keeping prices low. But we also show how Australia can regain world leadership, delivering cheap electricity with zero emissions by 2050.

Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE) reports

Beyond Zero Emissions, 2015, ‘Zero Carbon Australia: Renewable Energy Superpower‘,

Beyond Zero Emissions, 2010, ‘Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan‘.

Other Beyond Zero Emissions’ reports posted at www.beyondzeroemissions.org

Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in Australia

ClimateWorks Australia, 2014, ‘Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in Australia’.

Report webpage and PDF

Australian Energy Market Operator, July 2013, ‘100 Per Cent Renewables Study ‒ Modelling Outcomes’

The modelling undertaken presents results for four selected cases, two scenarios at two years, 2030 and 2050. The first scenario is based on rapid technology transformation and moderate economic growth while the second scenario is based on moderate technology transformation and high economic growth. The modelling includes the generation mix, transmission requirements, and hypothetical costs for each.

Media reports here, here, here and here.

University of New South Wales Simulation Study (2012)

Ben Elliston, Mark Diesendorf and Iain MacGill, 2012, ‘Simulations of scenarios with 100% renewable electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market’, Energy Policy, vol. 45, pp.606-613

Abstract

As a part of a program to explore technological options for the transition to a renewable energy future, we present simulations for 100% renewable energy systems to meet actual hourly electricity demand in the five states and one territory spanned by the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) in 2010. The system is based on commercially available technologies: concentrating solar thermal (CST) power with thermal storage, wind, photovoltaic (PV), existing hydro and biofuelled gas turbines. Hourly solar and wind generation data are derived from satellite observations, weather stations, and actual wind farm outputs. Together CST and PV contribute about half of total annual electrical energy supply.

A range of 100% renewable energy systems for the NEM are found to be technically feasible and meet the NEM reliability standard. The principal challenge is meeting peak demand on winter evenings following overcast days when CST storage is partially charged and sometimes wind speeds are low. The model handles these circumstances by combinations of an increased number of gas turbines and reductions in winter peak demand. There is no need for conventional base-load power plants. The important parameter is the reliability of the whole supply-demand system, not the reliability of particular types of power plants.

Highlights

We simulate 100% renewable electricity in the Australian National Electricity Market.

The energy system comprises commercially available technologies.

A range of 100% renewable electricity systems meet the reliability standard.

Principal challenge is meeting peak demand on winter evenings.

The concept of ‘base-load’ power plants is found to be redundant.

3. AUSTRALIA ‒ INFORMATION SOURCES ON RENEWABLES (AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY ETC.)

The Renewable Energy Index tracks the amount of renewable energy in Australia, the jobs it’s creating, the power bill savings it is delivering for Australian households, and the environmental benefits of the rising use of clean power. It’s updated every month by Green Energy Markets’ and funded by GetUp.

Clean Energy Council

RenewEconomy ‒ subscribe to the free daily e-newsletter

Yes 2 Renewables is Friends of the Earth Melbourne’s campaign for 100 per cent renewable energy.

University of NSW academics – numerous reports and articles:

• Ben Elliston ‒ School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications
• Mark Diesendorf – School of Humanities & Languages and see also this webpage
• Iain Macgill – Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets, School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications
• Jenny Riesz – Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets (PhD candidate as of 2018)
• Abhnil Prasad – Climate Change Research Centre

Australian Government – Department of the Environment and Energy

See the topics page – e.g. renewable energy – energy – energy efficiency – energy markets – National Electricity Market review

Reputex

Climate Change Authority

Australian Energy Market Commission

CSIRO ‒ Renewables and energy

Energy Efficiency Council

Solar Citizens

Solar Calculator (estimate cost savings by installing solar)

Alternative Technology Association

Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets

See esp. the publications page

Energy Strategies (EnerStrat)

Climate Action Network of Australia

4. ECONOMICS OF RENEWABLE ENERGY IN AUSTRALIA

Renewables to be cheaper than coal even without climate policy, CSIRO says

2 January 2019

The CSIRO and the energy market operator say existing coal plants are still one of the lowest cost forms of power but new wind and solar farms will soon be cheaper, even without a carbon price.

Australia solar costs hit “extraordinary” new lows – $50s/MWh

Sophie Vorrath & Giles Parkinson, 27 June 2018

The cost of building new large-scale solar energy generation in Australia has fallen to an “extraordinary” new low, the head of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency has said, citing industry reports of numbers down around the $50/MWh mark.

Australia’s PV price plunge has seen the cost of utility-scale solar fall from around $135/MWh when ARENA launched its first auction in 2015, to “somewhere in the $50s” today, or $1/W, ARENA chief Ian Kay said on Wednesday.

Wind and solar slashing corporate energy costs by 40%
Giles Parkinson, 1 June 2018

The continuing fall in the cost of new wind and solar farms, and the emergence of new firming contract products, is allowing large corporate and industrial users to slash energy costs by up to 40 per cent.

TFS Green, a Melbourne-based wholesale energy and environmental market broker, is on Friday launching its new “Renewable Energy Hub”, a day after the formal announcement of its first transaction with the Kiamal solar farm and Mars Australia.

TFS Greens’s Chris Halliwell says wind and solar is clearly delivering electricity at a 40 per cent discount from what is available to medium and large users elsewhere on the grid.

That assessment is shared by Sanjeev Gupta and his team at SIMEC ZEN Energy, which is looking at similar savings from building a massive suite of large-scale solar, pumped hydro and battery storage to power the Whyalla steelworks and other big energy users.

A cost curve for emissions reductions & energy storage

Reputex, March 2017, ‘An Energy Trilemma: A cost curve for emissions reductions & energy storage in the Australian electricity sector’

See media release and report summary.

From the media release:

• The rising price of gas, coupled with the falling cost of energy storage, has now made renewable energy storage cheaper than gas-fired power in providing reliable generation, such as instantaneous peaking or load-following supply.
• Flexible renewable supply – such as a solar plant with battery storage that can ramp up even if the sun is not shining – is expected to create a decreasing need for “baseload-only” facilities, enabling states to rely on storage to overcome intermittency concerns and provide clean, reliable supply – at least cost.
• Notably, findings also indicate “clean coal” will not be commercially mature before 2030, meaning it will not contribute to Australia’s 2030 target under the Paris Agreement.

From the report summary:

Key findings include:

• Demand reduction via the take-up of solar PV has the lowest marginal cost of emissions reductions in the electricity sector, in line with an anticipated drop in capital costs, and continued availability of financing.
• “Clean coal” such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and High Efficiency, Low Emissions” (HELE) coal is not forecast to be commercially mature until at least 2025. Subsequently, clean coal is projected to have a limited impact in support of Australia’s 2030 target under the Paris Agreement.
• New low cost: Wind is displacing existing generation, causing existing facilities to generate less energy, recover revenue less frequency, and exit the market. As this occurs, system reliability has become an issue, most noticeably where intermittent generation has a high penetration rate, given it does not necessarily coincide with peak demand (timing) and cannot be easily ramped up to follow a load forecast (controllability).
• Intermittent technologies do not provide the same contribution to system reliability as dispatched technologies, and may therefore require additional system investment (for example in storage) to ensure guaranteed supply.
• Analysing the “full cost” of renewables, with energy storage, raises the cost recovery for low-cost intermittent generators significantly above their LCOE, however, findings indicate that on a like-for-like basis clean energy is now cheaper than gas-fired generation, driven by higher gas prices and falling storage technology costs.
• Renewables with energy storage have therefore surpassed gas as the cheapest source of new flexible power in Australia, with analysis indicating these sources may alleviate system pressure by providing load-following and peaking generation services.
• Analysis indicates that this will create a decreasing need for baseload-only facilities, while enabling South Australia, Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales to rely on new storage technologies to provide affordable, clean, and secure energy – while improving system reliability.

Wind energy’s biggest month, and how it keeps prices down

Giles Parkinson, 8 June 2016

Wind energy in Australia has enjoyed its biggest every month in May, producing nearly a quarter more electricity than its previous record month, and overtaking hydro to provide 8.5 per cent of electricity demand in the country’s main grid.

The record output came, coincidentally, in the same month that the last coal fired power station in South Australia was closed (May 9). And a new analysis from energy consultants Pitt & Sherry points to how wind generation is keeping a lid on wholesale electricity prices.

The Pitt & Sherry analysis notes that four states recorded record monthly totals in May – South Australia (where wind met 49 per cent of demand), Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania. (There is only one very small wind farm in Queensland and Western Australia operates on a separate grid).

How rooftop solar is saving billions on energy bills for all consumers

Giles Parkinson, 16 October 2017

A major new study has underlined the crucial role played by rooftop solar in moderating energy prices: without it, the study says, the aggregate cost of electricity would have been several billion dollars higher over the past year.

The study by Energy Synapse, commissioned by the community lobby group Solar Citizens, reinforces previous estimates of the broad benefits of the more than 6GW of rooftop solar installed on more than 1.7 million household and business rooftops.

That capacity is often demonised by vested interests as “free-loading” on the network and other consumers, but the study proves otherwise.

Cheap wind, solar will make Australia a magnet ‒ Bloomberg

Ben Potter, 15 June 2017

Cheap wind and solar power will make Australia a magnet for energy-intensive industries such as smelting again within a decade or two, reversing the current trend for large smelters to back off production or threaten closure because of soaring electricity prices, Bloomberg New Energy Finance says in its 2017 Outlook.

Prices for solar PV rooftop panels, wind power and batteries will fall rapidly and quickly undercut coal and gas power, driving rapid uptake of these “distributed energy” technologies and making Australia one of the most decentralised energy markets in the world with a massive 45 per cent of power capacity “behind the meter” by 2040.

Small-scale PV will be the largest single source of generation capacity by 2040, with 44 gigawatts ‒ 31 per cent of the mix. Solar PV will “take the place of coal as the backbone of the national energy supply”, BNEF’s New Energy Outlook 2017 says.

Batteries in homes and business premises will supply another 15GW, helping to stabilise the grid at times of peak demand through “demand response” as coal supplies a diminishing share of demand. It projects that levelised (all in) costs of wind power will fall from $US57/MWh ($76/MWh) today to $US33/MWh in 2040, and solar PV will plummet from $US71/MWh today to $US26/MWh in 2040.

The solar PV boom will be joined by a boom in batteries, Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s New Energy Outlook 2017 projects Bloomberg New Energy Finance, New Energy Outlook 2017

Wind and solar already significantly undercut the cost of power from new coal plant ‒ which BNEF estimates at $US94-172/MWh ‒ and by 2023 will undercut the cost of power from refurbished coal plant.

Solar’s new sweet spot: Low cost, compact PV plants at $1/watt

Giles Parkinson, 22 June 2017

There’s been a lot of attention paid to the big boom in large scale solar in Australia over the past nine months, with more than 2.4GW under construction across the country, and another 8GW in the pipeline, by RenewEconomy’s estimates.

The focus has been on the big end of this construction boom, but something interesting is happening at the smaller end of the market – the emergence of quick-to-build, compact MW scale solar plants that are redefining the technology’s economics.

The majority of large scale solar plants are slowed down by connection issues and getting a power purchase agreement and finance. But there has been no such inhibition for YD Projects, which this week completed the first of a number of solar projects on the NSW/Queensland border.

5. RENEWABLE ENERGY JOBS IN AUSTRALIA

Wind farms power big surge in renewable energy jobs

Cole Latimer, 25 January 2018

A boom in wind farms is fuelling a jobs surge in the renewable energy industry with 17 per cent employment growth in the sector in December.

Nationwide, there are now 15,691 renewable energy jobs, rising to 21,168 when including those in small-scale rooftop solar installation. This is a 17 per cent month on month increase from November job figures. …

Renewables delivering – despite enemies and “lukewarm defenders”

Tristan Edis, 28 August 2017

Today Green Energy Markets has released the Renewable Energy Index, which is a monthly publication tracking: the amount of power produced from renewable energy; the jobs it’s creating; the power bill savings it is delivering for Australian households and businesses; and the environmental benefits of the rising use of clean power.

The story is an impressive one. At the end of June, large-scale renewable energy projects under construction were estimated to create enough jobs to employ 8,868 people full-time for a year. Then in our July edition it had grown by more than a thousand to 9,897 job-years (a person employed full time for a year) thanks to the commitment of a further seven projects.

On top of this we estimate almost 4,000 people were employed full-time in installation, design and sales of rooftop solar systems over the 2016-17 financial year. Renewable energy has now grown to 17 per cent of our power supply across the main east and west coast grids, up from about 7 per cent 10 years ago.

Renewables record: solar and wind power blow gas out of the water
16 October 2017

Solar and wind powered more homes than ever before last month and produced more energy than gas, the latest Renewable Energy Index shows. Solar and wind combined generated a record high of 2,363 GWh of electricity, compared with 2,186 GWh for gas.
The analysis, compiled by Green Energy Markets, reveals renewable energy from all sources made up 21.9% of electricity generated on Australia’s main grids — avoiding the equivalent of 9.3 million cars-worth of carbon pollution.
The Index also shows the renewable energy sector employed 17,521 people throughout September, with Queensland again coming out on top with 6,810 renewable jobs.

Climate Council, June 2016, ‘Renewable Energy: Future Jobs and Growth’ report

Report webpage or PDF of full report.

Moving to 50% renewables by 2030 would create more than 28,000 jobs nationally, new research by Ernst & Young (EY) and the Climate Council has found.

The Renewable Energy: Future Jobs and Growth report finds that 50% renewable electricity by 2030 will create almost 50% more employment than our business as usual trajectory.

The research uses EY modelling to project the employment outcomes of 50% renewable electricity by 2030. Climate Councillor and energy expert Andrew Stock said every state would gain many more jobs than it would lose.

Climate Institute ‒ Clean Energy Jobs

The website has an interactive digital map presenting the findings of a study into the potential national, state and regional employment impacts of this shift to a clean, low-pollution energy sources.

See also the 2011 national report

6. SOUTH AUSTRALIA

South Australia on track to meet 75% renewables target

25 July 2018

South Australia’s energy minister says the state is on track to have 75% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025 – the target set by the former Labor premier Jay Weatherill and once rejected by his Liberal government. … The Australian Energy Market Operator has projected South Australia would have 73% renewable power by 2020/21 while consultants Green Energy Markets found it could reach 74% by 2025 without any additional policies being introduced.

SA Climate Change Strategy

A new Climate Change Strategy for South Australia was released by Premier Jay Weatherill and Minister for Climate Change Ian Hunter on 29 November 2015. South Australia’s Climate Change Strategy 2015-2050 – Towards a low carbon economy sets a framework for significantly reducing emissions in SA while maximising economic opportunities.

SA Low Carbon Economy Experts Panel

South Australia’s Low Carbon Economy Experts Panel, Nov. 2015, Findings and Recommendations.

As a result of its assessment, the Panel found that it is feasible for South Australia to achieve a target of net zero emissions by 2050 and that a commitment to this target will position South Australia well in a low carbon world.

The modelling for the Panel did not include consideration of whether the nuclear and carbon capture and storage scenarios modelled at the national level are a cost-effective means to move to low carbon electricity for South Australia. The Deep Decarbonisation Pathways modelling found that nuclear power stations generally need to be of a certain size to be cost effective and thus precluded their consideration for use in smaller States such as South Australia. In addition, South Australia’s capacity for cost-effective carbon capture and storage is unknown.

Climate Institute ‒ Clean Energy Jobs: South Australia Snapshot (c.2011)

Some highlights of the South Australia study include:

‒ A large untapped resource: The modelling results show strong growth in South Australia’s electricity sector, with an additional 5,400 MW of generating capacity projected to be installed by 2030. This includes renewable energy, including wind, solar and geothermal, as well as gas.

‒ State-wide employment: Based on the modelling results it is estimated that close to 5,000 new jobs will be created in South Australia’s electricity sector by 2030, including 1,089 permanent ongoing jobs, 2,688 construction jobs and 1,189 manufacturing jobs. The vast majority of these jobs will be in renewable energy.

‒ Regional clean energy jobs: Thousands of jobs are up for grabs in regional South Australia, including over 1,200 on the Eyre Peninsula and over 1,300 in the York and Lower North region.

AEMO sees South Australia at 73% renewables by 2020/21

Giles Parkinson, 2 March 2018

The Australian Energy Market Operator has predicted, in a document published in December, that – based largely on the federal renewable energy target – it expects South Australia to reach 73% renewable energy by 2020/21. It goes further. It says that SA will likely reach between 75% and 80% renewable energy share by 2026/27, depending on the policy pathway.

Nicky Ison / Solar Citizens, 2017, ‘Repowering South Australia’

See also the related article in RenewEconomy:

South Australia should aim for 100% renewables by 2025, not 50%

Dan Spencer, 8 February 2018

Solar Citizens worked with Nicky Ison from the Community Power Agency on a new blueprint called Repowering South Australia, which not only shows how South Australia can get to 100% renewables by 2025, but also how we can ensure nobody is left behind along the way.

7. RESPONSES TO ANTI-RENEWABLES PROPAGANDISTS AND PAID LOBBYISTS

Greenpeace: Renewable Energy Myths: 6 Myths About Renewable Energy, Blown Away

The Feasibility Of 100% Renewable Electricity Systems: A Response To Critics

Diesendorf M, Elliston B, October 2018, The Feasibility Of 100% Renewable Electricity Systems: A Response To Critics, Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, 93:318-330

Highlights:

• Large-scale electricity systems based on 100% renewable energy can meet the key requirements of reliability, security and affordability.
• This is even true where the vast majority of generation comes from variable renewables such as wind and solar PV.
• Thus the principal myths of critics of 100% renewable electricity are refuted.
• Arguments that the transition to 100% renewable electricity will necessarily take as long or longer than historical energy transitions are also refuted.
• The principal barriers to 100% renewable electricity are neither technological nor economic, but instead are primarily political, institutional and cultural.

Abstract:

The rapid growth of renewable energy (RE) is disrupting and transforming the global energy system, especially the electricity industry. As a result, supporters of the politically powerful incumbent industries and others are critiquing the feasibility of large-scale electricity generating systems based predominantly on RE. Part of this opposition is manifest in the publication of incorrect myths about renewable electricity (RElec) in scholarly journals, popular articles, media, websites, blogs and statements by politicians. The aim of the present article is to use current scientific and engineering theory and practice to refute the principal myths. It does this by showing that large-scale electricity systems that are 100% renewable (100RElec), including those whose renewable sources are predominantly variable (e.g. wind and solar PV), can be readily designed to meet the key requirements of reliability, security and affordability. It also argues that transition to 100RElec could occur much more rapidly than suggested by historical energy transitions. It finds that the main critiques published in scholarly articles and books contain factual errors, questionable assumptions, important omissions, internal inconsistencies, exaggerations of limitations and irrelevant arguments. Some widely publicised critiques select criteria that are inappropriate and/or irrelevant to the assessment of energy technologies, ignore studies whose results contradict arguments in the critiques, and fail to assess the sum total of knowledge provided collectively by the published studies on 100RElec, but instead demand that each individual study address all the critiques’ inappropriate criteria. We find that the principal barriers to 100RElec are neither technological nor economic, but instead are primarily political, institutional and cultural.

See also this article drawing on the above study: Giles Parkinson, 19 June 2018, ‘The Fake Arguments Against 100% Renewable Energy‘,

Can we get 100 percent of our energy from renewable sources?

New article gathers the evidence to address the sceptics

Public release ‒ 17 May 2018

Lappeenranta University of Technology

Is there enough space for all the wind turbines and solar panels to provide all our energy needs? What happens when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow? Won’t renewables destabilise the grid and cause blackouts?

In a review paper last year in the high-ranking journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Master of Science Benjamin Heard and colleagues presented their case against 100% renewable electricity systems. They doubted the feasibility of many of the recent scenarios for high shares of renewable energy, questioning everything from whether renewables-based systems can survive extreme weather events with low sun and low wind, to the ability to keep the grid stable with so much variable generation.

Now scientists have hit back with their response to the points raised by Heard and colleagues. The researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Delft University of Technology and Aalborg University have analysed hundreds of studies from across the scientific literature to answer each of the apparent issues. They demonstrate that there are no roadblocks on the way to a 100% renewable future.

“While several of the issues raised by the Heard paper are important, you have to realise that there are technical solutions to all the points they raised, using today’s technology,” says the lead author of the response, Dr. Tom Brown of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

“Furthermore, these solutions are absolutely affordable, especially given the sinking costs of wind and solar power,” says Professor Christian Breyer of Lappeenranta University of Technology, who co-authored the response.

Brown cites the worst-case solution of hydrogen or synthetic gas produced with renewable electricity for times when imports, hydroelectricity, batteries, and other storage fail to bridge the gap during low wind and solar periods during the winter. For maintaining stability there is a series of technical solutions, from rotating grid stabilisers to newer electronics-based solutions. The scientists have collected examples of best practice by grid operators from across the world, from Denmark to Tasmania.

Furthermore, these solutions are absolutely affordable, especially given the sinking costs of wind and solar power.

The response by the scientists has now appeared in the same journal as the original article by Heard and colleagues.

“There are some persistent myths that 100% renewable systems are not possible,” says Professor Brian Vad Mathiesen of Aalborg University, who is a co-author of the response.

“Our contribution deals with these myths one-by-one, using all the latest research. Now let’s get back to the business of modelling low-cost scenarios to eliminate fossil fuels from our energy system, so we can tackle the climate and health challenges they pose.”

The research papers for further information:

‒‒ T.W. Brown, T. Bischof-Niemz, K. Blok, C. Breyer, H. Lund, B.V. Mathiesen, 2018 “Response to ‘Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems’,” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, DOI:10.1016/j.rser.2018.04.113, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032118303307

‒‒ B.P. Heard, B.W. Brook, T.M.L. Wigley, C.J.A. Bradshaw, “Burden of proof: A comprehensive review of the feasibility of 100% renewable-electricity systems,” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, DOI:10.1016/j.rser.2017.03.114, 2017.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.03.114, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032117304495?via%3Dihub

8. GLOBAL GROWTH OF RENEWABLES

Renewables 2017: Analysis and Forecasts to 2022

International Energy Agency, 2017, ‘Renewables 2017: Analysis and Forecasts to 2022’, Executive Summary

See also: Jocelyn Timperley, 4 Oct 2017, ‘IEA: Renewable electricity set to grow 40% globally by 2022‘

2016: Another Record Year for Renewables

A new report by the International Renewable Energy Agency, Renewable Energy Capacity Statistics 2017, states that global renewable electricity generation capacity (including hydro) increased by 161 gigawatts (GW) in 2016, making it the strongest year ever for new capacity additions.

International Renewable Energy Agency, 2017, ‘Renewable Energy Capacity Statistics 2017’

A Whole New World: Tracking the Renewables Boom from Copenhagen to Paris

Climate Council (Australia) ‒ 2015 ‒ Renewable energy is rapidly becoming the preferred choice for new electricity generation across the globe, our latest report has revealed. ‘A Whole New World: Tracking the Renewables Boom from Copenhagen to Paris’ reveals how the world is in the midst of a dramatic energy revolution.

9. ECONOMICS OF GLOBAL RENEWABLES

Unsubsidised wind and solar now cheapest form of bulk energy

Giles Parkinson, 20 November 2018

The unsubsidised cost of wind and solar now beats coal as the cheapest form of bulk generation in all major economies except Japan, according to the latest levellised cost of electricity analysis by leading energy analyst BloombergNEF.

The latest report says the biggest news comes in the two fastest growing energy markets, China and India, where it notes that “not so long ago coal was king”. Not any more.

“In India, best-in-class solar and wind plants are now half the cost of new coal plants,” the report says, and this is despite the recent imposition of import tariffs on solar cells and modules.

The China experience is also significant. While local authorities have put a brake on local installations, causing the domestic market to slump by one third in 2018, this has created a “global wave of cheap equipment” that has more than compensated for increased financing costs caused by rising interest rates.

The cost of battery storage is also falling – so much so that in countries like Australia and India, pairing unsubsidised wind and solar with four hours of battery storage can be cost competitive with new coal or gas plants.

10. INTERNATIONAL DEEP EMISSIONS CUTS STUDIES

Abstracts of 47 peer-reviewed published journal articles from 13 independent research groups with 91 different authors supporting the result that energy for electricity, transportation, building, heating/cooling, and/or industry can be supplied reliably with 100% or near-100% renewable energy at difference locations worldwide https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CombiningRenew/100PercentPaperAbstracts.pdf

Climate News Network reported:

How rapidly can we transition to 100% renewable electricity?

