Currently Speaking Goes Nuclear

A bad faith argument from cynics and dilettantes

The discussion around the role of nuclear energy in the Australian energy transition has been lingering like a shower fart — inescapable and unsavoury, it is suffocating rational public discussion around the energy transition and has reignited the climate wars,¹ despite the best efforts of energy professionals to disperse it.

There’s an accelerating barrage of breathless missives from a small but vocal minority of conservative op-eds, LinkedIn peanut gallery dilettantes and the federal opposition about how Australia must embrace nuclear energy, how the current transition pathways are unachievable or cripplingly expensive (or both!), and how everyone else is doing it, so why aren’t we.

Unfortunately, the vast bulk of these conversations are happening in bad faith. This is not to dismiss nuclear energy. It is a mature low carbon generation technology that will likely be important in the global energy transition. But it is a poor fit for the Australian energy system and many of it’s biggest proponents are either glossing over a lot of important context, or outright obfuscating them.

Today we’re going to unpack why nuclear power plants will not feature in short term to medium term future of Australia.

The Springfield Connection S6E23

Nuclear Down Under?

Nuclear in Australia is not a new discussion. In fact, Australians have a long history of talking about nuclear power — the Millennial Dictionary has a nice timeline of nuclear power in Australia.

In the decades after WWII there was enough interest in and excitement about nuclear energy that South Australia (1952), Western Australia (1977) and the Commonwealth Jervis Bay territory (1969) all pursued² potential sites for nuclear power plants.

Of these, the Jervis Bay site progressed to issuing tenders, but was eventually abandoned. The proposed reactor design was one which could generate weapons-grade plutonium. However the discovery of significant gas reserves in the Bass Strait completely altered the economics and energy security arguments, and an increasingly vocal Australian opposition to nuclear power in the face of the British testing nuclear weapons in the South Australian desert didn't help the project's fate.³

In fact, more surprising still, throughout the 1960s the Australian government actively pursued nuclear weapons procurement from the British. Australia's ratification of the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1973 officially put to bed Australia's nuclear weapons ambitions, as well as effectively ending the pursuit of nuclear energy.

Australia's nuclear ambitions were more permanently put to bed with the passage of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, which between them prohibit the construction of nuclear fuel processing, nuclear generation and nuclear reprocessing facilities. Additionally, most states have legislation preventing, in part or entirely, nuclear activities.

And in the nearly three decades since the federally legislated ban, we haven’t stopped talking about it either. The Australian Energy Council has a great summary of the constant reviews of the nuclear industries in Australia.

In fact nuclear energy in Australia might be the most reviewed and re-reviewed infrastructure proposal since high-speed rail…

While some might point to this legislation as a significant blocker to nuclear development in Australia, it ranks pretty low amongst nuclear’s challenges down under. There’s many reasons why no one credible in the energy industry⁴ is proposing that nuclear power should be a part of the energy mix in Australia, and none of those reasons are “it’s against the law”. Arguing that legislation is a barrier to nuclear energy in Australia is like setting a trip rope 7 ft above the ground — it’s going to stop somebody, but it’s not much of a barrier, is it?

So let’s look at why the Australian energy industry doesn’t care much for nuclear. But first, let’s set the scene for what we’re talking about.

Very broadly, nuclear technology can be classed into three buckets:

• ‘Conventional’ nuclear

• Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)

• Next generation technologies

The flavours of nuclear power

Conventional nukes

Conventional nuclear units have been around since the 1950s and are a mature technology. Simplistically they work by utilising the nuclear fission reaction where the atoms of a fissile material (usually the Uranium U235 isotope or Plutonium) are split into smaller atoms in an ongoing chain reaction, releasing energy. This energy is used to heat water into steam, which is run through a steam turbine, just like a coal-fired power station.

There are wide range of different reactor designs varying in the type of fissile material used, the type and layout of the cooling system and the way in which the nuclear fission reaction is controlled. Nuclear reactor design has undergone several generations, and Gen III or Gen III+ designs are the state of the art.

But common amongst the existing commercially operating reactors, there are a few defining characteristics of conventional nuclear units relevant to the discussion here:

• Nuclear units are expensive to build, no two ways about it. They are extremely complex bits of machinery subject to strict regulation. Someone has to stump up a lot of billions with a b worth of capex to get them built.

• In general they don’t do well with ramping — changing the output of the unit significantly over short time periods (seconds to minutes) is difficult.

