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2007 Nuclear Issues v29 04 |
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Written by Nuclear Issues
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Sunday, 01 April 2007 |
Nuclear Issues is also available as a pdf download
Public acceptance
One of the most powerful drivers for public acceptance of new
technology is a perception of personal gain. It is significant that an
American financial advisory website has now posted a strong endorsement
of a nuclear powered future with the recommendation to invest in
uranium mining shares. After noting that the price of U308 has, from a
record low of $7/lb in 2000, climbed during 2006 to $36.25/lb it goes
on to foresee future prices of over $100/lb.
This drive to higher prices is said to be driven not only by a demand /supply gap with production from world uranium mines meeting only 62% of the requirements of present nuclear capacity, but also by strong expectations of future nuclear power growth.
About 16% of the world’s electricity came from 440 nuclear reactors last year, with 28 reactors under construction around the world and another 62 being planned. For the future it confidentialy forecasts that the world will need as many as 900 more nuclear power plants to meet future growth. Expansions so far announced include 11 new plants in Japan by 2010; as many as 30 by 2020 in China; India wants to up to 20 more; while Russia’s energy goals call for at least 42 or up to 58 new reactors. In addition it is believed that a further 100 plants could be built in the next 10 years – 40 of them in Asia. (This indicates a huge potential market for nuclear plant and fuel from which the UK has foolishly withdrawn with the Government sale of the Westinghouse division of BNFL to a Japanese company.) There is a reference to Chinese plans to import 2 500 metric tonnes of Australian uranium per year by 2020, with forecasts that the total expected annual uranium demand from China could be three times as much – 7 500 tonnes – to supply two new 1 000 MW nuclear reactors planned to be built each year.
Nuclear expansion is also driven by concerns over climate change. After noting that the 11 hottest global temperature years (since records began in 1861) have been since 1990 the report refers to the general consensus that this is a consequence of man-made pollution in which coal-burning electricity stations play a major part. In America, as awareness of the crisis of global warming grows, major corporations are joining forces with environmental groups in an unprecedented alliance to push for quicker action on global warming in which nuclear power, with zero emissions, must play a large part. And it foresees that the public will start to demand that utilities make the switch to nuclear power.
It also notes that in 2006, global oil demand grew 0.9%, in part due to steady growth in China and South Asia. But worldwide oil and gas reserves are becoming depleted at an ever increasing rate, with many analysts convinced that we are fast approaching Peak Oil and Peak Natural Gas.
At the same time nnuclear power is starting to become the lower cost option. The report refers to a recent Standard & Poors study which showed that the next wave of nuclear power plants in the US should be able to produce electricity at $55 per megawatt hour, versus the average rate of $50 per megawatt hour at a coal plant. But for a second wave of nuclear plants, benefiting from standardization, the cost of a megawatt hour could drop to about $44 per MWh – nuclear power could end up being cheaper than coal, and without the tons of greenhouse gases and poisonous ashes that coal plants discharge into the atmosphere.
There is nothing new in any of this. They are all points which have long been argued by the nuclear community – and ignored or treated with suspicion. But when presented by financial advisers as opportunities for personal gain they are more readily, even eagerly, accepted. When profit beckons public opinion will follow.
Buried treasure
Forecasts of rising uranium prices driven up by increasing demand raise questions of the availability of uranium supply to sustain the future growth of the world’s nuclear programmes. This point has already been highlighted by the anti-nuclear lobby which claims that supplies of uranium ore, a natural resource like oil, must have a finite life which they estimate in tens of years rather than centuries. From this it is argued that nuclear power is a distraction, a diversion from the more important aim to reach a sustainable energy society based on natural renewable energy flows – winds, tides and solar power.
Uranium is however a common constituent in the earth’s crust, albeit at low concentrations and once the richer deposits are worked out it would be possible to develop lower grade resources. In the end there is the almost unlimited resource of uranium in sea-water – estimated at a staggering 4 billion tonnes. The costs of extraction would be high but as natural uranium represents only about 5-10 percent of the forward cost of nuclear electricity this would only double the cost of electricity from present reactor types. There is also the option of using thorium fuels as with the development of the thorium fuel cycle in India.
