Small nuclear reactors for military use would be too dangerous – excellent targets for the enemy
In normal operation, they release potentially hazardous quantities of fission products that would be widely distributed by any penetration of the reactor vessel. More worryingly, the resiliency of tri-structural isotropic particles to kinetic impact is questionable: The silicon carbide coating around the fuel material is brittle and may fracture if impacted by munitions.
Further, graphite moderator material, which is used extensively in most mobile power plant cores, is vulnerable to oxidation when exposed to air or water at high temperatures, creating the possibility of a catastrophic graphite fire distributing radioactive ash. Even in the case of intact (non-leaking) fuel fragments being distributed by a strike, the radiological consequences for readiness and effectiveness are dire.
Given these vulnerabilities, sophisticated adversaries seeking to hinder U.S. forces are likely to realize the utility of the reactor as an area-denial target…….. , a reactor strike offers months of exclusion at the cost of only a few well-placed high-explosive warheads, a capability well within reach of even regional adversaries
Even an unsuccessful or minimally damaging attack on a reactor could offer an adversary significant benefits…………..placing these reactors in combat zones introduces nuclear reactors as valid military targets,
MOBILE NUCLEAR POWER REACTORS WON’T SOLVE THE ARMY’S ENERGY PROBLEMS, War on the Rocks, 14 Dec 21, JAKE HECLA ”………… As China and Russia develop microreactors for propulsion, the U.S. Army is pursuing the ultimate in self-sufficient energy solutions: the capability to field mobile nuclear power plants. In this vision of a nuclearized future, the Army will replace diesel generator banks with microreactors the size of shipping containers for electricity production by the mid-2020s.
……. the question is whether or not reactors can truly be made suitable for military use. Are they an energy panacea, or will they prove to be high-value targets capable of crippling entire bases with a single strike?
nuclear power program is confidently sprinting into uncharted territory in pursuit of a solution to its growing energy needs and has promised to put power on the grid within three years. However, the Army has not fielded a reactor since the 1960s and has made claims of safety and accident tolerance that contradict a half-century of nuclear industry experience.
The Army appears set to credulously accept industry claims of complete safety that are founded in wishful thinking and characterized by willful circumvention of basic design safety principles………..
Dr Jim Green dissects the hype surrounding Small ”Modular” Nuclear Reactors
Nuclear power’s economic failure, Ecologist, Dr Jim Green, 13th December 2021 Small modular reactors
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are heavily promoted but construction projects are few and far between and have exhibited disastrous cost overruns and multi-year delays.
It should be noted that none of the projects discussed below meet the ‘modular’ definition of serial factory production of reactor components, which could potentially drive down costs.
Using that definition, no SMRs have ever been built and no country, company or utility is building the infrastructure for SMR construction.
In 2004, when the CAREM SMR in Argentina was in the planning stage, Argentina’s Bariloche Atomic Center estimated a cost of US$1 billion / GW for an integrated 300 MW plant (while acknowledging that to achieve such a cost would be a “very difficult task”).
Now, the cost estimate for the CAREM reactor is a mind-boggling US$23.4 billion / GW (US$750 million / 32 MW). That’s a truckload of money for a reactor with the capacity of two large wind turbines. The project is seven years behind schedule and costs will likely increase further.
Russia’s floating plant
Russia’s floating nuclear power plant (with two 35 MW reactors) is said to be the only operating SMR anywhere in the world (although it doesn’t fit the ‘modular’ definition of serial factory production).
The construction cost increased six-fold from 6 billion rubles to 37 billion rubles (US$502 million).
According to the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency, electricity produced by the Russian floating plant costs an estimated US$200 / MWh, with the high cost due to large staffing requirements, high fuel costs, and resources required to maintain the barge and coastal infrastructure.
The cost of electricity produced by the Russian plant exceeds costs from large reactors (US$131-204) even though SMRs are being promoted as the solution to the exorbitant costs of large nuclear plants.
Climate solution?
SMRs are being promoted as important potential contributors to climate change abatement but the primary purpose of the Russian plant is to power fossil fuel mining operations in the Arctic.
A 2016 report said that the estimated construction cost of China’s demonstration 210 MW high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) is about US$5 billion / GW, about twice the initial cost estimates, and that cost increases have arisen from higher material and component costs, increases in labour costs, and project delays.
The World Nuclear Association states that the cost is US$6 billion / GW.
Those figures are 2-3 times higher than the US$2 billion / GW estimate in a 2009 paper by Tsinghua University researchers.
China reportedly plans to upscale the HTGR design to 655 MW but the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology at Tsinghua University expects the cost of a 655 MW HTGR will be 15-20 percent higher than the cost of a conventional 600 MW pressurised water reactor.
HTGR plans dropped
NucNet reported in 2020 that China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp dropped plans to manufacture 20 HTGR units after levelised cost of electricity estimates rose to levels higher than a conventional pressurised water reactor such as China’s indigenous Hualong One.
Likewise, the World Nuclear Association states that plans for 18 additional HTGRs at the same site as the demonstration plant have been “dropped”.
In addition to the CAREM reactor in Argentina and the HTGR in China, the World Nuclear Association lists just two other SMR construction projects.
In July 2021, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) New Energy Corporation began construction of the 125 MW pressurised water reactor ACP100.
According to CNNC, construction costs per kilowatt will be twice the cost of large reactors, and the levelised cost of electricity will be 50 percent higher than large reactors.
Fast reactor
In June 2021, construction of the 300 MW demonstration lead-cooled BREST fast reactor began in Russia.
In 2012, the estimated cost for the reactor and associated facilities was 42 billion rubles; now, the estimate is 100 billion rubles (US$1.36 billion).
Much more could be said about the proliferation of SMRs in the ‘planning’ stage, and the accompanying hype.
For example a recent review asserts that more than 30 demonstrations of different ‘advanced’ reactor designs are in progress across the globe.
In fact, few have progressed beyond the planning stage, and few will. Private-sector funding has been scant and taxpayer funding has generally been well short of that required for SMR construction projects to proceed.
Subsidies
Large taxpayer subsidies might get some projects, such as the NuScale project in the US or the Rolls-Royce mid-sized reactor project in the UK, to the construction stage.
Or they may join the growing list of abandoned SMR projects:
* The French government abandoned the planned 100-200 MW ASTRID demonstration fast reactor in 2019.
* Babcock & Wilcox abandoned its Generation mPower SMR project in the US despite receiving government funding of US$111 million.
