More nuclear

Calls to increase nuclear power capacity beyond that envisaged in the Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy and Low Carbon Transition Plan have come from the CBI and Malcolm Wicks M.P. (the former Minister of State for Energy and now the Prime Minister’s Special Representative on International Energy) in his report on Energy Security.

The CBI believes it will be difficult for the industry to build enough renewable electricity generation by 2020 to deliver the 32% of generation which the Government believes is necessary to meet the EU target, while that attempts to force the pace of wind deployment through additional incentives could push up prices to consumers and also make wholesale prices more volatile. It would be prudent to reduce the targeted amount of renewable electricity for 2020 from 32% to perhaps 25%, and it urges a more “balanced pathway” with the construction of 8 nuclear power stations on existing sites. With what is seen as the inevitable delays in planning and licensing the earliest date for a start of construction would be in 2013 for operation by early 2018.

By 2030, when 10-15 reactors could be in operation, the main components of electricity generation capacity, in GWe, built up under the CBI “balanced pathway” compared with a “business as usual” programme would be:

                                   Balanced pathway              Business as usual                                          
                                              GWe                                  GWe

Gas                                           10                                       25

Nuclear                                     16                                       10

Wind                                         25                                       34

Coal with CCS                             7                                         4.5

Other                                          7                                         5.5

For the balanced pathway the percentage share of the projected total generation of 400 TWh in 2030 (CBI assumption) would be: Nuclear 34, Wind 20, other renewables 15, Gas 16, Coal 2, Coal with CCS 14.

The CBI balanced pathway claims advantages for both energy security and reduction of carbon emissions. By reducing the gas used in power generation in 2030 by almost 20% the total UK gas demand could fall from 99 bcm to 80 bcm at a time when over 90% of UK gas consumption will be imported, as production from the North Sea declines. [While the report optimistically believes that gas imports are not “inherently risky”, it must be probable that by 2030, as world consumption increases, ‘peak gas’ may follow ‘peak oil’ as a matter of growing concern and lead to ever higherprices,particularlyasoverhalftheimportswouldbeasLNG.]

The CBI also sees carbon emissions falling with the presumed adoption of CCS for almost all coal-fired generation. This latter assumption could again be optimistic. The high costs, reduced energy output, and safety considerations could make this technology unacceptable.The key factor of the CBI proposals is the reliance on nuclear power as the most cost effective way of delivering both carbon reductions and increased security of energy supply.

Wicks too sees nuclear power as a reliable and well understood low carbon technology.At its peak in the 1990s nuclear met over 25 per cent of our electricity supply. And he urges that we should be more ambitious about the potential amount nuclear could contribute. Projections show that the amount of nuclear in our mix in 2030 under the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) proposals may be no more that the present 12-15 per cent. Wicks believes that the level of ambition should be much higher. To enhance energy security and reduce our reliance on imports, a range between, say, 35-40 per cent of electricity from nuclear could be a ”sensible aspiration”. And he proposes that the Government should take the opportunity to make a strong and clear statement on the need for new nuclear power plants in the forthcoming National Policy Statement for Nuclear.

As Wicks points out a concerted effort across all Government departments will be needed to turn this “aspiration” into reality. This should involve not only the DECC but other Government Departments so as to achieve all that is necessary to create the right framework for nuclear new build without long delays - the nuclear inspectors of the Health and Safety Executive, as well as the Department for Business Innovation & Skills, HM Treasury, and the Cabinet Office - to create simpler governance structures and remove unnecessary interfaces. Reforms under the new Planning Act should enable applications to build new nuclear power stations to be considered and concluded more rapidly, with greater efficiency and in a more inclusive manner. This newAct is also seen by the CBI as essential to boost investor confidence that planning delays will not undermine the economics of investments. They urge that it should be completed by the Spring of 2010 since many of the key commercial decisions will have to be taken by early 2011.

Energy Security?

The “comprehensive independent report” on Britain’s energy security by MalcolmWicks analyses the challenges facing the UK on energy security as the UK has moved from a position of relative energy independence to a greater dependence on energy imports.At first sight, apart from the recommendation to increase the nuclear build to generate some 35-40 per cent of electricity supply, its 130 pages seem to add little to the unconvincing proposals of the 800 pages of the two recent reports from the Department of Energy and Climate Change which set out the UK renewable energy strategy. But, despite his declaration “there is no crisis”, by identifying the many “challenges” that will arise Wicks unavoidably raises questions which are open to different, and less optimistic interpretations, especially as he himself warns against complacency. “As the world comes out of global recession, the global grab for energy will return to something like its pre-recession trajectory, with demand forecast to increase substantially by 2030. Oil and gas prices can be expected to increase, perhaps very significantly.

