Russia on receiving end of energy diplomacy

Throughout recent years, Russia has been accused of using its energy resources as an instrument of diplomacy, isolating the taps on oil pipelines going into Europe last winter and as recently as last month. The linked article also explains a certain perceived, energy dependence related EU handicap with respect to the EU's ability to conduct firm negotiations with Russian with respect to the conflict in Georgia.

But Australia has some leverage on the issue thanks to Russia's increasing interest in uranium - specifically the deal struck about 1 year ago regarding Australia's supply of uranium to Russia. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said, "When considering ratification, the government will take into account not just the merits of the agreement but recent and ongoing events in Georgia and the state of Australia's bilateral relationship with the Russian Federation."

Smith made Australia's views clear to Russia when he summoned the Russian envoy last week to call on Moscow to pull its troops in Georgia back to the positions they held before the conflict began on August 8. He added that Russia's recognition of independence for the former Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was unhelpful.

Ross Garnaut's report

I was happy to see nuclear power discussed in the report. The section on nuclear power concludes as follows:

In Australia, as well as in most other developed and developing countries, public acceptability is an important barrier, that would need to be recognised as a constraint and a source of delays and increased costs by any government committed to implementation of a nuclear power program. The Australian Government is firmly against Australian nuclear power generation, and the Coalition parties retreated quickly from nuclear advocacy in the face of community antipathy during the 2007 federal general election. It would be imprudent, indeed romantic, to rely on a change of community attitudes as a premise of future electricity supply for the foreseeable future.

Given the economic issues and community disquiet about establishing a domestic nuclear power capacity, Australia would be best served by continuing to export its uranium and focusing on low-emissions coal, gas and renewable options for domestic energy supply. However, it would be wise to reconsider the constraints if:

• future nuclear costs come in at the low end of the estimates provided above
• developments in technologies reduce the need for long-term storage of high level radioactive waste
• there is disappointment with technical and commercial progress with low emissions fossil fuel technologies, and
• community disquiet eases.

Many who support nuclear power already believe the third bullet's criteria are a foregone conclusion for the next several decades at least. High level nuclear waste is a political and public acceptance issue [merging it with the fourth bullet] and ongoing growth in new plant constructions and innovative designs are working to address the first.

This leaves public acceptance as the overwhelming issue within Australia. Acceptance may be swayed by dramatically increased energy costs, failures to achieve desired reductions in emissions or energy quality and reliability issues [increase in power interruptions / blackouts].

In the near-term, I hope WA and Queensland reconsider their positions on uranium mining.

Expansion at Olympic Dam means increased energy inputs (of course).

Apparently, some people out there are shocked with new projections that expanded operations, proposed to be completed around 2013, at BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam facility will entail significant expansion of the mine's electricity consumption - projected to be an average of 690 megawatts per year, or around 40% of South Australia's total electricity consumption, when the expansion is complete.

Here's the complete story, from news.com.au.

(As an aside, I'm quite pleased to note, when reading the comments on the above-linked webpage, just how much pro-nuclear-energy sentiment seems to be out there.)

Olympic Dam is a copper mine. When the expanded production reaches full capacity in 2015 or so, 450,000 tons of copper metal will be produced annually.

There is a little bit of uranium, gold, and a couple of other things mixed into the orebody which are valuable too, so they extract them as well when the copper ore is processed.

It's a homogeneous orebody - the uranium and copper and things are all mixed together, so it is impossible to mine the copper without mining uranium, too.

For that 450,000 tons of copper metal that will be produced, only about 14,000 tons of uranium oxide will be produced. The uranium is only a byproduct.

Remember - without copper being mined out of the ground, no electricity of any kind, clean, green or not, can be generated, distributed or used. Without production of aluminium metal, a popular target of so-called environmentalists, electricity transmission over overhead cables cannot be done.

Even since the stone age or the bronze age, mining has been integral to the existence of our technological civilisation. Even as we move to clean sources of energy to power our technological civilisation, such as geothermal and nuclear energy, mining will always be essential.

Now, the expanded mine will consume 690 megawatts of electrical power, on average.

A typical nuclear power reactor generating 1 gigawatt of electricity requires an amount of uranium fuel corresponding to about 200 tons of natural uranium in the form of uranium oxide per year.

So, Olympic Dam will consume 690 megawatts of electricty - and it will produce enough uranium in one year to generate 70 gigawatts of electricity for one year -
over one hundred times the total power consumption of the mine.

Yes, you might be thinking that this ignores the other energy inputs into the nuclear fuel cycle - but it also assumes an extremely inefficient once-through fuel cycle using low-enriched uranium in current light water reactors, without recycling of fuel.

Of course, one must remember that the vast majority of the energy input at Olympic Dam goes into the extraction and smelting of copper metal - the overall "energy gain" typically associated with actual uranium mining operations are typically much higher than 100.

More nuclear deployment - we're getting closer

The expected launch of a new wave of UK nuclear power plant deployment is sparking acts of desperation from anti-nuclear critics and activists.

Dan at Idaho Shamizdat has an informative post on the anticipated UK announcement regarding a renewed nuclear energy programme.

Almost just as fast, over at the Oil Drum: Europe, Chris Vernon submitted this post about anti-nuke David Fleming's 'concerns' about 'peak uranium'. I gather from this post and the subsequent comments that Fleming is referencing 'Storm and Smith', a uranium / energy balance analysis that has been discredited by, among others Australian, Professor Martin Sevior. There's plenty of economically recoverable uranium out there. For details, see the links below.

These posts and this argument are more good news for nuclear power for a variety of reasons:

• First, the world is progressing still further through anti-nuclear rhetoric and what I see as pretty much 'junk' science (or at least poor quality / biased science) by, for example Storm Smith. First it was safety. Then following decades of operational excellence, that was grudgingly conceded. Then it was cost and construction time, but now with the true capabilities of renewables becoming better understood, the undefinable lead time of 'clean coal' and the ever increasing costs of gas and oil; nuclear plants on a 10 to 15 year horizon are looking more desirable. So now we have the 'peak uranium' argument. Recall my 'stages of grief' post? This is bargaining, simply a stage in the process.
• Next, I note the quick rebuttals from the scientific and engineering community. I'm not so certain this would have been as swift or thorough in previous decades. Maybe the Internet has provided a medium where scientific information can be presented fully, without interruption, to a broad and interested audience. If so, this change seems to have liberated individuals who would have previously shared their ideas in papers buried in scientific journals, to close fiends over dinner or via brief chats at cocktail parties. In any case, this is another tick in the 'good' column.
• Finally, I note the interest level in general. For good or bad, a rapidly growing number of people are interested in nuclear power again and are seeing fit to actually discuss different issues. I look forward to a day [I don't think we're quite there yet] where indignation, and arrogant, dismissive attitudes are, themselves, no longer considered valid anti-nuclear arguments by the general public.

Charles Barton at Nuclear Green shared some information about the further debunking of Storm and Smith [not on his blog - yet. I received it semi-directly]. The below links are courtesy of his research.

For more information:

Storm and Smith debated by Prof Servior and Dr. A. Flintly

Another Oil Drum Post - M. Sevior

U of Melbourn article

Lifecycle of Nuclear Power