tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/nuclear-fuel-cycle-royal-commission-24837/articlesNuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission – The Conversation2016-11-16T03:32:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/688192016-11-16T03:32:55Z2016-11-16T03:32:55ZSA doesn’t need a nuclear plebiscite – Weatherill just needs to make a decision<p>South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-15/sa-nuclear-referendum-wont-happen-before-2018-election/8026166">announcement</a> of a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/south-australian-referendum-to-be-a-plebiscite-on-nuclear-waste-20161114-gsp54x.html">non-binding public vote</a>, no earlier than 2018, on his proposed high-level nuclear waste storage facility looks like an act of political desperation. </p>
<p>It’s understandable that Weatherill wants to explore every possible option to replace some of the jobs lost in his state when the Abbott government <a href="https://theconversation.com/managed-decline-to-rapid-demise-abbotts-car-industry-gamble-23124">withdrew support for the car industry</a>. To that end, he took the unusual step of setting up a <a href="http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/">Royal Commission</a> to consider South Australia’s potential role in the nuclear industry. His appointed Commissioner, Kevin Scarce, faced <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2015/s4201053.htm">accusations of pro-nuclear bias</a>. </p>
<p>Scarce’s <a href="http://yoursay.sa.gov.au/pages/nuclear-fuel-cycle-royal-commission-report-release/">report</a> put a very positive spin on the idea of SA accepting high-level radioactive waste from other countries, suggesting that nations like Japan, South Korea and Taiwan would be willing to pay serious money to make their nuclear waste problems go away. </p>
<p>The local business community embraced the idea enthusiastically, while Adelaide’s newspaper, The Advertiser, published a series of articles promoting the scheme, describing the expected economic returns as “<a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/nuclear-waste-dump-would-tip-445b-into-south-australian-economy-royal-commission-reveals/news-story/9c134d8b18020768b1e6c419d997982f">gigantic</a>” and running Liberal senator Sean Edwards’ claim that nuclear energy would have “<a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/liberal-senator-sean-edwards-unveils-radical-plan-for-a-booming-nuclear-industry-in-south-australia/news-story/6717544ca509ceb461c13935255c8636">no cost apart from the poles and wires</a>”.</p>
<p>The way ahead was not straightforward, however, with the community clearly divided. Public meetings convened by those opposed to the proposal saw packed halls, and thousands turned up to a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-15/nuclear-waste-dump-protesters-bring-the-fight-to-adelaide/7935954">rally outside Parliament House</a>. Indigenous groups are particularly hostile to the prospect of overseas radioactive waste being brought onto their land. </p>
<p>Next, a citizens’ jury was appointed to offer a verdict on the issue. The randomly selected individuals interrogated experts with a range of views and probed the findings of the Royal Commission in great detail over several days. Their <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/07/citizens-jury-rejects-push-for-south-australian-nuclear-waste-dump">two-thirds majority view that the scheme should be dropped</a> was seen by many as sounding its death knell. </p>
<p>The jury’s scepticism is understandable. After deep probing of the estimates, they concluded that the numbers are very rubbery. Moreover, recent examples like the <a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/new-royal-adelaide-hospital-up-to-another-year-off-after-health-minister-rejects-new-plan-to-fix-alleged-safety-defects/news-story/d693c1c28bc246806c4d6f5cf643f528">Royal Adelaide Hospital redevelopment</a> do not inspire public confidence in the state government’s ability to manage a complex project within a fixed budget. So the jury decided that the probability of a good financial outcome was not high enough to justify risking billions of dollars of public money developing the waste management system.</p>
<h2>Pressing the plebiscite button</h2>
<p>It’s difficult to know why we need a plebiscite on top of all this. If government members want to know what well-informed members of the public think, they can read the <a href="http://assets.yoursay.sa.gov.au/production/2016/07/12/10/28/13/df622a91-cdbb-486d-bbed-20796a4109d5/Nuclear%20Citizens'%20Jury%20FINAL%20Book.pdf">report</a> of their own citizens’ jury. If they want to know what relatively uninformed members of the public think, they can consult opinion polls. And if they want to know what members of the public think after being systematically fed slanted information, they can check the <a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/exclusive-advertisergalaxy-opinion-poll-reveals-nearmajority-support-for-sa-nuclear-dump/news-story/01a724864c1b5e5f3ff54833097855a5">polls conducted by The Advertiser</a>.</p>