More nations will flex their muscles in the pursuit of energy resources.” Taking an optimistic view he argues that import dependence does not of itself create insecurity; diversity of sources, routes and types of energy, together with heroic reductions in energy usage could be more important. But will this diversity and indeed the actual supply of oil and gas be available? In recent years Britain was self-sufficient in energy; today we are net importers of over 25 per cent of our annual demand; and by 2020 Wicks suggests this proportion will be considerably higher with estimates of import dependence from 45 per cent to as much as 70 per cent or more.

His recommendations include “the adoption of technologies that reduce reliance on oil and gas and simultaneously reduce carbon emissions” (which underlines his ‘aspiration’ for an increased nuclear power programme) as well as attempting “to mitigate the international energy security risks inherent in the use of fossil fuels.” Whether this latter aim can be achieved at a time when the control of the remaining oil reserves and production is passing from the international to national companies can be doubted. Contrary to his conclusion this report leaves the impression that the security of this country’s energy supplies is far from being assured. It can be read as an alarm call rather than a reassurance that renewables and energy efficiency gains will see us through.

Oil

In May, Andris Piebalgs, the retiring EU Energy Commissioner, warned that the production of existing oil wells was declining, that new discoveries are more scarce and more expensive and that global oil production may have already peaked, to conclude “But one thing is certain, one day we are going to run out of oil, and to prepare for that day we may be running out of time.” More recently on August 3rd, in an interview with the Independent, Fatih Birol, chief Economist of the IEA is reported as saying that the day of cheap and easy oil is over, and that oil is running out far faster than previously predicted and he concluded that “I’m not very optimistic about governments being aware of the difficulties we may face in the oil supply”

Wicks recognises that imports of oil and gas will account for an increasing proportion of UK demand in the years to 2030, as indigenous production declines and imports inevitably increase at a time when “ there are clear risks that global supply of oil and gas will not keep pace with demand ... supplies from existing fields are declining at increasing rates.” Yet the key questions he poses are - who are the potential suppliers of oil and gas, what investment is required to ensure production, and will supplies be delivered?And the main emphasis of his recommendations is on efforts to secure a share of this dwindling supply - diversifying sources and routes of oil and gas imports, supporting EU and international action for a better functioning of oil markets, and improving the infrastructure to move energy and fuel around Europe. There is little sign of heeding the exhortation of Fatih Birol that “We have to leave oil before oil leaves us.”

The world recession by cutting energy demand has allowed some spare capacity to emerge, but at the same time with the recession there has been a decline in the investment needed for new oil and gas production. And Wicks accepts that that this spare capacity will be substantially eroded in the next 3-4 years if economic growth resumes. Despite this realistic view at the same time he seems to deny the inevitable advent of peak oil and the slow decline thereafter in world oil output. He asserts that physical supply risk due to geological constraints may be effectively ruled out since there are sufficient proven reserves and even larger remaining resources. And he repeats the misleading claim that the present economically extractable reserves are estimated at around 40 years at current production rates for oil, and 60 years for gas. This assumes that production would continue for the next 40 years at the present near peak rate and then suddenly fall off the cliff edge and collapse to zero when all the oil has been used up. A slow, but accelerating, decline from a peak over a longer time span is much more likely, during which the amount of unsatisfied demand would continue to grow. Will the oil and gas be there when we need it and if so at what price?

There are in addition geopolitical risks to supply. Almost 80 per cent of the projected increase in output needed for both oil and gas is expected to come from countries where production is controlled by national oil companies. Their depletion policies could require that the oil be left in the ground to make resources last for longer rather then being extracted now to meet immediate world demand. Political instability and terrorism could affect both production and transit - one-third of world oil supply in 2030 will pass through the straits of Hormuz, but Wicks also lists Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia, Gulf ofAden, Malacca Straits, and the Suez Canal as potential points of risk.

