Dumping yet another election promise, Campbell Newman has just announced the end of restrictions on uranium mining in Queensland. Crikey asked for my opinion (their article is here, maybe paywalled). I said
The end of Queensland’s ban on uranium mining comes at a time when long-term prospects for uranium markets have never looked bleaker. The failure of the “nuclear renaissance” in the US means that at most 2-4 new plants will be built there this decade, while older plants will close as plans for upgrades and license extensions are put on hold. In Europe and Japan, not only will there be little or no new construction, but the phaseout of existing plants is being accelerated. China’s big expansion plans are still on hold after Fukushima, and the program as a whole is being scaled back in favor of renewables. In these circumstances, uranium exporters must accept lower prices, be less choosy about their customers, or both. As one of the few markets with significant growth potential, India is in a strong bargaining position. It’s not surprising that the Gillard government has been keen to overlook India’s contribution to nuclear proliferation and the limited progress that has been made in separating civilian and military programs and stockplies.
John Quiggin 
India has 5300 MWe of nuclear under construction and 45,000 MWe of nuclear “planned or firmly proposed”. That is a significant market. We had better hope that this (or more) comes about or else it will be even more coal as India is inevitably going to rapidly expand electricity supply from the current situation of per capita supply little more than 25% of the world average.
More generally the “megatons to megawatts” program is drawing to a close. In recent years it supplied half of the U235 for the US’s power reactor fleet by down blending surplus weapons grade HEU. There may even be a small shortfall in world uranium production at the end of this program. It has eliminated material for an estimated 20,000 nuclear weapons.
Furthermore the postponement of Olympic Dam, probably makes other smaller projects more attractive.
The end of the stockpile drawdown helped to raise uranium prices. But even if the most optimistic plans for China and India go ahead, the total output from nuclear is bound to decline over the next couple of decades. Japan and Germany alone are sufficient to ensure that, and the US is going the same way, though without any formal commitment.
It’s fortunate that the cost of solar PV is plummeting and that of wind is falling, because these are now the only viable options for large-scale carbon-free energy – nuclear, geothermal and CCS have all failed to deliver. Combined with dispatchable gas, these two look like the future, at least for the next few decades.
Of course, that means a very different kind of industry to the existing one, based on continuous operation coal and nuclear.
@John Quiggin
The IAEA’s low scenario is a 9% increase by 2030, which by their estimate factors in a 10 year delay in the growth of nuclear power due to the Fukushima accident. Their scenarios are derived from country by country analysis.
Just what has nuclear failed to deliver? It’s not low emission electricity, because it still delivers a lot more than all non-hydro renewables put together. Quite frankly, lumping nuclear together with deep hot rock geothermal and CCS is ridiculous. Nuclear is proven to work and at scale.
As for nat gas, the United States is not the whole world. Is India, for example, going to base electricity supply around gas, with just 0.57% of the world’s reserves?
The whole situation would be laughable if it weren’t about such a serious issue. To hear Newman claiming he only did it, changed his mind, because Julia Gillard wants uranium mining at a federal level is so totally disingenuous it leaves me speechless. Never stand between a Premier and a bucket of $$$…even if it means there is a sickly yellow glow around it.
Not wanting to derail or get sent to a nearby sandpit, but I can’t get past the problem of radioactive waste.
There is no working solution. There are pie-in-the-sky ideas but nothing which is an answer.
It’s like greenhouse gases but worse (perhaps). We know for a fact that the waste produced is very dangerous for all life on this tiny little planet, we have no plan for the waste and we keep blithely producing it.
Years ago I spoke to a guy who had worked as something like an “Environmental Waste Consultant” for Chinese companies. I asked: “Really? I didn’t know China had policies for dealing with dangerous industrial waste.”
He said: “Oh yes, ‘chuck it in the river’, ‘burn it’, ‘throw it over the fence’, ‘bury it’ – they have heaps of solutions.”
