Despite Fukushima and the failure of the US “nuclear renaissance”, nuclear power still has plenty of fans in Australia. A question which opponents routinely ask is “where are the nuclear power plants going to go?”.
That’s obviously a difficult question, but there’s a subtly different, and even nastier, question behind it, namely “How should we decide where a nuclear power plant should go”. There are obviously all kinds of issues to be resolved. For example, should it be on the coast, and therefore potentially vulnerable to a tsunami? Should it be near or far from population centres?
If we in Australia made a decision to go for nuclear power, then decided to answer all these questions from scratch, it would take years, maybe a decade or more before we even picked a site (look how long we took over the much easier question of a site for the national capital). And, until we answered the siting question, any estimate of the costs of nuclear power would be a stab in the dark anyway. A plant located in the centre of the Nullarbor would be about as safe as you could get, but hopelessly uneconomic.
So, the obvious answer is; Look at what other developed countries have done when faced with the same problem. But it turns out there is a small difficulty. The answer, according to the US, Britain and every other developed country I’ve looked at, is “put your plant next to an existing one, so there won’t be any more trouble than you already have”.
Of course, it’s logically impossible that they always worked that way. But, as far as I can tell, the last time a new site was picked for a nuclear power plant in a developed country was in the 1970s, before Three Mile Island, let alone Chernobyl and Fukushima. Even supposing that experience were relevant, it’s lost in the mists of time – the decisionmakers involved are long since gone, and any records they left are probably buried in the archives.*
So, unless we can solve a problem that every other developed country in the world has chosen to duck for 30-odd years, we will never even get to the starting gate with nuclear power.
*Update It turns out to be fairly easy to retrieve material from the National Archives, for example, on the proposal, made in the late 60s and abandoned in the early 70s, to build a nuclear power station at Jervis Bay. Thanks to commenter Andrew for picking me up on this.
*Further update Contrary to the claim in the post, a Finnish company has announced a proposed site for a new reactor, though it is not clear that any proper approval process has been undertaken. I doubt that Finnish administrative processes will translate easily to Australia, but it looks like a counterexample to my claim.
John Quiggin 
Well, thinking out loud … perhaps a larger number of smallish nukes sited beside existing coal burners with existing distribution networks. Smaller nuke implies smaller risks, arguably.
Or speaking of the Nullarbor – sure it’s remote but as you say that appears to be an advantage for a nuke scheme in an era of nuclear hysteria. More interestingly though for us may be that the Nullarbor is also somewhere with plenty of bright sunshine for solar power installations, and it also sits beside the southern ocean with some of the most concentrated wave and wind power available on the planet. So toss them all in to the wash and for the extra price of the long distance to the electricity markets you gain a substantial co-location opportunities to ameliorate your transmission losses and costs. Bearing in mind the present economic viability of things like the Tasman DC link and if we also consider seriously mooted concepts like that enormous Nth African solar project (to feed power to Europe), what would seem at first blush to be an unworkable Nullarbor scheme may not be so inconceivable after all. I picture metropolises of happy power workers blooming like electric Kalgoorlies across our deserts …
What’s the status of the site for the planned reactor at Jervis Bay?
Muckaty Station is the best place for a nuclear power station, it’ll bring jobs to the area and give the locals a chance to improve their lot.
@Tom Davies When I visited it 40 years ago, there was a big hole. But I think it’s been filled in since then.
Those that are pro nuclear should be advocating for a facility close to where they live. Close would be within 30kms, the distance set by both Chernobyl and Fukushima as exclusion zones post meltdowns. The nuclear lobby say that these modern generators are safe and clean so there should be no problem?
The reality is that they will find a host of other factors to site them somewhere else.
don’t you need areally big grid with high customer density to make nuclear work? maybe thier a samll reactors now?
in terms of where it could be built without losing an election or two, a plant located in the centre of the Nullarbor would be about as safe as you could get, but hopelessly uneconomic gets to the nub of the matter
can’t even build a second airport in sydney these days.
Why would Nullabor be a “more safe” location? Granted the isolation would mean that, in the event of an incident, fewer people would be exposed to radiation. But placing such a plant in an isolated area is an admission that nuclear power is unsafe. The nuclear industry should be promoting nuclear power stations within urban areas.
