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UAE order As expected (NI September 2009) the seven members of the UAE (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al- Quwain, Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah) have lost no time in committing themselves to an ambitious nuclear programme.
The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) announced at the end of 2009 that it had awarded a contract for $20 billion to a South Korean group to build four 1 400 MWe reactors. Construction of the first will begin in 2012 for completion by 2017, and all four are to be in operation by 2020. The construction contract is expected to be followed by another $20 billion contract to maintain and operate the reactors over their 60 year lifetime.
The South Korean partners in the consortium which is led by the Korean Electric Power Co (Kepco) include Samsung, Hyundai, Doosan Heavy Industries, and Kepco subsidiaries; Westinghouse and Toshiba are also said to be involved.
Rival bids came from GEC/Hitachi in the USA, and a French group led byAreva, but their capital and generating costs are said to be significantly higher.
This agreement is seen as a first step in a closer cooperation between the two countries in economic and industrial affairs which will see the UAE develop from its total reliance on oil and gas exports to becoming an advanced industrial power. The South Korean president has taken a close interest in the negotiations and was present at the signing of the agreement, together with the president of the UAE. South Korean investors are expected to take an equity interest in the project.The contract calls for extensive training of UAE personnel who are expected to provide some 2000 of the operating staff required by 2020. South Korea will also assist in setting up the industrial infrastructure that will be required as well as participating in other energy ventures. Nuclear desalination is an obvious next step. This is a mutually beneficial agreement between the world’s third largest oil exporter and the world’s fifth largest oil importer. Both countries will gain.
The UAE's oil production has more than doubled over the past 20 years, peaking at about 2.6 million barrels per day in 2008. Their output accounted for 2.63 per cent of the world's total oil supplies, nearly 11 per cent ofArabian crude production and 7.8 per cent of Opec's output. To maintain or to increase this output the UAE is expected to spend some $12 billion between 2008 and 2012. Its gas production has also recorded a steady rise with marketed gas supplies reaching a record 50.2 billion cubic metres in 2008, 1.6 per cent of the world's total marketed gas. But, with its growing population seeking higher standards of living and an increasing industrialization, the internal consumption of oil in the UAE has also grown rapidly and is now some 13% of present output.
Electricity consumption in the UAE has also increased - almost threefold from 5.8 GWe in 2000 to 15.7 GWe in 2008. Nuclear power is now expected to take an increasing share of this growing electricity demand as well as for much-needed water desalination plants. Coal is ruled out on environmental grounds and the need to import supplies.
Renewable sources are seen as providing, at the most, only some 7 or 8%of demand.Oil and gas are judgedmore expensive.
South Korea Although South Korea had, only a few weeks earlier in December 2009 won a $173 million contract to build a Korean-design research reactor in Jordan (a preliminary to that country’s own intentions to embark on a nuclear power programme), the order from the UAE, its first nuclear power export order, is a major step forward for S Korea in its 30 year nuclear history. This began in 1978 with the import of aWestinghouse reactor, from which it has now developed its own version of the 1 400 MWeAPR. South Korea is now a major nuclear player. Its 20 reactors in operation - 17 716 MW- provide nearly 40% of the country’s electricity; eight more reactors are now under construction and a furtherten are planned for operation by 2020.
South Korea has plans to become a major nuclear exporter. In addition to the UAE plants it hopes to secure a further six orders within the next two years. Discussions are said to be taking place with Turkey, India, Indonesia and possibly Poland. The larger ambition is for the export of up to 80 reactors by 2030 worth some $400 billion to become the world’s 3rd largest supplier with a 20% share of the global market.
The plants being supplied to the UAE are the KoreanAPR 1400, a Generation III, 1400Megawatt nuclear power plant with evolutionary improvements in safety, performance, and environmental impact. This was developed by the Korean nuclear industry under the leadership of Kepco over a period of ten years beginning 1992. A certificate for the standard design approval of theAPR 1400 was issued by the Korean regulatory authority in 2002. It is similar to, but is claimed to represent an improvement over, the Combuation Engineering (now Westighouse) System 80+ design which was previously certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the United States. The first of the Korean APR 1400 units, Shin-Kori units 3&4, are now under construction, and unit 3 will be connected to the grid by 2013. The UAE nuclear power plants will continue the series with the Shin-Kori plants serving as the "reference plants" for the UAE program.As such, Kepco will construct plants that are essentially the same as the "reference plants," but supplemented with changes required to adapt to UAE climactic conditions and any specific requirements of the UAE nuclear safety regulator, the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation.
South Korea is also engaged in the development of fast and high temperature reactor concepts. In this it is able to take an active, contributory part in the work of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership where the UK is just a passive member. In another interesting development the Nuclear Transmutation Energy Research Centre of Korea is working on a lead-bismuth cooled design for a small 35MWe reactor using pyro-processed fuel. With a design life of 60 years it could be leased and operate for 20 years before being returned for refueling at the pyro-processing plant.
What we have lost The emergence of South Korea as a new exporter of nuclear power plant is an indication of how Europe andAmerica are being challenged in this new and growing market for advanced industrial equipment. This is a market from which the UK has already resigned having sold off almost all its nuclear capability.With Calder Hall, we could justly claim to have been a world leader in the construction of nuclear power plant, as well as in nuclear research and the early development of fast breeder and high temperature reactors.
All that nuclear expertise has now gone; instead the Government boasts that the UK is now a world leader in offshore wind farms. It is akin to a major motor manufacturer announcing that it had sold off its plant and its development of electric cars to become a world leader in producing the more environmentally-friendly bicycles - but then it emerges that most of the equipment for this is to come from overseas or has yet to be developed! A comparison with the remarkable speed and determination the UAE has shown in implementing their nuclear programme and in placing the order with S Korea immediately after the formal establishment of the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation reflects sadly on the lack of both speed and determination in this country where the Government seems unaware of the looming energy crisis.
The joint efforts of the Department of Energy and its instrument OFGEM brought about the collapse of the former British Energy in 2002 and the enforced sell-off of its, now extremely profitable, North American investments at a low price; UK nuclear output thereafter declined from 67.6 TWh in 2001/02 to 50.3 TWh by 2007/08. The outright hostility of the Government towards nuclear power has since slowly changed to indifference, and now even to a grudging acceptance so that the Department of Energy and Climate Change can declare that “Nuclear power is also a proven and dependable technology that can be deployed on a large scale.” But apart from introducing a new layer of bureaucracy with an Infrastructure and Planning Commission (IPC) the Government seems quite relaxed about the slow progress towards the construction of the first new nuclear stations. It is now concentrating its efforts on encouraging an overlarge and very expensive installation of offshore wind farms in the North Sea which are being subsidised by the consumer through the Renewables Obligation. It shows little sign of appreciating the scale of the crisis this country would face if a crippling shortage of electricity arises within the next five to ten years.Although it has identified 10 potential sites for new nuclear stations for the IPC to consider, the decision of where, when, or even whether to build rests solely with the foreign power companies who provide most of our electricity. It seems unlikely that we will have any new nuclear reactors in operation before 2020 - well behind the four plants planned for that date by the UAE. Speed and determination are sadly lacking here.
The final stage of the Government disengagement from all nuclear capability and innovation comes at the very time that the rest of the world is beginning to appreciate that the future of world energy supply will depend increasingly on nuclear power. It is now reported that they are proposing to sell off the UK share in the tripartite British, Dutch, German uranium enrichment company Urenco - a clear case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. They should then be cautious about our treatment of Iran - we may need to buy their enriched uranium at some time in the future. Chernobyl What happened It transpires that many people do not really know what caused the explosion – or explosions; there were two about five seconds apart – at the Chernobyl reactor and why it is totally unlikely to happen on any western reactors.
The answers are well documented in a British journal (Nuclear Energy, Vol 20, No 5. 1981, the publication of the British Nuclear Energy Society) after an examination of the RBMK reactor design - but before the accident occurred.