Just ran across this, which casts a lot of doubt on the AAEA “low” projection of an increase for North America
Whenever I see incorrect non-SI units (like MWe) bandied around, I generally presume the commenter is normally cutting and pasting far outside of their field.
Care to share your wisdom on MWe
not really, I think you mean MW. But who knows?
MWe just means megawatts of electric power. This is distinct from MWt (thermal power).
Quokka, how is nuclear power going to compete with solar in India?
Failed to deliver? Every day nuclear power plants are delivering carbon free energy. Vastly more carbon free energy than we get from wind or solar facilities. Your statement seems I’ll conceived.
@Megan
There was some discussion at some point some time ago about countries which exported uranium being responsible for accepting the waste back and disposing of it in their own lands. It was to be a built-in part of the uranium trade contract. That would certainly place the onus back on over-enthusiastic Govts. The rate at which Newman’s LNP changes laws and cremoves environmemntal controls let’s just hope that it does take 4yrs or longer to get any mining projects up and producing. Then, if the voters in Qld see sense, it will be a different Party in power. The development of any environmentally safe power options in this state have been virtually wiped out.
@iain
As Sam says, MWe denotes electrical power and is in fact universally used to denote the sustained electrical output of thermal generating plants. For a nuclear power plant MWe is about one third of MWt or perhaps a whisker more for Gen III+. For coal typically a bit more than a third.
We can also add MWp to the list of MW’s which is frequently used to denote the maximum power output of PV.
Why not build a machine that converts nuclear waste into energy? There are several designs around the place. Many of them technically proven.
Look, a machine that converts nuclear waste to electricity:-
http://www.forbes.com/sites/pikeresearch/2012/09/27/a-pair-of-mit-scientists-try-to-transform-nuclear-power/
The uranium industry would have to hope that any expansion will be based on old technology. It is claimed that India is looking seriously at the much safer thorium based approach. In addition, the nuclear advocates all talk about the next generation of nuclear power that would not only use a fraction of current uranium consumption per kWh but may also be able to extract power from the nuclear waste that has been produced to date.
Quite well, I should think especially when the sun isn’t shining.
The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, which is beginning commissioning consists of two Russian VVER-1000 1GWe reactors and associated plant. Lest it be thought these are cheapo unsafe products, the advanced safety features include passive heat removal system, double containment, core catcher, and hydrogen re-combiner. The latter was conspicuously absent from the Fukushima BWRs.
There has been a cost overrun, partly due to the activities of anti-nukes. The cost for the two units has escalated to about $3.2 billion at current exchange rate. That’s $1.6 billion/GWe. The date for that cost figure is Aug 2012 and may be found by googling “ESTIMATED COST OF KUDANKULAM NUCLEAR PROJECT” and SHRI V. NARAYANASAMY (Indian Government Minister).
The question is how can solar compete with that even on an LCOE basis without even mentioning India’s pressing need for more dispatchable capacity to prevent the kind of blackouts that recently occurred plunging a significant portion of the world’s population into darkness.
Costs of solar have dropped sharply since 2008. But still useful to have nuclear power as competitive technology that does not release carbon emissions. The 3 mines policy was ludicrous as is the view that while we can export the stuff we cannot use it at home.
I have been going over the LNP election material and I simply can’t find this no uranium mining promise anywhere. Can anyone here give me a reference?
@John D
It’s quite true that India has a fast breeder program with a view to utilizing Thorium. The demonstration 500 MWe plant at Kalpakkam has experienced some delays and is now expected to go online in 2013 or 2014. However, this unit will use a MOX fuel composed of a mix of uranium and plutonium oxides. It is intended to irradiate a Thorium blanket for the purposes of producing U-233 necessary for the initiation of a proper Thorium fuel cycle which may well be a decade or two or more away.
For the immediate future, and then some, India will build light water and heavy water of both foreign and domestic design and will have to fuel them by importing uranium.
