Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Any further comments will be posted here. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

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The New Zealand SMC has set up a Rena Oil Spill resource page which will be updated throughout the next few days as expert information comes to hand.

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Impact of the oil spill:

Dr Norm Duke, Professorial Research Fellow, Mangrove Hub, James Cook University comments:

“There needs to be great care taken in mitigating the impacts of large oils on coastal ecosystems – and in selecting the chemicals and methods applied.

“Petroleum oil will naturally break down – but this takes time and oxygenation. So, the longer the oil remains floating at sea – the safer it becomes. And, the rougher the weather – the better also.

“My results in Australia and in Panama with studies of major oil spills – and experimental studies – clearly show that oil can persist in tidal sediments for 20-30 years. And, the effect of this persistence is longer term impacts on biota growth – and its genetic makeup. For the latter, we know for instance, that there are mangrove plants can have increased genetic mutations with increased levels of oil in sediments.”

———–

Dr. Barbara Bollard-Breen, senior lecturer in marine conservation biology at AUT University’s School of Applied Science comments:

“This morning Maritime New Zealand indicated that up to 350 tonnes of oil have spilled from the Rena and more is expected over the next several hours.”

“While the oil spill from the Rena has placed the marine and coastal regions in the Bay of Plenty at great risk, all of New Zealand’s coastal areas are vulnerable to this sort of disaster.”

“It highlights the urgent need to develop rapid response protocols for ship groundings and oil spills and mechanisms to prevent this from occurring again. It also highlights the need for a more comprehensive approach to marine ecosystem management in New Zealand.

“This has turned into an environmental disaster with widespread implications.  It has the potential to not only affect some of our most pristine coastal areas in the Bay of Plenty region, but also estuaries and already threatened marine habitats, sea birds, shellfish, marine mammals and other marine life.It will also impact upon commercial, amateur and customary fishing, tourism, surfing and other recreational activities in the area.”

———–
Legal jurisdiction under the Resource Management Act:

Joanna Mossop, Senior Lecturer and maritime law expert, School of Law, Victoria University comments:

“My understanding is that [Rena] is within the territorial sea because it is less than 4 nautical miles from Motiti Island which generates its own territorial sea of 12 nautical miles.

“The RMA provisions in respect of pollution offences applie up to 12nm.  Beyond that, the Maritime Transport Act contains offences in relation to pollution. As far as I can tell, section 65 is not limited to beyond the territorial sea because the MTA is the primary source of regulation of shipping and maritime activities.”

———–

Dr Simon Boxall, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, comments:

“The main concern now is securing the containers on the ship.  A couple of years ago the container ship Napoli ran aground off Devon and Dorset in England and lost a significant number of containers.  These are potentially more worrying now than the fuel oil leaking from the ship.  Once they break away from the ship they present a hazard to shipping – often floating just below the surface and difficult to see and track until they finally fill with water and sink.

“Containers can remain afloat for weeks at a time. There should also be concern as to the contents of the containers. This could range from household good to chemicals and in the case of Napoli there were several tonnes of herbicides amongst other materials. The emergency will remain until the vessel is finally towed to safe haven.”

On the growing oil spill:

“The volumes of oil have evidently increased over the past two days but even at 350 tonnes, when this is 12km offshore the damage will be short term. The focus should be on securing the ship and its cargo and dealing with oil as and when it reaches shore.  There will be blobs of material (emulsified oil we often call mousse) on the beach which will require mechanical collection by hand.”

On use of dispersant Corexit 9500:

“Scientists will argue over the use of dispersants, for and against, but given the one used in this case the discussion is rather academic. [That is because Corexit 9500] is one of the less toxic dispersants and the volume used so far (under two tonnes) should not cause undue concern.”

———–

On the weather:

Winds now pushing oil onto the Bay of Plenty coast could turn offshore on Thursday, forecasters say.

State science company NIWA is providing Auckland City Council’s emergency management staff with weather and sea state (currents and waves) forecasts from its EcoConnect forecasting system relevant to the salvage and clean-up operation for the grounded container ship Rena.

NIWA Principal Scientist Dr Mike Revell said:

“Our forecasting system EcoConnect indicates that winds over the Tauranga harbour entrance region should peak from the north -north-east at about 35 kmh gusting up to 50 kmh during the early hours of Wednesday morning gradually easing and turning more easterly during the day – onshore winds for Tuesday and Wednesday  with frequent periods of rain. On Thursday and continuing into Friday winds are expected to turn to the westerly quarter – offshore – and reduce to 20 km/h gusting to 30 km/h with the rain clearing”.