<p>The only rational explanation for Weatherill’s decision to hold a public vote is that he is hoping for a different outcome. It’s a political tactic with a very notable recent precedent. When it became clear to conservatives in the Abbott government that they had lost the public debate on same-sex marriage, and that a free vote in parliament would probably see it approved, they came up with the idea of holding a national plebiscite. At the very least, they thought, this would delay the arrival of an outcome they opposed, while there was always the chance that a well-funded, carefully targeted scare campaign might shift the public mood. </p>
<p>But the same-sex marriage plebiscite died when it became clear that it would not be binding on politicians, and that public money would be used to fund the opposing campaigns. Senators sniffed the public wind and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-plebiscite-is-dead-but-the-quest-for-marriage-equality-lives-on-68409">voted down the scheme</a>.</p>
<p>Weatherill has invested a lot of political capital in his nuclear waste proposal. He funded the Royal Commission and the citizens’ jury process. But by pressing the plebiscite button as a way to end the ongoing impasse, he risks running foul of the same problems. </p>
<p>In Canberra, the Senate reflected the general public opinion that a non-binding plebiscite on same-sex marriage would be a waste of taxpayers’ money, as well as probably causing an acrimonious and unproductive public debate. One might very well say the same about the idea of a vote on radioactive waste management. </p>
<p>We elect our politicians to decide on policy after studying the issues carefully. It is therefore hard to justify spending millions of dollars on an expensive opinion poll. </p>
<p>Whether Weatherill opts to abandon his radioactive waste proposal or push ahead with it, his decision will inevitably be very unpopular with some. It’s a tough call, but it’s his job to make it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68819/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Lowe is the former president of the Australian Conservation Foundation. </span></em></p>After a Royal Commission and a citizens’ jury, South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has enough advice to decide on his nuclear waste dump plan. Which makes his decision to hold a plebiscite baffling.Ian Lowe, Emeritus Professor, School of Science, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/547422016-02-16T01:44:48Z2016-02-16T01:44:48ZWhy would the world accept Australia’s offer to store nuclear waste?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111574/original/image-20160215-22573-muopqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Under the proposed plan, countries would ship their nuclear dry storage casks to Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">US Nuclear Regulatory Agency/Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>While acknowledging that nuclear electricity is not commercially viable in South Australia, the Royal Commission’s <a href="http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/tentative-findings/">tentative findings</a> give strong support to the extraordinary notion that the state should attempt to profit by storing high-level nuclear waste from countries that do have nuclear power. </p>
<p>The scheme envisages a combination of above-ground temporary storage in dry casks, together with storage in a permanent underground repository. In practice, almost all the imported waste would be stored initially in dry casks for several decades before being transferred to the proposed underground storage area, where they would have to be managed for hundreds of thousands of years.</p>
<p>I will examine each of the two storage systems separately. </p>
<h2>Temporary above-ground storage</h2>
<p><a href="http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/tentative-findings/">Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of high-level waste</a> from nuclear power stations, both spent fuel rods and reprocessed waste, are in temporary storage around the world. They are “hot” in both temperature and radioactivity. Some are sitting in steel-lined concrete pools near reactors, while others are stored in so-called “dry casks”. </p>
<p>The idea that Australia could obtain a significant amount of this overseas waste for temporary storage in dry casks seems to be based on the dubious assumption that it would be cheaper for overseas countries to pay for shipping their dry casks to Australia for storage than to continue to store them where they are. </p>
<p>But it follows that if Australia could somehow offer an attractive price, then so could other countries with more experience in handling nuclear waste, as <a href="http://www.tai.org.au/content/free-nuclear-power-fantasy-report">pointed out by the Australia Institute</a>. The Royal Commission’s new findings do not reveal the cost of dry cask storage.</p>
