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2008 Nuclear Issues v30 6 |
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Written by Nuclear Issues
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Sunday, 01 June 2008 |
Nuclear Issues is also available as a pdf download
Managing waste
A white paper published by the UK government is called Managing
Radioactive Waste Safely and is said to represent a significant move
forward on the subject. In fact we have been waiting year and years for some sign of progress so let’s hope it lives up to expectation.
It is said to offer a framework for implementing geological disposal of waste and makes a claim for “voluntarism and partnership” which are to be used in the all important task of selecting a potential site for disposal of waste. It maintains that most of the UK is geologically suitable for a waste repository and hopes that by inviting communities across the country to participate it will find a happy partnership. It is expected that the prospect of jobs and infrastructure developments as well as a tailored package of benefits would prove tempting to communities to welcome a repository in their back yard. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is to take the lead in the search for a site and will conduct research on waste management and its Radioactive Waste Management Directorate will be responsible for actual delivery of the disposal project.
It is a harmless enough document but only discusses nuclear waste in general terms with few facts and figures.
The only meaningful table lists the total amounts of waste in the country but it does not say that this is sixty years production form military and civil programmes.
It lists 1 400 m3 of high level fission product waste – the real nuclear waste – which is a trivial volume that is being solidified in glass (vitrified) and welded into 150 litre stainless steel containers which will be held in surface storage for fifty years before it is ready for geological disposal. They do not say how long it could be safely stored in this way – it is 100’s of years by which time is radioactivity will be trivial compared with the uranium from which it was produced.
Then the report lists some material which it concedes is not real waste – spent nuclear fuel, separated plutonium and depleted uranium. All this is potentially recyclable though the report suggest that it might not be. What rubbish. Who at a time of desperate energy shortage can throw away these vast reserves? To start with there is 3 300 m3 of plutonium ready and waiting to be converted into new fuel. It is stored at Sellafield were a new plant is ready to fabricate it into new fuel which can be used economically in the Sizewell B reactor and also, with a little difficulty but greater efficiency, in our existing Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors. This is an energy resource equal to one billion barrels of oil but with no carbon footprint.
Then there is 11 200 m3 awaiting to be treated in the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) to produce more plutonium and unused uranium fuel. Is this large energy resource to be treated as waste and thrown away? Finally there is some 80 000 m3 of uranium which has already been reprocessed or depleted in the enrichment process. All we have to do is re-invent the fast reactor and this will become an energy resource of almost unlimited size.
The report also talks very briefly about new reactors that we hope to build. It does not highlight the important fact that they will produce less than a tenth of the amount of waste of today’s first generation plants.
Just six years
It is truly incredible to look back to the Manhattan Project which developed the first nuclear bombs back in 1945. This was just six years after the 1939 discovery of the fission process at the sub- sub-microscopic scale of the nucleus by chemist Otto Hahn in Germany with his physicist associate Louis Meitner – fleeing from Nazi anti-Jewish prejudice in Denmark. Just three years later the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi – also fleeing from a Fascist regime – multiplied things by a factor of 1025 to produce kilograms of uranium and a few Watts of power in the first atomic pile (reactor) in a squash court in Chicago. By then they were already designing large reactors at Hanford in the northwest to produce tonne quantities of a new man-made element called plutonium and in Tennessee they were building a huge complex for gaseous diffusion and magnetic separation of uranium-235 from just under 1% of natural uranium to around 90%. In the next three years they produced a plutonium and an enriched uranium bomb, exploded a test in the Nevada desert and dropped two which, like it or not, did change the suicidal attitude of the Japanese to fight to the death for every inch of territory. The significant thing about the Manhattan project was that the engineers and scientist, working with only slide rules and log tables, did not know for sure that it would work.
It only took another ten year for the UK to put into operation a nuclear power plant that would then perform safely – and yes! Economically if you look at the actual money spent on it and not what accountants attributed to it – for fifty years.
The Germans, of course, also had the same knowledge in 1939 but after the war it was discovered that they had not made progress beyond a small and rather crude nuclear reactor. This may have been because they had not got any available deposits of uranium in Germany to make it worthwhile to start enriching the material. We should be thankful because if they had decided it was worth developing they could have done as much in the next six years – as could most any country now that they know the basic principles.
