It does not appear that the British public were affected in any way by the March accident. It is not clear how much this is due to understanding what happened at Fukushima and the realisation that it was exposed to a natural event far greater than anything we are likely to experience. The seismic event was the worst in the history of Japan and was some 1 000 to 10 000 times larger than the worst earthquake ever experienced in Europe. None the less the plant responded well to the shock and closed down automatically with the boiling water reactors control rods inserted from below the reactor. This would immediatly have reduced the decay heat from the reactors to 6.5% of the fullpower and to 0.4% after one day. It was only an hour later that a horrific tsunami wave, 15 metres high, swept along the East coast of Japan killing 15 000 people and destroying tens of thousands of homes. It made five of the six standby diesel generators inoperative. Now the Japanese have arranged alternative power supplies if another terrible event occurs. This is the threat that the Japanese live with. They have no choice unless they move their homes. In Western Europe we seem to be generally a little bit safer.





More on Fukushima

Tepco is going to build an 800 metre-long iron wall surrounding reactors 1 to 4 at its Fukushima plant. But this is to keep radioactive water in rather than the sea out. The utility has been pumping fresh water into the reactor pressure vessels and over the spent fuel ponds to keep the fuel cool. This has prevented over heating but has created a large volume of contaminated water which is being held in trenches outside the reactor buildings. They fear that this could overflow and contaminate the local ground water.

But perhaps it will provide some protection against another dreadful tsunami. The plant survived the seismic shock from the biggest earthquake in history very well and shut down the reactors automatically and safely. It was the terrible tsunami which followed an hour later, killing 15 000 people and destroying thousands of homes, that took out five of the stations standby six turbo generators. A massive 15 metre high wall of water higher than your neighbour’s house. The utility has now made additional options available for providing off site power in the case of a similar devastating event. Other nuclear plants around the world are unlikely to suffer such a devastating natural event and should be rejoicing in the demonstration of safety from seismic shocks. But silly people in Germany and Switzerland and Italy have reacted stupidly to the Fukushima event.





Bushehr generating power

The 915 MWe pressurized water reactor at Bushehr in Iran has been connected to the grid and at long last is supplying electricity. An inaugural ceremony is planned for 12 September. Work on the Bushehr site started back in 1974 when the German company Siemens won a contract to supply a 1000 MWe plant. But work was suspended after the 1980 revolution. Then by the time the revolutionary government had decided it should have nuclear power the Germans had joined the US in placing an embargo on such exports to Iran. After some tricky negotiation the Iranians concluded a deal with Atomstroexport of Russia to carry out the difficult task of fitting their design of pressurised water reactor into a German design of building. The plant has also had to survive US efforts to stop it but the Russian finally completed the plant with a special condition that they would take back used fuel from the reactor. The plant went critical for the first time on 8 May of this year and should by September have reached full power. So like it or not the Iranians are now a peaceful nuclear power.





Laser enrichment

The application by Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) to build a uranium laser enrichment plant to produce up to six million SWU /year (separative work units), is a major step in the development of nuclear power. The company, a joint American, Japanese, Canadian collaboration – 51% General Electric, 25% Hitachi, and 24% Cameco – proposes to build the plant on a hundred acre site at Wilmington, North Carolina, already owned by GE. While it will take eight years to work up to full production it should be producing one million SWU/yr after three years. Full details of the proposed plant have been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for authorisation.

This would be a significant expansion of the world enrichment capacity, put by the World Nuclear Association at 57.350 million SWU in 2010 and expected to increase to 69 million SWU by 2015 (including two million from GLE). Uranium enrichment plants, using diffusion or centrifuge technology are now operating in France, Japan, USA, Russia, China , and Urenco (British, Dutch, German), as well as in Brazil, Iran and Pakistan. Urenco and Areva are also building new centrifuge plants. It seems that just as the older diffusion plant technology has been displaced by the more energy efficient centrifuge process, so in its turn the centrifuge process will give way to laser enrichment.

The laser technology is based on the initial development by the Australians Drs Goldschmidt and Struve in Silex Systems Ltd. The rights were acquired by GE for initial payments of some $55 million to be followed by perpetual royalty payments of up to 12% of revenues from the use of this technology. Clearly GE has great expectations for the future of this technology. Laser enrichment plants are claimed to have much greater enrichment efficiency – said to be between 2 and 20% U235 (the actual figure is secret because of potential military use at the higher enrichment levels) compared to around 1% for the other technologies – and lower capital costs.

