|
2008 Nuclear Issues v30 1 |
|
|
|
|
Written by Nuclear Issues
|
|
Tuesday, 01 January 2008 |
Nuclear Issues is also available as a pdf download
Too little too late
The White Paper, Meeting the Energy Challenge, must be recognized as a
welcome change. The unequivocal statement by the BERR (Department for
Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) listing the advantages of
nuclear power as:
- Low-carbon – helping to minimise damaging climate change
- Affordable – nuclear is currently one of the cheapest low-carbon electricity generation technologies, so could help us deliver our goals cost effectively
- Dependable – a proven technology with modern reactors capable of producing electricity reliably
- Safe – backed up by a highly effective regulatory framework
- Capable of increasing diversity and reducing our dependence on any one technology or country for our energy or fuel supplies (para 88) is a welcome step forward from the negative, anti-nuclear attitude of its predecessor the DTI. These conclusions are backed up by detailed analyses of the questions posed in the earlier public consultation and they provide overwhelming evidence in favour of nuclear power and succeed on all the above points in providing convincing arguments for proceeding with a new programme.
But it then seems as if alarmed at its boldness and success in making a strong nuclear case the White Paper goes to great length to disassociate itself from any direct action to ensure the provision of a secure energy supply.
Despite its recognition that “Without a clean, secure and sufficient supply of energy we would not be able to function as an economy or a modern society” the Government insists that the responsibility for this basic requirement for maintaining our standard of life rests solely with the industry. Although prepared to take “active steps” to open up the way to the construction of new nuclear power stations, it will be for energy companies “to fund, develop and build new nuclear power stations in the UK, including meeting the full costs of decommissioning and their full share of waste management costs.” The energy companies are being “allowed” to invest their own money in nuclear power.
The alternatives
The White Paper is primarily concerned with nuclear power, but in its analysis has to refer to alternative energy sources. In contrast to its rigorous and illuminating discussion of the pro’s and con’s of nuclear power when it comes to the alternatives it is content to accept the loose and often unjustified assumptions that characterize the Government policy for alternative energies but on occasions a degree of scepticism breaks through which casts doubt on many aspects of the Government promotion of renewable energies. Although these points are not followed up or considered further they suggest a degree of prejudice and misunderstandings that could lead to a social and economic collapse.
Oil and Gas
In what is intended as an illustrative side comment on energy security the White Paper it states tha t– “at current production rates, global oil reserves are projected to last 40 years.” ( para 28) This suggests an alarming misunderstanding of the future of world oil supply. It casts doubt on the whole Government approach to energy policy. The presumption that there is a sufficiency of oil for present production rates to be maintained unchanged over the next 40 years is quite wrong. It implies that by year 41 there will be none left. As the World Energy Council has said “It is clearly absurd to postulate that production could stay flat for a given number of years and then stop dead, when all oilfields are observed to decline gradually.” This gradual decline, as now experienced in the production of oil and gas from the North Sea, has followed a typical sine curve with production rising from the beginning of the 1970s to a peak in 1999 at about 140 million tonnes and thereafter falling, slowly at first but then increasingly rapidly, to 60 million tonnes predicted for 2012. Gas follows a similar curve, peaking in 2000 at 40 billion therms and falling to just under 20 billion therms by 2012. One estimate is that supplies of North Sea oil will gradually run out by 2030-2050. All other oil fields show the same pattern of production rising to, and the falling from, a peak. World oil production must then do likewise. The only uncertainty is the date at which the peak will arise, but this can only be seen in hindsight.
Some believe it may already have occurred, others that it is expected before 2015, and almost certainly by 2030.
There is in addition a change in the attitudes of many of the oil producing and exporting countries, which as their own economies advance see their internal consumption increase with a consequent decrease in the amount they have available to export. The dominance of world markets by the previous seven, now reduced to four, major oil companies (ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, ChevronTexaco) has weakened substantially as they have successively lost their rights in several major producing countries, and now control no more than about 10% of the world’s reserves. The countries that expropriated the rights of the foreign companies seek to preserve their critical energy supplies for the benefit of their own citizens. The oil and gas importing countries will suffer.
The optimistic assumption that oil and gas will continue to be readily available over the next forty years is a fatal flaw in any consideration of electricity supply, yet this is an underlying assumption of the UK policy. It is assumed that the percentage of gas burnt in the UK for electricity generation will increase from 30% in 2006 to 38% of a larger quantity by 2020. Even if some gas were available competition on world markets will push the price ever higher. Since, as the White Paper points out, the cost of gas accounts for some 70% of the overall running cost the probable price of gas in 2020 would make its consumption for electricity generation – at only around 40-50% thermal efficiency – uncompetitive. In contrast the cost of uranium ore makes up only 1.5% of the final electricity price from a nuclear station. A sensible energy policy must consider that gas may not be available for burning to generate electricity at some not too distant future date.