• Nuclear units generate power very efficiently from a small amount of fuel — so operating costs are relatively low.

The outcome of this – high capex, low opex units which are relatively inflexible in their operations — means that conventional nuclear power plants are large (all modern units are roughly 1,000 MW or larger), and operated as close to flat out as possible⁵ to achieve very high capacity factors.

TL;DR — the ideal economics for a conventional nuke is to build them big and run them as hard as possible for as long as possible.

Small Modular Reactors

Nuclear Small Modular Reactor designs utilise conventional Gen III (or potentially advanced Gen IV) reactor designs, but shrink the unit sizes and standardise the designs so that the reactors can be built in a factory and shipped to a site, rather than being site-specific large civil engineering projects.

The promise of SMRs then is economies of scale — by standardising the design and building them in a factory much of the cost, permitting complexity and quality control issues of conventional nukes can be reduced.

The ‘small’ in SMR also indicates that they’re designed to be much smaller than conventional nukes — the International Atomic Energy Agency defines small as less than 300 MW. Multiple units could be set up next to one another to achieve larger station sizes.

A final general design feature of SMR is that they might be able to be run with a more hands off approach than conventional nukes — tweaked safety systems and longer periods between refuelling should further reduce operating costs.

There is currently a mad rush to develop SMRs — there are some 80 different designs being progressed by a multitude of different nations and private companies. Of these designs the private American company NuScale is the most advanced, with an actual certified design by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

It all sounds pretty good right? Nearly limitless power provided by little boxes from a factory. Here’s the catch — there aren’t any commercially operating examples yet⁶. And the path is looking a little rocky right now.

NuScale, with a certified 50 MW reactor design, redesigned it to 77 MW in order to squeeze out more electrons for the cost and is back in a regulatory certification process. Meanwhile NuScale’s flagship Carbon Free Power Project with the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems collapsed late last year facing cost overruns.

In fact, the broader story paints an even more unflattering picture — the combination of small + modular might be a twenty-first century thing, but the general concept of small reactors is not new, nor is it promising.

The blunt TL;DR is that the economics of SMRs are simply not proven. They could be an excellent technology. But we’re not there yet. And we’ve been trying for longer than many proponents would care to admit.

Next generation technologies

Next generation technologies, somewhat obviously, are not here yet. The term is deliberately broad, but is often taken to mean Gen IV technologies.

There’s plenty of interesting options here, with a primary focus on increased safety and reduced proliferation risk [of weapons-grade fissile material], but the most optimistic timelines put commercial Gen IV units sometime in the late 2030s, with most forecasts suggesting 2040s at the earliest.

Other than the technologies being fundamentally different to existing conventional designs, the size and construction of Gen IV units will the critical question in the Australian context. Will they be large 1+ GW civil engineering projects, or built as small or medium modular designs? How will the differing technologies change things like auxiliary plant design?

Square Pegs and Round Holes

King-Size Homer S7E7

Given the range of potential solutions that fall under the nuclear umbrella, does it have a roll to play in the energy transition? There’s two main arguments for the role of nuclear power in Australia:

1. We need to replace coal-fired power with something similar. It’s not possible to supply electricity consumers with a mix of renewables because they’re too intermittent.

2. We need nuclear to decarbonise because, while a functioning high renewable penetration grid is possible, the cost and challenges of getting there are prohibitive.

The first argument is generally built on a misunderstanding of how baseload power works, a misunderstanding of the power system writ large or a conviction that the statement the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow is somehow not understood by power systems engineers.

This first argument has also become the refuge of the holdout climate deniers, at least those smart enough to realise that calling for new coal fired power stations is not only unfashionable but politically untenable.

A significant amount of modelling has been completed demonstrating the different pathways which could lead to not only a high penetration renewables electricity system, but also whole of economy net zero. The people and organisations completing this work are not dummies – the Australian electricity system can be decarbonised without nuclear power.

Which leads us to the second argument. But let’s talk about the actual barriers to nuclear energy in Australia before we circle back.

Plenty has been made of the obvious challenges — conventional nukes (and quite possibly SMRs) are expensive and have relatively long construction lead times (global average is 6-8 years).⁷ With no native nuclear energy industry, Australia is not going to be outperforming the mean on either of those points.

But I’m more interested in exploring the bits less (or not) discussed.

