nuclear-news

nuclear – an industry in financial meltdown

Is the nuclear industry in meltdown?

October 21 2009  |   Der Spiegel Politicians and electric company executives the world over are dreaming of a “nuclear renaissance”. But a spate of hitches at Olkiluoto 3, the new flagship reactor in Finland, go to show that this is not in the cards, believes Der Spiegel, whcih also doubts that modernising old nuclear power stations is a viable alternative……

not much is going according to plan at Europe’s biggest atomic building site. The customers and manufacturing companies are at loggerheads, fighting over billions in a court of arbitration. The costs are exploding (from 3 billion to 5.8), completion has been pushed back several years (from spring 2009 to 2012). But above all, critics reprove the syndicate for dangerously cutting corners. The concrete is porous, the steel cracked, and some of the construction principles are so audacious that experts from the Finnish atomic energy agency shudder at the very thought…….

the French state-owned energy group is not the only one having a hard time building new nuclear power stations. Last year, for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, not a single reactor in the world came on line. According to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2009, 52 reactors are currently “under construction” – 13 of them, however, for over 20 years now. And when 24 of them could eventually be commissioned is not even theoretically clear. What is more, 36 of the new reactors are to be built not in the safety-conscious West, but in China, India, Russia and South Korea. “Everything goes black when I consider that 16 nuclear plants are being built simultaneously in China, and all we hear is there are no problems there,” says nuclear critic Schneider…………….. Atomic energy is cheap only if old reactors remain on line for a long time and without any hitches – and if the state takes care of the unresolved question of permanent nuclear waste disposal. But is it really that simple to keep them running longer? In the past, the operational life span of a nuclear power plant was considered in the industry to be 40 years. “We have zero experience of power reactors that run for more than 40 years,” says nuclear expert Schneider…………… can the atomic industry be trusted to modernise old facilities if building a new one involves so many slip-ups as in Finland? No new reactors have been built in the Western world in over a decade. Atomic overseers regard the lack of know-how as one cause of the string of snags. And the problem is going to get worse…. http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/121101-nuclear-industry-meltdown

October 23, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, business and costs | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear spin, nuclear wastes, radioactive, uranium