Carbon Emissions Reduction Scheme: The Green Paper (Part 1)

An extract from the green paper:

The key supply-side factor to consider is the relative emissions intensity of different production processes. If all entities in an industry use similar technology, they will all face a similar increase in costs under the scheme and entities will be able to pass these costs through to consumers to the extent allowed by their price elasticity of demand.

However, if an entity is significantly more emissions-intensive than others that sell the same product, it will not be able to increase its prices without fear that its lower emissions competitors will undercut them.

Competitors for such emissions-intensive entities are not limited to existing producers, but include potential new entrants that can use less emissions-intensive technologies.

Demand for electricity is relatively inelastic. This is important, because it indicates that, absent particular supply side issues, the industry as a whole may be able to pass a large share of its carbon costs to consumers.

Some generators may be constrained in their ability to pass on carbon costs to consumers. Different technologies are used to generate electricity in Australia, and they vary significantly in emissions intensity. Highly emissions-intensive coal-fired generators compete with lower emissions (but still emissions-intensive) gas-fired generators, and with zero emissions electricity sources such as wind or hydro generation.

In the context of the competitive structure of Australia’s major electricity markets, this variability might prevent coal-fired electricity generators, in particular, from passing on a significant portion of their carbon costs, reducing their profitability.

The profitability of emissions-intensive generators could be reduced in two ways.

First, generators could lose market share to generators with lower emissions intensity.
A reduction in volume is particularly significant for coal-fired generators, because they need to sell significant quantities of electricity to cover their high fixed capital and maintenance costs.

Second, competition with less emissions-intensive generators could reduce the margins earned on electricity sold by more emissions-intensive generators.

I can’t help but think they’ve overlooked something here. Here’s a bit of a tip for the federal government: emissions-intensive generators losing market share to generators with lower emissions intensity results in a reduction of the GHG emissions intensity of the market.

We can’t have that now, can we?

Australian support for consideration of nuclear energy continues to grow.

Paul Howes, national secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, is continuing to advocate taking a reasonable look at the role of nuclear energy as a means to achieve anthropogenic GHG emissions reductions. As you might expect from Australia’s largest trade union, their chief area of concern is the mitigation of GHG emissions, and the introduction of GHG emissions trading, without damage to Australian industries and industrial employment.

THE Rudd Government is being urged to embrace nuclear power as a source of clean energy, amid warnings its emissions trading scheme could result in desolating Australian mineral and metallurgy industries.

Just days before the Government releases a discussion paper on carbon trading, a new report shows Australia’s aluminium industry - employing 35,000 people - could be devastated.

Challenging Professor Ross Garnaut’s preferred model, the Australian Workers’ Union wants the key metals sector to receive a partial reprieve from carbon trading.

The union has a powerful ally: respected business figure and Commonwealth Bank chairman John Schubert.

Mr Schubert, who also chairs the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, says Canberra should “definitely look at” nuclear power.

“It needs to be a real option… should absolutely be on the table“, Mr Schubert said.

Howes has just released a report from Per Capita consulting on the effects of the emissions trading scheme on Australian industry - specifically the aluminium industry, in this case.

It says the future for the aluminium industry is grim if the Government gets the design of an ETS wrong.

Union and business leaders fear an ETS will cause job losses and send investment offshore, with the aluminium industry particularly vulnerable.

The Per Capita report says jobs could be lost to Brazil, China and India if Canberra imposes tough new laws.

The study recommends the Government give the aluminium industry a “partial exemption” from carbon trading for up to five years and embrace nuclear power.

Mr Howes said the report would bring a “bit of level-headedness” to the debate over emissions trading and climate change.

Mr Howes said he was sick of hearing claims that workers in “heavy-polluting” industries, such as steel and aluminium, could be re-trained in “green” industries.

Instead, workers could be “left on the scrapheap of history” and enter the ranks of the long-term unemployed, Howes claims.

Personally, I don’t agree with the popular conception that aluminium production is an especially highly GHG emissions intensive industry.

Direct GHG emissions intensity for aluminium production in Australia was 2.0 tonnes CO2-e per tonne of aluminium production in 2007 — down from 2.1 in 2006 and 5.0 in 1990 — an improvement over the 1990 level of 60 per cent.

Indirect GHG emissions intensity from electricity consumption for aluminium production remained at the same level as 2006 at 14.1 tonnes CO2-e per tonne of aluminium production — down from 16.1 in 1990 — an improvement of 12%. This reflects both energy efficiency and changes in greenhouse grid factors.

