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2008 Nuclear Issues v30 7 |
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Written by Nuclear Issues
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Tuesday, 01 July 2008 |
Nuclear Issues is also available as a pdf download
Welcome to the French
Good. The £13 billion take over of British Energy (BE) by Electricte de
France (EdF) looks like its is going ahead.The French government will
then be controlling a British company? Well what do you want: the
cheapest source of electricity supplying 80 percent of needs with the
rest coming mainly from hydropower plants and security of supply.
Oh! Of course, the French have had their problems and made stupid mistakes as they did when they cancelled the SuperPhenix fast reactor just as it was about to start producing large amounts of electricity. It was a superbly engineered project with German and Italian bits fitting in smoothly with the French components. But it got caught by a green political phase which wanted to pull everything down. Despite this stupidity EdF has still made a vast amount of money and can now contemplate a £13 billion price tag with relative equinimety.
It is to be hoped that the price includes the stockpile of 51 000 tons of slightly depleted uranium and the 86.5 tons of separated plutonium from reprocessing that is owned by BE. This is said to be enough to provide mixed uranium/plutonium oxide fuel (MOX) for at least three 1000 MWe reactors for the whole sixty years of their life. We can not possibly talk of throwing away such a source of energy when oil and gas prices are going through the roof.
The greens and other so called environmentalis have writen endless essays on the internet about what they call a plutonium economy. They fail to recognise that the safest place for plutonium once it has been separated is inside a nuclear reactor. When it comes out in a few years as spent MOX fuel it can be reprocessed again and the new plutonium will be ideal for use in fast reactors which it is hoped will have been re-invented by then. Either way it will still form a smaller volume of waste than it would have been originally.
What of EdF’s plans to build new plants in the UK? It is well known that they have about enough reactors themselves to meet present needs. But the UK has a desperate need to replace old plant with modern new facilities. What better than a French dsigned third generation reactor built to the same high standard as projects in Finland and one in France being built a little ahead of actual need. Please, oh please don’t allow the cracy talk of six years before we poor the first drop of concrete and another three or four years before operation to prevail. Remember what we reported last month about a six year gap between the original discovery of fission and the dropping of two different kinds of bomb. We can build something a bit faster and a lot better than that today with our powerful computers sitting on every desk.
In the meantime let us grin and bear the £200 rise in electricity prices recently announced by EdF. We have only ourselves to blame for using so much gas when it was bound to increase in price. The sooner we get onto nuclear like the French the better.
Sellafield management
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has announced that it has chosen a group called Nuclear Management Partners Ltd to manage the Sellafield complex and associated facilities for a minimum of five years and up to 17 years for £1.3 billion per year.
The Nuclear Management Partners is a consortium of URS Corporation's Washington Division, AMEC and Areva NC. They will take over from British Nuclear Fuels pic (BNFL) the running of the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) and the linked fabrication plant for mixed uranium/plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel.
It is to be hoped that they will start to sell the wonderful services they can offer and will prevent the NDA from reducing everything to a green field.
There is a growing interest in reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and recycling the plutonium and depleted uranium as fuel for use in reactors. In America, for example, where the utilities have been waiting for years for a disposal site for spent fuel it is beginning to be appreciated that reprocessing and one recycle of MOX would reduce the volume of waste to be sent eventually to the Yucca Mountain repository - if it goes ahead - by a factor of eight times. It would even be possible to reprocess the MOX fuel once or twice though by then it will probably be better to recycle as fast reactor fuel with a massive increase in efficiency.
The French company Areva, of course, knows all about this which it is doing effectively in France. We should be doing the same in this country at Sizewell B and may start if Electricite de France takes it over from British Energy. We could even recycle in our Advanced Gas Cooled Reactors (AGR) though the experts insist that there are some technical difficulties.
For the time being Thorp is at last back on line and is keen to finish off the original target of reprocessing 100 tonnes of spent fuel by August. It had previously handled a total of 61.5 tonnes before it had be shut down from April 2005 to July of last year for repair of a leaking pipe. In all Thorp had achieved 5 727 te out of the target of 7 000 te originally set in 1994 for the first ten years of operation. It has been reprocessing AGR fuel for British Energy and also fuel from a number of overseas customers. It could take on more but BNFL appear to have given up. Let us hope for more from the new operators.