If we take all energy subsidies away (especially all the current subsidies for fossil fuels), make energy sources pay the full cost of negative externalities and allow regulated market forces under the aegis of full democratic decision making to hold sway… then we will make the right decisions. It’s that simple!
They’re all very safe now so stick them downtown and be proud of them. Pro-nukies are basically a cowed and boring cardigan-wearing set.
Make them look spiffy and monumental. Design a Nuclear Realism school of architecture, support this with a Boy-Meets-Nuke film and novel contest for emerging writers. Branding is everything, and with radioactivity one can burn it into you soul without touching your skin. The girly gays ‘ll love it.
I’d recommend the Domain in Sydney, opposite the NGV in Melbourne, and about 20 of them on Kings Park in Perth.
Nuclear power needs a ETS/Carbon tax to be viable ( funny how most advocates seem to miss this very point as poor old Rafe constantly does at Catallaxy. He did not even understand the concept in one column he wrote on this very topic at Troppo!) but even if you support that you have to find a site.
Good luck with that. If Australians are so stupid as to not accept recycled water then placing a nuclear reactor anywhere near people has got no hope at all.
on Nuclear power needs a ETS/Carbon tax to be viable, is that in Oz or the USA?
It has seemed to me for quite a while that small, modular nuclear (but always with passive safety design as a priority) might well be a faster way to more rapidly deploy nuclear power than building the massive plants that have been the standard until now. I would assume that such small units, which are also not reliant on cooling water and therefore do not need to be near major water supplies, are readily able to be plugged into the grid in gradually increasing numbers at existing power stations, which themselves should be readily able to be upgraded in terms of security.
(I know modular nuclear advocates have spoken about them being readily installed close to where the power the needed, and that they can be buried underground, but surely people are going to have concerns with water table contamination if one of them break. Seems to me a better idea to keep them close together even if this is a more inefficient.)
There are several small nuclear designs that have been on the drawing boards for years.
What seems to be badly lacking is any detailed analysis of their potential economics and how they could be best deployed.
On a slightly larger scale, I’m not convinced that pebble bed reactors (which would be gas cooled and pretty modular in design) have ever been carefully assessed, especially since South Africa gave up on its program.
Instead, it seems to me that the nuclear industry has always been assessed on the current big reactor basis that it has operated on since it started. But really, what’s needed is some innovative thinking, and not being stuck on the way the industry has operated until now.
And don’t forget to put the Waste out!
we live in Australia Jim!
is there a scale effect that allow reactors to survive commercially overseas but not in Oz?
• The La Trobe valley would be more accepting of the idea of a nuclear plant or three than you would be prepared to think. There’s only a small Greens influence, but there would be a lot of complaints from Melbourne Greens (who don’t live there so I can’t see why they would get to speak for valley residents, but I’m quite sure they would presume to do so). The Valley would make sense in a lot of ways, it has the infrastructure and many of the skills there. Unfortunately the water situation is less than ideal.
Just for the record, I am NOT alone in saying that YES in fact I would be prepared to live near a nuclear power plant, except for the fact that it is heavy industry and visually dominant. I’d far prefer to live near a nuclear power plant than near a coal fired one, and I wouldn’t prefer a large solar plant to a nuclear one.
I can’t answer that.
It could have something to do with how cheap our coal is and you need to price carbon to make other energy sources profitable.
As I mentioned not long ago, small scale reactors are still in the “cute idea” stage. If we wait until they are commercially deployed overseas (mid-2020s at best), then manage to select a suitable site for one in 5 years (v optimistic), they might start generating power around 2040.
To restate my point, the issue isn’t whether people would be willing to live next to one, it’s that we need a set of well-defined criteria
You need to price negative externalities realistically with regard to risks. Coal would not be cheap then and neither would nuclear. The evidence is very much in that solar would win hands down on a level playing field re production costs, negative externality costs and insurance costs.
It’s funny how the free market nukester-boosters remain blind to this fundamental financial and physical truth.
“A question which opponents routinely ask is ‘where are the nuclear power plants going to go?’.”
