In a full mimicry of Donald Trump, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s reality is how he claims it to be, in complete disregard for the facts. So it is with his stance on nuclear energy. He simply asserts his nuclear power will deliver cheaper electricity to Australian households, and that nuclear is the only pathway to net zero by 2050. In a speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia last month he delivered his rationale: line after line of bullshit.
Dutton builds much of his case for nuclear on what he claims are the very cheap electricity prices in the Canadian province of Ontario, where nuclear accounts for about half of the energy mix. However, he ignores the fact the domestic supplier, Ontario Power Generation, is effectively a basket case, with a very sorry financial history that has been catalogued by the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.
In 1998, seven of public utility Ontario Hydro’s nuclear reactors were unexpectedly forced to shut down due to safety concerns. All of these reactors were inoperable for more than five years – two were still inactive as late as 2017, according to the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.
By the following year, Ontario Hydro was effectively bankrupt, and split into five companies. The nuclear stations went to OPG, while some $20 billion of the stranded nuclear debt was transferred to the Ontario Financial Corporation, with the paydown lasting for more than a decade.
The province had to boost its dirty coal plants’ output by 120 per cent to keep the lights on – an outcome that would be most pleasing to Dutton’s important donors.
OPG’s electricity prices rose about 60 per cent between 2002 and 2016, in order to pay for nuclear power – including restarting the five reactors that had been shut down. In September 2016, OPG told the Ontario Energy Board it needed to increase its nuclear power prices by more than 10 per cent a year for the next decade. The premier of Ontario later directed OPG to take on billions of dollars of additional debt to ensure electricity price increases over subsequent years would not exceed the rate of inflation.
It is worth noting that in the start-up phase, the relatively new Darlington Nuclear Generating Station on the north shore of Lake Ontario has suffered from technical problems, even with proven technology, which have delayed it becoming fully operational. It should be clear there are very few givens in adopting these technologies, as evidenced with most projects across the globe, whereas Dutton is inclined to assume otherwise.
Dutton and O’Brien have attempted to create the impression that Australia is being left behind in a world rushing to adopt and expand nuclear power. This is in doubt, but it is certainly true that there is a major push to decommission existing nuclear power plants.
It is also important to learn from the cost blowouts of the Darlington project. The project was initiated in 1973 but not started until roughly a decade later. Ontario Hydro estimated a cost of C$7.4 billion when construction began (though earlier projections were lower). Costs more than doubled from here, an important element of which was the interest cost on the project debt over and above the expanding costs from delays in construction scheduling and in the build itself, which is often ignored in discussions. Other reasons for the cost blowout included the need to meet regulatory changes and updates to Ontario Hydro’s financial policies, as well as necessary design tweaks during construction. All of which seem to be characteristic of nuclear projects.
The overruns prompted more questions about whether OPG would go bankrupt again if the Darlington rebuild continued to go over budget and demand for electricity continued to fall. Why weren’t costs cut, or the Darlington rebuild cancelled, and, importantly, why didn’t they start buying more cheap water power from neighbouring Quebec, using existing transmission lines?
But the basic question that never seems to be asked is whether the electricity sector is being run in the interests of electricity consumers or the nuclear industry. This needs to be asked in the Australian context, in relation to Dutton’s persistence with his nuclear option against the massive and still-mounting global evidence of its cost and time delay disadvantages, and the hollowness of his commitments to cheaper electricity.
It is also worth noting that Canada established Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), a Crown corporation, not as a generator but as the primary research and development agency in the field of nuclear energy. As such, it is responsible for design, engineering, marketing and servicing of the country’s CANDU reactors, and aims to make CANDU “the long-term competitive electricity supply system”. This is a for-profit operation. Does the Coalition aim to replicate this sort of entity?
Peter Dutton and his shadow energy minister, Ted O’Brien, have sought to challenge the authority of CSIRO’s GenCost report on these cost disadvantages. A United States study has suggested the CSIRO estimates were conservative, putting the cost at $12,351 a kilowatt, compared with GenCost’s $8446/kW. Similarly, a recent report on the ABC’s Four Corners reviewing the US experience with the Plant Vogtle project in Georgia – which is also often cited by the Dutton team, in support of their policy proposal, as delivering cheaper electricity – revealed consumer dissatisfaction as electricity prices have risen sharply. And Bill Gates’s new Kemmerer project in Wyoming has encountered troubles.
While there are many gaps still in Dutton’s advocacy for us to adopt nuclear energy, one of the most important is his vagueness about the technology to be adopted – he has vacillated from the demonstrated, expensive large reactors to the commercially as yet unproven small modular reactors (SMRs). He would have us believe that by the time we need to build these, the proven technologies will be available. This delay may prevent him from supplying adequate cost estimates before the next election. It’s notable that the only SMR project to receive approval by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission was abandoned recently because of rising costs, even after the Department of Energy had pledged some US$500 million in grants.
