About Dr Jensen - Vision and Issues

Energy

Those of you who have been following my utterances will be well aware of my position on energy and the necessity to plan for the future. My belief is that we need to embrace nuclear energy as part of a portfolio that includes fossil fuel and so-called renewables.

There are various reasons for holding this view. Firstly, we have an “oil crunch” headed our way. When demand irreversibly exceeds supply (and that will be long before we “run out” of oil reserves), the price of oil will skyrocket. Following that, in a relatively short period of time, coal and gas prices will also increase considerably. This will result in our current cheap electricity no longer being cheap

The problem with fossil fuels is that power generated from their use is very much dependent on the cost of the fuel itself. Given the current high cost of fuel, fossil fuel power generation is relatively operating-cost expensive and very vulnerable to the foibles of the international commodities market.

On the other hand, the operation of nuclear energy is, relatively speaking, operating cost cheap. The price you pay for nuclear electricity is largely not affected by volatility in the costs of uranium ore (or thorium in future), so electricity prices for nuclear plants is far less unstable.

Nuclear energy is safe, in fact, historically, far safer than any other baseload electricity method and it is becoming even more reliable. So-called 4 th generation reactors are inherently safe where, due to the physics of their design they cannot melt down. These 4 th generation reactors can be made in modular fashion, with a single module being around 100 MW which is 1/10 th the size of current coal-fired power stations.

There are technical ways of storing nuclear waste and in my opinion, the problems regarding nuclear waste are political, not technical. Synroc, a product invented in Australia, can store nuclear waste for geological time periods. Having said that, it is important to note that even high grade radioactive waste decays to the radioactive level of the original uranium ore after around 1000 years. With modern 4 th generation reactors, this reduces to a couple of hundred years, if that.

The issue of an element’s half-live is often one which is raised when discussing power production. Many people are intimidated by elements which have a long half-life thinking it will remain in the environment for longer, thus causing a greater threat. However, it is important to realise that a longer half-life means lower radioactivity over a longer time period. A product with a very short half-life is far more dangerous and harmful than one with a long half-life. Lead, arsenic and cadmium, which are harmful chemically, have infinite half-lives, which means they remain in the environment forever. In terms of radioactivity, it is the short-lived elements that are more radioactively “hot”.

So consider this point. Not only do coal-fired power stations dispense large amounts of by-products such as arsenic, lead and cadmium, but they also emit radioactive material such as uranium and thorium which are usually part of the coal seam.