* Transatomic Power gave up on its molten salt reactor R&D in 2018.
* MidAmerican Energy gave up on its plans for SMRs in Iowa in 2013 after failing to secure legislation that would require rate-payers to partially fund construction costs.
* TerraPower abandoned its plan for a prototype fast neutron reactor in China due to restrictions placed on nuclear trade with China by the Trump administration.
* The UK government abandoned consideration of ‘integral fast reactors’ for plutonium disposition in 2019 and the US government did the same in 2015.
Hype
So we have a history of failed small reactor projects.
And a handful of recent construction projects, most subject to major cost overruns and multi-year delays.
And the possibility of a small number of SMR construction projects over the next decade.
Clearly the hype surrounding SMRs lacks justification.
Moreover, there are disturbing, multifaceted connections between SMR projects and nuclear weapons proliferation, and between SMRs and fossil fuel mining.
Hype cycle
Dr Mark Cooper connects the current SMR hype to the hype surrounding the ‘nuclear renaissance’ in the late 2000s:
“The vendors and academic institutions that were among the most avid enthusiasts in propagating the early, extremely optimistic cost estimates of the “nuclear renaissance” are the same entities now producing extremely optimistic cost estimates for the next nuclear technology. We are now in the midst of the SMR hype cycle.
* Vendors produce low-cost estimates.
* Advocates offer theoretical explanations as to why the new nuclear technology will be cost competitive.
* Government authorities then bless the estimates by funding studies from friendly academics.” ………………. https://theecologist.org/2021/dec/13/nuclear-powers-economic-failure
Radionuclides found from Hinkley nuclear mud Bristol Channel Citizens Radiation Survey .
Radionuclides found…! Bristol Channel Citizens Radiation Survey, Tim Deere-Jones, Stop Hinkley C. A new survey has concluded the spread of man-made radioactivity from reactor discharges into the Bristol Channel is far more extensive and widespread than previously reported.
The research has also detected a high concentration of radioactivity in Splott Bay, which could be linked to the controversial dumping of dredged waste off the Cardiff coast in 2018.The survey was undertaken over the summer by groups from both sides of the Bristol Channel after EDF Energy refused to carry
out pre-dumping surveys of the Cardiff Grounds and Portishead sea dump sites where they have disposed of waste from the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant.
The survey found that shoreline concentrations of two radio nuclides (Caesium 137 and Americium 241)
typical of the effluents from the Hinkley reactors and indicators of the presence of Plutonium 239/240 and 241, do not decline significantly with distance from the Hinkley site as Government and Industry surveys had previously reportedOverall, the study found significant concentrations of Hinkley derived radioactivity in samples from all 11 sites, seven along the Somerset coast and four in south Wales and found unexpectedly high concentrations in sediments from Bristol Docks, the tidal River Avon, the
Portishead shoreline, Burnham-on-Sea and Woodspring Bay.
Public Enquiry 11th Dec 2021
Research finds ‘significant concentrations’ of radioactivity in
samples taken from across the Somerset and south Wales coast. Nation Cymru 9th Dec 2021
‘The Catalog of Nuclear Death’: The U.S.’s Hair Raising Plan to Obliterate Russia
‘The Catalog of Nuclear Death’: The U.S.’s Hair Raising Plan to Obliterate Russia, The U.S. Air Force’s titled 1956 Atomic Weapons Requirement Study outlined all the targets it planned to hit if World War III broke out and how many bombers and nuclear weapons it would need to get the job done. In short, the report is a catalog of nuclear death. The National Interest, by WarIsBoring 10 Dec 21, Here’s What You Need to Know: The Air Force’s 1956 Atomic Weapons Requirement Study detailed the U.S.’s nuclear plan to attack Russia if the need should ever arrive.
In one scene from Stanley Kubrick’s iconic Cold War film Dr. Strangelove, an irate president Merkin Muffley refuses to get on board with a massive nuclear attack already in progress. Played by Peter Sellers, Muffley is trying to decide what to do after a rogue U.S. Air Force general sends his planes to bomb the Soviet Union.
“You’re talking about mass murder, general, not war!” Muffley angrily tells George C. Scott’s Gen. Turgidson, after the officer suggests the impending strikes could actually work. “Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed,” Turgidson quips.
“But I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed … tops,” the general stammers. “Uh, depending on the breaks.”
Released to a public faced with the ever present threat of nuclear annihilation in 1964, Kubrick probably had no idea just how close he was to the truth. Eight years earlier, the Air Force put together a report detailing how to obliterate the Soviet Union, China and their allies.
The National Security Archive at George Washington University obtained the document through a Mandatory Declassification Review and released it online on Dec. 22, 2015.
The flying branch’s blandly titled 1956 Atomic Weapons Requirement Study outlined all the targets it planned to hit if World War III broke out and how many bombers and nuclear weapons it would need to get the job done. Over the course of more than 800 pages, intelligence analysts identified more than 2,000 potential “designated ground zeroes” in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, including both military bases and cities.
“The SAC study includes chilling details,” William Burr, a nuclear researcher and analyst at the National Security Archive, wrote along with the release. “According to its authors, their target priorities and nuclear bombing tactics would expose nearby civilians and ‘friendly forces and people’ to high levels of deadly radioactive fallout.”
In short, the report is a catalog of nuclear death.
In 1956, Washington no longer had a monopoly on atomic bombs, but appeared to be winning the nuclear arms race. While Moscow had set off its first atomic weapon seven years before, the Pentagon had already started fielding even more powerful thermonuclear hydrogen bombs.
With long-range ballistic missiles still in development, the Air Force relied on a fleet of lumbering bombers and faster fighters to lob the nuclear arsenal in any actual war. The attack would come from warplanes armed with free-fall bombs or from early cruise missiles like the much maligned Snark………………
Those targets or target complexes that do not have a direct bearing on the destruction of SovBloc air power objective are part of the systematic destruction objective,” the authors explained. “The importance of the latter is not minimized.”
H-bombs would be reserved for important military targets, like air bases. American planes would drop atomic bombs on the rest……
The report includes a five-page key to every single category that might appear in the voluminous lists of bombing targets. It includes country codes for various facilities in all eight members of the Warsaw Pact. Depending on the type of target, three digit identifiers for Communist China, North Korea, North Vietnam and pre-Shah Iran might also be present.
Every single entry has a special eight-number code corresponding to an entry in a master “bombing encyclopedia.” The first four digits indicate a general zone, while the last four digits indicate the particular site or collection of sites within that particular area. This recording method theoretically allows for up to 9,999 individual targets within a given space.