Coal
With the closure by the end of 2015 of 11 GWe of older coal and oil stations under the EU low carbon directive the energy companies will need to build 30-35 GWe of new capacity over the next 20 years – and with the planned closure of AGR nuclear stations the new plant requirement by 2020 in the UK could be over 20 GWe. Yet according to a possible timetable in the White Paper construction of the first new nuclear stations would not begin before 2013-2014 with first power output in 2018.
If we are to avoid power cuts these companies will have to start planning for some 10 GWe rising to 20 GWe of new coal or gas fired plant within the next few years.
With the steep price rises expected for gas and with concerns over the security of supply it can be expected that the power companies, making decisions on the expected profitability of their investments, will turn to coal – although this still now has to be imported and the price can also be expected to rise but perhaps to a lesser extent than for gas. There will then, inevitably, be a substantial increase in carbon emissions making it well–nigh impossible to meet the targets the Government has set itself – reductions of 26-32% by 2020 and at least 60% by 2050.
To counter this increase there is now talk of, and some early attempts with demonstration projects to develop carbon capture and storage. The White Paper, without going into details, expresses scepticism that this will ever be a viable technology at least probably not before 2050, given the additional costs it would entail in capture and doubts over whether the carbon dioxide could be transported and stored safely underground – for ever! A Belgian study last year noting that one 800 MW coalfired station would produce about 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year concluded that the routine commercial ‘disposal’ of carbon dioxide “will be difficult if not quasi-impossible.” It would be surprising if, given the public anxiety aroused by proposals to store underground nuclear wastes in solid form, that the storage of much, much larger quantities of carbon dioxide in gaseous or more probably liquid form – for ever – would be accepted. The total high and medium active level waste accumulated from all nuclear activity in the UK over the past 60 years is put as some 200 000 tonnes – 25 times less than the carbon dioxide from just one small coal fired power station in one year.
As the White Paper puts it “our understanding of radioactive waste and how to deal with it is arguably more advanced than our knowledge of the impact of manmade climate change and as yet we have no solution for mitigating the risks posed by increased CO2 emissions.
We have no solution for reversing the adverse global environmental effects of these emissions, whereas we believe that geological disposal will provide a technically possible mechanism for disposing of radioactive waste safely that is already being taken forward in several other countries.” While the Government insists that the decisions on new construction are entirely a matter for the power companies, it still wishes to second-guess these decisions by withholding or granting planning permission. The controversy over planning permission for a new coal firedplant in Kent to replace on older station being shut down under the EU directive is a foretaste of what is to come.
The Government is in a dilemma of its own making – the choice is coal or candles.
Renewables
The White Paper tacitly assumes that the target for renewables of 15.4% of electricity production by 2015 will be met – a large increase from the present output of only 5%. But it seems, implicitly, to question the costs and benefits that might be delivered. From a table showing the costs of carbon dioxide abatement by the available technologies it contrasts the cost from onshore wind at £182 per tonne of carbon compared with just £0.3 per tonne with nuclear power.
Again while insisting that nuclear power will not in any way be subsidized by the State – the private power companies must meet all the costs incurred in constructing operating and decommissioning the stations and pay their share of the long term waste disposal – it is quietly pointed out that under the combined effects of the Renewables Obligation and the Climate Change Levy the subsidies given to renewable energy will amount to around £1 billion per year in 2010 rising to £2 billion per year by 2020.
Another comment points out that to replace existing nuclear capacity, assuming no new stations are built, by wind power alone would require 25 GWe of wind capacity a large increase from the 2 GWe haveailable today. Assuming a turbines size of 2 MWe, it would require more than 12 000 turbine, with each GW of wind power covering around 10 000 hectares of land. In addition, as wind is an intermittent type of generation, and is not available at all times, it would not provide a reliable baseload supply of energy.
The unasked and unanswered question must be – why bother? There is a brief mention of some novel technologies but without much enthusiasm. Bringing electricity from geothermal sources in Iceland would “face formidable problems in cost”. At home the Government is investigating tidal technology, wave power and a Severn Barrage but again without enthusiasm – “We will need to consider all these novel technologies in terms of their cost– effectiveness and their potential contribution to our energy policy goals including security of supply.” Besides nuclear, the only other proven low-carbon form of generation of baseload electricity is large-scale hydro, but the potential for further capacity increases in this country is small as many suitable sites have already been exploited.