Australian aluminium production in 2007 (i.e. aluminium smelting, not alumina production) contributed 31.6 mt (million tonnes) of GHG emissions (CO2-e), comprising 3.95 mt CO2-e of direct PFC emissions, direct carbon dioxide process emissions and other site-level emissions, and 27.69 mt CO2-e of indirect emissions from electricity consumption.

The Australian aluminium smelting industry consumed 29,500 GWh of electricity in 2007, corresponding to an average GHG emissions intensity of 939 g/kWhe for the electricity consumed by Australia’s aluminium smelters - consistent with Australia’s extremely GHG intensive, overwhelmingly coal based electricity generation capacity.

[These statistics are taken from the Australian Aluminium Council's 2007 Sustainability Report.]

Indirect GHG emissions from fossil fuel electricity generation - which aren’t really emissions from the aluminium production industry at all - hence comprise 88 percent of the GHG emissions intensity ascribed to the aluminium smelting industry.

If the overall GHG emissions intensity of the electricity supply of 939 g/kWhe was cut to, say, 100 g/kWhe through the replacement of coal fired generators with nuclear energy, geothermal, solar thermal, hydroelectricity or what have you, then the greenhouse gas emissions of aluminium production in Australia can be cut from 31.6 mt to 6.9 mt - 3.52 tonnes CO2-e per tonne Al, compared with 16.1 tonnes CO2-e per tonne Al at present - a 78% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions intensity, and that’s on top of any further improvement in energy efficiency and/or process efficiency, PFC emissions reduction and so forth, in the industry.

Aluminium smelters are not at all the cause for concern here. The burning of coal and fossil fuel for essentially all the country’s electricity generation is by far the foremost concern that we need to address.

The AWU’s press release, and the 32 page analysis commissioned by the AWU from Per Capita, are available here.

Also, in Canberra today, economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs warns that the world must embrace nuclear power as one of its options if it is going to win the fight against the potentially catastrophic damage of anthropogenic greenhouse effect forcing.

Professor Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and author of the book The End of Poverty, warned that global warming had the potential to undo the progress being made in the war on global poverty, making the tropics hotter and arid regions even more arid.

In Canberra to give a keynote speech today at the Australian National University’s annual China Update, he said the world would need to use every available technology - and develop some more - to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse forcing at the same time as rapidly expanding its output.

Professor Sachs, who has not supported nuclear power in the past, said better technology was the key to breaking the link between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions, and the world could not afford to do without either nuclear power or cleaner coal.

“I support the reintroduction of nuclear power”, he said. “It’s hard to see how we’re going to get enough energy with low carbon emissions without nuclear playing a significant role.“

“If Australia chooses not to go that way, it’s going to have to go even more aggressively towards solar energy and carbon capture and storage. My own feeling is that nuclear is safe and cost-effective.“

Professor Sachs, 52, played a key role in drawing up the Millennium Development Goals that are the targets for reducing global poverty.

Yesterday he said climate change was one cause of the steep rise in world food prices, which is making food unaffordable in some poorer areas.

If the world can not afford to do without either nuclear power or “cleaner coal”, and nuclear power is already a developed, mature, proven technology across the world, and “cleaner coal” is far from it, then it’s not much of a contest, is it?

ABC Q&A: It’s not easy being Green.

The recording of ABC TV’s Q&A series this week, debating anthropogenic climate change, the mitigation thereof, and alternative energy systems to coal, featuring Craig Emerson, Helen Coonan, Christine Milne, Andrew Bolt and Linda Jaivine is available online now. It’s worth watching, if you’re interested.

More on the Garnaut report.

The next thing that gets on my nerves about the Garnaut report is its repeated emphasis - and optimism - on what are described as “near-zero emissions coal technologies”.

“The success of near-zero emissions coal technologies will mean that new fossil fuel plant will continue to be coal, while Australia continues to gain as an exporter from the ongoing high global gas prices.”

“For Australia, the importance of reducing emissions from coal combustion is of large national importance.”

If this industry is to have a long-term future in a low-emissions economy, then it will have to be transformed to near-zero emissions, from source to end use, by the middle of this century. A range of technical, environmental and economic challenges must be addressed effectively to achieve this objective, in a time frame consistent with a global agreement on climate change and Australia’s own domestic commitment.