1. Conventional nukes are big — 1,000 MW or more per unit.

The NEM might look big, connecting the majority of the Australian population with a summer peak of 35 GW, but it is a patchwork of five smaller systems strung together like a tin can phone by interconnectors.

The current average minimum (a reasonable proxy for 'baseload’) demand of the biggest regions (NSW and QLD) is just shy of 6,000 MW. A single conventional nuclear unit or 1 GW would represent a nearly 20% contingency size on average. The remaining states (and the WEM) all have much lower average minimums. That’s not good system planning.⁸

Now consider that those numbers are now — not at the point in time when the first Australian nuclear unit might be switched on (a decade if you’re exceptionally optimistic?). The explosive growth of rooftop solar over the last decade — currently on a third of Australian homes — is driving minimum demands lower and upending the economics of traditional nighttime controlled load. Electrification will increase overall electricity consumption, but not in a way which helps ‘baseload’.

This point alone practically eliminates current conventional nuclear units from the Australian context. We of course could go to the US or Canada or South Korea etc. and ask them to design a smaller variant of one of their existing Gen III designs, but you can write off the adjectives cheap, quick or straightforward.

2. Australia is a big country, but just where would they go?

The federal opposition and others are currently running on an idea that nuclear units would be an excellent drop in replacement at existing coal-fired stations, soon(ish) to be retired. Reuse the site and existing equipment, save some dollarydoos!

This sounds great, but:

1. These sites are all owned by private companies (or the government in Queensland). They are valuable (and ‘cheap’) because they have existing connections to the grid. The companies that own these sites know this, and by and large have plans for replacements (mostly large batteries). Imagine walking past an empty block in a nice suburb and assuming you could get the block cheaply.

2. Nuclear units have different footprints both thermally and physically. MW-for-MW a nuclear unit is larger than a coal-fired plant, and requires more cooling⁹. The idea that you could re-use an existing cooling tower without extensive engineering redesign is appealing only to someone who never completed basic thermodynamics. Same idea for all of the various shared infrastructure on a site — auxiliary plant, roads, administration buildings, workshops and warehouses, etc.

3. Most of the coal-fired units in Australia are already north of 30 years old. Are you actually going to spend a few billion on a shiny new nuclear plant and then hook it up to the grid via clapped out transformers from the twentieth century? Be real now.

As an aside, two of the newest coal-fired units in Australia — Kogan Creek (2007) and Millmerran (2002) who otherwise might be good candidates for nuclear replacements are located inland in very dry regions and utilise air-cooled condensers (giant radiators, basically). Here’s a great detailed document from Westinghouse explaining that using ACCs with their AP1000 unit at Vogtle would be unfeasible from a ”Reliability, Cost, or Environmental Standpoint”.

3. Social licence

The idea of social licence is hot in energy right now. We’re proposing, needing to string up literal thousands of new kilometres of transmission lines to get power from the windy and sunny areas to the cities and suburbs. These power lines will go through rural Australian’s farms and around their towns.

And so the idea that we could replace existing retired coal-fired stations with nuclear units is appealing because of the lack of new infrastructure required.

But, really? Are you certain it will be easier to convince a community that a nuclear power plant in their midst is more appealing than some transmission lines? Considering the precedent that land owners are compensated for transmission lines running across their property, as they are for hosting wind or solar farms. Nuclear units will not be built on private land — there’ll be no financial compensation for towns and regions which host nuclear units — financial compensation via the promise of permanent high paying jobs and increased economic activity will need to outweigh the stigma of nuclear power in Australia.

It might well be the case that some (or many) communities, particularly former coal regions, find this prospect appealing. But also don’t expect

The outcome of these last two points — that utilising existing coal-fired sites is rather difficult and time consuming leads us to the conclusion that it might just be easier to find new sites for these plants… which means, yeah, building new transmission lines nuclear advocates are currently telling us is too expensive an option.

Before we move on I want to take a brief detour here¹⁰ and talk about nuclear waste.

Nuclear proponents will argue that nuclear waste as a problem has been solved — not only do nuclear plants produce very small amounts of waste relative to the electricity generated, but that we’ve figured out how to store it safely and effectively for the literal thousands of years it takes for the radioactivity to decay to safe levels.

And yeah, we might have figured it out conceptually, but we haven’t exactly implemented it yet. The United States with the largest number of stations, largest installed capacity, largest generation hours and longest history of nuclear generation (not to mention nuclear weapons), doesn’t have a permanent geologic repository. There’s currently 85 million tonnes of commercial nuclear waste sitting mostly adjacent to the power stations which generated it.

