ACF President Professor Ian Lowe, AO. Image (c) becwalton.com.au
Is nuclear power part of Australia’s global warming solutions?
Date: 19-Oct-2005
By Professor Ian Lowe AO, ACF President
Proponents of uranium mining are again loudly promoting nuclear power as a 'climate friendly' energy option. ACF President Professor Ian Lowe's address to the National Press Club, reproduced below, explains why nuclear is no solution to climate change...
I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet. One of the foundations of a sustainable future must be reconciliation with the Indigenous people of this country.
Forty years ago, I was preparing for my final exams. Having studied electrical engineering and science part-time for seven years at the University of New South Wales, I did well enough to spend the following year doing Honours in physics. I then went to the UK for doctoral studies at the University of York, supported by the UK Atomic Energy Authority. At the time, like most young physicists, I saw nuclear power as the clean energy source of the future. I want to tell you today why my professional experience has led me to reject that view.
I was nominated to speak here today by the Australian Conservation Foundation, of which I am President, and The Natural Edge Project, of which I am co-patron with former Governor-General Sir Ninian Stephen. ACF has been a leading independent force for conservation for nearly forty years. With about 30,000 members and supporters, ACF works with community, business and government, inspiring people to achieve a healthy environment for all Australians. The Natural Edge Project is a sustainable development think tank hosted in-kind by Engineers Australia. Both organisations are staffed by dedicated people who work tirelessly for the good of our nation. It is a real honour to be associated with ACF and The Natural Edge Project.
There is no serious doubt that climate change is real, it is happening now and its effects are accelerating. It is already causing serious economic impacts: reduced agricultural production, increased costs of severe events like fires and storms, and the need to consider radical, energy intensive and costly water supply measures such as desalination plants.
In the discussions leading up to the Kyoto agreement on greenhouse gases, the Australian government demanded a uniquely generous target. It justified this stance by claiming that being a responsible global citizen would cause unacceptable economic damage. There was never any convincing evidence for this claim.
More importantly, it took no account at all of the huge costs that climate change would impose on us. Extreme weather events, like the Sydney hailstorm or the Canberra bushfires, lost farm production, lost tourism from a bleached Great Barrier Reef, and the commissioning of desalination plants have imposed large economic costs, far more than any credible estimate of the cost of reducing our greenhouse pollution.
Munich Re, the largest re-insurance company in the world, has estimated that climate change will cost the global economy $300 billion per annum by 2050 if action is not taken.
The United States is currently reeling from the staggering $200 billion clean-up bill following Hurricane Katrina. While no single storm can be directly attributed to climate change, increased ocean surface temperatures around the globe mean we too can expect more frequent, more intense storms. We almost had our own Katrina-style event in March when Cyclone Ingrid hovered off Cairns. I wonder how prepared we are for such an eventuality?
Of course, climate change doesn't merely have short-term economic effects.
Consider some of the medium-term health effects. Research released last month by ACF and the Australian Medical Association shows that a 'business as usual' approach to greenhouse pollution could result in the transmission zone for dengue fever stretching down the east coast as far as Sydney by the end of this century. In the same period annual heat-related deaths are expected to rise from 1,100 a year to between 8,000 and 15,000 a year. That's up to15,000 Australians dying every year as a result of increased temperatures.
A report from the Water Services Association of Australia, released last week, assumes a 25% reduction in water yields from catchments, due to the likely impacts of climate change. That's a big drop in the drinking water available to Australia's growing cities.
The Millennium Assessment Report, released earlier this year by the United Nations, also contains warnings. The report shows that species loss is accelerating. The existing pressures of habitat loss, introduced species and chemical pollution are increasing. They are now being supplemented by climate change. The report warns that we could lose between 10 and 30 per cent of all mammal, bird and amphibian species this century.
These alarming consequences have driven distinguished scientists like James Lovelock to conclude that the situation is desperate enough to reconsider our attitude to nuclear power. I agree with Lovelock about the urgency of the situation, but not about the response.
The science is very clear. We need to reduce global greenhouse pollution by about 60 per cent, ideally by 2050. To achieve that global target, allowing for the legitimate material expectations of poorer countries, Australia's quota will need to be at least as strong as the UK goal of 60 per cent by 2050 and preferably stronger. Our eventual goal will probably be to reduce our greenhouse pollution by 80 or 90 per cent.
How can we reach this ambitious target?
