It's an irony that Australia, possessing a large proportion of the world's reserves of uranium and making major technical contributions to the disposal and enrichment of uranium, reaps no economic benefit beyond mining.
Theoretically we could benefit from nuclear power directly by using it to generate electricity, but on present costings, and without the benefit of distorting carbon taxes, this is not competitive.
Our best options are to go a couple of steps further than mining.
One kilo of reactor fuel costs $US2400 ($3144) to take through the fuel cycle from birth to death. The front end of the cycle is mining, at 25 per cent of the total cost, enrichment at 23 per cent and fabrication into fuel rods at 10 per cent. The back end of the fuel cycle is the reprocessing and disposal of the spent fuel. This takes up the balance of costs at 42 per cent.
It's clear, looking at the added value through the nuclear fuel cycle, that mining uranium is a substantial part of the fuel cycle.
The further value added entry points for Australia would be uranium enrichment and disposal.
With three uranium mines in operation our current exports are at the annual rate of 11,000 tonnes of yellowcake. This would yield some 1400 tonnes of enriched uranium and, after use in power plants, a similar amount for disposal.
Australia has the potential for creating an enrichment industry. A plant with capacity to yield 1400 tonnes of enriched uranium annually would have revenues of $700 million.
The local development of laser enrichment by Silex Systems could be a technical advantage that gives life to this opportunity. The process has demonstrated technical success and preliminary commercial viability.
In addition there is waste disposal. The problem of long-term disposal of radioactive waste affects all developed countries that use radioactive isotopes for medical and industrial purposes.
Countries that produce nuclear energy or have research reactors such as Australia have an even greater challenge, as nuclear reactors produce wastes with very high initial levels of radioactivity. High-level waste takes at least 1000 years before its activity becomes similar to that of a uranium orebody. Thus wastes need to be safely isolated for extremely long times.
There are two pathways for disposal, reprocessing and disposal of separated wastes or direct disposal of spent nuclear fuel.
Australia has made a major contribution to immobilising separated waste with Synroc, invented by the late professor Ted Ringwood of the ANU and refined by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. This is under active examination in the UK.
Though processing spent fuel from many countries, the two major European reprocessors do not offer final waste disposal.
Since the 1960s, extensive efforts have been made to identify and characterise suitable disposal sites and to demonstrate their long-term safety. With few exceptions, the scientists and engineers involved have concluded that the technology exists to safely dispose of nuclear wastes.
Australia may be in a unique position to offer safe, long-term burial of waste given the geology of our continent. An industry price estimate for disposal is $1 million per tonne of spent fuel. This price is comparable with the cost of nuclear fuel reprocessing and corresponds to a cost of approximately 0.4 ¢ per kilowatt hour for a nuclear power plant.
Even restricting the waste to Australian-sourced uranium would be a substantial market of 1000 to 2000 tonnes of spent fuel annually. The repository, which is essentially a deep underground mine, would cost between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion.
There are very good reasons to host waste from any source. Australia's twin stabilities, geological and political, offer splendid advantages. Both Indonesia and Japan lack our geological stability and providing a repository would enable their sensible development of nuclear energy.
The disposal of spent fuel and high level waste in Australia is a major opportunity. It is not only a significant business but also a major enabling step for the use of nuclear power, an important contribution to nuclear safety, countering proliferation and a major contribution to our region.
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