Actually, that is a question every right-wing proponent of nuclear power can easily answer: put them where the poor and unemployed live.
The plant creates jobs and if the whole thing goes KABOOM, it helps solve the poverty problem!
Nukes need water.
Lots and lots of water.
What’s that thing which Australia is famous for often not having much of?
Oh that’s it, water.
Magpie – the Latrobe Valley is perfect for this purpose, being inhabited by many poor and unemployed people with limited education who are vulnerable to anti-Green hatemongering. This pulls the teeth from any potential resistance to “negative externalities” for health or the environment.
Also, what Ikonoclast said.
“potential resistance to “negative externalities” for health or the environment”
you do realise of course that nuclear power plants are incredibly clean and have no health or environmental issues apart from that required for a large industrial facility? Total number of deaths cause by nuclear power in the OECD=0. The air in the La Trobe valley would be far cleaner with nukes than brown coal. Of course you’d be happy to speak patronisingly for valley residents since you know what’s best for them.
An alternative that seems to make sense to me.
Put a nuclear power station a long way from anywhere (WA between Broome and Perth, Nullabor) then don’t transmit the power.
Put it near the coast, and use desalination to get the clean water needed. Use the power to either create hydrogen from that same source of water, or use the energy to make hydrocarbons. Effectively you have a nuclear powered oil rig – and oil rigs are notorious for being in out of the way places. Transport the portable energy created by tanker or road.
“Total number of deaths cause by nuclear power in the OECD=0”
Not True
@John Quiggin
Sorry for missing your earlier comment.
I guess my point is that we don’t have time to wait and see what “cute” ideas develop into. We really need some political leadership on pushing forward innovation in the rapid deployment of safe nuclear, and I’m not convinced that the huge, water hungry models currently off the shelf are ever really going to fly in Australia, due in large part to the siting issues your post raises.
Best place for a medium nuke. Right next to the Port Augusta power station in S.A. There it could feed both power and produce water to the area and allow the closing of the PA station, hence reducing radioactive emissions (Rn). The coal going to PA has significant U which enable the ash disposal area to be “seen” in aerial gamma-ray surveys. And it has cooling water from the gulf. Does that tick all the boxes?
Nuclear power plants aren’t going to be built in Australia because they’re not competitive with other low emission sources of electricity. But let’s say I won one in an online contest. Where would I try to put it? Well, probably not in Australia. This is because Australians, not being total doofuses, would almost certainly charge me an approximate market rate for insurance and this would probably cost me more than what I could sell the electricity for. Sure I could reduce the insurance cost by putting the plant in a remote area, but then I’d have to pay for air cooling and transmission. No, I think if I was going to build a nuclear power plant in Australia I’d build it in another country. Preferably one with a doofus based system of government.
If the only condition on my receiving a free nuclear reactor was that it had to be built in Australia, where would I try to put it? Well obviously, where ever the wholesale electricity price is the highest. This would mean South Australia, except that with South Australia’s. The trouble with that is South Australia doesn’t use that much electricity and has a huge wind capacity, is going to
Gosh darnit! I’ve got to stop editing what I post. I keep leaving nonsense paragraphs at the end of my comments as a result. Sorry about that.
As a professional digital archivist I kind of resent the implication that stuff in archives is “lost”. If its in an archives its findable and useable. That’s what they are there for – to preserve evidence of activities. You should get out and visit one Professor, how about the National Archives of Australia. They even have an online presence – you’d be surprised at what you can find there. Go on try it: http://www.naa.gov.au
@Andrew
“Buried” isn’t the same as “lost”, it implies “can only be retrieved with a substantial effort”.
That said, I’m going to retract on this point, at least in part. A visit to the National Archives website does indeed give easy access to Cabinet documents on the Jervis Bay nuclear power plant proposal, notably including a submission from Treasury (the Treasurer at the time was Billy McMahon) saying that it was uneconomic.
By the NRC archives produce a different impression. They have a comprehensive electronic database going back to 1999, and an extensive, digitally searchable database going back to 1980. They don’t say anything about the pre-1980 period (the time I was talking about) but it’s clear that records from this period are both more limited and harder to find than those of the more recent past.
To toss
@Helen
Nuclear power plants can be cooled with sea water, which is why so many of them are located by the sea.
