Peter Dutton’s honest path towards nuclear power

Written by Michael Darby on July 9, 2024. Posted in Current News

Dr Stuart Ballantyne applauds the Peter Dutton endorsement of nuclear energy: “Buy a nuclear boat that doesn’t need fuel.”

Hagar, I can’t get to sleep for thinking about her” declared Lucky Eddie to his Commander.

“I can even concentrate, eat or do anything without thinking about her” he lamented. Hagar put a hand round Eddie’s shoulder, “It’s alright Eddie, I was the same with my first boat !” he declared sympathetically.

Hagar the Horrible, a nautical mentor to millions, has dispersed such gems of wisdom, that I post them up in the office kitchen.

Along with 274,000 other Queenslanders that own boats, we proudly show photos of our boats while our spouses show off happy snaps of the kids or the grandkids. Just for the record, I’ve noticed that some of these small people turn ugly in looks and/or personality when they get bigger, but a good looking boat always stays a good looking boat !.

The amazing thing about a boat is that they can be moved easily with very little horsepower. I have a 1930 photo of one draft horse pulling 600 tonnes of coal on a barge that weighed 200 tonnes. Bringing that 800 tonne total weight ashore, and putting it on railway wheels or truck wheels, would take 30-40 horses to pull it.

Hence when US President Dwight D Eisenhower asked his clever people in the early 1950’s for nominating a project for his “Atoms for Peace Project”, to a world terrified by the word “atomic”, the clever people in his administration offered floating solutions.

At the same time the Soviet Union started considering nuclear energy to transportation in 1954 when the 5-megawatt nuclear power station went into operation at Obninskoye, near Moscow. Serious papers by senior Russian engineers at the time highlighted the attractiveness of nuclear power plants for ship propulsion where “great range and endurance with the least amount of fuel weight” were the most desirable features. 70 years later they still are !

The 1st US project was the nuclear submarine Nautilus, commissioned in 1954 that could stay underwater, even under the polar icecap, for extended periods

The first US nuclear cargo passenger ship 182m “Savannah” was on the drawing boards early, launched in 1959, enterring service in 1964, capable of circumnavigating the planet 14 times at 20 knots on just 22kgs of uranium.

The Russians at the time were obviously peeking over the counter at the Americans, in designing a passenger cargo icebreaker, the 134m “Lenin” which they launched December 1957, pipping the Americans by getting her into service by 1959, and using a nuclear power plant similar to the Obninskoye unit.

These commercial nuclear vessels were setting significantly higher operational capabilities, particularly on the Russian Transarctic route known as the Northeast

passage which is is one-third of the distance of the traditional route through the Suez Canal. This transarctic route also gave the Russians access to significant oil reserves, gas reserves and mineral resources

In January 2022, multinational engineering and constructions company China Communications and Construction and Russian Titanium Resources agreed to co-operate on a mining project to develop a vertically-integrated mining and metallurgical complex for the processing of titanium ores and quartz sands from the Pizhemsky deposit in the Komi Republic, north Russia. The parties also discussed the supply of marketable goods to the Chinese market, including rutile, titanium dioxide, wollastonite, iron oxide, calcined quartz sands, and premium glass sands with low iron content. This project to create a national mining cluster is involving the construction of the Sosnogorsk-Indiga railway and the deep sea ports of Tiki and Indiga, in the Arctic region of Russia.

These developments have been boosted by the Ukraine war and sanctions against Russia where Chinese trade has increase by 35%. These developments need reliable waterways, which only icebreakers can provide.

Russia is boosting its 40 strong icebreaking fleet building with all of the new vessels being nuclear-powered as part of its aim to improve Arctic shipping.

Shipbuilder Rosatomflot is a subsidiary of Russian state nuclear company Rosatom and JSC Baltiysjiy Zavod, part of the United Shipbuilding Corporation. Recently, the company signed a contract for the construction of a unique, multifunctional nuclear service vessel that would operate from 2029. The vessel is designed to perform a full range of work on recharging nuclear icebreakers.

Successful Russian Floating nuclear power plants (FNPPs) have been working since 2018 in Vilyuchinsk in far easter Russia, and last month Russia agreed to supply the first FNPP to Guinea in Africa, with several others under contract with other African countries with power problems. These units will be leased by Russia and replacement of the reactors will also be done by the Russians.

China is building FNPPS for use in offshore mining and they are building another 23 reactors in China as of April 2024.

Ships powering shore grids has happened since 1929, but engineering advances with nuclear reactors has made power transfer much easier now with voltage transformers and the latest technologies.