There are in addition large uranium reserves immediately to hand, already mined and processed, which are available for use. These are contained in the spent nuclear fuel which is now classified as waste. At present only some 5 percent of the original uranium in the fuel is burnt up before being discharged from the reactor. This spent fuel, the source of so much anxiety - “But what about the waste!” – contains about 95 per cent of uranium, 1 percent of plutonium and only up to 4 percent of fission products. Under present proposals it is planned to dispose of spent fuel by burying it in underground facilities at great expense. Such wasteful utilisation of uranium in the once-through fuel cycle can only be accepted for the initial phase of a nuclear programme. Burying uranium and plutonium is inconceivable when nuclear energy begins to be utilised on a large scale in many countries of the world.
When it comes to matters of nuclear waste we are always being urged to consider the problems being passed to future generations. Requiring them to dig up the valuable energy resources we have needlessly buried should be a matter of concern. Other potential uranium resources are the depleted uranium rejected in the uranium enrichment process and the uranium and plutonium remaining in, or recovered by reprocessing, spent fuel.
Already there is an increasing use of recovered uranium and plutonium combined in mixed oxide fuels which could obtain up to 22 per cent more energy from the original uranium. Even greater utilisation comes with the fast reactor which can in addition burn the 1.2 million tonnes of depleted uranium left over from enrichment plants. Fast breeder reactors which convert non-fissile U238 to fissile plutonium could multiply uranium utilisation 50-fold. Although early ventures in the UK (the prototype fast reactor at Dounreay) and France (Superphenix) were abandoned work on fast reactor development has continued in Russia, India and Japan with growing success. New projects are now planned in the USA where an international consortium led by France’s Areva and including Japan Nuclear Fuels ltd, together with two American groups is preparing to build a new fast reactor and an associated reprocessing plant in the US. This will be a part of the US Department of Energy’s Global Nuclear Energy partnership (GNEP).
Further progress to improved uranium utilisation will come from the international grouping of the Generation IV Information Forum (GIF) in which some 12 countries (including the UK) participate. Six concepts have been identified for development, most of which use a closed fuel cycle to maximise the uranium burn-up and minimise high-level wastes to be sent to a repository.
Looking even further ahead an article in the Scientific American for December 2005 advocates pyrometallurgical reprocessing of spent fuel. This, unlike the present aqueous processes, would separate plutonium together with the other transuranic elements (actinides) leaving only a small fraction of the spent fuel to be disposed of as short-lived waste. The recovered fissile material would be re-used for fresh fuel. This holds out the promise that “there would be no need to mine any more uranium ore for centuries and no further requirement, ever, for uranium enrichment. For the very long term, recycling the fuel of fast reactors would be so efficient that currently available uranium supplies could last indefinitely.”
Energy, security, and climate
A debate, held on 17th April, in the UN Security Council in which 50 countries participated to discuss the energy and security implications of climate change was called by the UK and chaired by Margaret Beckett. In opening the meeting Mrs Beckett argued that the Council’s responsibility was the maintenance of international peace and security; climate change “a threat multiplier” exacerbated many threats, including conflict and access to energy and food. There was also potential economic disruption, which would inevitably have an impact on the world. She insisted that the international community needed to recognize that there was a security impact from climate change, and begin to build a shared understanding of the relationship between energy, security and climate. These comments were supported by the UN Secretary – General, Ban Ki-moon who warned that the projected climate changes could not only have serious environmental, social, and economic implications, but also implications for peace and security as restricted or threatened access to energy increased the risk of conflict. A scarcity of food and water would transform peaceful competition into violence; floods and droughts would spark massive human migrations polarizing societies and weakening the ability of countries to resolve conflicts peacefully.
These apocalyptic visions of the future (it seems that the Stern report must have provided the background to the meeting) were generally endorsed by most of the 55 national representatives who spoke, with many focussing on the loss of arable land and water shortages which would drive mass migrations from the affected areas. UN estimates are of up to 50 million people being forced by hunger to migrate by 2010 and with billions faced with inadequate or even non-existent water resources by 2050. Against this bleak future the United States delegate referred to working with Brazil to advance the use of biofuels – which the Brazilian delegate in turn insisted could help to address the challenge of energy supply. It is also the case that the British government and the EU have declared that the development of biofuels is an important part of our energy policy and have set targets for their future production and use. It is inconceivable that the EU would continue to grow biofuels on increasingly scarce agricultural land when faced with huge and probably unstoppable waves of immigration of staving people. Biofuel production obviously cannot be sustained in a world in which hunger is a major constraint. Mrs Beckett however was silent on this point.
What could be done?