The analysts clearly tried to pick out anything and everything that might have any effect on the war effort, from facilities producing cutting tools to rubber tires to the antibiotic streptomycin. Most notably, the Air Force defined “275” as the code for “population.”
Every single entry has a special eight-number code corresponding to an entry in a master “bombing encyclopedia.” The first four digits indicate a general zone, while the last four digits indicate the particular site or collection of sites within that particular area. This recording method theoretically allows for up to 9,999 individual targets within a given space.
The analysts clearly tried to pick out anything and everything that might have any effect on the war effort, from facilities producing cutting tools to rubber tires to the antibiotic streptomycin. Most notably, the Air Force defined “275” as the code for “population.”
“The authors developed a plan for the ‘systematic destruction’ of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets that specifically and explicitly targeted ‘population’ in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin and Warsaw,” Burr pointed out. “Purposefully targeting civilian populations as such directly conflicted with the international norms of the day, which prohibited attacks on people per se (as opposed to military installations with civilians nearby).”
But other contemporary sources make it abundantly clear the Pentagon saw any person tied to a war effort as a viable military target. A now declassified 1952 U.S. Navy film on chemical and biological warfare specifically states a goal “to incapacitate the enemy’s armed forces and that portion of his human population that directly supports them.” With similar thoughts in mind, the U.S. Army had looked into radiological warfare and built deadly dirty bombs………
“The anonymous authors may not have been scientists,” Burr said. “But in light of the 1954 Castle Bravo test, which spread radioactive debris globally, they should have known better.”……. This first appeared in WarIsBoring here. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/catalog-nuclear-death-uss-hair-raising-plan-obliterate-russia-197705
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Scenarios of the release of radioactive ions if high precision missiles were to strike Middle East nuclear reactors.
Report: Missile strike risks to Middle East nuclear reactors, A new study explores potential radiological fallout and evacuations from a missile strike on commercial nuclear power plants. Aljazeera, By Patricia Sabga, 8 Dec 21 ” ………………Scenarios and reactors
To illustrate the potential vulnerability of a nuclear power facility to a high precision missile strike, NPEC analysed four current and planned nuclear power plants in the region for three scenarios involving the radiological release of caesium-137 (Cs-137) into the atmosphere.
“Caesium-137 is one isotope that is particularly concerning for several reasons and it’s one of the most common isotopes looked at when evaluating the danger of a nuclear accident or some kind of radioactive release,” the report’s lead researcher Eva Lisowski told Al Jazeera. “It’s dangerous enough and lasts long enough that it can cause a significant increase in the chances of developing cancer.”
Significant contamination with Cs-137 can result in hundreds of thousands of people being evacuated from their homes, the report warns, and they may not be able to return for decades, given it has a 30-year half-life.
The first scenario Lisowski modelled examined what would happen if a nuclear reactor containment building is breached by an air strike, resulting in the core being released. The second scenario mapped what would happen if a spent fuel pond were hit and a fire broke out. The third scenario assessed what would happen if a spent fuel pond that is densely packed with radioactive rods were targeted and caught fire.
The four facilities chosen for the scenarios include the UAE’s Barakah power plant, Iran’s Bushehr, the plant under construction at Akkuyu in Turkey, and the site of Egypt’s planned commercial nuclear power station at El Dabaa.
The study focused only on select commercial nuclear power reactors. Research reactors, such as the one Israel maintains at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center near the city of Dimona, Iran’s Tehran Research Reactor, Egypt’s research reactor at Inshas, or Algeria’s research reactor at Es-Salam were not included in the study.
Sokolski also notes that containment buildings and spent fuel ponds are not the only targets for potential sabotage.
“You can go after the electricity lines that go into the plant that are necessary to keep the cooling system operating. You can go after the emergency generators, you can calibrate any number of effects with precision against that kind of sympathetic target,” he said.
The findings
The amounts of Cs-137 released in each scenario, as well as the estimated number of evacuees in each contamination zone, were simulated for four different months of the year based on 2020 weather patterns: March, June, September and December.
The simulations all include neighbouring countries that could be affected by mandatory evacuations.
The report examined scenarios for both a large release of Cs-137 (75 percent) and a smaller release (10 percent or 5 percent) to illustrate the potential differences between a densely-packed spent fuel pool catching fire, versus one that is not full.
The three scenarios involving a missile or drone attack on the Barakah nuclear power plant predicted average population displacements ranging from 800 mandatory and 40,000 voluntary evacuations in a low-radiological release simulation involving a core breach, to 4 million mandatory and 8 million voluntary evacuations if a densely packed spent fuel pond is hit resulting in a high release of Cs-137.
The three scenarios involving a missile or drone attack on the Bushehr nuclear power plant predicted average population displacements ranging from 53,000 mandatory and 120,000 voluntary evacuations in low-radiological release simulation involving a core breach, to 6.7 million mandatory and 4.8 million voluntary evacuations if a densely packed spent fuel pond is hit resulting in a high release of Cs-137.
The three scenarios involving a missile or drone attack on the Akkuyu nuclear power plant predicted average population displacements ranging from 1,000 mandatory and 28,000 voluntary evacuations in low-radiological release simulation involving a reactor core breach, to 4.6 million mandatory and 10 million voluntary evacuations if a densely packed spent fuel pond is hit resulting in a high release of Cs-137. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/12/8/report-missile-strike-risks-to-middle-east-nuclear-reactors
The nuclear consequences of cyber vulnerabilities
The nuclear consequences of cyber vulnerabilities, https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/the-nuclear-consequences-of-cyber-vulnerabilities/ Wilfred Wan |Researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), 29 Nov 21,
A recent report about a massive cyber surveillance campaign allegedly conducted by Russian intelligence against US government agencies reflects disturbing trends in cyberspace. The number of reported data breaches in 2021 is on pace to set a record, with government entities constituting the most targeted sector, and global supply chains increasingly impacted. The planning and sophistication that characterizes some of these operations in recent years also suggest more frequent State-level involvement, underlining the fact that cyber—or information security—capabilities increasingly constitute part of national strategic toolkits.
Operations in cyberspace have also targeted elements of the nuclear weapons enterprise across states. Recent known cases include the discovery in December 2020 of “long duration activity” against the US National Nuclear Security Administration (responsible for the management of the US stockpile), and in April 2021 of operations against a firm linked to the design of Russian nuclear submarines. In neither instance was there any indication that functions related to nuclear weapons systems were impacted.