Australia has plenty of sea water.
bruced, there are a number of environmental reasons (not directly related to nuclear as such) for not putting a reactor at Port Augusta. The waste heat in the cooling water wouldn’t dissapate, as Spencer Gulf doesn’t flush particularly well. (The water at the head of the Gulf is pretty stagnant. If it were hot as well, that’d be disastrous.) Also, if a desal plant were colocated, the waters would soon become hypersaline for the same reason.
The money that would be spent building a nuclear reactor at Port Augusta would be much better spent on a solar thermal plant.
We could hold a bidding war for the placement of the reactor. Bids start at (like) a billion dollars a year and go downwards. All bids are adjusted for other factors like the proximity to the power users, meshing infrastructure, etc (Sorry District Council of Cooper Pedy.) The winning municipality takes the cash which is paid to it’s residents each year for the lifetime of the plant. The users of the power pay the cost of the bribe.
Once the bidding process completes the resulting cost of power can be calculated so we take a vote on whether to run with it or move to mitigation measures like a carbon tax.
This idea is not completely mad and it would be very interesting to watch.
I think the obvious places are where there are already big distribution networks – Hunter valley, Latrobe Valley, even next to the Snowies. Actually, the last is good cos its halfway between Melbourne & Sydney, its got cooling water and it’s not overpopulated. Try somewhere beween Tumut and Albury.
But John’s right – even if nuclear ever became cost-competitive (which it currently is not) the question of where we SHOULD put it is irrelevant. The politics would determine that where we WILL put it is “Nowhere”. That modern nuclear is demonstrably safer than the thermal coal it would replace, and far far safer than things like the Kurnell oil refinery or the old CSR plant at Homebush, is nowhere in the public’s consciousness.
Latrobe Valley and Nullarbor coast keep coming up. I agree Pt Augusta is not a good site. Swimmers told me they feel extra buoyant (c.f. Israel’s Dead Sea) and their skin burns on emerging. An advantage of the Nullarbor coast (say Esperance or Ceduna) is that it could tie in with a high voltage direct current cable linking the east Australian and WA grids, currently separate.
Yes I would have a nuke in the back yard. The first small modular reactor to get US Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval is expected in 2018 then several other models could follow in quick succession. Prototypes will be built at Savannah, Georgia. It would be good if subsequent build times could get down to 2 years via prefabrication and site delivery via ship and truck. Capital cost seems likely to be $6/w or higher. I doubt if Indian or Russian reactors would get a look in.
Cost and small size could be the problem with SMRs. We need to replace say Hazelwood 1.6 GW, Bayswater 2 GW and Torrens Island 1.2 GW. By comparison combined cycle gas costs $2/w and can be built in 2-3 years with air cooling away from the coast. However Santos tell us the southern Australian gas price will escalate 3.5% a year, that’s around 40% of the running cost of a combined cycle plant which will never reduce CO2 by the desired 80%. Fuel costs for nukes is around 5% I think and we have a lot of uranium, though unenriched.
Target date for US deployment is 2022, and these targets always slip. To restate my previous comment, a plausible date for a significant contribution to Australian electricity production, all going well is 2040. Obviously, by that time, the climate change issue will have been resolved one way or the other.
@rog
Aside from a solar panel, there really aren’t many forms of power generation I would want to live near. Wind/hydro turbines are noisy and unsightly, whilst all forms of fossil fuel generation are both noisy and produce undesirable emissions – witness the high rates of respiratory illness in the Hunter region for evidence of the impact living near a coal station has, for example.
@Jim Rose
“is there a scale effect that allow reactors to survive commercially overseas but not in Oz?”
Yeah but how do they survive? From Britain: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/20/coalition-u-turn-nuclear-energy-subsidies
@Tom It seems that the issue of noise from wind generators is subjective, in NSW some farmers who live near wind farms were greatly stressed while those who were being paid to host generators are very happy.