<h2>Permanent underground storage</h2>
<p>The Royal Commission assumes that the “conservative baseline price” that could be received for permanent underground storage is A$1.75 million per tonne of heavy metal, including the operational cost. It is unclear whether this includes storage in dry casks for several decades. The report does not reveal the corresponding cost per tonne, although its bottom-line figures predict an extraordinary 77% undiscounted profit over the lifetime of the project. </p>
<p>These claimed huge profits are based on a <a href="http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/app/uploads/2016/02/Jacobs-MCM.pdf">long report by Jacobs & MCM</a>, released just a week ago and which few people will have digested in full so far. Hardly any of the assumptions of this new report are mentioned by the Royal Commission’s tentative findings. In reality it is still unclear how much the proposed facility would cost to run, or what kind of return on investment it might create.</p>
<p>It is a heroic fantasy to imagine that Australia would finance and build a permanent underground nuclear waste repository when the United States, an established nuclear nation, has so far failed, and similar facilities in <a href="http://www.skb.com/research-and-technology/laboratories/the-aspo-hard-rock-laboratory/">Sweden</a> and <a href="http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR-Licence-granted-for-Finnish-used-fuel-repository-1211155.html">Finland</a> are still under construction. The United States spent US$13.5 billion on preparing its proposed site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Its estimated total cost rose to <a href="http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR-Yucca_Mountain_cost_estimate_rises_to_96_billion_dollars-0608085.html">US$96 billion</a> (in 1998 prices) before the project was scrapped by President Obama. </p>
<p>The Royal Commission discusses the alleged economic benefits of underground storage, while failing to acknowledge the economic risks of Australia paying huge capital and operating costs to manage high-level waste for hundreds of thousands of years by means of unproven technologies and short-lived social institutions. </p>
<p>Although storing waste temporarily in dry casks is technically relatively easy, building the permanent underground repository would be very expensive. Therefore, if this scheme were commenced by storing dry casks, it’s possible that the underground repository, which would not be needed for decades, would never be built. </p>
<p>Then South Australia (and Australian taxpayers) could be stuck with managing a huge number of dry casks far beyond their lifetimes. As the casks began to decay and release their contents, the financial burden on future generations, and the environmental and health risks, would be substantial.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54742/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Diesendorf does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We don’t know how much it would cost to store nuclear waste in Australia - or how much other countries would be willing to pay.Mark Diesendorf, Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, UNSW, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/547312016-02-16T01:44:03Z2016-02-16T01:44:03ZThe economic case for Australia taking the world’s used nuclear fuel is clear<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111579/original/image-20160215-22573-1avcw40.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The proposals could add significant value to Australia's existing uranium mining.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alberto Otero Garcia/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In <a href="http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/app/uploads/2016/02/NFCRC-Tentative-Findings.pdf">delivering its interim findings</a> after almost a year of research, consultation and testimony, the South Australian <a href="http://nuclearrc.sa.gov.au/#fndtn-external-commission-visits">Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission</a> has extolled the potential benefits of a facility for the storage and disposal of international used nuclear fuel. The commission, led by Kevin Scarce, says it has uncovered potential benefits that far exceed the expectations of previous investigations.</p>
<p>They point to a future wealth fund growing at around A$6 billion per year and a present value of more A$50 billion – potentially a significant economic boost to South Australia through ramping up its engagement with the nuclear fuel industry.</p>
<p>If conservatively invested, those revenues, totalling A$267 billion, could give rise to a state wealth fund estimated to reach A$467 billion after 70 years of operations. While other questions will remain, one has been decisively answered: in economic terms, the nuclear opportunity is there for the taking.</p>