In terms of energy supply, we obviously should be moving away from the sources that do most to change the global climate. Coal-fired electricity is by far the worst offender, so the top priority should be to replace it with cleaner forms of electricity. Since there is increasing pressure to consider nuclear power as part of the mix, I want to spell out why I don't agree.
The first point is that the economics of nuclear power just don't stack up. The real cost of nuclear electricity is certainly more than for wind power, energy from bio-wastes and some forms of solar energy. Geothermal energy from hot dry rocks - a resource of huge potential in Australia - also promises to be less costly than nuclear. In the USA, direct subsidies to nuclear energy totalled $115 billion between 1947 and 1999, with a further $145 billion in indirect subsidies. In contrast, subsidies to wind and solar during the same period amounted to only $5.5 billion. That's wind and solar together. During the first 15 years of development, nuclear subsidies amounted to $15.30 per kWh generated. The comparable figure for wind energy was 46 cents per kWh during its first 15 years of development.
We are 50 years into the best funded development of any energy technology, and yet nuclear energy is still beset with problems. Reactors go over budget by billions, decommissioning plants is so difficult and expensive that power stations are kept operating past their useful life, and there is still no solution for radioactive waste. So there is no economic case for nuclear power. As energy markets have liberalised around the world, investors have turned their backs on nuclear energy. The number of reactors in western Europe and the USA peaked about 15 years ago and has been declining since. By contrast, the amount of wind power and solar energy is increasing rapidly. The actual figures for the rate of increase in the level of different forms of electricity supply for the decade up to 2003 are striking: wind nearly 30 per cent, solar more than 20 per cent, gas 2 per cent, oil and coal 1 per cent, nuclear 0.6 per cent. Most of the world is rejecting nuclear in favour of alternatives that are cheaper, cleaner and more flexible. This is true even of countries that already have nuclear power. With billions already invested in this expensive technology, they have more reason to look favourably on it than we do.
The second problem is that nuclear power is far too slow a response to the urgent problem of climate change. Even if there were political agreement today to build nuclear power stations, it would be at least 15 years before the first one could deliver electricity. Some have suggested 25 years would be a more realistic estimate, particularly considering the levels of public and political opposition in Australia. We can't afford to wait decades for a response. Global warming is already imposing heavy social, environmental and economic costs. By contrast to nuclear, wind turbines could be delivering power within a year and efficiency can be cutting pollution tomorrow. These are much more appropriate responses.
The third problem is that nuclear power is not carbon-free. Significant amounts of fossil fuel energy are used to mine and process uranium ores, enrich the fuel and build nuclear power stations. I was working in a UK university when their electricity industry proposed a crash programme to build 36 nuclear power stations in 15 years to avert the coming energy shortage. When our research group did the sums, we found that there would have indeed been an energy shortage if the crash programme had gone ahead - caused by the huge amounts of energy needed to build the power stations! In the longer term, over their operating lifetime, the nuclear power stations would have released less carbon dioxide than burning coal, but in the short term they would have made the situation worse.
The same argument holds true today: building nuclear power stations would actually increase greenhouse pollution in the short term, and in the long term they put much more carbon dioxide into the air than renewable energy technologies like solar and wind power.
The fourth, related, problem is that high grade uranium ores are comparatively scarce. The best estimate is that the known high grade ores could supply the present demand for 40 or 50 years. So if we expanded the nuclear contribution to global electricity supply from the present level, about 15 per cent, to replace all the coal-fired power stations, the resources would only last about a decade or so. There are large deposits of lower grade ores, but these require much more conventional energy for extraction and processing, producing much more greenhouse pollution.
Let's not forget, uranium, like oil, gas and coal, is a finite resource. Renewables are our only in-finite energy options.
The fifth problem is that nuclear power is too dangerous. There is the risk of accidents like Chernobyl. Twenty years after the accident, 350,000 people remain displaced, three-quarters of a million hectares of productive land remain off limits, and experts argue about whether the final death toll will be 4000 or 24,000. One accident like Chernobyl is too many, but building more reactors increases the risk of another.
Insurers are reluctant to insure the nuclear industry without government guarantees because of the risk of such accidents. The very existence of the nuclear industry is only possible because of significant government subsidies and intervention to underwrite the risk to insurance companies.
If the world suffers another Chernobyl, taxpayers, not insurance companies, will foot most of the bill.
Then there is the increased risk of nuclear weapons or nuclear terrorism.