The latest Micro Modular Reactors (MMRs) are being designed by several countries and focused on 5-10mW. For context, these MMRs can fit on the back of a 40’ semi-trailer, and can power merchant ships up to Panamax size (80,000 tonnes dwt) which are around 9mW. The largest production wind turbines are only around 7mW with a capital cost US$1.2m per megawatt, have a significant footprint and a limited lifespan of 20-30 years. Check for yourself !

The MMRs offer a combination of power for propulsion and shore powering, which for very remote nations is highly attractive. The highest national cost component of remote nations even with some hydro and renewables, is imported diesel, and averages $1bn per annum for a population of 1 million. With MMR manufacturers offering a cost of US$0.35/kWh on a leased base, this is surely the future for low emissions power solutions?.

Again the marine industry is leading the nuclear industry and technological change with MMRs. Not having to carry fuel or do voyage deviations to pick up fuels, as mentioned earlier, are hugely desirable features.

An average bulk carrier powered with MMRs could carry an extra 1,500 tonnes of revenue cargo instead of carrying fuel. Allowing for ballast legs and assuming 60% of its 30 year life span carrying 13 cargoes per annum at $7/tonne will earn the shipowner

around US$4 million extra and will eliminate emissions at the same time

A boat that doesn’t need refueling has a lot of appeal, especially if you can plug it into the power grid when alongside.

Hagar the Horrible and his long term Director of Operations, Lucky Eddie, even as 2 dimensional cartoons, would certainly agree!. Real life 3 dimensional people like Australian Minister for Energy Chris Bowen, should get with the program.

As an internationally-respected designer of unsinkable ships and a world authority on transhipment, Dr Stuart Ballantyne earns his living in a highly competitive marketplace, so his pro-nuclear wisdom expressed above should come as no surprise.

By contrast, some indidivuals whose source of income is immune from any kind of competition resort to lies and deception in their determination to inflict their cultish ideology on their victims. In the case of the Australian Government, the victims are the Austalian people.

The Michael Darby in Australia substack of 6 July 2024 featured pro-nuclear advocacy by esteemed researcher and writer Rafe Champion:

Rafe Champion’s powerful conclusion to his Quadrant Online article.

In the absence of due diligence, tens of billions of dollars have been added to the national debt to allow subsidised and mandated intermittent energy to enfeeble the grid in one of the most costly policy blunders in peacetime.

In return for the expense we have got less reliable and more expensive energy, causing domestic hardship and a great deal of unrecorded deindustrialisation. At the same time there has been massive environmental damage and division in regional communities.

In short, there has been a colossal negative return with an enormous threat to the nation’s security and prosperity.

This is the link to the complete Rafe Champion article.

Ken Schultz has published a valuable research paper, from which excerpts are reproduced below. The complete 21-page document with 23 end note is available for free download as a pdf file, from the LINK:

Logistics and costs for Australia to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050

THIS IS THE LINK TO THE COMPLETE KEN SCHULTZ RESEARCH PAPER (21 pages)

Executive summary

This study will show that to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, Australia will need to:

1. Decommission an amount of fossil fuel-burning generators, vehicles and equipment that collectively consume 1,085,000 gigawatt-hours of fossil fuel annually and replace with zero-emission equipment.

2. Install 125,000 wind turbines over an area of 60,000 square kilometres, an area as large as the area of 3 million MCG stadiums. Construction and installation of the turbines will consume 38 million tonnes of steel and 150 million tonnes of concrete.

3. Install 6 million rooftop solar systems.

4. Build 23,000 solar farms.

5. For the 516,000 gigawatt-hours of fossil fuel-burning equipment that cannot be replaced, provide carbon offsets by planting 36 billion trees for a total cost of $54 billion.

6. Build six new baseload power stations utilising small nuclear reactors, or install an industrial scale battery system to provide baseload power.

7. Spend an estimated total of $842 billion on renewables infrastructure

8. Take an estimated $540 billion hit to the economy.

This infrastructure requirement may be tweaked with more of some items and less of others, but it will still need to add up to the total number of gigawatt hours to replace or offset.

The total gigawatt-hours are based on Australia’s current energy usage, derived from the Australian government report ‘Australian Energy Update, Commonwealth of Australia 2020 – Guide to the Australian Energy Statistics 2020’.

If construction started on 1st January 2023, a total of 386 wind turbines would need to be installed every month, or 13 every day, until 2050, at a total cost of $500 billion.

In the same time frame, 19,000 solar rooftop systems would need to be installed every month together with 72 solar farms at a total cost of $343 billion.

The total infrastructure cost would run out at $842 billion, not including the cost of baseload power or offsets.

For all the massive costs and societal disruptions, the impact on global temperatures would be, in the words of Australia’s chief scientist, “virtually nothing”.

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