Australian Senator’s Impossible Nuclear Dream – analysis by Australia Institute

The impossible dream Free electricity sounds too good to be true. It is. A plan to produce free electricity for South Australia by embracing nuclear waste sounds like a wonderful idea. But it won’t work. The Australia Institute Briefing paper Dan Gilchrist February 2016

Summary

South Australia’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission was established on 19 March 2015 and is due to report on its findings in May 2016. It is inquiring into the risks and opportunities to the economy, environment and community of the expansion or development of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Perhaps the most prominent plan has been the one championed by South Australian Senator Sean Edwards.1 He claims to be able to bring tremendous economic prosperity to South Australia, with the almost incredible by-product of providing free electricity to the state, and with money left over to reduce state taxes.

The plan involves being paid to take spent fuel from other countries and store it in Australia. The state can then use that old fuel to power a new generation of reactors, producing tiny quantities of easily handled waste. With money earned from taking troublesome radioactive materials off the hands of countries struggling with stocks of nuclear waste, South Australia can fund next-generation reactors.

The plan sounds perfect. The reality is far from it.

The Edwards plan ignores the cost of shipping the waste to Australia, and relies on technology that has never before been deployed commercially. It hopes that unjustified and unrealistic amounts of money will be paid for the disposal of waste.

Furthermore, although the plan includes the acceptance of 60,000 tonnes of waste, only 4,000 tonnes, at most, would be reprocessed for fuel. The remaining 56,000 tonnes would remain in temporary storage, with no funds left for future generations to deal with the problem.

Even if the world fell into line just as Senator Edwards hopes, the plan fails to consider the obvious question: if Australia can generate free electricity from this spent fuel, wouldn’t other countries want to do the same? The plan makes no allowances for competition.

Even if the countries of origin chose not to implement the miraculous technology proposed for South Australia, other countries could compete with Australia to provide this service. A plan predicated on monopoly profits of over 400 percent is, therefore, unrealistic.

The idea that an expanded nuclear industry in Australia will produce thousands of jobs and generate so much money that South Australians will be provided with free electricity is a wonderful dream. But like so many dreams, it is an impossible one.

The first section of this report outlines the key elements of the Edwards plan.

The second section of the report provides a reality check. It shows that the plan fails to deal with over 90% of the imported waste, and then exposes the chief technological and economic risks in the scheme.

The third section will consider a world in which the assumptions contained in the Edwards plan come true, and explores the possibility that other countries might go on to use the same technologies as Australia.

This paper will analyse the mid-scenario modelled in the Edwards plan – that is, 60,000 tonnes of spent fuel to be taken by Australia, with payments received of $1,370,000 per tonne – and follow the convention of using Australian dollars at their 2015 value, except where otherwise noted. Similarly, costings and claims are taken directly from the Edwards paper, except where otherwise noted. ………..

Conclusion There are no magical solutions in the real world. When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Even setting aside the technological and economic problems of the Edwards plan, its impossibility can be deduced by a simple observation: it only works if no-one else does it. It is a Catch-22. If the plan is a technological success it will open up competition, which would make it an economic failure.

There is also the question of popular will: perhaps Australia’s edge would be in a unique willingness to implement such a plan? However, Australia has historically had a great deal of hostility toward the nuclear industry. If Australians could be convinced to embrace PRISMs and boreholes, surely some countries with an existing nuclear industry – countries which have, therefore, shown a much greater willingness to accept it – would also be willing to implement those solutions.

It makes far more economic sense to pay for your own boreholes, or PRISMs, or reprocessing, than it does to pay up to ten times the cost for Australia to do it for you – you would save on shipping and port costs, at least.

Not every country would or could implement this solution, but it would take just one other nation on earth to provide competition. If the deal really is as attractive as Senator Edwards claims, surely at least one other nation would be tempted to take a share of such a wildly profitable business. Assuming that Australia will somehow maintain a monopoly in technologies it does not own is naïve.

Deploying new technologies is inherently risky. PRISMs and boreholes may turn out to be massive white elephants financially, and leave us with thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste to deal with. But even if these technologies worked, some other countries would surely be in a position to implement them, and at a reduced risk, once Australia had piloted its development.

It is a plan which creates its own competition.

In reality, there is no reason to think any country would pay what the Edwards plan assumes they will. With no mature nuclear power or waste industry, holding no monopoly on the technologies needed, and far from potential markets, there is no reason to think that Australia would have a competitive advantage. There is no reason to think that Australians will accept 56,000 tonnes of waste with no costed long-term solution.

No other country will line up to take advantage of this amazing opportunity, because it does not exist. Sadly, Senator Edwards’ dream is impossible.

Impossible Dream Bibliography ……https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/conservationsa/pages/496/attachments/original/1455085726/P222_Nuclear_waste_impossible_dream_FINAL.pdf?1455085726