As Mohamed El Baradei, Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the 2005 UN conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty:
Our fears of a deadly nuclear detonation...have been re-awakened...driven by new realities. The rise in terrorism. The discovery of clandestine nuclear programmes. The emergence of a nuclear black market. But these realities have also heightened our awareness of vulnerabilities in the NPT regime. The acquisition by more and more countries of sensitive nuclear know-how and capabilities. The uneven degree of physical protection of nuclear materials... The limitations in the IAEA's verification authority... The ongoing perception of imbalance between the nuclear haves and have-nots. And the sense of insecurity that persists ...
Despite Mohamed El Baradei's passionate pleas, for which his agency has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the UN conference ended in complete disarray. The chair was not able even to produce a final statement summarising the areas of disagreement. Most of the states holding weapons and some others aspiring to join the nuclear "club" are clearly in breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The existence of weapons or programmes aimed at their production lends an extra dimension of instability to the obvious international "hot spots" of the Middle East, the Korean peninsula and the Taiwan strait.
The growing problem of terrorism makes the situation even more acute. The willingness of desperate people to engage in acts of gratuitous violence makes it imperative to protect the nuclear fuel cycle in military fashion. This adds both to the economic costs of nuclear power and the social costs of embracing the technology. Embracing the nuclear fuel cycle would both increase insecurity and justify further erosion of our shrinking civil liberties.
Nuclear power also inevitably produces radioactive waste that will have to be stored safely for hundreds of thousands of years. After nearly fifty years of the nuclear power experiment, nobody has yet demonstrated a solution to this problem.
The Swedes, who have probably the best system in the world for waste storage, calculate that the entire exercise to deal with the waste, the temporary storage and the deep rock laboratory, for all the fuel used by their existing reactors will cost around $12 billion.
In the absence of a proven viable solution, expanding the rate of waste production is just irresponsible. This is not just a huge technical challenge to develop systems that will isolate high-level waste for over 200,000 years. It is also a huge challenge to our social institutions. We are talking about a time scale around a hundred times longer than any human societies have endured, of the same order of magnitude as our entire existence as a species.
As AMP Capital Investors said in their 2004 Nuclear Fuel Cycle Position Paper,
there are significant concerns about whether an acceptable waste disposal solution exists. From a sustainability perspective, while the nuclear waste issues remain unresolved, the uranium/nuclear power industry is transferring the risks, costs and responsibility to future generations.
There is another point that should be considered. Nuclear power can only reduce carbon dioxide released from electricity generation. There are actually five classes of greenhouse gases, other than CO2, recognised by the Kyoto Protocol as contributing to global warming. These other gases have significantly higher global warming potential and last longer in the atmosphere than CO2. Australian Greenhouse Office figures show that only 35% of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity production. Sixty-five per cent of emissions come from transport, landfill, industrial process emissions, agricultural processes and land clearing. So all this attention is being devoted to just 35% of the problem. Transport emissions are ballooning out of control as we spend billions on roads, bridges and tunnels, we continue to provide massive public subsidies for road freight and we fail to invest in public transport. Only yesterday it was reported that governments have agreed to continue the current massive subsidy of road freight, amounting to many thousands of dollars per vehicle per year.
I am often urged to consider the impact of rapid industrialisation in China on the global problem. "Isn't China building nuclear power stations?", I am asked.
Yes, it is - but it is also investing massively in renewables, especially wind and solar. China is planning to get about twice as much energy from wind and solar as it is from nuclear. More importantly, the Chinese leadership understands the fundamental principle that a sustainable future involves real changes. At the recent conference on sustainable development for China and the world, I heard the leaders expound the principle of the "three zeroes": zero growth in population, zero growth in resource use and zero growth in pollution.
Beijing has announced plans to build a "solar street" where buildings, streetlights, and other features will run entirely on energy from the sun. Another project in one of the city's parks will use solar power for lighting, heating, and refrigeration. These projects reflect a government commitment to dramatically increase China's use of renewable energy. The Chinese parliament legislated in February to use renewable energy resources for 10 per cent of China's energy consumption by 2020. The new law includes details on the purchase and use of solar cells, solar water heating, and renewable energy fuels.
China has become a world leader in solar cell production: Shangde Solar Energy Power Company, the country's largest producer, has recently expanded to boost China's total production capacity from 200 to 320 megawatts by the end of this year.
China is also a world leader in solar thermal production and use. It accounts for 55 per cent of global solar heating capacity (excluding pool systems), according to the US-based Worldwatch Institute. The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing is being used to stimulate China's solar energy industry, with plans for solar power and geothermal energy to be used at various Olympic venues. And Shanghai has a three-year plan to boost local use of solar energy to 5 megawatts by 2007.