In fact there is no permanent geologic waste disposal anywhere in the world. Finland’s Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository is the furtherest progressed, with hopes it will be open shortly.

When (if?) we resolve our storage issues, including burying our problems deep in the ground, there’s another fun problem to contend with — commercial nuclear waste will be radioactive for some 10,000 years.

Presumably we’ll write some big warnings signs on the outside alerting potential intruders about the dangers within.

Is now a good time to point out that we still haven’t deciphered Linear A used by the ancient Minoans less than 4,000 years ago? The pyramids (4,5000 years old) were covered in warnings of curses and traps to deter would-be thieves, how did that work out?

This is admittedly pithy, but it does add some colour when the LinkedIn commentariat remind us that [currently] wind turbine blades are not recyclable.

Languages and entire cultures will come and go, nuclear waste won’t. In fact there’s an entire sub-branch of semiotics devoted to long term nuclear warnings.¹¹

It’s not about the legislation, is it?

Actually don’t which episode this came from, but one of the newer ones by the looks of it.

It’s really not.

Coming back to the second argument above, nuclear power is often pitched as a cheaper, easier alternative to the current pathway that the energy industry has proposed around a large renewables build out.

Except, the suitability, cost and operational characteristics of nuclear is nothing like what most proponents are saying. The fact that the federal opposition has announced that conventional nuclear units are back on the table is evidence that SMR development is not exactly proceeding swimmingly and that they’re currently chasing anything that looks even vaguely like a goose.

A common argument for nuclear power is that all options should be on the table in the fight for decarbonisation. And sure. That sounds nice. But when you’re in the process of buying a family car and you slip a 2002 Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec II NÜR into the mix alongside the Toyota RAV4, Mazda CX-5 or Subaru Outback, one of these options doesn’t actually belong on the table, does it?¹² Insisting that something unsuitable should remain on the table, is practically the definition of a bad faith argument.

Given the unsuitability of nuclear power in the Australian context, and the costs involved, it’s hard to square this away with the promise that nuclear power will be the panacea for the energy transition. Especially given the current trajectory and the progress already made with renewables and distributed energy and the less than credible record of climate change acknowledgement action from many of those promoting nuclear; not least of which includes the coalition.

I think it’s worth pointing out that many of the challenges and unsuitability of nuclear in Australia are not unresolvable. But resolving them won’t be cheap (and probably not quick). And thus we land at a paradox – almost no nuclear proponents are promoting nuclear as a solution to the climate crisis at any cost. They’re presenting it as the only rational and economic solution while glossing over all of the implementation problems.

But sure, repeal the legislation.¹³ I wait with baited breath for the coalition to sweep into government in 2025 with a clear mandate and legislative runway to deliver a nuclear-powered future cheaply and without market distortions like subsidies or ‘picking winners’. After all, it worked for them with the NBN.

1. Let’s not kid ourselves. It was a ceasefire at best.

2. Well, at least talked about it loudly enough to credibly suggest action.

3. Australians were even less stoked about the French nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific in the 1970s.

4. Appearances on Sunrise or Paul Murray Live may be considered good proxies for non-credible.

5. Unless you built a country’s worth of nukes and need to operate them at capacity factors somewhere south of 80%.

6. Outside of China and Russia, countries well known for their democracy, high functioning free markets and unfettered private corporations.

7. Hannah Ritchie has a good article on this. As a pithy side note, there’s a delicious irony in watching China hawks say things like “look China can build nukes quickly!”

8. As a graduate I was introduced to a power system planning rule of thumb that single system contingencies should be kept to 10% or less.

9. Primarily because coal-fired units have a lower thermal efficiency.

10. I WENT DOWN THIS FORSAKEN RABBIT HOLE AND NOW YOU’RE GOING TO FOLLOW ME.

11. I really, really encourage you to read that article. There are some genuinely offbeat suggestions in there, and also nothing that really screams to me “do not open that fucking container”.

12. At the time of writing this is exactly one for sale in Australia, with an eye-watering price tag north of $400k. It’s not even Bayside Blue!

13. On this point I’m ambiguous. On one hand I think we should repeal the legislation, dissipating some of the stench from the debate. But I also realise that post-legalisation the argument will immediately shift to pressuring the government to build out the regulatory environment, new government authorities and support packages for nuclear; wasting time and money. Repealing the legislation is not the end point of the discussion.