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Black Tuesday blights Brown's nuclear vision
Posted by jossc on 29 May 2008.
Sellafield: major ongoing problems have been hidden from the public
Yesterday, Gordon Brown felt compelled to go on the record to announce that the UK needs to not only maintain but to increase its nuclear power capacity. And yet the nuclear industry is not exactly hale and hearty because, let's face it, it's been a terrible week for the poor dears.
Hot on the heels of the news that construction of France's new flagship reactor had been halted due to safety concerns came a series of other body blows, including a large projected increase in future decommissioning costs, the unexplained shutdown of the Sizewell B reactor, and British Energy's profits fell by almost a third. The bad news just kept on coming as a new book challenged Sellafield's ability to deal with future nuclear waste, an American study reported huge increases in construction costs, and another reactor shut down unexpectedly yesterday - this time at Hunterston in Scotland. The full litany reads as follows:
- Last week the French nuclear safety agency brought construction of the new EPR reactor at Flamanville, France, to a halt only six months after work first began. The EPR is the same type of reactor that is proposed to be built in the UK.
- On Tuesday, a senior director at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said that the bill for cleaning up Britain's 19 ageing nuclear facilities, including some described as "dangerous", would be billions of pounds more than the £73 billion estimated by the National Audit Office in January (itself a massive increase on their previous estimate of £50 billion).
- On the same day an unplanned shutdown at Sizewell B caused by mysterious faulty instruments contributed to a massive power cut for hundreds of thousands of householders across the country. The plant is currently still offline.
- Also on Tuesday Britain's main nuclear operator, British Energy (BE), reported a 32 per cent decline in profits over the past year after a string of shutdowns and maintenance problems led to the loss of almost a quarter of its generating capacity.
- Tuesday also saw the release of a new US report by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) showing that power plant construction costs had risen by 130 per cent in the last eight years, the majority of the increase coming since 2005.
- In his new book, Voodoo Economics, Guardian journalist Paul Brown catalogues how the nuclear dream has turned into an economic and security nightmare for British taxpayers, how it has always been the most expensive way of producing electricity, and how major ongoing problems at Sellafield have been hidden from the public.
- And finally, yesterday Scotland's Hunterston B7 reactor shut down around 2pm. BE is investigating the cause, but said that it was too early to say how long the plant might be closed for. The closure meant 10 of BE's 16 nuclear generation units were not working yesterday afternoon.
So not good news on the nuclear front then, to say the least. And yet why is Mr Brown clinging doggedly to the idea of a nuclear future? The best guess here is that with BE being made as ready as possible for sale, the PM was engaged in a clumsy attempt to talk up the company's share price.
If that was the case he's unlikely to succeed - the nuclear industry will need more than a puff from the PM to shake off a woeful few days that must be shaking investor confidence in this outdated technology. In fact, given his plummeting popularity you could argue that his 'vote of confidence' was tantamount to putting yet another nail in the industry's coffin.
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And the winner is... the fossil fuel industry
So having opposed nuclear power for so long and having successfully prevented the construction of new nuclear plant for so many years, Greenpeace are now saying that it is the nuclear industry’s fault that their old plant is incapable of supplying enough electricity to keep the country running.
We were warned that there would be an energy gap. We were warned that there would be blackouts. And now it is happening.
But wait, there hasn’t been a new nuclear plant licensed in the UK in a quarter of a century. Surely that is long enough for renewables to become established? It seems not.
Even in Germany, where the uptake in renewables has been much greater than the UK, they are pleading to have their CO2 emission limits increased because they plan on (voluntarily!) giving up their nuclear power capacity. It isn’t possible for renewables to replace both fossil fuel and nuclear. The so-called “green” approach seems to be to keep burning the fossil fuel in desperation to avoid admitting that nuclear power was a good idea all along!
The only winners in this are the fossil fuel industry. The UK energy gap is going to be filled with yet more gas-fired powerstations.
The increase in costs for building powerstations, mentioned in the article, applies to all forms of generation (including wind power). Gas plant has the least capital cost of any type of generation, so it will naturally be the choice of the market.
Do you know who was sponsoring Paul Brown when he wrote the anti-nuclear “Voodoo Economics” that you mention in your article? He was sponsored by BP. Do you know who will supply gas for the new gas powerstations? Yes, it’s BP.
Should we be happy about this? Greenpeace seems to have become a devotee of the fossil fuel industry, relying upon gas to supply the majority of their “convenient” energy solution, even though it is unlikely to produce sufficient cuts in CO2 emissions. Anything rather than admit being wrong about nuclear power.
Solutions
We have rightly set some targets to achieve for green generation of electricity.
BP have said that if we could harnesse just one days sun on the UK can generate the equivalent of a years electricity!
So instead of developing new nuclear power stations or (power stations of other sorts), we can generate the electricity we need from our homes. Installation of solar panels, micro wind generators and heat exchange units, would provide a faster time to market and therefore solve the increasing need for more power generation.
How?
The amount of money we spend on Nuclear (including decommissioning and looking after waste is enormous). If this money was used as grants to enable free installation it would give a longer payback.
Secondly there must be a change of law to ensure that power companies have to buy energy at the same price less 10% from home generation, as opposed to the current scheme which is nearly 50% less.
Finally all new homes would have to by law have solar panels installed and builders would have to install wind or heat exchangers at cost plus 10% if requested by the new purchaser. This would require a change in law.
Re: Solutions
Don’t get carried away with the idea that microgeneration will save the day. It won’t. Despite the absurd headlines last week, the recent report by BERR indicates that microgeneration will only generate a small fraction of our electricity and only when it is subsidised at a ridiculous level. PV solar needs a feed-in tariff of 40p per kWh, while for comparison the real wholesale price of electricity (including nuclear) is nearer 3p. The vast majority of the viable microgeneration systems are Combined Heat & Power boilers running on non-renewable natural gas. So not only is the solution hugely more expensive, but it also generates much more CO2 than nuclear.
And once grid electricity is de-carbonised, most local microgeneration becomes pointless anyway.
The Register pretty much has this covered in their review of what the microgeneration report actually says.
This is of course what they are trying in Germany. If you loan people money to purchase the solar panels, and then pay them ten times the market rate for the electricity, then yes people will take up the offer. Who would turn down free money? But it is an obscene waste of resources and it doesn’t cut carbon emissions effectively. (Hence Germany is lobbying to have their emission quota increased to compensate for phasing out nuclear plants.)
Waste repository
Regarding waste disposal Greenpeace is now saying:
“this waste will remain highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, and when someone says they can build a storage system that will remain intact for that length of time, they're telling porkies. Apart from a few stone arrowheads, nothing man-made has lasted even a fraction of that time so making guarantees like that is ludicrous and foolhardy”
Nothing man made has lasted a fraction of that time, eh? Well, there are cave paintings that survive from 35,000 years ago. These are highly susceptible to water damage, but survived unscathed for all that time, even though the originators knew nothing of geology.
So basically it is perfectly feasible for something to survive that long underground, even in a fairly shallow cave.
Add to this the fact that the waste will be vitrified (glass) encased in steel and copper, then embedded in bentonite clay. Copper corrodes very slowly. Glass dissolves incredibly slowly. Water permeates through saturated clay at the rate of about 1 metre per million years. (It’s a bit quicker during ice ages, but they are relatively transient events on this timescale.)
In short, it is not that difficult to construct a solution that would keep the waste away from the biosphere for longer than it takes to decay to safe levels.
Is Greenpeace seriously suggesting that it is more ethical to not bury it? To just leave it for future generations to deal with?