Yet these revelations should heighten concerns beyond the states targeted, as the existence of these operations could have implications for potential nuclear weapon use. Cyber operations of the kind cited are unlikely to cause detonation events directly. Yet operations that successfully interact with nuclear forces can undermine states’ confidence in their nuclear deterrence capability or credibility, which can trigger forceful military response and even prompt ‘use it or lose it’ nuclear dilemmas. The clearest path to this end involves intrusions into weapons systems themselves. This is not far-fetched. In limited testing with “relatively simple tools and techniques”, the US Department of Defense in 2018 “routinely found mission-critical cyber vulnerabilities” in their weapons systems under development. Other nuclear-armed states are likely to be similarly vulnerable.
Other infringements on deterrence include cyber operations that impact nuclear command, control, and communication. Increased digitalization is likely to create new vulnerabilities, exacerbated by reliance on the supply chain. Even systems isolated from the internet can be compromised. The militarization of cyberspace—and a legacy of Cold War electronic warfare — also raises the possibility that adversaries could now induce the kind of malfunctions (such as erroneous warnings in early warning systems) that in the past have fuelled several nuclear ‘close calls’. Additionally, cyber operations that amplify conventional capabilities to evade radar and air or missile defence may increase nuclear force vulnerability, real or perceived.
The reason why such intrusions may escalate to a scale even beyond the intentions of perpetrators centres on a lack of clarity around so-called cyber ‘red lines’. Several nuclear-armed states have acknowledged the possibility of escalation linked to the cyber domain, or in their nuclear doctrines open the door to use in response to cyber operations. Further precision on thresholds is generally absent, with deliberate ambiguity held in service of deterrence credibility. Yet notions of achievable strategic stability are undermined by the secretive nature of cyber operations, the many potential points of entry for cyber operations, and context-dependent concepts such as ‘critical infrastructure’. Cyber-nuclear interactions open the door for misperception, miscalculation, or misunderstanding.
Reducing cyber-nuclear risks requires preventing interactions between cyber operations and nuclear forces; it also requires mitigating the consequences of interactions when they do take place. Developments in cyber space suggest the potential development of voluntary ‘rules of the road’ that can support the former. Last month the US and Russia submitted a joint resolution to the UN General Assembly (co-sponsored by 104 States) on responsible behaviour in cyberspace. Cyberspace policy also features in ongoing US-Russia strategic stability talks; President Biden in June 2021 had provided President Putin a list of critical infrastructure sectors meant to be “off-limits” from cyber operations. Such negotiations of State behaviours would be significant but would only address part of the risk picture.
It is incumbent on nuclear-armed states to strengthen the cyber security of their weapons and related systems and to elaborate standards across the entirety of their supply chains. Dialogue among nuclear-armed and nuclear-allied states can inform common understandings of risk perceptions, and chip away at the ambiguity around red lines. States can also look to establish guard rails through the conflict-prevention toolkit. In fact, information exchange around cyber military exercises, memorandums of understanding on engagement with communications and radar systems, and political declarations that nuclear command and control lies outside cyber bounds can build a foundation for formal agreements down the line.
Cyber-nuclear interactions are likely to increase given trends in the militarisation of the cyber domain and the digitalisation of nuclear weapons systems. The secrecy across both domains presents significant challenges: not only in their regulation but also to underlining the urgency of the situation and creating the prerequisite momentum for such action. After all, the cyber equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis is unlikely to ever play out in public. Yet the very real risk of cyber-nuclear interactions driving inadvertent nuclear war should provide ready incentive for immediate action.
Wilfred Wan is the co-author of a new UNIDIR report on The Cyber-Nuclear Nexus: Interactions and Risks.
France quietly benefiting from the neglect of international commitments to protect the seas from radioactive discharges.
SafeEnergy E Journal No.92. December 21, Radioactive Discharges The OSPAR Convention for the Protection of the North-East Atlantic has discreetly postponed its commitment to reduce radioactive discharges at sea from 2020 to 2050. Following a meeting on October 1st, the participating ministers discreetly postponed until 2050 the commitment made in 1998 in Sintra to reduce radioactive discharges into the sea to levels close to zero by 2020.
Once again, international commitments to the environment are being disregarded. This does not bode well for the upcoming COP26 in Glasgow. France is the first beneficiary of this 30-year postponement because, with its reprocessing plant at La Hague, it has the highest radioactive discharges to the sea in Europe. And these discharges are not decreasing, as shown by the results of the citizen monitoring of radioactivity in the environment carried out by Association pour le Contrôle de la Radioactivité dans l’Oues (ACRO) for over 25 years. (1)
The “Cascais Declaration” signed at a Ministerial Meeting in October 2021 said:“We aim to achieve zero pollution by 2050 and commit to reduce single-use plastic items and maritime related plastic items on our beaches by 50% by 2025 and 75% by 2030. We will take action to eliminate anthropogenic eutrophication and continue to reduce hazardous and radioactive substances to near background levels for naturally occurring substances and close to zero for human made substances.” (2)
Remi Parmentier, who was the lead Greenpeace International campaigner when the Sintra Decalation was signed in 1998 tweeted:
“30 yrs backward presented as progress. The OSPAR Commission is using Orwellian language: “We *aim* to achieve zero pollution by 2050” [“aim”, not “commit”], wiping out the previous target date (agreed in 1998) which was…2020.”
Meanwhile, the NDA is now saying all Magnox reprocessing will be completed in 2022. The Magnox reprocessing plant was expected to close in 2020 before delays caused by Covid. (3
2. OSPAR Cascais Declaration October 2021 https://www.ospar.org/site/assets/files/46205/cascaisdeclaration2021.pdf
3. NDA Mission Progress Report 2021. 4th Nov 2021 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/103121https://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/SafeEnergy_No92.pdf
Europe to pay half for raising Russia’s dangerous sunken submarines, – while Russia builds new ones!
“The sunken submarines K-27 and K-159 are the potential source of contamination of the Arctic, the riskiest ones,”
As Moscow this spring took the Chair of the Arctic Council, the need to lift dangerous nuclear materials from the seabed was highlighted as a priority.
No other places in the world’s oceans have more radioactive and nuclear waste than the Kara Sea.
Europe to pay half … it is a dilemma that international partners are providing financial support to lift old Cold War submarines from the ocean, while Russia gives priority to building new nuclear-powered submarines threatening the security landscape in northern Europe.
