An integrated energy and security plan for Australia

Where to start? The lack of systems thinking from from our leaders is mind-boggling. 

Ok, let's start with the submarines.  Nuclear submarines, I mean - really?

The whole point of nuclear submarines is that they carry nuclear weapons, can travel anywhere in the world without refuelling, and can stay submerged for months at a time. So your enemy never  knows where they are, and hence isn't willing to risk a direct confrontation. Our brand new AUKUS (awkwas?) nuclear subs won't have a nuclear weapon deterrent, and as a medium sized regional power I don't see the strategic usefulness of the long range capability. Also, nuclear subs are not particularly stealthy - pumps need to run at all times to keep the reactor core cool, and they leave a waste heat signature in their wake. Then there's the fact that we don't have a nuclear industry - we have neither the expertise nor the systems in place to be able to operate, maintain or refuel these things. 

A much better option would be to develop smaller and more numerous home-grown subs to take out enemy shipping and submarines. Powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Those things have no moving parts and are completely silent. Hydrogen and oxygen would be carried onboard, possibly as liquids, allowing extended operation underwater. A very effective deterrent in our region.

As a medium sized regional power, we are not the lion on the Serengeti. Our strategy should be that of the porcupine - not trying to throw our weight around, but make ourselves a really unattractive prospect  for larger powers. 

The core of a hydrogen industry

This constitutes a way to jump start large scale hydrogen production in Australia.

The need to decarbonise the energy sector is urgent, but global warming is by no means the whole story. At least as serious, and certainly more urgent, is fossil fuel depletion. Especially crude oil which when refined fuels effectively all of our transport and military (including our current submarines).

We are horribly exposed on this. Australia  imports about 2/3 of its transport fuel and now has only two domestic refineries remaining. Our "strategic" petroleum reserve is only 21 days worth of consumption, far less than the minimum of 90 days recommended by the International Energy Agency. Not only that, but a large part of our reserve is held on our behalf in the US where it won't be of much use in the event of something like a disruption to shipping. It's no exaggeration to say that if anything were to happen to international trade in crude oil, Australia would be in serious trouble (martial law, rationing) within a few weeks.

Not that a hydrogen industry is going to fix this, it's needed for other reasons:

• to power the submarine fleet
• liquefied (or possibly stored as ammonia) as a large scale energy storage for the grid. See for example this post on the need for storage in the grid. 
• as an export (liquid or as ammonia)

Electrolysis of water and storage of the hydrogen and oxygen as liquids is a good way to soak up the vast quantities of excess renewable energy that we'll have during summer months. And a good way of keeping submarine fuel on hand.

What about transport then?

This is an urgent problem, and should be a pressing national security concern. The critical thing in the short term is to be able to continue to power the transport fleet to ship goods (especially food) around the country.

Short term - start building up the rail network. Dual rail lines all the way between the capital cities and regional centres. Not high speed rail, just normal speed, with dual lines (and maybe even passing bays!) would be nice. Build infrastructure to ship liquefied natural gas from the west to the east. Convert diesel locos to run on LNG, and some of the long distance trucking fleet to run on either LNG or CNG (compressed natural gas). There's no down side to this - it'll be cheaper than diesel, cleaner both in greenhouse emissions and in sulfur, and reduces risk from international supply chains.

Medium term - electrify the whole rail network and start converting locomotives to run as hybrids with liquid hydrogen (or ammonia). It might make sense to build synthetic fuel plants to convert gas to methanol and then dimethyl ether as a diesel substitute for smaller trucks and cars, or to synthetic gasoline for cars (most importantly for emergency service vehicles).

Longer term - battery electric trucking for short distances to and from the rail head to warehouses and retailing.

A few words about nuclear power

In my view this is unwise, for the following reasons:

• We don't have a nuclear industry and we would have to build one almost from scratch, including developing expertise and setting up the training capabilities in universities. The same is true for hydrogen liquefaction and storage, although it's less technically challenging and we already have some of the skills needed. Investing in developing a nuclear industry represents a big opportunity cost to develop a more durable alternative though.
• We have other choices. Australia has shedloads of every energy source except crude oil. We might be much better placed exporting our uranium to other countries that have already made the decision to go down the nuclear path. As a source of export income and also a source of soft political power.
• Despite the required investment, it's not really a long term prospect. There's actually not that much uranium available globally. If everyone in the world were to try to generate their electricity using current nuclear technology, the global supply of U235 would last about 10 years. Yes, breeder reactors and yes, molten salt thorium reactors, but the former hasn't yet been made commercially viable and the latter is not much more than a research prospect. Decades away, at best. We can't wait that long, for something that might not work out.
• Spent nuclear fuel disposal. We (humans) have been generating power from uranium for 70 years, and we still haven't implemented permanent storage for the spent nuclear fuel.  The Onkalo repository is the  first in the world. They applied for a license to start storing waste from 2024. All of the spent nuclear fuel ever produced is sitting around on the surface and requires active systems (laws, management regimes, fences, surveillance, men with guns) to keep it secure. Now ask yourself this: what happens to all of that spent fuel that isn't safely disposed of, when those active management systems go away? It doesn't even have to be as dramatic as social collapse: war would be enough. 
• Inability to adequately model risk. Chernobyl was caused by a combination of bad design and human stupidity. Fukushima was a combination of poor design choices and failure to anticipate an earthquake and tsunami of that magnitude. The point is, that neither of those scenarios were part of the risk analysis that was done in setting those plants up. Far from being one-in-a-million events, we have a lived history of two catastrophic failures in seventy years of nuclear power. We really don't have a good way of modelling these very low probability but very high consequence events. The clean-up at Chernobyl and Fukushima is ongoing, with no end in sight and at  probably unknowable cost. 

Not impossible, but doesn't seem like the best option to me. Solar and wind are much more known and knowable quantities, and have the potential to be truly long term solutions. The difficulty there is the need for large amounts of storage to offset their inherent variability. 

Unfortunately, we are now out of good options.