The fact that most have chosen not to develop bombs is largely due to the non-proliferation safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Authority which has gone a huge way to ensuring the peaceful use of nuclear energy. But now we have India and Pakistan demonstrating the not remarkable fact that they can explode devices. However, India is already paying the price. Having had to take the expensive route of developing the peaceful use of nuclear energy on its own they now find they are short of uranium to fuel their reactor. As everybody knows there is plenty of uranium around and India is also developing the alternative of thorium, but they can still experience a glitch in the phasing of production and would be better off if they could simply import some from Australia.
But now the world is a very different place. We take ten to fifteen years to talk about a new project, which we know will produce a great deal of desperately needed energy, before we poor a drop of concrete to actually build it. The urgency of the need is just as great – if not greater – than it was in 1945. And the benefit is purely for the good of mankind. We agonize about waste because, after sixty years of civil and military development, we have a couple of Olympic swimming pools worth. This is probably a vast exaggeration because 96% of the spent fuel is recyclable and we all know we should be recycling waste – don’t we? We ignore those who tell us that replacement of existing nuclear power will only produce 5% to 10% more waste over a sixty year lifetime. And the only reason the nuclear industry produces waste is because a decision was made at the beginning to retain and concentrate it in the fuel because there is such a small quantity. Other power sources are producing billions of tonnes of CO2 waste per year and spewing it straight out into the atmosphere.
So come on. Let’s start building something now before it’s too late.
Piebalgs sees the light
Posting personal ‘blogs’ on the internet often makes the arrogant assumption that the writer’s views are of sufficient interest for others to read . But a blog from the EU Commissioner for Energy Andreas Piebalgs has the value of indicating his views which could eventually be formulated as EU policy. We hope this will be the case given the sensible comments on nuclear power which Piebalgs posted on May 16th when he made a strong case in favour of nuclear power.
“Taken together, the EU is the largest nuclear electricity generator in the world, has a mature nuclear industry spanning the entire fuel cycle with its own technological base and highly skilled workforce.
Currently, nuclear energy provides more than a third of EU electricity. It has proven to be a stable, reliable source, relatively shielded from price fluctuations when compared to the oil and gas markets. Conventional nuclear energy is essentially free from CO2 emissions and on the face of it, fulfils an important requirement of all three pillars of the EU energy policy, which are competitiveness, security of supply and sustainability.
Continued use of nuclear energy therefore would increase our energy independence and supply security as well as contribute to the limitation of CO2 emissions.” There are however problems. “Political and public acceptance is a prerequisite for the further development of nuclear energy. The European citizens’ concerns about the safety of nuclear installations and the safe management of radioactive waste must be properly addressed. EU Member States traditionally have diverse experience in opening the nuclear debate to local communities, non-institutional bodies and other stakeholders with respect to nuclear projects. The Commission, as guardian of the Treaties, strives to inform the public, promote its welfare and protect its safety and security. Transparency must become synonymous with the notion of a nuclear future. It was exactly with this objective in mind and in order to provide a platform for debate with all relevant stakeholders, that the Commission launched the European Nuclear Energy Forum in late 2007.” These are positive signs of a marked step forward from the EU 2007 proposal which called for a cut in carbon emissions of 20% by 2020 to be achieved by dubious and doubtful measures which included; an obligation for 10% of biofuels in the transport mix – at a time when world food shortage is already on us; the adoption of carbon capture and storage – when the safety aspects of underground storage are highly questionable; a 20% target for renewable energies – costly and intermittent; while adopting an “agnostic” stance on nuclear power.
But as José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, pointed out in a message to the first forum meeting in November 2007 “It is not the EU’s role, or indeed the role of the Commission, to decide for Member States whether they use nuclear energy or not.” At the 2nd Forum meeting in May he was even more explicit “The European Commission is not in the business of promoting nuclear energy, nor of advocating its use.” This seems an extraordinary position to adopt. It could be argued that it is contrary to the original Euratom treaty whose aim some fifty years ago was “the creation of conditions necessary for the speedy establishment and growth of nuclear industries.” Why does the EU have an Energy Commissioner if the EU does not intend to take any positive action in the face of the unprecedented energy crisis facing Europe and the world as the age of oil comes to an end.
