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2011 Nuclear Issues Vol34 No10 |
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Written by Nuclear Issues
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Sunday, 30 October 2011 |
Fukushima good news
Countries around the world are producing in depth reports of the Fukushima accident in Japan but all seem to concentrate on the bad news and ignore the good. So here is some of the good news.
When the largest earthquake in history with a force of nearly ten on the Richter Scale sent a huge seismic shock wave through the earth the elderly boiling water reactors at Fukushima detected it and automatically shut down with control rods inserted from below the reactors. Hurrah! This would have reduced the power in the core of the reactors immediately to about 6% of the operating power and down to a modest 0.2% by the next day. Hurrah! The shock was followed an hour later by a devastating tsunami estimated as a 15 to 19 m high wave of solid water which killed about 15 000 to 25 000 people and damaged many hundreds of thousands of homes. But it did not damage the main reactor buildings.
Hurrah! It did, not surprisingly, damage other buildings around the reactors taking out five of the six turbo generators. The Japanese have now implemented a simple scheme to provide power from mobile units which can be driven to the site as required. Hurrah! The cores of the reactors and fuel in storage ponds did get too hot and partially melted.
The resulting release of radioactivity did no harm to anybody. Hurrah! Hydrogen explosions did occur in the space above the reactor containments but this only destroyed a light weather proofing structure and did not harm the reactors. Hurrah! Of course it is important to learn lessons from the Japanese actions in an emergency but the worst bad news could be the silly reaction of the Germans, Swiss and Italians who are abandoning nuclear power just because an accident has happened.
Common sense
The most sensible of the post Fukushima reports comes from the UK. It notes that the causes of the nuclear accident, a magnitude nine earthquake and the associated 14 metre high tsunami, are far beyond the most extreme events that the UK would be expected to experience.
The report was prepared by Mike Weightman, the UK’s chief nuclear regulator who visited the site in Japan as head of a team organised by the International Atomic Energy Agency. He reached his conclusion in an interim report published in May and has found nothing to alter in his latest report. Naturally he has reviewed nuclear regulation in the UK and lessons that might be applied from Japanese experience. This involves in particular the consideration flooding and events such as earthquakes.
It requires further consideration of the layout of UK plants, emergency response arrangements, dealing with prolonged loss of power and risks associated with flooding.
But the overall conclusion is that the UK system of reviewing nuclear facilities is sound and there is no reason to curtail the operations of nuclear facilities in the UK. In particular Mr Weightman sees no reason to change present siting strategies for new nuclear power stations in the UK.
This is a sensible analysis of an accident that has happened in another country. It is in marked contrast to the irrational reactions in Germany, Switzerland and Italy.
Unsaid in this report is the level of risk to which Japanese people are subjected. They take sensible precautions against them but in the final analysis they have to accept that they live in a more dangerous part of the world than most of us. They have no chance of avoiding that unless they move home. Most do not want to. They still enjoy a remarkably high standard of living. The same could be said of people living on the West coast of America.
... and stupid
There is one aspect of UK policy that remains stupid. The decision of the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency to close down the Sellafield MOX plant at the earliest opportunity because Japan is perceived as no longer requiring its separated plutonium from the reprocessing of Japanese fuel at Sellafield in the form of fuel assemblies. To start with they have got to take it back in some form and the prospect of shipping separated plutonium half way round the world must be the most dangerous operation ever conceived. Of course Sellafield can put it in long term storage for a while along with British plutonium but eventually something has to be done with it. They cannot go on delaying it for ever.
The same applies to the 100 tonnes of plutonium separated from the reprocessing of UK fuel. We have to do something with it eventually and clearly the conversion to MOX fuel and production of valuable energy in a nuclear reactor is the best – and only – solution.
They say they can’t get the MOX plant working properly. Well the French and Belgians have made vast quantities of MOX fuel and would be only too willing to help if asked.
They may be having difficulty with the binderless process installed by the former British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL). Well at least they could make a start mixing plutonium and depleted uranium oxides at the front end of the plant. That would be better than shipping pure plutonium.
But even if they cannot make fuel with the binderless technique they could at least put some new machinery in the building which has been built alongside the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) to offer greater security. Of course they want to start pulling THORP down as soon as they have got the last tiresome contracts out of the way.
They call the separated plutonium a valueless asset. That means that nobody has to be paid anything to use it, doesn’t it. And the cost of making it into MOX fuel assemblies, even in a plant you can’t operate at full production, must be less than the alternative of buying fresh uranium and processing it and enriching it and making it into uranium fuel assemblies.