China's targets for the growth of renewable energy represent a huge economic opportunity for Australia. But instead of positioning ourselves as a leader in renewable energy to supply these new markets, media reports this week show more interest in allowing China extraordinary access to dirty, dangerous uranium.
The Chinese leadership concedes that it will be no small achievement to match its "three zeroes" goal to the material aspirations of its people, but the principle contrasts dramatically with the naïve emphasis on perpetual growth in resource use in our political culture.
Successive reports on the state of the environment and three reports by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on measures of progress all show that we are not using natural resources sustainably. The sensible responses to global warming are just the sorts of measures that will take us toward a clean, green, smart and sustainable future. The nuclear option would be a further decisive step in the wrong direction.
So what should our strategy be?
How can we reduce our carbon emissions by at least 60 per cent by the middle of this century, given our dependence on energy for our comfortable lifestyle? There are now seven fully costed studies showing that nations can reduce their greenhouse pollution by 30 to 60 per cent by 2050 without building nuclear power plants and without economic damage.
By far the most cost-effective way to reduce our emissions is to improve the efficiency of turning energy into the services that we want: cooking, washing, lighting, transport and so on. As Amory Lovins put it, people don't want energy, they want hot showers and cold beer. All forms of new supply are more expensive than improving the efficiency of turning energy into services.
Reducing waste is by far the cheapest way to reduce greenhouse pollution. Did you know that more than 10 per cent of household electricity in this country is used keeping appliances like TVs and video players on standby? That is an extreme example of large amounts of energy not doing anything useful.
Energy efficiency provides economic benefits because saving energy is much cheaper than buying it. The Natural Edge Project's recently-published book The Natural Advantage of Nations outlines numerous case studies. I only have time to mention a few of these. Du Pont has cut its greenhouse gas pollution by over 70 per cent in recent years. At the same time it increased production nearly 30 per cent and saved more than $2 billion in the process. Five other major firms including IBM, Alcan, Bayer and British Telecom have reduced their greenhouse pollution by 60 per cent since the early 1990s - and saved another $2 billion. In 2001, the oil giant BP announced that it had already met its 2010 target of cutting greenhouse gases to 10 per cent below its 1990 level. It reduced its energy bills $650 million over the decade. This May, General Electric set a goal of improving energy efficiency 30 per cent by 2012. Going even further, at the extreme end of the range, silicon chip company ST Microelectronics has set a target of zero net carbon dioxide production by 2012.
Just last week The Climate Group, a UK-based, non-profit organisation, published a report, Carbon Down: Profits Up, showing that 43 companies had significantly reduced their greenhouse gas emissions and saved a total of $15 billion.
This is just a sample; literally hundreds of cases show that improving efficiency makes business sense.
At the household level, if your fridge or washing machine is more efficient, that is real money in your pocket as well as a win for the environment. If your house is better insulated, it costs less to heat in winter and you are less likely to have to resort to air conditioning to keep the temperature tolerable in summer. Inefficiency wastes money as well as energy.
We should set the sort of positive targets for renewable energy that progressive nations in the northern hemisphere are doing. We should aim at 10 per cent extra electricity from renewables by 2010, 20 per cent by 2015 and 30 per cent by 2020. These are realistic targets based on existing technology. As far back as the early 1990s, the relevant Commonwealth department estimated we could get 25 per cent of our electricity from renewables at no significant extra cost, and the technology has advanced dramatically since then.
Be in no doubt: renewable energy works. Renewables now account for a quarter of the installed capacity of California, a third of Sweden's energy, half of Norway's and three-quarters of Iceland's. It is time we joined the clean energy revolution sweeping the progressive parts of the world.
Renewables can meet Australia's energy demands. Just 15 wind farms could supply enough power for half the homes in NSW. And that would only use less than half a percent of the pasture land in the state - without disrupting grazing.
Fitting solar panels to half the houses in Australia could supply seven per cent of all our electricity needs, including industry's needs, enough for the whole of Tasmania and the Northern Territory.
And I want to dispel the myth that when the wind stops or a cloud goes across the sun the system collapses. The strongest system is a grid that is fed by various forms of energy. A mix of renewable energies would provide the system with flexibility. Big centralised coal-powered systems require expensive back-up in case the largest unit goes down. Diverse sources of energy make an energy system more reliable. In any case, no one is suggesting we switch from coal-dependent to being wind and solar dependent quickly. The solar revolution can't happen overnight! In the short-term gas will have an important place as we wean ourselves off our coal dependence.
