About 90% of the nuclear generation capacity the Coalition proposes to build would not have access to enough water to run safely, according to a report commissioned by Liberals Against Nuclear.
The report authored by Prof Andrew Campbell, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, assessed nuclear energy’s water needs and the available supply across the seven sites where the Coalition has proposed new reactors.
Campbell found replacing coal generation with “off the shelf” nuclear technology as proposed by the Coalition would require 200 gigalitres of water annually.
He found half of the proposed nuclear capacity was already unfeasible given insufficient water, while a further 40% of the capacity would need to be curtailed during dry seasons.
“At Loy Yang in Victoria, Mt Piper in NSW and Muja in Western Australia, existing water availability is already so constrained that new nuclear power stations of the capacities proposed would lack sufficient cooling water to provide reliable power now, let alone for 80 years into the future, even if the majority of existing irrigation water entitlements were acquired,” the report said.
The volumes required at Callide in Queensland and Liddell in New South Wales would be so significant the demands could place pressure on other water users, including agriculture, industry, urban residents and the environment.
Dave Sweeney, a nuclear policy analyst at the Australian Conservation Foundation, described nuclear energy as the “thirstiest of the energy sources”, which required reliable access to large volumes of water for steam to drive a turbine as well as to cool the reactor core.
On a per-kilowatt hour basis, nuclear power used more water than coal, and “massively more than renewables”, he said.
The Nationals senator Perin Davey, who is the shadow water minister, said she was a “staunch supporter of our water dependent industries like irrigation”.
“The first question I asked when we were looking at developing a nuclear policy was what impact it would have on water and I have looked at how much water is already allocated to power generation and am confident that there will be little difference.”
“Unlike Labor who want to turn our water into green hydrogen, our nuclear plan’s water needs can be met through existing water licences.”
Dr Mark Diesendorf, an expert in sustainable energy at the University of NSW, said nuclear power stations were typically larger than coal generators and used more water as a result. “In comparison, solar and wind don’t use any water during operation at all,” he said.
“Australia is the driest continent in the world, apart from Antarctica,” he noted. That meant water use was an important issue, alongside other concerns such as the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the difficulty and expense of managing radioactive waste and the danger of low-level radiation as well as accidents.
The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering said in its submission to a Senate inquiry that water use was a “key consideration” for nuclear energy in Australia, given existing pressures on supply and the frequency of droughts. ATSE’s submission said nuclear reactors required about 15% more water than coal-fired power plants, which already had considerable water needs.
Tony Irwin, a nuclear engineer and honorary professor at the Australian National University, agreed that a typical nuclear power station required slightly more water than a coal-fired power station of the same size.
He said using water from the sea or a lake was usually the cheapest approach to cooling, which was why nuclear power plants in places such as the UK tended to be on the coast. There were other technologies, including dry cooling plants, which reduced the water requirements but relied on more advanced technologies, he said.
Campbell’s report considered different nuclear cooling systems, including more expensive options like dry cooling, but noted the Coalition’s stated preference for “off the shelf” technologies.
Dry cooling was hardly used in the US and had been ruled out in the UK as impractical and unreliable, according to the report, which noted there was only one facility where dry cooling was routinely used, which was in “very small reactors at Bilibino in the Arctic permafrost region of Siberia”.
Andrew Gregson, the spokesperson for Liberals Against Nuclear and a former state director of the Liberal party in Tasmania, said the nuclear water grab threatened to “sever the trust between the Coalition and agricultural communities permanently”.
“We’ve spent decades building our reputation as champions of farmers’ rights – particularly water access. Why would we throw away that political capital for nuclear plants that most Australians don’t want?”