Mark Diesendorf, 21 June 2018

This article focuses on the transition of the electricity industry to 100% renewable electricity together with energy efficiency.

Vaclav Smil, an expert on historical energy transitions, argues in his book that ‘the process of restructuring the modern high-energy industrial and postindustrial civilization on the basis of nonfossil, that is, overwhelmingly renewable, energy flows will be much more challenging that [sic] was replacing wood by coal and then coal by hydrocarbons.’

To question Smil’s conclusions it’s sufficient to refute the assumptions underlying his key arguments.

A more extensive critique, in Section 6 of our recent peer-reviewed paper ‘The feasibility of 100% renewable electricity’, is available free upon request from m.diesendorf@unsw.edu.au.

FoE International Report: An Energy Revolution Is Possible

A report by Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), launched a week before the 2015 UN climate summit in Paris, estimates that it would take US$5,148 billion of extra investment to generate half the world’s electricity with 100% renewables by 2030. No small amount, but to put it in perspective, FoEI points out that this is an investment equal to the wealth currently held by 0.00001% of the global population, or 782 people.

This means that the personal fortunes of the 782 wealthiest people on the planet – many of them CEOs of major corporations – could power Africa, Latin America and most of Asia with 100% renewable energy by 2030. The wealth of the richest 53 people globally could power the whole of Africa with 100% renewable energy by 2030, and the wealth of the richest 32 people could power most of Latin America with 100% renewable energy by 2030.

The report details the mix of renewable energy sources most appropriate for each region and discusses relevant technical issues regarding capacity factors, storage technologies and so on. But just as importantly, it argues that the energy revolution is necessarily a social revolution as well.

Friends of the Earth International, November 2015, ‘An Energy Revolution Is Possible’

Summary and full report

Deep Decarbonization studies (many countries; renewables and nuclear)

Transition to a fully sustainable global energy system

September 12, 2012. Transition to a fully sustainable global energy system. New study published in Energy Strategy Reviews details an energy future for 2050 powered 95% by renewables: Yvonne Y. Deng, , Kornelis Blok, Kees van der Leun, ‘Transition to a fully sustainable global energy system’, Energy Strategy Reviews, Volume 1, Issue 2, September 2012, Pages 109–121

Reply to the letter from Dr. Hansen and others

Excerpt from: Jusen Asuka, Seung-Joon Park, Mutsuyoshi Nishimura and Toru Morotomi, 31 Jan 2014, ‘Reply to the letter from Dr. Hansen and others’

Several studies have been conducted in the past to determine whether this ambitious climate change target is achievable without any reliance on nuclear power. Edenhofer et al. (2010) compared low-carbon scenarios using five different energy-economy models, and identified that the additional costs needed to stop nuclear investment in 2000 would be only around 0.7% of GDP in 2100. Recently other researchers have conducted studies in consideration of the denuclearization movement after the Fukushima accident. Bauer et al. (2012), for example, state that the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions required to limit global average temperature rise to two degrees C from the pre-industrial era would be achievable for the additional cost of less than 0.1% of GDP by 2020, and less than 0.2% by 2050 without nuclear power. Duscha et al. (2013) state that denuclearization would increase global greenhouse gas emissions by 2% in 2020, but that developed countries would be able to achieve their share of the two degrees C target at an additional cost of 0.1% GDP. The same Duscha et al. (2013) reviewed other existing research, and concluded that most existing studies also indicated that ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reductions could be achieved at the additional cost of 1% GDP globally without nuclear power generation.

Edenhofer, O., Knopf, B., Barker, T., Baumstark, L., Bellevrat, E., Chateau, B., van Vuuren, D. P., 2010. “The economics of low stabilization: Model comparison of mitigation strategies and costs”, The Energy Journal, 31 (Special Issue 1), 11–48.

Bauer, N., Brecha, R. J., & Luderer, G., 2012. “Economics of nuclear power and climate change mitigation policies”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109, 16805–16810. DOI:10.1073.pnas.1201264109.

Duscha V., Schumacher K., Schleich J. & Buisson P., 2013. “Costs of meeting international climate targets without nuclear power”, Climate Policy, DOI:10.1080/14693062.2014.852018

Renewable Energy Outlook 2030

Stefan Peter, Harry Lehmann, Renewable Energy Outlook 2030: Energy Watch Group Global Renewable Energy Scenarios

Exec Summ: http://isusi.de/downloads/REO_2030_EE_ExcecSummary_en.pdf

Full report: http://isusi.de/downloads/REO_2030_EE_fullText_en.pdf

Nuclear Information & Resource Service: ‘Nuclear-Free, Carbon-Free’

Many reports listed on this NIRS webpage (mostly USA, some global and Europe)

World Future Council

World Future Council’s Global 100% Renewable Energy − Studies and reports

http://www.go100re.net/e-library/studies-and-reports/

http://www.go100re.net/e-library/websites-and-links/

Global http://www.go100re.net/e-library/studies-and-reports/#tab1

Europe http://www.go100re.net/e-library/studies-and-reports/#tab2

America http://www.go100re.net/e-library/studies-and-reports/#tab3

Asia http://www.go100re.net/e-library/studies-and-reports/#tab4

Pacific http://www.go100re.net/e-library/studies-and-reports/#tab5

Others http://www.go100re.net/e-library/studies-and-reports/#tab6

Energy [R]evolution: A sustainable world energy outlook 2015

Greenpeace International, September 2015, ‘Energy [R]evolution: A sustainable world energy outlook 2015’,

The Energy [R]evolution Scenario has become a well known and well respected energy analysis since it was first published for Europe in 2005. In 2015, the fifth Global Energy [R]evolution scenario was published; earlier editions were published in 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2012.

Greenpeace has been publishing its Energy [R]evolution scenarios since 2005, more recently in collaboration with the scientific community, in particular the German Aerospace Centre (DLr). While our predictions on the potential and market growth of renewable energy may once have seemed fanciful or unrealistic, they have proved to be accurate. the US-based Meister Consultants Group concluded earlier this year that “the world’s biggest energy agencies, financial institutions and fossil fuel companies for the most part seriously under-estimated just how fast the clean power sector could and would grow”. It wasn’t the IEA, Goldman Sachs or the US Department of Energy who got it right. It was Greenpeace’s market scenario which was the most accurate.

100% Renewables by 2050

Mae-Wan Ho, Brett Cherry, Sam Burcher & Peter Saunders, 2009, ‘Green Energies: 100% Renewables by 2050’, ISIS/TWN Special Report

Preview

11. INTERNATIONAL DEEP EMISSIONS CUTS STUDIES ‒ MARK JACOBSON / STANFORD UNI RESEARCH

Research by Mark Jacobson and colleagues

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Stanford University

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Clean Energy Roadmaps for the 50 United States and 139 countries and The Solutions Project

• Wind, water, solar roadmaps for 50 states and 139 countries (and here is an alternative link)
• The Solutions Project
• 139 COUNTRY 100% INFOGRAPHICS: A new study finds that countries around the world could shift their economies entirely to renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind and hydroelectric, by the year 2050. The researchers map out the blend of energy sources that each of 139 countries would need to completely switch their energy to electric power. The report was first published in the journal  “The idea here is to electrify all energy sectors — transportation, heating, cooling, industry, agriculture, forestry, and fishing — and provide that electricity with 100 percent wind, water and solar power,” says Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and one of the authors of the report.

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Studies on Grid Reliability With High Penetrations of Wind, Water, and Sunlight

http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CombiningRenew/combining.html

Matching demand with supply at low cost in 139 countries among 20 world regions with 100% intermittent wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) for all purposes (Renewable Energy, 2018) (pdf)

—– One set of simulations (Case A) from paper: 2050-2054 simulations matching all-sector energy demand with 100% WWS supply, electricity storage (CSP with storage, batteries, pumped-hydro, existing hydroelectric reservoirs with zero added turbines ), heat storage, cold storage, and hydrogen storage in 20 world regions encompassing 139 countries: Africa (pdf) Australia (pdf) Central America (pdf) Central Asia (pdf) China-Mongolia-Hong Kong-North Korea (pdf) Cuba (pdf) Europe (pdf) Haiti-Dominican Republic (pdf) Iceland (pdf) India-Nepal-Sri Lanka (pdf) Jamaica (pdf) Japan-South Korea (pdf) Mideast (pdf) New Zealand (pdf) Philippines (pdf) Russia-Georgia (pdf) South America (pdf) Southeast Asia (pdf) Taiwan (pdf) U.S.-Canada (pdf)

—– Global cooling due to wind turbines (pdf)

A low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem over 48 contiguous U.S. states with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015) (pdf) Clarification (pdf)

—– Paper awarded Cozzarelli Prize from PNAS (link)

—– Reply to Bistline commentary (pdf) Reply to Clack commentary in journal format (pdf) Reply to Clack commentary line-by-line (pdf) Reply to Clack commentary for general readers (link) Corrections suggested for Clack et al. (pdf) FAQs about correcting record (pdf) Response to Caldeira about hydro assumption (pdf) Reply to Bryce-National Review (link) Reply to Conca-Forbes (link) Reply to Porter-NYT (link) Interview-GreenTech Media (link) Setting Record Straight-CleanTechnica (link) Hydropower times series (xlsx)

—– 30 peer-reviewed published research articles supporting grid stability with or near 100% renewable energy penetration (pdf)

Combining wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric to match contemporary power demand in California with 99.8% carbon-free sources (Renewable Energy, 2010) (pdf)

Review of potential of intermittent renewables to meet power demand (Proceedings of IEEE, 2012) (pdf)

The carbon abatement potential of high penetration intermittent renewables (Energy and Environmental Science, 2012) (pdf)

Effects of aggregating electric load in the United States (Energy Policy, 2012) (pdf)

Variability and uncertainty of wind power in the California electric power system (Wind Energy, 2013) (pdf)

Optimized mixes of wind and solar on a fully-renewable U.S. electricity grid (Energy, 2014) (pdf)

Flexibility mechanisms and pathways to a highly renewable U.S. electricity future (Energy, 2016) (pdf)

Temporal and spatial tradeoffs in power system modeling with assumptions about storage: An application of the POWER model (Energy, 2016) (pdf)

Combining offshore wind and electrolytic hydrogen storage (J. Power Sources, 2017) (pdf)

Matching hourly and peak demand by combining renewables (Stanford VPUE Report, Hoste et al., 2009) (pdf)

Studies on combining wind and wave power (link)

Studies on powering the world, U.S., and individual states with wind, water, and sunlight (link)

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Avoiding blackouts with 100% renewable energy

Stanford University, 8 Feb 2018

Renewable energy solutions are often hindered by the inconsistencies of power produced by wind, water and sunlight and the continuously fluctuating demand for energy. New research by Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, and Aalborg University in Denmark finds several solutions to making clean, renewable energy reliable enough to power at least 139 countries.

In their paper, published as a manuscript this week in Renewable Energy, the researchers propose three different methods of providing consistent power among all energy sectors ‒ transportation; heating and cooling; industry; and agriculture, forestry and fishing ‒ in 20 world regions encompassing 139 countries after all sectors have been converted to 100 percent clean, renewable energy. Jacobson and colleagues previously developed roadmaps for transitioning 139 countries to 100 percent clean, renewable energy by 2050 with 80 percent of that transition completed by 2030. The present study examines ways to keep the grid stable with these roadmaps.

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Some papers organized by topic

http://stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/

Roadmaps for transitioning the world, countries, states, cities, and towns to 100% clean, renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) in all energy sectors

• A path to sustainable energy by 2030 (Scientific American, 2009)
• Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials (Energy Policy, 2011)
• Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part II: Reliability, System and Transmission Costs, and Policies (Energy Policy, 2011)
• Examining the feasibility of converting New York State’s all-purpose energy infrastructure to one using wind, water, and sunlight (Energy Policy, 2013)
• A roadmap for repowering California for all purposes with wind, water, and sunlight(Energy, 2014)
• 100% clean and renewable wind, water, sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States (Energy & Environmental Sciences, 2015)
• A 100% wind, water, sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy plan for Washington State (Renewable Energy, 2016)
• 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for 139 countries of the world (Joule, 2017)
• 100% clean, and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for 53 towns and cities in North America (TBA, 2018)

Studies on grid reliability with up to 100% penetration of WWS

• Matching demand with supply at low cost among 139 countries within 20 world regions with 100% intermittent wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) for all purposes (Renewable Energy, 2018)
• A low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes ( Natl. Acad. Sci., 2015)
• Optimizing investments in coupled offshore wind-electrolytic hydrogen storage systems in Denmark ( Power Sources, 2017)
• Flexibility mechanisms and pathways to a highly renewable U.S. electricity future (Energy, 2016)
• Temporal and spatial tradeoffs in power system modeling with assumptions about storage: An application of the POWER model (Energy, 2016)
• Features of a fully renewable U.S. electricity-system: Optimized mixes of wind and solar PV and transmission grid extensions (Energy, 2014)
• Variability and uncertainty of wind power in the California electric power system (Wind Energy, 2014)
• The carbon abatement potential of high penetration intermittent renewables (Energy & Environmental Sciences, 2012)
• Effects of aggregating electric load in the United States (Energy Policy, 2012)
• The carbon abatement potential of high penetration intermittent renewables (Energy & Environmental Sciences, 2012)
• The potential of intermittent renewables to meet electric power demand: A review of current analytical techniques (Proceedings of the IEEE, 2012)
• A Monte Carlo approach to generator portfolio planning and carbon emissions assessments of systems with large penetrations of variable renewables (Renewable Energy, 2011)
• Reducing offshore transmission requirements by combining offshore wind and wave farms (IEEE Journal of Ocean Engineering, 2011)
• Power output variations of co-located offshore wind turbines and wave energy converters in California (Renewable Energy, 2010)
• Supplying baseload power and reducing transmission requirements by interconnecting wind farms ( Applied Meteorology & Climatology, 2007)

Studies examining impacts of energy and transportation technologies on climate, health, and energy security

• Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security (Energy & Environmental Science, 2009)
• Exploiting wind versus coal (Science, 2001)
• The effect on photochemical smog of converting the U.S. fleet of gasoline vehicles to modern diesel vehicles ( Res. Letters, 2004)
• Cleaning the air and improving health with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (Science, 2005)
• Switching to a U.S. hydrogen fuel cell vehicle fleet: The resultant change in emissions, energy use, and global warming gases ( Power Sources, 2005)
• Effects of ethanol (E85) versus gasoline vehicles on cancer and mortality in the United States ( Sci. Technol, 2007)
• Effects of wind-powered hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on stratospheric ozone and global climate ( Res. Letters, 2008)
• Examining the temperature dependence of ethanol (E85) versus gasoline emissions on air pollution with a largely-explicit chemical mechanism (Atmospheric Environment, 2010)
• Examining the impacts of ethanol (E85) versus gasoline photochemical production of smog in a fog using near-explicit gas- and aqueous-chemistry mechanisms ( Res. Letters, 2012)
• Worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident (Energy & Environmental Science, 2012)

Studies examining global and regional wind and solar resources and impacts of wind energy

• Spatial and temporal distributions of U.S. winds and wind power at 80 m derived from measurements ( Geophys. Res., 2003)
• Evaluation of global wind power ( Geophys. Res., 2005)
• Large CO2 reductions via offshore wind power matched to inherent storage in energy end-uses( Res. Lett., 2007)
• California offshore wind energy potential (Renewable Energy, 2010)
• S. East Coast offshore wind energy resources and their relationship to peak-time electricity demand (J. Wind Energy, 2012)
• Where is the ideal location for a U.S. East Coast offshore grid ( Res. Lett, 2012)
• Saturation wind power potential and its implications for wind energy ( Natl. Acad. Sci., 2012)
• Geographical and seasonal variability of the global “practical” wind resources ( Applied Geography, 2013)
• Taming hurricanes with arrays of offshore wind turbines (Nature Climate Change, 2014)
• World estimates of radiation to optimally tilted, 1-axis, and 2-axis tracked PV panels (Solar Energy, 2018)

12. OTHER INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE

WWF report: Critical materials for the transition to a 100% sustainable energy future

This February 2014 WWF study examines whether non-energy raw material supply bottlenecks could occur in the transition to a fully sustainable energy system.

International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)

IRENA REsource database and country statistics: http://resourceirena.irena.org/gateway/

RenewableEnergyWorld

REN21 ‒ Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century

See esp. Renewables 2017 Global Status Report

Clean Technica

Greentech Media

The Solutions Project

With over 200 businesses, cities, and countries committed to 100% clean, renewable energy, momentum is building. Solutions Project is here to support that momentum and accelerate the transition to clean energy for all.

International Energy Agency ‒ energy issues by topic, Data & Publications, annual ‘World Energy Outlook‘ reports, Market Report Series: Renewables 2017, ‘Energy Technology Perspectives‘ reports

Renewable Energy Directory publishes articles about renewable energy, new technologies, etc. Our news pages aggregate headlines from around the web to keep you informed on a daily basis. Visit the directory to view informative websites and resources.

Nearly 50 countries vow to use 100% renewable energy by 2050

Payton M., 18 November 2016, ‘Nearly 50 countries vow to use 100% renewable energy by 2050’, The Independent

The signatories are countries who are disproportionately affected by global warming such as Ethiopia and the Maldives

Global Energy Assessment

The Global Energy Assessment (GEA), launched in 2012, defines a new global energy policy agenda – one that transforms the way society thinks about, uses, and delivers energy. Involving specialists from a range of disciplines, industry groups, and policy areas, GEA research aims to facilitate equitable and sustainable energy services for all, in particular the two billion people who currently lack access to clean, modern energy.

Coordinated by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), GEA was led by some of the world’s leading energy experts in research, academia, business, industry and policy, representing both the developed and the developing world. GEA is the first ever fully integrated energy assessment that analyzes energy challenges, opportunities and strategies, for developing, industrialized and emerging economies. It is supported by government and non-governmental organizations, the United Nations Systems, and the private sector.

Website

Final Report:  GEA, 2012: Global Energy Assessment ‒ Toward a Sustainable Future, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria.

Free download ‒ Final Report summary:
From the final report: “Nuclear energy as a choice, not a requirement. The GEA pathways illustrate that it is possible to meet all GEA goals even in the case of a nuclear phase-out. Nuclear energy can play an important role in the supply-side portfolio of some transition pathways; however, its prospects are particularly uncertain because of unresolved challenges surrounding its further deployment, as illustrated by the Fukushima accident and unresolved weapons proliferation risks”.

Renewable Energy ‒ The Green Alternative Way to Heat your Home

Energy Innovation Policy and Technology LLC is an energy and environmental policy firm.

Renewables International

Renewable Energy World

‘The World’s #1 Renewable Energy Network for News, Information, and Companies.’

World Wind Energy Association

Guardian renewable energy article collection

New Scientist ‒ articles on many energy / clean energy issues

13. COUNTRY STUDIES

Pathways to Deep Decarbonization ‒ Country Case Studies

International Energy Agency country reports

14. COUNTRIES WITH HIGH PERCENTAGES OF POWER FROM RENEWABLES

A 100% renewable grid isn’t just feasible, it’s already happening

Joe Romm, 22 May 2018

The ongoing debate around whether it’s feasible to have an electric grid running on 100 percent renewable power in the coming decades often misses a key point: many countries and regions are already at or close to 100 percent now.

According to data compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, there are seven countries already at, or very, near 100 percent renewable power: Iceland (100 percent), Paraguay (100), Costa Rica (99), Norway (98.5), Austria (80), Brazil (75), and Denmark (69.4). The main renewables in these countries are hydropower, wind, geothermal, and solar.

A new international study, which debunks many myths about renewable energy, notes that many large population regions are “at or above 100%” including Germany’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Hostein regions, New Zealand’s South Island, and Denmark’s Samsø island. In Canada, both Quebec and British Columbia are at nearly 100 percent renewable power.

Last summer, China’s State-run Xinhua News Agency reported that “Qinghai Province has just run for seven straight days entirely on renewable energy … only wind, solar and hydro.” This was part of a test by the country’s State Grid Corporation to show a post-fossil-fuel future was practical.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has projected that by 2040, Germany’s grid will see nearly 75 percent renewable penetration, Mexico will be over 80 percent, and Brazil and Italy will be over 95 percent. BNEF was not looking at what could theoretically happen by mid-century if countries pushed as hard as required by the Paris Climate Accord. They were just looking at business as usual over the next two decades.

A study out earlier this month found, “Indonesia has far more than enough pumped hydro storage sites to support a 100% renewable electricity grid.” Storage is one of the most straightforward ways to integrate wind and solar power into the grid, to account for the times when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. … And pumped hydro is but one of many strategies for integrating more renewables into the grid.

15. CANADA

Canada could go 100% renewable by 2035 if its government gets serious

Katie Valentine, 24 March 2015

Canada can be a world leader in emissions reductions and renewable energy use, but only if its federal government decides to take climate change seriously, according to a new report.

The report, published by 70 Canadian academics, looked at Canada’s potential to shift its electricity production to renewable sources and cut its emissions. It found that the country could get 100% of its electricity from low-carbon sources like wind, solar, and hydropower by 2035 and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. To achieve these goals, the report recommended that the federal government implement a nationwide price on carbon and eliminate subsidies to Canada’s fossil fuel industry – particularly, its tar sands industry.

16. CHINA

Unsubsidised wind and solar now cheapest form of bulk energy

Giles Parkinson, 20 November 2018

The unsubsidised cost of wind and solar now beats coal as the cheapest form of bulk generation in all major economies except Japan, according to the latest levellised cost of electricity analysis by leading energy analyst BloombergNEF.

The latest report says the biggest news comes in the two fastest growing energy markets, China and India, where it notes that “not so long ago coal was king”. Not any more. …

The China experience is also significant. While local authorities have put a brake on local installations, causing the domestic market to slump by one third in 2018, this has created a “global wave of cheap equipment” that has more than compensated for increased financing costs caused by rising interest rates.

China could get 85% of its electricity and 60% of total energy from renewables by 2050, according to government agencies.

Emissions will peak by 2025 if wind, solar and bioenergy are rolled out quickly, finds the report led by the China National Renewable Energy Centre claims.

In a “high renewable” scenario, the country’s coal use would peak in 2020 and its greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 – five years ahead of target.

The report:

Energy Research Institute, National Development and Reform Commission, April 2015, ‘China 2050 High Renewable Energy Penetration Scenario and Roadmap Study‘

Summary / analysis: Megan Darby, 22 April 2015, ‘China’s electricity could go 85% renewable by 2050 – study‘

The Solutions Project:

http://thesolutionsproject.org/

China: http://thesolutionsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/100_China.pdf

17. EUROPE

The Solutions Project:

http://thesolutionsproject.org/resource/139-country-100-infographics/

http://thesolutionsproject.org/resource/139-country-100-infographics/

Roadmap 2050 (Europe)

The Roadmap 2050 project is an initiative of the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and has been developed by a consortium of experts funded by the ECF.

Europe 100% Renewable by 2050,

NuClear News No. 18, May 2010 discusses this study among others:

100% Renewable Electricity: A roadmap for Europe and North Africa, Price Waterhouse Coopers, March 2010

Europe ‒ 2014 report:

Phase out of Nuclear Power in Europe – From Vision to Reality
Authors:
Gustav Resch, Lukas Liebmann, Michael Lamprecht, Reinhard Haas ‒ TU Wien / Energy Economics Group (EEG)
Fabian Pause, Markus Kahles – Stiftung Umweltenergierecht (SUER)

Nuclear Information & Resource Service: ‘Nuclear-Free, Carbon-Free’: Many reports listed on this NIRS webpage (mostly USA, some global and Europe)

Zero Carbon Britain is the research project of the Centre for Alternative Technology, showing that a modern, zero-emissions society is possible using technology available today.

France: 2018 report

France’s environment ministry ADEME released a report finding that France will save €39 billion (US$44.5 billion) if it refrains from building 15 new nuclear plants by 2060, and instead replaces reactors with renewable energy sources.