There is seemingly precious little discussion about the maturity of such technologies, how scalable they are, how far they are away from practical widespread use, the extent to which they actually mitigate carbon dioxide emissions, and how much these technologies will cost, and their economic competitveness, even under a GHG emissions trading scheme.

At its simplest, the challenge is to develop technologies that allow coal combustion with zero, or near-zero, carbon dioxide emissions while maintaining its relative competitive position as a fuel.

Those same forces of high capital costs, high world gas prices and relatively strong export coal prices will strongly favour retrofitted (post-combustion capture) coal plants with captive coal supplies and low-emissions profiles and ultimately, near zero emissions plants involving integrated coal drying and gasification technology.

This notion of “zero-emissions” or “near-zero-emissions” from coal is simply ridiculous and unfounded.

The IPCC Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage reports that:

“Available technology captures about 85–95% of the CO2 processed in a capture plant. A power plant equipped with a CCS system (with access to geological or ocean storage) would need roughly 10–40% more energy than a plant of equivalent output without CCS, of which most is for capture and compression. For secure storage, the net result is that a power plant with CCS could reduce CO2 emissions to the atmosphere by approximately 80–90% compared to a plant without CCS.”

There’s an interesting paper here which provides a realistic analysis of the implementation of retrofitted CO2 capture for an existing pulverised coal power station.

This paper examines the retrofit of a 400 MWe pulverized-coal fired plant emitting 368 t/h of CO2 to enable CO2 capture while maintaining 400 MWe output, where 90% of the CO2 emitted from the coal plant is captured. To do so, the extra energy required for capturing CO2 was supplied by natural gas-fired gas turbines.

I’ve quoted the key points from the paper below. I’ve applied some minor editing and collation, but most of the material is straight from the paper cited.

Even when CO2 emitted from the gas turbines is not captured, the overall process still have some impact in reducing CO2 emissions, corresponding to an overall reduction in carbon dioxide output to the atmosphere of between 60-70%, with atmospheric CO2 emissions of between 110 and 138 t/h, compared to 368 t/h for the original coal combustion plant, at the cost of a natural gas requirement of about 1350 GJ/h.

When CO2 from the gas turbines is captured, the reduction in CO2 emission is between 68 and 77%, or CO2 emission to the atmosphere of 86-113 t/h. However, a considerably large amount of natural gas is required (around 3140 GJ/h), which is certainly not reasonable.

The total amount of natural gas required is between 3100 and 3300 GJ/h. To put this number into perspective, this amount of natural gas would generate about 460 MWe when used in a combined-cycle gas turbine plant without CO2 capture. The relative emissions are between 23% and 32% of the original coal power plant, which has a significant impact on the reduction of CO2 emissions.

In addition to the cost analysis, the future work will investigate other possibilities of integrating gas turbines into the coal power plant. The configuration presented in this paper represents one extreme, where all the electricity is generated from coal and the auxiliary power is generated from the gas turbine and natural gas boilers. Another extreme is to consider the classical view of producing all the auxiliary power from the coal plant, at the expense of decreasing the net electrical output. To compensate for the lost electrical output, a combined-cycle gas turbine with CO2 capture will be added. Combinations between these two extremes will also be investigated.

For a nameplate capacity of 400 MW, and a capacity factor which we may assume to be, say, 85%, carbon dioxide emissions of between 86 and 138 t/h correspond to emissions of between 253 to 406 grams of carbon dioxide per kWh generated.

The results from this study certainly paint a less optimistic assessment of the carbon dioxide emissions intensity of “clean coal” than the 80-90% reductions estimated by the IPCC.

That’s not clean coal. Much like the use of fossil fuel methane, it’s a bit cleaner, but it certainly isn’t clean.

Indeed, such levels of carbon dioxide emissions intensity are not much better than existing high efficiency combined-cycle natural gas fired gas turbine power plants. Given that the carbon dioxide emissions aren’t grossly worse, and given that gas turbine plants are already established, mature technology which is likely to remain far more economically competitive with this expensive, immature, unproven future technology, it is easy to envision that natural gas will be the main focus of the fossil fuel combustion energy industry over coming years, as opposed to the development of CCS technology, even where emissions trading is introduced.

The exception to this, of course, is where there is a vested interest in keeping the existing coal-fired power plants, and enormous coal-mining infrastructure, even if it is a less than sensible choice on many different levels. Natural gas turbines are of course, along with nuclear power, by far one of the biggest “threats” to the coal mining and coal-combustion electricity generation industry.

