With the due closure of 22 GWe of existing capacity (12 GWe coal, 10 GWe nuclear) - nearly 30% of present UK capacity - from 2015 onwards, and assuming (contrary to the predictions of the DECC) that there will be a continuing growth of electricity in line with continued economic growth, serious economic and socially damaging interruptions in supply can be expected unless reliable new electricity capacity is built within the next 7 or 8 years. It is then alarming that no single body has the overall responsibility for ensuring that the lights will not go out.

This responsibility seems to be shared amongst at least five different bodies each of whom could, if optimistic assumptions fail, point the finger of blame at others.

• The DECC sets out what they describe as the National Policy for Energy, but in this the provision of new electricity capacity, and the proportion of coal, gas or nuclear they decide to build, rests with the private industry, But the first priority of the utility companies must be to their own shareholders, consideration of the needs of their customers will take second place. The Government tries to influence a part of the outcome by decreeing the subsidies paid under the Renewable Obligation scheme to promote renewable energy in the hope that this will encourage the construction of sufficient new wind capacity to meet their target for 30% of electricity generation to come from renewables by 2020.

The Government responsibility is solely negative; they can only refuse permission to build.

• But before any new construction is authorised all proposals will first be submitted to the new Infrastructure Planning Commission. This is “an independent nondepartmental public body” which is being set up by the Department for Communities and Local Government - a Government department without any obvious responsibility for or interest in energy security. The chair of the IPC is Sir Michael Pitt who will be supported by a number of commissioners, some of whom have already been appointed. On the future of electricity supply the IPC will be ‘guided’ by the DECC who detail the points that the IPC ’should’ (not must) consider.As an independent commission the IPC could decide to reject this guidance. An incoming Conservative government, according to Cameron has declared that it would scrap the IPC which would seem to leave energy and electricity plans in even more of a mess.

• OFGEM, which has already issued its own examination of energy future as Project Discovery, which differs in a number of respects from the EN papers of the DECC, sets the price mechanism under which the private utility companies operate. This has a large and sometimes malign influence on the electricity supply industry (OFGEM policies were largely responsible for the collapse of British Energy and its far-sighted replace nuclear with nuclear campaign, which had it been followed would have avoided the present concerns over electricity supply).

• There is also the National Grid Co, now a private company but with a licence which requires it to operate the electricity transmission networks in an efficient, economic and coordinated manner. It is also responsible for the gas distribution system. It has no direct responsibility for ensuring that there is an adequate supply of electricity, or for deciding how this electricity should be generated, but it provides the forecasts of future demand on which the DECC relies. Like OFGEMit too has also issued its own report on meeting future demand.

• Overseeing all is the EU Commission which is responsible for setting the (unworkable) renewable energy targets across the EU. The Commission has also decreed the closure, under the Large Combustion Plant Directive which seeks to limit emissions of sulphur and nitrogen oxide discharges from older coal-fired stations which cannot meet their requirements

 

• In the background without any responsibility for anything are the militant environmentalists who will demonstrate against, and actively oppose, any expansion of coal-firing.

 

The required additional electricity generation in all three assessments (DECC, OFGEM and National Grid Co.) are seen as coming fromWind (on and off-shore) Gas, Nuclear, and as a last resort Coal, which emits about twice as much carbon dioxide as gas.While these three assessments differ in some small respects they can all be criticised for placing an undue reliance on renewable energy, gas, and increasing efficiency of use. The DECC lead scenario foresees a need for 100 GWe of total capacity in 2020. Almost half of this, 43 GWe, will be new generating capacity of which 26 GWe will be renewables (mostly wind) and 17 other generating capacity . By 2025 these figures could increase to a need for 109 GWe total capacity (35 GWe renewables and 25 GWe other) While it is always possible that fortune may favour their optimistic assumptions there a number of things which could go wrong. These include:

 

• Future electricity demand

In the first place these estimates of future electricity capacity are based on what could be an erroneous belief that growth in electricity demand may be restrained by programmes to promote and increase the efficiency of use. The central projection of the National Grid assumes that peak electricity demand will remain at around the present figure of 60 GWe for the next 25 years. The history of technology shows that increasing the efficiency of energy use always leads to a growth in energy consumption. And as the Government itself has recognised an increasing adoption of electrification for transport and fuel-saving devices such as heat pumps will also increase electricity demand.

