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2007 Nuclear Issues v29 05 |
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Written by Nuclear Issues
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Tuesday, 01 May 2007 |
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If you look at any country over the last ten, twenty or thirty year and
study their latest review of the energy situation you will find the
same thing. In every case there is a strong recommendation to save
energy and an urging for the development of renewable energy sources.
None of the reports comes up with anything new on how to achieve these
objectives.
Now with its latest White Paper the UK government has produced another report saying exactly the same.
We had been expecting a bold new nuclear programme for the country which launched the world’s first programme. But all it really has to say on the subject is: “ The Government’s preliminary view is that it is in the public interest to give the private sector the option of investing in new nuclear power stations.” Why then did the Government insist on selling off our private sector initiatives in America, Canada and even in this country. We no longer have a nuclear industry. Fortunately for us the French and Germans seem to be taking some interest in prospects in this country. Whether they will persist when they come into contact with our licensing authorities remains very questionable. And there is still another period of consultation to be faced.
However, let’s get on with it before they change their minds and support what could be a revival of the British industry if under French and German or Japanese and American ownership. Nuclear is now down to 18% of electricity production when it used to be at least 30% so the first priority must be to make good that discrepancy and to stop the import of foreign gas. We should even support “clean” coal burning to revive another domestic industry which the Government is Hell bent on killing off.
What about saving energy and use of renewable. Private industry – not the government – has done quite well over recent years in using energy more efficiently. With renewables they have tried hard but one has to admit that the prospects are not great. The need to build 1800 wind generators to replace one retiring nuclear plant is asking rather a lot. There is no large scale renewable energy except large hydro projects which seem to attract as much wroth from the Greens as nuclear. A tidal barrage across the Severn is another possibility but seems to be equally stuck by ill informed opposition.
So we are left with new nuclear. It should not of course be the last resort but the first preference because it is carbon free, economical and safe. We have justified these claims many times in the past but just a few points to remember. A new plant would probably be a third generation design – a European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR), an AP 1000, an Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) or a Candu 600 – which could be built economically by the private sector. Its decommissioning and waste management costs, which are about one tenth of our first generation Magnox plants, would be taken up in the daily operating costs. Safety has been increased by about 100 times. They are compact and clean and would be almost lost on existing sites alongside great big Mgnox reactors.
Incidentally, in case you are worried about energy resources be assured that we already have in this country enough uranium and plutonium to provide power for the next century. Spent fuel coming out of existing reactors contains about one or two percent plutonium which can produce a further 25% in existing reactors. It also contains about 85% of unused uranium which can be used with the plutonium to produce sixty times more energy. And there is still depleted uranium at our enrichment plants which can be used in fast breeder reactors. These recycle products used to be economically unattractive but at today’s fuel prices are becoming very interesting.
Meeting the Energy Challenge – A White Paper on Energy, May 2007. Department of Trade and Idustry
What she threw away
As Bruce Power in Ontario continues its brilliant success we can only ruefully reflect on the invaluable asset which Patricia Hewitt, as Secretary of State for the Department of Trade and Industry, insisted shouldbe sold post haste by British Energy. This was a condition of the £650 million reconstruction loan the company required to keep in operation under the new market conditions imposed on the industry through OFGEM on the advice of a group of economists working for the DTI.
In the event the loan was only used by BE to stand as a trading collateral. The National Audit Office in their report of March 2006 showed that the conditions of the forced sale (within 10 weeks) of Bruce Power reduced the possible expected price from a valuation of around £900 million in 2002 to £275 million received in February 2003.
The original lease of the Bruce nuclear stations, which had fallen into a sad state of disrepair, largely attributed by an independent commission to poor management under a government appointed chairman, was negotiated by Robin Jeffrey, when ‘in exile’ as BE’s resident north American director. The lease was for a period of 18 years with a possible extension for a further 25 years.
Bruce Power, is now owned by Canadian interests.
Under the leadership of Duncan Hawthorne (a former director who left BE at the time of the reconstruction) as president and chief executive, Bruce Power has gone from strength to strength. The latest operating figures for 2006 (http://www.brucepower.com/generations/ main.html) show a profit before tax of C$554 million from six operating units running at an average capacity factor of 89% and with a total generation of 36.47 TWh. Two more units of the previously shut down Bruce A station are being reconditioned at a cost of some $2.75 billion and are planned to be brought back into operation by 2009 to add a further 1 500 MWe to bring the total Bruce capacity to 6 200 MWe. Bruce Power is now planning a new generation of nuclear reactors to come into operation from 2016 and expected to remain in service for up to 60 years.
