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2008 Nuclear Issues v30 4 |
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Written by Nuclear Issues
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Tuesday, 01 April 2008 |
Nuclear Issues is also available as a pdf download
Utterly stupid
105 or 106 years – 100 000 to 1 million – is said to be how long we will need to take care of nuclear waste.
This is utterly stupid. It only applies if we fail to recycle plutonium and unused uranium in the fuel we take out of reactors. If we remove and recycle this valuable fuel the fission product waste left will only have to be looked after for 300 year when it will be less radioactive than the uranium dug out of the ground in the first place. In fact after about 100 years it will be down to a few times the activity and will be perfectly easy to handle.
We have all the technology and even the processing plants to recycle nuclear fuel. We have built and commissioned a large commercial reprocessing plant – THORP – at Sellafield and a mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel plant integrated into it. We have already separated tonnes of plutonium and it is just waiting in safe storage until somebody says go.
It is now perfectly economical to enrich fuel with plutonium rather than fresh uranium. Have you noticed how people are building new enrichment plants. They have not, like us, got the alternative plutonium ready.
When we have recycled once or twice as MOX in light water reactors it should be perfectly economical to switch to fast reactors and recycle virtually all of the unused fuel in spent elements coming out of reactors.
There are other clever ideas and they all involve recycle rather than throw away. The quantity of waste is drastically reduced as well as becoming relatively harmless. It has been estimated that we have about 200 000 tonnes of military and civil waste from sixty years of nuclear development though this is almost certainly an exaggeration. But it has been estimated that another sixty years of operating modern replacement nuclear plant will only increase waste by 5 to 10 percent. One reason for this is that we now irradiate the fuel in a reactor to about 60 MWd/te and burn at least 25% plutonium there and then in the fuel.
There are other reasons why third generation light water reactors are more efficient than the now obsolete first generation gas-cooled reactors but we should not dismiss the old plants. They generated vast quantities of electricity at a real cost which was miniscule. It is only the madness of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority which is now claiming silly prices for reducing the nuclear sites to “green fields.” They have already been reprimanded by a House of Commons Business and Enterprise Committee for an ‘unsustainable’ funding model.
With recycle of nuclear fuel waste will only be a cause for concern for about 300 years. It will be easily stored in glass blocks in stainless steel milk churns placed in concrete vaults. It would be quite simple to leave it at that but the international community has developed lots of proposed solutions if we want to do something a little better.
Nuclear renaissance
Every month Nuclear News, the publication of the American Nuclear Society, publishes a renaissance watch of plants being considered for new built in the US. It has to be said that none of them is yet converted to a firm order but some are getting very close.* Several projects have already placed orders for heavy forgings which have to come from Japan as they have the only large enough press. As of March some 15 projects had already submitted combined operating and construction licenses (COLs) which is the first step in a new licensing arrangement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Various standard designs of plants are being proposed.
There are seven applications for the large 1600 MWe EPR (renamed the US Evolutionary Pressurized Water Reactor instead of European Pressurized Water Reactor but still the French-German design being offered by Areva of France and virtually identical to plants being build in Finland and France and ordered for China).
This is now being considered by the NRC as a prospective standardized design with an expected acceptance by 2012.
Then there are five ESBWR and two ABWR of around 1400 MWe from General Electric. The ABWR has already been operating at three plants in Japan and another two units are under construction in Taiwan. It has already obtained NRC standardized design approval but the more sophisticated ESBWR with passive safety systems is just starting the process with a 2012 date for completon.
Then there are twelve of the smaller AP-1000, which has standardized design authorization, being offered by Westinghouse with extensive use of passive systems.
There are also two US-APWR which is the latest evolution of the standard Westinghouse PWR but being offered by Mitsubishi from Japan. Finally there are three projects where the reactor design still has to be announced.
All together this represent around 22 600 000 kWh (units) of electricity production. It would take 80 to 90 million large wind turbines to produce the same amount of electricity. That really is some renaissance.
* Since writing Georgia Power has signed a contract with the consortium of Shaw and Westinghouse for engineering, procurement and construction of two AP- 1000 units at its Vogtle site where it currently operates two 1169 MWe PWRs. The new units will also have a capacity of around 1100 MWe.
The day before a letter of intent was signed with Progress Energy to complete negotiations on an engineering, procurement and construction contract for another two AP-1000 units in Florida
License renewal and uprates Nuclear
News also lists the existing plants in the US which are seeking license renewal. Some 81 of the 104 plants in the US have already submitted applications to the NRC or will do so in the near future. This assures that nuclear generating capacity will continue to supply electricity typically to 2033 but probably for longer.
There are also 20 existing plants that are planning to uprate their power output. These are increases from a few percent to 20 percent. That represent a power level equivalent to 1½ large new power station.
Oui. Oui! Tres bon!
What an excellent idea. Electricte de France (EdF) takes over British Energy (BE). EdF has plenty of money and the latest design of pressurized water reactor but it has not got sites in France where it really needs more power plants. BE has lots of sites – and good quality staff – but needs nuclear power stations just a soon as they can be built. It really does not matter who is making the money as long as it is well managed and EdF is certainly well managed.
Of course the French and British love to hate each other but this is due to us both having a superiority compl … – no there is nothing complex about it – we know that we are superior culturally to other countries and it is recognising it in the other that causes us to love to hate them.
In the nuclear energy field France and Britain were early advocates and started along the same route. But then, after heated discussion on both sides, France went towards the American PWR and Britain persisted with a gas-cooled line. In the event the French approach worked out best and nuclear power now meets around 80% of electricity with most of the rest coming from clean hydropower. We on the other hand had a bubble of North Sea gas which we have now just about squandered away.
France has still maintained a healthy respect for British nuclear technology. And the technologists at the Central Electricity Generating Board, the Atomic Energy Authority and British Nuclear Fuels plc before we started privatising and selling them off to the Japanese. Both sides have had plenty of problems but the French have largely overcome theirs.
EdF has had its greatest success from building strings of identical plants but just at the moment the early plants are operating so well that they do not really need any more. They have tried and are trying to get round this by building in other countries – Finland, China and America for starters. But in Britain there is a desperate need for a string of large reactors to boost our electricity to around 80% from clean nuclear energy.
There are other advantages that will hopefully come from French involvement. They believe in recycling unused fuel and would even be able to take some of the stockpiles of separated plutonium owned by BE while they are building PWRs. They would have demand for the modern reprocessing plant (THORP) at Sellafield and for the integrated MOX fabrication plant. So come on. Let’s go.
Canada out of UK for now
The Canadians have decided to opt out of the UK market for the time being. It will concentrate efforts on its latest ACR-1000 design in the domestic market where safety regulators have just commenced preproject design review activities.
The ACR-1000 was originally one of four designs being considered by UK regulators for Generic Design Assessment. The others are the EPR from Ariva of France, the AP-1000 being offered by a consortium of Shaw and Westinghouse and a GE-Hitachi ESBWR.
The UK regulators had earlier announced that they were going to reduce the number of designs being considered to three so the withdrawal of Canada may be welcomed. The Canadian design is appreciated in the UK as a good one but it has to be said that the other three designs probably started favourites.
Carbon capture and storage
We received a pretty book recently from BP (British Pertoleum). It dealt with the Fundamentals of Carbon Capture and Storage Technology. With 17 articles by leading experts it examines the storage of CO2 in just about any well or underground hole or underground faults to show that it is technically possible to capture and store the waste gas. It is an elegantly produced, 150-page book with many colourful diagrams and the odd picture of a beautiful lake or forest to establish their green credentials.
But the most surprising thing is the sheer size of this waste problem. Today we are releasing around 7 billion tonnes (that is 7 000 000 000 tonnes) per year.
In the next 50 years it could grow to 14 billion if nothing is done about it. Needless to say, BP gives little credit to nuclear power for reducing it and actually predicts a decline in nuclear contribution from 2015 to 2030 – just the years when we were expecting a bit of a renaissance – but it projects various success rates for its removal and storage programmes.
It is amazing that people worry about nuclear waste when we are discharging such huge quantities of waste gas directly to the environment. For power production alone this country emitts 180 million tonees of carbond dioxide every year. Yet over the past 60 years nuclear development – both military and civilian – is said to have produced about 200 000 tonnes of solid high level and intermediate level waste, say 100 000 tonnes due to military and 100 000 from civil nuclear power.
That is 1 600 tonnes per year of civil nuclear waste compared with 180 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
In modern nuclear plants it is confidently predicted that it will be reduced by a factor of ten. So that is about 160 tonnes per year total waste. It is stored in glass blocks and encased in stainless steel and buried in concrete and in 300 years is less radioactive than the uranium originally dug out of the ground. If we propose putting it under ground we have to come up with some formation that has been stable for millions of years – not a leaky old oil well which stands little chance of retaining a billion tonnes of gas.
New phase at Leningrad
Leningrad nuclear power complex has started a new phase with the placing of a contract for two new nuclear units. Up till now the Leningrad plant has been the centre for the continued careful operation of RBMK plants like Chernobyl but suitably modified to make them adequately safe. Now the new phase intends to make a break and accept the latest design of Russian pressurized water reactor. This is gaining acceptance in world markets as being at least as safe as third generation plants being built in the West.
St Petersburg-based AtomEnergoProekt has signed a contract for the construction of the two new units. The cost is put at 136 billion roubles ($5.8 billion).
The name of the plant has hung on to Leningrad despite the change of the nearby city to St Pertersburg.
Advertising boost
At long last someone has started an advertising campaign extolling the virtues of nuclear power in the UK. Instead of hearing about a few percent improvement in the efficiency of oil and gas burning the latest television advertisement shows a neat diagram of a 1600 MWe nuclear reactor feeding electricity into the national grid and producing no carbon dioxide at all.
This is the work of the French company Areva which is showing a welcome interest in the UK market and is the leading contender to build our next generation of nuclear power plants.
We have only one criticism. Included in the coastal scene surrounding the plant they have include a wind farm of about five wind turbines. These might be expected to produce a maximum of 10 MWe when the wind is blowing at the right strength but this would be reduced to an average of less than 2.5 MWe by a typical load factor. This really is small time compared with the 1600 MWe with a ninety percent load factor produced by the nuclear unit. Inclusion in the advertisement is a misguided concession to renewables. An advertisement for a wind energy would make no such concession to nuclear power.
Common sense needed
Under its present policy the German government intends to phase out its operating nuclear power stations which now generate some 25% of German electricity. These stations are to be progressively closed down between now and 2020, well before the end of their operating lives, for political not operational reasons.
It is suggested that most of the replacement generation will come from renewable sources. The German cabinet, in August 2007 approved a decision that 25-30% of electricity in 2020 should come from renewable energies. On paper this may not seem an impossible target; renewable sources provided 14.2 % in 2007, but most of this was from hydropower, biomass and waste where any large increase must seem unlikely.
Wind power provided only 6.5% of total generation, at a low load factor of under 20% and at a high cost to the consumer. Proposals to build 28 GWe of onshore and 20 GWe of offshore wind are unlikely to be implemented.
The greater part of the replacement of the nuclear generation is expected to be filled by an increase in fossil fired plant which already meets about 50% of demand.
The major power companies have expressed an intention to build another 26 coal-fired stations.
Much of the existing fossil capacity is, and for the new plants being proposed will be, fired by lignite, of which Germany has a large resource, which can be relatively cheaply produced by opencast mining. Hard coal is expensive and a declining domestic production is subsidised by the German government. An alternative is to import coal from Poland. At present gas only makes a small contribution to electricity generation but this could increase, provided supplies are available and at an acceptable cost.
This reliance on fossil fuels would gravely damage German ambitions to reduce carbon emissions. Burning lignite releases some 1000-1200 gm CO2/kWh compared to 800 for hard coal, 400 for gas and near zero for nuclear power. It has also drawn surprisingly outspoken critical comment from the International Energy Agency in their 2007 country review. As much of what they say is of general application to other European countries considering a phase-out policy, it is reproduced below, “Regardless of how nuclear power is replaced, the early shut-down of theseplants comes at a cost to energy security, economic efficiency and environmental sustainability, the tenets of Germany’s energy policy. The loss of nuclear power will lead to reduced supply diversity, negatively impacting energy security. As a largely domestic resource, nuclear power reduces the need to rely on imports of other fuels, such as gas; increased dependence on fossil imports in the future would likely raise Germany’s reliance on Russia’s Gazprom, a company that already provides a very large share of total supply. Furthermore, the supply replaced by wind power, an intermittent source, will necessitate backup reserve capacity – most likely coal and natural gas.