France should spend €1.28 trillion over the next four decades, the report states, mostly on clean power production and storage capacities, networks, and imports. If it does this, France would progressively shut down its 58 reactors and renewable energy would comprise 85% of electricity generation by 2050 and 95% by 2060, up from 17% last year.

Bloomberg reported: “Falling costs means that photo-voltaic facilities won’t need subsidies from 2030, nor will onshore wind from 2035, the [ADEME] report said. That’s assuming that EDF halts 30 percent of its reactors after 40 years of operation and an additional 30 percent when they turn 50. Otherwise, surplus production capacity would undermine the economics of both nuclear power and renewables, ADEME said. The study doesn’t take into account the impact on jobs, industry and the environment. However, “we’re expecting job creations in renewables and energy efficiency to largely make up for job losses in the nuclear industry,” said ADEME Chairman Arnaud Leroy.”

ADEME, 10 Dec 2018, ‘Étude : Quelle Trajectoire D’évolution du #Mix #Électrique Français D’ici 2060?’, https://presse.ademe.fr/2018/12/etude-quelle-trajectoire-devolution-du-mix-electrique-francais-dici-2060.html

Francois De Beaupuy, 11 Dec 2018, ‘France Would Save $44.5 Billion by Betting on Renewable Energy, Agency Says’, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-10/french-power-costs-will-rise-if-renewables-are-sidestepped

Geert De Clercq / Reuters, 11 Dec 2018, ‘Building new nuclear plants in France uneconomical – environment agency’, https://uk.reuters.com/article/france-nuclearpower/building-new-nuclear-plants-in-france-uneconomical-environment-agency-idUKL8N1YF5HC

France: 2015 report

A 2015 report by ADEME, a French government agency under the Ministries of Ecology and Research, shows that a 100% renewable electricity supply by 2050 in France is feasible and affordable. For an all-renewables scenario, the report proposes an ideal electricity mix: 63% from wind, 17% from solar, 13% from hydro and 7% from renewable thermal sources (including geothermal energy). The report estimates that the electricity production cost (currently averaging 91 euros per MWh) would be 119 euros per megawatt-hour in the all-renewables scenario, compared with a near-identical figure of 117 euros per MWh with a mix of 50% nuclear, 40% renewables, and 10% fossil fuels.

English language summary: Terje Osmundsen, 20 April 2015

Full report (in French): L’Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Energie (ADEME), 2015, ‘Vers un mix électrique 100% renouvelable en 2050’

18. INDIA

India Energy Minister Flags Massive 100GW Solar Tender
By Giles Parkinson, 21 June 2018

Future bids for renewable projects to have 50 pc manufacturing component: R K Singh

June 25, 2018

Union Power Minister R K Singh said, “We will add 175 GW of renewable energy by 2022. We have already added around 70 GW of renewable energy that is solar and wind and around 40 GW is under implementation.”

On lowering emission goals, he said, “We have pledged in 2015 that by 2030, 40 per cent of our installed capacity will come from renewables.”

The minister said that with the addition of large hydro power of 45 GW to 70 GW of renewables, it has already crossed 30 per cent, and by 2030, about 53 or 55 per cent of installed power generation capacity will be renewables.

Talking about investment in clean energy in India, he said about USD 42 billion investment has come in renewables in the last four years which was done by facilitating the market and India did not invest except in the transmission.

On India’s household electrification programme, he said, “In the sphere of power and renewables, we are engaged in massive expansion programme. We are adding about 40 million electricity consumers. We have already added about 7.5 million consumers till date. We have added 100,000 km lines to transmission country.”

Unsubsidised wind and solar now cheapest form of bulk energy

Giles Parkinson, 20 November 2018

The unsubsidised cost of wind and solar now beats coal as the cheapest form of bulk generation in all major economies except Japan, according to the latest levellised cost of electricity analysis by leading energy analyst BloombergNEF.

The latest report says the biggest news comes in the two fastest growing energy markets, China and India, where it notes that “not so long ago coal was king”. Not any more.

“In India, best-in-class solar and wind plants are now half the cost of new coal plants,” the report says, and this is despite the recent imposition of import tariffs on solar cells and modules.

100% Renewable Energy by 2050 for India

Dec. 2013: Even India could reach nearly 100% renewables by 2051, Emma Fitzpatrick, 17 Jan 2014.

See also RenewEconomy article.

The Solutions Project:

http://thesolutionsproject.org/

India: http://thesolutionsproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/100_India.pdf

Realizable solar potential in India is 110 GW to 144 GW by 2024

September 2014

A recent BRIDGE TO INDIA analysis suggests that India’s realizable solar potential is 110 GW to 144 GW by 2024. Solar could contribute 10%-13% to India’s grid power supply by 2024 without destabilizing the grid. 26-35 GW is the potential for small rooftops (“bees”), 31-41 GW for commercial rooftops (“pigeons”), 32-42 GW for utility scale plants (“horses”) and 21-27 GW for GW-scale plants (“elephants”)

A Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) 2018 report found that the cost of wind and solar power has declined dramatically over the past year in India, well beyond the global average. According to BNEF: “Taking India as an example, BNEF is now showing benchmark LCOEs [levelized costs of electricity] for onshore wind of just $39 per MWh, down 46% on a year ago, and for solar PV at $41, down 45%. By comparison, coal comes in at $68 per MWh, and combined-cycle gas at $93. Wind-plus-battery and solar-plus-battery systems in India have wide cost ranges, of $34-208 per MWh and $47-308 per MWh respectively, depending on project characteristics, but the center of those ranges is falling fast.”

Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 28 March 2018, ‘Tumbling Costs for Wind, Solar, Batteries Are Squeezing Fossil Fuels‘

Research released by Greenpeace India in December 2017 found that at least 65% of India’s coal power generation in financial year 2016 – representing 94 GW of installed capacity – was being sold to distribution companies at a higher cost than power from new renewable energy projects. The analysis showed that replacing the most expensive coal power plants with electricity generated by solar PV and wind would save consumers up to 54,000 crores (US$8.3 billion) annually. Just replacing older, expensive plants – those older than 20 years – would still yield 20,000 crore (US$3 billion) in reduced power purchase costs annually.

Greenpeace India, 21 December 2017, ‘Win-win: India can save 54,000 crore in power costs and reduce air pollution by replacing expensive coal plants with renewables’,

“Cheap renewable energy is killing India’s coal-based power plants”

20% of plants are stranded

9 May 2018

Quartz India reports that wind and solar tariffs have fallen to around Rs 2.4 per unit. Coal averages Rs 3.7. Of India’s 197 GW of coal plants, c. 40 GW are stranded, according to the Ministry of Power.

19. JAPAN

A Sustainable Energy Outlook for Japan

Greenpeace, 2011, ‘The Advanced Energy [R]evolution: A Sustainable Energy Outlook for Japan’

Renewables 2013 Japan Status Report

Overall, Japan has given the go-ahead to over 70 GW of renewable energy projects, most of which are solar. Longer term, a ‘100% by 2050’ ISEP renewables scenario has around 50GW of wind, much of it offshore, and 140GW of PV.

20. USA

Nuclear Information & Resource Service: ‘Nuclear-Free, Carbon-Free’: Many reports listed on this NIRS webpage (mostly USA, some global and Europe)

Stanford / Jacobson: Roadmaps to convert the 50 United States to 100% Wind, Water, and Sunlight (WWS) for all purposes

Summary paper: Energy and Environmental Sciences 2015

State-by-state infographics from The Solutions Project / 100.org

National Geographic article and graphics on 50-state roadmaps

Powerpoint-WWS-map

50-state xlsx-spreadsheets

Frequently-asked questions

See other material posted at http://stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/WWS-50-USState-plans.html

Some other US studies from Jacobson et al.:

• Mark Z. Jacobson et al., 2015, 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States, Energy Environ. Sci., 2015, 8, 2093-2117
• A low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem over 48 contiguous U.S. states with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015) (pdf) Clarification (pdf)

The Solutions Project

Study: wind and solar can power most of the United States
Wind, solar, and storage could meet 90–100% of America’s electricity needs
2018 study: Wind and solar PV could meet 80% of US electricity demand

A new study finds that wind power and solar photovoltaics could by themselves meet 80 percent of all U.S. electricity demand. “Five years ago, many people doubted that these resources could account for more than 20 or 30 percent,” co-author Steven Davis of the University of California at Irvine (UCI) explained in a news release. So, “the fact that we could get 80 percent of our power from wind and solar alone is really encouraging.”

From the news release: “But beyond the 80 percent mark, the amount of energy storage required to overcome seasonal and weather variabilities increases rapidly. “Our work indicates that low-carbon-emission power sources will be needed to complement what we can harvest from the wind and sun until storage and transmission capabilities are up to the job,” said co-author Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science. “Options could include nuclear and hydroelectric power generation, as well as managing demand.””

Also from the news release: “We looked at the variability of solar and wind energy over both time and space and compared that to U.S. electricity demand,” Davis said. “What we found is that we could reliably get around 80 percent of our electricity from these sources by building either a continental-scale transmission network or facilities that could store 12 hours’ worth of the nation’s electricity demand. The researchers said that such expansion of transmission or storage capabilities would mean very substantial – but not inconceivable – investments. They estimated that the cost of the new transmission lines required, for example, could be hundreds of billions of dollars. In comparison, storing that much electricity with today’s cheapest batteries would likely cost more than a trillion dollars, although prices are falling.”

Comments from Think Progress: “It’s especially encouraging for two additional reasons. First, the price of solar and wind have been dropping rapidly. Second, the study only examined how wind and solar could power the grid. In doing so, it found these two sources alone could provide 80 percent of the power. This still leaves 20 percent that could be provided by a variety of alternative types of carbon-free power. And in terms of alternate carbon-free power sources, hydropower already provides 6.5 percent of U.S. power while geothermal and biomass together add another 2 percent. All of those can be expanded.”

Matthew R. Shaner, Steven J. Davis, Nathan S. Lewisa and Ken Caldeira, 2018, ‘Geophysical constraints on the reliability of solar and wind power in the United States’, Energy & Environment Science.

News release

Think Progress article

Response to Flinders Uni academic’s articles on nuclear and uranium issues.

This webpage responds to some published comments by Flinders Uni academic Assoc. Prof. Haydon Manning which are inaccurate or otherwise problematic. Manning works in the School of Political and International Studies at Flinders and describes himself as a “competent generalist”.

The webpage has been created following discussions with a few Flinders Uni students about Manning’s lectures on nuclear/uranium issues – one complained that Manning’s behaviour was that of a salesman not a lecturer. Another reason for this webpage is that Assoc. Prof. Manning contributes to media debates on nuclear issues fairly frequently. Anyway this may be of some use to some Flinders Uni students … if no-one else.

Jim Green
Friends of the Earth, Australia
jim.green@foe.org.au

---

<MISREPRESENTATION AND SLOPPY ACADEMIC STANDARDS

Manning and O’Neil (M&O) write:
“With regard to Australia hosting an international nuclear waste repository, one of the more interesting arguments concerns the prospect of terrorist groups seeking to excavate nuclear waste buried in the middle of the country. The prospect of terrorists travelling to a remote location hundreds or thousands of kilometres inland, or attacking heavily guarded caskets as they travel to a desert repository, is identified as reason enough to oppose hosting an international waste facility (see Green 1997). Similarly, the fact that waste could remain an attractive source for terrorists for thousands of years also features as a key objection.”

Manning, Haydon and O’Neil, Andrew
Australia’s Nuclear Horizon: Moving Beyond the Drumbeat of Risk Inflation
Australian Journal of Political Science, 42:4, 563-578, 2007
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10361140701595767

The ‘Green 1997’ article referred to by M&O is mine − it is posted at <greenleft.org.au/1997/292/15877>. The article does not argue a case for or against Australia hosting an international nuclear waste repository − it doesn’t even address the topic. Likewise, the risk of waste remaining attractive source for terrorists for thousands of years does not “feature” as a “key objection” in my article, in fact it isn’t mentioned at all. M&O appear to be fabricating arguments. They ought to redress that misrepresentation, starting with a correction in the Australian Journal of Political Science.

M&O may be referring to a 1999 article
‘Australia ‘world’s best’ for international N-waste dump’
http://web.archive.org/web/20071130183244/http://www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/pangea.html
in which I quote Professor John Veevers, a fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences and an academic in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Macquarie University, mentioning the risks of terrorism and vandalism but say nothing else about the issue myself. The risk of waste remaining attractive for terrorists for thousands of years does not “feature” as a “key objection” in Veever’s comments − M&O may be misrepresenting Veever’s mention of the “next 10 millennia’s vandals”.

M&O misrepresent me and/or Veevers and their academic standards are sloppy.

Australian Journal of Political Science editor Ian McAllister claims the problem in the M&O article is simply ‘typographical’ though he knows that that is not true.

M&O appear to be unaware that the risk of nuclear dumps being accessed for fissile/radioactive material is not just one of the “more interesting” arguments raised by nuclear critics, it is frequently acknowledged by nuclear advocates (and fence-sitters):
— e.g. George Stanford writes that integral fast reactor technology “relieves future generations of the responsibility to guard the plutonium mines, and of the risks of not guarding them adequately.”

Response to an Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) critique

— e.g. nuclear advocate and nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson has mentioned the risk of a proposed dump in Australia being accessed for materials for dirty radiation bombs.

---

<MISINFORMATION AND SLANDER

Manning writes:
“Uranium usually occurs with other ores, notably copper and gold − and if it doesn’t then it has to be of very high grade to be worth the effort. True, the current high spot prices temporarily qualify this, but as supply increases over the next two decades it will only be the solo uranium mines with very high grade ore bodies that will survive.
“BHP’s mine in northern South Australia at Roxby Downs is a copper mine − that’s why BHP bought out Western Mining, primarily for the copper and gold (and other non-uranium mineral product). Roxby will soon become the biggest uranium mine in the world, but BHP would still be there even if there was not an ounce of uranium to be extracted.
“This is commonplace with uranium mining because uranium seems to like bobbing up with other valuable minerals! The point is the mining and separation of various minerals, all carbon intensive activities, would be happening anyway. How convenient to neglect this very obvious aspect of the equation and, in the process, trump up the charge that nuclear power is high on the carbon emitting front.”
‘Dogma and delusion over renewables’, Haydon Manning, 18 June 2007, <www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5991>

UNSW academic Dr Mark Diesendorf, the subject of that accusation of convenient neglect, responded:
“On the basis of Haydon Manning’s article, I question his claims to be a “competent generalist” and to be striving to be objective. … His objection to the scientific evidence, that CO2 emissions from uranium mining and milling are increasing as uranium ore grade is decreasing, is a peculiar and illogical one. He claims, contrary to empirical evidence, that uranium “usually” occurs with other minerals, such as copper, and that the uranium is simply a byproduct.
“The truth, based on data from the OECD Red Book*, is that 9 of the top 10 uranium mines in the world are uranium-only mines. Roxby Downs is the exception, not the rule. …
“As Manning admits, he has no expertise in this field.”
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5991&page=0

* See also: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf23.html

Manning didn’t correct his error or retract or apologise for the false accusation of convenient neglect.

---

<FOURTH-GENERATION REACTORS

Manning has been an enthusiastic supporter of ‘pebble bed’ nuclear reactors. A South African nuclear utility has been at the forefront of developing these reactors but the project has recently been postponed indefinitely. Unless the South African project is revived, that leaves only China developing pebble bed concepts. There’s not a lot to get enthusiastic about.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-PBMR_postponed-1109092.html
http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-demise-of-the-pebble-bed-modular-reactor

Oddly, Manning has also enthusiastically supported a book − Tom Blees’ ‘Prescription for the Planet’ − which is scathing about pebble bed reactors and argues that they should be banned (p.291, 365). Manning does not address the contradiction between his enthusiasm for pebble bed reactors and his enthusiasm for a book which argues that they should be banned.

‘Putting battlers before the greens’
Haydon Manning, June 02, 2009, The Australian
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25571555-7583,00.html

Manning writes: “Greenies opposed to nuclear power confront a huge challenge to debunk his [Blees’] detailed assessment of fast breeder reactors; they will have no choice but to take up the challenge of developing a critique – I doubt they will but it will be interesting to see the anti-nuclear crusaders grapple with this convincing account of so-called ‘generation four’ reactors.”
www.amazon.com/Prescription-Planet-Painless-Remedy-Environmental/dp/1419655825

A critique of the proposed ‘integral fast reactors’ favoured by Blees is posted at https://nuclear.foe.org.au/power/

Manning writes (‘Dogma and delusion’): “Of particular interest is the so-called, “pebble bed modular” reactor. Contrary to Diesendorf’s view that no Generation 4 reactors exist today, a pebble bed modular is operating in China … This design is remarkable because it is claimed that meltdown is impossible.”

In response:
* Pebble bed reactors are variously described as Gen 3, Gen 3+, Gen 4, or failed Gen 2 technology.
* The reactor in China is a 10MW prototype. A 200 MW pebble bed plant is planned (I’m not sure if construction has begun).
* The indefinite postponement of the pebble bed project in South Africa resulted from economic factors as well as technical factors, some with safety consequences.
http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-demise-of-the-pebble-bed-modular-reactor
http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectionCode=76&storyCode=2052590
http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectioncode=76&storyCode=2052589

Manning says: “The fact is the theory underpinning a host of “Generation 4″ reactor designs is rarely read, I believe, by opponents of nuclear power.” (‘Dogma and delusion’) However there is a significant, readily-available body of informed, critical literature on generation 4 reactors. A couple of examples:
— Hirsch, Helmut, et al, April 2005, “Nuclear Reactor Hazards”, <www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/nuclearreactorhazards
— World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2009
www.bmu.de/files/english/pdf/application/pdf/welt_statusbericht_atomindustrie_0908_en.pdf
— See also <www.ieer.org>, <www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk>, <www.energyscience.org.au>, etc.

Conversely, we know that Manning has enthusiastically absorbed some literature about pebble bed technology, and is equally enthusiastic about a book which argues that pebble bed technology should be banned, but there’s little evidence that he has read much else about fourth generation technology and no evidence that he has understood any of it.

Manning writes: “Against this background nuclear power blossoms as part of the answer to energy security.” (‘Dogma and delusion’) In fact, nuclear power has been stagnant for the past 15-20 years. It accounted for 16% of global electricity generation in 2005, 15% in 2006 and 14% in 2007. The global fleet of reactors is middle-aged and the industry will be kept busy just maintaining current output over the coming 20-30 years let alone expanding output. It is possible that there will be significant growth in the medium to long term but past projections have rarely been met and have usually been wildly optimistic. For example, the IAEA estimated in 1974 that in the year 2000, nuclear output would be 4,450 GW. Output in the year 2000 was 352 GW. The IAEA estimate was out by a factor of 12.6 or 1260%.

See: The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2009, www.bmu.de/english/nuclear_safety/downloads/doc/44832.php

Manning writes: “I believe many [Generation 4 reactors] will be built in the next two decades. (‘Dogma and delusion’)
— But even the World Nuclear Association states that: “Generation IV designs are still on the drawing board and will not be operational before 2020 at the earliest.” www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf08.html
— Probably later than 2020 according to the Uranium Information Centre: “Generation IV designs are still on the drawing board and will not be operational before 2020 at the earliest, probably later.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20080717135332/www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf32.html
— Most informed commentators believe that very few if any Gen 4 reactors will be deployed in the next 20 years. For example the Generation 4 International Forum website states that “commercial deployment of Gen-IV reactors is not foreseen before 2030 at the earliest, and all current activities involving Gen-IV designs are at the level of R&D.”
www.gen-4.org/GIF/About/faq/faq-definition1.htm

Manning writes: “As for reactor designs it is rather disingenuous to maintain so confidently that future science regarding reactor design and safety features (making meltdowns impossible and securing against “worst case” terrorist attack scenarios) is just theory and unlikely to contribute quickly enough to be a major player in forging less carbon intensive electricity generation.” (‘Dogma and delusion’) Manning is right that some nuclear critics sometimes make too little allowance for potential technological development. Is Manning’s supreme confidence any less disingenuous? His understanding of the debates over ‘meltdowns’ (presumably short-hand for reactor core damage accidents) appears to be:
Generation 4 − impossible
Generation 3 − “almost impossible” www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4504
You won’t find terms like ‘probabilistic risk assessment’ in anything written by Manning.

Even nuclear industry representatives are sceptical about the hype surrounding ‘next generation’ reactors, one noting that: “We know that the paper-moderated, ink-cooled reactor is the safest of all. All kinds of unexpected problems may occur after a project has been launched.”

Likewise, the MIT Study states: “We do not believe there is a nuclear plant design that is totally risk free. In part, this is due to technical possibilities; in part due to workforce issues. Safe operation requires effective regulation, a management committed to safety, and a skilled work force.” http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower

In addition to the waning fortunes of pebble bed reactors, the generation 3 reactor being built in Finland provides another sobering example − one which is ignored by Manning. The reactor is A$2.9 billion over budget, construction is 3.5 years behind schedule, and construction company Areva and Finnish utility TVO are locked in protracted dispute and arbitration over the project.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=24732&jmid=7911&j=229862342
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=24227
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/18/nuclearpower
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/may/10/nuclear-reactor-safety-concerns-areva
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8138869.stm

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<URANIUM ENRICHMENT

‘Rann needs to exorcise the nuclear ghosts’
Haydon Manning, 12 April 2006, The Advertiser
www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,18787589%5E5000423,00.html

In this opinion piece, Manning promotes uranium enrichment in Australia without even a passing mention of two obvious problems:

1. Enrichment is a ‘sensitive’ nuclear technology which can produce both low-enriched uranium for reactors or highly-enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. Thus there have been repeated calls from the likes of G.W. Bush and the IAEA for a moratorium on the spread of enrichment technology and/or international control of enrichment. (See EnergyScience briefing paper 13 at www.energyscience.org.au/FS14%20GNEP.pdf.)

2. Manning says “we” could earn quadruple the price of uranium exports if “we” enriched it. (It’s not clear who “we” are. The three companies currently mining uranium in Australia are completely or majority foreign-owned.) The economic case for enrichment in Australia has been rejected by the likes of BHP Billiton and the Switkowski report. BHP Billiton’s submission to the Switkowski panel stated: “BHP Billiton believes that there is neither a commercial nor a non-proliferation case for it to become involved in front-end processing … Enrichment has massive barriers to entry … We do not believe that conversion and enrichment would be commercially viable in Australia. … The economics of any Australian conversion, enrichment or fabrication do not look positive, either individually or collectively.” www.energyscience.org.au/energyscience%20response.doc

Surely those proliferation and economic issues warrant at least a passing mention.

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<ENERGY-ELECTRICITY OPTIONS

Manning writes: “If nuclear, along with other renewables (of which hydro is the only current option), can not replace the introduction of ever more coal burning power stations …” (‘Dogma and delusion’)

Nuclear and hydro are not the only options to new coal fired power plants as any ‘informed generalist’ would know. Nor is it true that hydro is the only currently available renewable energy source which can replace coal.

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<TERRORISM

M&O state: “Terrorists with access to nuclear material are a concern. But it is truly a long bow to argue, as some environmental groups do, that Australian uranium would be a likely source for a “terrorist device”. Surely, terrorists may find equally keen “technicians” in states with weapons programs and their own fissile material sources.”
‘Smart moves’, Haydon Manning and Andrew O’Neil, 26/5/06, www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4504

I’m not aware of anyone saying Australian uranium would be a “likely” source, but it is obviously a possible source. Civil nuclear materials and facilities are of great concern in relation to smuggling/terrorism because civil nuclear facilities greatly outnumber military facilities, the same applies for nuclear materials stockpiles, and because civil facilities generally have weaker security than military facilities. There are plenty of other reasons for concern − the frequency of detected incidents of smuggling … the huge volume of Australian-obligated nuclear materials (AONM) in circulation … Australia has zero capacity to independently monitor the flow of AONM … the IAEA is under-resourced and ill-equipped to deal with smuggling in any event, etc. Those issues are discussed in submissions by Friends of the Earth, posted at
www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jsct/nuclearnon_proliferation/subs.htm

M&O (AJPS) falsely state that “no nuclear reactor has ever been subjected to terrorist attack.” There is a history of nuclear terrorism that M&O appear to be unaware of, and a history of conventional military strikes on nuclear facilities that they also appear to be unaware of.

