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2007 Nuclear Issues v29 03 |
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Written by Nuclear Issues
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Thursday, 01 March 2007 |
Nuclear Issues is also available as a pdf download
Hard times ahead
Charles Dickens published Hard Times in 1854. At that time the UK
population was about 30 million: the carbon dioxide emissions were
about 60 million tons of carbon, equivalent or 2 tons carbon percapita.
By 2004 the UK population had doubled to around 60 million; carbon
emissions had increased to some 150 million tons carbon to give a
percapita of 2.5 tons carbon. By 2050 it is estimated that UK
population will rise to 68 million, but according to the Government
carbon target emissions are to be reduced by 60 percent of the present
figure down to the 60 million tons at the time of Dickens, but as a
result of the increased population, with a percapita emission of 0.88
tons – less than half of that experienced by Dickens. Hard times ahead
indeed.
This comparison must raise questions as to whether this latest Government target for carbon dioxide emissions is realistic or can ever be achieved. Dickens enjoyed neither electricity nor motor transport, major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
For electricity generation it would be possible by 2050 for the UK to generate all electricity from nonfossil sources, primarily from nuclear power as the only established large-scale source available. On present figures this would eliminate about 30 percent of our emissions that come from fossil-fired power stations. This would reduce carbon emissions to about 105 million tons to give a percapita figure of 1.75 tons or 1.5 on the estimated 2050 population. These figures can be compared with the present percapita emissions in Sweden at 1.58 tons and France at 1.68 tons - both countries where power generation is principally from nuclear power and hydroelectricity, not from fossil fuels.
A further 21.3 percent of our emissions now comes from road transport. If this could be eliminated by converting from oil to electric drive the UK percapita emissions could be reduced to 1.4 or 1.2 on the 2050 population. It can be assumed that biofuels will make little impact. The energy used in growing crops and converting to ethanol or other fuels isn almost as much as the energy generated in burning biofuels. In addition there are reports that ethanol programmes are already forcing up the price of corn; that poor countries should starve so that the richer countries can continue to drive cannot be contemplated.
Efforts to reduce domestic and industrial fossil fuel consumption through increasing energy efficiency measures are only more likely to lead to increases in GDP and hence energy consumption than reduce fossil fuel use.
The target of 0.88 tons percapita by 2050 is still beyond reach unless some desperate measures are taken.
The biggest greenhouse producer
Burning of gas is is now the largest producer of greenhouse gases in the UK. The graph, which is from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre, Oak Ridge, shows only the figures to 1999 but they clearly indicate that gas now spews out a third of the carbon in the UK. We believe it has almost doubled in the last eight years.
Yet a television advertisement by British Gas tells us that it is the lowest producer of any major supplier. What about nuclear which until recently was the largest supplier of electricity in the UK but whic produces no carbon dioxide. And although not a major supplier in the UK, hydro power is certainly a big producer of electricity in several countries and also produces no carbon dioxide. But still they advertise with their benign little blue flames which is presumably to encourage us to use more gas.
It is true that gas is marginally better than producing the same amount of energy from coal or oil but it still puts out in excess of 60 million tonnes of carbon each year. It is an abuse to the inteligence of the public to claim it is a small producer of greenhouse gases. If you share our disgust at this please send your complaint to the Advertising Standards Agency at Mid City Place, 71 High Holborn, WC1V 6QT.
Nuclear proliferation
Has the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) outlived its usefulness?
It can be argued that the Treaty has now been so undermined that it is no longer relevant to present concerns for the control of nuclear weapons material and technology. A number of problems have arisen:
- The nuclear weapon states (NWS) clearly have no intention of abandoning their privileged position under the treaty by fulfilling the requirements to disarm progressively. Article VI of NPT specifically requires that “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
Despite some limited decommissioning of nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War it is estimated that several thousand nuclear weapons still remain in the arsenals of the five nuclear weapon states (China, France, Russia, the US and the UK). More worrying is the continuing development of new systems, with the alarming intention to produce smaller scale ‘battlefield’ weapons which would have the effect of trivialising their use as a relatively minor, or even acceptable matter.
