UK confusion over nuclear future

“….If they closed, that huge decommissioning liability would have to be shown on the nuclear generator’s balance sheet − figures that would soon overtake the net worth of the company, thus making it technically bankrupt….”

By Paul Brown

http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2013/09/uk-confusion-over-nuclear-future/

 It’s the nuclear closure programme that never was. The UK government insists it needs new nuclear power stations urgently built to replace ageing installations − and yet its safety watchdog is granting lengthy extensions that could see old ones continue for decades

LONDON, 9 September − The UK Government has been telling its parliament and the public that because eight large nuclear stations are scheduled to close over the next 10 years, the country needs urgently to build some new ones to keep the nation’s lights on.

Yet EDF, the French state-owned company that bought the eight nuclear stations in 2009 for £12.5 billion, has no intention of closing any of them.

A Government spokesman denied that its statements were misleading and explained the apparent contradiction by saying that if the stations did not pass their periodic safety reviews then they would have to close.

However, there is no reason to believe they will fail safety tests.  The state safety watchdog, the Office for Nuclear Regulation, told Climate News Network that keeping them open is fine by them.

The stations are constantly monitored, and periodically have major safety reviews. As long as they remain safe, they can remain in operation, provided EDF wants them to. It is a commercial decision, the watchdog says.

“Britain will be getting almost half its electricity from
nuclear power − something it has never told parliament”

This strange situation means that if the Government is successful in its policy of building eight new large nuclear stations, Britain will be getting almost half its electricity from nuclear power − something it has never told parliament or discussed as part of its energy policy.

Currently, EDF’s existing nuclear stations produce nearly 20% of the country’s electricity.  Until earlier this year, according to the Government, two of them would be closing in 2016: Hinkley Point B in Somerset, England, and Hunterston B in north Ayrshire, Scotland, both of which came into operation in 1976.

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September 10, 2013 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nuclear Energy Survives Only on the Basis of Faulty Risk Assessment

Posted: 09/09/2013 9:35 am

Jeff Schweitzer

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-schweitzer/nuclear-energy-survives-o_b_3882434.html

Nuclear power survives on empty promises and false hopes fed by our inability to effectively evaluate risk. We are lulled by long periods of stability and safe operation, and then seem shocked in the face of catastrophe that could have and should have been anticipated. If the costs of just one major disaster were embedded in the price of electricity, the industry would not be even close to economically viable; only massive taxpayer subsidies keep nuclear power alive.

The costs of sustaining nuclear power are too great for society to bear; so why is it still with us? Beyond the obvious, such as effective lobbying, nuclear plants are still online today because society is extraordinarily weak in its ability to assess and manage risks that have a low probability of happening (or that may occur in the distant future), but have catastrophic impact when they do.

The human brain is a marvel of nature, giving us astonishing capabilities while consuming the energy equivalent of nothing more than a 100 watt bulb. This incredible efficiency in computing power is achieved in part because the brain excels at taking shortcuts.

We assume certain aspects of our environment to avoid wasting metabolic energy or time on unnecessary calculations or attention. For example we are very good at perceiving motion, but tend to ignore things at rest. Our assumptions about the physical world are generally a good approximation of nature and serve us well (better in the short-term than out further in time), but they are not perfect; optical illusions exploit our perceptual flaws.

With our innate assumptions about how nature works, we excel at assigning cause to effect as we interact with our environment. We learn quickly that putting our hand in a flame hurts or that eating rotten fruit makes us sick. So too is the human brain extraordinarily adept at posing questions about the natural world; our curiosity leads to innovation and enhanced chances for survival.

The flipside is that we abhor the concept of leaving any questions unanswered. We are unable to turn off this instinct to see patterns and to discern effect from cause when confronted with the unknown. We demand that there be a pattern, that there be cause and effect, and that there be an answer, even when none exist. Generally, this is harmless, like seeing animal shapes in clouds or concluding that your thoughts of grandma caused her to call you.

Unfortunately, our perceptual shortcuts and flawed perception are not always so benign. As amazing as our gray matter may be, we are simply not wired well to evaluate anything but the most immediate risks from the most obvious threats. With our hard-wired assumptions about our physical world, humans are particularly bad at assessing and managing low-chance-high-consequence risks.

The most obvious example is an asteroid hit, but this small-chance-big-impact can come too in less dramatic form: pandemic flu, 100-year flood, the emergence of bacteria resistant to all known antibiotics, or a chemical weapons terrorist attack in a big city. We tend to ignore or dismiss these “outliers” in our short- and long-term planning; and that can and has led to catastrophes.