Then there are investment risks, andWicks quotes the IEA estimate in that to satisfy the substantial demand growth, between 2007-2030 an investment of over $5 trillion is required in the oil sector, and $3.3 trillion by 2030 in the gas sector (or $5.5 trillion according to the IEF-IGU Ministerial Gas Forum meeting of November 2008). For oil most of this investment is required to compensate for the loss of output from the decline in existing fields. The IEA estimate that the annual rate at which these are depleting will rise from an average 6.7 per cent in 2007 to 8.6 per cent in 2030. And Wicks repeats the claim that additional production equivalent to 4 Saudi Arabias will be needed to maintain oil production at existing levels and 6 Saudi Arabias to enable supply to match the increase in demand likely to materialise by 2030. A comment which alone should warn against an over reliance on oil and gas for meeting our future energy demands.

In considering possible new sources of oil Wicks does not hide the environmental problems of recovering oil from tar sands, in Canada (Alberta) and Venezuela, in terms of increased carbon emissions, energy and water requirements, and environmental pollution which could limit production. And he warns of over-optimism about a possible role for biofuels given concerns over the effect on land use and food production.

Gas

Although demand for gas has dropped sharply in the global recession this also means it is unlikely that new LNG or pipeline projects will be agreed before 2010 given the uncertain outlook for demand and prices. The IEAhas then warned that, given the long lead times in building new plants, LNG markets could tighten once again beyond 2013- 2014. Although the DECC's renewable energy strategy foresees a reduction in the share of gas in electricity generation from the present 45% to 29% by 2020 almost half of this would be imported –but as Wicks warns “such projections are inevitably uncertain, and others have estimated higher levels of import dependence. A great deal will therefore depend on successful delivery of the renewables and energy efficiency measures.” It seems as if, at times,Wicks is sending coded messages.

His analysis of the problems that could arise in Germany, with the potential for an electricity supply gap, apply with equal force to the UK. With no public backing for nuclear, and an ambitious renewables target of 25-30 per cent for electricity generation Germany looks to gas, to close the supply gap. Security of supply for gas has then become a dominant theme. The Russia/Ukraine dispute highlighted Germany’s exposure to a high level of dependence and Germany has sought to improve this relationship with Russia through the EU. Germany has also focused on promoting new gas supplies by forging relations with the Caspian region and improving LNG capacity to gain access to African and Middle Eastern resources. This mirrors Wicks’ own recommendations that the Government should give a high priority to cementing bilateral relations with producer states in the Caspian Region and with transit states such as Turkey and potential oil and gas suppliers including Norway and Qatar.

In contrastWicks looks enviously at France which is selfsufficient for electricity supply with nuclear power meeting 80% of demand. “France is set to become a world leader in new nuclear generation technology and is positioning itself as a key supplier nation within Europe for electricity.”

Coal

In 2008 coal accounted for 18%of UK energy consumption, most of which (86%) was for electricity generation .The UK became a net importer of coal in 2001 and in 2008 net imports accounted for 74 per cent of UK coal consumption. The main suppliers being Russia (46 %), South Africa (18%) Australia (11%) and Colombia (9%). Here again, as for gas, the renewable energy strategy foresees a reduction in the share of coal in electricity generation from a present 32% to 22% by 2020. This might mean that by 2020 these fossil fuels (coal and gas) are expected to meet half the electricity supply (22% +29%). Given the constraints of the carbon emissions targets this would require the successful deployment of carbon capture and storage on a wide scale. Although this technology is being given a high priority by the Government it is most unlikely that it will be available on any significant scale by 2020, or even by 2030 – if ever.

The problem is intensified by the expected closure of 25% (18 GWe) of the present older coal-fired capacity by 2018. Replacement of these stations by new coal plant will increase carbon emissions and lead, as is already the case, to protests and disturbances. The less damaging alternative will be to replace them by gas–fired stations (for which the carbon emissions are still about half of that from coal), but this will be at a time of increasing international competition for gas and the general expectation of ever-rising prices.

The security of our electricity supply from 2014 onwards, until the new nuclear capacity can be commissioned looks increasingly precarious.

Now what?