EU willing to co-fund lifting of sunken nuclear subs from Arctic seabed https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/nuclear-safety/2021/11/europe-offers-pay-russia-raise-sunken-nuclear-subs The Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP) has decided to start a technical review aimed to find a safe way to lift two Cold War submarines from the Barents- and Kara Seas. By Thomas Nilsen
“We are proceeding now,” says a smiling Jari Vilén, Finland’s Ambassador for Barents and Northern Dimension.
Projects aimed to improve nuclear safety are some of the few successful arenas for cooperation still going strong between the European Union and Russia.
“In roughly two years time we will have the understanding on what and how it can be done, what kind of technology has to be used,” Vilén elaborates with reference to the two old Soviet submarines K-159 and K-27, both rusting on the Arctic seabed with highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel elements in their reactors.
Continue readingNuclear Fusion Recedes Into Far Future For The 57th Time
Fusion Recedes Into Far Future For The 57th Time, Clean Technica, Fusion has an amazing future as a source of energy. In space craft beyond the orbit of Jupiter sometime in the next two centuries. By Michael Barnard, November 9, 2021 Fusion has an amazing future as a source of energy. Which is to say, in space craft beyond the orbit of Jupiter, sometime in the next two centuries. Here on Earth? Not so much. At least, that’s my opinion.
Nuclear electrical generation has 2.5 paths. The first is nuclear fission, the part that is the major electrical generation source that provides about 10% of the electricity in the world today.
And then there’s fusion. Where fission splits atoms, fusion merges them. Instead of radioactive fuel, there’s a lot of radioactive emissions from the merging of things like hydrogen-3, deuterium, and tritium that irradiates the containment structures. Lower radioactive waste that doesn’t last as long, but still radioactive waste for those who think that’s a concern…….
fusion generation of electricity, as opposed to big honking nuclear weapons using fusion, is a perpetual source of interest. When Lewis Strauss, then chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, talked about nuclear being “too cheap to meter” in 1954, he was talking about fusion, not fission. Like everyone since the mid-1950s, he assumed that fusion would be generating power in 20 years.
And so here we are, 67 years later. How is fusion doing?
Let’s start with the only credible fusion project on the planet, the ITER Tokamak project. It’s been around for decades. It planted its roots in 1985 with Gorbachev and Reagan. 35 countries are involved. Oddly, ITER isn’t an acronym, it’s Latin for “The Way,” a typically optimistic and indeed somewhat arrogant assumption about its place in the universe.
It’s supposed to light up around 2040. That’s so far away I hadn’t bothered to think much about it, as we have to decarbonize well over 50% of our economy long before that. As a result, I had a lazy read on it. I had assumed, as most press and indeed pretty much everyone involved with it asserted, that it would be generating more energy than it consumed, when it finally lit up…………..
ITER will require about 200 MW of energy input in total running as it creates 500 MW of heat. But the exergy of heat means that if it were tapped, it would only return about 200 MW of electricity. So it might be a perpetual motion machine, but one that wouldn’t do anything more than keep its lights running as long as you fed it tritium, about $140 million worth of the stuff a year.
And it gets worse. ITER is planning at the end of this process to maintain this for less than 3000 seconds at a time. That’s 50 minutes. This is at the end of the process. As they build up to less than an hour, mostly they’ll be working on fusion that lasts five minutes, several times a day. It’s a very expensive physics experiment that will not produce climate-friendly energy. It’s going to teach us a bunch, which I completely respect, but it’s not going to help us deal with climate change.
I expected more from ITER. Not much more. I mean, it is a million-component fission reactor expected to light up in 2040 and not generate any electricity at that point. But I had assumed based on all the press that it would generate more electricity than it used to operate if you bolted a boiler and some turbines to it, even if it were grossly expensive. Apparently not. Just grossly expensive, no net new electricity………..
However, ITER is not the only fusion reactor in the game. There are startups! And we all know startups make no promises that they can’t keep and are excellent at disclosure.
Like Helion. They have a photo-shopped peanut asserting it’s a 6th prototype with regenerative power creation that’s never achieved fusion that is backed by Peter Thiel! It just received $500 million more of VC funding, with an option to get up to $2.2 billion if they hit their targets!
I’m not sure if I could have made up a paragraph less likely to make me think that there was some there there.
The website is likely intentionally lacking in anything approaching detail. It’s low-information and VC friendly, which in the energy space is Thiel’s jam. He’s the guy who, despite being partnered with Elon Musk, has never realized that electrical generation was already being disrupted by wind and solar. His acolytes in startups disrupting energy crashed and burned, because he and they never bothered to do the hard work of understanding how electricity actually works at grid scale. At least Musk was solid on solar, although he got the wrong end of it and hasn’t quite figured that out yet.
While Helion has achieved 100 million degrees Celsius, it’s with a high-energy laser pulse — not new ideas, in fact 1950s ideas, just easier now — and they are incredibly coy about duration. The assumption to be taken is that it lasts for a picosecond at a time. They talk about their prototype having worked for months, but that means it’s maintaining a vacuum and occasionally creating plasma, a precursor to fueled fusion. Many years and tens of millions of dollars in, they are promising the moon, and soon. And to be clear, they are well behind on their initial schedule…………..
fusion generating electricity appears to be as far away as ever. https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/09/breaking-news-fusion-recedes-into-far-future-for-the-57th-time/
“Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders”
Biggest US nuclear bomb test destroyed an island—and this man’s life, https://nypost.com/2021/11/20/biggest-us-nuclear-bomb-test-destroyed-an-island-and-lives/ By Eric Spitznagel The US bomb tested near John Anjain’s (right) home in the Marshall Islands in 1954 was 1,000 times stronger than at Hiroshima, and left his wife and kids with debilitating and deadly health problems, as detailed in a new book. November 20, 2021
Just before dawn on March 1, 1954, John Anjain was enjoying coffee on the beach in the South Pacific when he heard a thunderous blast, and saw something in the sky that he said “looked like a second sun was rising in the west.”
Later that day, “something began falling upon our island,” said Anjain, who at the time was 32 and chief magistrate of the Rongelap atoll, part of the Marshall Islands. “It looked like ash from a fire. It fell on me, it fell on my wife, it fell on our infant son.”
It wasn’t a paranormal experience. Anjain and his five young sons, along with the 82 other inhabitants of Rongelap, were collateral damage from a “deadly radioactive fallout from a hydrogen bomb test… detonated by American scientists and military personnel,” writes Walter Pincus in his new book, “Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders” (Diversion Books), out now.
