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| Fig. 1: A nuclear education campaign poster at a bus stop in the state of South Australia (Source: Wikimedia Commons). |
Despite hosting the world's largest deposit of uranium, and being the third largest uranium producer after Kazakhstan and Canada, Australia makes little use of its own abundant nuclear resources. [1] That is because Australia is the only G20 country that bans nuclear power production at a federal level, under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Commonwealth). [2] A variety of factors contributed to this unique situation, including sentiments towards anti-nuclear proliferation, concerns about nuclear waste, campaigning from a powerful coal industry, and protests against mining and nuclear operations in Aboriginal lands. [3] However, as the threat of climate change makes the search for clean alternative energy to fossil fuel a more urgent issue, there has been more positive public discourse (Fig. 1) around nuclear energy a potential shift in public opinion towards support. [4]
Australia's untapped nuclear potential does not just start from its nuclear power prohibition. Compared to other countries with large uranium resources, Australia is lagging behind in uranium production. Despite accounting for 30% of the worlds uranium reserve, more than the 2nd and 3rd place Canada (12%) and Kazakhstan (9%) combined, Australia is behind both nations in annual uranium export. [1] In 2018, Australia's uranium production stands at 6526 tons (12%), less than Canada's at 6996 tons (13%), while Kazakhstan's production accounts for 21700 tons or more than 41% of the total. [1]
Excluding the outlier case of Kazakhstan's aggressive exploitation of its uranium resources, Canada has been a frequent point of comparison for what better utilization of nuclear power in Australia could look like. Like Australia, Canada is a large country by landmass with a smaller concentrated population. Australia and Canada are both commonwealth nations with a similar democratic parliamentary system. And they are both blessed with rich natural mining resources, particularly in uranium deposits.
Unlike Australia, Canada has an active nuclear industry. According to data from the international energy agency (IEA), 19 nuclear reactors mostly in Ontario provide ~14 GW of electricity capacity, accounting for over 15% of Canada's total electricity generation. [5] By IEA estimation, if an equivalent amount of electricity were generated by fossil fuels instead, emissions from electricity generation in Canada would have been 50% higher. Therefore, a naive comparison with a similar country that has roughly comparable levels of uranium production would suggest that nuclear energy has the potential to meaningfully diversify electricity production in Australia and provide a good clean energy alternative.
However, despite their similarities, there are circumstances unique to Australia that would necessitate a more dedicated study. For instance, over 80% of Australia's uranium is concentrated in South Australia, and in a few sites, in particular like the Olympic Dam, where most of the uranium ores are poly-metallic and low-grade. [1] Also, the differences in geography and climate between Australia and Canada also have important implications for the wider context of energy generation. For example, the climate in Australia is much more amenable to other forms of clean energy like solar power.
Thus, a more dedicated and comprehensive study of energy generation in Australia would be required to understand the potential role nuclear energy can play. That is what researchers from the University of Adelaide in South Australia set out to do in their report. [2] Modeling different electricity generation scenarios with and without nuclear power while considering a full mix of energy options, they found that the optimized scenario includes nuclear power accounting for over 40% of electricity generation. The life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions of the optimized scenarios including nuclear power are less than 27 kg MWh-1 CO2 equivalent in 2050, which meets the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change target of 50-150 kg MWh-1 CO2equivalent. These results would suggest that nuclear energy is an effective option for a cleaner and more sustainable energy future in Australia.
From both a direct comparison to similar countries without a federal nuclear ban, and dedicated studies of energy generation in Australia with and without nuclear power, it suggests that the underlying numbers behind Australia's untapped nuclear potential support nuclear power playing a significant role in Australia's clean energy future. However, as described previously, the long-standing anti-nuclear barriers are multi-faceted, and any real change would require a fundamental shift in public opinion coupled with real policy change. Major events impacting public opinions can sometimes affect policy far more readily than underlying numbers. For example, the Fukushima disaster in 2012 has deepened skepticism towards nuclear power, particularly in a country like Australia where such feelings are deep-rooted. [6] It would interesting to see if more recent events were able to have a similar impact on public opinion in the other direction, like Germany's turn away from nuclear power and subsequent European energy crisis as a result of over-reliance on Russian gas, and Australia's nuclear-powered submarine agreement with the US and the UK.
© Minjie Lei. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] "Uranium 2020: Resources, Production and Demand," Nuclear Energy Agency, NEA No. 7551, 2020.
[2] S. Hong, C. J. A. Bradshaw, and B. W. Brock, "Nuclear Power Can Reduce Emissions and Maintain a Strong Economy: Rating Australia's Optimal Future Electricity-Generation Mix by Technologies and Policies," Appl. Energy 136, 712 (2014).
[3] B. Martin, "The Australian Anti-Uranium Movement," Alternatives 10, No. 4, 26 (1982).
[4] "Nuclear Power Poll," Institute of Public Affairs, June 2022.
[5] "Nuclear Power in a Clean Energy System," International Energy Agency, May 2019.
[6] D. K. Bird et al., "Nuclear Power in Australia: A Comparative Analysis of Public Opinion Regarding Climate Change and the Fukushima Disaster," Energy Policy 65, 644 (2014).
