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17 comments on The Bullroarer - Saturday 1 December 2007
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Olympic Dam expansion
All good things must come to an end and that includes sitting on the fence. With declines in car manufacturing, bulk wine and horticulture South Australia is on the wane. Jobs and royalties from Roxby Downs have been their salvation. Now BHP wants to send the crushed rock to China so the jobs go to Guandong or wherever and BHP shareholders get bigger dividends. South Australia ends up with less money and a giant hole in the ground.
Here's the link again to the discoveries made since Olympic Dam, an area larger than most European countries http://www.nrdb.com.au/index.php?id_pag=72
However they may not all go ahead without water for processing. The area will be peppered with slightly radioactive mine sites even if the primary mineral was magnetite or copper. Note the area immediately to the west was used by the Brits post WW2 to detonate A-bombs and air launched plutonium dirty bombs. Add to that the fact that Olympic Dam is the world's largest uranium deposit then the whole region has well and truly lost its nuclear virginity.
Maybe it's just my strange thinking but why not generate the extra electricity and desalinated water using local nuclear power? The plant could be located between Whyalla and Pt Augusta, proposed site of the fossil powered desal or where the port would be located for Scenario B concentrate export to China. There are existing terminals for iron ore and LNG and the shallow gulf has sufficient flow for cooling water.
Here's your choice Mr Rann; build a nuclear power station or watch the State slip rapidly down the dunny. Go visit France and look at some nuclear power stations.
Alternately, all that aquifer water used by the Olymic Dam (an amount greater than the domestic water consumption of Adelaide) could be used more profitably for almost anything other than uranium mining.
Olympic Dam uses 35Mlt of water daily, or 12,775Mlt annually, earning A$831 million in uranium oxide sales, or A$0.066/lt. They pay nothing for this water. Presumably with BHP-Billiton's mere A$17 billion profits last year, they couldn't afford it.
By comparison, Adelaide's 440,000 households use 245 litres each daily, or 107Mlt daily in total, or 39,055Mlt annually, paying about A$70 million for it.
15% of SA's GSP of A$59.819 billion, or $9 billion, comes from industry, which uses 16.2 Glt of water, thus earning A$0.56/lt, or nine times what the mining earns.
In addition, the Olympic Dam mines uses 10% of the state's baseload power, accounting for 1Mt of CO2e emissions annually. Each 1kWhr of coal-fired electricity requires about 2lt of water (and nuclear electricity requires about 2.5lt, since you're looking at higher temperatures in the reactor).
Olympic Dam plans an expansion, a tripling of uranium and copper mining capacity, with a consequent tripling of power and water use.
In a time of lengthy drought in Australia, it seems foolish to be basing our economy on things which make such poor use of water. Given that our water resources are limited, to maximise the money we get from them, we ought to close down the Olympic Dam uranium and copper mine, and expand horticulture and industry in South Australia.
It's the economically rational thing to do.
Hmmm - not so sure about your economic rationalism here.
I'd think a more rational approach would be for BHP to pay the same for their water that industry elsewhere in South Australia does (including small business) - that would enable the water market to work correctly.
Overall I think it would be best if they were asked to supply their own water (from desalination plants on the coast) and power (from whatever source they please - I'd prefer a mix of solar thermal, wave, geothermal and wind - all abundant in SA - or they could build their own nuclear power plant, given how enthusiastic they are about uranium) too.
Problem solved - the rest of SA can go back to relying on local infrastructure and BHP can behave like some foreign multinational that is above the rules without putting any financial burden on the locals...
No, economic rationalism is not about a free market, but about deliberately crushing things which you consider to be unprofitable or undesireable.
If it was good enough for Thatcher's coal miners, it's good enough for Rudd's uranium miners.
K
the points you miss are;
1) the groundwater Roxby Downs already uses is 300km from any commercial irrigation. Whether Artesian Basin flows (eg for outback livestock) would be improved is unclear.
2) a 400ML/day desal plant at the top of Eyre Pensinsula would enable the pipeline from Morgan on the upper River Murray to be switched off. Boomtown Ports Augusta and Lincoln would sure appreciate the water as would environmental flows in the lower Murray including the Adelaide intake at Mannum and the silted up river mouth at Goolwa.
The redoubtable Joy Baluch at Pt Augusta has hinted that it would be nice to replace their filthy lignite burning power station. Thinking about this I wouldn't be surprised if Rann joins the list of Premiers who resign rather than do an about-face. There is no magic rescue package for Adelaide.
BTW I've lived in all these areas but moved to Tassie to be cool temperature-wise.
Desalination is a costly and energy-intensive process.
Cost of desal water could easily be double current water cost and would be directly linked to energy prices which can only go one way. (Electricity cost is up to half total cost of desal water.)
Also if nuke or renewable power option doesn't get up CO2 emissions for a plant of the size you suggest would be equivalent to burning 800000 litres of petrol per day.
Effect of up to 400 Ml per day of extra salty water discharged into gulf might be a worry too.
Desal from current power plants is impossible to support from my viewpoint.