In 1946, the US started testing atomic weapons began in Bikini Atoll, 125 miles west of Rongelap. Known as Operation Crossroads, the tests were moved to the islands from the US because officials feared “radioactive fallout could not be safely contained at
any site in the United States,” writes Pincus.
During those early tests, the Rongelapians were relocated to another island a safe distance away.
But the 1954 test was different. Not only were there no evacuations, but “Castle
Bravo,” as it was dubbed, was also the largest of the thermonuclear devices detonated during the military’s 67 tests, “a thousand times as large as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima,” writes Pincus.
It took just hours for fallout to reach the shores of Rongelap, where it blanketed the island with radioactive material, covering houses and coconut palm trees. On some parts of the isle, the white radioactive ash was “an inch and a half deep on the ground,” writes Pincus.
The natives, who often went barefoot and shirtless, were covered in the toxic debris. It stuck to their hair and bodies and even between their toes.
“Some people put it in their mouths and tasted it,” Anjain recalled at a Washington DC hearing run by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to investigate the incident in 1977. “One man rubbed it into his eye to see if it would cure an old ailment. People walked in it, and children played with it.”
Rain followed, which dissolved the ash and carried it “down drains and into the barrels that provided water for each household,” writes Pincus.
It took three days before American officials finally evacuated the island, taking the natives to nearby Kwajalein for medical tests. Many Rongelapians were already suffering health effects, like vomiting, hair loss, and all-over body burns and blisters. Tests showed their white blood cell counts plummeting, and high levels of radioactive strontium in their systems. No one died, at least not immediately. That would come later.
After three years, the Rongelapians were allowed to return home, assured by officials that conditions were safe. But by 1957, the rate of miscarriages and stillbirths on the island doubled, and by 1963 the first residents began to develop thyroid tumors.
Though they continued to conduct annual medical tests, the US military admitted no culpability, other than awarding each islander $10,800 in 1964 as compensation for the inconvenience.
In fact, some — including the islanders — have speculated that the US government had used the Rongelapians as “convenient guinea pigs” to study the effects of high-level radiation.
For Anjain and his family, the effects were devastating. His wife and four of his children developed cancer. A sixth child, born after the fallout, developed poliomyelitis and had to use a crutch after one of his legs became paralyzed.
But the biggest tragedy befell his fifth child Lekoj, who was just one year old when Castle Bravo covered their island in nuclear dust. As a child, he was mostly healthy, other than the occasional mysterious bruise. Soon after his 18th birthday, Lekoj was flown to an American hospital, where doctors discovered he had acute myelogenous leukemia.
Anjain stayed at his son’s bedside for weeks as he underwent chemo, holding his dying son’s hand and watching him disappear.
He recounted Lekoj’s final days in a letter to the Friends of Micronesia newsletter in 1973. “Bleeding started in his ears, mouth and nose and he seemed to be losing his mind,” Anjain wrote of his son. “When I would ask him questions he gave me no
answer except ‘Bad Luck.’”
Lekoj passed away on November 15, 1972, at just 19. Newsweek called him “the first, and so far only leukemia victim of an H-bomb,” and said his death was proof that nuclear fallout “could be even more lethal to human life than the great fireball itself.”
After burying his son at a spot overlooking Rongelap Lagoon, Anjain continued to battle for financial restitution for his family and other Rongelapian survivors. In 2004, just months before his death (of undisclosed causes) at 81, he marched with 2,000 people in Japan to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1954 hydrogen bomb test that slowly killed his son.
In 2007, a Nuclear Claims Tribunal awarded Rongelap more than $1 billion in damages, but not a penny of it has yet been paid. And according to a 2019 Columbia University study, radiation levels on Rongelap are still higher than Chernobyl or Fukushima.
For Anjain, it was never really about the money. “I know that money cannot bring back my son,” he once said. “It cannot give me back 23 years of my life. It cannot take the poison from the coconut crabs. It cannot make us stop being afraid.”
Humboldt nuclear reactor is dead and gone, but its highly radioactive wastes live on.
Is this the final chapter? The NRC will soon revoke the operating license for PG&E Unit #3, formally ending its official existence. But the waste is still on-site. The NRC considers cask storage a temporary solution and suggests a 40-year life span. Some hope the casks can last up to 100 years but even this is far shorter than the time needed to safely store high-level waste.
Lori Dengler | Decommissioning a nuclear power plant is a long slow process, https://www.times-standard.com/2021/11/20/lori-dengler-decommissioning-a-nuclear-power-plant-is-a-long-slow-process/By LORI DENGLER |November 20, Nothing happens quickly with a nuclear plant. Power is generated through fission, a process of splitting atoms in a controlled way. Once fission begins, it can be slowed or increased, but there’s no on-off switch and a controlled shutdown takes 6-12 hours. The radioactive byproducts last for millennia.
The fuel at PG&E’s former nuclear facility at King Salmon was small ceramic uranium oxide pellets compressed into fuel rods. A single new rod is only mildly radioactive, but when groups of rods (assemblies) are brought closely together in a reactor core, fission commences. PG&E’s Unit #3 was a boiling water reactor (BWR), where water pumped into the core was brought to a boil and steam produced electricity.
All first-generation nuclear reactors were BWRs. Built in the late 1950s to mid-1960s, seven became operational in the US and none are operating today. In the late 1960s, the second generation BWRs came online with improved efficiency, lifespan, containment, and safety features. The Fukushima-Daichi Nuclear Power Plant that failed during the 2011 Japan tsunami was this type. Of the 93 operating reactors in the US today, 31 are BWRs.
During its 13-year operational history, the Humboldt nuclear facility generated most of the county’s electricity. It was shut down yearly for refueling and maintenance and the spent fuel rods were placed in a cooling pool on the site. The pool was within the containment structure and made of steel-lined reinforced concrete several feet thick.
Spent fuel and reactor waste has been and continues to be the Achilles heel of the nuclear industry. In the early decades of the nuclear era, it was often glossed over as something that science and technology could solve. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) classifies nuclear waste as high level or low level depending upon how long-lived the radioactive material is.
Low-level waste is produced by medical facilities, research labs, commercial facilities and in reactor operations. Often short-lived, it has radioactivity levels only slightly above background and can be safely handled with simple precautions. Small amounts can be disposed as ordinary trash and larger amounts moved on highways to approved low-level waste repositories.