This concluded that it could not be licensed to operate by British authorities because it did not have a fast emergency shut down system. This was particularly needed because the reactor was a highly moderated system that in certain conditions could exhibit a positive void coefficient of reactivity. That means that as it gets hotter it becomes more reactive. Western light water reactors have a negative coefficient which means they get less reactive and try to shut down if the temperature increases. The only other reactor with a possibility of a positive coefficient – but smaller than the RBMK – is the Canadian CANDU system which is a pressure tube reactor with very efficient heavy water moderation. But this has a fast emergency shut down system. It was in fact the first reactor in the world to have an on-line computer system to control the reactor. The Russians at the time were prevented from getting fast US computer chips and only had a back up reactivity control system that was so slow that it could not be put on-line.
This, incidentally, has since been corrected at other RBMK reactors still in operation.
It is now generally believed that an initiating event was the pressing of the scram button of the RBMK reactor – in the reactor control room inside the sarcophagus you can still see where the button was although the actual switch has been removed by some trophy collector. Pressing this switch causes control rods to drop into the reactor and shut it down.
But unfortunately there was a design flaw that caused an initial insertion of extra reactivity. This so called positive scram effect was due to fuel element followers of graphite moderator that hang below the control rods. These should be ejected from the core as the control rods are dropped in. But there was a small gap above and below followers which 2 nuclear issues meant in the first few inches of movement there was an injection of water moderator at the top and at the bottom of the core. This could cause a positive injection of reactivity under certain conditions. This was clearly known about by the Russians who immediately after the accident – within days – issued an instruction to other operators of RBMK reactors to reposition micro-switches that would prevent the control rod from being completely removed from the core.
A diagram produced a year later by a Russian official showed the intermediate fix and subsequent modification.
This was not however reported at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s post accident conference.
There was a lot of discussion at the post accident conference of an apparent operator error of removing too many control rods from the reactor. Perversely this is generally considered to be a safe condition because the control rods are then in a position to be dropped into the reactor but a peculiarity of the RBMK was an instruction to always maintain at least 30 absorber rods in the core unless special permission were granted by the station manager. The complexity of the system meant that the positive void coefficient became larger if too many were pulled out. It seems that the deputy station manager, Anatoly Dyatlov, who was in the control room, authorised pulling more control rods out of the reactor to keep it in operation after a long period of half power operation in which there had been excessive build up of xenon poisoning. This was caused by a request from the grid operator to maintain power for an extra day just when they had been about to shut the reactor down. In a later article published in Nuclear Engineering International (Nov 1991, Vol 36, No.448) Dyatlov goes into some detail about the situation but this was after he had spent four years in prison and he was seeking to establish that there had not been any human error. He claimed rather that there was a fault in the reactor design and that the control room manuals were not clear. Although there is some truth in this, Dyatlov appears to have had some discussion with the two reactor operators about the possibility of putting the reactor into an unsafe condition by withdrawing more control rods. They were both graduates in nuclear energy and Dyatlov was an electrical engineer.
Dyatlov did also make a mistake after the accident in telling the designers in Moscow that the reactor was intact when in fact it had blown its top. This led to a fruitless attempt to get primary circulation pumps working. Visited ten year after the accident we were shown the area of the circulation pumps though we were asked only to take a short look because the radiation level was still high. It was just a pile of rubble with no prospect of pumping water.
In the remaining RBMK reactors the graphite moderator blocks have been trimmed and the enrichment of the uranium fuel has been increased from 2 to 2.4 percent. This, somewhat confusingly, results in a less positive void coefficient. There was also an improved fast shut down system and a faster computer system for displaying the reactivity of the core which were added to all operating RBMK’s.We have seen the light on the control panel of an operating RBMK indicating that the reactivity monitor is operational. Together with the repositioning of the microswitches on the control rod drives (already mentioned) the reactors are now considered safe to operate in Russia, but there is still doubt elsewhere.