- There are at least four countries outside the NPT – India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan – which have developed an independent nuclear weapon capability.
- The interpretation of the provisions of the Treaty have been stretched by the agreement whereby the US will assist India in the expansion of its civil nuclear power programme while India still continues with a parallel but separate military programme. The US-India collaboration will not be subject to IAEA safeguards.
Russia has also supplied civil nuclear power stations to India.
- The capability to produce enriched uranium by the centrifuge process is spreading. The same plant can be used to produce low-enriched reactor grade uranium or high-enriched weapons grade material. The purpose of the IAEA safeguards system is to verify that plant or materials are not being diverted from peaceful to weapons use, but this may not always be easy to establish – until too late.
Secondly an Australian/US collaboration to develop a laser enrichment process opens up a direct route to the production of high-enriched uranium. If successful this would make it possible for any country or group with access to high power lasers to try to follow the same route. Initial development could be made outside the NPT by using non-radioactive isotopes.
- The Treaty refers to the “inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.” An attempt is now being made to go beyond this and identify an alternative class of non-nuclear weapon states – those which can be accused of seeking to produce nuclear materials with the intention of diverting some for the development of nuclear weapons. The problem is that intentions to divert or false assurances to the contrary cannot be easily identified in advance.
The insistance of Iran, a signatory of NPT, that it is seeking to enrich uranium only for a civil power programme is widely disbelieved. On the other hand the development by Brazil of its own centrifuge process – in secrecy it is said to protect the commercial confidentiality of the process – is accepted without comment.
- The dual threats, of global warming from increasing levels of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion, and the imminence of arrival of peak oil when world production begins to fall behind potential demand, point to a rapid expansion of nuclear power in many countries for whom the division into black and white –‘those with us or those against us’ – may not be easily determined, or may change with time.
Any attempt to enforce a strict NPT regime would only increase the number of countries seeking to develop an independent nuclear capability outside the NPT.
Is there an alternative?
If NPT were abandoned there would be no restriction on any country developing a weapon capability – if it so wished. But how many would do so? While NPT has contributed to the peaceful development of nuclear power it is less obvious that it has had much bearing on maintaining a nuclear peace. The main restraining influence on nuclear war since Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been the principle of mutually assured destruction, MAD, which kept a peace between the two opposing sides of the Cold War. In future the threat of immediate international retaliation with the imposition of the complete isolation of a transgressing country and the sequestration of all its foreign assets, which could be organised through the UN, should be a sufficiently powerful deterrant without the need of a MAD exchange.
It is often argued that we live in a dangerous and unstable world and that nuclear weapons are required for protection against unknown threats that may arise in the future. But this is an argument that can be used by every country seeking to develop its own weapons capability and indeed some may wish to do so. But experience shows that it is only those countries living in a state of unresolved conflict with their neighbours which have, so far, developed weapons outside NPT – Pakistan against India, and Israel in a hostile Middle East. These examples are however of local, primarily territorial and limited disputes between neighbours.
A more serious and wider threat, involving many more countries, could arise from future wars over energy. Unless the world can reach accepted compromise agreements on sharing out the inevitably limited supplies of oil and gas, disputes over access to essential energy may lead to disastrous international conflicts, ultimately involving the use of nuclear weapons as the major powers scramble to secure their own energy imports.
The only alternative energy at present available on a sufficient scale to limit the dangerous dependence on fossil fuels is nuclear power. The world will be a less perilous place the greater the number of countries that can turn to nuclear power to reduce their need for gas and oil. The spread of nuclear technology will then be inevitable but the dangers of conflict, economic collapse, as well as the possible devastating consequences of global warming leading to mass migrations of population, as outlined by Stern, could pose a much greater threat than an exchange of nuclear weapons.
It can also be argued that the greater the reliance of a country on nuclear power as an essential energy source the less likely it is to divert into a weapon capability. We have the dilemma that a world wide expansion of nuclear power capacity is essential if we are to avoid a nuclear war.