It’s the high-level waste that is the big problem. High-level waste is predominately spent nuclear fuel rods. “Spent” is a misnomer as it still contains a substantial amount of energy. Unlike the new, unused fuel rods, they are now highly radioactive and very hot. That’s because once fission starts, can’t be totally stopped. Not all the uranium has been used up; it’s just no longer concentrated enough to be economically worthwhile. Fission is a complex process and creates toxic daughters such as cesium-137 and strontium-90. Fission releases neutrons which may be captured by other uranium atoms to form heavier elements such as plutonium. They aren’t as hot as the daughters but take much longer to decay. Plutonium-239 has a half-life (the time for half to be used up) of 24,100 years.
I admit to much ignorance when it comes to nuclear reactors. In talking about the Humboldt plant, I used to remark how silly it seemed that new fuel rods could be transported on highways and used ones could not. Now I understand why. There is no fission going on in the new ones and emissions are very low.
PG&E announced intentions to decommission Unit #3 in 1983. Three years later, the company requested a SAFTOR license amendment from the NRC. SAFSTOR means “possess-but-not-operate” so that the plant is maintained and monitored and much of the waste can decay before dismantling begins. In 2003, PG&E submitted an application to the NRC to begin transferring the spent fuel rods into dry cask storage.
The Humboldt plant produced 390 spent fuel assemblies in its lifetime. After several years in a storage pool, the NRC considers the waste cool enough to be moved into a dry cask storage facility on site. High-level waste repositories are known as ISFSIs (independent spent fuel storage installation). Finding an ISFSI spot on Buhne Point was problematic in many ways.
The biggest problem was that the ISFSI had to be on the PG&E site. Buhne Point site is exposed to earthquake and tsunami threats, erosion, and sea-level rise. Many people were involved with environmental and hazards studies over the years including a number of HSU geology grads. A site was selected at an elevation of 44 feet just to the west of Unit #3 with the capacity to store 37 tons of high-level waste in six casks.
I attended a community meeting about the ISFSI plan in the early 2000s. It was well attended with scientists, environmental organizations, and other community representatives. What surprised me most was that everyone agreed it was the best solution to a problem all of us wish we never had. Oh, if only time travel were possible – PG&E would be the first in line to reverse the decision to build the Humboldt nuclear facility. But given the legal realities, this was the best option.
NRC issued the Humboldt SAFSTOR license to PG&E in November 2005. By 2008, all of the spent fuel had been moved to the dry casks. The active decommissioning of the site began in 2009 and included removal of the reactor vessel, nuclear systems, containment structure, and other infrastructure. Even the soils at the site were removed. The final step was site restoration and soil remediation. It’s unclear what the footprint of the former nuclear facility may eventually become; at present, it is a parking lot.
Is this the final chapter? The NRC will soon revoke the operating license for PG&E Unit #3, formally ending its official existence. But the waste is still on-site. The NRC considers cask storage a temporary solution and suggests a 40-year life span. Some hope the casks can last up to 100 years but even this is far shorter than the time needed to safely store high-level waste.
Note: The Humboldt ISFSI is covered at http://archive.wmsym.org/2010/pdfs/10217.pdf. If anyone wants to get into the weeds with nuclear reactor technology, see https://www.amacad.org/sites/default/files/academy/pdfs/nuclearReactors.pdf.
Lori Dengler is an emeritus professor of geology at Humboldt State University, an expert in tsunami and earthquake hazards. Questions or comments about this column, or want a free copy of the preparedness magazine “Living on Shaky Ground”? Leave a message at 707-826-6019 or email Kamome@humboldt.edu. https://www.times-standard.com/2021/11/20/lori-dengler-decommissioning-a-nuclear-power-plant-is-a-long-slow-process/
Heritage Foundation – murky think tank funded by the nuclear weapons industry, wants weapons-makers to be exempt from climate and pandemic regulations
“Defense industrial base” is a buzzword that has picked up steam during the pandemic: It sends the message that, whatever happens with the economy and pandemic, we need to make sure we are in “fighting shape” — by keeping military contractors afloat. This concept was invoked to explain why, at the beginning of the pandemic, factories that produce bombs and tankers should be allowed to stay open, even amid the outbreak risk to workers. And it was also used to justify subsidies to contractors during the hardship of the pandemic.
Lockheed Martin is just one of numerous weapons manufacturers that has directly funded the Heritage Foundation. According to a report by the think tank Center for International Policy (CIP), the Heritage Foundation ranks ninth among the top think tanks that received funding from military contractors and the U.S. government from 2014 to 2019. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon were two of those major funders, both of which are among the largest weapons companies in the world and would be impacted by the new regulation.
This case provides a window into the murky world of think tanks, which are often viewed as academic and above-the-fray institutions but operate more as lobbying outfits.
Think Tank Funded by the Weapons Industry Pressures Biden Not to Regulate Military Contractors’ Emissions https://www.rsn.org/001/think-tank-funded-by-the-weapons-industry-pressures-biden-not-to-regulate-military-contractors-emissions.html
Sarah Lazare/In These Times 19 November 21The Heritage Foundation has received considerable donations from the arms industry. And now it’s trying to shield that industry from climate regulations targeting military contractors.
The Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, is publicly opposing a new Biden administration regulation that would force the weapons industry to report its greenhouse gas emissions related to federal contracts. It turns out the Heritage Foundation also receives significant funding from the weapons industry, which makes the case worth examining — because it reveals how the arms industry pays supposedly respectable institutions to do its policy bidding at the expense of a planet careening toward large-scale climate disaster.
The regulation in question was first proposed in an executive order in May. It would require federal contractors to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and their “climate-related financial risk,” and to set “science-based reduction targets.” In other words, companies like Lockheed Martin would have to disclose how much carbon pollution its F‑35 aircraft and cluster bombs actually cause.
In October, the Biden administration started the process to amend federal procurement rules to reflect these changes. “Today’s action sends a strong signal that in order to do business with the federal government, companies must protect consumers by beginning to mitigate the impact of climate change on their operations and supply chains,” Shalanda Young, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said at the time.The Department of Defense is the world’s biggest institutional consumer of fossil fuels and a bigger carbon polluter than 140 countries. Yet its emissions (and those of other armed forces) are excluded from UN climate negotiations, including the recent COP26 talks. The Biden administration itself supports a massive military budget, initially requesting $753 billion for the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, a number that has since ballooned, with the Senate set to vote on a $778 billion plan. Organizers and researchers argue that, to curb the climate crisis, it is necessary to roll back U.S. militarism and dismantle the military budget.
But according to the Heritage Foundation, even this modest proposal is a bridge too far.