The July/August edition of theAmerican Nuclear Society’s Radwaste Solutions has on the front cover a picture ofYucca Mountain with a superimposed no entry sign and the question “now what?” Inside the Editor Nancy Zacha gives a full description of the agonising Yucca Mountain story with all its political stumbling blocks. The schedule for operation has slipped from 1998 to 2003 to 2010 to 2017 and finally to 2020 or beyond. Closing the project President Obama called for examination of alternative sites ignoring the fact that they had earlier reduced the number of sites to be investigated fromnine to six to three and eventually just one.

Another article in the issue examines “a nuclear renaissance without disposal?” All the countries who have talked about building new nuclear power plants are briefly reviewed. All of them insist on the need for plans for eventual disposal to be formulated but none appear to have such plans in place. We all know why this sad situation exists. It is NIMBY (not in my back yard). Unless this is solved the future looks bleak for all of us.

But at least the proposal to recycle MOX fuel offers a little breathing time. It reduces the amount of material requiring disposal by a factor of at least eight. And it provides 25% to 30% more carbon free energy.All this with today’s technology as demonstrated admirably by the French. If we use the breathing space to develop – or rather redevelop – more advanced reactors such as fast reactors or high temperature gas cooled reactors we may reduce the waste for disposal to almost nothing. But don’t count on it. We must still fight NIMBYism to gain the possibility of disposal of the tiny fraction left.

Looking for reprocessing capacity

US utilities are starting to talk about recycle ofMOX. They have about 60 000 te of spent (used) fuel stacked up at their power stations and nowhere to get rid of it in the near future. They do not like to talk about reprocessing – it’s a nasty word in the US – but they are talking about recycle.

We in Britain have a commercial reprocessing plant – THORP – at Sellafield that is running out of foreign customers. BNFL was accustomed to shipping spent (used) fuel in from around the world and reprocessing it. If you do away with the last stage of a reprocessing plant it becomes a recycle plant producing MOX So why not try to sell British reprocessing to US utilities for their badly needed recycle. We may not be able to handle the full 60 000 te of used fuel but we can provide a little time for the US to build its own plant.

We also have a MOX fabrication plant build alongside THORP and linked to it. But for some unexplained reason we can’t make it work at its design capacity of 120 te per year. In a shameful admission by the then Minister of Energy, Malcolm Wicks, responding to a question in parliament it was revealed that the plant had produced only 5.3 te in five years of operation.Are we going to accept the expenditure of £473 million on a plant that won’t work or are we going to get it working so that we can sell MOX recycle to the US? The plant is very similar to one at Springfield used for fabrication of uranium fuel assemblies. If we don’t get the SMP working the French will be happy to step in and probably the Japanese shortly thereafter.

Part of the problem is that the plant is now owned by the Nuclear DecommissioningAgency which seems to be intent on pulling things down rather than making them work. Certainly they do not look likely to market the capacity at THORP and SMP in the US. Environmental groups are delighted, of course, but if they persuade the Government to scrap the plant they are condemning us to trying to sell the 100 te of separated plutonium which, like it or not, we have produced.This is just the sort of trade they think is so dangerous.

We love plute

The common perception of plutonium as something rather nasty whichwe should try to dispose of as soon as possible is absolutely wrong. environmentalists’ claim of it being the most poisonous substance known toman has been refutedmany times but they still persist with it. But the rest of us still think of it as something to be feared. So let’s look at it.

To start with it is an extremely valuable source of energy. Our 1000 te stockpiled of separated plutonium would fuel two large EPR’s or three AP-1000’s for sixty years. That is at least two times the amount of electricity that might be obtained from the 8 000 off shore wind generators that the Governmentwants us to build at a cost of about £100million.

What about radioactivity. The radioactivity of a substance is inversely proportional to the half life. So the main uranium isotopes with half lives of 4.5 billion and 700 million years are only mildly radioactive and can be handled quite safely. The only reason it is still around in rocks is because of the long half lives which helps us to date geological specimens. By contrast the main plutonium isotopes only have half lives of 2.6 and 32 thousands of years. That means that they will be easier to handle in the long term but in the short term they are more radioactive. But not that much. Only about eight times the radioactivity of a typical uranium ore. The nature of the activity is mainly alpha emission which in the words of the inspector of the Windscale Enquiry can be stopped by “a stout pair of jeans.” Of course you don’t want to inhale it or have it injected into your blood stream but who was going to do that anyway.