Click to access Exploring%20community%20acceptance%20of%20rural%20wind%20farms%20in%20Australia%20a%20snapshot_CSIRO2012_Report.pdf
It’s interesting that nuclear power seems to hold the same away over the popular imagination that alchemy once held. It is, after all, the one set of process (fission and fusion) where elements are transmuted into other elements. It is my suspicion that a majority of nuclear advocates are also advocates of a return to the gold standard; gold bugs in other words. That also is a kind of alchemic fascination where the magic of gold will transmute all fiscal and monetary worries into perfect order.
The other fascination with nuclear power is with the supposed vast amounts of power waiting to be unleashed. Vast amounts of power (relatively) are indeed unleashed when a small amount mass is converted into pure energy. But herein lies the rub. Only a small amount of mass is transformed out of the total uranium or plutonium fuel mass. And only a small amount of uranium (relatively speaking) is avilable on planet earth. Thorium as a practical fuel is still speculative and only some experimental plants have been built with dubious results.
Nuclear power currently produces about 6% of the world’s total energy use (not just electricity production). This is about the same amount of power as produced from renewables and renewables are growing much faster despite not attracting anywhere near as many subsidies as nuclear and fossil fuels have historically enjoyed. These facts speak for themselves. Nuclear power is a technological dead end. This is not to say other nuclear technologies are a dead end. For example, nuclear medicine will have a continuing role.
I pretty much agree with Derrida_Derider. Given that in structural terms, nuclear plants are similar to the thermal coal and gas plants they’d replace, then they ought to go in similar locations. I’d favour putting them where, all things considered they were most thermally efficient and produced the smallest environmental foot print. DI(NR) suggests that Port Augusta mightn’t be the best place for one to go as warm water discharges mightn’t dissipate quickly enough. If so, then that would IMO, be a good enough reason to pick an alternative location. (Not sure though why a solar thermal plant of the same capacity would work better there — a heat sink is a heat sink, surely?
Subject to practical considerations of this kind though — proximity to load centres and connectivity, ecofootprint, thermal efficiency — I’d have no problem putting one anywhere on the Eastern weatern or southern seaboards. I can’t recall the last tsunami of plant-threatening size to hit the coast. I’ve not read anywhere that a tsunami has hit any of these places in the time since there have been humans on the Earth. I like the odds of Australia avoiding a plant-destroying tsunami a lot better than me getting a share of a large lotto payout from the faculty syndicate I’m in. I also like it a lot better than the odds of epidemiology or environmental footprint from coal and gas plants in Australia or anywhere else falling to near zero in my lifetime. There are potential advantages of seabaord placement — desalination is an obvious usage and not drawing freshwater in a place like Australia does reduce the call on ecosystem services. There are also some valuable minerals in seawater that at the margins, might be useful post-desal.
That all said, I’d have no problem putting a plant almost entirely underground with just the cooling towers visible. If that’s what it would take to reassure the more emotionally fragile amongst us then IMO, it would be a price well worth paying. Unlike Fukushima, we would have the emergency power backup secured separately from the plant complex, and thus able to operate even under the most extraordinary of local circumstances. Really though, if we are factoring in tsunamis, virtually nothing should be on the coast, since, self-evidently, lots of people could be killed whether there are nuclear plants there or not. Yet people continue to pay a serious premium for property with absolute ocean frontage. Hmmm. (That’s an observation rather than a criticism — I’d pay if I could afford such a place as I also like ocean frontage, and no, being the proverbial stone’s throw from either a nuclear plant or a wind farm wouldn’t bother me).
I don’t share PrQ’s view of the earliest timetable for nuclear in this country. While there can be no denying that Fukushima has been a body blow to the standing of nuclear power around the world, it might well be that a decade from now, with the climate emergency being even more salient in the minds of most, and further developments in the technology around GenIV plants we could in theory see the first nuclear powered output in Australia by about 2025 or a little later. Ultimately of course, what Australia does about nuclear power will make little difference to the global picture. As long as Australia deals with robustly with emissions, how we manage that in practice is neither here nor there from the point of view of global climate policy. That’s the most important issue here, IMO: to what extent does Australian action underpin policies aimed at reducing global human emissions?
Placing a nuclear plant underground opens up a new set of variables – possible contamination of groundwater and aquifers.
Seismic activity would also need to be considered.
Ideally it would be placed in an impervious bedrock, like granite, which would be the source of additional cost.