Additionally, that’s only considering greenhouse gas emissions from combustion at the power plant - without any consideration of whole-of-life-cycle analysis of coal mining and natural gas production - the enormous scale on which coal is mined, along with the fugitive emissions associated with the production and handling of natural gas, and so forth.

There is a large body of literature and knowledge of the whole-of-life-cycle analysis of energy intensity, environmental impact and greenhouse gas emissions associated with, for example, nuclear power, solar photovoltaics or wind power.

However, since fossil fuel combustion energy generation has such a comparatively fantastically high level of carbon dioxide emissions in the combustion process itself, I feel that sometimes it’s easy for some of us to forget that it’s only sensible to apply the same metrics across the life cycle for fossil fuels, just as people insist on analysis the impact of the entire life cycles for nuclear energy or solar energy, for example.

What is desperately needed is further research into the life cycle analysis of coal or other fossil-fuel combustion based energy generation systems when they are combined with proposed carbon capture and storage technologies. This is clearly important if a fair comparison is to be made between the economic and environmental feasibility of fossil-combustion CCS and alternatives such as nuclear power, wind, hydro or so forth.

Personally, I believe that as such analyses are performed, the extreme skepticism with which many of us view the comparative practicality of these “low-emissions” fossil fuel combustion technologies will begin to be vindicated.

Not-really-clean-coal for Victoria.

Just two days before the Garnaut report on climate change is handed down, the Victorian Government has given the go-ahead to a new brown-coal power station in Latrobe Valley.

Environmental campaigners said it was “complete madness” to approve the $750 million plant, but the Government said the station would use new technology that would slash greenhouse gas emissions.

The project is a joint venture between consortium HRL and Chinese power giant Harbin Power, and will receive funding of $100 million from the Federal Government and $50 million from the Victorian Government.

“The $750 million HRL plant will use technology which has been developed right here in Victoria and is part of the new generation of clean coal power stations designed to slash greenhouse gas emissions,” said the Energy Minister, Peter Batchelor.

“The project uses a process called integrated drying gasification combined cycle (IDGCC) which can reduce emissions of CO2 from brown coal-fired power generation by 30 per cent and reduce water consumption by 50 per cent, compared to current best practice for brown coal power generation in the Latrobe Valley.”

Robert over at Larvatus Prodeo actually reported on this at length last year, when the project was first announced, and there’s a good body of details of the project and discussion to refer to there.

Typical generators burning Victorian brown coal generate 1175 g CO2e per kWh of electricity generated.

The IDGCC plant will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 30% - so, that’s about 823 g CO2e/kWh.

For a good supercritical black coal burning plant you’ve got about 863 gCO2e, and 751 g for natural gas, or 577 g for combined cycle natural gas - which is about the absolute lowest you’ll get for a fossil fuel.

The carbon dioxide emissions are still high as all hell. It’s basically the same as a black coal fired power plant - in absolutely no way is it low in greenhouse gas emissions. All that the IDGCC technology is really accomplishing is to turn a plant powered by brown coal - the most especially inefficient and carbon dioxide intensive form of coal - into the emissions equivalent of a more conventional black coal fired plant. Make no mistake - the entirety of that dangerous fossil fuel waste is being discharged straight into the environment, as per business as usual.

But there’s one aspect to this which I find interesting, in particular.

This plant is slated to cost 750 million (Australian) dollars, and will have a nameplate capacity of 400 MW.
That is; $1875 per kilowatt of nameplate capacity.

The US nuclear energy industry is aiming to build new nuclear power plants for a cost of $1500 to $2000 per kW capacity.

The General Electric ABWR was the first third generation power plant approved. The first two ABWR’s were commissioned in Japan in 1996 and 1997. These took just over 3 years to construct and were completed on budget. Their construction costs were around $2000 per KW.

Westinghouse claims that the AP1000 power reactor will cost $1400 per KW for the first reactor and fall to as low as $1000 per KW for subsequent reactors.

I don’t know what kind of capacity factor is to be expected from an IDGCC plant - but at best, it’s comparable to that of nuclear power. If the capacity factor is significantly less, then this decreases the economic competitiveness of the coal plant relative to nuclear power still further.