It seems likely that the initiating event of the first explosion was the positive scram effect. The second explosion about five second later, which was reported to be a bit larger than the first, could have been caused by a number of events but high on the list of possibilities is the creation of a massive void in the core by the first explosion and a consequent positive void coefficient.
The situation would not have been made worse by a considerable build up of xenon in the middle of the core during the day of low power operation. This is a problem familiar to all reactor operators though the effect would be large in the huge over moderated RBMK core.
What did not happen at Chernobyl Contrary to the general belief, there were no detectable long term radiation effects after Chernobyl. There were cases of acute radiation sickness directly after the accident – 134 were taken to Hospital 6 in Moscow and received excellent treatment but sadly 28 died. It seems that most of the rest who survived the first couple of months recovered to live a more or less normal life.
But among the recovery workers, many of whom received significant, though relatively low, doses of radiation, there has been no observed increase in the level of leukaemia’s or other cancers. In certain groups of recovery workers it was anticipated there would be a peak in leukaemia’s in the first five years and other hard cancers in ten to twenty years after the accident but none have been observed among the larger number of natural occurrences of the diseases.
The latest estimates from the IAEA and World Health Organisation is that there might be a total as high as 2000 but again these have not been detected amongst much higher natural levels of the diseases. These estimates are based on the linear-no-threshold extrapolation from observed effects among Japanese bomb survivors. Serious questions have, however, been raised by a number of radiobiologists about the accuracy and method of extrapolating from effects on Japanese survivors some 60 years ago. The Chernobyl accident resulted in levels of radiation which were measured and recorded. The records may not have been kept as well as one might have wished but they were much better than 60 year old estimates. But there seems to be unwillingness to learn from the Chernobyl measurements.
There has been an observed increase in child thyroid cancers although these are a little confusing. They are believed to have been caused by emissions of iodine-135 which landed on grassland and was eaten by cattle. This was transferred to milk which was fed to children and caused cancer in the thyroid gland. The half life of iodine-135 is only seven day so the mechanism could only have applied to children living in the area for three or four weeks after the accident. The confusion concerns the natural level of thyroid cancers which was not well known before the accident but would have been applicable more than four weeks later. It seems to have continued at an elevated level for longer which casts some doubt on the earlier figures.
The thyroid cancers, while very distressing, are however January 2010 3 readily treatable.
Arguably it does not matter. The nuclear industry can lived with the more severe radiation standards. But at what cost? We could be paying vast amounts of money to maintain standards that are much tighter than necessary. We should at least take a closer look at the Chernobyl non-effects.
There have also been increases of other diseases which have no link with radiation. These have included such things as stomach complaints and even an increase in the number of suicides. These are real and distressing cases and deserve to be investigated carefully. They may be due to the great trauma caused by the explosion and they may be a case for seeking more responsible press reporting of such traumatic events both man-made and natural.
Two questions We heard recently of a village where a proposal has been made by their community centre for the erection of a wind turbine. They have the romantic idea that this will supply them with electricity and allow them to sell the surplus to the grid supplier. They need to ask the eco-freak who is promoting the idea two questions: 1 Will my house still need a connection to the electricity supply grid? 2 Will I have a separate supply to my house from the wind generator? The answer to the first must be yes if you are to continue to enjoy the luxury of switching on an electrical devise at the flick of a switch anytime of the day or night. The second answer is no; it would be far too costly to install a separate distribution system to each house.
What this means is that the village is in effect considering the establishment of an electricity generating enterprise that will feed into the electricity supply grid the power from a huge wind generator overlooking their village. They hope that this might make more money than they are paying for a supply from the grid. Maybe they will while the government maintains its stupid law obliging electric supply companies to buy any surplus renewable energy despite the cost which is estimated to be five times higher than nuclear generation. It also depends on the village enterprise being able to maintain their generator in good operating condition.
They should be aware that the grants that they are hoping to receive are to compensate them for being prepared to have an unsightly, noisy, wind generator in their back yard.
While the electricity it generates will be available to all, not exclusively to the village where it is sited. We suggest that it would be better to put their money into shares of a company proposing to build a clean, economical and reliable nuclear power plant.
Reducing carbon emissions There is growing criticism of the system of carbon trading, or cap and trade, now in force under the EU Energy Trading System (ETS). The ETS covers only about the half of EU carbon dioxide emissions which come from around 10 000 installations in the energy and industrial sectors; there are strong arguments that it should now be replaced by a universal carbon tax. A tax would not only be easier to administer, less volatile and more predictable in its action, but the wider application of a straight forward carbon tax to all sectors of the economy, not just to industry, will be essential if we are to achieve the reductions of up to 80% in emissions now being proposed.
The ETS has been described as a license to pollute.
Credits are issued to a polluter (often a large and powerful company) which instead of making changes to reduce its carbon emissions can trade with another company (often in a weaker position or in a developing country) which is able to make the equivalent changes more cheaply. If both companies, under the incentive of a carbon tax, were to reduce their emissions the combined reduction would obviously be greater. Moreover the issuing and trading of credits requires a whole new structure of financial dealers and traders which not only adds to the complexity but inevitably attracts the attention of fraudsters and money launderers. The first prosecutions for abuse of the ETS system are now taking place.
The ETS can also be seen as fundamentally immoral.
There would be a justifiable outcry if wealthy criminals were able, by paying poor or homeless persons to serve their prison sentence for them, to escape incarceration and continue to offend.
A carbon tax on fossil fuels would be a simpler and more effective means of achieving a greater reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Instead of being limited to about that half which comes from major industrial installations it would cover the whole of society and provide a significant incentive for emission reductions in all sectors. The transport and domestic sectors account for about one third and one sixth respectively of the total UK emissions. A carbon tax applied to motor fuel would encourage a move to smaller and more efficient engines and better driving habits, a greater use of public transport as well as a move towards electric vehicles.
Similarly a tax on the domestic use of fossil fuel would provide the incentive to improve the insulation of homes, installation of heat pumps, and the use of more efficient domestic appliances.
A recent attempt was made in France to introduce a tax of €15/tonne carbon on fossil fuels, but this proposal by President Sarkozy has just been blocked by the French Constitutional Court mainly on the grounds that it was too weak. With almost all industrial emissions gaining possible exemptions the tax was declared to discriminate against households and motorists. But these two sectors account for a significant fossil energy usage in France where almost all electricity is carbon free - nuclear or hydro. President Sarkozy has said that the bill will be reintroduced in a modified form within a few months time. It will be interesting to see if opposition from businesses fearing their competitive position will be damaged, and almost inevitably from French farmers, will be maintained.
There are now reports that China is also considering a carbon tax to head off the imposition of tariffs on goods by the US and EU.
A substantial criticism “Carbon Trading, how it works and why it fails” has just been published by the Dag Hammerskjiold Foundation in Sweden.
But not when needed It is often claimed by the proponents of windpower that the wind always blows at some place in the UK and all we have to do to lessen the problems of intermittent supply is to interconnect all windfarms across the country and offshore - (but at what cost?). The recent cold spell at the beginning of the year shows this to be a fallacy.
At a time when, with the higher demands of colder weather, electricity consumption for the month of January was at a high level, the total output from all wind turbines fell to a very low level - well below 1000 MWh for most of the time - about 0.001% of the peak electricity supply which reached 1,100 000 MWh - and even falling to below 100 MWh for shorter periods - practically zero! Wind conditions in Scandinavia and presumably across the North Sea were similar, while their temperatures were much lower.
These climate conditions are not unusual. What will happen when they occur again in 2020 at a time when the Government proposes we should depend on wind to supply around 30% of our electricity? Quotation of the month “You can add to the awe-inspiring engineering achievements of the offshore wind industry an unparalleled ability to make nuclear power look cheap.” From an article on Offshore Wind Power in the Economist, January 14th 2010. |