All this leads to the conclusion that without new nuclear, a significant proportion of the new capacity built to meet baseload demand for energy will come from additional fossil fuel power stations. With doubts over the availability of gas and oil this would mean a large increase in coal capacity which, considering the uncertainty surrounding the development of CCS, would see an inevitable increase in carbon emissions.
Energy efficiency
Improving energy efficiency is already a key part of the Government’s climate change policies, and based on existing measures it is expected that the energy efficiency of our economy will improve by a third by 2020. The White Paper is none the less cautious and points to potential limitations with a reference to the “rebound effect” whereby households may use the financial rewards from improving energy efficiency to increase their use of energy in other areas - improve their level of comfort, by increasing the temperature at which they heat their home, or by purchasing more energy-consuming products, thereby increasing carbon dioxide emissions. The White Paper does not quantity the effect but a reference to a paper by the EERC suggests it may be between 10 to 30% so that only 90-70% of the expected savings are achieved.
There is however no reference to the potentially much larger effect of a “Keynesian multiplier” whereby the money injected into the economy to fund energy efficiency measures is recycled through a number of hands and will promote economic growth and hence an increase in energy usage.
Advancing the process
The illustrative timetable given in the White Paper which foresees construction of new nuclear stations staritng in 2013-2014 for operation by 2018, but some of the underlying assumptions for these dates can be questioned.
There is an initial delay of some three and a half years for a generic design assessment (GDA) which seems difficult to justify. It would assume that the NII has the capability to review reactor designs and approve their suitability for construction in the UK. But the UK no longer has any reactor design capability and it is presumptious to expect that staff newly recruited to the NII for this purpose will have the experience to make judgements on designs that have been worked on for years by the reactor vendors and have already been approved for construction by the licensing authorities in other countries. Any alterations required, other than merely cosmetic, will be costly and may be rejected by the reactor vendor companies whose order books are now filling up, and could turn to more compliant customers. Areva for instance now has two stations under construction in Finland and France and orders for two more in China. The role of the NII should be to police the operation of the stations and see that the safety standards and requirements are met – such as the prosecution of the UKAEA for breaches of the Health and Safety Act in July 2007 at Dounreay – not to redesign reactors. There could also be some confusion and room for delay in the distinction made between the reactor vendors (AECL, Areva, GE-Hitachi, Toshiba- Westinghouse) whose designs will be subjected to the GDA and the energy companies generating and selling electricity who will presumably have their own preferred vendor who may or may not obtain GDA approval without making costly (and unacceptable?) alterations to a standard design.
It might also be possible for the Government which now has control of, or at least the power to influence, British Energy to order the company to build Hinkley Point C – which was already approved in a public inquiry as long ago as 1990 although under the terms of the EU approval for the reconstruction loan of 2003 British Energy is prohibited from expanding its nuclear capacity for six years.
On the other hand it is possible that the presumed start of construction could be over-optimistic. The “indicative” timetable is based on the assumption that decisions in principle by the energy companies to proceed may be taken before the end of 2009. Whether and when they decide to do so will be determined by their own commercial decisions, not by any considerations of the UK national interest. These companies may at that time also be fully occupied in building and planning their new coal or possibly gas –fired plants to meet the immediate generation gap arising over the next 5 years. It is also possible that as more countries turn to nuclear power there could be shortages and bottlenecks in key components such as steam generators and pressure vessels and large turbines for which the UK now has no, or limited, domestic manufacturing capability and could find itself a long way down the queue. The folly of selling off BNFLWestinghouse is now becoming apparent. If, for whatever reason there are delays, first nuclear production from the new programme may not come until well after 2020 by which time it would be far too late to secure the UK electricity supply or to meet our climate change commitments.
In the end there is the short-term solution of installing more cables to France, provided the French have sufficient capacity to help us out, although we may have been forestalled by the Italian ENEL now to take a 12.5% share of Flamanville and future EDF stations The White Paper itself sums up the uncertainties “We think it is likely that energy companies will come forward with proposals for new nuclear power stations, although we cannot predict this with certainty. Their decisions will be affected by their view on the underlying costs of new investments, their expectations of future electricity, fuel and carbon prices, expected closures of existing power stations and the development time for new power stations.”
Plan B
If, as the White Paper recognizes may be the case, the energy companies delay any commitment to building new nuclear stations in the UK what is the alternative? This point is addressed in an appendix.