I would like to see other States follow the lead of South Australia and outlaw the installation of new electric water heating in favour of solar, heat pumps or gas. When an average household switches from electric to solar water heating, they cut their household emissions by 20 per cent and save $300 a year. The savings are greater in the northern States. Hot water often accounts for half of domestic electricity use in Queensland, where the savings are dramatic. That is why I installed solar hot water more than twenty years ago. It paid for itself in less than five years and was still working when I moved, twelve years later.
We should set a target of at least five per cent for biofuels in the transport sector as well as requiring cars to be more efficient and investing properly in public transport. Governments at all levels should be modelling best practice in buildings, operations and transport.
Above all else, we should set a long term target to cut our greenhouse pollution by 2050 to well below half the present level and take it seriously. Our present approach of demanding the world's most generous target and making no serious effort to cut emissions is an embarrassment to all thinking Australians.
Let me summarise my argument. To avoid dangerous further changes to our climate, we need to act now. We should make a commitment to the sensible alternatives that produce sustainable cost-effective reductions in greenhouse pollution: wind power, solar water heating, energy efficiency, gas and energy from organic matter such as sewage and waste. Nuclear power is expensive, slow and dangerous, and it won't stop climate change.
Let me finally comment on uranium mining and export. I suspect the real motive of many who have called for a debate about nuclear power is to soften up the Australian people to accept a possible expansion of uranium mining. This is a modern version of an old debating trick. When we were debating the Ranger report nearly 30 years ago, then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser claimed that "an energy-starved world" needed our uranium, conjuring up the picture of small children freezing in the dark if we didn't sell it. This was a transparent attempt to portray a crass commercial operation as a moral virtue, based on the untrue claim that the world needed nuclear power.
I wonder how much the current debate about nuclear power has to do with BHP Billiton's planned expansion of the Roxby Downs uranium mine in South Australia. The company has applied to the Commonwealth and South Australian Governments to take from the Great Artesian Basin five times more water than it currently does. Plan B is for the company to build a de-salination plant. That would cost around $160 million more than taking the extra water from the Great Artesian Basin. Massively increasing the amount of water extracted from the Great Artesian Basin could threaten the fragile Mound Springs ecosystem in the desert. The Big Australian should be warned that it will not get away with making a big mess in the South Australian outback.
I can't help being suspicious of the motives of those who claim that they want to see uranium being exported to slow down global warming. If we were serious about helping the rest of the world to reduce their greenhouse pollution, we would start by scaling back our coal exports. That would have much more impact that exporting more uranium. Of course, those urging increased uranium exports generally support the continuing export of more than 100 million tonnes a year of coal, making clear that their real concern is the economic return from mineral exports rather than slowing down climate change.
In similar terms, if we were serious about helping the developing nations to have the energy services we take for granted, we would be promoting Australian solar technology, which is both much more appropriate to their needs and much more likely to provide jobs and economic benefits than expanding uranium exports. Australia could play a leading role in helping China - and other countries - make the transition to a clean energy future. This is not only a chance to offer regional assistance. It's a huge economic opportunity.
Despite the hype, uranium only accounts for about one per cent of our mineral exports, ranking with such metals as tin and tantalum. One per cent!
Since every gram of uranium becomes radioactive waste and increases the amount of fissile material that could be diverted to weapons or "dirty bombs", we should be phasing out the industry, not looking to expand it. Legislation to phase out nuclear power has been introduced in Sweden (1980), Italy (1987), Belgium (1999) and Germany (2000), and several other European countries are discussing it. Austria, the Netherlands and Spain have enacted laws not to build new nuclear power stations.
The concern about bombs fuelled with radioactive waste is not something being whipped up by fringe-dwelling extremists. Earlier this month US President George Bush claimed his security forces had foiled a plot by terrorists to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the USA. Our Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, said last week the desire of terrorists to get hold of nuclear material presented a much greater problem than any "rogue state". You won't hear people worrying about terrorists getting hold of wind turbine parts or making dirty bombs out of solar panels.
I think the scales are weighted very heavily against nuclear power as a realistic response to global warming. It is too expensive, too risky, too slow and makes too little difference.
The only clean energy is renewable energy. It is safe, plentiful and lasts forever. It is better environmentally, economically and socially. It will take us toward a sustainable future, whereas nuclear energy would be a decisive step in the wrong direction, producing serious environmental and social problems for little benefit. As people said back in the 1970s, if nuclear is the answer it must have been a pretty silly question!
Address to the National Press Club, October 19, 2005