A Swedish history lesson
On the 8th of February in the House of Lords, Lord Terverson, a Liberal peer stated “Nuclear power cannot proceed without considerable public subsidy in one form or another”. A more extreme claim was made by a Liberal MP, Mark Williams, in a letter to an APG member in January -“.. every nuclear power station ever built has needed public subsidies and government guarantees. Evidence from abroad shows nuclear power is not competitive.”
We must accept that in both cases these individual assertions are sincerely believed to be correct. It then seems that they are both repeating a piece of Liberal party dogma, opposing nuclear power, which is accepted uncritically by the Party’s representatives and recycled as fact.
There are a number of examples from overseas which show it to be false. A particularly striking example is from Sweden. Inspired by the Geneva conference of 1955 on The Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy a group of executives from the privately owned hydropower companies in Sweden agreed to undertake the construction of a first nuclear power plant. To this end a consortium, the AtomKraft Konsortiet (AKK) was formed in the same year by eight companies to guarantee the necessary capital and financing for the initial planning period. There followed a lengthy period of political discussions with the Swedish State Power Board, the Government research company AB Atomenergi, as well as with the government authorities, and during this time various, progressively more realistic, alternatives and offers were assessed as the technology overseas developed including a Westinghouse PWR, a BWR from GE and even (briefly) a gas-cooled graphite reactor. By 1960 the site for a first station had been identified and approved by the government. After rejecting some of the earlier proposals for small stations AKK decided that only a station larger than 300 MWe would be economic and finally accepted an offer from the Swedish electric manufacturing company ASEA for a 400 MWe BWR station in June 1965.
This, a turnkey bid at a fixed price, was an extremely bold step both for the utility, now transformed into Oskarshamnsverkets Kraft Grupp AB (OKG) (after the name of the chosen reactor site Oskarshamn) with a share capital of 1 million Sw.kr. But even more so for the manufacturer. It was a fixed price bid for a BWR to ASEA’s own design made without an American licence for the first of a kind of power station to what for ASEA was a completely new technology. The contract included an output guarantee with penalties and bonuses if the specified output was below or above the guarantee figure. It was at the time ASEA’s largest single order. It was financed entirely by the eight consortium members and with loans from the three major Swedish banks. It is interesting that it was the private utility group which decided to back Swedish industry by choosing a Swedish designed BWR; the Government company AB Atomenergi started to construct a heavy water reactor (possibly wih the production of plutonium in mind) which was later abandoned and converted to an oil-fired power station; while the Swedish State Power Board’s played safe and chose a Westinghouse PWR for its first nuclear station.
With so much at stake the utility and the supplier worked in a close and harmonious collaboration to the extent that in 1969 a second station OKG-2 was ordered from ASEA only three years after the start of construction in June 1966 of OKG-1. Both stations were completed within five years. Both stations are still in operation. A third station OKG-3 of 1000 MWe was ordered in 1976. This success established the ASEA BWR as the preferred Swedish reactor type and ASEA went on to build a total of nine stations in Sweden and two in Finland.
[With the outstanding performance of the two ASEA reactors in Finland – ranked as among the world’s best – it was surprising that the company did not bid for the new power station now being built in Finland (also for a private utility group), but by this time the nuclear division of ASEA had been taken over by BNFL, who no doubt had their own reasons for not bidding a BWR in Finland, and it has now passed to the Japanese as a part of BNFL’s sale of its Westinghouse group].
Far from granting any subsidy or support to OKG the Swedish government only accepted nuclear power with reluctance. This came to a head when, after the Three Mile Island incident in the USA, the Government organised a public referendum in 1980 which determined that while the twelve stations in operation or under construction (including three Westinghouse PWRs for the State Power Board) should continue to operate until 2010, no further staions should be built.
So far only one station, Barsebäck, some 20 kms from Copenhagen has been prematurely shut down (at heavy cost in compensation) and the current trend of public opinion is now more in favour of keeping the stations in operation as long as possible or even building new stations.
