The Iranians had however encountered some pretty rough treatment from the West on enrichment. They invested a billion dollars in the French gaseous diffusion enrichment plant at Tricastin and should have received a share of the output from the plant. But by the time they wanted it everything had changed and they lost both their investment and the promised enrichment services. They maintain therefore that they had to develop enrichment technology which they have consistently maintained was purely for peaceful purposes. But they have kept some of the work secret and have refused to sign an extra non-proliferation protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Now Western governments are reluctantly accepting that the Iranians have the right to start up their nuclear power plant which is clearly for peaceful power production. But suspicion remains about the un-needed enrichment processes. Basically you pays your money and takes your choice on who you believe. Certainly there is less case for going to war than there was with Iraq and to impose sanctions on the country seems rather harsh. But that is the politics of the day.

The next step should be to encourage and assist Iran to build further power reactors and develop fuel manufacturing technology to provide a civil use for its own production

of enriched uranium. The safest place for fissile material is in a reactor generating electricity. A country that depends to a significant extent on nuclear electricity for its economy and welfare is less likely to embark on an aggressive weapons programme.

Attention should now be focussed on the two remaining rogue nuclear states, Israel and North Korea whose nuclear activity is solely directed to the production of nuclear weapons.


French to sort out MOX production

Areva, the French company which is a shareholder in the Nuclear Management Partners that has been responsible for the operations of Sellafield since 2008, is to design, supply and install a new production line at the Sellafield mixed uranium/plutonium oxide (MOX) plant (SMP). This is the plant which the British have been having difficulty getting to work. Hopefully the French, who have a plant – Melox – that has operated satisfactorily for years, will be able to sort it out.

Another encouraging factor is that they now have some orders for MOX fuel. The Japanese, who were not well pleased when British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL) made a silly quality control mistake, have now decided to have all the plutonium from the reprocessing of their fuel at Sellafield returned in the form of MOX fuel. This makes sense as it is obviously safer than shipping back plutonium oxide powder. They are doing it only with the plutonium from their used fuel for which the reprocessing contracts are now complete. After that they will be relying on their own reprocessing plant which is now just starting up at Rokkasho and a newMOX fabrication plant that they have recently announced and which should be operating in three years time.

But why are there no orders from Britain. There is said to be about 100 tones of plutonium already separated by reprocessing British used fuel held in storage at Sellafield. This could be recycled in the Sizewell B pressurized water reactor and it has been demonstrated as possible in the AGR stations as well. It is said not to be government policy to recycle this material.Well it jolly well should be. Perhaps now that the French also own British Electric we may get some sense. The French have been recycling plutonium from their reactors for years and they produce the cheapest electricity in Europe.


On course for crisis

The Secretary for Climate Change, Chris Huhne, says that we are “on course” for new nuclear power plants to commence operation by 2018.Well according to our estimates that is too late.We are due to have decommissioned nearly all existing nuclear power except Sizewell B and we should have removed all coal fired plant by then. There will be an electricity shortage of the order of 20 000 to 30 000 MWe by then which means that we will need 20 to 30 new plants to be operating before 2018. When is somebody going to show a bit of urgency.

Mr Huhne appears to be satisfied that private industry is in a position to pick up the bill. That is great but is it for 20 to 30 plants. The coalition government has stated that it is going to pay nothing for new nuclear although it will still be pouring billions of pounds each year into the construction of wind turbines which will produce a fraction of the power needed at three times the cost when the wind is blowing at the right speed. Somebody else is presumably responsible for providing back up electricity for when the wind is not obliging.

Does not the government have some responsibility for getting us in this mess? It is true that Electricity de France and a consortium of Germany’s E.ON and RWE Npower are showing interest in building new nuclear in this country and that they probably have enough capital strength to raise the considerable amounts needed to build several new plants at sites they have already secured. But 20 or 30 plants – that is a lot of money.

Of course it would not have been so much if they had started ten years ago. It would have been a lot less. Maybe as much as a tenth of the cost. And today we would be in a position to start turning some of that capital into real earnings. This may sound like being wise after the event but we were saying this ten years ago.

The government is hoping to make it easier to get the planning permission for new nuclear plants. Good. But don’t Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have something to say about that. The record of public consultation on major projects suggests a potential for years of delaying tactics by people who have no responsibility for urgency.


Why subsidise wind?

In a House of Lords debate on 27th July Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked why the Government are prepared to subsidise wind power which is the most inefficient kind of renewable power and, at the same time, refuse any subsidy for nuclear power, another renewable source?

In reply Lord Marland the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State of the DECC explained “We are pump-priming offshore wind technology because, as the 2050 pathway document shows, we need to have energy from many sources. Nuclear is a mature source, whereas offshore wind is not as mature. To see whether it has the economic benefits that we think it has, it must be proceeded with.”

This seems an extraordinary statement. What possible, as yet unknown, economic benefits does the government imagine can come from wind in general and offshore wind in particular.We already have the experience of 14 offshore wind farms in operation and 1.5 GWe more are under construction.What further ‘pump-priming’ is needed.We know that wind is capital intensive – the Thanet offshore windfarm at £2.6 million/MWe is more costly than a nuclear station – and that wind is unreliable – the five years from 2005 the load factors for offshore wind given the DECC statistics are 2005 - 27.2%, 2006 - 28.7%, 2007 -25.6%, 2008- 30.4 %, 2009 - 26.0%.

The only virtue in wind is that as a non-fossil fuel source of electricity it emits no carbon dioxide, but on the other hand the low load factor requires back-up from fossil sources to cover for the variability of wind.Why then should wind continue to be subsidised through the Renewable Obligation when nuclear power can generate entirely carbon free electricity at a lower cost.

The Renewable Obligation was conceived under the previous government, but of Chris Huhne the Energy Secretary is an enthusiastic advocate claiming that “Thanks to the Renewables Obligation onshore wind has become competitive.” (24th June) – this is rather like a small child standing on a chair and proclaiming “I am as tall as my daddy.” It deceives no one expect perhaps Huhne himself since as he later confirmed “I am personally absolutely committed to offshore wind” (30th June). At a time when the coalition government is desperately seeking financial cuts in all areas the continued wasteful expenditure on subsidising expensive wind farms should cease even though this is levied directly on the electricity consumers and as such does not count as government expenditure.

ITER – more money and more time

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project has reached a deal on additional financing based on an extra € 6.6 billion from the European Union. This will bring the total cost of the experiment to €16 billion. This is a lot but shared between the international partners it should be obtainable fairly easily. The partners include the European Union, Russia, the US, Japan, China, India, and South Korea which should be more than enough to find the money.

The trouble is that the latest financial agreement comes with an additional year on the schedule. Operation of the torus has now gone from 2018 to 2019 and operation with tritium-deuterium fuel, which will be needed to produce energy break even, has gone back to March 2027.

Already back in 2005 the project had been scaled back from 1500 to 500 MWth. A more ambitious machine proposed by the French engineer Paul-Henri Rabut, who pushed through the former JET project, was dropped back in 2005 when the Americans opted out of the project for a few years. It will take another bigger Demo project to produce usable amounts of electricity.

We cannot imagine what takes so much time. It is difficult to see how scientists can maintain enthusiasm for a project which they may never see completed. Anyway construction at the site, Cadarache, in southern France has at least started. Perhaps when they have something to show they might get a move on.