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<NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY

M&O (‘Smart moves’) state:

<“Does Australia risk undermining the Non-Proliferation Treaty if it sells uranium to a non-treaty member state such as India? A more appropriate question would be: Is the treaty itself worth preserving? The reality is the treaty is in terminal decline. This is due to a combination of bad faith among nuclear weapons states and the covert weapons programs of North Korea and Iran − North Korea actually attained a threshold nuclear capability while it was a member of the treaty.
“Today the treaty is little more than a political and legal fig leaf for a small group of states (such as Iran) that have no intention of complying with its provisions. Indeed, the treaty merely perpetuates the myth that nuclear proliferation can be prevented at a time when the international community should be exploring ways it can be managed through alternative arms control agreements.”

It’s disappointing that M&O don’t elaborate on their proposal for alternative agreements. In the above-mentioned article, M&O appear to want to replace the NPT with alternative agreements but in their AJPS article they appear to support the NPT and see alternative agreements as being supplementary.

Key questions are left unanswered, e.g. do M&O support the principle that non-NPT states or non-compliant NPT states should be precluded from civil nuclear trade?

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<SAFEGUARDS

M&O (AJPS) assert that Australia is a “responsible supplier of uranium”. However Australia sells uranium to:
* all of the ‘declared’ nuclear weapons states (USA, UK, China, France, Russia), none of which has fulfilled its disarmament obligations under the NPT;
* countries with a history of weapons-related research based on their civil nuclear programs (such as South Korea and Taiwan)
* countries blocking progress on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (e.g. the USA) and the proposed Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty.

No Australian government has ever invoked bilateral treaty provisions such as the right to refuse permission to separate Australian-obligated plutonium from spent fuel, even when that plutonium separation demonstrably leads to stockpiling and regional tensions (Japan / North-East Asia).

Australia’s uranium exports are shrouded in secrecy. Examples include the refusal to release:
* Country-by-country information on the separation and stockpiling of the plutonium produced from Australian uranium.
* ”Administrative arrangements”, which contain vital information about safeguards arrangements.
* Information on nuclear accounting discrepancies including the volumes of nuclear materials unaccounted for, countries involved and reasons given to explain discrepancies.
* The quantities of Australian uranium (and its byproducts) in each country are also kept confidential.
* Some, if not all, export agreements allow for further secrecy under the rubric of ”state secrets”.

M&O do not address the above-mentioned, substantive criticisms of safeguards.

More info on safeguards:
* https://nuclear.foe.org.au/nuclear-safeguards/
* Medical Association for Prevention of War www.mapw.org.au/nuclear-chain/safeguards
* Who’s Watching the Nuclear Watchdog? A Critique of the Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office, briefing paper 19, www.energyscience.org.au/factsheets.html
* Non-Proliferation Policy Education Centre, Feb 2008, “Falling Behind: International Scrutiny of the Peaceful Atom”, www.npec-web.org.
* Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding Dialogue, June 2007, “Final Report, Nuclear Power Joint Fact-Finding”, www.keystone.org/spp/energy07_nuclear.html

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<AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE ARTICLE

Manning, Haydon and O’Neil, Andrew
Australia’s Nuclear Horizon: Moving Beyond the Drumbeat of Risk Inflation
Australian Journal of Political Science, 42:4, 563-578, 2007
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10361140701595767

See the earlier comments re M&O’s misrepresentation and sloppy academic standards.

M&O state: “Recent opinion polls indicate that Australians favouring the development of domestic nuclear power slightly outnumber those opposed. And a clear majority − especially in South Australia and the Northern Territory − support uranium exports to China.” M&O are cherry-picking opinion polls.

M&O talk up profits and jobs arising from uranium mining but provide no detail or context. Uranium accounts for about one-third of one percent of Australia’s export revenue and falls a very long way short of providing one-tenth of one percent of jobs in Australia.

M&O repeatedly mention the “anti-nuclear movement’s belief in population-wide consciousness shifts”. This is one part straw man, one part conspiracy theory. Leaving aside other aspects of that discussion, M&O conflate and confuse mundane discussion on energy conservation and efficiency with ‘population wide consciousness shifts’.

M&O attack the ‘moral absolutism’ of opponents of nuclear power. To a limited extent that is justified criticism but:
* They grossly overstate the level of moral absolutism in the anti-nuclear movement, and they ignore the moral absolutism of some nuclear advocates.
* They ignore the significant body of critical literature which addresses the debates in a cost-benefit, risk-benefit, comparative analysis framework.

M&O state that the Ranger Inquiry “gave the green light to uranium exports”. It didn’t.
www.waltpatterson.org/foxnuclear.pdf

M&O discuss the Ranger Inquiry’s comments on nuclear waste but ignore what the Inquiry obviously saw as the key problem: “The nuclear power industry is unintentionally contributing to an increased risk of nuclear war. This is the most serious hazard associated with the industry.”

M&O write: “Every nuclear weapons programs since and including the US Manhattan Project has been the product of dedicated military reactors, rather than an offshoot of civilian programs.” M&O are evidently unaware of … loads of things, e.g.: India’s program was based initially on the civil CIRUS research reactor; North Korea’s was based primarily on an ‘experimental power reactor’; a number of weapons programs have not been based on reactors at all but on enrichment technology ostensibly acquired for peaceful purposes, e.g. South Africa and Pakistan. More info including numerous case studies: https://nuclear.foe.org.au/power-weapons/

M&O state that “the core ingredients of weapons-grade fissile material (i.e. highly enriched uranium and plutonium) are scarce internationally …” Global stockpiles of weapons-usable (fuel grade or reactor grade) ‘civil’ plutonium would suffice to build over 160,000 nuclear weapons; stockpiles of separated ‘civil’ plutonium would suffice to build over 27,000 nuclear weapons. Paper on plutonium grades and nuclear weapons: https://nuclear.foe.org.au/power-weapons/

<M&O promote fuel leasing. Implicit in their plan is that a small number of countries (presumably including Australia) would host international deep geological repositories for high-level nuclear waste − yet that is not spelt out or discussed. For a different perspective on fuel leasing and related debates, see briefing paper #13 at www.energyscience.org.au

Patrick Moore is described by M&O as a “prominent” environmentalist and elsewhere (‘Smart moves’) Manning describes Moore as a “renowned” environmentalist. M&O know that Moore is paid by the Nuclear Energy Institute and they ought to state that fact.

M&O dispute Al Gore’s claim that “for 8 years in the White House, every weapons proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program”. To ‘prove’ their point M&O refer to two countries – Iran and North Korea – where ostensibly civilian reactor programs are very clearly of proliferation concern. Gore might also have India and Pakistan in mind, and a number of countries in the Middle East and north Africa, and north-east Asia.
(See country case studies https://nuclear.foe.org.au/power-weapons/#casestudies)

M&O write: “[T]he argument that Australian uranium exports for civilian programs will help release valuable fissile material for military development programs in nuclear weapons states is not very convincing.”

In some cases it is a weak argument that M&O are challenging, in some cases it is a strong argument. M&O ignore the important example of India. K. Subrahmanyam, former head of the India’s National Security Advisory Board, has stated: “Given India’s uranium ore crunch and the need to build up our minimum credible nuclear deterrent arsenal as fast as possible, it is to India’s advantage to categorize as many power reactors as possible as civilian ones to be refueled by imported uranium and conserve our native uranium fuel for weapons grade plutonium production.” (Times of India, 12/12/05.)

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<2010 ARTICLE

More from Manning, this time on the ‘Brave New Climate’ website (13 Jan 2010)

From nuclear sceptic to convert

Manning compares Australian uranium exports with Saudi Arabia’s oil exports. In response:
* The value of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports is 325 times greater than Australia’s uranium exports (which account for about one-fifth of global uranium demand). A better comparison would be with Australia’s cheese exports. Cheese and uranium have been in an ongoing tussle for export value supremacy in recent years. Cheese is winning. Back cheese.
* Uranium still accounts for just one third of one percent of Australian export revenue. Revenue would need to double for uranium to make it into the list of top 25 export earners. Australia could stitch up the entire global uranium market and it would barely scrape into the list of top 10 export earners.
* For the second (or third?) year in a row, the nuclear renaissance has gone backwards, with more reactor shutdowns than start-ups.

Manning claims that uranium and nuclear power are “the main game” on the carbon emission reduction front. In response:
* The International Energy Agency expects 63 percent of the world’s emissions reductions by 2030 will come from energy efficiency.
* A 2007 ABARE study estimated energy efficiency would directly account for 55 percent of Australia’s carbon abatement by 2050.

Manning promotes uranium sales to India. In response:
* If Australia supplied one quarter of India’s current demand, uranium exports would increase by just 2.4 percent or $24.5 million. Revenue from exports of all products to India would increase by 0.16 percent. Even if India’s nuclear power expansion plans are fully realised (23 reactors are operating or under construction, another 23 are planned), Australia’s uranium exports would increase by a modest 14 percent above current levels and exports of all products to India would increase by 0.9 percent.
* The Australian Uranium Association supports the policy of refusing to allow uranium exports to non-NPT countries including India – presumably because it has done calculations similar to those above.
* Leonard Weiss, a former staff director of the US Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Nuclear Proliferation, notes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that a concerted program of improved energy efficiency could substitute for all the nuclear power being planned in India between now and 2020.
* Uranium exports to India would undermine the fundamental principle of the global non-proliferation regime – the principle that only countries which have signed the NPT and are bound by its disarmament and non-proliferation commitments can engage in international trade for their nuclear power programs. True, that principle has taken a big kick in the guts with the US-India deal. Nevertheless, allowing Australian uranium exports to India would encourage other countries to pull out of the NPT, develop nuclear weapons, and do so on the expectation that uranium could still be procured from Australia.

Manning was asked to supply evidence for his claim that cancer rates for uranium miners are no higher for uranium miners. He supplied no evidence whatsoever.

Radioactive Exposure Tour, April 2018

Ray Acheson from Reaching Critical Will writes about her experience of the 2018 Rad Tour to South Australia: A journey to the heart of the antinuclear resistance in Australia: 2018 Rad Tour

Radioactive Exposure Tour 2015: Red dirt, porridge and the nuclear industry

Gem Romuld

The 2015 Radioactive Exposure Tour was a multi-dimensional whirlwind dive into the nuclear landscapes of New South Wales and South Australia. We got up close and personal with Australia’s only nuclear reactor, former uranium mine sites, both of Australia’s two currently operating uranium mines, vast areas under uranium exploration and the five thousand kilometres of “nuclear freeway” in between.

This year’s radtour packed around 25 people into two mini-buses and a ute running on vegetable oil and started with the traditional pre-dawn packing session at Friends of the Earth on Smith St, Collingwood.

Our first two nights were spent on a beautiful bush property of our friends from Uranium Free NSW. The camp at Jervis Bay was located near the site that was to be home to Australia’s first nuclear power reactor under the government of John Gorton in the late 1960s. Gorton later acknowledged that there was a secret weapons agenda driving the Jervis Bay reactor project. Thankfully, a change of government dampened that sinister plan and we were able to swim the glorious waters of Jervis Bay without a nuclear reactor’s shadow.

A couple of hours north we were greeted by a large contingent of staff at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Australia’s only research reactor at Lucas Heights. We were fed promotional videos and various misinformation including “radiation is radiation”, and therefore all the same. We asked lots of questions, and challenged the organisation on their role in ensuring responsible radioactive waste management. This includes preventing the manipulation of remote Aboriginal communities for a radioactive waste dump with such mythologies as the necessity of a remote waste dump for cancer patients to receive their treatments.

After some campaign history from the “Atom Free Embassy” days outside ANSTO, we high-tailed it to the Blue Mountains in time for a public meeting in Katoomba. Eco-pella sang their ratbag tunes and we heard Donna Mulhearn’s stories of acting as a human shield in Iraq and the devastating legacy of depleted uranium weapons use. After some classic group + banner photos at the Three Sisters the next morning we pushed on, heading west.

Upon our arrival in Dubbo, we walked into a fascinating collision of locals and an Alkane Resources employee at a meeting organised by Uranium Free Dubbo, discussing the proposed rare earths mine 20 kms out of town. As rare earths are typically found in conjunction with radioactive materials, the mine poses radiological risks − nearby residents would get elevated radiation exposure levels when the mine operated, and the town would be left with radioactive tailings forever and a day. Locals are worried about drinking water contamination, and doubted whether they could trust the company and what benefit they would derive from the mine.

Further west through open plains teeming with kangaroos and feral goats, we met with the thriving group “Nuclear Free Cobar” (one person) and eventually found the Broken Hill Racecourse Hall, a roof over our swags. The huge shed was somehow made cosy by the big feed that Kerry and Biscuit laid out for our weary arrival. While there are no current mine proposals, several companies have been prospecting for uranium around Western NSW.

Leaving Broken Hill meant leaving big towns for a while, and heading for the territories of the nuclear cowboys. We built our first desert camp under a full moon, en route to the Gammon Ranges. We woke, packed and left before sunrise. Emus welcomed us to Adnyamathanha country, where protest broke out against the Beverley uranium mine in its first years of operation from 1997. One particular protest was subject to a ten-year legal battle to hold the police accountable for their use of force, capsicum spray and locking nine people in a shipping container for several hours.

At the site, we had a brief tour of the controversial in-situ-leach mine before scones, tea and, of course, a Powerpoint presentation. The staff ducked and weaved through our questions, hand-balling them to each other and shying away from giving us numbers e.g. daily water usage of the mine. When questioned about the federal government’s tender for a radioactive waste dump site, they said ‘we think here would be a pretty good place’. Never mind what the Adnyamathanha community thinks …

We travelled on, skirting north of the Flinders Ranges and west along the Oodnadatta Track. Now on Arabunna country, we unfortunately had to skip the famous Marree Camel Cup, an annual highlight, to make Lake Eyre for sunset.

Everything slowed down for our dreamy “Oodnadatta Day”. We visited several of the mound springs, lush desert oases of endemic flora and fauna that are dependent on the natural flow of the mineral-rich waters of the Great Artesian Basin to the surface. The springs have sadly been drying up since the Olympic Dam mine started sucking 37 million litres of water per day from underneath them.

We shifted camp to the site of the Keepers of Lake Eyre camp, where Uncle Kev, Bilbo and others kept a constant watch on BHP Billiton for many years. After another incredible sunset and sunrise we had to tear ourselves away from that place for our uranium mine tour appointment at the gates of hell − Olympic Dam.

In Woomera we toured the missile park with Avon Hudson, nuclear veteran and whistleblower for the Maralinga nuclear weapons testing program. During his time working at Woomera and Maralinga he amassed a trove of damning stories and information, which we are so lucky to hear every year on the radtour.

Woomera locals Mick and Glenn shared our red dune campfire and told us some of their proud Kokatha family history of resisting uranium mining and the radioactive waste dump. Their families won the Irati Wanti campaign (the poison, leave it) more than a decade ago, and they are preparing for another campaign against radioactive waste in light of the SA Royal Commission into nuclear expansion, currently underway.

From Woomera we found ourselves in Adelaide all too quickly, with some of the tour preparing to stay for the Students of Sustainability conference and others preparing for the drive back to Melbourne. After the opening fire ceremony we heard from some of the Aboriginal champions for a nuclear-free-world like Uncle Kevin Buzzacott, Mitch and Aunty Sue Coleman-Haseldine. Their words reinforced the relevance of the journey we’d just travelled, and the need to keep the fight alive for an end to the atomic age.

The Radioactive Exposure Tour means many different things to different people. It is an education … of the land, of the struggles faced by Aboriginal people, a window into what happens out there when the city isn’t watching and a history lesson for the future. The radtour is a temporary community that must learn to get along, to work collectively and unravel patriarchal patterns in the way we function day-to-day. While travelling thousands of kilometres, we are fermenting information, ideas and conversation. Perhaps most importantly, the radtour is one way we grow the movement, maintain connections across vast distances, spark wild ideas and fortify ourselves for the next steps. Bring it on!

Gem Romuld is a member of FoE Melbourne’s Anti-nuclear and Clean Energy (ACE) Collective and was one of the organisers of the 2015 radtour.

More information and photos are posted at www.radioactivetour.com

If you’d like to register interest in next year’s radtour, email use at: radexposuretour@gmail.com

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Radioactive Exposure Tours – a short history

Ila Marks

The first Nuclear Exposure Tour was organised in 1990, six years after the Roxby Blockades of 1983 and 1984 where hundreds of people blockaded and hindered the establishment of Olympic Dam Operations (the copper/uranium mine at Roxby Downs in northern South Australia). During these blockades people had the powerful experience of seeing a uranium mine and listening to Aboriginal people who opposed the mine. Blockaders also had the opportunity to show their opposition to uranium mining in creative, colourful and sometimes dramatic ways.

It was in this tradition that the idea of Nuclear Exposure Tours evolved. The Anti-Uranium Collective at Friends of the Earth organised the tours with the aim of letting people witness and experience the nuclear industry first hand. People would be able to see and walk on the country affected, to hear what Aboriginal people had to say, learn about the anti-nuclear movement and strengthen opposition to the nuclear industry. We wanted to give people the opportunity to support traditional land owners in their opposition to the nuclear industry, so that the tour participants could return to their colleges, work places or communities with the story of their experience and to encourage them to play a role in the anti-nuclear movement.

The first tour to Roxby Downs was carefully planned, with members of the Friends of the Earth anti-uranium collective doing what we call, a “dry-run”. Such a trip was not new; members of the collective had been visiting the Mound Springs area in northern South Australia and working with the Marree/Arabunna community there since 1987. The Mounds Springs are 120 Kilometres north of the Olympic Dam copper/uranium mine at Roxby Downs. Water for the mine, metallurgy plant and town was, and still is, being taken from the Great Artesian Basin and unique springs have dried completely and others have had a drastic reduction of flow. A trip to the Springs area led us to do a round trip to the town at Roxby Downs, the mine there and the tailings dam. Members of the anti-uranium collective were becoming familiar with the Springs and Roxby; this was another motivation for the tour, to share this experience with other people in an organised and constructive way.

The “dry-run” was important as permission from traditional land owners was needed to camp in their country and to obtain information on culturally appropriate behaviour. The anti-uranium collective also needed to meet with communities whose land they would be passing though to organise joint actions against nuclear activities in their areas. These included CRA’s proposed mineral sands development near Horsham in Victoria and the Rare Earth Tailings dump at Port Pirie. Future tours took in the Beverley Uranium Mine and the Honeymoon Project, and at the invitation of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, camping at Ten Mile Creek just out of Coober Pedy. Recent tours have become focused on the proposal for a low to intermediate level nuclear waste dump in the Woomera area.

In organising the tours we at FoE always endeavour to make them more than just an out-back adventure! At Roxby Downs we organised public meetings on radiation exposure levels at the community centre, we leafleted the entire town on workers’ and community health issues, we organised awareness stalls with local environmentalists and produced a performance at the Woomera Primary School that involved all of the students as well as the people on the tour.

Following a tour in 1996 the participants formed a collective and organised the ‘Roxstop Action and Music Festival’ in 1997, where over 300 people gathered at Roxby to protest against the expansion of the mine. Here they hosted a public meeting attended by over 120 people with the United States epidemiologist Dr David Richarson as the key note speaker talking about his work and the effects of low level radiation exposure on nuclear workers. Roxstop also included an exhibition of paintings by the Melbourne Artist Lyn Hovey in the Roxby Library. After three days at Roxby the protestors moved to Alberrie Creek on Finnis Springs Station where a music festival was held over three nights to celebrate the Mound Springs, while during the day there were cultural workshops and tours given by members of the Arrabunna community including Reg Dodd and Kevin Buzzacott.

In August 1998 the collective that had organised Roxstop received a fax from the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta. It said: “We’re trying hard about this rubbish – the radio-active waste dump. We don’t want that… We want your help! We want you to come up here to Coober Pedy and have a meeting with Aboriginal people (and any whitefellas from here who want to come)”. In September of that year a group of over a dozen people travelled from Melbourne to Coober Pedy and held a public meeting with the Aboriginal people to discuss the dump.

Things have not always run smoothly for the anti-uranium collective. One year we were stranded for a night on the Borefield Road between the Oodnadatta Track and Roxby Downs with forty people and three buses when the road became impassable due to rain! Another time at Mambury Creek in the southern Flinders Rangers, emus raided our camp and scattered our provisions including cereal, bread and fruit all over the campsite while the campers were protesting in Port Pirie! But, there have been great high-lights. The first time we were invited to the Ten Mile Creek (just outside of Cooper Pedy) by the Kungka Tjuta, we saw the beautiful sight of moon rising over Lake Eyre South. At Ten Mile Creek we saw the effects of the leaflet on workers’ health and exposure to low levels of radiation, we protested outside the Woomera Detention Centre, we saw the representatives of the Honeymoon Uranium Project squirm as tour participants asked difficult questions about the chemical structure of the waste solution to be pumped back into the aquifer. And we will never forget the warm greeting from members of the Adnyamathanha community at Nepabunna, even though we were four hours late!

There have been many great and rewarding outcomes from the Nuclear Exposures Tours. What stands out for us and what must be acknowledged here is the strengthening of the close working relationships we at Friends of the Earth have with the Aboriginal communities and the many individuals who have taken part in our tours. Every person who has gone on a tour has had an amazing, never-to-be-forgotten experience and many of the participants from various tours have made a considerable contribution to the anti-nuclear movement.

Originally published in the FoE Australia book 30 Years of Creative Resistance

Click here to read articles about previous radioactive exposure tours

See also: Nuclear weapons and Lucas Heights.

Australia’s bid for the bomb – short summary

In 1962, the federal Cabinet approved an increase in the staff of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission from 950 to 1050 because, in the words of the Minister of National Development William Spooner, “a body of nuclear scientists and engineer skilled in nuclear energy represents a positive asset which would be available at any time if the government decided to develop a nuclear defence potential.”

In 1968, government officials and Australian Atomic Energy Commission scientists studied and reported on the costs of a nuclear weapons program. They outlined two possible programs: a power reactor program capable of producing enough weapon grade plutonium for 30 fission weapons annually; and a uranium enrichment program capable of producing enough uranium-235 for the initiators of at least 10 thermonuclear weapons per year. Three years earlier, secret enrichment research commenced in the basement of a building at Lucas Heights.

In 1969, federal Cabinet approved a plan to build a power reactor at Jervis Bay on the south coast of New South Wales. There is a wealth of evidence – some of it contained in Cabinet documents – revealing that the Jervis Bay project was motivated, in part, by a desire to bring Australia closer to a weapons capability. Then Prime Minister John Gorton later acknowledged: “We were interested in this thing because it could provide electricity to everybody and it could, if you decided later on, it could make an atomic bomb.”

After Gorton was replaced as leader of the Liberal Party by William McMahon in 1971, the Jervis Bay project was reassessed and deferred and the Labor government, elected in 1972, did nothing to revive the project.

There has been lingering interest in developing nuclear weapons in Australia since the early 1970s − including interest in lowering the lead time for weapons production under cover of ostensibly peaceful nuclear activities. But the more important point is that the pursuit of a weapons capability waned when Australia became a nuclear weapons state − a weapons state by proxy as a result of the cementing of the nuclear alliance with the US through the construction of US military and spy bases in Australia.

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Nuclear weapons for Australia

This article addresses the support in Australia during the 1950s and 60s for the manufacture or acquisition of nuclear weapons. The article then considers the shifting debates from the 1970s onwards, during which support for the production or acquisition of nuclear weapons has waned although Australia remains complicit in weapons proliferation through the US military alliance and the operations of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. A version of this article was published in Social Alternatives, October 1999. — Jim Green, Friends of the Earth, Australia, jim.green@foe.org.au

During the 1950s and 1960s, there were several efforts to obtain nuclear weapons from the US or the UK. The key institutions pushing for nuclear weapons were the three arms of the defence forces, the federal Cabinet’s Defence Committee, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Supply, and the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC). Others were more sceptical, including the Department of External Affairs, the Treasury, and Prime Minister Menzies. Menzies preferred to rely on alliances with Australia’s “great and powerful friends”, the US and the UK.

Australia’s position as an isolated outpost of the British Empire was an important driving force. At various times concerns were focussed on Japan, Russia, China, and Indonesia.

Always there were nagging doubts as to whether the US and the UK would come to the rescue in the event of threats to Australia’s sovereignty. Hence the sycophancy – the hosting of British weapons tests, the US bases, Australian troops in Vietnam, and so on. And hence the interest in nuclear weapons.

