How natural is uranium?
Uranium is a natural part of many rocks and is barely radioactive - very much less so than many of the other elements usually found with it. But even so, it provides the main heat source inside the Earth, causing convection and continental drift.

How natural is nuclear energy?
The first nuclear reactors started up and operated naturally about 2000 million years ago, in a uranium orebody, in west Africa*. Nuclear fission long predates human technology.
And the Sun is a large nuclear reactor! (but fusion, not fission)

* Due to natural changes over time in the uranium, this can no longer happen.

How much from Australia?
Australia provides about 20% of the world's uranium, representing almost half (42%) of Australia's energy exports in thermal terms. Australia has 36 per cent of the world's low-cost uranium resources and the prospect of much more as current exploration programs bear fruit.

Australian uranium production amounts to about 10,000 tonnes of uranium oxide concentrate (8500 t uranium) per year. This U₃O₈ is exported, and its use for power generation avoids some 370 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions (relative to coal) - almost twice as much as Australia's total CO₂ emissions from power generation.

How sufficient and sustainable?
Known economic resources of uranium are equivalent to 70 years of present consumption, and there is much scope for identifying more. Little uranium exploration was done between mid 1980s and recently.

With a change in reactor technology which is well-proven but not yet economic, even present known resources would be sufficient for hundreds of years.

When uranium is used to generate electricity it produces no pollution or greenhouse gases. Even taking account of the greenhouse gases from the production, treatment and transport of the uranium, it is still responsible for very little - less than 5% of that from fossil fuels.

How significant?
Nuclear energy provides 16% of world electricity (24% in developed countries). Today there is as much electricity generated by nuclear power as from all sources worldwide in 1961. There have been over 12,500 reactor-years of operation for civil nuclear power (and about the same for naval reactors).

France gets over 75% of its electricity from nuclear power. It is the world's largest electricity exporter, and gains over A$4 billion per year from that.

There are some 440 nuclear reactors in 31 countries, totalling 370 million kilowatts (GWe) capacity, and producing 2658 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2006 (13 times Australian total). 56 countries operate more than 280 research reactors. Over 200 reactors are currently used for naval propulsion.

Uranium as exported from Australia contains 20,000 times as much energy per kilogram as coal.

To supply Australia's gross electricity production, 6000 tonnes U₃O₈ per year would be needed if utilising nuclear power - a little over half our present production.

A 1000-megawatt reactor producing 7 billion kWh per year supplies 780,000 people (at Australian average of 9000 kWh each per year).

What potential?
To produce all today's base-load power (that part of the demand requiring continuous, reliable supply) worldwide would require about 1700 nuclear reactors*. The figure in 2030 would be almost double.

* Assuming base load is 75% of total, and using 1000 MWe units.

Nuclear energy is widely considered the most promising means of cleanly making hydrogen, initially by electrolysis, but later by thermochemical means.

If in 2050 nuclear reactors also produce most of the world's hydrogen, which by then is the main transport fuel, there could be over 8000 reactors for electricity, plus 1300 units for the hydrogen: say a total of 9500 worldwide.

How quickly can they be built?
Most reactors today are built in under five years (first concrete to first power), with four years being state of the art and three years being the aim with prefabrication. Several years are required for preliminary approvals before construction.

In the 1980s, 218 power reactors started up, an average of one every 17 days.

How economically competitive is nuclear power?
Today nuclear power is competitive with coal and gas in most parts of the world - which is why 30 or so reactors are under construction and many more are planned. China plans a fourfold expansion in nuclear power capacity by 2020.

If the costs of carbon emissions are factored in to fossil fuels, it becomes universally competitive, even in Australia.

What about wastes?
Nuclear power is the only energy producing industry which takes full responsibility for all its wastes, and fully costs this into the product*. High-level civil wastes - mostly spent fuel - are contained and managed safely, and have been - virtually without incident - for 50 years.