Continue readingNew film: The ‘Mothers of the Revolution’ Who Stared Down Nuclear Weapons
The ‘Mothers of the Revolution’ Who Stared Down Nuclear Weapons, The doc ‘Mothers of the Revolution’ chronicles the women who spent years protesting the nukes at RAF Greenham Common. One of those brave women, Rebecca Johnson, tells their story. Daily Beast, Rebecca Johnson Nov. 21, 2021 In September 1981, a ten-day walk from Wales under the banner of Women for Life on Earth arrived at the main gate of RAF Greenham Common, sixty miles west of London. Home to the 501st Tactical Missile Wing of the U.S. Air Force, this nuclear base was designated by NATO to deploy nuclear-armed cruise missiles in Europe. We called for this decision to be publicly debated.
When ignored, Women for Life on Earth grew into the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. I began living there in 1982 and stayed until the 1987 U.S.-Soviet Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty banned and eliminated all land-based medium-range nuclear weapons from Europe, including Cruise, Pershing and SS20s.
After years of being airbrushed out of histories of the Cold War, Greenham’s actions, struggles and legacy are being spotlighted in a new film, Mothers of the Revolution, from acclaimed New Zealand director Briar March. Showing contemporaneous news footage from the 1980s along with dramatized vignettes and reflections from women who got involved with the Greenham Women’s Peace Camp in the 1980s, the film weaves an illustrative narrative from the experiences of a small cross section of activists—not only from Britain, but Russia, East and West Europe, the United States, and the Pacific.
Though it’s taken a long time for our contribution to the INF Treaty to be publicly recognized, other treaties have been influenced by Greenham’s feminist-humanitarian activism and strategies, most notably the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into international law in January 2021.
While living at Greenham for five years I came to understand what we really need: Not weapons and power over others, but communities that are empowered to love, question and create. We took forward new theories and practices of nonviolence that were feminist and assertive. We didn’t suppress deep human emotions like fear, love and anger, but channelled them into power for change. We needed to be activist and analytical, passionate and diplomatic, stubborn and flexible, courageous and truthful—no matter who tried to silence us.
The cruise missiles arrived in November 1983, which felt like a bitter defeat at first. Yet we refused to give up. …………….
Were we mothers of a revolution? If anything, I think we were part of a long continuum of struggles for women’s rights and safety, following in the footsteps of the women who fought so hard to vote and live free from oppression, slavery, and misogyny. Not mothers but daughters—of all those brave feminist revolutionaries.
I’m so glad Mothers of the Revolution ends with such an inspiring call to action showing the faces and voices of a new generation of fierce Daughters who are campaigning for girls’ education, climate justice, peace, and women’s rights to live free of patriarchal perpetrators and their greedy, oppressive systems of violence. Together we can stop the destroyers and strengthen the naturally diverse, interdependent lives that share and protect our beautiful Mother Earth. That’s our revolution, and we are not finished yet. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-mothers-of-the-revolution-who-stared-down-nuclear-weapons?ref=scroll
While the French government promises a nuclear revival, its supreme auditing body warns of serious obstacles to this.
The Court of Auditors (Cour des comptes) is the supreme body for auditing the use of public funds in France. It is independent from the Government and Parliament. It has financial jurisdiction and is in charge of auditing, issuing rulings and certifying the State and Social Security accounts, as well as contributing to the evaluation of public policies.
Nuclear revival: the Court of Auditors highlights many obstacles https://reporterre.net/Relance-du-nucleaire-la-Cour-des-comptes-pointe-de-nombreux-obstacles 19 Nov 21,
In a report published this Thursday, November 18, the Court of Auditors questions our “ability to build a new fleet of [nuclear] reactors on time and at reasonable costs”. This, while “maintaining a 50% nuclear share in electricity production (…) beyond 2050 would require ultimately not having seven EPR or EPR2, but 25 to 30 in the assumption that the current reactors would almost all be shut down by this time, ”the text specifies. And that the composition of the new mix must be decided between 2022 and 2027, believes the institution, given the delays in the construction of new plants.
The report from the Court of Auditors
In this document entitled “The choices of electricity production: anticipating and controlling technological, technical and financial risks”, the wise men of the rue Cambon recall the slippages of cost – 19 billion euros instead of the 3 billion planned – and of deadlines – at least eleven years late – of the Flamanville EPR site. “The gaps are similar for the Olkiluoto RPE in Finland,” they said. In July 2020, the Court of Auditors detailed these troubles at length in a report dedicated to the EPR sector.
Several points of real concern are mentioned.
One is the locations of these new reactors, “as climate change can make the installation of sites along rivers more complicated”.
Management of spent fuel and waste: the construction of new reactors planned to operate until 2100 would in fact involve “either renewing the fuel reprocessing plant at La Hague (…) and creating new sites for ‘warehousing and then disposal of nuclear waste, or to propose another mode of management of spent nuclear fuel and waste which would be, in such a hypothesis, much more voluminous ”, we read in the note.
Another imperative element for the implementation of this half-nuclear mix emphasized by the Court is “the start of the Cigeo radioactive waste disposal project” – a project that is also marred by many uncertainties.
The cost, finally. “EDF will not be able to finance the construction of new nuclear reactors on its own when it has to bear the cost of extending the current fleet and of the“ post Fukushima ”safety investments, face the future costs of dismantling and the uncertain evolution regulated access to historic nuclear power since its inception in 2011, and that it is already indebted to the tune of 42 billion euros, ”warns the Court of Auditors. The project to build six new EPRs had been estimated at 46 billion euros by EDF and could be half-financed by the state, as reported by Reporterre. The cost of the investment has since been reassessed from 52-56 billion euros to 64 billion euros, according to a working document released at the end of October by the media Context.
The implementation of a 100% renewable energy mix also represents many challenges, nevertheless warns the Court of Auditors. It would thus be necessary to define modalities for storing energy (batteries, etc.) at an affordable cost and to overcome implementation difficulties linked to geography, regulations and even social acceptability.
In any case, “the holding of an informed democratic debate would encourage choices made with full knowledge of the facts and then followed up with lasting effects”, recommends the institution. This debate could take place in 2023 during the preparation of the next multiannual energy program, the roadmap for France’s energy policy.
The publication of this report comes at a time when debates rage on the definition of the electricity mix of the future. On October 25, the electricity transmission manager unveiled its six electricity scenarios for 2050: three give pride of place to the atom. Less than three weeks later, Emmanuel Macron promised the construction of new nuclear reactors in France during a televised address.
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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