Japan has four commercial reactors using MOX fuel. They are planning to build their own MOX fabrication plant but they still want the plutonium that has been separated from Japanese spent (used) fuel in the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) at Sellafield to be converted into a safe form such as MOX fuel rather than stored as separated plutonium in a Fort Knox type facility.

Then there is the US. They have recently been reported as having 64 500 tonnes of spent (used) fuel held in storage at power plants. They talk about putting it into a waste repository but they do not have one and have stopped work onYuccaMountain which was the only near term prospect of one. But what they really need is the use of a reprocessing plant to recycle the plutonium and uranium in the spent (used) fuel.We have such a plant at Sellafield – THORP – which has just completed foreign contracts and needs some new ones. Why on Earth does somebody not do something about selling THORP services to the Americans and that would mean that the MOX plant would also be needed to manufacture fuel for return.

In fact the International Panel on Fissile Material (IPFM) study says that at the end of 2009 there were about 240 000 tonnes of spent fuel in storage worldwide most of it at reactor sites. Annually the world is now producing about 10 500 tonnes of which roughly 8 500 tonnes are going into long term storage and only about 2000 tonnes is being reprocessed for plutonium recycle in France. We have the technology for recycle and everybody says that waste recycle is a good thing. But instead of recycle most operators of nuclear plants are talking about long term underground disposal which will require the used fuel to be retrievable for several hundred years.What a load of nonsense.



French tell the US to recycle

The US has a 64 500 tonne stockpile of spent (used) fuel sitting in storage at its nuclear power plants. MostAmericans consider this to be nuclear waste and are concerned about the need for a waste repository. But a white paper issued by the French company Areva says that it should be considered as a valuable energy resource not as a waste product. It is estimated that the current stockpile of spent (used) fuel has sufficient energy content to fuel all 104 nuclear reactors in the US for six whole years. Recycling in this way would reduce by 75% the volume of high level waste that would need to be disposed of in a repository. In addition Areva could offer a vitrification process that produces a simple, stable and durable waste form optimised for storage and geological disposal.

The full package being offered by Ariva includes the COEX reprocessing technology which offers the non-proliferation benefit of ensuring that no plutonium is separated at any point within the plant. The Americans seem to be preoccupied on this point although the coprocessing technology has been around for some time and has been adopted in the latest commercial reprocessing plant in Japan.

Areva of course has plenty of experience of recycling mixed uranium/plutonium (MOX) fuel in reactors. This is achieved in France without incurring any additional cost. They would be able to provide short term capacity for US spent (used) fuel to be reprocessed at La Hague in France where a plant built for international contracts has just about completed its work. They have also the Melox facility in the south of France which can fabricate the MOX fuel assemblies and a connection with Belgonuclaire which also has the necessary skills. Britain also has the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) and the Sellafield MOX Plant which could offer a similar service but the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency (NDA) appears to be set of pulling them down as soon as possible.

Detailed studies have shown that deploying Areva’s recycling technology in the US would increase the nation’s energy security, create jobs and investment, and improve public acceptance of nuclear energy. But it would not increase electricity costs. Areva is well aware of advanced fuel cycles being developed for new types of reactor but thinks that it will take many decades for these technologies to be ready for commercial deployment. In the meantimeMOX recycle is here and now and can be used without any economic disadvantage.

The Areva white paper is available at htpp://us.areva.com. Click on “News,” click on “Archives,” then click on “AREVA White Paper.”

Nuclear power is needed

There are 120 million people living in the two main islands of Japan. That is about double the UK population in roughly the same area. They enjoy a very high standard of living. But they are exposed to earthquake hazards. They take sensible precautions and in general accept these risks. They don’t have much choice unless they wish to move their homes.

InMarch they suffered the worst earthquake in their history. Just under 10 on the Richter scale. That is roughly 10 000 times more severe than the worst earthquake in Europe. Generally they survived the seismic shake up but the tsunami which followed was terrible killing thousands of people and destroying thousands of homes. Our sincerest sympathy goes out to them. But still they prefer to live with this terrible threat rather than moving.

The country relies on nuclear power for up to 20 percent of electricity production. The plants are generally located near the coastline both on the East and West. They are built to the highest of seismic standards and all withstood the initial shock of theMarch quake shutting down automatically which reduced the heat production to 6.5% of its previous level straight away and to 0.4 % a day later. But the tsunami, estimated to be a wave of 15 to 19 metres height, which followed an hour later proved too much for one plant with four reactors at Fukushima and took out five of the six diesel generators designed to provide power to remove the residual heat. The Japanese have now implemented a solution with mobile power generators mounted on trucks that can be kept safely away from the tsunami and driven to the site as required.