Overall, the elimination of nuclear is a liability for energy security, as it eliminates one potential generation option from a portfolio available to German companies. The marginal costs of nuclear plants are low and stable relative to fossil fuels, which means they provide low-cost baseload power. Nuclear plants rarely set the marginal price of electricity, so their closure will have a limited effect on wholesale electricity prices. It will, however, have negative spillover effects on the economy.
The shut-down of these productive assets will require additional near-term investments in new capacity, while continued operation would allow companies to invest the revenues from the plants in ways that are more productive for the economy.
Deferring the shut-down would also reduce the need for new capacity, allowing for the development of more advanced technologies, including renewable energy technologies.
In the context of Germany’s ambitious targets to reduce the negative environmental impacts of energy production, the shut-down of nuclear power plants might have the biggest effect on its environmental goals. While the phase-out threatens to result in higher overall emissions of carbon dioxide than today, it will certainly prevent Germany from reaching its full potential over the longer term. With nuclear in the fuel mix, Germany’s carbon dioxide emissions could be cut even further.
For these reasons, we strongly encourage the government to reconsider the decision to phase out nuclear power. Changes to the phase-out law and lifetime extensions for these productive power plants could also be linked to a reduction in free emission allocations for new and existing fossil fuel power plants, resulting in greater overall carbon dioxide reductions at no net cost, as well as to other concessions.
The government should initiate a national debate about the role of nuclear power in Germany’s longterm fuel mix, with early attention paid to the possibility of extending the lifetime of existing plants in order to accommodate the country’s climate change policy goals. Keeping nuclear in the country’s energy mix will require gaining increased public acceptance for the technology.
Recent information on public attitudes towards nuclear power shows that in Germany, as in many countries, obtaining higher levels of public acceptance hinges on the ability of the government to successfully address the radioactive waste disposal question. We therefore commend the governing coalition on its statement of intent to do this by the end of the current parliament, and we encourage the government to adhere to this deadline. Regardless of the path chosen, all citizens should be well aware of the impact of the phase-out on the country’s economic, greenhouse gas and energy security goals.”
Political gaps in Europe
From the recent Government announcement that the UK is to approve the construction of a new generation of nuclear power stations it seems that we have heeded the IEA advice. Other European countries which like Germany have proposed to shut down their operating nuclear stations may now also restart their nuclear programmes..
In Belgium where nuclear power delivers 54.4% of electricity a report commissioned by the government has concluded that the nuclear phase-out policy cannot be sustained; it would lead to a doubling of electricity prices, increase dependency on imports and increase carbon emsissions.
In Italy, which closed its operating nuclear power stations in an over-reaction to Chernobyl, ENEL the state utility is to take a 12.5% interest in the French station now being constructed at Flamanville with an option for a similar share in subsequent new French plants. It will be but a short step to accept nuclear stations on Italian soil rather than in the country next door.
The Swedish parliament has now abandoned any attempt to name a firm date for the shutdown of the Swedish nuclear stations as determined by the public referendum of 1980 (after the Three Mile Island accident). It is apparent that there is no obvious alternative to replace the 50% of Swedish electricity generated in its nuclear stations. The government has already approved the upgrading of existing stations which has increased their capacity by the equivalent of one new nuclear station.
In Lithuania the Russian design RBMK reactor which supplies 72% of the country’s electricity is due to be closed down in 2009 under the 2004 agreement for entry to the EU. There are now discussions with Poland, and the other Baltic republics to replace this with a 3200-3400 MWe of nuclear station .
The Spanish government has proposed to close, or not to replace, the country’s nuclear stations which generate 20% of its electricity from nuclear power.
This policy, also against the advice of the IEA, is disputed within the country.
In the rest of Europe, France 78%, Slovakia 57%, Bulgaria 44%, Slovenia 40%, Hungary 38%, Switzerland 37%, the Czech Republic 31% and Finland 30%, already rely on nuclear power for more than 30% of their electricity. Romania now at 9% will increase the nuclear share to 18% when Cernavoda-2 comes into operation and will reach 30% with Cernavoda-3 & 4.
The Netherlands generates only 3.5% of nuclear electricity. Austria, Denmark, Ireland and Norway remain without nuclear power. Norway and Austria rely principally on hydro electric power; 99% of electricity production for Norway, 59% for Austria. Ireland and Denmark rely on fossil fuels; 91% of electricity production in 2005 for Ireland, 71 % for Denmark. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 28 May 2008 )
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