Against this self-imposed limitation the Forum can only be a talking shop whose main task is to “inform the public”; although this is necessary and critical step, it is one which rising oil prices and the certain approach of peak oil at a time of potentially rising oil and gas demand, together with a growing public awareness of the costs and intermittency of ‘renewable’ energies will do more effectively. But the Forum also has a role in promoting discussion and cooperation between politicians, financiers and industrialists on some of the key issues facing a nuclear revival in Europe. These include shared licensing and certification, procedures for site approval, financing, the manufacture of key components and support for the continuing research into the recycling and reuse of spent nuclear fuel and the development of advanced reactor systems to utilize the ‘wastes’ as fuel. A contribution to the November 2007 Forum meeting by BUSINESSEUROP listed the priorities: • greater harmonisation of safety requirements for nuclear installations in EU • establishment of national plans for management of radioactive waste • simpler and harmonised licensing procedures? maintaining highest safety standards • mutual recognition of certificates relating to new design of reactors • support of research, development and demonstration projects • development of policies to address industrial bottlenecks • promotion of an open and well informed debate on nuclear energy.
Generic design assessment
One positive step for the Commission to take would be to extend the licensing of a nuclear design in one European country to all the other countries of the Union. This would enable EDF (if they so wish – we are in their hands) to build a replica of their Flamanville-3 station in the UK with all the advantages in time and cost, and operational efficiency that this would bring.
As Bill Coley of British Energy told the May meeting of the European Nuclear Energy Forum “… I believe the margin to safety is maximised when many identical designs are built. For new nuclear build we must resist the temptation to make changes to internationally accepted designs with the result of having a small number of unique designs, such as we have in our AGRs.” It would only be human if, having been called on to carry out the generic design assessment of four possible reactor types the NII found reasons to recommend some ‘essential’ changes to meet unique UK ‘requirements’. We went through this process with Sizewell B ending up with a one-off British modified PWR built at a higher cost and for no obvious advantage. The Government insists that the decision to build new reactors lies solely with the industry – an industry which may be unwilling to accept imposed and expensive design changes to their preferred reactor system.
Planning permission for Flamanville-3 was given by the French authorities in April 2007; it is expected to be in operation by the end of 2012. A UK replica if started without delay could follow soon after, at least by 2015 the critical period when the UK economy is likely to suffer from repeated power shortages – provided of course that EDF decide that this is to their advantage.
Quietly getting on with things
The Swiss energy company, Atel, has submitted an application to build a new nuclear power plant. It will be located at Niederant near the Goesgen site in which Atel has a 40% interest. An advanced plant of 1 100 to 1 600 MWe is being proposed and it will use a hybrid cooling system called dry-wet to minimize water use.
The estimated cost is Eur 3.7 to Eur 4.5 billion ($6 to $7 billion). Start up is expected after 2020.
There is strong local support for this project despite a strong anti-nuclear movement in Switzerland as a whole. Last year the local canton parliament called for “rapid construction of a nuclear power station at Niederant.” Until 2000 Switzerlant was limited by a moratorium on new nuclear construction but now the generally very pragmatic population is recognizing the great benefit of nuclear power in a country which has a high standard of living but nothing but nuclear and hydro to supply its heavy energy demand. At present the country gets about 40% of its power from five very successful nuclear plants. There are two early 365 MWe pressurized water reactors at Beznau, a 355 MWe boiling water reactor at Muehleberg, a 970 MWe PWR at Goesgen and an 1 165 MWe BWR at Leibstadt. The remainder of power comes mainly from hydro power – roughly a half each from small flow-of-the-river plants and from large dams in the Alps.
The operation of nuclear plants has been amongst the best in the world. Switzerland also has a central repository for spent nuclear fuel but has also participated in some recycle of plutonium.
New units for Darlington
The Darlington site has been selected by the Ontario government for a new nuclear power station with two large units scheduled to come on line by 2018.
Darlington is on the north shore of lake Ontario about 73 km east of Toronto and already has four 880 MWe Candu type heavy water reactors which have been operating since 1990-93. It is the last plant to be built in Canada and is now operated by Ontario Power Generation (OPG). But unlike the previous station it will not automatically be two new Canadian built Candu reactors. The contenders include Westinghouse – now a Japanese owned company – and Areva of France in addition to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited.
A tender has been invited and a decision is promised for the end of the year.
The Ontario government is also urging Bruce Power – now a separate private company operating two large power stations on Lake Huron 250 km northwest of Toronto – to supply 6 300 MWe either by refurbishment of the existing plants or by building new ones. A decision by Bruce Power on whether to refurbish Bruce B which has four Candu units with a total capacity of 3 260 MWe or to push ahead with a new four reactor station at Bruce C – or both – is pending.