Now people are asking if the Japanese should continue to use nuclear power. Of course they should. They have no indigenous coal, no oil and no gas and so no choice but to use nuclear. Some are even asking if we should continue to use nuclear in other countries where force ten earthquakes are not experienced. Of course we should. And that means Germany and Switzerland and Italy.

Nuclear heat

A government report estimates that energy consumed for heating accounts for just under half of total final energy consumption and nearly four-fifths (79%) of energy use outside the transport sector. In the domestic sector this amounted to 41 910 thousand toe , or 87%of domestic energy consumption. In the industrial sector heat the figures were 31 989 thousand toe or 73% of industrial energy consumption.

The greater part of this heat energy is met from gas at 81%for the domestic sector a total of 34 085 thousand toe, and 47% for industry or 11 018 thousand toe.

At a time when the UK is becoming evermore dependent on imported gas, with gasfired power stations being relied on to provide back-up supply for the intermittent renewables as well as replacing older coal-fired stations, the potential for nuclear heat should be considered.

It is indeed surprising that this possibility has been neglected. There is the example of the four units of the Bilibino plant in Siberia which has been operating since 1976 with four small 62 MWt reactors producing steam for district heating as well as 11 MWe of electricity.

Newer concepts are now being proposed.AWNAreport lists 16 different designs with power outputs from 25 to 300MWe now said to be under development in seven countries (Argentine, China, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Russia and US). There are a number of other different designs under development in other countries. Many of these reactors could be factory built and transported to site.Most are designed with a high level of passive safety. Some are small enough to be built underground. This provides additional benefits of lower construction costs because earth, concrete and steel are less costly than elaborate security systems in use today.

Small factory built reactors that could be supplied and operating in two or three years would, as well as supplying nuclear heat and reducing our dependence on gas, help to solve the impending crisis in electricity supply before the new large nuclear plants come into operation around 2020.

Gas but at what cost

We can’t use coal. It’s too dirty. And it will take at least ten years to build new nuclear power station even if the French are prepared to pay. That leaves gas. We have finished off the bubble of gas from under the North Sea so we will have to use gas from shale deposits which they say will be abundant. They will have to convert it to liquefied natural gas to ship it into our system.

Everybody knows that gas is better than coal and so this solution will probably be selected. But gas, while only emitting half as much carbon dioxide as coal, is still a very significant emitter. It puts millions of tons directly into the atmosphere.

Then the safety record of gas is not good. There are currently 0.197 death/GWe/year from the gas industry. That figure is likely to increase as we start to ship liquefied natural gas around the world. Nuclear power, by contrast, has a very low 0.058 deaths/GWe/year. That includes Chernobyl and has certainly not been affected by Fukushima.

Hormesis

The assertion that small doses of radiation could have a beneficial effect has long been argued in Nuclear Issues. It has now received strong support from a report by JanWillem Nienhuys, a Dutch member of the appropriately named Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

A full account is given in the European Energy Review of 25 July. Hormesis is a general phenomenon. It was first described towards the end of the 19th century when it was observed that small amounts of a particular disinfectant stimulated the growth of a yeast but destroyed the yeast cells in larger doses. The idea that a favourable reaction of biological organisms to low exposures to toxins is a general phenomenon is supported in Hormesis: A Revolution in Biology, Toxicology and Medicine (Springer, 2009), which it is claimed provides an understanding of how hormesis works through various compensatory mechanisms which come into play when an organism is exposed to harmful influences. These mechanisms not only counter the immediate threat but can prepare for possible future repeats.

When it comes to the question of radiation exposures the problem is that actual evidence of harm, and in particular of radiation induced cancers which are known to occur at high dose levels, is almost impossible to establish at low levels against a background of many other possible causes – smoking, diet, etc. The radiation protection authorities have in consequence always adopted the precautionary principle of assuming that the damage which is clearly seen at high doses can be extrapolated ever downwards to lower dose levels. This is the linear no threshold assumption of LNT which is the basis of all radiation protection legislation and limits. The application LNT is critically examined by C L Sanders in another book Radiation Hormesis and the Linear-No-Threshold Assumption (Springer, 2010).