During and after World War II, Australian uranium, supplied for the weapons programs of the US and the UK, was a useful bargaining chip. It was because of this asset that Australia was included in a select group of eight nations to be involved in drawing up a statute for the IAEA. In the 1950s, uranium supply (and the hosting of weapons tests) also aided the procurement of High Flux Australian Reactor (HIFAR), a 10 megawatt research reactor, from Britain. (HIFAR, located in the Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights, is now Australia’s one and only nuclear reactor.)

Uranium was no longer a scarce resource from the mid-1950s onwards. Thus Australia’s uranium reserves became increasingly irrelevant as bargaining chips in efforts to obtain nuclear technology, including weapons technology, from the US or the UK.

In the mid-1950s, the Australian government asked the US if Australia was eligible to participate in nuclear sharing initiatives being discussed within NATO. Nothing came of the governments approaches except some vague promises to consider Australia if the US chose to develop a weapons capability among allied nations.

A nuclear cooperation agreement was signed between Australia and the US in 1956, but it counted for little in terms of technology transfer and probably nothing in terms of gaining greater access to nuclear technology than was available to other western countries.

The greater part of the bomb lobby’s effort was directed at Britain. Beginning in 1957, the matter was often addressed by representatives of the Australian and British governments and military organisations.

The British realised that supplying nuclear weapons could cause problems, such as encouraging horizontal proliferation and perhaps jeopardising US/UK nuclear cooperation agreements. But there was support nonetheless, partly because of Australia’s status as a Commonwealth country, and also because of the British government’s desire to sell Australia the aircraft and missiles that would be required to deliver nuclear weapons. British documents also make it clear that if Australia was to cut a deal with either Britain or the US, it should be with Britain. Communications and negotiations continued into the early 1960s, but nothing concrete was ever agreed.

There were ongoing efforts through the 1950s and 1960s to procure nuclear-capable delivery systems. The 1963 contract to buy F-111s bombers from the US was partly motivated by the capacity to modify them to carry nuclear weapons. Moreover, their range of 2000 nautical miles made them suitable for strikes on Indonesia, which was seen to be anti-British and anti-imperialist under Sukarno’s presidency.

DOMESTIC WEAPONS PRODUCTION

In the 1960s the interest in nuclear weapons was spurred on by China’s development of nuclear weapons, Britain’s decision to withdraw troops from the Pacific, and American withdrawal from Vietnam.

From the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, there was greater interest in the domestic manufacture of nuclear weapons. It is unclear why the focus shifted from attempts to purchase weapons to a greater interest in domestic production; perhaps the main reason was that so little had been achieved through negotiations with the US and the UK.

In 1965, the AAEC and the Department of Supply were commissioned to examine all aspects of Australia’s policy towards nuclear weapons and the cost of establishing a nuclear weapons program in Australia.

The AAEC began a uranium enrichment research program in 1965. For the first two years, this program was carried out in secret because of fears that public knowledge of the project would lead to allegations of intentions to build enriched uranium bombs. There were several plausible justifications for the enrichment project, such as the potential profit to be made by exporting enriched uranium. While there is no concrete evidence, it can safely be assumed that the potential to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium counted in favour of the government’s decision to approve and fund the enrichment research.

Menzies retired in January 1966. The new prime minister, Harold Holt, soon faced a dilemma. The US requested that a bilateral safeguards agreement between the US and Australia be transferred to the IAEA. The Australian government opposed the move for fear it would close off the nuclear weapons option. Opposition to the safeguards transfer was sufficiently strong that some Cabinet members thought it would be preferable to close the Lucas Heights research reactor rather than comply with the request. (The previous year there were Cabinet discussions on the potential for nuclear transfers from France which would not be subject to safeguards.)

Cabinet agreed to the US request in June 1966, but only after being reassured by defence officials that IAEA safeguards would not directly affect a nuclear weapons program.

Despite the glut in the uranium market overseas, the Minister for National Development announced in 1967 that uranium companies would henceforth have to keep half of their known reserves for Australian use, and he acknowledged in public that this decision was taken because of a desire to have a domestic uranium source in case it was needed for nuclear weapons.

In May 1967 Prime Minister Holt and the Cabinet’s Defence Committee commissioned another study to assess the possibility of domestic manufacture of nuclear weapons, as well as “possible arrangements with our allies.”

It is not known how seriously Holt might have pursued nuclear weapons. In December 1967 he disappeared while swimming off Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne. The new prime minister was John Gorton, who was on public record as an advocate of the production or acquisition of nuclear weapons.

By the mid-1960s, the AAEC had become the leading voice on nuclear affairs, thanks in large part to its influential chairman Philip Baxter. According to Walsh (1997), “Baxter personally supported the concept of an Australian nuclear weapons capability and, perhaps more importantly, viewed the military’s interest in nuclear weapons as consonant with the AAEC’s need to expand its programs and budget.”

NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY

The intention to leave open the nuclear weapons option was evident in the government’s approach to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) from 1969-71. Gorton was determined not to sign the NPT, and he had some powerful allies such as Baxter. The Minister for National Development admitted that a sticking point was a desire not to close off the weapons option.

During the election campaign of late 1969, Gorton said that in the absence of major changes, Australia would not sign the NPT. But on February 19, 1970, Gorton announced that Australia would sign, but not ratify, the treaty. He noted that the treaty would not be binding until ratified.

Why the decision to sign the NPT? Pressure from the US had an impact. In addition, there were some significant signings from countries such as Switzerland, Italy, Japan and West Germany in the months preceding Australia’s decision to sign. Another possible reason was the possibility that weapons production could be pursued even as an NPT signatory. The “sign-and-pursue” option would have raised some difficulties, but it had advantages including greater access to overseas nuclear technology and less suspicion regarding Australia’s intentions. The Department of External Affairs argued that it was possible for a signatory to develop nuclear technology to the brink of making a nuclear weapons without contravening the NPT.

(On the NPT saga, see Encel and McKnight (1970), Walsh (1997), Cawte (1992).)

PEACEFUL NUCLEAR EXPLOSIVES

In the late 1960s, the AAEC set up a Plowshare Committee to investigate the potential uses of peaceful nuclear explosives (PNEs) in civil engineering projects. The most advanced plan was to use five 200-kiloton explosions to create an artificial harbour at Cape Keraudren, off the coast of Western Australia, to facilitate a mining venture. The US Atomic Energy Commission was the key architect of the project.

The PNE project was abandoned after some months of negotiations. The reasons included unresolved questions about the viability and funding of both the mine and the PNE project, concern in the US because of the Australian government’s refusal to sign the NPT, and the implications for the Partial Test Ban Treaty (to which Australia was a signatory).

The AAEC maintained a smaller Plowshare Committee after the Cape Keraudren project fell through. Various other possibilities were explored, but none of these plans reached fruition and the Plowshare Committee was disbanded in the early 1970s.

(On PNEs, see Findlay (1990) and Cawte (1992).)

NUCLEAR POWER

On several occasions through the 1950s and 1960s, nuclear advocates argued for the introduction of nuclear power. One of the arguments routinely put forward in favour of nuclear power was that it would bring Australia closer to a weapons capability. The expertise gained from a nuclear power program could be put to use in a weapons program, and the plutonium produced in a power reactor could be separated and used in weapons.

While favourably inclined to proposals for nuclear power, the government continually deferred making a decision, largely because of the immature state of the industry overseas and the abundance of fossil fuels in Australia.

In 1969, with Gorton as Prime Minister, the time was ripe. With the NPT dilemma still unresolved, Cabinet approved a plan to build a power reactor at Jervis Bay on the south coast of New South Wales. Site work began, and tenders from overseas suppliers were received and reviewed.

There is a wealth of evidence to suggest that the Jervis Bay project was motivated, in part, by a desire to bring Australia closer to a weapons capability, even though key players such as Baxter and Gorton refused to acknowledge the link at the time. Gorton later acknowledged: “We were interested in this thing because it could provide electricity to everybody and it could, if you decided later on, it could make an atomic bomb.” (Clark, 1999).

In 1969, Australia signed a secret nuclear cooperation agreement with France. The Sydney Morning Herald (June 18, 1969) reported that the agreement covered cooperation in the field of fast breeder power reactors (which produce more plutonium than they consume). The AAEC had begun preliminary research into building a plutonium separation plant by 1969, although this was never pursued.

According to Walsh (1997), “Gorton’s public skepticism about the NPT, the government’s plans for nuclear expansion, the peaceful nuclear explosions initiative, and France’s reputation in the nuclear field led some to speculate that Australia had made a decision in favour of the bomb. That conclusion seems unwarranted, but it is fair to say that 1969 represented a peak point in efforts to pursue an indigenous nuclear weapons capability.”

Gorton’s position as leader of the Liberal Party was under intense pressure and he resigned in March 1971. William McMahon succeeded him. McMahon was less enthusiastic about nuclear power than his predecessor. Reasons for this included concern over the financial costs, awareness of difficulties being experienced with reactor technology in Britain and Canada, and a more cautious attitude in relations to weapons production. McMahon put the Jervis Bay project on hold for one year, and then deferred it indefinitely.

The Labor government, elected in 1972, did nothing to revive the Jervis Bay project, and it ratified the NPT in 1973.

Since the early 1970s, there has been little high-level support for the pursuit of a domestic nuclear weapons capability. There have been indications of a degree of ongoing support for the view that nuclear weapons should not be ruled out and that Australia should be able to build nuclear weapons as quickly as any neighbour that looks like doing so. This current of thought was evident in a leaked 1984 defence document called The Strategic Basis of Australian Defence Policy (Martin, 1984).

Bill Hayden, then the Foreign Minister, attempted to persuade Prime Minister Bob Hawke in 1984 that Australia should develop a “pre-nuclear weapons capability” which would involve an upgrade of Australia’s modest nuclear infrastructure. (Hayden, 1996.) His efforts fell on deaf ears. Moreover the AAEC’s uranium enrichment research, by then the major project at Lucas Heights, was terminated by government direction in the mid-1980s.

Political and military elites have doubted whether the pursuit of nuclear weapons justified the risk of sparking a regional nuclear arms race, undermining international non-proliferation initiatives such as the NPT, or threatening the alliance with the US.

Perceptions regarding national security partly explain the declining interest in nuclear weapons. The increasingly common view that nuclear weapons are of no great use in military conflict must have had some impact. (Previously, tactical nuclear weapons were thought of as high-end conventional weapons and their use in warfare was envisaged by Australian political and military leaders.)

Through the 1950s, the military alliance between the US and Australia amounted to little more than a minimal formal agreement as expressed in the ANZUS Treaty. In the 1960s it became an open-ended commitment to (non-nuclear) military cooperation with the US including weapons development and purchase, joint exercises, and involvement in the Vietnam War. By the 1970s the construction of a number of US installations in Australia had tied Australians the nuclear arms race. Agreements were signed in the 1960s for three major bases at North West Cape, Pine Gap, and Nurrungar. These bases became operational in the late-1960s and early-1970s. (Smith, 1982.)

The development of the US alliance, and in particular the construction of the major bases, is arguably one of the stronger explanations for the declining interest in a domestic weapons capability from the early 1970s.

(On the proposals for nuclear power, and the weapons connection, see Walsh (1997), Cawte (1992), Stewart (1993), and Henderson (1996; 1997).)

SWORDS TO PLOUGHSHARES?

According to Jim Walsh (1997), who has written one of the most thorough and useful accounts of the historical interest in weapons acquisition or manufacture in Australia, the rejection of nuclear weapons from the 1970s is one of the “untold successes of the nuclear age”.

Walsh is far too generous. By virtue of the US alliance, Australia is a nuclear weapons state by proxy. As Ron Gray from the Australian Peace Committee put it in a letter to The Australian (May 15, 1998) after the Indian weapons tests in 1998: “The Federal Government can, of course, adopt a “holier than thou” attitude over the Indian Government’s decision, as we have signed the NPT and are not considering developing nuclear weapons. We don’t need to, however, as by hosting the United States bases in Australia we shelter under the US nuclear umbrella and, indeed, are part of the US nuclear war fighting machine. Hooray for hypocrisy.”

The intransigence of the US and other nuclear weapons states is a fundamental barrier to global efforts aimed at nuclear disarmament. The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1997) argue that, “By remaining steadfast in their commitment to nuclear weapons as an integral part of their defence policies, the nuclear weapons states are sending the message to the non-nuclear states that nuclear weapons are legitimate, indeed necessary and desirable instruments of military power. Combined with a lack of adequate safeguards for fissile materials, and the increasing spread of the knowledge and technology needed to make nuclear weapons, the threat of nuclear proliferation is real and imminent.”

As always, the Lucas Heights nuclear agency is complicit in Australia’s contribution to weapons proliferation. As plans for nuclear power and weapons waned in the 1970s, the AAEC focussed on medical and scientific projects. Reflecting its new – and more humble – status as a public sector science agency, it was renamed the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) in 1987.

Since the mid-1970s, the AAEC/ANSTO has attempted to persuade successive governments to fund and approve a new research reactor to replace HIFAR. The issue has become all the more pressing as HIFAR has reached a stage where it cannot operate for many more years without a major refurbishment.

The push for a new reactor – which culminated in the government’s 1997 announcement to replace HIFAR with a new reactor at Lucas Heights – has been publicly justified with emotive rhetoric about “saving lives” with medical isotopes and with claims that a new reactor will be used for “world class” scientific research.

The medical and scientific justifications for the reactor are weak, to say the least. (Green, 1997; 1997B; n.d..) Assuming the federal government knows this, why then has it agreed to fund a reactor with an initial outlay of $286 million? Why invite the political backlash from a decision to build a new nuclear reactor in the Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights? Why build a new reactor when no long-term solution exists for the radioactive waste stockpile from the existing reactor?

The Department of Foreign Affairs and the Australian Safeguards Office (1998) state that the operation of a research reactor “first and foremost” serves “national interest requirements”. (On the ‘national interest’ debate, see McSorley (1999).)

The government is extremely keen to maintain Australia’s seat on the Board of Governors of the IAEA. A foreign affairs bureaucrat said in 1993, “(Australia’s) role on the Board of Governors is central to our ability to influence the direction of control within the nuclear industry and the control of nuclear weapons. It is the only body in the world which looks at those issues on a week to week basis and that is fundamental.” (Cousins, 1993.)

The government claims that operating a nuclear research reactor is necessary to shore up the IAEA position. That claim is open for debate, and in any case the position is not put to good use. As Jean McSorley (1996) argues: “It would not be a bad thing if Australia were in there pushing for stricter safeguards, a separation of promotion and watch-dog activities and stringent safety laws. If Australia did that it would, more than likely, lose its Board of Governors seat. So, Australia has to be part of the promotional stakes to keep within the upper echelons of the IAEA.”

Claims that Australia uses its influence to good effect are disingenuous. Events such as the indefinite extension of the NPT, negotiated in 1995, are falsely portrayed as non-proliferation victories. As the Malaysian delegation said at the closing session of the NPT review conference, “Indefinite extension is a carte blanche for the nuclear weapons states and does not serve as an incentive to nuclear disarmament … we are abandoning an historic moment to free ourselves from nuclear blackmail and to safeguard future generations.”

To secure Australia’s place on the IAEA, Australia must promote nuclear technologies. Unfortunately, most nuclear technologies are “dual use” technologies with both civil and military applications. As IAEA employees El Baradei and Rames (1995) state, “… the materials, knowledge, and expertise required to produce nuclear weapons are often indistinguishable from those needed to generate nuclear power and conduct nuclear research.”

The risk of civil programs laying the foundations for weapons proliferation is not just a hypothetical one. For example India and Israel have used research reactors (ostensibly acquired for peaceful purposes) to produce plutonium for their arsenals of nuclear weapons. Pakistan and South Africa developed nuclear weapons under cover of a nuclear power program. (Whether clandestine weapons production is best pursued under cover of a nuclear power program or a nuclear research program is a debate taken up by Fainberg (1983) and Holdren (1983; 1983B).)

Another of the government’s “national interest” objectives is to shore up the US alliance. These issues have been neatly summarised by Jean McSorley (1999): “Is it that Australia is determined to keep its regional seat on the IAEA because it is part of the ‘deal’ that Australia plays a leading role in the (Asia Pacific) region’s nuclear industry and, in lieu of having nuclear weapons, continues to be covered by the US nuclear umbrella? Taking part in ‘overseeing’ the activities of other nuclear programmes must meet an objective of the wider security alliance by playing an intelligence-gathering role – a role which the US probably finds it very useful for Australia to play. The pay-back for this is through its defence agreements with the US, that Australia gets to be a nuclear weapons state by proxy.”

One final question: could the planned new reactor be part of a renewed push for Australia to produce nuclear weapons? Certainly there is no intention to pursue such a course of action in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, there may be some high-level support for the view that Australia should maintain (and nourish) nuclear expertise which would facilitate and expedite weapons production at some stage in the future. Nuclear expertise, it can be argued, provides Australia with a “virtual capacity” to produce weapons.

A submission to the 1993 Research Reactor Review by a private individual, Gareth Watford, argued that Australia should not develop nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future, but the time may come when it would be necessary or desirable to do so and thus a civil nuclear program must be maintained. “The replacement of HIFAR”, Watford argued, “is the absolute minimum that can be done through the civil nuclear industry to protect Australia’s national security in the total sense, as well as in the more limited sense of defence.”

The $286 million question is how much support this argument has within the political establishment and within military and nuclear institutions.

Moreover, while the production of plutonium in the core of the new OPAL reactor at Lucas Heights is likely to be minimal under normal operating conditions, it would be possible to insert uranium or depleted uranium targets into the reactor to produce significant quantities of plutonium. Alternatively, thorium targets could be inserted to produce significant quantities of fissile uranium-233.

On the possible miltary subtext to the current (2006-07) debate over uranium enrichment and nuclear power in Australia, see Walsh (2006), Broinowski (2006), White (2007). Suffice to note that regardless of motivations, an enrichment plant would give Australia the capacity to produce highly-enriched uranium for potential use in nuclear weapons, and a power reactor would give Australia the capacity to produce large quantities of plutonium over and above the plutonium that could be produced in the new OPAL research reactor at Lucas Heights.

REFERENCES

Broinowski, Richard, 2006, Australia’s New Nuclear Ambitions, http://nautilus.rmit.edu.au/forum-reports/0624a-broinowski.html

Cawte, Alice Atomic Australia: 1944-1990, Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1992.

Clark, Pilita, 1 Jan 1999, “PM’s Story: Very much alive… and unfazed”, Sydney Morning Herald.

Cousins (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), Research Reactor Review – Transcript of Public Hearing, Canberra, 25 March 1993, pp.919-920.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Australian Safeguards Office, Joint Submission to Senate Economics References Committee – Nuclear Reactor Inquiry, 1998.

El Baradei, E.N. and Rames, J., International law and nuclear energy: Overview of the legal framework. IAEA Bulletin, Vol.3, 1995.

Encel, S. and McKnight, Allan, Bombs, Power Stations, and Proliferation. The Australian Quarterly, Vol.42(1), 1970, pp.15-26.

Fainberg, Anthony, The connection is dangerous Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May, 1983, p.60.

Findlay, Trevor, Nuclear Dynamite: The Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Fiasco, Sydney: Pergamon, 1990.

Green, Jim, New Reactor a Missed Opportunity. Search, Vol.28(9), 1997, pp.275-279.

Green, Jim, 1997B, New Reactor – a missed opportunity?, Radio National – Ockham’s Razor,
http://www.abc.net.au/science/kelvin/files/s366.htm

Green, Jim, n.d., A new reactor for scientific research?, http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/#science

Hayden, Bill, Hayden: An Autobiography, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1996, pp.422-423.

Henderson, Ian, N-plant proposal included atomic bomb option. The Australian, 1 January 1996.

Henderson, Ian, Weapons a sub-plot in nuclear power plant story. The Australian, 1 January 1997.

Holdren, John, Nuclear power and nuclear weapons: the connection is dangerous. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January, 1983, pp.40-45.

Holdren, John, Response to Anthony Fainberg (1983): ‘The connection is dangerous. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May, 1983B, pp.61-62.

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, A new dimension to the nuclear threat, Abolition 2000 Newsletter, 1997.

McSorley, Jean, Australia’s Nuclear Connections. Chain Reaction, Number 75, 1996, pp.29-31.

McSorley, Jean, 1998, “The New Reactor: National Interest and Nuclear Intrigues”, Submission to Senate Economics References Committee, Inquiry into Lucas Heights Nuclear Reactor. https://nuclear.foe.org.au/ansto/

Martin, Brian, Proliferation at Home. Search, No.5/6, 1984, pp.170-171.

Smith, Gary, From ANZUS to Nuclear Alliance. Social Alternatives, Vol.3(1), 1982, pp.10-14.

Stewart, Cameron, Military sought N-bomb option. The Australian, 1 January 1993.

Walsh, Jim, Surprise Down Under: The Secret History of Australia’s Nuclear Ambitions. The Nonproliferation Review, Fall, 1997, pp.1-20.

Walsh, Max, June 6, 2006, The Nuclear Club, The Bulletin.

White, Hugh, Don’t mention the bomb, The Age March 1, 2007, www.theage.com.au/news/hugh-white/dont-mention-the-bomb/2007/02/28/1172338702694.html

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Australia’s atomic bomb plans revealed

Australasian Science, September 2002

Peter Pockley adds new evidence to revelations on Australia’s deepest defence secret.

The story of how Coalition governments worked secretly to build the capacity for Australia to have its own nuclear weapons is probably the most startling in the relations between science and politics in the nation’s history.

The troubled nuclear legacy in Australia, which the current government is keen to downplay, had its roots in Britain’s determined, but ultimately futile, project to develop its independent nuclear capability.

As issues over nuclear technologies rise to the surface again over the replacement research reactor and the disposal of radioactive waste, the story is an object lesson in the perils of keeping such matters out of public scrutiny.

Fortress Australia, a dramatic documentary released last month at the Melbourne Film Festival and on ABC TV, has unravelled the influence of Philip Baxter, the powerful Chairman of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC) from 1956-72, on three pro-nuclear Liberal Prime Ministers: Robert Menzies, Harold Holt and John Gorton.

Layers of Secrecy Peeled Back

The first clues to the existence of these plans emerged from a pioneering study of the AAEC by Ann Moyal in Search, the predecessor of Australasian Science, in September 1975 (pp.365-384). Moyal’s perceptive analysis was all the more remarkable for its prescience, given the AAEC had refused her access to its official records under the strict security provisions of the Atomic Energy Act.

Moyal wrote that in an interview with William McMahon in 1975, the then former PM said that Baxter had “pressed strenuously for the production of plutonium of weapons grade”. She recorded that the choice of fuel type for the proposed power reactor for Australia “was therefore posed as pivotal in determining the country’s free use of the plutonium output for weapons development”.

Moyal concluded her paper with observations that seem fresh in nuclear issues of today: “The history of the AAEC is an object lesson in the problems and dangers of closed government. At root it is a case study of the framing of a national nuclear policy through the influence of one powerful administrator surrounded by largely silent men… Overall there was a disdain for public accountability on the part of a major scientific establishment.”

Newcastle University historian Wayne Reynolds made the claims explicit in his 2001 book, Australia’s Bid for the Bomb. Moyal and Reynolds deliver elements of their evidence in the documentary by Film Australia producer Peter Butt.

Baxter dominated the scene while also serving as Vice-Chancellor of the NSW University of Technology (later UNSW), and after retiring from that post. Fortress Australia replays some chilling interviews from the archives: “The only way in which we can protect ourselves, I believe, is by having not machine guns and rifles, but the most sophisticated scientific weapons that we can devise. And I put nuclear weapons in that too. And anything else which will enable one man to hold off a hundred.”

At the time, the 1950s and 1960s, the Cold War was at its height and paranoia was abroad about an imminent Armageddon following a nuclear exchange between the USA and USSR.

Anna Binnie, who is completing a thesis on the AAEC, wrote sceptically of Reynolds’ atomic conspiracy theory in Australasian Science (August 2001, pp.29-31). This brought into the story nuclear engineer, Alan Parkinson, who had worked with the AAEC from 1965-81. Parkinson has become prominent following his persistent attacks on the government over its handling of nuclear waste, which he labels “irresponsible” (AS, August 2002, p.14).

