Royal Commission in to nuclear power for SA says it’s not commercially viable for now

NUCLEAR-POWERED electricity generation in South Australia is on the backburner until action to stall global warming forces policy change, the royal commission says.

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NUCLEAR-POWERED electricity generation in South Australia is on the backburner until action to stall global warming forces policy change, the royal commission says.

A nuclear power station was not commercially viable at the moment but this situation could change.

“Nuclear power may be necessary, along with other low carbon generation technologies,” the commission reported.

“It would be wise to plan now to ensure that nuclear power would be available should it be required.”

The commission found that South Australia’s electricity market did not need another large-scale power station.

Demand was flat and the large capital expenditure to build a plant weighed against a power plant.

Major upgrades in connection would be needed for SA to supply significant power to other states.

“However, if you were thinking about retiring coal plants (interstate), it’s a very different equation,” Commissioner Kevin Scarce said.

If national policy settings were changed to take strong action on climate, a large nuclear power plant in SA could reduce wholesale electricity prices by 24 per cent compared to what they would otherwise need to be.

Nuclear was a low-carbon emission technology, comparable to the main renewable sources in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases generated in the full life cycle.

The commission said nuclear power plants were “very complex systems designed and operated by humans, who can make mistakes”.

It warns there could be no guarantee there will never be an accident but goes on to say “the risk of nuclear accident should not of itself preclude consideration of nuclear power as a future electricity generation option”.

The commission considered the three major international nuclear accidents — Fukushima Daiichi in Japan in 2011, Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986 and Three Mile Island in the US in 1979.

It said each accident had been thoroughly investigated, leading to lessons that have been applied to enhance safety.

Rear Admiral Scarce said safety was paramount, but successful risk management was not beyond SA’s capability.

“We believe with the new technology developed since Fukushima, with appropriate regulatory oversight, that nuclear power should not be automatically ignored as a future generation technology,” he said.

In addition to receiving submissions and hearing from expert witnesses, the royal commission contracted two professional reports into the viability of nuclear power in SA.

Estimates of costs and a possible business case were studied by consultants WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff.

Separately, DGA Consulting/Carisway looked at how nuclear power plant in SA could be linked in with the national electricity market which is supplied by both fossil fuel and renewable sources.

The commission heard evidence about Generation IV reactors which use a different cooling mechanism and are able to take nuclear waste from earlier generation reactors.

This uses up more of the energy and reduces the time in which the waste from a Generation IV reactor to about 300 years — similar to uranium — rather than hundreds of thousands of years.

However, this technology was currently unproven and the commission saw it as a future possibility and was not in favour of SA being the testbed for a first of a kind technology.