LNT also assumes that the doses received by a population are in some way cumulative and the article in the EER gives the example of a population of 1 million exposed to 1 milli Sievert for twenty years. The accumulated dose of 2 billion milli Sievert or 2 Sievert would, in that population, cause 100 000 deaths this. This ignores any possible effects of hormesis. As the article points out on the assumptions of LNT those living there for 20 years should all be dead! (The average exposure to natural background radiation in the UK is about 2.5 milli Sievert/year with higher doses in areas in Cornwall and parts ofWales.) There is also the evidence of exposure to radiation from natural sources where populations have lived for generations in areas of high radiation backgrounds without any obvious harmful effects. One such area is Kerala on the southern coast of India where the black thorium-containing beach sands give an annual doses of about 30 milli Sv/yr. An extreme example sited is Ramsar in Iran. On the Caspian coast it is a noted Spa whose radioactive hot springs attract many visitors, but the natural background can reach up to 700 milli Sieverts a year compared with a world average of about 2.5 milli Sieverts a year. Again without any harmful effects observed in the resident population.

A paper published in Health Physics, January 2002, Volume 82, Number 1, concluded that:

“Given the apparent lack of ill effects among observed populations of these high dose rate areas, these data suggest that current dose limits may be overly conservative. However, the available data do not yet seem sufficient to cause national or international advisory bodies to change their current conservative radiation protection recommendations; for this to happen more definitive data are needed.”

This article suggests that it is time for the LNT to be reviewed. Apart from an overzealous regulation of the nuclear industry the application of LNT can cause unnecessary alarm, hardship and distress to those affected by accidental radiation exposures such as at Fukushima.

This latter has been shown with the offered evacuation of some foreign nationals from Tokyo after Fukushima, which shamefully included the British Government. Those who accepted this offer could have more than doubled their radiation exposure in leaving Tokyo, where exposures after the accident had risen to 0.109 micro Sv/hour, and returning to the UK with an average of 0.251 micro Sv/hour.

Over zealous regulation can be seen in the limits in force in the UK for the nuclear industry which are set at 20 milli Sv/year for most employees and 1 milli Sv/year for the public. There is nothing wrong in working to very high safety standards but the additional costs of doing so in the nuclear industry should be considered in relation to the accidents and injuries incurred by workers and public with other forms of electricity generation where the money might be spent to better effect. The 1 milli Sv public limit inevitably carries the implication that exposures above this limit, even by small amounts, from nuclear operations would be harmful when added to the UK average of 2.5 milli Sv. Experience from areas of higher natural background in the UK and elsewhere show that this is not the case.

Taiwan shows the way

The six nuclear units in Taiwan generated 41.63 TWh of electricity in 2010 which was a record high level for the fourth year running. The average capacity factor was an impressive 92.32% according to a statement by the Atomic Energy Council (AEC).

Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) which operates the plants at three sites – Chinshan with two 604MWe BWRs, Kuosheng with two 948MWe BWRs andMaanshan with two 890 MWe PWRs – said that the capacity factor was ranked second according to the statistics of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO). They generated 16.9 percent of the national electricity in 2010 which was slightly down on the 18.1% the previous year due to an increase in power from liquefied natural gas. To meet rapidly growing demand Taipower produced 36% from coal, 24% from liquefied natural gas, 16.9% from nuclear power, 16.4 co-generation, 3.3% from oil, 3% from hydro and 0.4 % from solar power. But unfortunately Taipower has slowed down the building of its latest plant at Lungmen with two 1300 MWe Advanced BWRs. They are now scheduled for operation some time in 2012.

Look at what actually happened

The Swiss industry has strongly criticised the government decision to suspend consideration of three new plants to replace the currently operated five units and the proposal to phase out nuclear power by2034. The Association of Swiss Electrical Firms (VSE-AES) says that it is “deeply worried” by the decision which it said had been taken without consideration of important criteria such as the country’s future energy security. BKW, the utility operating the Muhleberg BWR and part owner of Leibstadt BWR said the Federal Council’s decision would increase Switzerland dependency on electricity imports.Axpo, which operates the two PWRs at Beznau and Leibstadt and has a stake in the Gosgen PWR, said that the decision could result in state subsidies for energy and higher costs for consumers. Alpiq, which operates Gosgen and is a part owner of the Leibstadt plant said the licence applications for new plants which, were suspended on 14 March 2011, are still pending. They claim that all energy options remain open until the public has a chance to vote on them in a referendum which will take several years.

Surprisingly the industry has not raised the question of what actually happened at the Fukushima plant in Japan, which has been given as the reason for the Federal Council decision in the first place. The damage at Fukushima was caused by a massive tsunami wave higher than a two story building which struck an hour after the most severe earthquake ever. But how could a land locked country like Switzerland suffer from a tsunami. The plant at Fukushima survived the initial seismic shock very well and that was about 10 000 times bigger than anything experienced in Europe. The Swiss might have to face flooding if one of their hydro power plants burst but to the best of our knowledge the Swiss nuclear plant have not been built in the shadow of any major dams.