1n the event the restrictions on building new stations imposed by the referendum has had little effect. Priority in Sweden is given to hydropower which, depending on the water conditions, meets about 50 percent of electricity demand. The existing nuclear stations are able to supply the balance. It is only now when with an ever increasing demand for electricity that there could be room in the system for new nuclear plant. Without any reasonable alternative Sweden may then reverse the 1980 referendum result.
It should also be noted that the Swedish nuclear companies, including the State Power Board meet all the costs of waste disposal and decommissioning. These are assessed by an indpendent committee at regular intervals and money is put aside in a separate account to meet the costs in full. The charge is only a small fraction of the generating cost, but will accumulate over the long life of the station. [British Energy was following a similar system before being forced into near-bankruptcy by the Government inspired change in the market rules and the imposition under the ‘reconstruction’ of the nuclear sweep which skims off the major part of any profit]
Finally with the imposition of an additional tax on nuclear generated electricity it is the nuclear industry which is subsidising the Swedish government; while the OKG itself was deemed to be sufficiently profitable for it to be acquired by the German company EoN. So much for the Liberal Party delusions.
Fast reactors still of interest
An iternational consortium led by Fance’s Ariva and including Japan Nuclear Fuels Ltd., Washington Group International and BWX Technologies is preparing a bid to build a new fast reactor and an associated reprocessing plant in the US. This would be part of the US Department of Energy’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) which is looking at the next generation of power reactors.
GNEP is funded through the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative which is receiving $167.5 million this year and looking forward to $395 million next year. It includes the first revival of US interest in liquid metal fast reactors since they opted out with the cancellation of a project at Clinch River. France also opted out of a major fast reactor project, Superphenix, but has shown renewed interest recently and Japan has been maintaining an interest through a period of difficulty with its prototype fast reactor project. So there is hope yet for this vital way forward for nuclear technology.
Important new research reactor
Construction work has started at France’s Cadarache nuclear research centre of a new research reactor to be known as the Jules Horowitz plant. It will be a 100 MWth reactor cooled with light water. It follows on an important line of materials testing reactors for development of fuel for existing and future commercial reactors. The earlier reactors were the 70 MWth Osiris and the 35 MWth Siloé which have played a vital role in development of fuel for France’s impressive line of pressurized water reactors.
As with the earlier reactors, the Jules Horowitz will be operated by the French Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA).
Finland considers another The two major power companies in Finland, TVO and Fortum, are about to commence environmental impact assessments at their nuclear sites, Olkiluoto and Loviisa, to consider the construction of further new nuclear power plants. This is the first important step for either company before they can seek government permission to build another new plant. Although neither company has yet made an investment decision it clearly indicates a keen interest.
Finland’s fifth nuclear power reactor is under construction at the Olkiluoto site by Areva of France and Sienens from Germany. It will provide a big increase of nuclear generating capacity with the biggest reactor in the world due to be in commercial operation by 2011. Although there has been a small increase in the time of construction of this 1600 MWe plant, the two companies have an excellent record of operation of two Russian designed pressurized water reactors at Loviisa and two Swedish built boiling water reactors at Olkiluoto and they should make good use of their expansion.
Final sell out
The last trace of the famous British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL) is near. Six organiztions have been prequalified as bidders to manage Selafield, now owned by the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (DNA). They are: CH2M HILL International Services Ltd; Energy Solutions EU Ltd; Flour Ltd in partnership with Toshiba; Jacobs Engineering Group Inc; SBB Nuclear, consisting of a consortium of Serco, Bechtel and BWXT Nuclear Services; and Washington International Ltd, MEC Nuclear Holdings and Areva NC. They are bidding for an initial five year period but it could be extended to a total of 17 years.
Final tenders will be invited in the last quarter of 2007 and the contract is due to be awarded to the successful bidder by mid-2008. And that will be the end of the British nuclear industry. Thank goodness there are some respectable international companies involved.
It is not only the Sellafield site with reprocessing plants, mixed oxide fuel facilities and decommissioning projects but also the Windscale, Capenhurst and Calder Hall sites which will be included in the grand sell off.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 30 May 2007 )
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