Nowhere is our poor ability to address low-probability-high-impact events more evident than in society’s approach to nuclear power. Operators of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was severely damaged the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, initially received a $12.8 billion bailout from the government to help contain the disaster.

Japan announced this week an additional $500 million to further stabilize the continuing contamination. We are witnessing acts of desperation: building a “frozen wall” underground to prevent a flood of groundwater from contacting the contaminated buildings. This has never been tried on such a vast scale or for the decades needed here, and the scheme requires electricity to work; a problem given the number of blackouts suffered by the power plant.

We just learned that 300 tons of water contaminated with radioactive strontium drained into the sea from a faulty tank. There are now 430,000 tons of contaminated water being held at the site, increasing at rate of 400 tons per day.

None of these infrastructure problems cover the tremendous human and economic costs of forced evacuations of more than 160,000 people; the equivalent of a small city evacuated, never to be occupied again, with land permanently lost to high levels of radiation. Imagine abandoning forever Madison, WI, or Akron, OH, because of radiation contamination.

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September 10, 2013 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Entergy seeks bill increase to pay for nuclear plant repairs

About 700,000 Entergy customers from the New Orleans suburbs to the Arkansas line already are paying to repair the Waterford 3 nuclear plant that has only 11 years left on its license.

Since January, Entergy Louisiana’s typical residential customers — who buy about 1,400 kilowatt hours of electricity monthly — have been paying $5.81 more each month for the nuclear plant repairs, according to the company’s calculations.

The repair is roughly the cost of building a brand-new generating plant that uses natural gas as fuel and would last another half century, said Casey DeMoss Roberts, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy. The Alliance is a New Orleans-based group that advocates on behalf of residential and small-business customers of big utility companies.

“Do we want to invest that much money into about a 30-year-old nuclear power plant, or should we retire the plant and invest that into a new natural gas or some other new generation source?” Roberts asked.

It’s like replacing the engine in an old car. The engine works well, but the electrical system and the other mechanicals are antiquated. “What else has rusted? What else needs to be updated? We’re locking into increased spending on this plant for decades,” Roberts said.

Waterford 3 is licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate until Dec. 18, 2024.

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September 10, 2013 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Uranium Production Cost Study – 2013 – VERY DIRE!!

“….one of the challenges will be for the supply side of the industry to expand and bring new production to a market still recovering……”

Pinning Down Production Costs

http://www.uxc.com/products/rpt_upcs.aspx

Given the move toward cleaner energy, reduced carbon emissions, and more secure long-term energy sources, uranium supply is becoming more important to utilities worldwide. Currently, in our post-Fukushima demand case, uranium demand is still projected to nearly double by 2030, mainly due to increased demand from Southeast Asia – China in particular.

With the U.S.-Russia HEU Agreement coming to an end this year, resulting in the elimination of 24 million pounds U3O8 per year from the market, and other secondary supplies and mine reserves being depleted, there is much greater emphasis on primary production today than ever before. It has only been until recently that uranium exploration has experienced a revival, but even this is being threatened in the post-Fukushima environment as many suppliers now find it much more difficult to obtain the required financing to bring new projects into production.

As a result, the current menu of worldwide projects is not all that exhaustive due to the fact that most of the recent exploration has been on brownfield sites that were discovered 20, 30, or even 40 years ago.

Although uranium resources are extensive, the vast majority of these are neither delineated nor developed.

As the nuclear industry transforms itself into a safer and robust industry, one of the challenges will be for the supply side of the industry to expand and bring new production to a market still recovering.

September 10, 2013 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments

World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013

http://www.greens-efa.eu/world-nuclear-industry-status-report-2013-10346.html

The Report sets forth in painstaking detail the actual experience and achievements of nuclear energy around the world”, writes Peter Bradford, former Commissioner of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in his foreword to the 140-page reference document. In addition to the careful assessment of the global industry, this year’s report also contains chapters on nuclear economics and an overview of the status of the ongoing Fukushima crisis.

Key findings of the 2013 edition include:

• A record drop of nuclear electricity generation in the world in 2012.
• Rapid aging of nuclear power plants: almost half of the world fleet has operated for at least 30 years.
• In 2012, for the first time, China, Germany, India and Japan generated more power from renewables than from nuclear plants.
• Water management at the Fukushima site is critical, with an estimated 400,000 tons in precarious storage, containing many times more radioactivity than was released to the air in the weeks after 11 March 2011.

• Have a look on the website report www.WorldNuclearReport.org, where a high resolution version of the report can be found.

September 10, 2013 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment