A Japanese nuclear restart could help Australia in two ways.. it would revive the price of yellowcake and hold down the price of gas for domestic use. The connection between gas and uranium runs deep since the proposed expansion of the Olympic Dam mine was to be based on gas fired energy. The Fukushima event was probably the final straw that saw the expansion mothballed.

Few people ask what we will do to replace gas in the second half of the century. Fertilisers like urea based on the Haber Bosch process are said to enable world population to be a third larger than otherwise. We could use gas a transport fuel noting the new Chevrolet Impala will run on both compressed natural gas and petrol. We should not be using gas for baseload electricity (a job for nukes), for LNG export or for extracting tar sands but saving it for the long run.

This article brings together several strands of the LNG story dispassionately and rationally.

Well done!

Expect the first Japanese restart to be the most difficult. From there, the next and the next will be less problemmatic. Basing this "what if" discussion on 50% return to service of nuclear power plant thus seems reasonable, but in what time frame?

5 years? The bottom has already fallen out of the Japanese balance sheet. In 5 years, the implications from a falling currency and hence the value of Japanese private savings will be socially very significant.

10 years? Might as well be never, because Japan will be difficult to recognise with accumulating foreign exchange losses of hundreds of billions of dollars and with scarce natural energy resources. The current buffer is private savings. These are primarily held in Yen and will thus devalue as inflation and external negative balance of trade take their toll. The Yen will be useless for overseas trade, so oil and coal purchases will have to cease. Not pretty.

If Japan's economy is to avoid having to be redesigned from the bottom up, the Japanese nuclear power stations will be needed back on line asap.

This discussion is central to the world's energy and economy futures. The effects on the economy and the Yen will be evident much sooner than the effects on climate.

Taswegian

Expecting nuclear energy would solve Australia baseload power needs is as politically impossible as some of the Greens more unlikely energy schemes.

Australians can't even agree on a National Low or Medium nuclear waste dump site let alone a High level waste dump that spent Reactor fuel rods would need to be stored in - for many-many years.

see the lack of progress on Low-Medium http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/western-australia-in-nations-nuclear-waste-dump-sights-20131112-2xdzn.html

Yep maybe Australian nuclear - in fifty years. But Australians would need to accept long term storage issues of High level waste - with all the problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel#Spent_fuel_decay_heat

Pete

Interesting thread.
It should be remembered that Oilprice.com is a part of the oil & gas
industry and that site does publish a fairly wide spread of views.
However like the rest of the industry on the whole it seems to believe
that the flow of gas from fracked wells is a long term supply.

Like the fracked tight oil wells, the gas wells are on borrowed time
with high production decline rates.
The end of this decade will see the end of their significant production.
The whole oil & gas fracking industry faces a finance problem due to
poor returns on previous investment.
BHP, Shell, Mobil & Chesapeake are all out of that business now.
To quote Mobil's CEO; "We are losing our shirts !".

Australian nuclear will never happen, we have left it too late even if
the political obstacles could be overcome,
The financial and insurance requirements can never be met.
Such a program requires an economy with vibrant growth.

We really need to get selfish and reserve the largest part for ourselves.
We have a very dodgy supply of petrol & diesel and soon
all refineries in Australia will be closed and we will be importing
100% of our supply. The reason they are closing is because we now only
produce about 40% of our usage and it is declining at about 4% a year.
It is cheaper to import from the larger Singapore refineries.

To be more self supporting we need to convert a large proportion of
our transport fleet, cars & trucks to CNG. If we do that the gas will
not last as long as it is now being forecast.

I do not know what the proportion would be but I suspect that transport
would use more that half the available gas if most of the fleet was converted.
Cont:

Cont:
So you can see our problem;
1. Flog of all the gas we have
2. Sell none of it & use for transport
3. Sell some, but keep most

If 1. Walk or ride a bicycle
If 2. Drive for many more years and run factories & homes
If 3. Drive for some years and run factories & homes

Crudely those are the choices we have. The governments ABIRE told
the previous government this so they suppress the report and the
current government is doing an Admiral Nelson on it.

Baz is either very much a pessimist or has closed his mind to some of the options.

Of course nuclear is a difficult political sell, but it is absolutely incorrect to say that it is unable to be financed or insured. The proven, actuarial risks associated with nuclear, even the current commercial options, are far lower than with every other form of electricity production than hydro. That includes solar, wind, etc. The cradle to grave scenario has been explained many times, but it is politics which stand in the way.

Indeed, the insurance fund in the USA which the nuclear generators have built up is so large that there are pressures from the contributors to cease or to drastically reduce their contributions and from the politicians to syphon half off for other projects.

Similarly, Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) figures published by various sources, having regard to all lifetime factors including insurance and end-of life costs are available from many sources. They demonstrate conclusively that it is not cost which holds nuclear power back.

It isn't safety, or cost, or insurance or financing that prevent consideration of nuclear power: it is emotion, expressed as lack of political will.

And please, don't come back with arguments about "waste". Nuclear waste, left to itself, eventually becomes benign, through decay. That isn't the case for wastes such as lead or arsenic or asbestos or a long list of other permanent pollutants which attract less attention, despite the fact that they never decay. Once introduced into an environment, they continue to accumulate, damage, re-accumulate and get passed up and down food chains for ever. Read up about Type IV reactors, for which the technology was demonstrated 40+ years ago, and discover just how tiny the waste from a nuclear power station can be and how simple and safe it can be to manage very safely indeed.