National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) marine ecologist Dr Drew Lohrer comments:

“There are naturally occurring micro-organisms that break down hydrocarbons. However, oil will arrive at the coast much more quickly than the bacteria can break it down. In areas where the oil arrives in thick slicks or clumps, it may take years or decades for it to disappear naturally. This is why it is imperative to clean up as much of the spill as possible”.

“I don’t have any information on how rates of degradation will differ in different types of habitats. However, rates of breakdown were expected to be much faster in the Gulf of Mexico (Deepwater Horizon spill) than in the Gulf of Alaska (Exxon Valdez spill) due to the much warmer water and air temperatures. The Gulf of Mexico may have higher populations of hydrocarbon consuming bacteria due to numerous natural hot and cold hydrocarbon “seeps” present on the seafloor”.

“A significant slick of black oil has the potential to damage wildlife and the functioning of the ecological systems in coastal systems including sandy and muddy intertidal flats. It can smother the small creatures living on and in the sediments, and the oil’s toxicity can cause longer term problems for the animals that do not immediately succumb. Estuarine tidal flats and wetlands are ecologically important areas that contain an interconnected web of invertebrate, fish and birdlife”.

“(Spraying of) dispersants may help the birds and larger fauna by breaking up the larger thicker slicks and globules. However, the effects of more diffuse and widespread toxicity are unknown. There could be negative effects on organisms including the invertebrates and plants that live in coastal and estuarine areas”.

———–

University of Southampton lecturer in oceanography Dr Simon Boxall, who has experience of the Erika oil spil on France’s Brittany coast in 1999, and the MV Braer oil spill in the Shetland Islands in 1993, comments:

“There is nothing positive about an oil spill, they shouldn’t happen. A ship going aground and spilling its fuel oil is inexcusable. So far it is a relatively small volume. The stormy weather is both a pro and a con.  The bad news is that it hampers the clean up and access to the stricken vessel.  The good news is that it helps the oil disperse naturally. A good example of this was the Braer spill off the Shetlands … very large volumes dispersed very quickly by heavy storms. Tides and currents will also help.

“Microbe activity will act quickly and break the oil that is naturally dispersed in about 4-6 weeks given current temperatures and increasing daylight.  Add to that a team of beach clean-up personnel and the impact of the (estimated) 30 tonnes will be minimal. There will be some distressing sights of some sea birds killed and of oil on beaches but it will be short-term.

“Some experts disagree on the dispersants. Dispersants do have a role to play but only in a few cases (but) there is a tendency to use them regardless.

“Contrary to what is coming out, they are more harmful than the oil itself and they are NOT less toxic than dishwashing liquid!  Fairy dishwashing liquid doesn’t carry hazchem advice and you don’t wear protective clothing and masks to do the washing up. In their raw form some dispersants can be very toxic and I believe will do more harm than good.  Most of the Corexit dispersants were banned from use by the UK Government in 1998 for rocky shore areas and can only be used offshore after consultation with govt., and if no alternatives are available. Sweden has a blanket ban on all dispersants in the marine environment. In this case – with limited knowledge of the region – I’d advise caution on use of dispersants.

“Nature did a lovely job of Braer and very little human intervention took place (no dispersants).  The Erika involved substantial mechanical beach clean up but we did a study 5 months after the spill and levels of hydrocarbons on the beaches of France that had been impacted were below background levels (and in fact were better than one or two control beaches). The Rena spill needs containment as first priority, booming where possible to contain the marine based oil. Beach clean-up will be important and the oil breaks down more slowly on the beach than at sea.  At sea, nature will disperse and break the oil down very quickly, without use of chemicals.

———–

CSIRO research scientist Professor Nic Bax, who leads the Biodiversity Hub at the University of Tasmania,  comments:

“Responding to oil spills is a very complex, high pressure situation requiring decisions to be made based on whatever data are available at the time. One of the difficulties in assessing the environmental impacts of oil spills is the lack of environmental baselines against which to measure the changes. Hydrocarbons impact the environment and plants and animals through several different pathways – physically through smothering or the external oiling of birds and marine mammals, and chemically through the toxicity of the compounds entering the animal itself causing different levels of short and long-term poisoning. The most visible impact of oil spill is through smothering and this is often the one that gets most attention. The chemical impacts are harder to quantify being less visible, although tainting in commercial species (or the perception of tainting) can have immediate commercial impacts”.

“While the impacts of oil spills are visually alarming with high local impact, far more oil enters the global oceans through other mechanisms. Local environmental impacts of oil spills will continue after the obvious tarry oil has been removed or dispersed. This is at least in part because some oil seems to usually remain hidden at depth in the sediments. The time this oil remains depends on the environment, with cold, low energy environments being the slowest to recover”.