In an unpublished letter to the Editor, Parkinson corrected technical errors in Binnie’s article and added, obliquely: “Across the period 1967-1969 AAEC engineers and scientists were seconded to Britain to investigate a natural uranium fuelled, heavy water moderated, boiling light water cooled reactor which might have been built in Australia (Jervis Bay)”.

He did not disclose in this note he was one of those engineers, but when Australasian Science interviewed him last month his professional story reinforced Reynolds’ and Butt’s conclusions (see below).

Explosive Documents

Butt uncovered several revealing documents marked “Top Secret” and “AUSTEO” (Australian Eyes Only).

One memo from Baxter to the Cabinet Defence Committee, “Plutonium Production in Australia, 16th January, 1958”, gives a precise costing for extracting “military plutonium” from a power reactor of the British Calder Hall type, which used natural uranium. The cost of plutonium by-product from 120 MW of electricity was £23,500 per kg. A reactor was proposed for Mt Isa, Queensland, where large ore bodies of uranium minerals had been discovered.

Another memo headed “Nuclear Weapons for the Australian Forces, 3.9.58” followed minutes of a meeting in Canberra on 29 January 1958 between Menzies and British PM Harold Macmillan, which paved the way for the secret exchange of information from the UK nuclear program.

Acting on instructions from the Minister for Defence, Air Marshal F.R. Scherger, Chief of the Air Staff, reported in “Tactical Nuclear Weapons, 13th November 1958” that each “nuclear bomb” of “nominal yield of 15/20 kilo-tons” would cost £500,000 sterling.

A 1966 “Paper by Department of Supply and A.A.E.C.: COSTS OF A NUCLEAR EXPLOSIVES PROGRAMME” covered a civil power reactor that covertly doubled as a plutonium producer, plus weapons manufacture, R&D and testing and a diffusion plant for producing highly enriched uranium (U235 for uranium bombs) as well as “tritium, separated lithium isotopes and deuterium for a thermonuclear weapons programme”.

“A capital outlay of $100M could equip [Australia] with the capacity to produce annually sufficient plutonium for thirty nominal (20KT) weapons at a cost of $13M per annum.” The paper concluded: “It must be emphasised that no allowance has been made in the above figures for any delivery system costs”.

But plans for delivery were already well underway as, in October 1963, Menzies had ordered 24 of the highly expensive F-111 fighter-bombers from the US, precisely (but secretly) because they provided the capacity to deliver nuclear bombs. When the Australian nuclear program was cancelled a decade later, they had to be modified, again expensively, for delivering conventional explosives. Those that have not crashed are still in service.

In “Nuclear Weapons Policy; Top Secret AUSTEO” in February 1968, the AAEC confirmed: “If Australia possessed a civil nuclear power generation capability with associated facilities, it could produce the required quantities of weapons-grade plutonium at minimal cost… This would limit the cost of producing nuclear weapons virtually to the design, development and production of the weapons itself, including trials.”

Without stating the obvious, this subterfuge enabled the government and AAEC to hide what it was really doing and its true cost from the public.

The AAEC pointed out: “The cost of development of a nuclear warhead is progressively decreasing as the technology involved becomes public knowledge”.

Baxter, as the real author, played on the fear factor, underlining it for emphasis: “The ease and secrecy with which countries can now develop clandestine nuclear weapons, or clandestinely transfer or conceal existing weapons, has ensured that in future ‘total and complete disarmament’ is not a realistic policy. Nations can no longer have implicit faith in the pledged word of all other nations. Even security guarantees supported by both the USA and Soviet Russia cannot be regarded as credible and would be adopted at peril.”

According to Dr Jim Walsh, a Harvard University historian and expert in nuclear history who has verified the Australian record: “Baxter [was] a brilliant and crafty fellow”.

In describing Baxter’s style in the film, Moyal said: “It was one of the times in policy-making when secrecy was rampant… He fought like a tiger for Jervis Bay, [saying] most people know nothing about the technology; therefore the expert must be trusted.”

The date of the 23-page AAEC memo is significant. Clearly, it had been very carefully prepared by Baxter and kept under wraps for presentation to government at the most favourable time. This moment came when Gorton, the most bellicose of nuclear advocates among the succession of PMs, almost accidentally succeeded Holt after his disappearance in Port Philip Bay. As a Senator in 1957, Gorton had even espoused the need for “intercontinental missiles of our own”.

The remarkably confident AAEC memo landed on the government within days of Gorton announcing his ministry on 28 February 1968. The rush to Australia’s bomb had begun in earnest.

In October 1969 Gorton announced that the government would build a 500 MW power reactor for the AAEC on Commonwealth land at Jervis Bay. A call for tenders was issued.

Next year, before any contracts were let for construction, excavation started at the site and a high quality road was built. The initial cost was $1.25 million. Virtually no information was provided to the public. Secrecy and deception ruled as Gorton denied the project had anything to do with nuclear weapons. A huge rectangular scar is still clearly visible from the air.

Gorton’s wasteful nuclear legacy lives to this day. The fact that this went unremarked in obituaries on his recent death show how little is known about this decades-long drama in Australian history.

But, after McMahon toppled Gorton from the Prime Ministership in March 1971, the project was being quietly shelved up to when he lost office in December 1972. In her Search article, Moyal wrote that McMahon gave “minimal information about the government’s determination to retract from the nuclear program at Jervis Bay”. McMahon’s successor, Gough Whitlam, cancelled it finally a year later.

Fresh Evidence

From 1994-97, Parkinson was the Commonwealth’s overseer of the clean-up of the nuclear weapons waste that Britain left at Maralinga. He was removed after querying the government’s management and cutting of corners (AS, April 2000, pp.20-22; July 2000, p.16).

In the film Parkinson asked: “What did Australia get [from its nuclear liaison with Britain]? Hundreds of square kilometres of plutonium-contaminated land, which they still have. But no bomb. Crazy.”

Parkinson had entered the bomb story in 1965, unaware of the high-level plots behind the scenes. He had been working on designing reactors for the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) when he was recruited to do similar work for the AAEC at Lucas Heights. Two years later, he was one of a team of 25 AAEC staff seconded to UKAEA for 2 years to develop designs for an Australian reactor.

The AAEC, he says, had already been looking at the Snowy River and Mt Isa as possible sites. But, after he was seconded to Canada and then to the USA, Jervis Bay was announced in 1970 and he worked on tender assessment while in the USA.

Only after he returned late in 1970 did he “twig to the realisation that the reactor type selected – a Steam Generating Water Reactor with on-line refuelling – enabled continuous production of plutonium 239, as used in Nagasaki-type bombs. Yet, all of us engineers wanted a Pressurised Water Reactor without on-line refuelling. We were overruled.”

Parkinson says: “I then met a guy [he declines to name him] who had been brought from UKAEA specifically to design a plutonium separation plant. A modular design got on paper. Also, a team of 30 in the AAEC labs had gone further by developing gas centrifuges for enriching uranium 235.

“‘Hang on,’ I asked myself. Why do we need a plutonium separation plant that does not fit into a power program? And, once uranium enrichment exceeds 3% (for reactor fuel) it approaches weapons grade. My suspicions had become firm by September 1975.”

Reynolds brought the nuclear secret up to date in concluding the film. He believes Australians “want to have the capacity to develop our own bomb quickly, in the event that the Americans are not forthcoming… I think it’s fair to assume that that capacity is still on the books”.

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Fortress Australia

ABC showed a remarkable documentary called ‘Fortress Australia’ revealing the hidden weapons agenda behind the plan to build a nuclear power reactor on Commonwealth land at Jervis Bay. Currently (2022) the video is not on youtube but hopefully it will reappear. It might be possible to get it from the ABC (see notes below).

ABC information about Fortress Australia

http://web.archive.org/web/20160613042320/http://www.abc.net.au/tv/documentaries/stories/s650355.htm

Broadcast: 22/8/2002

Fortress Australia uncovers one of the most extraordinary chapters in Australia’s history – the brazen attempt by successive Australian governments to fortress their nation with atomic weapons. Recently released top secret documents finally allow this astonishing story to be told. They reveal a web of intrigue, in which Australia’s nuclear industry became inextricably linked to a quest for atomic weapons technology.

Set against a backdrop of cold war paranoia and fear of Asian aggression, Fortress Australia explores the motives of the politicians, defence chiefs and scientists who set out to buy, then ultimately build, a nuclear arsenal.

From uranium exploration and guided weapons research to A-bomb tests on Australian soil, the film shows how Canberra aided both Britain and the United States in the hope of sharing their nuclear secrets. But it proved to be an extraordinary double-game in which both allies and enemies treated Australia with mistrust.

This groundbreaking film penetrates the murky world of atomic espionage and counter-espionage. It exposes KGB infiltration of crucial political offices, which almost thwarted Australia’s nuclear ambitions. It also brings to light the secret role of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission in the quest for nuclear weapons — in particular, the ill-fated Jervis Bay Nuclear Reactor Project, which could have enabled Australia to build as many as 30 nuclear weapons a year.

FORTRESS AUSTRALIA – DIRECTOR’S NOTES

Fortress Australia had a long gestation. Two decades ago I picked up a self-published book – Without Hardware – penned by Catherine Dalton, daughter of British poet and historian Robert Graves, of I, Claudius fame.

The story dealt with the mysterious death in the late 1950s of Catherine’s husband Clifford Dalton, a leading engineer at the newly established Atomic Energy Commission’s research facility at Lucas Heights in Sydney. Dalton drew a picture of a highly secret institution, which she believed had a malicious hand in her husband’s untimely demise. In 1983, with the financial assistance of the Australian Film Commission, I set about writing a feature-length dramatic screenplay based on the book.

Some years later, when the American nuclear film Silkwood and two Australian features with nuclear themes were released, I realised the project would not survive in an already saturated market. After more than a dozen drafts, I relinquished the option. What I didn’t drop was an interest in the affairs of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission (AAEC) in the 1950s and 60s. That interest deepened when I came upon an extraordinary interview in the archives with the Commission’s Chairman, Sir Philip Baxter, in which he called for a biological, chemical and nuclear-armed Australia.

I also discovered a newspaper article from the early 1970s in which Baxter suggested that Australia was capable of producing nuclear weapons within a matter of years. I wondered how this could be achieved without the scientific infrastructure, the means to produce plutonium and the years of research and development required for such an enormous undertaking. The only conclusion I could come to was that these essential precursors to bomb production already existed. And if they did exist, then there must have been the political will in Australia at some time to build atomic weapons. But in the early 1980s, the official Government documents relating to nuclear defence and atomic matters were unavailable, due to the 30-year secrecy rule. A few people, however, had investigated the subject.

In a 1975 feature article for Search (a journal published by the Australian & New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science) historian Ann Moyal questioned both the highly secretive research agenda of the AAEC and the Gorton Government’s decision in 1969 to build a nuclear power station at Jervis Bay. In Moyal’s view, the economics of the reactor didn’t add up, unless it was to be used to provide plutonium for atomic weapons. Alice Cawte, in her excellent book, Atomic Australia, made a similar deduction.

In September 2000, I felt it was now time to revisit the story. I knew that documents relating to Australia’s early atomic history would now be open to inspection. To my surprise, there were more documents relating to Australia’s interest in nuclear weapons than for both uranium and atomic energy put together.

Many of the documents about nuclear weapons’ policy came from the Department of Defence, the Prime Minister’s Department and the Department of Supply, but those relating to the technical, scientific and economic aspects of bomb production were authored by the AAEC and often bore the signature of its Chairman, Sir Philip Baxter.

They revealed:
* A serious concern between 1946 and 1971 about Australia’s inadequate defences in the atomic age.
* Prime Minister Robert Menzies in the early 1950s believed that the defence forces would inevitably be armed with nuclear weapons.
* Growing doubts as to whether Australia’s allies, the United States and Britain, would provide nuclear protection.
* The Menzies government had made numerous but unfruitful approaches to Britain and America to secure nuclear technology.
* In 1958 Menzies made a direct approach to his British counterpart Macmillan to buy British nuclear weapons.
* Sir Philip Baxter, the Chairman of the AAEC, continually pressured the government to either acquire the weapons or create the infrastructure to build them in Australia.
* A growing fear of our northern neighbours (especially after China exploded its first atomic bomb in 1964, and Indonesia boasted that it would soon have the bomb) resulting in the government calling on the AAEC to provide costs for building the bomb.
* How Australian uranium was denied to Britain in 1966 so that there would be enough radioactive materials to start a nuclear weapons program.
* Baxter’s preferred tenders for the Jervis Bay Nuclear Reactor were those that could produce plutonium for building the bomb.

Other defence related documents provide an extraordinary insight into the mistrust held by Australia, not only of its potential enemies, but also of its allies. They reveal both a country fearful of its future and a belief that battlefield nuclear weapons were the answer to Australia’s defence needs.

With many of these documents in hand, I went to Film Australia, as it seemed a natural project for its National Interest Program. The greatest challenge was to bring the story alive on film. As a specialist in archive film, I knew sourcing newsreels and informational films dealing with defence and politics wouldn’t be difficult. But this project also required footage not in the public domain. More than 50 hours of archive footage was located, many hours of which have never before been released for public screening.

One such film was a ‘classified’ version of a documentary called Operation Blowdown, which covered the scientific and military aspects of a simulated nuclear blast in North Queensland in 1963. This bizarre experiment assumed that the next war involving Australia would take place in the jungles of South East Asia or even New Guinea and involve nuclear weapons. Out of the US National Archives came extraordinary footage of the first Chinese Nuclear blast in 1964 – an event that so worried Menzies he called for a report on the costs of producing Australia’s own bombs.

Spectacular colour footage of the British bomb tests in Australia, the Woomera rocket range and the Lucas Heights research facility was also uncovered. ANSTO – the modern incarnation of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission – generously supplied splendid historical footage and gave the production permission to film its HIFAR Reactor. Candid ABC interviews with AAEC Chairman, Sir Philip Baxter, provide a chilling insight into both the risks for Australia of another global war and the hazards of allowing scientists to plan for it. Baxter’s call, in 1972, for nuclear weapons to repel refugees from a global catastrophe is one of the most disturbing interviews I have ever seen.

A rewarding aspect of the production was meeting the twelve interviewees who bring the story to life with surprising insights about Australia’s bold bid for a nuclear arsenal. A fortunate find was Jim Walsh, a Harvard University researcher, who investigates countries that have pursued atomic weapons options and either failed or succeeded, then renounced them. Walsh’s grasp of the Australian nuclear weapons story is unequalled.

During production we were able to uncover many relics of Australia’s nuclear history. Central to the story is the proposed Jervis Bay nuclear reactor, which would have provided the plutonium required for nuclear weapons’ production. In 1970, hectares of eucalypt forest were removed to provide foundations for the reactor. Today, the scar on the landscape remains as a stark reminder of our secret interest in developing a nuclear bomb.

We also travelled to Woomera Rocket Range, where Australia joined with Britain to develop guided missiles for the nuclear age. The crumbling launching pads and the spent weapons that litter the range represent the last vestiges of our defence relationship with Britain.

The most striking aspect of filming these places is that we were visiting territory once prohibited to all but scientists and defence personnel. These were places that were meant to provide the nation’s protection in the event of another global war, yet at the same time they were escalating the tension and suspicions that could have precipitated it.

Ultimately, we have produced Fortress Australia to allow Australians to understand the thinking of their political, scientific and defence leaders who flirted with the bomb.

It is a story about the all-too-trusting relationship between science and society. A tale from the height of the Cold War about secrecy and deception with poignant lessons for democracy – a story that powerfully resonates into the present day.

− Peter Butt, Producer/Director

The DVD is available for purchase from: Sales and Distribution Coordinator, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Level 1, 45 Murray Street Pyrmont NSW 2009, ph +61 2 8202 0144. If you’re going to buy the DVD, consider also getting the remarkable Silent Storm DVD about the British bomb tests and the role of whistleblower Hedley Marston.

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Atomic Australia

October 1997

Book review by Jim Green

Review of Alice Cawte, ‘Atomic Australia: 1944-1990’, Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1992.

Keith Alder, ‘Australia’s Uranium Opportunities: How Her Scientists and Engineers Tried to Bring Her into the Nuclear Age but were Stymied by Politics’, Sydney: P.M. Alder, 1996,  83 pp.

How close did Australia come to building nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s? By far the most interesting analysis of this issue is in Alice Cawte’s Atomic Australia. Cawte takes a critical look at the whole scope of Australia’s nuclear industry, but her major contribution is some detective work on the weapons issue. Cawte draws on academic literature, newspaper reports, and a considerable volume of unpublished archival material such as Cabinet submissions from the government’s Defence Committee, Ministers, and Phillip Baxter (Chairman of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission from 1953 to 1972). The archival research is particularly revealing.

What emerges from Cawte’s research that there was sustained, high-level interest in a nuclear weapons capability through the 1950s and 1960s, though it was not seen as an urgent matter nor was their consensus on the issue. The Menzies government was not intent on developing nuclear weapons – most of the time it just wanted to keep its options open. To this end, the government was willing to support civil nuclear projects – such as nuclear power – in order to lower the barriers to nuclear weapons. There was also considerable interest in the purchase of nuclear weapons from the US or the UK, or for the stationing of American nuclear weapons in Australia.

Nuclear cowboys such as Baxter sought to drum up business for themselves by pushing for nuclear weapons – it was no coincidence that the strongest push came in the late 1960s, when the AAEC was at a loose end and its future insecure. A second, more important driving force was ruling-class paranoia about Australia’s position as an isolated outpost of British imperialism. At various times this paranoia was focused on Japan, Russia, China, and Indonesia. Always there were nagging doubts as to whether Australia’s imperialist allies, the US and the UK, would come to the rescue in the event of threats to Australia’s sovereignty. Hence the sycophancy – the weapons tests, the US bases, Australian troops in Vietnam, and so on. And hence the interest in the purchase or construction of nuclear weapons.

On numerous occasions through the 1950s, nuclear cowboys and politicians argued for the introduction of nuclear power. Often it was argued that one reason for building a nuclear power plant was to lower the barriers to nuclear weapons. The connection was twofold: plutonium could be separated from spent fuel from power reactors, and the expertise gained through a power program would be invaluable for a weapons program. While generally supportive of the various proposals put forward, the government continually deferred making a decision on nuclear power, largely because of the immature state of the industry overseas and the abundance of fossil fuels in Australia.

In the 1950s, the government’s Defence Committee, which included the chiefs of the armed forces, approached the US about the possibility of stationing nuclear weapons in Australia. No dice. In 1958 an informal approach was made to buy bombers and tactical nuclear weapons from the UK. Again, no dice. The 1963 decision to buy F-111 bombers from the US was partly motivated by the capacity to modify F-111s to carry nuclear bombs if required; better still, their range of 2000 nautical miles made them suitable for strikes on Indonesia if such were needed to put an end to Sukarno’s “adventurism”.

In 1965, the AAEC and the Department of Supply were commissioned to examine all aspects of Australia’s policy towards nuclear weapons and the cost of establishing a nuclear weapons program in Australia. The AAEC also began a centrifuge uranium enrichment program in 1965. For the first two years, this program was carried out in secret because of fears that public knowledge of the project would lead to allegations of intentions to build nuclear bombs.

There were several plausible justifications for the enrichment project, such as the potential profit to be made by exporting enriched uranium. While there is no concrete evidence, it is also possible that the weapons implications counted in favour of the government’s decision to approve and fund the enrichment program. Its worth noting that South Africa covertly built highly-enriched uranium bombs using enrichment facilities, and Pakistan has almost certainly done the same.

Despite the glut in the uranium market overseas, the Minister for National Development announced in 1967 that uranium companies would henceforth have to keep half of their known reserves for Australian use, and he acknowledged in public that this decision was taken because of a desire to have a domestic uranium source in case it was needed for nuclear weapons.

The momentum continued to build in the late 1960s. (Sir Phillip) Baxter was still an influential advocate of nuclear weapons, as were some other nuclear scientists and administrators including Australia’s second Nuclear Knight, Sir Ernest Titterton. The Democratic Labor Party, strongly Roman Catholic and fiercely anti-communist, advocated a nuclear weapons capability in official policy statements. Sundry other politicians argued the case for nuclear weapons. The Returned Services League advocated a weapons program, though equivocally at times, and there was some support within the military.

The intention to leave open the nuclear weapons option was evident in the government’s approach to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) from 1969-71. By this time John Gorton was Prime Minister. He had openly advocated the production or acquisition of nuclear weapons in the late 1950s. Gorton was determined not to sign the NPT, and he had some powerful allies such as Baxter. When the United Nations General Assembly met in April 1968, the Australian position was one of obfuscation and rejection of the NPT. A host of specious arguments were put forward, such as that signing the NPT would retard Australia’s economic development. Back in Australia, the Minister for National Development admitted that a sticking point was a desire not to close off the weapons option.

Another episode in the late 1960s was the “peaceful” nuclear explosions fiasco. The AAEC and the government offered Australia as a guinea-pig for an American project to test massive nuclear explosions. The plan was for five 200-kiloton explosions to create an artificial harbour off the coast of Western Australia; by contrast, the Hiroshima bomb was 12-15 kilotons. Thankfully, that project was abandoned, and the AAEC’s “Plowshare Committee” was disbanded soon after.

Nuclear power was back on the agenda in 1969. A plan was approved to build a power reactor at Jervis Bay on the NSW south coast. The project was abandoned in 1971, though not before considerable preliminary work had been completed and a number of tenders from overseas firms had been received and reviewed. There is a wealth of circumstantial evidence – too much to discuss here – to suggest that the Jervis Bay project was motivated, in part, by a desire to bring Australia closer to a nuclear weapons capability.

The financial costs associated with nuclear weapons were never likely to be insurmountable. Developing the technical and manufacturing expertise and facilities would have taken considerable time and effort, a significant but not prohibitive obstacle. The major barriers to nuclear weapons manufacture in Australia have been political. There were (and are) considerable doubts as to whether any advantages of acquiring nuclear weapons would outweigh negatives such as the possibility of sparking a regional nuclear arms race, or the possibility of threatening the alliance with the US.

Overall, Cawte’s analysis of the weapons issue is intriguing and convincing. Cabinet documents from 1962-66, released in the five years since Cawte’s book, all confirm the general thrust of her arguments. Cawte’s book has, by and large, met with deafening silence from the nuclear industry, but there have also been some attacks. One such attack is that of Keith Alder in his book Australia’s Uranium Opportunities (which is mostly focused on the AAEC’s enrichment project).

Alder was centrally involved in much of the AAEC’s work from the mid 1950s until 1982. He claims that “…… there was never any planning or work done by the AAEC towards the development of nuclear weapons in Australia …… (All), repeat all, of the Commission’s own work was directed at all times to the peaceful uses of Atomic Energy, and those who say otherwise are remoulding history to suit their own false views and political purposes.”

In fact, all of the AAEC’s work lowered the barriers to nuclear weapons to a greater or lesser degree, regardless of intentions. Here is Phillip Baxter arguing the point: “Almost every action, every piece of research, technological development or industrial activity carried out in peaceful uses of atomic energy could also be looked upon as a step in the ‘manufacture’ of nuclear weapons. There is such a large overlap in the military and peaceful uses in these areas that they are virtually one.”

Whether there was ever any research at the AAEC directly and deliberately related to weapons is an open question. If a decision was ever made to systematically pursue a weapons program – and its unlikely that there was such a decision – it would have been in the late 1960s under Gorton. For the inside information on that period, we’ll have to wait a couple more years for the declassification of documents under the 30-year rule.

More generally, Alder’s ranting misses the point. He ignores Baxter’s arguments, repeated over the years, that projects such as nuclear power and enrichment should be pursued to lower the barriers to nuclear weapons. He ignores (or is unaware of) the overtures made by the federal government’s Defence Committee to the US and UK in relation to the acquisition of nuclear weapons. He says nothing about the AAEC’s Plowshare Committee and the “peaceful” nuclear explosions nonsense. He says nothing about the refusal of the government to sign the NPT in the late 1960s. He ignores the public advocacy of Gorton and several other politicians for a nuclear weapons “deterrent”. And he ignores much else besides.