Just for some context to my question, Mining Australia had pointed out on Sep 14 (after the election, but well before the Newman decision) that the LNP had made no such promise here:
http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/qld-remains-silent-on-uranium
@John Quiggin
Without knowing the ins and out of electricity generation in the mid-west of the US, it’s a bit hard to get a handle on the significance of this. However, if there were a carbon tax the situation might be quite different, and it could well be some old fossil fuel burner getting shut down – a far more agreeable outcome.
At the market price mentioned of about $50/MWh, it’s hard to see how any new capacity of any technology would be built without subsidy – not that it seems they need any.
Quokka, Germany’s installation costs are aproaching $2 a watt for point of use solar. With India’s low labour costs and immense market they will definiately be able to beat that. So even $1.6 billion a gigawatt nuclear power won’t be able to compete with point of use solar as it competes with retail prices, not wholesale prices. Actually, nuclear might not be able to compete with $2 a watt grid only solar farms once insurance, waste disposal, and decomissioning costs are factored in. Just how to think about that is hard as nuclear plants will be built in a poor developing country but decomissioned in a rich developed one.
Solar can’t produce electricity at night, but as we’ve seen in Germany and Australia it doesn’t take a lot of solar capacity to start pushing down electricty prices during the day and that is very bad for the economics of nuclear power as it’s a high capital cost, low fuel cost source of energy and reducing output during periods of low demand doesn’t do much to reduce costs. The situation is made worse by the fact that India has the cheapest wind power in the world which will also result in periods of low electricity prices.
You say India needs more dispatchable power. This is true, but per average kilowatt of output, solar is much better at meeting demand than nuclear as it is load following, producing electricity during the day when demand is higher, while nuclear output is as constant as possible and is not dispatchable. Many Indians are installing point of use solar to help cope with an unreliable grid and save fuel costs on diesel generators.
Now I can see that some people might argue for a kitchen sink approach to meeting electricity demand in India and include nuclear in the mix. But I wouldn’t. Not when I’m sure it won’t be very long before we see $1 a watt installed solar in India and further reductions in the cost of wind power.
I agree that it’s a pity that a low emission source of electricity in the Wisconson reactor is going to be shut down, Quokka, and that it seems likely it could have been saved if the US had a half way reasonable carbon price.
@quokka
Huh? This shows that you have not been listening.
Everyone should be aware that nuclear has failed to deliver safe power plants, and safe waste disposal. The natural level of background radiation has doubled.
So what happens if these trends continue. How many doublings can humanity accept, and when you reach this point how do you stop?
These issues have been so well developed in the past that we must excoriate those who opretend they do not exist and persist in little more than a boring “dialogue of the deaf”.
Unlike John, I see little hope in solar or wind unless there is a levelling-off in global population (or a decline).
The only answer is a lower standard of living, or a more-selective standard of living.
@Ronald Brak
Solar is pushing down German electricity prices? Pull the other leg. The renewables surcharge that consumers pay in Germany is to nearly double next year to over five Euro cents per kWh. That is to support solar and wind that produce about 12% of Germany’s electricity. And the environmental disaster of agricultural biogas made from corn, where Germany “leads” the world.
Yes merit order effect affects peak demand prices when the sun is shining. Among other things in this mess is that it knocks the wind out of economics of storage ie pumped hydro that would previously have turned a dollar (or Euro) by supplying peak demand.
The free ride that intermittent generators have had in Europe is not going to continue. It cannot, and this common knowledge.
Grid supplied electricity is not going away, not now and not in the foreseeable future. The mega cities of today and the even bigger ones of tomorrow are not going to be powered by PV panels on the top of high density housing. If one is seriously interested in decarbonization, ones attention must turn to the grid and not the point of use distraction. It’s by far and away the main game and energy planners in the developing countries whose priorities are other than a political crusade against nuclear power are completely aware of the overriding importance of the grid.
Nuclear output is dispatchable – how do you think France operates. And if you want it, new nuclear is more dispatchable. The EPR can vary it’s output from 60% to 100% at 5% of rated maximum power per minute while maintaining constant temperature. The new smaller Areva reactor is even better at load following. It is only necessary to go through the tedium of having to repeatedly point this out, because like just anything about nuclear, some people just don’t want to know.