We don’t need it, they say. Who can ignore fuel which could run two large commercial reactors for their 60 year lifetime. It can be used in the Sizewell PWR now operated by Electricte de France who have plenty of experience using MOX economically. And as we have pointed out several times it could be put into the advanced gas cooled reactors.
Look back to the last run of the Windscale AGR in 1980 for the proof of MOX fuel in an AGR.
So please, please, don’t shut down the Sellafield MOX plant and use our plutonium tomorrow rather than in ten or twenty years. And don’t you dare contemplate the obscene re-reprocessing of it by adding radioactive fission products so that it can be treated as waste.
US plants survive hurricane Irene
Natural events in the US appear to be a little bit less severe than Japan. Some 22 unit in the path of the hurricane Irene continued to operate safely at full or temporarily reduced power as the storm swept up the Eastern seaboard. Only two plants had to be taken off line. Calvert Cliffs-1 in Maryland automatically and safely shut down when a large piece of aluminium struck a transformer. Calvert Cliffs-2 continued to operate at 100 percent.
A single unit at Oyster Creek in New Jersey was manually taken off line as a precautionary measure.
After the storm passed the operational staff undertook a complete inspection to ensure that safety systems and equipment were not affected.
Can we afford offshore wind
To justify their ambitions for an ever–increasing dependence on off shore wind the Department of Energy and Climate change has organized an industry-led Offshore Wind Cost Reduction Task Force with the task of reducing the costs of offshore wind down to £100/MWh. They have now got as far as appointing a chairman for the task force for what seems a very ambitious task. But even if they succeed can we afford electricity at £100/MWh? A report for the DECC by the consultant Arup published in June gives low, medium and high estimates for the levelised cost of Round 2/2.5 offshore wind in Scottish waters. For the medium estimate this falls from £174/MWh in 2010, to £147/MWh by 2015, £117/MWh by 2020, £110/MWh by 2025 and £104/MWh by 2030. This is on an assumed load factor of 38% and a plant lifetime of 24 years.
For round three the assumed load factor is again 38% but the plant lifetime is reduced to 22 years as there are “significant challenges” in deploying in deeper water further offshore. It also warns that “a high level of uncertainty” surrounds these costs which are appreciably higher than assumed for round 2/2.5. The medium estimate ranges from £198/MWH in 2015, to £156/MWh in 2020, £142/MWh in 2025 and £121/MWh in 2030.
The low estimate ranges from £147 to £104, and the high from £231 to £138.
These figures can be compared to those in an earlier Mott MacDonald report ‘UK Electricity Costs Update’ of June 2010 which concluded that “While offshore is projected to see a large reduction in costs, compared with onshore wind, it will still face much higher costs at £110-125/MWh for projects commissioned from 2020.
For comparison the Mott MacDonald report gives the levelised cost of nuclear power as ranging from £99/MWh for a first of a kind plant falling for later plants to around £67/MWh by 2017 and to £35-40 by the 2020’s, when, as carbon and fuel prices rise it becomes the least cost generating option.
There is still some uncertainty about the levelised cost of offshore wind. It will depend on the expected operational lifetime. It will be some years before we have the experience to judge whether the 24 years assumed by Arup is achievable. Another factor is the costs of operation and maintenance, which, particularly for sites in deeper waters are largely unknown. The assumed load factor of 38% might also be an overestimate if, with climate change and increasing gale force winds the turbines have to shut down. On the other hand nuclear costs are in the main well established and based years of operation both here and abroad.
The supposed driving force for offshore wind is to meet the EU targets for low carbon electricity, but this can be better achieved with nuclear stations operating at load factors of 90%. Offshore wind turbines will have to be supported by fossil-fired generation, most likely to be from gas-fired stations, always on standby, to cover the intermittency and lack of power at times of peak demand. The output from a wind turbine can drop in a matter of minutes; it would take almost an hour to bring a gas-fired plant into operation; building offshore wind turbines will increase, not decrease carbon emissions.
Another consequence of the DECC obsession with offshore wind is the burden that rising electricity prices will place on domestic consumers and industry. The number of households in fuel poverty will increase and industrial companies will become uncompetitive or forced to move their operations overseas. The Government now seeks to shift the rising public concern over increasing energy prices onto the six major energy suppliers, but their freedom to compete is limited by the constraints of the Government renewable energy policy and their increasing reliance on imported gas.
There still remains the problem of a providing a secure electricity supply over the next ten years. With the delays and dilatory approach to building new nuclear stations the first of these cannot be expected to come into operation until around 2020. As an expansion of wind power capacity cannot be justified this leaves only coal or gas.
Surprise, surprise
An article in the European Energy Review (15th Sept) commenting on a report of the European Climate Foundation – “Financing for a Zero-Carbon Power Sector in Europe” shares their “surprise” to find that the utility companies will not be able to finance the transition on their own, but will require the support of institutional investors. The only “surprise” is that anyone could have thought otherwise. Hitherto the renewables, mainly on and offshore wind, have only been built by the utility companies with the support of large subsidies – ultimately paid for by the unfortunate consumer.
The ECF report acknowledges that the renewable systems, as well as nuclear plant, fossil fired stations with carbon capture and sequestration are (CCS) all highly capital intensive and require large upfront investments. This ignores a significant difference in that a nuclear plant can expect to repay its investment cost over an operating life of 50 years or more compared with an assumed 20-25 years for wind. In addition nuclear power is not dependent on the large subsidies that the renewables require. It is noted that in Germany “renewable energy adds one-third to the wholesale price for consumers.” But even if the subsidies continue the large expansion foreseen in Europe for wind power and particularly for offshore wind would be a heavy burden for the utilities. In addition to the capital cost of the plant, wind power and the other intermittent renewables need to be supported by a back-up supply, (most likely to be from gas) for the 70 -80 percent of the time they are not available including perhaps 90-95 percent of the time when electricity demand is at a peak. This back up supply will incur an extra cost.
The question is who pays. It is reported that talks have taken place between the Government, Centrica, owner of British Gas, and other energy companies on incentives to build the power stations needed as back-ups for the wind farms now being built around the country. It is believed that 17 gas-fired plants worth about £10 billion will be needed by 2020. But as these power stations will only operate intermittently they would not be financially viable. To that end, energy companies are asking the Government for 'capacity payments' a fee payable throughout the year for keeping a plant on standby. It may take only a few minutes for the output of a wind turbine to drop dramatically; it would take about one hour to startup a gas plant from cold. In winter, when the most intense cold period coincides with a high pressure front, most wind turbines stand idle. To add to the To deal with this problem the ECF report proposes that the utilities will have to change their way of working; to change from being the owners into operators of assets. “You need to have the utilities building assets, but making sure they get the assets off their balance sheet by refinancing, making them more nimble and flexible.” This means that external investors will have to be brought in to meet the !1.3 trillion that they say needs to be invested in power transmission and generating systems over the next 15 years.
The idea that the utilities will be able to pass on the responsibility for finance, and that the institutional investors will willingly accept all the uncertainties of this increased dependence on renewables with their intrinsically high cost and need for subsidy seems unlikely. While the domestic consumers of electricity may have little option but to accept the higher costs for wind and solar generation industrial consumers can always choose to move their operations elsewhere.
Germany
The position in which German industry will find itself if the plans to go ahead with the shutdown the 30% of nuclear power are carried through show the problem. Germany’s economy is heavily export oriented on industrial products - motor vehicles, machinery, chemical products, electrical devices and telecom technology - all requiring a substantial energy and electricity input. While 60% of this is to other EU countries some 40% is to the rest of the world. It is doubtful if this export level could be maintained if electricity prices in Germany were to rise substantially with the plans for a growing dependence on renewables and the loss of the lower cost nuclear power. German industry would be faced with competition from other producers both within and outside the EU with access to lower cost electricity.
With a possible flight of industry or a loss of market share it seems probable that some face-saving compromise could emerge. There is the example of Sweden where after the (relatively minor) nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in the USA in 1979, the Swedish public voted in a referendum to close down the country’s nuclear plants which at that time supplied almost 28% of Swedish electricity. While this position was officially maintained by successive governments, and one station, Barseback, close to Copenhagen was actually closed (as a sop to the anti-nuclear Danes and with a substantial payment to the station owners), Swedish reliance on nuclear power has increased and from 1990 onwards together with hydro power it meets about half of the country’s supply.
The Swedish government has now recognised its dependence on nuclear power and the possibility for building new nuclear stations has now been accepted.
"The LNT is a method of calculating the damage in cases where a population is exposed to a given amount of radioactivity. It is a very simple method, whereby all the radiation doses to which the population has been exposed are added up and then divided by 20 to give the number of cancer deaths. So, for example, if 100 million people are exposed to 1 millisievert per year for twenty years the calculation would be as follows: one hundred million times 1 millisievert per year times 20 years equals two billion millisievert, which burden British Gas has warned that prices will have to rise by at least 15% to compensate for the soaring cost of wholesale gas.
There is also a political risk. The ECF points to the example of the recent decision of the Spanish Government to cut solar subsidies retro-actively and concludes that “The equals 2 million sievert. Dividing 2 000 000 by 20 gives 100 000. Hey presto and you’ve got your number of cancer deaths.