In the extreme case, without carbon capture and storage, renewables generation would have to provide up to 80% of electricity supplies, with around 60% from wind, (now less than 2 percent). This would require additional investment in conventional generation plant to provide ‘back-up’ for the inevitable hours when intermittent renewable energy resources would not be available. The marginal abatement cost for reducing carbon emissions in 2050 could also increase to around £1450/tC (compared with £0.3 per tonne for nuclear power).
Heroic assumptions for a substantial improvement in the energy intensity per unit of economic output, to around 48 tonnes of oil equivalent per £ million compared to 211 tonnes of oil equivalent per £ million today, would be required. Without such improvements the White Paper admits that the only other way to keep energy demand at current levels or even to reduce it, would be to forego economic growth with a considerable change in consumer behaviour and reduction in standards of living.
The consequences are either alarming and disasterous or, for the advocates of a zero growth, low energy society, desirable. These are changes which would drastically affect the future of UK society and economy. It seems beyond belief that the Government abdicates any responsibility and is to leave the outcome in the hands of the French and German electricity companies who dominate this sector.
The next ten years
Too little too late – yes – but we do not recommend that we give up. It will still be a desperate necessity when it eventually comes on line in 2020.
We told you ten years ago how things would be today with rising oil and gas prices and we were generally right.
So now we will tell you what it will be like in another ten years. Perhaps somebody will listen to us this time.
The energy situation will be really desperate. Oil and gas prices will have continued to rise driven by the increasing pressure of the world market. We will be in a particularly weak position importing at least 90% of our requirements. Conservation efforts will not have lessoned public demand. The efforts to build up renewable capacity will have become a dismal failure with hundreds – not the thousands actually needed – of wind generators blighting our coastal regions and producing a huge task for maintenance workers who will not be able to keep pace with the failures. Prices will have risen at least another ten times but in addition we will have to contend with strong competition from the whole of Europe – west and east – who will be ahead of us on the pipelines from Siberia. We will probably have had to introduce rationing of energy supplies. Black outs will be a familiar occurrence.
By then we will welcome any nuclear power we can lay our hands on whether generated by French build plants in this country or in France using under water cables beneath the channel.
What are we talking about?
There is often a misconception about the new nuclear plants we are talking about particularly when it comes to costs. We are not talking about first generation gasgraphite reactors designed back in the 1950’s and 60’s and costing ten times as much as present day light water reactors to decommission because we have lost all the money which was allocated to the task by the former nationalised Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB).
In fact the early nuclear reactors were not so expensive in real money terms to build. Some suffered from increased costs but they still all came in at tens rather than thousands of millions of pounds. But it was necessary to apply inflation to the capital charges ostensibly to pay for the eventual replacement of the plant. What replacement? In the absence of replacement those early first generation plants were the cheapest source of electricity near to the ‘too cheap to metre’ level. But that is all forgotten now.
What of the future? Take for example the huge amount of development by Freanch and German designerss of their existing plants. Today these are reliably supplying around 80% of French electricity as well as sizeable amounts exported to their neighbours. The main design is the European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR) though it is now often referred to as the ‘Evolutionary’ PWR. That means that it incorporates steady design improvements to the whole plant. It really is a remarkable design still based on the pressurized water reactor used for more than half of the 400 plants operating around the world but with safety and performance improvements at every level. It is the biggest reactor at 1600 MWe which helps to bring down the operating costs.
It generates more power while the fuel is in the reactor – about 60 000 to 70 000 MW days per tonne. This compares with 4000 to 5000 for the first generation gas cooled reactors. As a result it produces less waste per MW and the plutonium, as generated in all reactor, is less suitable for making bombs. The antinukes often quote American experts as having made and tested nuclear weapons from ‘reactor grade’ plutonium but that was plutonium supplied by Calder Hall at a few thousand MWd/te. At higher irradiation such as 60-plus thousand the plutonium becomes progressively more difficult to make into bombs. Furthermore the French advocate recycle of the plutonium as MOX which makes it still more unsuitable for bombs. (Though the White Paper for some reason dismisses reprocessing.) The longer irradiation of the fuel also means that the cost of decommissioning is less per MW. An International Atomic Energy Commission study has already shown that present generation PWR’s cost around ten times less to decommission than first generation gas cooled reactors and the EPR will be better still.
Will the EPR suffer cost overruns? Quite likely, but we will learn a lot from plants being built in Finland, France and China and amlost certainly this year,America.
And does it really matter that much? No. With continuing inflation the real money cost is still going to be trivial over the 60 or more years that the plant will operate. So let’s get on with it and build some. |
|
Last Updated ( Friday, 15 February 2008 )
|
|
|
|
Join SONE |
|
We need your support
To become a member of SONE download the application form by clicking the button below
|
|