As for the cost of PV, the current panel market is a mess, there are big inventories and excess capacity. Siemens today announced it is dumping PV. The share price of solar (and wind) ETFs is a bit of a shocker. Pop over to Yahoo finance and have a look at KWT for example. It makes the tech NASDAQ crash look mild. TEPCO may be faring better! The situation is not sustainable and there is going to be a shake out in the PV market. Lets see how prices are in a few years.
@Chris Warren
The level of background radiation has not doubled or anything like doubled.
The biggest increase in background radiation levels world wide was during the peak of atmospheric weapons testing during the 1960s raising the level by about 5%. Most of that has now decayed away.
In some parts of the world, average human radiation dose has almost doubled and that is almost entirely due to medical procedures.
Go and check some facts.
@Chris Warren
I am reminded of a from quote from a new article by Fred Pearce “Why Are Environmentalists Taking Anti-Science Positions?”
to which I might add “leading them to make up their own facts”.
Nuclear power delivers substantial amounts of carbon free energy.
Nuclear power has prove to be one of the safest forms of electricity.
Nuclear power can be dispatched and nuclear power plants can be effective load followers.
Nuclear waste is largely a resource that can be exploited for energy.
Sources not forms. Doh!
May not be so-called “natural level” itself, because there is no natural process to naturally increase this exact item. This is the benchmark.
The increase is 100% man made – the effect is that individuals (obviously in nuclear regimes – eg US) now receive twice the radiation they did before. It may be higher in the Ukraine and Fukushima.
Arguing that the increase is “man-made” does not help nuclear pundits one little bit.
A small piece of data to support the point in the OP that expansion plans are being shelved
http://www.startribune.com/business/175426891.html?refer=y
@2dogs
Let me Google that for you
No plan to change LNP uranium policy: Newman
As a bonus, the news story I linked destroys Newman’s alibi that it was Gillard’s deal with India that justified his breach of promise. It shows that before the election, Gillard had foreshadowed the policy change, and that Newman’s recommitment was made in response to Gillard.
Quokka, I’m going to ask you a question in the sandpit since we’re in same old same old territory.
Okay, the sandpit comments are closed, so I’ll ask it here. Quokka, do you agree that if a nuclear reactor is run at 50% capacity the cost of electricity produced is almost doubled?
It is quite astonishing to see the bizarre degree of excitement that the idea of nuclear power generates in its proponents. I think this excitement occurs largely in older men, say those over 50. This is a generation which grew up in the post WW2 era. The explosive, erupting power of the nuclear weapon was shown in many news clips of the era. A Freudian analyst would have a field day with the implications but I will remain tactfully silent.
The news and magazines of the era were full of propaganda for the “peaceful atom” and its promise for the future of endless power “too cheap to meter”. Deep in the psyche of these over 50s men, other than those like me who have resisted the nuclear siren’s call, there is a non-rational belief in the endless safe power of nuclear fission and delusions of fusion. It is part of the US led cultural indoctrination of the 50s and 60s which many have failed to overcome.
@Ronald Brak
That is a complex question and it depends on what you mean by cost. If you mean LCOE the answer is yes, but that is far from the whole story and there is a directly related question of what happens to the LCOE of unreliable renewables when they have to run at less than their maximum possible load factor. The answer is much the same, though IEA sensitivity analysis shows the economics of renewables is even more vulnerable. The UK Climate Change Committee
So how soon might renewables run into this problem? If solar capacity in Germany doubles, on the best days, at the best times it would satisfy nearly all demand. Something has to give. Would wind have to waste capacity? And this by the time PV generates no more than 10% of Germany’s electricity.
If you are talking about the price of electricity then things get complicated and the characteristics of the market are very important. If there is a capacity market then there will be capacity payments to nuclear. The pending electricity market reforms in the UK will introduce some sort of capacity market as for some reason they would like to keep the lights on. Of course Greenpeace and co are screaming blue murder but it is inevitable. In what should shock some people these cranks are also campaigning against a floor carbon price.