All that Alder can do is to assert that neither Baxter nor anyone at the AAEC supported nuclear weapons development or supported civil nuclear projects to lower the barriers to nuclear weapons. He repeatedly says that those who claim otherwise are politically-motivated, anti-nuclear dogmatists whose arguments rely on dubious sources. Alder’s perspective is one of embitterment at the failure of so many of the AAEC’s nuclear projects. In short, his erudite thesis on Australia’s nuclear history is that “Dogma won, over national interest.”

Alder’s vision is for Australia to provide the world with “total nuclear fuel cycle services including reprocessing and waste disposal”, and if the ignorant, politically-motivated dogmatists have their way, Australia risks invasion from Asian countries in need of uranium. Baxter argued that last point many years ago.

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Further reading on Australia’s bid for the bomb

Nautilus Institute, Australia nuclear proliferation history

Jacques E.C. Hymans, 2000, “Isotopes and Identity: Australia and the Nuclear Weapons Option, 1949-1999”, Nonproliferation Review, Vol.7, No.1, Spring, pp.1-23, http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/hym71.pdf

Jim Walsh, 1997, ‘Surprise Down Under: The Secret History of Australia’s Nuclear Ambitions’, The Nonproliferation Review, Fall, pp.1-20, http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/walsh51.pdf

Alice Cawte, 1992, “Atomic Australia: 1944-1990”, Sydney: New South Wales University Press.

Wayne Reynolds, 2000, “Australia’s bid for the atomic bomb”, Melbourne University Press.

Richard Broinowski, Australian nuclear weapons: the story so far, Austral Policy Forum 06-23A 17 July 2006, http://nautilus.org/apsnet/0623a-broinowski-html/

Richard Broinowski, 2006, Australia’s New Nuclear Ambitions, http://nautilus.org/apsnet/0624a-broinowski-html/

Richard Tanter, ‘The Re-emergence of an Australian nuclear weapons option?’, APSNet Policy Forum, December 1, 2007, http://nautilus.org/apsnet/the-re-emergence-of-an-australian-nuclear-weapons-option/

Tom Hyland, 6 July 2008, ‘When Australia had a bombshell for US’, http://www.theage.com.au/national/when-australia-had-a-bombshell-for-us-20080705-32ai.html

Greg Ansley, 1 Jan 2002, ‘N-club tempting for military chiefs’, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=584576

‘Australia’s defence chiefs pushed for atomic weapons research as part of the nation’s nuclear energy programme, despite the signing of the non-proliferation treaty 15 months earlier, secret 1971 cabinet documents reveal.’

Jim Green website archive:

• http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/weapons.html
• http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/anstoweapons.html
• http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/reynolds.html
• http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/30410/20090218-0153/www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/rrweapons.html

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Australia – nuclear proliferation history

Please see the Nautilus Institute webpage which is likely to have updated material.

Government sources

Australia

Strategic Basis of Australian Defence Policy – 1971, Department of Defence

192. Finally there is, in our opinion, no present strategic need for Australia to develop or acquire nuclear weapons; but the implications of China’s growing nuclear military capacity, and of the growth of military technology in Japan and India, need continuous review. We consider that the opportunities for decision open to the Australian Government in future would be enlarged if the lead time for the acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability could be shortened. We recommend regard to this, without undue claims upon resources, in the future development of Australia’s nuclear capacity for peaceful purposes, in the Defence research and development programme, and in other relevant ways.

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Strategic Basis of Australian Defence Policy – 1976, Department of Defence

96. No requirement is seen in Australia’s present and prospective strategic circumstances for acquisition of nuclear weapons. Any steps taken in this direction would at a certain point seriously concern the US and probably cause strong opposition from other nuclear powers. It could alarm countries of major strategic concern to Australia and stimulate further nuclear proliferation. (See also paragraph 382 in Chapter Ten).
97. No requirement is seen for Australia now to acquire nuclear weapons. However, the possible requirement to keep the lead time for Australia matched with contingent developments in other relevant countries, calls for keeping up-to-date in developments and for a review periodically of Australia’s potential for development of nuclear weapons, against the possibility that the country might be forced to consider turning to them for protection at some indeterminate time in the future.

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United States

“Australia’s Prime Minister Wanted ‘Nuclear Option’”, 40th Anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, National Security Archive, 1 July 2008.

Document 16a: Dean Rusk, Secretary of State, U.S. Embassy Canberra cable 4842 to Department of State, 6 April 1968, Secret Nodis, National Security Archive

In my talk with Prime Minister Gorton I ran into a full battery of reservations about the Non-Proliferation Treaty. You could almost repeat everything the Germans have said and put them in Australian mouths. Gorton is deeply concerned about giving up the nuclear option for a period as long as twenty-five years when he cannot know how the situation will develop in the area. He sounded almost like De Gaulle in saying that Australia could not rely upon the United States for nuclear weapons under ANZUS in the event of nuclear blackmail or attack on Australia. I will not recount here what I said to him but I opened up all stops. One of the things which s getting in the way is objections coming out of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission and Defense on all sorts of picayune problems on which we have been able to satisfy the Germans and others.

Document 16b: U.S. Embassy Canberra cable 4923 to Department of State, “NPT,” 10 April 1969, Secret/Limdis

Document 16c: State Department Cable 144920 to Embassy Canberra, “Australian Concerns regarding NPT,” 11 April 1968, Secret, Limdis

Document 16d: Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Memorandum of Conversation, “Consultations with Australians on NPT and Status of Interpretations on Articles I and II,” 24 April 1968, Secret

Mr Bunn [ACDA] said that they [ACDA and AEC officials] were particularly impressed by the independece of the officials representing the Australian AEC, the confidence of their ability to manufacture a nuclear weapon and desire to be in a position to do so on very short notice. …The political rationalization of these officials was that Australia needed to be in a position to manufacture nuclear weapons rapidly if India and Japan were to go nuclear. Mr. Bunn indicated that the Australians were fully aware of the implications of the six interpretations offered to the Soviet Union on April 28, 1967. Indeed the Australian officials indicated they would not even contemplate signing the NPT if it were not for an interpretation which would enable the deployment of nuclear weapons belonging to an ally on Australian soil.

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Analysis

Australia’s Quest to Enrich Uranium and the Whitlam Government’s Loans Affair, Wayne Reynolds, Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 54, Issue 4.

Australian nuclear weapons: the story so, Richard Broinowski, Austral Policy Forum 06-23A 17 July 2006

Australia’s New Nuclear Ambitions, Richard Broinowski, Austral Policy Forum 06-24A 24 July 2006.

Australia’s Nuclear History, Rear Vision, ABC Radio National, 4 June 2006.

Exploring The Nuclear Option, Pathfinder: Air Power Development Centre, issue 29, August 2005.

Fact or Fission, the Truth about Australia’s  Nuclear Ambitions, Richard Broinowski, Scribe Books, 2003.

Fortress Australia, ABC television documentary, Peter Butt – Director/Co-producer/writer/editor Broadcast: 22 August 2002.

Australia’s Bid for the Atomic Bomb, Wayne Reynolds, Melbourne University Press, 2001.

“Isotopes and Identity: Australia and the Nuclear Weapons Option, 1949-1999”, Jacques E. C.Hymans, Nonproliferation Review, Vol.7, No.1, Spring, pp.1-23, 2000.

Surprise Down Under: The Secret History of Australia’s Nuclear Ambitions, Jim Walsh, Nonproliferation Review 5 (Fall 1997), pp 1-20. This paper examines how Australia pursued nuclear weapons from the mid-1950s until signing the NPT in 1973, first through attempted procurement and then by developing indigenous capacity.

Atomic Australia 1944-1990, Alice Cawte,University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1992.

Australia and Nuclear Policy, Desmond Ball, in Strategy and Defence: Australian Essays, Desmond Ball (ed.), George Allen and Unwin, 1982, pp. 320-343.

Australia in the Nuclear Age, Ian Bellany, Sydney University Press, 1972.

Proliferation at home, Brian Martin, Search, Vol. 15, No. 5-6, June/July 1984, pp. 170-171:

Although an overt bomb lobby has not recently been conspicuous, influential opinion exists within the government and the Department of Defence that nuclear weapons should not be ruled out. This is precisely the current of thought revealed in a defence document called ‘The strategic basis of Australian defence policy’ revealed by The National Times in March 1984. Brian Toohey (1984) summarises the implications regarding Australian nuclear weapons in this way: ‘The Hawke Government has accepted a defence planning document that says Australia should be in a position to develop nuclear weapons as quickly as any neighbour that looks like doing so.’

The policy document reveals a cavalier disregard for Australian government obligations under the NPT, giving the impression that the NPT would simply be ignored if the government decided to move towards a nuclear weapons capability. This disregard does not sit well with the government’s heavy reliance on the NPT as the guarantee against military use of Australian uranium exports.

While there may be no influential groups actively pushing for Australian nuclear weapons, the acceptance of the ‘strategic basis papers’ suggests that neither is there much principled opposition to nuclear weapons in Cabinet or the Defence Department. Changes in political circumstances could well lead to a quick resurgence of the influence of the bomb lobby.

Popular support for Australian nuclear weapons might not be hard to create and channel. An opinion poll reported in March 1981 that over one third of Australians favoured Australia having nuclear bombs (Bulletin, 1981) – similar to the level of support for this option a decade earlier (Anon., 1969a).

Click here to download the report, Uranium mining, nuclear power & ‘Ethical’ Investment, by Frances Howe. Corporate Watch Australia. September 2008.

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In this webpage:

• Choice magazine write-up of the ethical investment report.
• Frances Howe’s summary of her report, from The Age.
• FoE article on the ethics of uranium mining and nuclear power.
• Updates

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There is a ‘crisis of definition’ when it comes to ethical and sustainable funds, according to a new report.

Choice Magazine
Online 09/08
http://www.choice.com.au/viewArticle.aspx?id=106491&catId=100570&tid=100011&p=1&title=Uranium+and+ethical+investing

A report by the not-for-profit group Corporate Watch Australia claims that “many so-called ethical funds are not necessarily ethical in the area of uranium mining”.

“Of the 18 ethical investment funds studied, just four have policies that absolutely screen out investment in uranium and nuclear power, five have no policy, seven have policies that allow for some level of investment and one is proudly pro-nuclear,” Corporate Watch says. The companies offering funds that screen out uranium are Australian Ethical, CVC Sustainable Investments, Hunter Hall Investment Management and Perpetual Investments.

The report was commissioned by environmental group Friends of the Earth, which has been campaigning against uranium mining and nuclear power for 35 years. “We consider investment in the nuclear power chain to be unethical because of the industry’s disproportionate, adverse impacts on indigenous people; the repeatedly demonstrated connection between the ‘peaceful’ nuclear chain and nuclear weapons; the legacy of high-level nuclear waste and the existence of a plethora of more benign energy production and energy-saving methods to reduce greenhouse emissions,” Friends of the Earth says.

Corporate Watch’s findings are consistent with our September 2007 article, which found that despite uranium’s controversies most ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ funds invest in big uranium mining companies such as BHP and Rio Tinto. Funds justify this on the basis that the uranium is used for nuclear energy, not weapons, or that the companies chosen get less than 5% or 10% of their (enormous) overall revenue from uranium, or that they have good environmental, social or corporate governance performance.

‘Sustainable’ and ethical’ funds that invest in uranium often permit investments in industries like tobacco and gambling too. Interpretations of what’s sustainable or ethical differ; the catch-all term ‘responsible’ is now favoured by the industry’s representative body. The industry seems to view the negative screening approach to ethical investing (where problem industries are excluded from funds) as outdated and less relevant than the more mainstream ‘responsible’ and ‘sustainability’ investing, which researches and invests in companies that perform well on environmental, social, ethical and corporate governance measures. But Corporate Watch calls this a crisis of definition. It quotes the company Australian Ethical as saying “a lot of companies claiming to invest ‘sustainably’ are actually talking about financial, rather than social or ecological sustainability”.

For information about where a range of sustainable and ethical funds invest, where to find their all-important investment methodologies, as well as their investment performance, go to our ethical investing report and the Responsible Investment Association website.

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Radioactive alert on ethical investment

2 September 2008, Frances Howe, The Age (business section)
One man’s ethical is another’s poison; but the adage does not apply to uranium, writes Frances Howe.

A RECENT Corporate Watch Australia survey reveals that many so-called ethical investment funds invest inuranium mining.

Some fund managers justify investment in uranium with questionable arguments about nuclear power and climate change, but the primary reason for the shift is probably BHP Billiton’s entry into the uranium industry with its 2005 acquisition of WMC Resources, which owns the Olympic Dam uranium mine in South Australia.

Of 16 ethical investment funds studied, just two allow absolutely no investment in uranium or nuclear power.
The rest either have no policy on the matter or allow limited investment in the nuclear industry – for example by allowing investment only in companies that get below a certain percentage of their income from uranium, or ruling out uranium mining but having no policy on other parts of the nuclear cycle.

Ethical investment is booming: from its origins in 1984 with a fund nicknamed “Brazil”, because you’d have to be nuts to invest in it, the sector is now worth $2 trillion worldwide. According to the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia, Australian responsible investment portfolios grew from $4.5 billion to $17.1 billion from 2004 to 2007.
However, this rapid growth is accompanied by a crisis of definition and a dilution of its original principles. The concept “ethical investment” is vaguely defined: fund managers make their own rules, and their definitions of “ethical” vary.

The sector is now more commonly called “Sustainable and Responsible Investment”. In Australia it is represented by the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia, which manages the national certification program for investment providers.

Certified companies can display RIAA’s “Responsible Investment” logo. However, there is nothing to stop any fund calling itself ethical without going through the certification process, and funds frequently do.

Many ethical investment funds use an approach known as “best of sector”. This means they do not rule out investing in any legal industry, but instead seek investment in companies that claim to be trying to improve their ethical practices. A sector cannot be ruled out on the grounds that it is simply wrong – if a company within that sector can show it is making some gesture, however tokenistic, to improve its practices, it can be included in an ethical portfolio.

Some fund managers rule out investment in companies that get more than 5% of their revenue from uraniummining or nuclear power. This means that AMP’s ethical portfolio can still include shares in BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto – the world’s fifth and third largest uranium miners respectively.

Several fund managers that invest in nuclear power cite climate change as a reason. However, little effort is made to justify the claims or to refute counter-arguments.

There is no attempt to refute the large and growing body of scientific literature that demonstrates how the expansion of renewable energy sources, coupled with concerted energy-efficiency programs, can generate major reductions in greenhouse emissions without recourse to nuclear power.

Nor have most fund managers dealt with the ethical problems associated with uranium mining and nuclear power. The uranium mining industry has a poor track record in its dealings with Aboriginal communities – failing to consult traditional owners, using divide-and-rule tactics, and ignoring sacred sites.

In the words of Yvonne Margarula, Mirarr senior traditional owner in the Northern Territory: “Uranium mining has taken our country away from us and destroyed it. Mining and the millions of dollars in royalties have not improved our quality of life.”

Similar patterns of “radioactive racism” are evident in the management of byproducts of the nuclear cycle. North American activist Winona LaDuke told the Indigenous World Uranium Summit in 2006: “The greatest minds in the nuclear establishment have been searching for an answer to the radioactive waste problem for 50 years, and they’ve finally got one: haul it down a dirt road and dump it on an Indian reservation.”

Another ethical quandary concerns the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. No fewer than five of the 10 states to have produced nuclear weapons did so on the back of their “peaceful” nuclear programs. Former US vice-president Al Gore neatly summarised the problem in 2006: “For eight years in the White House, every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program.

And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal … then we’d have to put them in so many places we’d run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale.”

While ethical questions are necessarily arguable, the nuclear industry has been repeatedly and comprehensively discredited. If the ethical investment market is to retain its credibility, it must employ more rigorous and more consistent ethical screens. Further, there is a clear case for regulatory reform to ensure more transparent disclosure of investment in controversial sectors such as uranium mining and nuclear power.

Frances Howe is a researcher with Corporate Watch Australia, which monitors the social and environmental impacts of Australian corporations operating here and abroad, as well as international corporations operating in Australia.

A longer version of the above article is posted on the Online Opinion website:

www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7788&page=0

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What’s ethical about uranium?

Friends of the Earth, Australia

September 2008

Proponents of uranium mining and nuclear power argue that nuclear power is a necessary strategy in the battle against climate change. However, nuclear power could make only a modest dent in greenhouse emissions, it poses serious risks including WMD proliferation, and the existence of a plethora of more benign climate change abatement options obviates any need for nuclear power and does away with the false choice of fossil fuels vs. nuclear power.

Nuclear power could make only a modest dent in greenhouse emissions. A significant constraint is that, other than its military applications, nuclear power is used almost exclusively for electricity generation which accounts for 16-30% of global greenhouse emissions.

Globally, doubling nuclear power by 2050 at the expense of coal would reduce greenhouse emissions by no more than 5%. The 800-900 reactors required to achieve a doubling of nuclear output by 2050 would produce over one million tonnes of high-level nuclear waste, and enough plutonium to build over one million nuclear weapons.

The greenhouse benefits of nuclear power must be weighed against the costs and risks including nuclear weapons proliferation, the widespread and ongoing problem of ‘radioactive racism’, nuclear smuggling, the potential use of a wide variety of radioactive materials in ‘dirty bombs’, the potential targeting of nuclear plants by terrorists, the targeting of nuclear plants in national conflicts and wars (as has occurred on several occasions in the Middle East), the small risk of catastrophic accidents, the intractable problem of nuclear waste management, and the contamination and depletion of water resources.

The first two of those problems are briefly discussed here.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Nuclear power is the only energy source with a direct – and repeatedly-demonstrated – link to the production of Weapons of Mass Destruction. In five cases, nation states have succeeded in producing nuclear weapons under cover of an ostensibly peaceful nuclear program – India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa and North Korea. Many other countries (over 20 in total) have pursued nuclear weapons research under cover of a civil nuclear program.

Former US Vice President Al Gore said in May 2006 that: “For eight years in the White House, every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program. And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal … then we’d have to put them in so many places we’d run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) safeguards system is flawed and under-resourced and provides little confidence that the proliferation risks associated with civil nuclear programs can be adequately contained. The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, has noted that the IAEA’s basic rights of inspection are “fairly limited”, that the safeguards system suffers from “vulnerabilities” and “clearly needs reinforcement”, that efforts to improve the system have been “half-hearted”, and that the safeguards system operates on a “shoestring budget … comparable to that of a local police department “.

Impacts on Aboriginal communities

The uranium mining industry has a poor track record in its dealings with Aboriginal communities. Racism in the uranium mining industry in Australia typically involves: ignoring the concerns of Traditional Owners insofar as the legal and political circumstances permit; divide-and-rule tactics; bribery; humbugging Traditional Owners (exerting persistent, unwanted pressure until the mining company gets what it wants); providing Traditional Owners with false or misleading information; and threats, most commonly legal threats.

Mining company Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) and the Howard government were determined to override the opposition of the Mirarr Traditional Owners to the Jabiluka uranium mine in the Northern Territory. ERA and the government were defeated by a remarkable national and international campaign led by the Mirarr. The Jabiluka mine site has been rehabilitated and the Mirarr have a veto over any future development of the mine, but ERA still hopes to mine Jabiluka at some stage in the future and it still operates the Ranger uranium mine near Jabiluka.

Heathgate Resources, owned by General Atomics, succeeded in imposing the Beverley uranium mine on the Adnyamathanha people in north-east SA in the late 1990s. The company negotiated with a small number of Native Title claimants, but did not recognise the will of the community as a whole. This strategy, coupled with the joint might of industry and government, has resulted in inadequate and selective consultation with the Adnyamathanha people.

The racism associated with the Roxby Downs uranium mine in South Australia is enshrined in legislation. WMC Resources was granted completely unjustifiable legal privileges under the SA Roxby Indenture Act. This legislation overrides the Aboriginal Heritage Protection Act, the Environment Protection Act, the Water Resources Act and the Freedom of Information Act. The current mine owner, BHP Billiton, refuses to relinquish the legal privileges.

Ethical solutions to climate change

Nuclear power generates fewer greenhouse emissions than fossil fuels per unit of energy output. However, nuclear power is more greenhouse intensive than most renewable energy sources. For example, the 2006 Switkowski report states that nuclear power is three times more greenhouse intensive that wind power per unit of electrical output.

There is tremendous scope to use a wide range of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency measures to reduce greenhouse emissions. For example, the Australian Ministerial Council on Energy has identified methods to energy consumption and greenhouse emissions in the manufacturing, commercial and residential sectors by 20-30% with the adoption of commercially-available technologies with an average pay-back time of four years.

For comparison, the Switkowski report estimates that the construction of 25 nuclear power reactors in Australia by 2050 would reduce emissions by 17% compared to business-as-usual, assuming that nuclear power displaces black coal. Twenty-five reactors would produce 45,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste and enough plutonium to build 45,000 nuclear weapons.

A significant and growing body of scientific literature details how the systematic deployment of renewable energy sources, coupled with energy efficiency policies and technologies, can generate major reductions in greenhouse emissions – without recourse to nuclear power. Moreover, a number of renewable energy sources can supply reliable base-load power including geothermal, hydro, bioenergy and solar with storage.

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Sorry, We’re Sending Your Money To The Arms Dealers

By Nicholas Taylor

18 Jan 2010

Sorry, We're Sending Your Money To The Arms Dealers

This week over a million Australians lost the choice to prevent their super being invested in things like cluster bombs and cigarettes, writes Nicholas Taylor

Australia’s largest superannuation fund, which invests more than $30 billion on behalf of 1.4 million working Australians, has this week quietly removed its ethical exclusion policy.

Simply put, the door is now open for Australian Super to invest in “vice”.

Previously excluded from the fund’s “sustainable” options were companies deriving more than 5 per cent of their revenues from the “manufacture or sale of alcohol or tobacco, the operation of gaming facilities or the manufacture of gambling equipment, uranium extraction or the manufacture of weapons or armaments”.

The Dutton Coalition’s push to introduce nuclear power

• PowerPoint: The Dutton Coalition’s Nuclear Power Plan (July 2024)
• Dutton’s nuclear power plan will increase greenhouse emissions
• Dutton’s nuclear power plan will increase power bills AND taxes
• Dutton’s nuclear thuggery: planning to override state govt legal bans, use compulsory acquisition laws to acquire sites, and to ignore/override community opposition
• Power Games: Assessing coal to nuclear proposals in Australia: Cost, timing, consent and other constraints, 30-page report, Australian Conservation Foundation, June 2024.

Other webpages on this site with info about nuclear power

• April 2024: Coalition “in a panic” about response to confused and unpopular nuclear power plan
• April 2024: Peter Dutton’s nuclear push is a “suicide note” playing mostly to right wing echo chambers
• March 2024: The demise of nuclear power in Australia’s AUKUS partner countries
• Jan 2023 – Submission to Senate nuclear power inquiry by FoE and 10 other Australian environment groups.
• Nuclear Power’s Economic Crisis and its Implications for Australia, Dec. 2021 report by Friends of the Earth Australia
• NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro’s nuclear falsehoods (March 2020)
• Oct. 2019 – detailed joint NGO submission to NSW nuclear inquiry covering nuclear power and uranium mining
• Sept. 2019 – civil society statement opposing nuclear power in Australia with 50+ signatory groups (environment, health, faith and indigenous groups plus wonderful support from trade unions).
• Sept. 2019 – Australian environment groups’ submission to federal nuclear power inquiry (lots on nuclear economics, ‘generation IV’ concepts, small modular reactors etc).
• Global nuclear power issues
• Responses to nuclear power propagandists
• Impacts of nuclear power and uranium mining on water resources
• Public opinion in Australia towards nuclear power and uranium mining
• Ethical investment, uranium and nuclear power
• Main nuclear power section of this FoE website
• Nuclear power section on the links page
• EnergyScience Coalition Critique of the 2006 UMPNER/Switkowski report

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  Articles on other sites

  • Small nuclear reactors, huge costs, Oct. 2021 article in RenewEconomy
  • Nuclear power’s long decline in shadow of wind and solar, Sept. 2021 article in RenewEconomy
  • Supporters of nuclear need a reality check: it’s staggeringly expensive (FoE opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, 10 March 2020)
  • Australia’s nuclear fantasies: the technological creationism of nuclear power (Dr. Darrin Durant)

  Summary

  The conservative Howard government made nuclear power illegal in Australia in the late 1990s (EPBC and ARPANS Acts) and those prohibitions remain as of mid-2018.