* Adding about 5% to the generating cost. This is met by levy, eg 0.1 c/kWh in USA, giving a $24+ billion fund in USA. Decommissioning cost is also c 5% of electricity cost and is usually levied throughout a unit's life.

The heat and radioactivity from spent fuel diminish significantly, eg to less than 0.1% of original, by 50 years. Hence storage for several decades means they are more easily handled for eventual disposal.

In relation to waste disposal, there are multiple provisions or barriers protecting people and the environment: they are to be immobilised as solids, sealed, and buried deep in stable rock formations. There are two broad strategies: direct disposal, and reprocessing to recover useful content for recycle. Either way, the net cost comes to about 5% of electricity generation cost.

What about Plutonium?
When uranium is "burned" in a reactor, some plutonium is formed. Much of this is a valuable energy source like the fissile portion of the uranium (ie U-235). This plutonium provides about one third of the energy from a typical reactor.

Reprocessing used fuel with recycle of plutonium into fresh mixed oxide (MOX) fuel extracts about 30% more energy from the original fuel. MOX is mainly used in Europe but will be important in Japan. Currently 10-12 tonnes plutonium is used in MOX fuel each year (of about 100 tonnes generated). This reactor plutonium is very different from weapons-grade plutonium.

Megatonnes to Megawatts
Ex-weapons uranium is now well established as a source of fuel for power generation. One tenth of US electricity (ie half of the nuclear electricity) is generated from Russian ex-weapons uranium.

Military plutonium is now starting to be made into MOX. This is an important disposal option since the plutonium will be permanently removed as it is burned.

Greenhouse significance?
Nuclear power generation emits no carbon dioxide (CO₂), and worldwide it avoids the emission of about 2.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year (relative to coal). Other electricity generation emits about 9.5 billion tonnes per year*. Every 22 tonnes of uranium (26 t U₃O₈) used for generating electricity saves about one million tonnes of CO₂ relative to coal .

* 1 TWh from coal => 1 Mt CO2 - ie 1 kWh => 1 kg

A carbon emission cost of $10/t CO₂ on black coal would lift electricity generation costs from those sources by one cent per kWh. The European Emission Trading Scheme has been pricing CO₂ emissions for 2008 at about EUR 15 per tonne (A$ 25/t).

Safety?
Nuclear power has an excellent - and arguably unmatched - safety record, considering over 12,500 reactor years of nuclear power generation. Typical reactors, even with a worst-case accident involving melting of the core, are safe for their neighbours. Newer ones are improved further.

The Chernobyl disaster tragically showed why such reactors were never licensed outside the Soviet Union. Some early Russian reactors remain a concern.

Do nuclear plants use a lot of water?
If they have to employ evaporative cooling towers, nuclear power plants use the same amount of water as any others with the same size and thermal efficiency.

In practice, nuclear plants are often sited on the coast so that they are cooled with seawater, and hence use up no fresh water. (Coal-fired plants are usually located on coalfields, otherwise a lot of coal has to be moved to them. Hence they normally employ evaporative cooling.)

How secure from misuse? What about proliferation of nuclear weapons?
All Australian uranium is used for electricity (though Australia itself is almost the only developed country not using any electricity generated by nuclear power). Australia will only export uranium to countries which have signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and with which we have a bilateral safeguards treaty.

Avoiding nuclear weapons proliferation has been a high priority from the inception of nuclear power - which in at least four countries arose from weapons programs. Nuclear safeguards are international means of accounting and auditing the disposition of fissile materials.

No uranium traded for electricity production has ever been diverted for military use. No weapons program has ever arisen out of civil nuclear power.

Civil plutonium is unsuitable for weapons, but is also subject to rigorous accounting and auditing under the international safeguards system.

The Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office (ASNO) oversees Australia's uranium production and transport. It works closely with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which inspects nuclear facilities worldwide to ensure materials are not diverted from civil use for non-peaceful purposes.

GPO Box 1649, Melbourne 3001, Australia
phone (03) 8616 0440