Block’s Indicator of Sustainable Growth

by Ray Block

  Australians have always looked on themselves as the lucky country. First,  it was a case of riding on the sheep’s back. Now, it is the same with abundant minerals and natural gas in great demand by Asia.

With coal, the largest export earner,  which in turn provides approximately  75 per cent of the electricity fuel source in the country, the lucky image is highly dependent on a successful outcome of the CCS technology proving cost competitive 10 or 20 years out. 

Like so many other countries, Australians have many hangups. One of these is over the issue of nuclear energy.  

Although a nuclear research facility, Australian  Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) was set up in Sydney, as early as 1958, and a school of nuclear engineering  opened in 1964, the concept of having nuclear power plants has been enmeshed with waves of political resistance, which has continued to this day.

With the nuclear engineering school shut down in 1988,  the ANSTO facility of producing isotopes for nuclear medicine, imagining and treatment, neutrons for scientific research and irradiation of industrial materials continues to this day.

But no nuclear power for electricity, and this at a time when Australia has at least 40 per cent of the world’s reserves of uranium, with much of the continent still not explored for additional deposits.

It is incredible that with Australia holding so much reserves of yellow cake, with 31 countries and 440 reactors around the world in nuclear powered electricity, Australia is the odd country out.

And as Dr Ziggy Switowski, the chairman of ANSTO said in 2007, there are another eight countries in the queue to introduce nuclear power, 60 or so additional reactors on order, and another couple of hundred being planned.

Moreover, it would take probably 10 years or so, before a new order for a reactor would be delivered, and cost a minimum of $9 billion to 10 billion per plant, before  any electricity was delivered. The NEMS model in the US calculated capital costs in 2008 of a new reactor at around US$6,900 per kilowatt.

The Union of Concerned Scientists in the US in their report Climate 2030: A national blueprint for a clean energy economy, March 2009 , is generally supportive of an expansion in nuclear energy.

The United States now obtains about 20 per cent of its electricity from 104 nuclear power plants, and in 2007 had an operating performance of 91.5 per cent capacity factor. The report suggests the possibility that with zero emissions, the nuclear share could conceivably rise to 58 per cent.

The one major drawback is the excessive amount of water usage in nuclear plants. For a country like Australia, which outside the polar regions is the driest continent, this is a major impediment.

There are five nuclear reactor designs which offer evolutionary improvements on existing plants. The scientists’ report is suggesting consideration of the “Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR), which appears to be  significantly safer and more secure than existing reactors.”

Australia is a major player in the quest for cleaner coal, with carbon capture and storage (CCS) pilot plants in post carbon combustion processes, and is the headquarters of the Global CCS  Institute.

An October 28 2009 report from the institute titled Strategic Analysis of the Global Status of Carbon Capture and Storage says there are 213 active or planned projects, with 101 of commercial scale, demonstrating a significant pipeline of potential projects being investigated in Europe (37%), USA (24%), Australia (11 %) and Canada (10%).

The report highlights that widespread take-up of CCS is faced with the stark risk of high project failure rates typical with the adoption of new technologies. But it goes on to suggest that with targeted project support, and approriate incentives for development, CCS will work out.

The report goes to recommend urgent action on three major fronts.                 

The first is to actively work with the 55 active or planned fully integrated projects to improve their likelihood of success.

 The second is to develop national strategies where absent to provide incentives to innovate or invest in CCS technology.

The third is to establish a regulatory framework which assigns a value to carbon, resolves long-term storage liabilities and underwrites critical infrastructure.

I have pointed out more than once that the big problem with CCS is the very heavy costs involved. Unless the carbon price in the future is high, CCS technology is going to be uncompetitive with alternative sources of energy.

And it will take 10 years to establish the most practical technology to use from a cost competitive point of view. What is very clear is that post carbon combustion, where power plants can be retrofitted for CCS requires much greater volumes of coal or other fuels, given the excessive energy required for the carbon capture process to work effectively.

This leads to the inevitability of closing small existing power plants and installing large new pre carbon combustion plants of either oxyfuel or IGCC.

Which comes back to the point, that if Australia wants to remain the lucky country, it will have to take out an insurance policy, in adding nuclear energy as an additional renewable source of energy. Environmental romantics may moan and groan, but Australia has to join the rest of the world.