The truth is that nuclear power is virtually waste-free in comparison with everything else available.

Mr Bennetts please note.

In some or many (?) countries nuclear disaster insurance may be low because the taxpayer foots the bills after nuclear disasters.

In India nuclear projects have been severely delayed over the vexed insurance question.

In October 2011, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said the Japanese government will spend at least 1 trillion yen ($13 billion) to clean up vast areas contaminated by radiation from the Fukuahima nuclear disaster.

Japan "faces the prospect of removing and disposing 29 million cubic meters of soil from a sprawling area in Fukushima, located 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of Tokyo, and four nearby prefectures".

see http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/20/us-japan-nuclear-noda-idUSTRE79J3W020111020?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FworldNews+(News+%2F+US+%2F+International)

Pete

Well John, I hope you are right about the possibility of nuclear.
No, I don't worry much about waste, I think it can be managed sensibly.
If the worlds economy is in a good enough state to build a fleet of
nuclear power stations we should be able to launch the waste off to the sun.

As far as gas is concerned you & others may be interested in an article
by Jean Laherrere who is a well known geologist and expert on oil geology.

http://tinyurl.com/n7arawv

While I thought we had to be near the end of the decade before we saw
the beginning of the end of fracked oil & gas he sees it beginning this year.

JohnBennetts

The following comment is quite deceptive:

"Nuclear waste, left to itself, eventually becomes benign, through decay."

We are referring to high level waste in the form of spent fuel rods of current nuclear power reactors - not future reactors with untested performance on an industrial scale. This "if new reactor built" is largely a straw man for those with self interest in the nuclear industry.

It would take decades for new types of reactors to be built.

see http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/committee.nsf/0/3b435d05dca2a3acca256e3d00178f7c/$FILE/JSC%20Nuclear%20Waste%20Report.pdf :

Page xvi:

"Proponents of the proposals claimed that the radioactive waste was not as dangerous as other hazards, such as petrol. The committee rejects these arguments. The community accepts these goods and associated risk because of a justifiable, demonstrable benefit. Generally this is not the case with radioactive waste."

Page 25 - 2.164 As the McKinnon Report noted in 1993:

“The handling and storage of [radioactive] waste… is an intractable problem worldwide.

...Intermediate and, particularly, high level waste disposal is, perhaps, the biggest single problem of the whole nuclear field”.8

Pete

Plantagent thinks that many countries pay for the massive cleanup costs following nuclear disasters.

What disasters?

Fukushima? The cost is inflated due to ambitions to reduce the radiation count far below any rational figure - perhaps even below that which pre-existed the incident and certainly much below clinically justified levels.

Chernobyl? It isn't sensible to load Chernobyl onto the backs of our futures, when (1) No such power station will ever be constructed again, especially not in Australia; (2) the disaster was due suicidal tests performed with the safety systems turned off and carried out by fools; and (3) Chernobyl didn't have a proper enclosure. Chernobyl is not a reasonable argument against future low cost, low risk, highly reliable electricity.

Three Mile Island, then? It was never a concern to those beyond the fenceline. Nobody inside the plant was injured or killed. The damage carried a dollar cost, but little more. There was no disaster.

I suggest that Plantagenet read about the costs to humans and to our natural world from "business as usual" disasters from coal, gas, even hydro, before he writes off nuclear options. Some true disasters work slowly and hence avoid publicity, but their cumulative effects may dwarf Black Death, World War II, the Pneumonia outbreak of 1917-1919 and many other real disasters.

There are plenty of sources - for example, simply Google "How coal burns Australia - The true cost of burning coal" or "coal + pollution + cost". It may surprise many otherwise well-informed folk to see the scope of the hidden costs of Business As Usual.

Note that I have not touched on Climate Change or Ocean Acidification, both of which concern me greatly, but I don't need them to make my point. Even IF carbon dioxide is not charged with ruining the atmosphere and the oceans, burning fossil fuels to produce electricity still works out more expensive and dangerous in the long run than nuclear electricity production. So why are we having this discussion? Let's get on with it.

John Bennetts

Although you are a nuclear advocate you appear to be unaware how politically on-the-nose the nuclear waste issue is in Australia.

Why are you dismissing the problem of medium and high level nuclear waste identified by Australian Government bodies?

See the Executive Summary of http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/committee.nsf/0/3b435d05dca2a3acca256e3d00178f7c/$FILE/JSC%20Nuclear%20Waste%20Report.pdf

Are you aware Australian states and territories have refused to host a permanent, national, nuclear waste dump for decades and are still refusing?

Pete

Re Chernobyl, a friend of mine was at the International Atomic Commission
in Vienna in 1956 when the Russians described in a presentation their
new nuclear power station to an international gathering of nuclear engineers.
After the talk, some of those present expressed concern about some of
the design features, especially the graphite moderators and the way
that under certain conditions they can release energy.
The Russians brushed off the warnings.

In the Chernobyl event that was exactly what happened.

The Russian reactors have all since been modified and no other
reactors have the same design.
I hope nowadays no one would dismiss so lightly a warning.