Another consideration would be the consequences of a melt down of a facility that is essentialled encased in rock.
@rog
That’s true, and foreclosure of that possibility would be a site and engineering question and then go to cost. That said, nuclear incidents in which there are uncontrolled releases are very rare, and likely, post-Fukushima, to become rarer still. Assuming the back-up power to operate the cooling system remains unaffected, and (along with the cooling system) is regularly tested to ensure critical availability, there ought to be no such incident.
Fairly unremarkable measures could be taken to foreclose potential contact between plant-produced actinides and groundwater, so I don’t agree that the requirements you suggest would be needed.
@derrida derider Regarding the older industrial facilities around Homebush, I would suggest that would never gain approval today. As part of the Olympic process existing contaminants were identified and some were treated – often by encasement. There remains significant pollution by chemicals such as dioxin and heavy metals, particularly in the river bed.
I don’t think that nuclear is being especially targeted, any activity that creates potentially harmful elements is subject to control.
This thread is about hurdles which must be passed for Nuclear in Australia to have even the vaguest chance for implementation. This topic is the issue of placement and public acceptance, both major barriers each one.
These issues preface a long list of massive obstacles which for my thinking include safety/security, waste disposal, guarantees, economic viability, and most significantly future economic viability.
As a civilisation we are sitting at the precipice of environmental pesetilence, the only adaptive protection from which is energy intensive but consecutively we are equally on the precipice of energy starvation. And while we tetter here we are squabbling over energy futures. Nuclear versus Solar. I think that we really need a new way of looking at this.
In the background though I can here the pressure building.
Oil availability is causing ever increasing economic stress. Petrol in the UK is now so expensive that London and the UK motorways are no longer gridlocked. The Indian economy, along with so many others, is stressed by its petrol subsidies and can no longer afford to maintain flat petrol pricing.
Why is the oil issue so important to the electrical energy source issue?
It is simply this. There is only enough oil left at economically acceptable prices to have one energy infrastructure and climate adaption rebuild before the full force of climate change coupled with energy starvation leave global economies in tatters, free global markets shut down, food security vanishes, and population relocation wars set in.
We are talking about the next twenty to thirty years. For some here that tends to sound like the rest of their lives, but for my kids it is when their lives should be prospering.
In 1992 when I ran for election in NZ proposing a Carbon Tax the worlds population was 5.4 billion and oil was around $20 per barrel.
Twenty years later the population is 1.6 billion higher at 7 billion and oil is around $100 per barrel. Oil reserves are dwindling while globally peoples desire to use energy has consolidated to a solid expectation.
So as they say…………….You Do the Maths.
From my perspective there is only one energy source that is available everywhere in the world, is delivered as a raw resource absolutely free to every location, and will steadily become cheaper to utilise even in the short term.
Nuclear power supporters from all they write clearly belong to that group of people who are any or all of the following;
1. Impervious to well documented empirical facts no matter how often presented.
2. Scientifically illiterate in general.
3. Unaware of many of the basic facts and laws of physics.
4. Cavalier towards the known and documented dangers of nuclear accidents.
5. Unaware of the unviability of nuclear power financially.
6. Strangely and unhealthily fascinated by nuclear power to the point of attrituting to it promethean and mythical powers for solving all mankinds ills; and
7. Sometimes even of the belief they could share their bed with 1kg of U235 and eat plutonium sprinkles on their breakfast every day without harm.
Could we have a new sandpit? I wanted to post something longish but it wasn’t germane to an open thread here.
@Ikonoclast
I’d say it is matter of choosing the less worse option. Oil has peaked, gas has maybe 20 good years and coal is unknown. However the accumulated CO2 lingers on so warming is locked in. Our modern industrial society has come to depend on demand matched inexpensive energy supply. That may leave us the power of E = mc^2 as our only affordable round the clock fossil replacement. I agree it’s hard to see 10,000 reactors worldwide making all the electricity and synthetic fuel. That means we’re going to take an economic hit regardless. Like I say less worse.
@Fran Barlow
Molten salt solar thermal plants don’t use water anywhere in their cooling cycle, so no water is ever discharged. They do use some for cleaning mirrors, but that all evaporates.