The Magnox stations
In anticipation of an expected electricity shortage by 2012 we have argued that it would be sensible to keep in operation as much of the existing Magnox capacity as a possible. Only two stations of the original 10 Magnox stations , Oldbury (434 MWe) and Wylfa (980 MWe), g are still in operation but are due to be shut down by Dec 2008 and March 2010 respectively after some 40 years of service. Dungeness A (450 MWe) and Sizewell A (420 MWe) were closed in December 2006.
A BNFL report of May 2000 suggested that with the use of an uranium oxide fuel instead of the metal Magnox fuel the operating life of Oldbury and Wylfa could be extended to up to 45-50 years to keep them operating to 2013 and 2016/2021. This would seem a very sensible proposal.
But it is not clear who now owns or has responsibility for the Magnox stations. From questions posed in the House of Lords by Lord Jenkin on 27 June last year it seems that a contract had been awarded to a single company, Energy Solutions Inc of Salt Lake City, Utah, to operate and clean up the 10 Magnox sites. The contracts, signed by Magnox Electric Ltd on 6th June are for one year with an option to extend.
Energy Solutions Inc now describes itself as “a fullservice nuclear fuel cycle company that is committed to environmental protection, energy independence, and the nuclear industry.” We assume that any association with a previous company of the same name, to which BNFL sold its American nuclear clean up unit in February 2006 for £51 million, has ended. At that time Energy Solutions Inc was fiercely opposed to nuclear weapons in particular and nuclear power in general.
The 2007/2008 Annual report of the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency confirms the sale by BNFL to Energy Solutions Inc of Reactor Sites Management Company Ltd, the parent body of Magnox Electric Limited. There is then the question of the income earned by the two remaining Magnox stations, Oldbury and Wylfa. Confusingly the NDA annual report gives two different figures for this. One specifically refers to the SLC income of Magnox Electrcity as £280 million.
Does this go to Energy Solutions Inc which has bought Magnox Eectric or does it remain with the NDA? But then in listing its commercial activities the NDA reports an income of £469 million from the generation of 11.624 TWh of electricity - but does the NDA have any other electricity generation plant than the Magnox stations? Whatever the answer it is certain that this 11 TWh could be an invaluable resource at a time of future shortage.
Yucca Mountain license application
June 3 was an important date for the US nuclear industry. On that day the Department of Energy submitted a license application for the Yucca Mountain repository. This is the culmination of twenty years work. Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has 90 days for a preliminary review to check the completeness - with 8 600 pages in 17 volumes with 200 key supporting documents it would be difficult to be incomplete but you never know - then they are committed within three to four years to issue a decision on the license. That means that construction of the facility could begin in 2011-12 and the repository could be operating by 2020 provided that the Congress commits the necessary funding - something of a potential problem.
The repository is designed with a capacity of 70 000 tonnes of spent fuel or high level radioactive waste. At present it looks like it will be mostly spent fuel but we need a big campaign to try to persuade US utilities that recycle of “waste” after reprocessing and fabrication of mixed uranium/plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel. At the moment they don’t think it makes economic sense but they will soon be facing competition and rising prices of fresh uranium and enrichment and if they take a responsible look at world energy resources they must agree that recycling as carried out in Europe and Japan makes sense. It would mean at least an eight times reduction in the volume of waste to be sent to the repository.
Of course the US utilities have had a bit of a hard time over their waste. The DOE was originally promising to take all their spent fuel by January 31, 1998. For this they paid one mil per kilowatt hour of electricity that they produced to the DOE. When the DOE failed to keep their promise the utilities were forced to make temporary storage arrangements at their nuclear sites.
This has been no great problem for them and today spent fuel is stored in transport/storage flasks standing in odd corners of some 121 sites. They have naturally demanded compensation for the cost of doing this from the DOE and to date have already won $600 million in lawsuits. The DOE anticipates that they will have to pay out billions more.
The Yucca Mountain site is an excellent location in the side of an arid mountain range in a deserted part of Nevada. But it still faces strong opposition from people in Nevada and from environmental protest groups. At the political level too there are quite divided view. The prospective candidates for President, for example, have divided views. Republican, John McCain, is in favour but the Democrat, Barack Obama, says the project has run out of time and that they should start exploring new alternatives - though he does not say how long that might take.
We wish them good luck because having a repository - though not as pressing as most people suggest - would ease the case for a long overdue nuclear renaissance.
Back to coal?
The dash for gas, credited with the short-lived reduction in UK carbon dioxide emissions, is coming to an end.
Faced with sharply increasing prices and doubts about availability of gas supply, coal is making a come back and is vying with gas as the major power station fuel. A number of electricity companies are seeking planning permission to replace some of their older coal stations, due to be closed down, with larger new stations. First in line is an application by E.ON for a 2 000 MWe station at Kingsnorth in Kent.(to replace an older station on the same site which is due to be closed). This is being strongly opposed by ‘green activists’ who, rightly, claim that with this as a forerunner of a new generation of coal stations the aim for a 60 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 would be unattainable.
Although the Government has abdicated power to make any positive action in securing energy supply it could have the negative power of granting or refusing planning permission for proposals put forward by the industry. But it seems almost certain that permission for Kingsnorth, and probable successors, will be granted as an alternative or complement to new gas fired stations in filling the generation gap and avoiding the widespread power cuts that would be expected by 2012 -2015, before any new nuclear stations could come on line by around 2017-2020. But having built these stations the companies would wish to operate them for an expected lifetime of up to 30 years or more. And the costs of building these stations could also limit the ability of these companies to make the even heavier initial investment in the new nuclear stations that will be required if the UK is to make any serious attempt to meet its carbon emission targets. A return to coal could delay the start of a serious new nuclear programme by 10 or more years.
There are suggestions that Government permission for Kingsnorth could be conditional on the station being required to adopt carbon capture and storage when (and if) the technology becomes available. A brief reflection indicates the huge problems that would arise. A 2 000 MWe coal station would produce some 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, (800 gms/ kWh, 6 000 hours /year) almost 2% of the UK present total annual emissions. This would have to be transported away from the station to a safe, permanent sequestration site capable of holding the 300 million tonnes of gas produced over a 30 year operating life.
Where can such a site be found? How would the gas be sent there? The cost of a big gas pipeline could be up to £1 million per km. And Kingsnorth could be the forerunner of a number of further stations.
The Government view is that “coal is and will continue to be, in our judgement, a vital part of the UK’s energy mix, essential for providing us with secure and reliable energy supplies”. Some reports suggest that the generating companies are considering as many as six or seven new coal-fired power stations in the UK by 2015. The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee in their ninth report is highly critical of the progress towards developing carbon capture and storage and has warned that unless the Government is able to show there is sufficient storage capacity there must be some question about the long-term viability of CCS.
“The possibility of CCS should not be used as a fig leaf to give unabated coal-fired power stations an appearance of environmental acceptability.” And the Committee, in its recommendations, supported a proposal put forward by the Royal Society that planning permission is only granted to new coal-fired power stations on condition that operating permits would be withdrawn if the plant failed to capture 90% of its carbon emissions by 2020. This underlines the confusion. Few believe that even a demonstration plant will be in operation before 2015 and the Government itself admits that with the uncertainty around the costs, technical requirements and risks associated with CCS it was unlikely that CCS would be widely deployable before 2020.
But now the future of coal itself is also coming into question. It is unrealistic to expect that the domestic coal industry having been closed down can be brought back to life. The UK will then be increasingly reliant on coal imports, already over 80% of consumption, (much from Russia) at ever-higher prices; some reports suggest that the price of coal may double this year with an increasing world demand. We will then be rerunning the problems now experienced with natural gas – everhigher prices and an over-dependence on uncertain imports.
The Government is in a difficult position. They can argue that without new coal stations widespread electricity cuts must be expected by 2012-2015. But before granting permission for Kingsnorth there are other short-term alternatives to cover the period before the new nuclear plants can come on line. These could include negotiating a 5 to 10 year exemption from the EU Large Combustion Plants Directive (to counter the earlier concerns of acid rain, not climate change) that requires a the closure of the more polluting coal stations; or alternatively the Government could require or persuade the power companies that at least six of those plants - Ferrybridge (SSE) 1 000 MWe; Didcot A (RWE nPower) 2 000 MWe; Tilbury (RWE npower) 1 520 MWe; Kingsnorth (E.ON) 2 000 MWe; Ironbridge (E.ON) 1 000 MWe; Cockenzie (Scottish Power) 1 152 MWe with a total capcity of 8 672 MWe plants - due to close should now be fitted with the sulphur and nitrogen oxide filters to enable them to continue in operation. The Magnox and AGR closure programmes should be reviewed with the possibility of restarting those stations which have been recently shut down and keeping those still operating in service for as long as safety permits. In addition if the takeover of British Energy by EDF goes ahead the company should be authorised to build a replica (not a one-off LHD British version) of Flammanville at the Dungeness site on this side of the Channel without further delay; it could be in operation by 2015. Further cable connections across the Channel or to Scandinavia should also be considered.
Any long-term solution to this countries energy problems must depend on nuclear power for a secure, carbon free, electricity supply with low and stable costs.
A revival of coal would only increase the dependence on more expensive, carbon emitting fossil fuels and leave us over-exposed to the uncertainties and high costs of wind and other renewables.
Rationing Electricity
The Government expects that by 2015 some 18 GWe of electrical capacity, (24% of the present total) will have closed, but it insists that the replacement of this plant as well as the additional plant needed to meet rising electricity demand is entirely a matter for the industry.
Control of a vital energy source, on which our economy and society depend, has been ceded to “the market”.
This leaves the possibility, as the Government itself recognises, that “market participants may not be able to respond by developing and commissioning new power stations in a timely fashion.” The Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks has also given a “cautious estimate” that he does not expect new nuclear stations to come into operation before 2020. But in that event it is the government and not the industry which would be blamed for the shortages that would occur. With the probability of widespread power cuts between 2012 and 2020 some system of electricity rationing will be required to ensure the least interruption to priority users.
The possibility of rationing was implied in the BBC radio programme “You and Yours” on 20th June which claimed that London is already suffering from a “chronic electricity shortage”. This was based on the experience of a number of London-based internet companies operating Data Centres used to store the rapidly growing traffic in internet transactions. This requires a growing electricity demand to operate and cool large banks of computers. These companies claim that EDF has told them that it is not able to supply their increasing needs as priority is being given to the demands for electric power arising from the preparations for the 2012 Olympic games – the Olympics must come first. As a consequence a number of Data Centres are considering relocating out of London or even moving to Amsterdam or Paris. EDF deny that this need be the case provided the Data Centres give sufficient advance warning of their increasing needs. It was suggested that the problem may not be in the generation of electricity but in its distribution. More substations may be needed.
Whatever the cause this episode underlines the need to plan sensibly for the possibility that severe and widespread power cuts will occur from 2012 onwards.
The BBC report suggests that the Government has already intervened to seek priority for the Olympics.
Whether this is the best use for a restricted electricity supply could be questioned. The competing demands of industry, services, transport and the domestic sector need to be carefully assessed.
If these problems are arising now how much worse will they become in 4 to 8 years time? There seems little that the Government can or will be able do to remedy the situation. It places great store on its proposal to “allow” companies to build up to 25 GWe of offshore wind by 2020, but at the same time admits that a target of a 10-fold increase in renewable generation over the next twelve years is unlikely to be met. A seven-fold increase is recognized as more realistic. But it is accepted that this would cost the consumers £100 billion over the next ten years. Given that the price of electricity and gas has doubled over the past twelve months, and that these increases are only likely to continue to rise, there could be a consumer revolt against the imposition of an additional £100 billion onto the cost of electricity - for an unpredictable and intermittent supply which can be delivered for only between 20-30% of the time.
The growing recognition way in which the costs of wind are passed onto the consumer has now been featured in Private Eye (no1214, 11-24th July). This claims that a 2 MWe wind turbine, up to 350 ft high, which because the variability of wind can only generate for about a quarter of the time, will earn its owner some £450 000 a year. At current prices £230 000 of this comes from selling electricity to the Grid, but the developer also receives a further £218 000 from the Government renewables obligation which is extracted from the rest of us in our electricity bills. Yet as the Eye points out the 2000 wind turbines built in Britain last year generated between them less electricity than a single gas-fired power plant and much less than a nuclear power station, while the 7000 additional turbines (including those offshore) which the Government will allow developers to build with our subsidy will produce much less electricity than Drax coal-fired station.
With doubts about the cost and availability of future gas imports, which could hamper present intentions to rely on new gas-fired plant to fill the capacity gap, the Government is also prepared to allow an expansion of coal-fired generation. This will inevitably increase emissions of carbon dioxide. The technology and cost of carbon capture and storage has yet to be developed and proven on an industrial scale and could .be unacceptable.
Electricity rationing to minimise the effects of blackouts, perhaps from 2010 onwards, now looks unavoidable, with near disastrous consequences for industry, services and households. All we can do is to advance with urgency the construction of new nuclear plants in the expectation that they will provide a secure, low cost and carbon-free source of electricity – but as yet the Government seems blissfully unaware of the consequences of their inaction – apart from allowing the power companies to build more coal –fired stations. |
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