Although we probably have the world’s largest deposits of uranium, we don’t have an enrichment industry. This also raises another serious question for the opposition to answer: where will the fuel for the reactors come from? Are they advocating that we also launch a nuclear enrichment industry? Is this also part of their AUKUS dream?
There are also important issues to be addressed in relation to the disposal of the waste from the reactors. The United Kingdom is currently demonstrating just how significant a challenge this can become.
Dutton and O’Brien have attempted to create the impression that Australia is being left behind in a world rushing to adopt and expand nuclear power. This is in doubt, but it is certainly true that there is a major push to decommission existing nuclear power plants. A recent report by the UK parliament’s Public Accounts Committee reviewed the decommissioning of all the country’s civil nuclear sites and made the point of just how expensive and time-consuming this process can be. Indeed, the committee estimated it will cost taxpayers about £132 billion to decommission all sites, and could take as long as 120 years. Clearly any estimates of the costs of nuclear deployment in Australia must recognise the costs of ultimate decommissioning.
Having spent some time reviewing the nuclear issue, especially in Canada, I ask whether Dutton is not just playing the nuclear card to distract and interrupt the Albanese government’s focus on the renewables transition. Or does the opposition leader plan ultimately to capitalise on our generous endowments of uranium deposits by not only moving towards nuclear power but perhaps also developing an enrichment industry that seeks to add value to those uranium deposits both for domestic use and export? There are very real opportunities to develop spin-off industries in nuclear medicine, radioisotope production, fixed irradiation technology and radio therapy equipment, as Canada has done to a world-class standing.
Setting all his misrepresentation to one side for a moment, the big question Dutton really needs to answer is why, when Australia is endowed with wind and solar resources that are the envy of the world, is he not prepared to capitalise on this? The Coalition could help this country lead the world in related technologies, and in the inevitable transition to renewables, rather than fiddling with nuclear power and undermining the government’s vision for a low-carbon future – which is probably something we as a nation should have embraced a couple of decades ago.
Overall_Bus_3608 on
I mean if it can deliver clean energy and be cost effective and safe. well why not.
There no real way to know until they build it so no point getting into politics over it. Both right and left just hate each others opinions.
Obviously there’s a team of scientists out there working on this development, if they are legit good, or dodgy, their motive will be enough to judge their dedication
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In a full mimicry of Donald Trump, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s reality is how he claims it to be, in complete disregard for the facts. So it is with his stance on nuclear energy. He simply asserts his nuclear power will deliver cheaper electricity to Australian households, and that nuclear is the only pathway to net zero by 2050. In a speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia last month he delivered his rationale: line after line of bullshit.
Dutton builds much of his case for nuclear on what he claims are the very cheap electricity prices in the Canadian province of Ontario, where nuclear accounts for about half of the energy mix. However, he ignores the fact the domestic supplier, Ontario Power Generation, is effectively a basket case, with a very sorry financial history that has been catalogued by the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.
In 1998, seven of public utility Ontario Hydro’s nuclear reactors were unexpectedly forced to shut down due to safety concerns. All of these reactors were inoperable for more than five years – two were still inactive as late as 2017, according to the Ontario Clean Air Alliance.
By the following year, Ontario Hydro was effectively bankrupt, and split into five companies. The nuclear stations went to OPG, while some $20 billion of the stranded nuclear debt was transferred to the Ontario Financial Corporation, with the paydown lasting for more than a decade.
The province had to boost its dirty coal plants’ output by 120 per cent to keep the lights on – an outcome that would be most pleasing to Dutton’s important donors.
OPG’s electricity prices rose about 60 per cent between 2002 and 2016, in order to pay for nuclear power – including restarting the five reactors that had been shut down. In September 2016, OPG told the Ontario Energy Board it needed to increase its nuclear power prices by more than 10 per cent a year for the next decade. The premier of Ontario later directed OPG to take on billions of dollars of additional debt to ensure electricity price increases over subsequent years would not exceed the rate of inflation.
It is worth noting that in the start-up phase, the relatively new Darlington Nuclear Generating Station on the north shore of Lake Ontario has suffered from technical problems, even with proven technology, which have delayed it becoming fully operational. It should be clear there are very few givens in adopting these technologies, as evidenced with most projects across the globe, whereas Dutton is inclined to assume otherwise.
Dutton and O’Brien have attempted to create the impression that Australia is being left behind in a world rushing to adopt and expand nuclear power. This is in doubt, but it is certainly true that there is a major push to decommission existing nuclear power plants.
It is also important to learn from the cost blowouts of the Darlington project. The project was initiated in 1973 but not started until roughly a decade later. Ontario Hydro estimated a cost of C$7.4 billion when construction began (though earlier projections were lower). Costs more than doubled from here, an important element of which was the interest cost on the project debt over and above the expanding costs from delays in construction scheduling and in the build itself, which is often ignored in discussions. Other reasons for the cost blowout included the need to meet regulatory changes and updates to Ontario Hydro’s financial policies, as well as necessary design tweaks during construction. All of which seem to be characteristic of nuclear projects.
The overruns prompted more questions about whether OPG would go bankrupt again if the Darlington rebuild continued to go over budget and demand for electricity continued to fall. Why weren’t costs cut, or the Darlington rebuild cancelled, and, importantly, why didn’t they start buying more cheap water power from neighbouring Quebec, using existing transmission lines?
But the basic question that never seems to be asked is whether the electricity sector is being run in the interests of electricity consumers or the nuclear industry. This needs to be asked in the Australian context, in relation to Dutton’s persistence with his nuclear option against the massive and still-mounting global evidence of its cost and time delay disadvantages, and the hollowness of his commitments to cheaper electricity.
It is also worth noting that Canada established Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), a Crown corporation, not as a generator but as the primary research and development agency in the field of nuclear energy. As such, it is responsible for design, engineering, marketing and servicing of the country’s CANDU reactors, and aims to make CANDU “the long-term competitive electricity supply system”. This is a for-profit operation. Does the Coalition aim to replicate this sort of entity?
Peter Dutton and his shadow energy minister, Ted O’Brien, have sought to challenge the authority of CSIRO’s GenCost report on these cost disadvantages. A United States study has suggested the CSIRO estimates were conservative, putting the cost at $12,351 a kilowatt, compared with GenCost’s $8446/kW. Similarly, a recent report on the ABC’s Four Corners reviewing the US experience with the Plant Vogtle project in Georgia – which is also often cited by the Dutton team, in support of their policy proposal, as delivering cheaper electricity – revealed consumer dissatisfaction as electricity prices have risen sharply. And Bill Gates’s new Kemmerer project in Wyoming has encountered troubles.
While there are many gaps still in Dutton’s advocacy for us to adopt nuclear energy, one of the most important is his vagueness about the technology to be adopted – he has vacillated from the demonstrated, expensive large reactors to the commercially as yet unproven small modular reactors (SMRs). He would have us believe that by the time we need to build these, the proven technologies will be available. This delay may prevent him from supplying adequate cost estimates before the next election. It’s notable that the only SMR project to receive approval by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission was abandoned recently because of rising costs, even after the Department of Energy had pledged some US$500 million in grants.
Although we probably have the world’s largest deposits of uranium, we don’t have an enrichment industry. This also raises another serious question for the opposition to answer: where will the fuel for the reactors come from? Are they advocating that we also launch a nuclear enrichment industry? Is this also part of their AUKUS dream?
There are also important issues to be addressed in relation to the disposal of the waste from the reactors. The United Kingdom is currently demonstrating just how significant a challenge this can become.
Dutton and O’Brien have attempted to create the impression that Australia is being left behind in a world rushing to adopt and expand nuclear power. This is in doubt, but it is certainly true that there is a major push to decommission existing nuclear power plants. A recent report by the UK parliament’s Public Accounts Committee reviewed the decommissioning of all the country’s civil nuclear sites and made the point of just how expensive and time-consuming this process can be. Indeed, the committee estimated it will cost taxpayers about £132 billion to decommission all sites, and could take as long as 120 years. Clearly any estimates of the costs of nuclear deployment in Australia must recognise the costs of ultimate decommissioning.
Having spent some time reviewing the nuclear issue, especially in Canada, I ask whether Dutton is not just playing the nuclear card to distract and interrupt the Albanese government’s focus on the renewables transition. Or does the opposition leader plan ultimately to capitalise on our generous endowments of uranium deposits by not only moving towards nuclear power but perhaps also developing an enrichment industry that seeks to add value to those uranium deposits both for domestic use and export? There are very real opportunities to develop spin-off industries in nuclear medicine, radioisotope production, fixed irradiation technology and radio therapy equipment, as Canada has done to a world-class standing.
Setting all his misrepresentation to one side for a moment, the big question Dutton really needs to answer is why, when Australia is endowed with wind and solar resources that are the envy of the world, is he not prepared to capitalise on this? The Coalition could help this country lead the world in related technologies, and in the inevitable transition to renewables, rather than fiddling with nuclear power and undermining the government’s vision for a low-carbon future – which is probably something we as a nation should have embraced a couple of decades ago.
I mean if it can deliver clean energy and be cost effective and safe. well why not.
There no real way to know until they build it so no point getting into politics over it. Both right and left just hate each others opinions.
Obviously there’s a team of scientists out there working on this development, if they are legit good, or dodgy, their motive will be enough to judge their dedication