“Dispersants when applied on reasonably fresh oil can disperse the oil though the water column. Dispersants do not change the amount of oil but they redistribute it. They can be used to alter the parts of the environment that are affected from surface creatures and sensitive shorelines to the water column and bottom creatures. Where they are used in deep water and high energy environments they also serve to spread the oil over a wider area (or volume),  diluting it and reducing its immediate impact. Dispersants used to be quite toxic but now are considered to be much less toxic than the oil itself, so the main environmental decision regarding their use is determining where the oil will have least harm i.e. concentrated at the surface and on sensitive shorelines, or dispersed through the water column. There does not seem to be much evidence to indicate that dispersing oil leads to greater uptake by organisms, although this would be very hard to measure”.

“It seems that oil will eventually be broken down by natural processes including microbial activity. Microbial activity may be especially important after oil has entered habitats such as sub-surface sediments where physical weathering can no longer occur. It seems to be a long-term process as oil has been detected in sediments a decade after oil spills have occurred. The more volatile components of the oil are typically considered to be the most toxic, but they are also the components that will boil off or evaporate most rapidly. Typically heavier crudes hang around longer are harder to disperse and have a greater visual and aesthetic impact. Evaporation of the oil will be increased in warmer temperatures thus reducing impacts. Dispersion in the water column will be increased in high energy environments (such as high wave action) which will dilute the oil … reducing its local impact”.

“In low energy environments, such as there is little opportunity for physical processes to operate. Areas of high tidal energy will again serve to spread and dilute the oil, but may make it harder to prevent the oil reaching sensitive areas. Spilt oil that remains at the surface will gradually be dispersed by natural physical processes at least in high energy environments. Oil that reaches low energy environments or gets buried in sediments may persist for several years”.

———–

Use of oil dispersants and the ability of marine microbes to break down oil pollutants:

Professor Ravi Naidu, Managing director of the Co-operative Research Centre For Contamination Assessment And Remediation Of The Environment, in South Australia, comments:

“This spill could impact on the sensitive aquatic environment and life cycle of the marine ecosystem. The oil will not disappear quickly… it will be in the aquatic environment for a while. There are volatile hydrocarbons in the oil which will disperse but the oil which is not removed will continue to have an effect. There will be some natural remediation by microbes in the coastal environment, but it may be found that these are not as active as they are in warmer tropical waters. Oil which is bound to organic matter in the sediments may be the easiest to break down — the wave action will be an advantage.”

Marine ecologist Associate Professor Mark Costello, at Auckland University’s Leigh Marine Laboratory, comments:

“[Effectiveness of the microbes] seems to depend on what type of oil it is, and what type of environment it is, as the physical environment breaks it into smaller pieces. Dispersants, like a lot of detergents, will kill animals and plants as well. Some of the new ones may be safer, but I don’t know how safe they are.

“You do get natural oil and gas leaks in various parts of the world. The marine microbes which break down oil slicks seem to be pretty cosmopolitan and they break down lumps of oil in other places.

“I know people have sprayed nutrients such as nitrogen on beaches to try and speed up the growth of bacteria that would help degrade the oil — but as far as I know this has been experimental and it’s not yet clear whether it has any effect in degrading the oil faster. The nutrients could have their own knock-on effect”.

———–

More on oil dispersants:

Last month, a project based out of the University of Houston in Texas was launched to research new types of oil dispersants that would be friendlier to the environment and appropriate for use in deep sea oil releases – such as that experience in the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ramanan Krishnamoorti, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Houston is leading the research. He said:

“Safety has been a big issue in dispersant technology. We already know they can be highly toxic, so the challenge is to make them less so. We hope to make safer and more efficient dispersants.

“My efforts will be focused on coming up with novel, particle-based and biological dispersants,” Krishnamoorti said. “I’ll be working on developing dispersants that we can use less of and are more biocompatible with the water, plant life and wildlife.”

———–

Rena oil spill Resources:

- Latest updates from Maritime New Zealand

- Real time satellite location data for the Rena and nearby ships

- Bay of Plenty Regional Council information on the Astrolabe Reef

- Cawthron Institute guidelines for Maritime NZ on oil dispersants

- Northland Regional Council backgrounder on oil pollution
- Backgrounder on past oil spills in Australia

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International research

- Community Attachment and Negative Affective States in the Context of the BP Deepwater Horizon   Disaster (log into the SMC Resource Library for the full paper)

- Acute health effects of the Tasman Spirit oil spill on residents of Karachi, Pakistan

- FAQ on microbes and oil spills With fist-sized “patties” of clumping fuel oil washing up on New Zealand’s Mt Maunganui beach and tonnes more expected to land on Bay of Plenty beaches further south, authorities say they face difficulties dealing with the estimated 50 tonnes of oil already in the water.