In the spot market for electricity, if the renewables have gone AWOL, then nuclear electricity may command a higher price offsetting a lower capacity factor to some extent. Serious modelling required.
In any case in the UK, the only renewable that has an LCOE competitive with nuclear is on shore wind. Solar is not now and will not be anytime soon, and without some serious cost reductions, neither will be off shore wind.
All this is getting a wee bit complicated, but do the anti-nukes really want to understand it? Not on your life. They’re decided they don’t like nuclear and peddle any old simplistic nonsense they consider will bolster their case in populist, repetitive fashion. In many cases, the preconceived opposition to nuclear is founded on nonsense, of which we have already seen one example here on this thread, but those examples are absolutely rife.
A telling observation is that countries that are expanding nuclear have high GDP growth rates. I believe China and India are both now in the 5%-10% range for example. Conversely de-nuclearised Germany has ~0% growth. Japan (home of Kyoto) has a chronic trade deficit and increased emissions due to fossil fuel imports and now consumes a third of world LNG. The UK plans more nuclear power and it will be interesting to see if in a decade or so they pick themselves up to become stronger than Germany.
The perceived gas glut in the US is likely to be short lived. Even in the absence of direct CO2 pricing many in the US caution against over reliance on gas; see recent articles in the Energy Bulletin. When US domestic gas climbs to world prices and the EPA makes life hard for coal burners their nuclear hiatus may pick up again.
@Ikonoclast
Geez, you are bordering on the offensive.
“A telling observation is that countries that are expanding nuclear have high GDP growth rates.”
I think you have causality reversed here.
The article linked @16 includes:
“Transatomic’s plan is to build a prototype reactor in 5 years, commercialize the technology in 15 years, and have reactors come online by around 2030.”
Unfortunately, there is no “machine”. Just a plan and an idea. This is exactly the type of thing I mean by pie-in-the-sky. I’d love to have a working safe solution for nuclear waste – but we don’t.
Quokka, so do you agree that while nuclear reactors can be built that can rapidly vary output, which is useful for grid management, being able to quickly vary output does almost nothing to improve the economics of nuclear power? That it makes no economic sense to keep a reactor standing by idle so it can be ramped up to meet an increase in demand?
@Megan
This is OT, but there actually is a “machine”, it’s called the IFR and having an operational demonstration unit by the end of this decade is absolutely feasible. Billions have already been spent on the R&D by the US government and it is mostly already done. Go to BraveNewClimate and read the presentation to the current World Energy Forum 2012 in Dubai. Among others to endorse the presentation is James Hansen. This may open your eyes to the realistic possibilities.
There is much, much more to be said on the issue of waste, but this is not the place to say it.
@Ronald Brak
I agree that any capital intensive electricity generation technology forced to operate at less than maximum achievable load factor due to policy, market or engineering reasons will be placed at a potential economic disadvantage. But the the exact situation is complex and very dependent on policy and market design.
Who’s the odd man out – gas. Before we embark on a dash for gas, we should be damned sure that it has significant climate benefit. We are not. Doesn’t seem bother Greenpeace.
@quokka
I don’t regard BNC as a reliable source on anything. The site routinely publishes climate denialists like Peter Lang, and it was a source of spectacularly bad misinformation on Fukushima*. While James Hansen is an excellent climate scientist, I don’t think that gives him any particular credibility on issues of policy design (carbon tax vs permits, for example) or energy economics.
* In fact, still is. Googling BNC+Fukushima produces this as the top hit
http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/03/13/fukushima-simple-explanation/
@John Quiggin
Well go to another source on the IFR if you like. Get it from the horses mouth and read Till and Chang’s book. They were, after all, leading scientists in it’s development.
@John Quiggin
Actually Peter Lang got banned. And in general climate denialist garbage is not allowed in comments and is moderated.
Quokka, so you agree that in practice, per kilowatt-hour of output, solar more closely matches demand than nuclear, particularly in places like India and Australia?