It has to be powered from renewable (or nuclear) sources - and should preferably be near the open ocean, not the gulf.
As far as ever-rising energy prices go, this is only true if they aren't using renewables - once solar, wind, ocean, geothermal power is built the costs should be pretty much static from their onwards...
Basically agree except to say that geothermal (HDR) is an unproven technology at this time like cellulosic ethanol or carbon capture and storage and is the only renewable of those you mention that could provide base load electricity.
Well, strictly speaking it's not really a renewable either but from our point of view it's just as good as.
Geothermal faces possibility of immediate and catastrophic loss of productivity and capital if underground reservoir short circuits or otherwise mis-behaves to cause drop in flow rate or temperature. I wouldn't risk a cent of my money on it.
Desal plants have high maintenance costs and relatively short life due to harsh saline environment, hence high cost per unit output regardless of energy source.
Any renewable can provide baseload power if you build enough energy storage into the generation facility.
"Baseload" can also effectively be achieved by sufficient geographic distribution and using a range of sources - its a rare moment indeed that the sun isn't shining, the wind isn't blowing and the waves aren't rolling in.
I hope that what you say comes about but it is not possible with existing technology to go out and order a renewable energy driven set of electricity sources to reliably power a largish city in the manner to which we have become accustomed.
In my view we have to stop growing our economy, have zero net immigration if possible whilst allowing for the possibility of many climate change refugees, stop encouraging women to have more babies and learn to live with less consumption and hope for the best that renewable energy technology developments occur especially energy storage.
Otherwise with BAU we build more coal or gas fired power stations and dig the hole deeper.
Co-ordinating the electricity generation grid with demand so that when one station produces less others can make up for it is something that's been done for about fifty years now.
There's no difference between "oh, there was a mine collapse at Yallourn, better ask the Loy Yang station and the hydro dam to ramp up power," and "oh, the wind has dropped off at Coldstream, better have them turn up the panels at Woop Woop."
You might imagine that with coal-fired stations rated at (say) 1,000MW, the things are pumping along at 1,000MW every minute of every day. They're not. They're constantly being turned up and down to match demand in various areas, to make up for other stations being down for maintenance or repair, or for bursts of demand in the next state due to a hot afternoon, and so on.
It's just a matter of co-ordinating the whole grid. To say "just" is not to say that it's a simple job anyone can do, rather to say it's a very technical and difficult job but one which has been done regularly and fairly well for about half a century.
No doubt this has been done for half a century with FF powered stations which more or less can be switched on as required but with renewables you cannot crank up supply if the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing.
If it is so straightforward to power a largish city by renewables only then why hasn't it happened?
Inherent intermittency of supply of wind and solar requires storage technology which does not exist as yet AFAIK for base load power.
It hasn't been done because coal has been cheap and easy to do (and nuclear had side benefits like big bombs).
Storage isn't an absolute requirement - it just makes the demand management problem easier.
Kiashu's comments about the intermittency (and variability) of coal fired power stations are true - these things adjust their output levels all the time.
The same applies to nuclear plants - Ireland looked at nuclear and realised they'd have to build 2 plants even though one would meet their needs - because sometimes, they go down...
Once people get this through their heads the baseload fallacy usually drops away not long after...
On the one hand Boof tells us that Roxby Down's groundwater is 300km away from any commercial irrigation, so that (he implies) it's impractical to have the groundwater go to irrigation.
On the other hand Boof also tells us - as does BHP-Billton, by the way - that they could build a desalination plant on the Eyre Peninsula... which would involve building a pipeline more than 300km long.
So it's practical to pump water to Roxby Downs, but impractical to pump it away from Roxby Downs. Apparently, water pipes can go only one way. I thought water flowed from high ground to low, but apparently it can only flow from public ground to corporate.
Who'd've thought?
price of U3O8: $200/kg
price of lettuce: $2/kg
Water required to produce 1kg of uranium: 3,000lt
Water required to produce 1kg of lettuce: 30lt in the open, 10lt covered, 3lt hydroponics
Then of course there's the cleanup cost when your uranium mine's in situ leaching settling ponds spill. I know of no case where a lettuce poisoned anyone.
Uranium is bought by some countries, but not all, and is subject to safeguards, etc. Whereas the world trade in fresh fruit and vegetables is very free indeed, and everyone wants them.
Should Australia base its economic prosperity on a market with narrow appeal, or on one with wide appeal? Would you rather we sold to three or four countries, or a hundred?
The uranium is also going to run out one day. Whereas we can, if we set our minds to it, keep growing food forever.
Should Australia base its economic prosperity on things which will run out, or on things which will, if done properly, last forever? Are we to be like those stupid middle eastern despots who pump out all the oil, but when it runs out, they'll just have an empty desert?
That was pretty good (sorry Boof) :-)
Its not fair to say the middle eastern despots will have empty desert - the gulf states will have a stupendous collection of enormous buildings and strangely shaped islands.
And the Saudis have quite a lot of heavy industry springing up.
And they are showing signs of looking at building some big solar plants - they have the luxury of building some huge solar thermal plants when the oil starts to run out...