———–

We often hear about rising greenhouse gases and pollutants caused by our love of cars, cheap flights and latest gadgets, but there are also emissions spewing forth from natural events such as volcanic eruptions, forest fires and underwater vents. How do these scales of emission compare and how should we be focussing our efforts? We had three top experts who are speaking at the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) conference in Melbourne on hand to discuss all the issues.

The briefing addressed questions such as:

• Who is the bigger emitter of greenhouse gases – man or the natural environment?
• How can we tell where the gases have come from?
• What other pollutants is the earth spewing out and do they overshadow man’s efforts?
• Does it actually matter whether only a minority of emissions are man’s if that’s enough to tip the balance to global warming?
• There are huge efforts looking to reduce man’s emissions, could we be doing anything to trap the Earth’s?

Watch the full briefing here (Webex)

SPEAKERS:

• Dr Ian Galbally, Chief Research Scientist, Marine & Atmospheric Research, CSIRO | Listen (mp3)
• Dr Fred Prata, Senior Scientist, Climate and Atmosphere Department, Norwegian Institute for Air Research | Listen (mp3) | Fred’s PowerPoint presentation
• Dr Michael MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs with the Climate Institute, Washington, US, and past president of the International Association for Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences | Listen (mp3)
• Listen to the Q and A session here (mp3)

BRIEFING DETAILS:

DATE: Tue 5 July

START TIME: 10.30am AEST

DURATION: 40 min

VENUE: Online

For further information, please contact the AusSMC on 08 7120 8666 or email.

Questions:

1.     Which countries have, or are planning, a carbon price and is Australia leading the way or just catching up? 

2.     How will carbon pricing actually work and, given the experience in other countries, what is the price likely to be?

3.     From the experience of other countries, how much of an impact does carbon pricing have on reducing emissions – and should we expect the same in Australia?

4.     Can we learn anything from New Zealand, which is apparently ahead of Australia in terms of carbon trading?

5.     What alternatives to carbon pricing are in place in other countries and how successful are they in reducing carbon emissions?

6.     How robust is the global carbon trading market?

7.     How will a carbon price impact on household energy prices and are there examples from other countries of how Government could compensate any costs?

8.     What vested interests are there in carbon pricing and who stands to benefit from it?

 Feel free to use these quotes in your stories.  Any further comments will be posted here. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

 ———–

1.     Which countries have, or are planning, a carbon price and is Australia leading the way or just catching up? 

Professor John Foster is Leader of the UQ Energy Economics and Management Group  at the University of Queensland

“The EU (which is a lot of countries) is well ahead and about to enter Phase 2 of their cap and trade scheme in 2012.”

Professor Kevin Parton is from the Institute for Land Water and Society at Charles Sturt University

“Our trading partners (including the European Union, China, Korea and Japan, and a number of states of the US) are pricing or are moving to price carbon. They are doing this by various policy measures including regulation, subsidies on consumption of non-carbon polluting technologies such as solar PV panels, subsidies on the production of non-carbon polluting technologies, subsidies on research and development related to green technologies, and pricing schemes such as a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme (ETS).

For Australian industry to remain competitive, we also need to be pricing carbon. The real question is: what type of policy will move the carbon price in Australia as quickly as possible to international carbon price levels? This is a critical question because Australia risks getting left behind in the international market place unless our carbon price quickly moves to international price levels.

 Many countries have used a combination of the above policies. For example, in Germany there is an emissions trading scheme, together with subsidies on consumption and production of non-carbon polluting technologies. One outcome has been that Germany now produces a significant number of solar PV panels, while Australia produces none.

 The real question for each country, including Australia, is what is the appropriate policy to move the country into a world of new, non-carbon polluting technologies, and keep the country competitive in an environment in which all of our major trading partners are pricing carbon.

 Economic analysis has not completely answered this question. Nevertheless the research that has been completed gives a strong indication that the best policy is a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme. As long as it can be introduced with few administrative inefficiencies, and few exemptions for polluters, it is theoretically the most economically efficient form of policy. Moreover it can be designed to focus directly on the pollution problem by most taxing those producers who generate the most pollution. Furthermore, if you examine the alternative forms of policy to achieve the objective of putting a price on carbon, they are either more costly or there are more imponderables about them. For example, in the more costly basket is subsidising the use of non-carbon polluting technology in the form of solar PV panels. The demise of the New South Wales subsidy policy on solar panels occurred because the technology has not developed to the extent necessary to generate electricity at low cost. In the imponderable basket is subsidising research and development (R&D) related to non-carbon polluting technology. A significant problem with this type of policy is that we don’t know, before we’ve done the research, which type of R&D is going to be successful. This suggests that we should invest in a range of R&D activities related to various forms of new technology. For a small country like Australia, the size of the investment needed for such a portfolio of R&D activities would be prohibitive. Another form of policy, regulation to prevent pollution, has been successful in the past in overcoming other industrial pollution problems. It has not seriously been considered for overcoming greenhouse gas pollution. It is also considered administratively inefficient.”