The total profit before tax of Bruce Power since its formationin 2003 now amounts to C$1741 million (£811 million) nearly three times the £275 million BE received from the sale – and there would have been a further 14 or up to 29 years of the lease to go. The major loss from the DTI imposed forced sale is borne by BE’s dispossessed shareholders but some part will also fall on the Government itself through losses on taxation.
The story of the Bruce site itself provides interesting and useful insights into how a competent and professional management can successfully turn round a failing, poorly run company. From load factors of around 50% and with the Bruce A units shut down, the average load factors now achieved have risen to 89%.
In contrast the average for BE has fallen from 81 % in 2002 (before the reconstruction) to 72% in 2006.
Who owns our waste?
Department of Energy figures give the stock of separated plutonium held in product stores at the reprocessing plants as 101 tonnes. A further 7 tonnes are held at the reactor sites as spent fuel, with another 27 tonnes in spent fuel at the reprocessing plants to give a total of 135 tonnes. In addition there are 86 400 tonnes of depleted, natural and low enriched uranium (DNLEU) in the civil nuclear fuel cycle with enrichments between 0.4% – 1% 235U. Roughly one quarter of this is uranium recovered from reprocessing spent fuel; three quarters depleted uranium from enrichment plants. This material, generally regarded as nuclear waste – (there have been proposals to bury ‘surplus’ plutonium in underground repositories) – constitutes a valuable potential energy reserve. It should not be sold off for a derisory sum (as were British Energy’s valuable North American investments) in the Government’s apparent desire to rid itself of any responsibility for or association with nuclear activity. It is important to establish ownership of these materials and ensure they are retained as a national resource.
Plutonium and depleted uranium from enrichment plants or recovered from reprocessing are already being recycled as reactor fuel for nuclear stations: plutonium as mixed oxide MOX fuel; the uranium, after reenriching as fresh fuel – more than 15 000 tonnes of the recovered uranium has been recycled for use in AGRs. Reprocessed uranium could also be used directly to fuel natural uranium reactors such as the CANDU heavy water system. Depleted uranium can be used for LWR reactor fuel after blending with high enriched uranium to raise the 235U content to 3-4% (a service offered commercially by Russia).
A Department of Environment consultation document on radioactive waste in 2001 equated the energy content of 1 tonne of plutonium when recycled in MOX fuel as equivalent to more than 3 million tonnes of coal. With imported steam coal now at around £30 per tonne the potential value of the UK plutonium stock on this basis is over £12 000 million. With uranium prices now reaching peak prices of up to $100 per pound, the value of the DNLEU material could be of the order of £10 000 million.
The above estimated values are on present oncethrough reactor technology. The international development of the advanced Generation IV nuclear reactors (GIF) which could be in operation by 2030 will open the possibilty of partially closed or even fully closed fuel cycles in which the plutonium uranium and actinides can be repeatedly recycled thus increasing the potential value of our present "wastes" well beyond the above estimates.
The value of the depleted Uranium stored at Sellafield is currently seen to be negligible. There will be some 106 000 tonnes in store by 2020. The only current use is for making armour piercing munitions.
This is fertile nuclear material with an energy content of 1000 MW thermal days/tonne, enough to run a one Gigawatt reactor for a year. At a wholesale price of 5p/ kWh of carbon free electricity, each tonne is worth £600 million and the whole store has an eventual commercial value of £64 trillion and could supply all UK homes, industry, and electrified transport for 600 years. In units of Billions of Barrels of oil Equivalent, this Uranium has the energy content of 1500 BBOE, which is five times the oil reserves in Saudi Arabia or 75 times the amount extracted from the North Sea. We are likely to use a trillion pounds worth by the end of this century.