<h2>Taking the world’s waste</h2>
<p>The Royal Commission has identified the potential to establish and operate a facility to accept 138,000 tonnes of heavy metal (MtHM) from spent fuel over a period of some 50 years. Such a facility would be a globally significant piece of infrastructure and a major step forward in the internationalisation of the nuclear fuel cycle. </p>
<p>With no directly comparable service in operation today, demand for service is high, although that means the prices to be paid for using it are also uncertain. The Royal Commission estimates a figure of A$1.75 million per MtHM as a conservative baseline price. For context, that figure is above the A$1.37 million per MtHM adopted in <a href="http://decarbonisesa.com/publications/transforming-our-economy-cleaning-our-energy-sustaining-our-future/">my own modelling</a> as the mid-price. If the Royal Commission’s estimates are correct, the market for taking other nations’ spent nuclear fuel is more lucrative than previously anticipated.</p>
<p>The relatively rapid establishment of an above-ground interim storage facility would enable this process to begin relatively quickly. The Commission has estimated this could be funded by upfront contracts for receiving the first 15,500 MtHM based on the A$1.75 million per MtHM figure. That would be followed in future by underground disposal. However, with 11 years’ establishment and 17 years of above ground loading, there seems ample scope to revisit a range of pathways for the used fuel material before it is buried beneath the ground. </p>
<p>That may occur via the commercialisation of advanced nuclear technologies such as fuel recycling and fast reactors. At this stage, no advanced technology pathway has been advocated for South Australia, however a scientific research group tied to the facility has been recommended. </p>
<p><a href="http://decarbonisesa.com/publications/transforming-our-economy-cleaning-our-energy-sustaining-our-future/">Research by me and my colleagues</a> suggests these technologies are ready for commercialisation now and this would be an opportune investment of revenues for South Australia. We believe there is a great opportunity here, although the commission has taken a more conservative view. </p>
<h2>Nuclear power a trickier prospect</h2>
<p>There also appears to be no prospect of domestic nuclear power for Australia, in the short term at least. The commission has highlighted a range of size, cost and technical challenges, including the need for greatly strengthened climate policy. This is a fair and accurate reflection of Australia’s current generating requirements, resources and policy settings and a reasonable, though conservative, reading of the current state of technology. </p>
<p>But importantly, the findings repeatedly stress that the nuclear generation option may be either beneficial or demanded in future to achieve the necessary deep decarbonisation of our economy. Nuclear electricity should not be ruled out, and it therefore follows that some planning options should be investigated. Should any of a range of conditions change and Australia decides nuclear power is a necessary inclusion, we would then be better positioned to do it. </p>
<p>The Commission has found likely benefits to expansion of uranium mining, although they are relatively small with royalties in the tens of millions of dollars per year. No case has been found for short-term engagement with value-adding processes of conversion, enrichment, and fabrication of nuclear fuel. </p>
<p>An exception to this is the concept of “fuel leasing”, which allows Australian uranium to be sold overseas with an accompanying agreement that the spent fuel will be sent back here for a fee. Having an international nuclear waste storage facility would obviously help this approach, in turn locking in more value from uranium mining.</p>
<p>Given the economic benefits identified by the commission in providing multinational services in used fuel storage and disposal, the domestic use of nuclear power should not be arbitrarily impeded. It may be vital in future, and expanded mining and fuel leasing might provide yet more economic benefits. </p>
<p>Politically, of course, the issue is in the hands of the South Australian public.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54731/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Heard was an author of two submissions to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission: one on behalf of South Australian Liberal senator Sean Edwards, and one on behalf of the SA Economic Development Board. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of Terrestrial Energy, a Canadian nuclear start-up.</span></em></p>Offering permanent storage for the world’s nuclear waste could open up a huge economic opportunity for Australia.Ben Heard, Doctoral student, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.