2015 August 20 « nuclear-news

Nuclear power – a very bad plan for South Africa

Why SA mustn’t go nuclear August 19 2015 IOL Business Report
By Vladimir Slivyak Russia – According to Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson, the South African government has entered into a nuclear energy procurement process likely to be completed as early as 2016. So far, South Africa has signed Intergovernmental Framework Agreements on nuclear co-operation with Russia, France, China, South Korea and the US.

The agreement with Russia is very advanced compared to the others. This leads to the assumption that the procurement process will result in risky Russian reactors with a total capacity of 9.6 GW.

The risk of nuclear power to South Africa comes from the high costs of nuclear construction. It also comes with decommissioning nuclear plants, and safety concerns regarding the Russian nuclear industry.

Nuclear energy is expensive

Today, a 1 000 MWt reactor costs at least $6 billion. But the real question is, does nuclear technology produce cheap electricity? Two recent South African studies have found that nuclear generated electricity will be more expensive than the electricity generated by new coal plants, solar photovoltaic panels and wind.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research projects the levelised cost of electricity from nuclear power to be R1/kWh, R0.80/kWh from new coal, R0.80/kWh from solar photo voltaic, and R0.60/kWh from wind in today’s prices.

Analysis by another South African institute also projects that the levelised cost of nuclear energy to be higher than most other technologies. Both studies are inclusive of capital‚ finance‚ maintenance and fuel costs.

As the projected costs of electricity reveal, committing to a nuclear future now is senseless. A report by a Swiss-based banking firm claimed: “We believe solar will eventually replace nuclear and coal, and be established as the default technology of the future to generate and supply electricity.”

Africa joins the renewable revolution…….

The future doesn’t look good for nuclear

Despite the nuclear industry’s enormous state funding and political support, the contribution of nuclear to the world’s primary energy production has dropped from 8% in 2000 to around 4.4% in 2014………

Accidents are a very real threat

Russia and the previous Soviet Union has experienced many problems as a consequence of nuclear power development……..

It is not only Russian nuclear industry which had terrible nuclear accidents. Reactors were melting in Fukushima in Japan; Three Mile Island in the US; Sellafield in the UK. There are dozens of smaller but still very dangerous events. But Russian industry definitely occupies one of the top places in this list.

From this, it is no surprise that when the agreement was signed between South Africa and Russia, this clause was included:

In the case of a nuclear accident, South Africa will accept all of the liability.

Russian nuclear federation Rosatom has launched a large public relations campaign in South Africa with the intention of convincing the public that nuclear power is the solution to the electricity crisis. Rosatom’s campaign makes use of several well-known nuclear lobbyists and deliberately misrepresents key information, such as the real cost of nuclear power and the status of the global nuclear industry.

The Nkandla scandal is a drop in the ocean compared with the pending Russian nuclear deal. South African civil society must take a stand now towards the future it wants before it is too late.

Vladimir Slivyak is a senior lecturer of Environmental Policy at the Russian National Research University’s Higher School of Economics…..http://www.iol.co.za/business/opinion/why-sa-mustn-t-go-nuclear-1.1902495#.VdT7EbKqpHw.

August 20, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | general | Leave a comment

Canada’s radioactive trash dump plan, all too close to USA border

Canada Might Start Dumping Nuclear Waste Near the US Border, VICE, By Arthur White August 19, 2015 A Canadian plan to build an underground nuclear waste dump less than a mile from Lake Huron is getting unfriendly attention from US lawmakers, who are trying to force the Obama administration to invoke a 106-year-old treaty against its northern neighbor.

Though a Canadian review panel declared that the proposed Deep Geologic Repository will have “no significant adverse effects on the Great Lakes,” opponents wonder why a site so close to the world’s largest freshwater system was chosen. One environmental group even warned that the project could give terrorists the opportunity to steal radioactive materials and blow up a “dirty bomb” in downtown Toronto.

The project would bury 7 million cubic feet worth of low and intermediate level nuclear waste — including contaminated mop heads, paper towels, floor sweepings, but also filters and reactor components — 2,230 feet underground. Ontario Power Generation, which operates two nuclear power plants in Canada’s most populous province, has chosen a site just north of the lakefront town of Kincardine, after getting approval from the municipality.

The power company claims that the site is “ideal” for containing the waste, which will lay ensconced in limestone under a 660-foot layer of shale, a boundary they call “impermeable.” The risk from earthquakes is low, they say, and the rock formations have been stable for millions of years.

Data from a government earthquake database reveal that over the past 10 years there have been about a half dozen earthquakes roughly 20 miles north of the site. At less than 2 on the Richter scale, all of those tremors were extremely weak. The most powerful quake in the region, which hit 4.3 on the scale, was about 50 miles away.

This March, a review panel recommended that the government approve the dump, claiming that the health risks to people living around the lakes are “virtually zero………

That report was sent to Canada’s environment minister, who is expected to announce a decision in early December.

But many challenge the panel’s impartiality, with the Sierra Club Canada saying it’s stacked with ex-nuclear industry officials, and the Canadian Environmental Law Agency (CELA) calling its report biased, incomplete, and “fundamentally flawed.”

“The members of the panel support nuclear power from the outset,” the Sierra Club’s program director, John Bennett, told VICE News. “They’ve never not approved a project.”

CELA blasted the panel and the power company for only considering a “hypothetical” alternative to the DGR plan, without looking at a single other real-world site to bury the waste………https://news.vice.com/article/canada-might-start-dumping-nuclear-waste-near-the-us-border

August 20, 2015 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment