Ted O’Brien’s nuclear love-in at COP28 gets a brutal reality check

The nuclear lobby has been out in force at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai. Their main initiative was a ‘declaration’ promoting a “global aspirational goal of tripling nuclear energy capacity from 2020 by 2050”, signed by 22 countries and supported by 120 companies.

The 22 countries are Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ghana, Hungary, Japan, South Korea, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Ukraine, the UAE, the UK and the USA.

David Appleyard, editor of Nuclear Engineering International, did the math: “Now 2050 still sounds like a long way off, but to triple nuclear capacity in this time frame would require nuclear deployment to average 40 GW [gigawatts] a year over the next two and half decades. The cruel reality is that’s more than six times the rate that has been seen over the last decade.”

A dominant feature in the declaration — and all the nuclear lobbying surrounding COP28 — is the perceived need to find new methods of financing nuclear plants. In the words of the declaration, participants “commit to mobilize investments in nuclear power, including through innovative financing mechanisms”.

Nuclear power as a commercial venture is very nearly dead, and thus the participants “invite shareholders of the World Bank, international financial institutions, and regional development banks to encourage the inclusion of nuclear energy in their organizations’ energy lending policies”.

In a parallel initiative announced during COP28, the US plans to “jump start” the development of small modular reactor (SMR) exports despite the recent collapse of NuScale Power’s flagship project in Idaho. The US Export-Import Bank has approved a resolution to fund applications for the export of US SMR systems and components.

International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Rafael Grossi recently said — apparently without irony — that international financial institutions, development banks and private banks and investors should take a fresh look at the “winning” investment of financing new nuclear power plants.

In fact, US giant Westinghouse declared bankruptcy in 2017 following its disastrous reactor construction projects in South Carolina and Georgia; the British nuclear power industry went bankrupt years ago and was sold to the French, then the French nuclear industry went bankrupt and has been fully nationalised; South Korean utility KEPCO’s debt has climbed to A$224 billion; the Japanese nuclear industry is essentially a pile of ashes in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster; and so on.

Ted O’Brien says a bunch of silly things

The federal Coalition’s shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien was the lead speaker at a forum on the sidelines of COP28 titled ‘Australia’s Nuclear Energy Potential: Joining the Global Journey’.

The forum also heard from representatives of the (so-called) Coalition for Conservation (which flew seven Liberal and National MPs to the summit), the World Nuclear Association, Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, the US Nuclear Industry Council; and an Italian SMR start-up called Newcleo.

O’Brien said that a Coalition government would sign the 22-nation declaration with its aspirational goal of tripling nuclear power capacity by 2050.

The Labor government last week joined more than 120 countries in backing a pledge to triple renewable energy and double the rate of energy efficiency by 2030 — a pledge opposed by the Coalition. O’Brien reiterated the Coalition’s opposition to the Labor government’s target of 82 per cent renewable power supply by 2030.

Speaking to The Guardian, former NSW treasurer Matt Kean said “obviously nuclear is a long way away” and Australia should back renewable energy now: “Who knows what might be available in another 20 years — we may have flying cars in 20 years — but that doesn’t mean you base your whole transport around it.”

O’Brien told the COP sideline forum that Australia’s legislation banning nuclear power is “bizarre”. That would be the legislation introduced by John Howard’s Coalition government and left untouched by the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison Coalition governments over nearly a decade.

O’Brien said Australia’s track record on renewables is something to be “enormously proud of” without noting the Coalition’s decades-long efforts to slow the growth of renewables and to promote fossil fuel power generators.

He failed to mention that fellow Queenslander and Nationals leader David Littleproud recently said he wants a “pause” to the roll out of wind and solar and transmission links and a stop to the “reckless pursuit” of the government’s 82 percent renewables target by 2030.

O’Brien showed a photo of his children, whose existence apparently demonstrates his commitment to a low-carbon, environmentally sustainable future. In case anyone thought he was serious, he said that Australia needs more gas-fired power generation.

O’Brien said nuclear power is one of the fastest ways to decarbonise; that nuclear waste is “so miniscule”; that Australia should develop “capabilities in other areas of the nuclear fuel cycle”; that the Coalition was not interested in old nuclear but rather Generation 3+ (i.e. mostly non-existent) nuclear power; and that COP28 will be remembered as the “nuclear COP”.

World Nuclear Industry Status Report

The December 6 release of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) provided a welcome relief to all the nuclear nonsense at COP28, including O’Brien’s. For over 30 years, these annual reports have provided factual information that irritates the nuclear industry no end.

WNISR-2023 notes that global nuclear power generation dropped by 4 percent last year. Nuclear power’s share of global electricity generation fell to 9.2 per cent, its lowest share in four decades and little more than half of its peak of 17.5 per cent in 1996.

As of mid-2023, 407 operable reactors with 365 GW capacity were operating in the world, 31 below the 2002 peak of 438. Another 31 reactors are in long-term outage, 23 of them in Japan.

Over the two decades 2003-2022, there were 99 power reactor startups and 105 closures worldwide: 49 startups in China with no closures; and a net decline of 55 reactors in the rest of the world.

Chinese and Russian government-owned or government-controlled companies were responsible for all 28 reactor construction starts in the world from the beginning of 2020 to mid-2023. About 45 per cent of global nuclear power capacity is fully state-owned.

As of mid-2023, 58 reactors were under construction worldwide, 11 fewer than in 2013.

In 1990, the mean age of the global power reactor fleet was 11.3 years. Now, it is 31.4 years. The mean age of reactors closed from 2018 and 2022 was 43.5 years.

The problem of ageing reactors is particularly acute in two of the three largest nuclear power generating countries: the US reactor fleet has a mean age of 42.1 years, and in France the mean age is 37.6 years.

The industry has a huge task on its hands just to maintain current output as ageing reactors are retired, let alone tripling output. There were 65 power reactor construction starts in the decade from 2013-2022, and the number of construction starts will need to increase sharply just to maintain nuclear power’s 30-year pattern of stagnation.

Renewables vs. nuclear

WNISR-2023 states that in 2022, total investment in non-hydro renewables reached a new record of US$495 billion (35 percent up on the previous year), 14 times the reported global investment decisions for the construction of nuclear power plants.

Investments in renewables constituted an estimated 74 percent of all power generation investments in 2022, while nuclear and coal each accounted for 8 percent.

A record 348 GW of new renewable energy capacity (including hydro) was installed in 2022, compared to a net addition of 4.3 GW of nuclear power capacity. In 2023, the International Energy Agency expects at least 440 GW of new renewable capacity, while nuclear capacity has marginally declined so far this year.

Renewables (including hydro) account for 30 percent of global power generation. Wind and solar (combined) generated 28 percent more electricity than nuclear plants in 2022 and reached an 11.7 percent share of global electricity generation.

Small modular reactors

WNISR-2023 includes a detailed section on progress with SMRs. But in truth, there isn’t much progress to report.

WNISR-2023 states: 

“The 2023-update does not reveal any major advances. In the western world, no unit is under construction, and no design has been fully certified for construction. The most advanced project, involving NuScale in the United States, was terminated in November 2023 following a 75 per cent increase of the cost estimate. …

“Small Modular Reactors, by virtue of the fact that they are designed to generate less electricity than standard reactor designs, will necessarily face greater economic challenges. When compared to large reactors, SMRs will be more expensive per unit of installed capacity and produce more costly power.

“The trend of SMR designers to move towards larger design outputs — South Korea moving from a 100 MW design to a 170 MW design, Rolls-Royce proposing a 470 MW design — offers evidence for the continued importance of economies of scale. However, even after increasing output power, SMRs remain uneconomical. The case of NuScale, with a cost estimate of around US$20,000 per kW of installed capacity, illustrates how expensive SMRs could be.

“All SMR designs are being developed with large amounts of public money. The puzzle remains why governments continue to invest in a suite of technologies that appear doomed to commercial failure.”

Commenting on the collapse of NuScale’s flagship project in November, Australia’s energy minister Chris Bowen said: “The opposition’s only energy policy is small modular reactors. Today, the most advanced prototype in the US has been cancelled. The LNP’s plan for energy security is just more hot air from Peter Dutton.”

Dr. Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and a member of the Nuclear Consulting Group.