  No power reactors have ever been built in Australia. The strongest push was for a power reactor at Jervis Bay in the late 1960s to early 1970s. That push was underpinned by a hidden weapons agenda as then Prime Minister John Gorton later acknowledged.

  As of mid-2018, nuclear power is off the mainstream political agenda in Australia. There is a push to build nuclear power plants (and repeal the legal prohibitions) driven by the far-right (e.g. Senator Cory Bernadi, the Minerals Council of Australia) and a few nuclear lobbyists (such as Ben Heard – whose fake environment group accepts secret corporate donations).

  In 2019, some dopey politicians are claiming that nuclear power is cheap. Here is a link to a June 2019 FoE briefing paper on nuclear power’s global economic crisis, including a letter sent to all federal MPs and Senators.

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  Some reasons to say ‘no’ to nuclear power in Australia

  UNNECESSARY

  We don’t need nuclear power. Several renewable energy sources – such as bioenergy, geothermal hot rocks, solar thermal electricity with storage, and sometimes hydroelecticity – can provide reliable baseload electricity.

  More information: https://nuclear.foe.org.au/links-to-literature-on-clean-energy-options/

  NUCLEAR WEAPONS

  Nuclear power is the one and only energy source with a direct and repeatedly-demonstrated connection to the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. For example, the first and only serious push for nuclear power in Australia was driven by a weapons agenda as then PM John Gorton later acknowledged.

  More information: www.nuclear.foe.org.au/power-weapons

  ACCIDENTS AND ATTACKS

  In addition to the risk of accidents, nuclear power reactors are vulnerable to disasters from sabotage, terrorism, or the use of conventional forces to attack nuclear facilities during war.

  More information: www.nuclear.foe.org.au/power

  ROUTINE EMISSIONS − RADIATION & CANCER

  The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation notes that international cancer incidence and mortality data demonstrate statistically-significant links between radiation and all solid tumours as a group, as well as for cancers of the stomach, colon, liver, lung, breast, ovary, bladder, thyroid, and for non-melanoma skin cancers and most types of leukaemia.

  More information: https://nuclear.foe.org.au/radiation/

  NUCLEAR WASTE

  The 2006 government-commissioned Switkowski report envisaged the construction of 25 power reactors, which would produce up to 45,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste. There is not a single permanent repository for spent fuel or high-level nuclear waste anywhere in the world.

  More information:

  https://nuclear.foe.org.au/nuclear-waste-international-issues/

  https://nuclear.foe.org.au/waste-import/

  DEMOCRACTIC RIGHTS

  Democratic rights have often been trampled in the pursuit of nuclear projects. The Howard government sought legal advice on its powers to override state laws banning nuclear power plants. The current (2012) Labor government is working to impose a nuclear waste dump at Muckaty in the NT despite the opposition of many Traditional Owners, an unresolved Federal Court challenge, and NT legislation banning the imposition of nuclear dumps. The government also plans to give itself the power to override any and all state/territorry laws, and affected local councils and communities have no say.

  COST

  Too cheap to meter, or too expensive to matter? The nuclear power industry survives only because of huge taxpayer subsidies.

  More information: EnergyScience Briefing Paper #1: http://www.energyscience.org.au/factsheets.html

  REDUCED PROPERTY PRICES. COMPULSORY LAND ACQUISITION. NO INSURANCE.

  A nuclear power plant would reduce local property values. The government may use compulsory land acquisition powers to seize land for reactors – just as it has previously seized land for a nuclear waste dump. Insurance companies do not insure against the risk of nuclear accidents.

  WATER

  Nuclear power is the most water-intensive of all the energy sources. Reactors typically consume 35-65 million litres of water per day.

  More information: https://nuclear.foe.org.au/water-consumption-and-pollution-uranium-and-nuclear-power/

  TOO SLOW

  It would take 15 years or more to develop nuclear power in Australia. Clean energy solutions can be deployed immediately.

  GREENHOUSE GASES

  Nuclear power emits three times more greenhouse gases than wind power according to the 2006 Switkowski report. Nuclear power is also far more greenhouse intensive than energy efficiency measures.

  More information: https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/806/nuclear-power-no-solution-climate-change

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  Joint NGO statement

  Joint Australian NGO Statement of Opposition to Nuclear Power (Dec 2010)

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  Even Ziggy Switkowski has given up on nuclear power!!

  ‘Australia has ‘missed the boat’ on nuclear power’, Cole Latimer, 11 Jan 2018, The Age, www.theage.com.au/business/the-economy/australia-has-missed-the-boat-on-nuclear-power-20180111-p4yyeg.html

  The Minerals Council of Australia has called for the country’s prohibition on nuclear power to be lifted. But both critics and supporters see little future for large-scale nuclear power in Australia’s energy mix.

  The man who once famously called for 50 nuclear reactors across Australia, nuclear physicist and NBN chairman Ziggy Switkowski, says “the window for gigawatt-scale nuclear has closed”.

  A lack of public support and any actual proposals for a nuclear plant had resulted in government inertia, he said on Thursday.

  “Government won’t move until a real business case is presented and none has been, to my knowledge, and there aren’t votes in trying to lead the debate,” he said, adding that renewables were now a more economically viable choice.

  “With requirements for baseload capacity reducing, adding nuclear capacity one gigawatt at a time is hard to justify, especially as costs are now very high (in the range of $5 billion to $10 billion), development timelines are 15+ years, and solar with battery storage are winning the race.”

  Warwick Grigor, the former chairman of Uranium King, mining analyst, and a director of uranium miner Peninsula Energy, agrees.

  “I think nuclear energy is great, but we’ve missed the boat in Australia, no one is going down that path in the foreseeable future,” Mr Grigor told Fairfax Media.

  “When Fukushima [the 2011 nuclear accident in Japan] occurred, that was the closing of the door to our nuclear power possibilities.”

  Mr Grigor sees battery technology, a market he has since entered, as a better alternative.

  Australian Conservation Foundation nuclear free campaigner Dave Sweeney said talk of nuclear power was “a dangerous distraction” from the steps that needed to address the energy and climate challenges facing Australia.

  Nuclear energy has been officially banned in Australia since 1998, with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s OPAL reactor at Lucas Heights, NSW, the only nuclear reactor in the country.

  But the Minerals Council’s executive director for uranium, Daniel Zavattiero, said the nation had excluded a low-emissions energy source of which Australia has an abundant supply from the current debate.

  “Maybe nuclear power might be something that is not needed, but an outright prohibition on it is not needed,” he said.

  Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg supported the Mineral Council’s stance.

  “There needs to be bipartisan support for nuclear power and that does not exist right now,” Mr Frydenberg said.

  “You would also need state-based support and that is not clear at this stage either.”

  In a pre-budget submission, the Minerals Council said nuclear energy needed to be “allowed to compete with other low-emissions sources of electricity – and on equal terms”.

  “The ban on nuclear power in Australia is hampering an open debate about future energy and climate change management.”

  Mr Zavattiero’s position has been supported by the South Australia Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, which recommended the lifting of the federal prohibition on a nuclear industry.

  Mr Switkowski said smaller, modular nuclear reactors could play a part in the future energy mix, and could support regional centres.

  An ANSTO spokesman told Fairfax Media these smaller plants could technically work in Australia.

  “If Australia did want to expand into nuclear energy technologies, there would be a number of options to consider in the future, including small modular reactors and Generation IV reactors, which could be feasible if the policy, economic settings and technology were right and public support was in place,” he said.

  However, the country currently did not have enough skilled personnel to safely operate a nuclear energy industry, he said.

  “The question of whether nuclear energy is technically or economically feasible is a different question to whether Australia should or should not have a nuclear energy program, the latter of which is a matter for policy makers and the people of Australia,” the spokesman said.

  Countries such as France have embraced nuclear energy, and nuclear power accounts for nearly 75 per cent of all energy generation.

  This reliance on nuclear energy has played a role in helping the nation slash its CO2 emissions, with OECD data outlining France averaging 4.32 tonnes per capita compared to Australia’s average of 15.8 tonnes per capita.

  While France had set a timeline to reduce its proportion of nuclear energy generation to half of all generation by 2025, French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot said it would be difficult to keep to its timeline without reintroducing fossil fuel generation.

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  The nuclear renaissance is stone cold dead

  Well, actually, as of 2018 there is a micro-renaissance resulting from the large number of nuclear power reactor construction starts in the three years before the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Beyond that, decline is near-certain. For more info see:

  Nuclear power in crisis: The era of nuclear decommissioning

  1 Feb 2018, http://reneweconomy.com.au/era-nuclear-decommissioning-13370/

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  Where would reactors be located in Australia?

  Andrew Macintosh (The Australia Institute), 2007, “Siting Nuclear Power Plants in Australia Where would they go?”, Web Paper No. 40, http://www.tai.org.au/documents/downloads/WP96.pdf

  Do you live near one of the areas most likely to be targeted for nuclear power reactors? Using four primary criteria and six secondary criteria, a report by The Australia Institute identified the following sites as potential sites for nuclear power:

  Queensland:
  Townsville
  Mackay
  Rockhampton (e.g. around Yeppoon, Emu Park or Keppel Sands)
  Bundaberg
  Gladstone
  Sunshine Coast (e.g. near Maroochydore, Coolum or Noosa)
  Bribie Island area

  New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory:
  Port Stephens (e.g. Nelson Bay)
  Central Coast (e.g. near Tuggerah Lakes)
  Port Kembla
  Botany Bay
  Jervis Bay and Sussex Inlet

  Victoria:
  South Gippsland (e.g. Yarram, Woodside, Seaspray)
  Western Port (e.g. French Island, Hastings, Kooweerup, Coronet Bay)
  Port Phillip (e.g. Newport, Werribee, Avalon)
  Portland

  South Australia:
  Mt Gambier/Millicent
  Port Adelaide
  Port Augusta and Port Pirie

  Western Australia and the Northern Territory were excluded from the Australia Institute siting study because they are not on the National Electricity Market grid. The report does not consider Tasmania in any detail and considers it unlikely that a nuclear power plant would be constructed in Tasmania in the short to medium term.

  Siting criteria

  The study used four primary criteria for the siting of nuclear power plants in Australia:

  1. Proximity to appropriate existing electricity infrastructure; sites close to the National Electricity Market, preferably near existing large generators;

  2. Proximity to major centres of electricity demand;

  3. Proximity to transport infrastructure to facilitate the movement of nuclear fuel, waste and other relevant materials; and

  4. Access to large quantities of water for reactor cooling − coastal sites

  Secondary criteria included the following:

  1. Population density − sites with adequate buffers to populated areas.

  2. Geological and seismological issues.

  3. Atmospheric conditions − sites with low risk of extreme weather events and suitable pollution dispersion conditions.

  4. Security risk − sites with low security risks (e.g. sufficient buffers to potentially hazardous areas).

  5. Sensitive ecological areas − sites that pose minimal risk to important ecological areas.

  6. Heritage and aesthetics − sites that pose minimal risk to important heritage areas.

  7. Economic factors – sites that accommodate local economic and social factors.

  Andrew Macintosh (The Australia Institute), 2007, “Siting Nuclear Power Plants in Australia Where would they go?”, Web Paper No. 40, http://www.tai.org.au/documents/downloads/WP96.pdf

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  Nuclear priced out of Australia’s future energy equation in new report

  By Sophie Vorrath and Giles Parkinson, 26 November 2015, RenewEconomy, http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/67465

  Australia’s official economic forecaster has finally admitted that the cost of nuclear energy is more than double other clean energy alternatives, suggesting it would likely play no role in a decarbonised grid based around lowest costs.

  The Australian Power Generation Technology Report – a 362-page collaborative effort from more than 40 organisations, including the CSIRO, ARENA, the federal government’s Department of Industry and Science and the Office of the Chief Economist – clearly shows that solar and wind will be the cheapest low carbon technologies in Australia.

  It comes at a critical time, with the nuclear lobby, supported by existing coal generators, pushing nuclear generation heavily, on the basis of previous technology cost assessments that had unrealistically optimistic views of its costs.

  But the APGT report has essentially ruled out nuclear power for the whole of Australia, revealing that the technology is becoming more and more prohibitively expensive, at around double the capital cost estimated three years ago – and double the cost of competing technologies.

  The research – undertaken by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Worley Parsons in Australia and Ernst and Young, and peer reviewed by the Australian Government Bureau of Resource Research Economics (BREE) – has been used to provide “credible technology cost and performance data for 2015 to 2030.”

  And one of the big take-aways from its findings is that the cost projections for nuclear have changed considerably from previous estimates – particularly the 2012 Australian Energy Technology Assessment (AETA) by BREE, which we described as “astonishing” at the time, given the real-world experience.

  Based on the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) – which is the the average cost of producing electricity from that technology over its entire life – nuclear is found to be more expensive than wind and five out of six solar technologies in 2015. By 2030, it is more expensive than everything. And this is the figure that counts, because it is an impossibility that nuclear could be built in Australia before that time. Some would suggest it would take another 10 years.

  The cost inputs (of building new nuclear generation) go from roughly $4500/kW (AETA 2012) to $6000 (AETA 2013) to $9000/kW in today’s update.

  As noted above, this is quite a revision. The 2012 AETA by BREE evaluated 40 utility-scale generation technologies including large nuclear plants and small modular reactors, and named the latter two among the six lowest-cost options by 2040.

  Similarly, the eFuture study by CSIRO showed that the inclusion of nuclear power as an option caused wholesale prices to be 34-37 per cent lower, and led to a 53 per cent nuclear share in 2050.

  In an updated report in 2014 – concluded after “consultation” with various industry sectors – AETA rectified its errors by lifting its estimates of the capital costs of nuclear by around 50 per cent. And we wondered how quickly the CSIRO would amend its own modeling.

  Today, a spokesperson from the CSIRO said that “as the outlook for nuclear costs has deteriorated with each update, eFuture has accordingly decreased the role that nuclear can play in Australia’s electricity mix.”

  As we said last year, getting the LCOE of different energy generation technologies right – or at least improving on previous efforts – is critical for Australia as it makes decisions about its energy future.

  The findings of this new report are particularly salient in light of the current SA Royal Commission into nuclear power, especially considering many of the submissions made in favour of nuclear – like this one from the representatives of coal fired generators, and this one from the World Nuclear Association.

  Both of these submissions relied on the previous cost estimates from BREE that suggested nuclear was much more cost effective than solar.

  The WNA ignored the 2013 cost estimates, and used the 2012 estimates incorporated by the CSIRO to suggest that the inclusion of nuclear power would cause wholesale prices to be 34-37 per cent lower, and would lead to a 53 per cent nuclear share in 2050. The ESAA reached a similar conclusion on wholesale prices.

  Both the nuclear and the coal industry lobbies have a shared advantage in slowing down the deployment of wind and solar, because it narrows and ultimately removes the need for large-scale centralised generation. The energy system of the future will be based around dispatch able generation.

  On this note, the latest estimates for solar thermal and storage are also interesting – vastly cheaper than the estimates for nuclear, despite the pretensions of many in the nuclear booster camp.

  The new report came one day after nuclear power was ruled out as a contributor to the future low-carbon electricity mix of South Australia by a government-commissioned advisory panel, which said it was too expensive.

  The South Australian government embraced its recommendation to target net zero emissions by 2030, although held back on its suggestion of going 100 per cent renewable energy. Presumably it will await the outcome of the nuclear royal commission. Hopefully the commission looks at the new cost estimates, and does not rely on hopelessly out of date and optimistic cost estimates.

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  (The so-called nuclear renaissance was faltering even before the Fukushima disaster as discussed in this 2009 article.)

  Nuclear economics just don’t add up

  Michael R. James, December 24, 2009

  www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/nuclear-economics-just-dont-add-up-20091223-lcuj.html

  The fall-out from Copenhagen has left the world’s biggest “carbon criminals”, among them Australia, exposed on climate change. With the overthrow of Malcolm Turnbull in the Liberal party along with the proposed ETS, the ascension of Tony Abbot and his emphasis on “direct action” it was inevitable that the federal Opposition would revisit nuclear power as an option for a low-carbon future in Australia. Given the recent sobering Government report on carbon capture and storage, “clean coal” seems less and less as the likely saviour.

  An article on this website by Martin Nicholson (Renewable energy is not as reliable as nuclear, 14/12) proposed nuclear power over alternative renewable energy as the solution to a low-carbon energy future for Australia. Elsewhere with his colleague Barry Brook they have discussed common objections to nuclear power such as safety, waste handling and storage, and weapons proliferation. These, however, are among the most contentious and unresolved issues, both scientifically and politically, and by no means did the authors resolve them to the satisfaction of anyone informed on these topics.

  Surprisingly they avoided the single major issue that is much more convincingly resolvable: costs. And a second major issue, that of time.

  Advocates of an Australian nuclear industry often cite France as an excellent model to emulate because the French obtain 75 per cent of their electrical power from nuclear. As someone who has lived for a decade in France I agree that it is impressive but since they established their industry four decades ago, partly as a strategic response to poor indigenous energy resources and rising oil import bills, many things have changed. And no one should need reminding that we are nothing like France not least in their bipartisan consensus among both politicians and citizens.

  The French not only solved their energy supply but created a successful high-technology export industry. Therein lies a lesson for Australia, but not today in the realms of nuclear energy. It is unconvincing to imagine, with many long-established suppliers of nuclear technology, that there is any space for a Johnny-come-lately such as Australia to establish a competitive industry. The Switkowski report into uranium mining confirms that if we actually started building reactors we would import enriched uranium fuel processed from our own uranium ore exports. A bit like buying back Japanese paper products made from Tasmanian woodchips.

  Contrary to the claims of a nuclear resurgence in Europe and the world, it is far from certain how much of Europe will actually implement their plans. Most nuclear plants under construction are in Asia, principally China (15 plants), India (six), South Korea (five) and Russia (nine). Among developed economies Austria, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Poland and Eire (Ireland) have no active nuclear plants and none under construction, though some have plans of varying credibility. The Netherlands has one plant and no plans for any new ones. In France the last completed plant was in 1999. In the UK the last one completed, Sizewell-B, was in 1995 after 14 years of inquiries and protracted construction delays. In the US, the last completed plant took 25 years, opening in 1996.

  Only time will tell if the UK, the US or others with much less political and social cohesion can implement their proposed nuclear renaissance. The British Government has already said it will suspend many of the usual democratic processes involved in licensing and site selection. The world will watch to see how that goes.

  In the US despite up to 45 new applications for nuclear power plants (licensing processes are advanced for three), no hard investment decisions have been taken on a single new reactor. Of course nuclear power has never stood on its own economic legs and relies upon endless subsidies, tax concessions and government guarantees not to mention government liability insurance including for the unsolved long-term waste handling — or as in France and China, the whole project is government financed and operated.

  In countries where the state plays less of a role and the private profit motive reigns, there are obvious reasons why no private interests (stock market, private companies etc) are seriously putting up the money for such plants. As Michael Grunwald reported in Time a year ago: “It turns out that new plants would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive. The first detailed cost estimate, filed by Florida Power & Light (FPL) came in at a shocking $12 billion to $18 billion.” He cites Rocky Mountains Institute chairman and chief scientist Amory Lovins’ calculations that “new nuclear wattage would cost more than twice as much as coal or gas and nearly three times as much as wind”.

  In Europe there are two nuclear plants under construction, one in Flamanville, France and one in Olkiluoto, Finland both by France’s state-owned Areva. Both have been subject to significant troubles, partly related to being the first-build of the most evolved advanced model in production, Areva’s EPR, which was supposed to be simpler, more efficient, cheaper and faster to build. In Finland’s Olkiluotu a 50 per cent blowout in costs (to $US6.4 billion so far, lawsuits pending) and doubling in construction time (from 3.5 years to at least seven years) is typical of nuclear projects over the decades. Today Areva concede that construction of a similar reactor of 1.6 gigawatts would be $US8 billion ($A9 billion).

  The reasons why nuclear plants routinely run into such troubles are that it is hugely capital intensive so delays greatly add to the cost of capital long before any revenue is generated. Construction is extremely complex, which is greatly compounded by safety regulation — this was another major cause of the slowdown at Olkiluoto. For these reasons the industry prefers to use “overnight” costs, which are the costs as if a plant was constructed overnight at today’s prices.

  Dr Ziggy Switkowski, chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), has said that Australia should build 50 reactors though this assumes a doubling of electricity consumption by 2050. Dr Ian Smith suggested, when chief executive of ANSTO in 2008, that Australia could realistically construct six to 14 plants but this would still provide only 10-20 per cent of total electricity requirements.

  Australia’s current electricity consumption is almost 40 gigawatts from installed capacity of about 50 gigawatts. So, to replace most of this would require about 25 reactors of the EPR design, each of 1.6 gigawatts (or 40 of the Westinghouse AP1000 1 gigawatt design). This could cost about $225 billion in today’s money, or close to half a trillion dollars for 50 reactors. Using Smith’s more modest suggestions the cost could be up to $126 billion but displace a lot less coal burning. Switkowski may be correct in the sense that why create all these contentious issues and still not substantially solve the problem? This points to another weakness: with nuclear it appears to be an all-or-nothing gamble with hundreds of billions of dollars.

  Nuclear advocates always cite “next-gen” designs and purported much swifter and cheaper construction but the figures given above are the actual costs of the plants being constructed in Europe today, not even the much higher industry estimates reported by Grunwald for the proposed US plants. The timetable of this construction is anyone’s guess except that history warns us to be pessimistic. By comparison China plans for 50-60 of the simpler, smaller Westinghouse design by 2030, but nuclear will still account for only about 4 per cent of their energy needs.

  Those are just the construction costs. As is well known, liability insurance needs to be covered by government. The other big cost is the decommissioning of reactors. Even with many of the world’s 439 existing reactors approaching the end of their productive lives, so far none have been decommissioned. The world’s first commercial nuclear power generator, Calder Hall at what is now called Sellafield (previously Windscale), was turned off in 2003. It has been estimated by the UK industry that full decommissioning of Calder Hall, if ever done, will cost about $2 billion at today’s prices. Meanwhile, old plants need continuous maintenance and high-security against decay and incursion including against potential terrorists.

  But the biggest cost, especially for Australia, could be the opportunity cost of throwing these vast sums into an old technology dominated by other countries, rather than investing in new renewable technologies and industries of the future. From relatively modest funding Australia has already produced world-beating solar-photovoltaic and solar-thermal technologies, even if both have moved offshore due to lack of investment support. Geothermal power has just received government grants, which will allow full prototypes to be tested in a few years. Many scientists believe that it is inevitable that these technologies will be viable, provide so-called baseload power cost-competitively, and that their maturation would be faster than the typical construction schedules of nuclear power stations if comparable budgets and subsidies were deployed.

  Is this any different to the claims by the nuclear dreamers such as Brook and Nicholson? Emphatically yes. The nuclear industry is not a new one but an old mature one. For more than 50 years it has consistently over-promised and under-delivered, yet its advocates continue to propose that governments should provide massive subsidies to nuclear construction, provide unlimited liability insurance, assume most of the decommissioning costs and — after 50 years — continue to search for the elusive “permanent” storage of high-level waste.

  There are not minority views and indeed are not contested by the nuclear industry, or the Wall Street Journal, or Lazards the merchant bank. Or many scientists. Here is commentary from the world’s top science journal Nature (W.Patterson, Vol 449, 11/10/07): “As climate and fuel security dominate the energy agenda, the battle between traditional and innovative electricity intensifies around the world, notably in fast-growing economies such as China. After half a century, nuclear power is the ultimate in tradition. It needs climate more than climate needs it. To avert catastrophic global warming, why pick the slowest, most expensive, most limited, most inflexible and riskiest option? In 1957, despite the Windscale fire, nuclear power was worth trying. We tried it: its weakness proved to be economics, not safety. Now nuclear generation is just an impediment to sustainable electricity.”

  It is a clear enough choice. The economics and the long time to approve and build show nuclear is not the smart choice, arguably for the world but certainly not for Australia with its plentiful resources in renewables (solar, wind, wave, tidal, geothermal).

  The real question for Australia is whether we have what it takes to grasp the opportunities.

  Dr Michael R. James is an Australian research scientist.

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