When it came to positive action to alleviate the problem many speakers at the Security Council meeting paid lip service to promoting renewable energies, non-carbon fuels and energy efficiency, but it was only the Japanese delegate who was bold enough to point to the need for nuclear energy and urge a greater exchange of technology on non-carbon fuels at all levels.
While accepting that these specific issues fell within the Security Council’s mandate to prevent conflicts many argued that the problems raised needed a wider discussion within the UN. The questions for the international community which have to be considered include the impact of population density and growth, income levels, energy and carbon concentration. To answer those and other questions would require indepth and detailed studies, which must precede the formulation of precise policies or recommendations.
Despite the Venezuelan delegate’s (from an oil producing country) insistence that energy policy was a matter of sovereignty with every country having the authority to decide on the use of its own natural resources, many accepted that this was an international problem which required concerted action. So far however the only proposal for international action to grapple with the problem of decreasing oil production has come from ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil) with its suggested Oil Depletion Protocol.
This would require the oil importing nations to agree to reduce their imports by an agreed yearly percentage, the World Oil Depletion Rate so as to put demand into balance with the declining world supply. At the same time the producing countries would agree to reduce their rate of production by a National Depletion Rate - determined individually for each producing country as the total yet-to-produce oil divided by the yearly amount currently being extracted. DTI figures for the UK continental shelf estimate the total remaining oil reserves at 1267 million tons with an annual production in 2005 of 85 million tonnes to give a depletion rate of 6.7% (85/1267).
The concept of peak oil is that world production will shortly (or as some claim already has) reach a peak.
But the decline from the peak can be seen as a number of slow but increasingly steep successive transitions over time. Initially demand and production will be roughly in balance, as now, but as production falls there will be a series of transitions for which everincreasing depletion rates will apply. Any sustained increase in world oil consumption to meet a hitherto continuing expansion of demand is out of the question.
Without a new energy source present society with its high energy lifestyles in an increasingly populated world will collapse.
The only proven large scale new energy source now available is nuclear power. The ‘alternative’ energies alone are quite insufficient and largely unpredictable; while they could sustain small isolated independent (possibly idyllic) communities this presupposes a breakdown of our present more complex societies with disastrous consequences for the majority. But with sensible policies for the replacement of oil by nuclear energy – for both heat and electricity – the gradual reduction of dependency on oil by the importing countries should be manageable. This will give time to consider, alleviate, or even find alternatives to some of the more pressing social problems facing the world.
Managing oil depletion will require international cooperation among the importing countries and a far greater openness on the part of the producing countries over the extent of their remaining oil reserves. The ASPO protocol could at least provide the basis for further discussion for an agreed international system which will be essential to avoid conflict. As the UN Secretary-General said in the Security Council debate “Throughout human history, people and countries have fought over natural resources ... war has too often been the means to secure possession of scarce resources.”
Nuclear Iran
The assertions that Iran is using its nuclear programme, and in particular its centrifuge enrichment plant, with the intention to produce nuclear weapons reverses the burden of proof. It is easy to make such allegations without producing hard evidence in their support. On the other hand it is well nigh impossible to refute them.
Even if no weapons grade uranium is being produced at this time this does not mean this will be so in the future if intentions change. This is an argument that Iran cannot win. The perception of intentions can change dramatically with time as the history of Iran’s nuclear development shows.
Few now remember that Iran’s nuclear programme was launched in the 1950s with the support and encouragement of the United States. After the elected president Mossadegh had been replaced by the more despotic rule of Shah Reza Pahlevi in a coup engineered by the CIA (bringing democracy to the Middle East was not then on the agenda), the US in order to assist its new ally entered into a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Iran in 1957. This was extended for a further10 years in 1969. Under these agreements the US supplied highly enriched uranium and plutonium for a research reactor fuel.
By the middle of the 1970s the Shah, one of the first to appreciate the concept of Peak Oil, had called for a substantial nuclear programme of up to 23 000 MWe to be brought into operation as soon as possible to meet the growing energy demand and to supplement the expected decline in oil production. He was prepared to use the country’s large oil revenues to achieve that aim. The prospect of lucrative contracts attracted international interest. In 1975 Henry Kissinger as US Secretary of State signed a trade agreement with Iran estimated to be worth up to $6 billion to US corporations. This covered the sale of 6-8 nuclear reactors with fuel. Iran was also to invest $1 billion in a private US uranium enrichment plant. In 1976 the US even offered to supply a reprocessing plant for spent fuel to recover unburnt uranium and plutonium The US was not alone France and Germany also sought to negotiate the sale of reactors and fuel and preliminary contracts were signed with both countries. In the event it was Germany which gained the intial advantage and construction began in 1975 on 2 x 1200 MWe PWRs on a site at Bushehr.