We’re looking at the construction of a coal-fired power station that is not mitigating its carbon dioxide emissions in any meaningful way, emitting about 823 g CO2e/kWh straight into the atmosphere, along with all kinds of other dangerous coal byproducts, where the construction of a new nuclear power plant is already likely to be directly competitive, if not superior, on construction cost terms, even in the absence of any kind of emissions trading scheme, carbon dioxide ‘price’, carbon dioxide capture and storage or carbon dioxide sequestration.

What’s up with that?

Rudd rejects Labor nuclear push

Rudd rejects Labor nuclear push

THE Rudd Government has flatly rejected calls from an influential unionist and the former Labor premier Bob Carr to embrace a nuclear power industry as it grapples with how to cut carbon emissions.

Kevin Rudd told ABC radio this morning the nuclear option was not needed.

And in a short media conference, Treasurer Wayne Swan, when asked about the renewed nuclear push answed: “No, a capital N-O.”

The issue was reignited after The Australian reported this morning that Australian Workers Union boss Paul Howes and Mr Carr had called on the Government to purge its prejudices and embrace a nuclear power industry.

Their advocacy came at the annual Australian-American Leadership Dialogue in Washington after a debate on climate change.

“If we are going to be a green Labor Government, then we have to look at nuclear,” Mr Howes told The Australian.

“If we don’t start today, we are going to put ourselves in a very precarious position in 10, 15 or 20 years time.”

“I’ve told ministers in the Rudd Government this is my view and the view of my union. I can’t tell you how concerned I am about this. It’s the greatest challenge the union movement has faced since trade liberalisation in the 1980s, if not greater.

“The only option for us, in my view, is nuclear. If we are going to reduce our carbon output and still want to have heavy industry then we have to look at renewable and new sources of energy - and that means nuclear.”

Mr Carr described nuclear power as the critical bridge between the carbon era and energy from renewable sources.

“There is no other bridging technology to get us from this catastrophic burning of coal and oil into the era of cheap and infinite renewable power,” the former NSW Labor premier said.

“We all want to get there. But it’s decades off and we need a bridge. The best the Western world can do to stop the melting of the polar icecaps is to sponsor the production of the most modern nuclear power plants.”

But the Prime Minister said today: “We believe that we have a full range of energy options available to Australia beyond nuclear through which we can respond to the climate change challenge, and we’re confident we can do that,” he said.

Mr Rudd also reiterated that the coal industry must remain part of a long-term solution and that clean coal technologies must be further developed, but he was optimistic about its future.

“What the nation needs to set for itself and the world is a goal to bring about the commercial application and scale of clean-coal technologies,” he said.

The climate change issue will continue to dominate the political agenda over the next week, with the Government’s climate change expert Ross Garnaut to release his interim report next Friday.

A Government green paper is to follow.

As the Government moved to dismiss the nuclear option, Mr Howes continued his push.

“In the UK, there’s going to be the expansion of nuclear facilities there,” he told Fairfax radio today.

“France now has 80 per cent of its power generated from nuclear, all as short solutions, that is 20 to 50 year solutions until other technologies, such as fusion and hot rock, … are developed and are widely available as baseload power.”

Nuclear power would always be a sensitive issue, he said.

“But we have 40 per cent of the world’s uranium in Australia.

“Labor has overturned the three mines policy and I think it’s now a time for another healthy, sensible and rational debate about this issue without falling back to alarmist sentiments.”

Rudd’s and Labor’s position on nuclear power is based completely on ideology and dogma, in the absence of any evidence. What is their scientifically, factually motivated argument against nuclear energy?

If we “have a full range of energy options available to Australia beyond nuclear through which we can respond to the climate change challenge” then what the hell are they, actually?

Rudd can either put up or shut up. Meanwhile, no impact is being made in the use of coal at all.

So, what are these magical options that Rudd has up his sleeve? How mature are the technologies? How much energy do they generate, how easily can they be scaled up, how much do they cost when scaled up to replace coal plants, and how much carbon dioxide and other forms of pollution do they emit - and why aren’t we using them to replace coal fired power stations right now, without the bullshit?

If there’s some magical thing that Rudd is sitting on that is superior to nuclear energy - which there isn’t - then let’s see it. I’m calling him out on it, right now. Since no superior option exists for replacing coal-fired power stations, nuclear energy is what is needed.

Even the AWU realises that burning coal in this way is completely unsustainable - why does the Rudd government insist on remaining committed to coal?

If we check out The Australian’s poll we see - once again - that a clear majority of Australians think the same way.