No doubt you’re wondering why this division by 20? What is it based on? Well, among the survivors of the atom bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was a group who had received an average of 1 sievert each in a single dose. As we shall see, that’s a large amount. In this group the percentage of people contracting cancer was 38 percent instead of the 33 percent observed in a comparable non-exposed group. So 1 sievert means 5 percent more people die of cancer. This single piece of data forms the basis for the calculation 1 sievert = 5 percent (1/20) extra cancer risk.
But this is a nonsensical calculation. Incremental exposure is less damaging than a dose that is given all at once. In other words, the phenomenon of hormesis is totally ignored.
Sanders argues that ionising radiation in small amounts is actually healthy, just like regularly running or fasting moderately. It can actually decrease the cancer risk by 10 to 30 percent compared to no extra radiation at all. So where the cancer risk is, say, 30 percent, a limited amount of radiation could cut this to 27 percent (i.e. by 10 percent)."
Wishful thinking vs reality
The Scottish parliament has proposed highly ambitious renewable energy targets which could see the equivalent of 100% of its electricity consumption from green energies by 2020. This would come from on and offshore wind and, with an even greater degree of wishful thinking, from wave power.
The Scottish government is optimistic. There seems to be no lack of finance. Although the costs of building an offshore wind farm are estimated to be between £140-170 per MWh they believe this figure can be reduced to around £100 per MWh at which it might be viable. There are a number of initiatives that have been set up to look at this critical issue, including the recent establishment of a Task Force by the UK Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC), which will be working with industry, the devolved administrations and The Crown Estate in order to set out a path and action plan for reducing the costs of offshore wind.
The Scottish government will also provide support for the necessary infrastructure.
Stage 1 of the National Renewables Infrastructure Plan (N-RIP) identified the priority sites for port and harbour developments to support the growth of the offshore wind sector.
Stage 2 (published in July 2010) sets out the investment requirements to fully develop first phase sites. It highlighted that £223 million investment in key port and land-side infrastructure could support an offshore wind sector manufacturing 750 offshore wind units per year. £70 million from the National Renewables Infrastructure Fund (N-RIF) has now been made available to strengthen ports and manufacturing facilities for offshore wind turbines and related components and leverage private sector investment.
Scotland is also looking to the EU to help finance its offshore wind ambitions. In 2009 the Scottish European Green Energy Centre (SEGEC) was established by the Scottish Government and private partners to seek access to EU funding for low-carbon utilities are not going to do it on their own. The scale of investment is to large for them to carry on their balance sheets and the risks too high.” infrastructure demonstration and deployment projects. To date SEGEC has delivered over !115M of EEPR funding for demonstration projects and supported two Scottish marine energy bids; the Pentland Orkney Wave power Resource (POWER) Ltd, and the Islay Tidal project.
Scotland is also home to the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) on Orkney for developers to test full scale grid connected wave and tidal energy prototype devices. There are currently five devices deployed and operating at EMEC with a total capacity of 2.7 MW. A further five are due to be grid connected by the end of 2011, initially with 4.3 MWe capacity, increasing to 5.9 MWe after 12 months.
The fact that some 10 different wave and tidal devices are only at the stage of being tested suggests that claims that one or more of these will lead to the break through required to provide electricity at an acceptable cost are optimistic. Even more Heath Robinson devices are likely to be put forward for the £10 million Saltire Prize for global innovation in wave and tidal (power which the Scottish government is promoting.) It is said that 150 registrations have been attracted from 31 countries.
While all this points to a glorious green energy at some time in the future, Scottish industry faced with the problem of increasing electricity prices and possible shortages warns that to the extent that this policy is carried through it is likely to drive Scottish industries out of Scotland. According to Mike Salter, the chairman of the Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC), electricity from wind farms is about nine times more expensive to generate than gas-powered plants, and he warned that the greater reliance on “very expensive” renewables will lead to consumers’ electricity bills doubling. This would hold back the Scottish economy and lead to businesses going under. The Scottish government has failed to recognise the “cold realities” of financing expensive new forms of green technology.
Olkiluoto 3 more delay
The Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Ovj (TVO) has reported that the large pressurized water reactor being built by Areva-Siemens could be delayed until 2014. This follows earlier delays which pushed the date for connection to the grid back from 2009. This is undoubtedly a disappointment but not a disaster. The first 1600 MWe of Areva designed reactor is a difficult project and delays are not unexpected.
The main civil construction has been completed and installation of primary components is close to completion. The latest delay is said to be in the development of the instrument and control system. Once the plant is completed it should become a massive earner and TVO will get its money back in a few years time.
A second unit is uder constrction at Flamanville in France and two units are being built in China. Electricite de France is also due to build more units of this design in the UK so the time spent on it in Finland should help with the later plants. |
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