The grasshopper and the ant
In Aesop’s fables, the grasshopper having sung all summer turns when winter comes to its more thrifty neighbour, the ant, for succour only to be rebuffed – “now you should dance”. The UK having heedlessly auctioned off its North Sea oil assets, now when it has again become an oil and gas importing country, turns to its neighbour Norway for supplies. The Norwegians, so far, more obliging than the ant, have responded, notably with the Langaled pipeline to bring gas from the Ormen Lange field to the UK. But there are now indications that in the future supplies may be restricted.
Unlike the UK, which has little to show from its exploitation of the North Sea, Norway in 1997 set up a Global Pension Fund (formerly Petroleum Fund) to manage revenues from its newly discovered oil reserves for future generations. This fund is now worth some $330 billion – with additional income being added each year from oil revenues at ever-increasing world prices. It corresponds to some $80 000 for each of Norway’s citizens and yields an average annual nominal return of 6.5%. In a list of Sovereign Wealth Funds Norway comes second, after Abou Dhabi with an estimated $875 billion, but ahead of Saudi Arabia with $300 billion. It is of course not only a better management of a national resource which puts Norway in this favourable position; with a small population of just over 4 million its internal demand has been much less than for the UK with over 58 million.
Now, with the approaching peak of world oil and gas, Norway, as with other oil and gas producers, seeing its own production starting to decline, has realized that it is more sensible to retain more of what is left for its own future use at a time of coming world shortage (and even higher prices) rather than to maximize exports and add to an already adequate fund. Norway’s oil production from the North Sea is now in decline. It peaked in 2001 two years after the UK oil peak in 1999. Gas reserves are more difficult to assess but it has been suggested that Norway’s gas production will peak in 2020 at 162 bcm, falling sharply to 111 bcm by 2030.
With growing competition in the European market for limited supplies of gas Norway has now indicated that future supplies will be on a strictly commercial basis. It has commissioned a LNG export terminal to open the door to a wider market, including the USA.
The Norwegian government has also recently ruled against a second pipeline from the Troll field to export gas to Europe. This is a blow to the UK which had, optimistically, hoped that the new Troll pipeline would land first in the UK rather than Belgium or the Netherlands. That this pipeline will not now be built is a severe blow, not only to the UK but to the rest of Europe.
The UK also imports gas from the continent. But gas production from the Netherlands, the principal continental producer is now about to decline; the Dutch government .has acknowledged that gas production peaked in 2007/2008 and it expects that by 2025 the Netherlands will become a net importer. The main gas supplier to Europe is Russia. Here again there are indications that future supplies may be restricted. Some two/thirds of Russian gas is consumed within the country. If production remains flat internal consumption, rising at about 2% per year, would swallow up gas exports by 2020. In Algeria too, another gas supplier to Europe, domestic consumption is on the increase with a growing population, increasing industrialization, and plans for an ambitious programme of water desalination leaving less to export. Possible supplies from Libya and Egypt may also be restricted in the same way.
Considerable hopes are placed on an expected increase in imports to the UK of liquefied natural gas which could bring in supplies from more distant gas producing countries. But unlike a pipeline which ties the producer and receiver together in a mutual interdependence LNG, delivered by tanker, opens up a world market in which gas can be sold to the highest bidder. Reports that world capacity to receive LNG in import terminals is almost twice the export capacity suggests that this will be a sellers market. The US for instance plans to expand its LNG import terminals by a factor of five. Gas prices can be expected to follow the spot market with prices fluctuating on an ever-rising curve. Estimates by the BBC that UK gas prices may rise by 40% could be a serious underestimate.
The consequences
Possible shortages and or high cost of gas would have serious consequences for the UK. Gas is our largest energy source, accounting for almost 40% of total primary energy consumption. In 2006 the major share, of gas 34.8%, was taken by domestic consumers with 29.6% going to electricity generation. But UK natural gas production peaked in 2000 and the UK became a net natural gas importer by 2004; net imports in 2006 accounted for 23% of supply.
The BERR Energy Markets Outlook 2007 expects that by 2015 some 18 GWe of electrical capacity, (24% of the present total), will have closed. Against this there are plans for 14 GWe of new capacity to be built (of which only 4.5 GWe are under, or close to, construction). But almost all, 85%, of this 14 GWe new capacity is to be gas fired. Will this gas be available by 2015 and if so at what price? The cost of gas in a CCGT is the major factor in the electricity cost. And what will happen if the gap between closures and new build is not filled? |
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