Australia 2020 Summit - Initial Report

http://www.australia2020.gov.au/docs/2020_Summit_initial_report.pdf

The (initial) report from the Australia 2020 summit has been released.

It says this:

“By 2020 Australia will be making a major contribution to a comprehensive global response to climate change, including working with our partners on clean energy. Australia will have dramatically reduced our emissions, and communities, regions and business will be actively assisted to adopt the unavoidable consequences of climate change.”

But how will those emissions of greenhouse gases be “dramatically reduced”? There is essentially nothing in the report indicating that much thought has been given at all to how those emissions will be reduced on an appropriate chronological scale.

What’s more, astonishingly, there is no mention - no mention at all - of nuclear energy in the report. There is no “nuclear energy is good”, no “nuclear energy is bad”, no “no, we must not waste our resources with nuclear energy”, no “we should look into the nuclear energy option” - absolutely nothing!

What exactly have these delegates been doing, for goodness sake?

Those anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions aren’t going to mitigate themselves.

An open letter to Kevin Rudd and the Australia 2020 Summit.

As worldwide concern mounts over the potentially serious effects caused by potential forcing of changes in climatic systems resulting from anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, Australia must undertake serious consideration of how best to reduce, within reason, the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions of our civilization.

In an Australian context, the most significant, obvious step which we can take towards the mitigation of CO2 emissions is the replacement of our extremely polluting and harmful primarily coal-fired stationary electricity generation capacity with alternative systems for stationary electricity generation on the large scale required, which are environmentally sustainable and not CO2 emissions intensive.

50% of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in Australia come from stationary energy generation - clearly this is the most obvious place to start if we really want to make a dent in carbon dioxide emissions.

The idea that 80% of our electricity generation capacity is being generated from coal and fossil fuels, with the dangerous waste of fossil fuels just being spewed into the environment as usual, is absolutely appalling.

To this end, rational, factual, well-researched and scientifically motivated consideration must be paid in particular to the use of nuclear energy - which is a proven, mature, environmentally sound and non CO2 emissions intensive source of electricity generation which works on the large scales of energy output required.

Nuclear energy must be considered, and compared with the alternatives available, in a way which is informed, scientifically motivated and free of dogma, ignorance and political bias, and based on consideration of the environmentally sound technologies which are available and proven right now which can most successfully provide large scale electricity generation with the high capacity factors required to substitute for and replace dangerous and environmentally destructive coal-fired generation in the near future. Nuclear energy is a technology which satisfies all these criteria.

I would like to hear what account the Rudd government would give, what scientifically, factually motivated basis they could give, for their opposition to nuclear energy - and I strongly urge them to reconsider it, for the good of us all.
[Yes, I did officially submit something very close to the above to the summit.]

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 electricity - 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.

Another point that anti-mining and anti-nuclear-power activists love to make in Australia is that mines such as Olympic Dam use too much water.

The Olympic Dam mine consumes about 30 megalitres of water a day - 30 million litres, in total, for the township, as well as all mining operations. Is that a lot?

Olympic Dam, at present, produces about 200,000 tons of copper annually, along with a relatively small amount of uranium, about 4300 tons of U3O8.

Now, I’m not an expert on mineral extraction, hydrometallurgy, and mining operations, but I will make the rough assumption that the production of one ton of copper metal consumes the same amount of water as the production of one ton of uranium oxide. Therefore, we infer that uranium production at Olympic Dam consumes 2% of the total amount of water, or 600,000 litres per day, or 140 litres of water per metric ton of uranium oxide produced.

If 200 tons of natural uranium in the form of uranium oxide is sufficient to make up the fuel for a 1 GW nuclear power reactor for one year, and that reactor operates with an 90% capacity factor, then the production of Uranium at Olympic Dam then consumes 3550 litres of water per TWh of electricity that can be produced from that uranium.

For comparison, the mining of coal consumes about 200 litres of fresh water per ton of coal produced. Given that a typical coal-fired power station consumes about 0.5 metric tons of coal to produce 1 MWh of electricity, the mining of coal for electricity generation consumes 100 megalitres of water per TWh of electricity production.

Difference of Opinion: Nuclear or Not?

The transcripts and recordings of this TV debate program that I previously mentioned is now available.

Some fairly predictable discussion, and some not so predictable discussion, from a few familiar and relatively familiar faces in the nuclear energy scene.

I figured the international community, or those who didn’t see the program on TV, would find this useful.