These advantages are also a matter of concern. It is argued that if a rogue state bent on producing nuclear weapons were able to master the technology it could produce weapons grade virtually without detection using the smaller, cheaper and more efficient laser process. There is then some opposition to the proposed plant. A number of scientists have written to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission claiming that "Should the United States be seen to embrace the use of laser isotope enrichment as a commercially viable technology, there can be little question that other states will be strongly encouraged to follow this lead and develop such technology for their own use," … "Given the great difficulty of detecting laser isotope enrichment facilities, their spread could undermine U.S. nonproliferation efforts and the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to confirm the absence of undeclared nuclear activities in Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) non-nuclear-weapon states."

The NRC has said that it will make the decision on whether to approve the plant or not in 2012. The problem however is that even if permission to build the plant is refused it will not be possible to stop others developing the technology now it is known that success has already been achieved. This need not necessarily take a major effort, and much of the initial work could be done using nonradioactive isotopes and as such outside any IAEA safeguards restrictions by almost any research institute with access to a high power laser. Success too depends more on ingenuity than on resources. The GLE Silex process is based on the work of two Australians in a small research company whereas the US has previously spent almost $2 billion over some 20 years before abandoning work on their own AVLIS (atomic vapour laser isotope separation) programme at the Lawrence Livermore laboratory.

One solution might be for the US to place the Wilmington facility under IAEA safeguards, with the benefit that the UN agency could then gain access to technology details that might help it to detect possible clandestine sites in the future. But, perhaps in the light of their own lack of success, some in the US administration believe that this technology is so sensitive that details would inevitably leak out.





Growing the economy

The Economist on-line (July 28th) gives a table listing the growth in GDP less the cost of financing the net debt for a number of countries based on a forecast for 2011. This figure is important: a negative value when the cost of financing the debt exceeds the growth of the economy (or adds to negative growth) suggests that the country will sink ever deeper into debt unless there is a substantial and sustainable increase in GDP. Not surprisingly the problem countries are Greece -19.3%, Portugal -16.7, Ireland -13.8, Spain -3.2, Italy -2.5 and Hungary -0.3. The UK escapes with a positive figure of 0.9%. This however is above France at 0.8%, Belgium 0.5 and Netherland 0.3. In the strongest position are all the Nordic countries: Norway (still a major oil and gas exporter) 6.7%, Sweden 2.9, Finland 2.8, Denmark 1.6. Germany comes in at 2.0%.

There are now many calling for policies to increase economic growth in the UK. But “growing the economy” will require an increased availability of a low cost, reliable electricity supply. With coal-fired stations being shut down under EU regulation this leaves only gas-fired or nuclear power stations. The renewables, primarily wind, are grossly expensive, with substantial subsidies from the consumers, and will require an increase in gas-fired output when the wind is not blowing. While the annual load factor of wind is around 20-30% much of this is at night. The availability at times of high electricity demand is only about some 5 -10%. This will require 90-95% back up and lead to sharp peaks in electricity prices or shut down of supply. As the output of gas from the UK sector of the North Sea continues to decline we will become increasingly dependent on imported gas, probably at ever higher prices. This is not a situation which can be expected to support the higher economic growth required to service the debt and reduce the budget deficit.

Unless the UK can end the hesitations and delays in implementing the announced nuclear programme we are likely to remain in the susceptible low growth band rather than joining the more secure club of the Nordic countries. Is there now a case for reviving the old concept of EFTA – the European Free Trade Area?

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Megatons to Megawatts nearly completed

Nearly all the enriched uranium from Russian nuclear weapons that is destined to be blended down to low enrichment material suitable for use in US commercial power reactors has been processed. 425 tonnes of an eventual 500 tonnes has now been put into the civil nuclear power plants under a 20 year programme financed by government and industry. This is equivalent to17 000 nuclear warheads. When the programme is completed in 2013 it will be 20 000 warheads.

The US agreed to take the material and use it commercially because it had enough demand from power plant operators which was not available at the time in Russia. Further enrichment contracts are expected to be signed in 2013 following the good relations established in the Megatons to Megawatt programme.

Under a separate programme the US and Russia are disposing of 50 tonnes each of plutonium from their weapons programmes. The US is disposing of it as mixed uranium/plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel in commercial reactors while the Russian intend to use theirs in fast reactors.