 ———–

2.     How will carbon pricing actually work and, given the experience in other countries, what is the price likely to be?

Professor John Foster is Leader of the UQ Energy Economics and Management Group  at the University of Queensland

“Currently the EU price is about AU $22 per tonne. $20 would be a good choice for the initial fixed price but I fear that politics will drive it down to $10.”

Professor David Pannell is an ARC Federation Fellow at the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, University of Western Australia

“This will vary over time. In the short term, price will be fixed. Later it will be determined by the market. For a simple explanation of how it will work at that stage, see here: http://cyllene.uwa.edu.au/~dpannell/pd/pd0104.htm

Experience in other countries is irrelevant. It will depend on how tightly the government sets the limit on emissions.”

 Professor Kevin Parton is from the Institute for Land Water and Society at Charles Sturt University

“The government in Australia has announced that from July 2012 it wishes to introduce a fixed price carbon policy, with a movement to an ETS three to five years later. 

 Under the fixed price carbon policy, each firm that generates greenhouse gases in its production processes must purchase one permit for every CO₂ equivalent emitted. It will be able to purchase these permits from the government at a fixed price. This is similar to an emissions trading scheme, except the price is fixed by the government and not determined in the market place.

 Although the initial incidence of the fixed price will be felt by polluting producers, these producers will attempt to pass their cost increases on to consumers. Hence the impact of the fixed price carbon policy will be broadly felt across the economy because many goods contain inputs that have some carbon content, so many goods will have price increases.

 The effect of the fixed price carbon policy (and an ETS) is to change the price relativities that face consumers.  This effect is rather like the introduction of a variable rate Goods and Services Tax (GST), with higher rates of tax on goods that have a larger carbon content. The objective is to have consumers shift their preferences away from these goods.  So ‘green’ power, in future with zero carbon tax, should become relatively less expensive compared with electricity generated by coal.

 The current traded price of carbon in Europe is around $AUS22/tonne. It seems probable that the initial fixed carbon price in Australia will be considerably less than this in order to make the policy more politically acceptable. The fact that international offsets will not be permitted under the current Australian government proposal also supports the notion that the carbon price will be considerably below international levels.

 In terms of economic efficiency, moving more quickly to an ETS, with prices free to adjust to international levels, is preferred to the current proposal of the government, which has a fixed price initially with an ETS three to five years later. Immediate movement to international carbon price levels has the advantage of providing the incentive for Australian industry to be more competitive in the international economy.”

———–

3.     From the experience of other countries, how much of an impact does carbon pricing have on reducing emissions – and should we expect the same in Australia?

Professor John Foster is Leader of the UQ Energy Economics and Management Group  at the University of Queensland

“The EU’s Phase 1 was experimental and not intended to reduce carbon emissions much. Phase 2 is but it hasn’t started yet. The best example in the past was the cap and trade scheme for sulphur dioxide in the US and it was very successful.”

Professor David Pannell is an ARC Federation Fellow at the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, University of Western Australia

“In an emissions trading scheme, price has no impact on reducing emissions. It’s the other way around. The level of emissions is set by government up front, and this determines what the price ends up being. “

Professor Kevin Parton is from the Institute for Land Water and Society at Charles Sturt University

“This is a difficult question to answer, because it is difficult as yet to disentangle the effects of the policy from other influences on carbon emissions. One major exacerbating factor has been the global financial crisis that has restricted growth in some advanced economies and hence reduced their greenhouse gas emissions below what they would otherwise have been. Thus in Europe there has been a slowing in greenhouse gas emissions at the time that an ETS has been introduced, but this can’t be attributed to the ETS.”

———–

4.     Can we learn anything from New Zealand, which is apparently ahead of Australia in terms of carbon trading?

Professor John Foster is Leader of the UQ Energy Economics and Management Group  at the University of Queensland

“We can’t learn too much from NZ because it is a country with a lot of hydro and not much power generated by fossil fuels. Australia is the opposite, thus, the very strong opposition of the coal lobby echoed by the Coalition.”