Clearly, ownership of this enormous energy asset should always remain with the UK Government. The imminent final sell off of British Nuclear Fuels, now owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, to one of six international consortia must not transfer ownership of this resource to the new contractors. This would be a bargain not seen since the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon. Will the coming UK Energy White Paper recognise this or the underlying weapons proliferation possibilities? (By Brendan McNamara)
Biofuels
The production of biofuels is a matter of considerable controversy, on which the environmental movement is deeply split. The problem, as with all alternative energies is that the bioethanol and biodiesel fuels are a diffuse energy source. Large areas of land, quantities of fertiliser and pesticide and water are required. The cultivation, harvesting and processing of the bulky raw materials requires considerable inputs of fuel and labour. Taken together the energy inputs may be close to or even exceed the energy they deliver. The environmetal disturbance is large in relation to the modest amount of energy produced. The one point in their favour is that in the event of shortages biofuels could provide the simplest and most obvious substitute for oil in motor transport. The alternative of giving transport a priority in the event of oil production peaking while replacing the other uses of oil for heating and electricity generation by nuclear power fails to be given any serious consideration.
The EU Biofuels directive set a target for 5.75 percent/volume of road transport energy fuel to come from biofuels by 2010; within this the less ambitious UK target is put at 3.5% Biofuels represented just 0.05 per cent of total fuel sales in the UK in 2004. But in 2006, 264 million litres were sold – about 0.5 per cent of total fuel sales + a tenfold increase. Although this trend is set to continue we are still far from reaching the target – (as is the case for most alternative energies).
To review the matter the House of Lords EU Select Committee published its report “EU Strategy on Biofuels: from Field to Fuel” in November 2006. This usefully set out three justifications or biofuels as:
Weaning off oil.
Biofuels are identified by the European Commission as a significant tool towards reducing the EU’s dependence on oil imports for transport fuel. The road transport sector accounts for 30 per cent of energy consumed in the EU. The sector is heavily dependent on oil (98 per cent), a significant proportion of which is imported from outside the EU. In 2005, the EU’s net imports of crude oil amounted to over 560 million tonnes. While exporting 19 million tonnes of gasoline to the US the EU imported 25 million tonnes of diesel from Russia, leading to the conclusion that as energy security becomes an ever greater political concern, demand for biofuels will grow, but probably concentrated on biodiesel.
Cutting Down on Carbon.
For the UK government reducing carbon emissions is the prime aim in promoting biofuels, even though it was accepted that there are less expensive measures for saving carbon. The extent to which CO 2 reductions achieved by biofuels are cost-effective depends on a number of factors, including the type of crop used for production, the methods used and the system of transportation and distribution. The Committee concluded that if CO2 saving is the primary goal, it is clearly illogical to use biofuels which have caused the emission of more greenhouse gases by their production than are saved by their consumption. To take this into account it recommended that some form of carbon certification be introduced for a European-wide system of certification for both imported and domestically produced biofuels and feedstocks. The EU should draw on best practice and establish a monitoring and assessment programme that encourages the environmental lifecycle performance of biofuels to meet minimum standards. Whether that be sufficient to exclude those biofuels that increase rather than decrease environmetal damage could be uncertain.
Developing the agricultural economy
It is not surprising that the powerful agricultural lobbies, notably in France and Germany have been strong advocates of the EU biofuel policy as seen in the “rape seed revolution”, they also want to be assured of the long term stability of the biofuels market. The aim is a strong national commitment to agricultural economic development through biofuels..
As the EU has failed to reach the 2005 target of a two per cent market share for biofuels additional measures will need to be established for the higher target of 5.75 per cent market share by 2010.The production of biofuels in Europe however comes up against the fact that these are expensive – at between 30-45 p/litre – whereas bioethanol made from imported sugar cane costs only 6 to 11 pence per litre in countries such as Brazil which has the advantage of high crop yields and lower costs for land and labour. EU producers then face severe competition from imports. It might be considered that the aim of securing a greater energy independence is undermined if a substantial part of the feedstock for biofuels is imported. The committee, perhaps perversely, took the view that energy independence could be secured through a strong international market in biofuels – the same argument does not seem to apply for oil.
Stronger arguments against importing biofuels are the environmental costs. The Committee heard claims that in countries where a large-scale expansion of bio fuel feedstock production is likely to take place there could be pressures on eco-sensitive areas, like rainforests, as well as concerns over soil fertility, water availability and quality, fertiliser and pesticide use. It was said that “Tropical rain forests act as a carbon sink: burning, logging and then ploughing it leads to very significant carbon emissions, so any potential benefit from growing cheaper renewable feedstocks on such cleared rain forest would never repay the carbon debt that you had built up by clearing it in the first place”. A similar view had been expressed by the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in its own Bioenergy report: “Bioenergy is often said to be carbon neutral, on the basis that the carbon released on burning the fuel is equal to the carbon removed from the atmosphere when the crop is growing. However, carbon savings are affected by agricultural practice, production and processing methods, and transportation of the feedstock.