Some independence in supply of enriched uranium was always an important aim for Iran. That it is Iran’s progress towards developing a centrifuge enrichment capability which has triggered the present confrontation should be no surprise. In addition to the proposal to invest in an enrichment plant in the US, in 1975 Iran took over the 10% share in the French Eurodif diffusion plant which became available when Sweden withdrew from the project, and in addition lent France $1 billion for the right to buy 10 percent of the production.
All these profitable trade deals came to a sudden end as existing contracts were cancelled when the Shah was deposed in the Islamic revolution of 1979. After the American embassy hostage crisis the confrontation ha continued with the Great Satan opposing the Axis of Evil. Iran’s nuclear programme was on standby with a gap of some years before the Islamic government in turn realised the threat of Peak Oil. In 1995 a contract was signed with the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy to complete the Bushehr plants which had been left 50% and 85% built.
Against this background it should not be surprising that Iran seeks to develop its own nuclear power capability, including enrichment. In addition the Peak Oil argument is compelling. In 1974 when the Shah announced his large nuclear programme Iran’s oil production was 6.1 mbd. It has now fallen to about 3.8 mbd. But over this time the population has more than doubled and nearly 40% of oil produced is consumed within the country.
The arguments used by the US administration to justify the Kissinger trade agreement of 1975 – that a nuclear power programme would enable Iran to prepare for a decline in oil production and also to reduce the internal need for oil and thus leave more for exports – carry even more weight today when not only Iran but most of the world’s major oil producers are aware of the approach of Peak Oil at the same time as their own internal needs are increasing, with increased growth of population and GDP, thus restricting even further the supply of oil to the importing countries.
Contracts for AP 1000
The final contract for four Westinghouse AP 1000 reactors is expected to be signed in May although there still seems to be some uncertainty where they will be sited. In the meantime Westinghouse is pressing ahead with the ordering of certain long lead time items.
A $350 million contract with Doosan Heavy Industries in South Korea has been signed for two pressure vessels and four steam generators has beenawarded for two of the plants. It should be remembered that although the AP 1000 has some novel passive design features at the heart of the plant is a more or less standard pressurized water reactor.
China, which is pressing for technology transfer to be 100 percent by the time they build a fifth plant, is expected to manufacture the pressure vessels and steam generators for the third and fourth reactors. The Harbin Boiler Works or First Heavy Works are expected to handle the pressure vessels and the steam generators will be manufactured by Shanghai Electric Company.
The State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) made the choice of the AP 1000 and is expected to become licensee for the reactor which is expected to have a considerable market in Southeast Asia.
The success of the AP 1000 will further contribute to the record profits that Japan’s Toshiba Corporation has recorded for 2006. Toshiba’s profits have already increased by 76% to 137.4 billion yen ( $1.16 billion) for the year ending 31st March due, in large part it is said, to the purchase of Westinghouse during the year for $5.54 from British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL). So it would seem that the British have lost out again.
A BWR for the UK
General Electric Energy has notified the UK Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) that it will apply for its ESBWR (Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor) to be considered along with other reactor types for building in the UK. Documents for GE’s proposals for a UK BWR have also been submitted to the Department of Trade and Industry in mid-April.
Although BWR technology is somewhat foreign to the British it has to be said that at present it is ahead of PWRs and Heavy Water Reactors for introduction of third generation reactors elsewhere. There are three 1300 MWe Advanced BWRs already operating – one for ten years – and three more under construction in Japan and Taiwan. These are third generation evolutionary reactors which have been certified by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as standards designs. Then in the US several utility groups are also expressing interest in the 1520 MWe ESBWR which is the next step in development involving design simplification and passive safety features and which is being considered by the NRC for design certification.
Other types of reactor which have already been submitted to the NII for consideration in the UK are the 1650 MWe European PWR (EPR) which is under construction in Finland and France and has been submitted to the NRC for standard design certification; the Westinghouse AP 1000 which already has NRC certification; and the latest Candu heavy water reactor from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) which is said to be a third generation design. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 30 May 2007 )
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