Now it happens to take the destruction of eight spent (used) fuel elements to produce enough plutonium to make one MOX fuel element. This can be recycled in a reactor to produce 25% to 30% more energy. That means that the amount of plutonium radioactivity inMOX spent fuel could be equivalent to the benign uranium ore standard right now.

What is left in the MOX spent fuel element is relatively short half life fission products.At tens or less years half lives of these in their early days are intensely radioactive and provide a disincentive for anybody to go near them. But after 100 or so years their radioactivity will have decayed to less than that of our harmless uranium ore.

There is one other source of radioactivity left. This is americium which is formed in a complex way by the decay of the short lived isotopes of plutonium. Americium was discovered first by Glen Seaborg back in 1944 when he was following on from his discovery of plutonium to see if yet heavier artificial elements could be formed by bombarding plutonium with neutrons. The americium he found was used extensively as a source in domestic smoke detectors. You may have one in your kitchen. They have soft gamma emission of 60 and 70 keV only need a bit of lead instead of stout jeans to stop it so that should not be too much of a problem. In a reactor, however, one produces a bit more than needed for smoke detectors. The half lives of its isotopes are 100 years and 26 million years. There is however a good way to get rid of americium. Put it back in a reactor with MOX recycle fuel. Like other heavy artificial elements it undergoes fission and although it does not produce as much useful energy as the fission of plutonium or uranium at least it finishes up as relatively short lived fission products.

Plutonium is energy

The electrical power produced from 1 kg of plutonium is around 10 million kWh. We in the UK have approaching 100 000 kg of plutonium already separated and ready to use if we can make it into MOX fuel. That is 1 trillion kWh.

That people can even suggest throwing it away as waste is incredible. It is much more energy than we can hope to get from the 8 000 off shore wind generator that the government wants us to build at vast expense.

The US planned to get rid of about half of its military plutonium as waste mixing it with short lived radioactive fission products in a sort of un-reprocessing operation. But they gave up the idea when they found it was quite a difficult and messy process. Instead they are, with help from the French, converting it intoMOX fuel which will be used to fuel commercial reactors.

So even if we have to go to the French for a little help, we should be converting our plutonium into MOX.We may be having difficulty getting the Sellafield MOX plant up to capacity but we haven’t even tried the un-reprocessing route yet. That involves workers mixing highly radioactive fission products with the plutonium which has not even been tried by the French. We could probably do it but would have no payback at the end of the day. On the other hand we know, from the French, that it can be converted intoMOX and then into a heck of a lot of valuable carbon free energy to make a useful profit.

In addition we go from separated plutonium, which the environmentalists tell us is a proliferation risk, into a reactor where it is protected by intense radiation. To throw that away would indeed be a wicket sin.

Failure to recycle

The question of MOX production in the UK is a sad one indeed. It seems that the people left after the sell off of BNFL can not get anything like the design output of 120 te/yr of MOX fuel from the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) and therefore they are prepared to abandon it saying that we will need a new MOX plant. Who do they think will give them the £300 million spent on SMP to try again – in fact it would probably be at least twice as much now – we cannot imagine.We would do better to make a quick deal with the Belgians who fabricated a lot of France’s earlyMOX fuel at a 35 te per year plant.

The failure of SMP is particularly sad as it uses a new short binderless process developed by BNFLwhich enables the preparation of MOX powder and press feed in one gravity-fed pass through vertical process towers. Why this does not work needs to be seriously examined since the reputation of British nuclear engineering rests on it.We can hardly urge other countries to pursue the highly desirable route of plutonium recycle if we can’t do it ourselves. And we have a problem of approaching 100 te of separated plutonium to get rid of – sooner rather than later.

It is not so much the problem of continuing to hold this large stockpile in a Fort Knox type store. There will be a build up of americium activity but this can he handled. But it is the abject failure to demonstrate the recycle of MOX when we have already done the reprocessing to separate the plutonium and unused uranium, that is unforgivable.

Oh! We haven’t got the right sort of reactors, they say. Well we do have reactors in which it could be done.We have a PWR at Sizewell B and we have theAGR plants in which it would now be economically viable. A little bit of test irradiation ofMOX fuel would be needed but that is nothing compared with the crisis of 100 te of separated plutonium. The situation is so serious that British Energy should be told that it has to do it. And since they are now owned by Electricite de France they would probably accept willingly.

But just why we can not salvage something from the SMP is an equally pressing question