Professor Kevin Parton is from the Institute for Land Water and Society at Charles Sturt University

“We may not learn much from New Zealand, because its policy introduction is phased-in by sector of the economy, involves many free permits, and has an initial fixed price of only about $10AUS/tonne.”

 ———–

5.     What alternatives to carbon pricing are in place in other countries and how successful are they in reducing carbon emissions?

Professor John Foster is Leader of the UQ Energy Economics and Management Group  at the University of Queensland

“An alternative is sustained subsidies for investments in renewables. Examples of success are Germany and Denmark. But this has to be paid out of general taxation, unlike a cap and trading scheme which reditributes from polluters to non-polluters. Another alternative is a carbon tax. Being an explicit tax, most governments have shied away from it despite its simplicity and the certainty that it offers businesses. a problem with it is that it is hard to know what the emission reduction effect will be. With cap and trade this is known and it is the price that is uncertain.”

 Professor Kevin Parton is from the Institute for Land Water and Society at Charles Sturt University

“This was covered in answer to the first question.  There are alternatives and their successfulness depends on the characteristics of the country concerned.  In the European Union, the principal policy is an ETS on grounds of political expediency among the member states. In Australia, an ETS is probably the best policy on grounds of both economic efficiency and because other policies make little sense for a small economy.”

———–

6.     How robust is the global carbon trading market?

Professor John Foster is Leader of the UQ Energy Economics and Management Group  at the University of Queensland

“It won’t be robust until the US gets involved because of their size. the US plus the EU would be enough to fully establish a global market because others such as China would fear that they would have to face carbon tariffs in both of these regions.”

Professor David Pannell is an ARC Federation Fellow at the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, University of Western Australia

“The carbon trading prices will not be stable. Prices in an ETS are likely to be quite volatile. For example, see this graph of prices in the European market (see below).”

———

Professor Kevin Parton is from the Institute for Land Water and Society at Charles Sturt University

“After some difficulties at the start, the European market now is trading effectively.”

  ———–

7.     How will a carbon price impact on household energy prices and are there examples from other countries of how Government could compensate any costs?

 Professor John Foster is Leader of the UQ Energy Economics and Management Group  at the University of Queensland

“Up until now, the impact on electricity prices in the EU, compared with other costs, have been minimal. The impact has not been high enough yet for there to be specific compensation schemes. however, all governments seem to accept that, if this cost component gets large that the lowest income group should be compensated.”

  Professor Kevin Parton is from the Institute for Land Water and Society at Charles Sturt University

“If the European experience is reproduced in Australia, the price impact due to climate change policy will be unnoticeable relative to general price movements. At current international carbon price levels, the average electricity bill for households in Australia would rise by about $3 per week, assuming that households make no response to the price change.

 As mentioned above, the effect of the fixed price carbon policy (and an ETS) is to change the price relativities that face consumers.  This effect is rather like the introduction of a variable rate Goods and Services Tax (GST), with higher rates of tax on goods that have a larger carbon content. The objective is to have consumers shift their preferences away from these goods.  So ‘green’ power, in future with zero carbon tax, should become relatively less expensive compared with electricity generated by coal.

 However, this relative price effect will occur within a system of many prices moving higher. In Australia, the government proposes to link the fixed price policy to “assist families with household bills”. The obvious form of such compensation is a cut in income tax, probably with larger cuts to the poor to compensate for the regressive impact of the fixed price carbon policy. Another form, considered in the US, is a per capita refund.

 Whatever the compensation mechanism, an objective is to make consumers no worse off overall while still having to face the full set of new prices.

 Microeconomic analysis suggests that coupling carbon price policy to compensation to consumers can be inefficient. However, on equity grounds, it may be defensible.”

———–

8.     What vested interests are there in carbon pricing and who stands to benefit from it?

 Professor John Foster is Leader of the UQ Energy Economics and Management Group  at the University of Queensland

“Aside from generators of renewable energy, such as wind, the biggest beneficiary in the short term will be gas generators who will gain a clear competitive advantage over black coal generators.”

Professor Kevin Parton is from the Institute for Land Water and Society at Charles Sturt University

“As a market-based policy, a properly organised ETS gives good prospects of avoiding the influence of vested interests. However, if an ETS or the proposed fixed price policy is to be effective and at the same time avoid the influence of vested interests, the government must not liberally distribute free permits.  For their part, we would expect firms in the energy intensive industries to be lobbying heavily to receive free or discounted permits.”