• Gas supply and price

The National Grid’s projection of demand shows that in addition to 2 GW of capacity about to be commissioned a further 8 GW is now under construction and an additional 10.5 GW has the required consents but has not yet started construction. The decisions on what to build, and when, will be taken by the industry but given the lower initial construction cost of gas and the environmental opposition to new coal plants almost all of this additional new capacity can be expected to be gas-fired.

There is now a growing controversy over the possibility that world oil supplies may soon reach a peak and thereafter inevitably enter a slow decline. In this the Government, which so far does not even recognise that this could be a problem, should at least consider the recent report from the UK Energy Research Centre which estimated the date of peak production to lie between 2009 and 2031, with a significant risk of a peak before 2020. If this occurs the price of oil can be expected to rise considerably and this would drag up the price of gas.At the same time there would be an increasing use of gas as a substitute for oil, particularly with ever-growing demand from the rapidly expanding economies of the non-OECD countries, and world supplies, particularly of LPG, could come under pressure. In addition, just as gas from the UK sector of the North Sea is now declining, supplies from Norway, the Netherlands and perhaps also Russia will also decline. If this were to happen the assumption that a major part of new electricity supply will come from gas-fired stations may prove optimistic in terms of both the price and availability of gas imports.

• Doubts about renewables

Few independent assessments believe that anything approaching the assumption that up to 30% of electricity supply will come from renewable energies by 2020 is realistic. The present figure is only 5.4%. This is already well short of the first target for 10% by 2010.And if indeed the 10% figure were to be reached by 2020 from where will the missing 20% of electricity supply come from? There are growing doubts over the economics of wind power with a high cost and as yet uncertain lifetime as well as the problems of managing its intermittency . The Danish Government is reported as having begun to phase out wind subsidies. The UK government seems to be doing the opposite having increased the subsidy for offshore wind from 1 to 1.5 ROCs per MWh earlier this year; the cost of this will be paid by the consumer. Biofuels also look less promising when the costs of transporting large quantities of low energy content materials, together with the far from negligible energy cost of converting these to fuel, are taken into account. In addition the competition with farm crops leading to an increasing price for food is a matter of growing concern.

• Intermittency of wind

The National Grid, in its own consultation paper, assumes that the wind is blowing somewhere across Great Britain for most of the time - which would reduce that need for back up capacity. An opposing view comes in a report “Will British weather provide reliable electricity?” by Oswald et al which claims that at a time of peak winter electricity demand wind power output in Britain and also in neighbouring countries can fall to very low levels. This undermines the case for connecting the UK transmission grid to neighbouring grids. This paper also suggests that power swings of 70% within 12 hours are to be expected in winter.As an example of the problems that arise it supposes that if, for instance, 25 GWe of wind turbines had been installed, in January 2005, and assuming that wind output has priority access to the grid (because of the preference to use carbon free energy), then after subtracting the wind output from the total demand curve the residual demand, which must be served by other generation plant, would have varied over the month between 5.5 and 56 GWe. This would have required individual generating plant to go on or off line frequently, thereby reducing the utilisation and reliability of these plants.

• Nuclear power

The draft National Policy statement (EN6) recognises that nuclear power is “a proven and dependable technology that can be deployed on a large scale.” As a low carbon, economic, dependable and safe source of electricity “it is in the public interest to allow energy companies the option of investing in new nuclear power stations; and that the Governments should take active steps to facilitate this.” Unfortunately these ‘active steps’, which include the listing of ten potential sites for submission to the ILP, do not anticipate the start up of a first station before 2018. This will be too late to alleviate any power shortages that might be expected to occur in the previous three or four years. The number of operating stations will however increase to generate 12 to 17 GWe by 2025. The decision to build however rests with the industry. The Government can only express the view that “it is in the public interest that sites that can be deployed significantly earlier than 2025 should be allowed to do so to contribute to displacing CO2 as soon as possible.” This comment does not seem to accept that the prime role of nuclear power will be to ensure the security of electricity supply; reducing carbon emissions is a bonus.

In section 2.4 of EN6 “The need for the early deployment of new nuclear power stations” the repeated use of the phrase significantly earlier without any attempt at quantification indicates the powerlessness of the Government to intervene. Para 2.4.2 identifies a key problem “Failure to take account of the ability to develop new nuclear power stations significantly earlier than the end 2 nuclear issues of 2025 will increase the risk that the UK is locked into higher CO2 emissions than would otherwise be necessary.” - is this severn, eightrt or ten years? And what active steps could the Government take now to reduce the delays and enable the industry to start up its first stations by 2016 or 2017 when they could be badly needed.

• Coal

The problem with coal is its higher carbon emissions. It is unlikely that carbon capture and storage on any appreciable scale will be available before 2030 - if ever. Opposition by militant environmentalists will impede the construction of any new coal stations.

One solution to alleviating any power shortages that might occur around 2015 would be to seek an exclusion from the EU Large Combustion Plant Directive. This would have a better chance of being granted by the EU if it could be shown that this would only be a temporary, emergency measure, until new nuclear stations under construction or planning could come into operation. Building new coal or gas-fired stations which could expect to operate for 30 years or more would not only, as the DECC recognises, lock us into higher carbon emissions for that time but would increase reliance on energy imports when higher prices and even scarcity of supply may prevail.

Waste policy

The governments painfully slow action on new nuclear plants and broader nuclear policy is playing into the hands of the FOE and Greenpeace. When they say we have not answered questions on nuclear waste they almost have a point.

But it is important to get the waste ‘problem’ into perspective. We have in the UK been storing the waste safely for the past sixty years. Now we have most of the high-level activity in the form of blocks of glass in stainless steel containers – about the size of a milk churns – stored in concrete vaults. All the sixty year’s waste – from both military and civil development programmes – is contained in two stores at Sellafield which are much smaller than an olympic swimming pool. There is plenty of room for the next sixty years waste which, due to favourable developments, is only a fraction of what went before. So there is no real problem storing it for the next hundred or so years by which time it will be less radioactive than the uranium from which it came.

The confusion – and lack of government action – starts when you look at spent (used) fuel. The volume of this waste would just about fill the olympic swimming pool. But there is a perfectly acceptable solution. Recycle. One recycle asMOX fuel not only places the ‘waste’ in a reactor where intense radiation provides very adequate proliferation resistance, but it reduces the amount of long lived plutonium radioactivity to the same level as uranium. Today! One can go on recycling as MOX but it makes more sense to start recycling in fast reactors which produce about sixty times the energy and reduce the residual radioactivity by a similar amount. All that is needed for these two options to be exploited commercially is a clear government statement of policy.

But the so called nuclear waste problems are as nothing compared with CO2. We are discharging billions of tonnes every year directly into the atmosphere by burning hydrocarbons. The amount is so vast that it must effect the global environment. And all we have is promises of some untried sequestration processes. This is not a solved problem.

Nuclear myths - subsidy

It is widely asserted by those opposed to nuclear power that no nuclear station has been built without a government support or subsidy. This is not true. One clear example where the initiative and all the costs have been taken by private industry is Sweden.

In 1956 after lengthy negotiations a group of eight private electric signed a contract with the Swedish electrical manufacturing company ASEA for a 400 MWe BWR at a fixed price and with performance guarantees. This reactor was to ASEA’s own design without any American licence.

Both sides were exposed to risk; forASEAof cost overrun, poor performance and delay, in what was then their largest single order; the utilities could be exposed to buying-in power to meet their supply commitments. At that time the State Power Board (Vattenfall) were playing safe and ordering a PWR fromWestinghouse, while the Government organisation AB Atomenergi was looking to a heavy water design - later abandoned.

In the event the ASEA BWR proved a great success.

Construction of the reactor known as Oskarshamn-1 began in July 1966 with first operation in August 1971. Full commercial power supply at 420 MWe began at the beginning of 1972. But confidence in the project was sufficient for a larger second reactor Oskarshamn- 2 of 600MWe to be ordered from ASEA two years before the completion of Oscar-1.

ASEA went on to build 9 more of their BWR reactors in Sweden (but the two Barsebäck reactors were shut down finally 1999 and 2005 for political reasons) and also supplied two 860 MW reactors in 1972 and 1974 to the private utility group TVO in Finland where they have operated at annual load factors of over 90% .

The utilities are responsible for meeting all the decommissioning and waste disposal costs and pay a fee to the Nuclear Waste Fund, to cover their share of the total costs for the management and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and/or nuclear waste.. The size of the fee is decided by the Government for a period of three years and is individual for each utility.

Far from receiving a subsidy from the government the Swedish nuclear power stations subsidise the government through a tax of 0.67 Eur cents/kwh on nuclear electricity.

Nuclear Issues has been suffering from severe computer problems and as a result we will fill our last page with a simple seasonal greeting: December 2009 3 a Merry Christmas and a Nuclear New Year 4 nuclear issues.