Australia on the road to Glasgow and beyond

Climate change is a defence issue as well as an environmental issue, as I will explain.

Australia is attracting unfavourable attention for our reluctance to commit to the growing international consensus for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, noting that the world’s largest emitter, China, has committed to this target by 2060. The way to achieve net-zero is being hotly debated and is largely based on the increasing adoption of renewable energy sources, primarily solar and wind, with additional energy storage to accommodate supply and demand variations.

Meanwhile there is a groundswell of advocacy for nuclear power to be included in the net-zero energy portfolio, requiring the rescission of federal and state laws that currently prohibit the enrichment of Australia’s copious deposits of uranium, the manufacture of nuclear reactor fuel, the operation of nuclear power plants or the processing of nuclear waste including spent reactor fuel.

The current advocacy for nuclear power emphasises the safety and efficiency of the latest small modular (nuclear) reactors, or SMRs as they are universally known. The leading examples of SMRs in the US and UK have achieved regulatory approvals to enable their full operation by the end of this decade. These SMRs are inherently safe, requiring no external action to maintain cooling after any automatically or manually initiated emergency shutdown, and are also cooled by convection thereby obviating the need for access to large volumes of cooling water. These two factors provide significant flexibility in the siting and sizing of the reactors so they may be tailored to an extended electrical supply and distribution grid such as on the eastern part of Australia.

Meanwhile, as Australia prepares to attend the UN Climate Change UK 2021 conference in Glasgow in November, there is increasing debate on whether Australia will make the commitment to net-zero and the basis for this to occur. The recently appointed CEO of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), Daniel Westerman, declared earlier in July that the grid would accommodate 100 per cent renewables, but more recently that current initiatives "would only get the grid equipped to handle about 75 per cent of instantaneous renewables penetration, and the solutions to bridge the gap have yet to be found". (AFR 26 JUL 2021) These solutions are needed to maintain the frequency of the grid and the reliability when there are large fluctuations in demand.

SMRs will provide such a solution, but at what cost? CSIRO says that nuclear power is too expensive, but this is being challenged. Environmental advocate Zali Steggall OAM admits that nuclear would be a solution if it were affordable. But the affordability will be known a decade from now when the SMRs are running, So what other reasons are there to maintain the legislative bans? None that are evidence based. Nuclear power has produced far fewer deaths than any other form of energy and is under deliberate action to make even safer.

The long-term effects of reprocessed radioactive waste have been carefully assessed and are internationally judged to be more manageable than the effects of plastic and other waste materials, or of carbon emissions.

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And then there is the time factor, with under 30 years to go there will need to be a transition process that is sustainable and that is proposed as liquefied natural gas, of which Australia has plentiful supplies, and is less carbon intensive than either coal or oil.

So then where is the defence issue? Well, we all hear every day the debate about the limitations of conventionally powered submarines due to their energy constraints and need to replenish internal air periodically. And most people would agree that nuclear propulsion would be preferred if only we had the nuclear industry essential to their effective sustainment.

And that is the nub of the Glasgow agenda. Australia will commit to net-zero at the Climate Summit based on the Labor Party agreeing to include SMRs in the energy portfolio, requiring the lifting of the bans, and that will in turn give rise to the development of the nuclear industry we need for Australia’s future submarines to be nuclear-powered.

QED as they say.

Christopher Skinner served 30 years in the Australian Navy as a weapons and electrical engineer officer in six surface warships. His interest in nuclear power for submarines is more recent and is reflected in his membership of the Engineers Australia, Sydney Division Nuclear Engineering Panel, the Australian Nuclear Association and the American Nuclear Society. He is also associated with several other organisations and institutes engaged in geopolitics, technology and submarine matters.

The views expressed above are entirely those of the author and are not endorsed by any of the organisations of which he is a member.