  ———–

At last, I am learning some of the web sites which actually give decent information even if there is very little analysis of the event.  To add to World Nuclear News www.world-nuclear-news.org and the International Atomic Energy Agency web site www.iaea.org there is also the Japanese Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, NISA, English language site:  www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/

NISA reports. This site is giving updates every 12 hours.  However the documents require careful reading.  Here are some points it reveals the 28th Release as of 17:30 March 17th, 2011.

• Two workers were last seen in a turbine building of Unit 4. They have been missing since the earthquake. Other injury updates are found on Page 14-15.
• The worker radiological exposure report is found on page 13. The worker recording more than 100 mSv has presumably been retired from the site.
• Water levels. The situation is unclear because a great deal of instrumentation is not working (Page 2). Nothing has been recorded in Unit 4 since Monday, 14^th March. On Units 1, 2 and 3 the water levels in the reactors are reported as getting slightly worse between 16^th and 17^th March. The level in each reactor is about 2 m below fuel rod top in each of these reactors (I have information that the rods are 4.7 m long). Unit 5 and 6 are reported for the first time in the latest release and the water levels, though above the rod tops, are probably below normal levels. We are not informed as to what the normal levels are.

Sea water injection is occurring in Units 1, 2 and 3.  There are no recent news reports for two reactors: for Unit 1, 6 days ago; Unit 2, 3 days ago; which is an indication of some stability for these two reactors.  Unit 3 is the site for emergency remote water spraying.  Why they are conducting spraying on this reactor is not explained.  There have been fires there as recently as 2 days ago.  TEPCO is reported to have said that the plumes from this Unit may be steam from a fuel storage pond.  Fuel pool problems in this reactor are not reported by NISA.

• Unit 4 remains a concern in the fuel pond, but no water has been showered on that plant. I discuss this unit in more detail below.
• The control rooms are shared between pairs of units and people are using radiological protection while they are working in them. The central control room of Units 3 and 4 was evacuated on 16^th March at 10.45, but was reoccupied oat 11.30 am. We do not know what this means, other than the control room is not adequately shielded. Some workers are complained about using face masks in the control room (Page 15).

The fuel pond on Unit 4 is now the centre of attention.

Water injection on this Unit has stopped.  According to the NISA update, the emergency water cannons are being used on Unit 3.

The situation on Unit 4 is entirely different from the other reactors.  This reactor has been shut down since 30 November 2010 and thus has been cooling for over 15 weeks.  The fuel removed from the reactor has been stored in a fuel storage pool inside the reactor building.  This water in the pool performs two main functions: the water cools the fuel rods and the water is intended to stop radiation from the fuel rods reaching workers.

The 15 weeks of cooling since Unit 4 shutdown is strongly to our advantage in this situation.  The fuel is now much colder in terms of heat given off.

The situation in this fuel store might or might not be satisfactory.  The main interest is in the temperature of the fuel cladding.  If water is present in the pool the temperature of the cladding of the fuel cannot exceed the boiling point of water which is 100°C.  Zircaloy fuel cans have a melting point of about 1850°C.  This large difference in temperature means that there is hope that the cladding may not melt.  The fact that the panels on Unit 4 building have been opened to the air makes air circulation cooling possible at some level.

So should we worry or not?

There is no definitive answer yet.  The capability to predict what may happen is complex and reports about the situation are confused and excessively short.

An example of the confusion: Gregory Jaczko, chairman of US Nuclear Regulatory Commission said to a congress committee that there was no water in the Unit 4 pool.  He retreated from this statement in the press briefing the next day (17 March) saying it was not known what the level was.   Japan’s NISA says that the level and temperature of the water are not known.

Many other issues we have been witnessing may or may not be part of the design considerations for the plant.  General Electric (US), who designed the reactor, should be doing the calculations to find out what the current situation implies for the future, for example, what happens if there is no water in the fuel storage pool.

Basically GE Energy has been almost silent.  I think we deserve to hear more from GE.

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FOOTNOTE: The opinions expressed in all Science Blogs are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Australian Science Media Centre.

A Japanese nuclear expert’s estimate of exactly what has happened over the last week at the Fukushima plant can be found on the Science Media Centre of Japan website here.

See a background resource on radiation from the Science Media Centre of Canada here

Also see Outside the evacuation zone: Health effects of low dose radiation comment from the Science Media Centre of New Zealand here

Feel free to use these quotes in your stories.  Any further comments will be posted here. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.

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Tony Irwin is a visiting lecturer in nuclear technology at The Australian National University and the University of Sydney. He worked for British Energy in the UK commissioning and operating 8 nuclear power plants and following the Chernobyl accident he helped review operating practices at Russian reactors. In 1999 he joined the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and was Reactor Manager during construction and operation of the OPAL research reactor. After retiring from ANSTO in late 2009, he became a visiting lecturer for Masters Courses in Nuclear Technology at the ANU and the University of Sydney.