Reverse nimbyism

A report in the FT (August 7th) gives an account of how the people of Dungeness, aided by their local Conservative MP, Damian Collins, are campaigning to have two more nuclear reactors built to replace the existing reactors – Dungeness A was decommissioned in 2006 after 41 years of service; Dungeness B while still generating “ enough electricity for 1.5 million homes” will go out of service in 2018. This will leave Dungeness without an active reactor for the first time since 1965. Some 570 jobs are said to be in jeopardy.

EDF Energy, which now owns and operates Dungeness B, had proposed to build Dungeness C with two reactors, but to the dismay of many residents the government declined to include Dungeness on its list of eight approved locations for new stations. As Dungeness, the largest shingle peninsula in Europe, is a protected area offering a haven for rare vegetation and bird life it seems that the government decided that, in this case, nature conservation should take precedence over the national need to build new reactors.

Quoting the further example of Hinkley Point in Somerset where a poll by EDF found that a 63 per cent support for a new reactor among residents living within 25 miles, rose to 66 per cent for residents within 10 miles, and contrasting this with a national opinion poll which found only 36 per cent in favour of new nuclear power stations and 28 per cent against, the FT sees this reverse nimbyism as a “paradox of British public opinion on nuclear power. The closer people live to a nuclear plant, the more they tend to be in favour of this means of generating electricity.”

But this so-called paradox has a simple explanation. The more a local population knows of the benefits that a nuclear installation can bring, principally in the creation of new jobs in a high technology industry, and at the same time have the experience to doubt the scare stories of the anti-nuclear lobbyists, the more ready they are to accept new nuclear installations. There are indications of an inverse square law – opposition to nuclear power increases as the square of the distance from an existing nuclear plant.

This applies to other nuclear facilities including waste disposal. In Sweden and Finland the authorities spent much time, effort, and money searching for a site for a deep waste disposal repository. Initially when focusing on potential sites in remote areas they met with fierce opposition not only from the local inhabitants who wished to preserve their lifestyle away from industrial operations but also from those who valued the preservation of unspoilt areas. It only became obvious at a later stage that a repository could be seen as an asset for a local community already hosting a nuclear site in providing further jobs for their experienced workforce, so that in Sweden there was competition between two existing nuclear sites, Oskarshamn and Forsmark, to host the repository before the decision was made in favour of Forsmark. Again in Finland the final choice was for a site at an existing nuclear station.

Despite these examples it seems only too likely that much time and money will be spent looking for a waste disposal site in the UK when the obvious choice, given suitable geology, would be at an existing nuclear site where it would be no doubt be welcomed.

The debt crisis

There are growing fears that a number of nations are now so heavily indebted that there are growing doubts that the money they have been lent will ever be repaid. In Europe this began in Greece and Ireland and is now spreading to Spain and Italy. The downgrading of America’s risk rating from AAA to AA+ is an even more significant warning sign. But there seems to be little appreciation that one underlying cause is the growing awareness of impending energy shortages.World production of oil from existing fields is now at, or approaching, a peak and the time and rate at which new discoveries can be brought into production will not keep pace with the growing energy demand required to support economic growth. The need to import increasing amounts of oil is a burden that cannot be long sustained. You can print money for quantitative easing or to promote Keynesian expansion programmes; you cannot print energy.

Banks make their profits by lending money in the expectation that this will be repaid at some future date with added interest. With doubts that the extent of economic growth will not be sufficient to meet the increased repayments the rate of interest charged will increase to a level which in itself will choke off future growth and lead to an eventual collapse of the economy.

This course of events takes place at a time of ever-increasing population growth, with larger numbers of the world population moving to megacities requiring clean water, sewage and waste disposal, air conditioning, and ever-higher standards of life with the expectation of higher personal incomes.

The existing fossil fuel based economic expansion is coming to an end as fears of climate change from carbon dioxide emissions add to the impending shortages of oil and eventually of gas. Carbon capture and burial can be seen as a desperate attempt to prolong the burning of coal.

It is only by a large expansion of non-fossil energies – renewables and nuclear – that a widespread economic collapse can be avoided. But renewables as low density energy sources are intrinsically expensive and their intermittency will require backup from some other energy source. To sustain our present lifestyle there is no other option than a very substantial expansion of nuclear power for heat as well as electricity.