Consequently, the carbon savings offered by biofuels may be reduced to varying degrees by the emissions incurred over the lifecycle of the fuels.” There is also the important issue of ‘market displacement’ – fuel displacing food – an issue of increasing concern if (as according to the Stern report) climate change brings a decline in food production in countries affected by a growing desertification. The Committee recognized these arguments and commented that “Although biofuel use produces less carbon dioxide emissions than use of fossil fuels, this may be partly, if not wholly, negated by environmental costs in their country of origin and by transportation to the point of use.” It sees this as strengthening the need for a European wide system of evaluation and certification of the lifecycle environmental performance of both imported and domestically produced biofuels.
Land use is another contentious issue. Land designated as “set aside” could be brought back into production but this could curtail the amenity use. The export of cereals could be reduced and converted to fuel, but this might push up prices and reduce food supplies to more needy parts of the world. On this the report is noncommittal “We strongly believe there is a genuine prospect of bringing into use more EU land, including set-aside, to grow energy crops, while respecting biodiversity policies. However, the EU must always remain secure in its food supply.” The report itself was the subject of a debate in the Lords on the 19th of April when many of the criticisms of biofuels were forcefully raised. Production in the EU would have to compete with lower cost imports leading to the undesirable return to a heavily subsidised European agriculture; there were claims that the energy consumed in producing these fuels was nearly equal or even more than the energy delivered; and that according to US critics the grain used to fill a tank of a SUV would be sufficient to feed one person for year.
The loss of rainforests for sugar cane or palm oil plantations was particularly criticised.
This lead to the view that while the case for the first generation of biofuels, where energy crops would be in direct competition with food production might be questionable, the potential of a second generation using waste products – straw, biomass, wood chips and other wastes – was more promising. There was the potential for cellulose from any biodegradable source – timber, thinnings, or urban waste – to be broken down with enzymes to its constituent sugars. As the report itself concluded “there is scope for second generation biofuels to become increasingly important and to bring greater environmental advantages than currently provided by biodiesel and bioethanol.” Against the optimistic view it has been argued that using biomass or wastes for combined heat and power or for co-firing in power stations, where they could replace the use of coal is a better and cheaper option for reducing carbon emissions than the replacement of petroleum fuel for transport.
Energy security
Biofuels are also seen as a possible substitute for oil used for transport. It could be that a shortage of petroleum will be as much a matter of concern as climate change, and one that is likley to strike first. It has even been suggested that as production of oil and gas declines the higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere proposed by the IPCC may never be reached.
The future shortage of oil is a considered by the United States Government Accountability Office. An 82 page report by the GAO of February 2007 sets out their concerns: “CRUDE OIL Uncertainty about Future Oil Supply Makes It Important to Develop a Strategy for Addressing a Peak and Decline in Oil Production.”.
This report (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/ d07283.pdf) which gives a detailed examination of the problem shows that in the US the potential problem is now taken seriously. A similar study should be carried out here.
After noting that the date of peak oil could, according to different authorities, be anything between now and 2040 the GAO recommended that the Secretary of Energy work with other agencies to establish a strategy to coordinate and prioritize efforts to reduce uncertainty about the likely timing of a peak, and to advise Congress on how best to mitigate consequences – which could include a world-wide recession.
The uncertainties over future oil supply include; the amount of oil remaining in the ground – there are doubts about the accuracy of the self-reported reserves from OPEC; the cost of extracting future supplies some of which may only be accessed by complex and costly technology; the political uncertainty where some 60 % of world oil supply is in countries that can be regarded as unstable; the growth of future world demand and competition over supply with large increases expected from China and India.
The problem for the US is that domestic oil production peaked around 1970 at close to 10 million barrels per day and has been generally declining ever since, to about 5 million barrels per day in 2005. In 2005 the United States imported about 66 percent of its oil and petroleum products and the U.S. economy depends heavily on oil, where transportation accounts for approximately 65 percent of U.S. oil consumption and has continued to increase in recent years.
Transportation fuel shortages would translate into significant economic hardship. But this is a world problem. Oil – 84 mbd in 2005 – accounts for about one third of all energy used world wide. Most countries outside the Middle East have already peaked. Nonconventional oil sands and shales are more complex and expensive to extract. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 21 June 2007 )
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