“There is an important difference between the two problem areas in these nuclear power plants.

The radioactivity from the reactor core is from the release of steam containing gaseous fission products and particles from the primary containment. The primary containment concrete provides shielding from direct gamma radiation from the fuel assemblies in the core.

The water in the spent fuel ponds within the secondary containment provides cooling and shielding. The bottom and walls of the ponds are part of the concrete section of the containment but the top is open. As the water level in the ponds falls, as well as reduced cooling, the shielding is reduced. The concrete bottom and walls will prevent gamma radiation towards the reactor area but there will be a direct shine path of gamma radiation upwards.  This is probably the main contribution to the high radiation levels above the reactors detected by the helicopters.”

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The following comments were issued Thursday 17th of March:

Dr John Price is a former member of the Safety Policy Unit of the National Nuclear Corporation UK, formerly a Professor at Monash University and now a private consultant:

“The fuel pond on Unit 4 is now the centre of attention especially since reported statements by Gregory Jaczko, chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, overnight. He seems to have said that the water has drained from the pool and people are saying this means he thinks it is empty. This may be a misinterpretation; there are statements from Japan that the level had been lowered but is not below the fuel top.

This and many other issues may or may not be a design condition for the plant. GE (US) who designed the reactor should be doing the calculations to find out what it means. The fact that the panels on this building have been opened to the air probably makes this a new scenario that has not been tested before. GE has been silent on what they designed the reactors for and whether they are still within design level. I think we should hear from GE and I took the opportunity of a Bloomberg network interview just now to suggest that they come into this discussion.

There is good information on the website for NISA Japan but even this is about 12 hours old.”

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Prof Stephen Lincoln Lectures on nuclear chemistry and is an environmental chemist in the School of Chemistry and Physics at the University of Adelaide:

“The first steam released into the atmosphere probably contained nitrogen 16 which is radioactive with a half-life of 10 minutes. This means that after 10 minutes the radioactivity is down to a half, after 20 minutes a quarter, after 30 minutes one eighth, after 40 minutes one sixteenth, after 50 minutes one thirty-secondth, after 60 minutes one sixty-fourth and so on – i.e. no long term environmental consequences. The hydrogen explosions occurred because water circulating around the reactor core produces hydrogen through reaction with the zirconium alloy cladding of the fuel rods at high temperature. Hydrogen forms an explosive mixture with air.

The fuel rods contain the enriched uranium oxide in which uranium-235 undergoes fission to produce a great amount of energy as heat. Sometimes the fuel rods also contain plutonium oxide in which plutonium-239 oxide similarly undergoes fission. This is apparently the case in at least one of the Fukushima reactors. Even after the fission reaction is closed down in the reactors, as was the case at Fukushima, the fuel rods continue to generate great heat due to the radioactivity of the fission products. Used fuels rods are stored under water in ‘cooling ponds’. It appears that in one such cooling pond at Fukushima the used fuel rods have become exposed to air.  This could result in fracturing of the fuel rod cladding and escape of dangerous radioactive fission products such as iodine-131 (half-life 8 days), cesium-137(half-life 30 years) and strontium-90 (half-life 29 years) which are among the most common.

If these escape into the environment and are ingested by humans:

Iodine-131 accumulates in the thyroid where it can cause cancer, but it can be rapidly removed by dosing victims with non-radioactive iodine.
Cesium-137 accumulates in soft tissues where it can cause cancer. It is not readily removed.
Strontium-90 accumulates in teeth and bones where it can cause bone cancer. It is not readily removed.

Foetuses particularly, and children in general are particularly susceptible to radiation damage as a consequence of the rapid multiplying of their cells as they develop. At this stage it is unclear as to whether or not there has been a significant release of these fission products into the environment from Fukushima.”

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Dr Pradip Deb is Senior Lecturer in Medical Radiations at the School of Medicals Sciences, RMIT University

[Regarding the question should Australians be worried about going outside if it's raining]

“If this is due to the radiation incident in Japan, I completely disagree with this. Radiation exposure in Japan is mainly gamma radiation which is not ‘material’ that can be dissolved in water. It’s electromagnetic energy like light or ultraviolet rays. We can see light because the human eye can detect those rays. We cannot see ultraviolet rays because of their high frequency and hence the high energy. Gamma rays are also in the same electromagnetic wave family – with very high frequency and energy. When they pass through air the rays are attenuated and they lose their energy. Gamma radiation cannot mix with water or anything else. So I do not think anybody will have any extra problem besides the normal ones if it’s raining just because of the incident in Japan.”

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