Renew On Line (UK) 20

Extracts from the Nov-Dec 2000 edition of Renew
These extracts only represent about 25% of it

Nuclear News

UK Nuclear Going Bust?

British Energy, which runs the Sizewell and the AGR nuclear plants, suffered a serious shortfall in profits this year, and may even make a loss in the next year. It now wants to switch from reprocessing its spent fuel, to storage, and estimates that this could reduce costs by two-thirds. British Energy has £4bn worth of reprocessing contracts with BNFL and accounts for about a third of the baseload work for the Thorp reprocessing facility at Sellafield. Michael Kirwan, British Energy's finance director, said: "As far as we are concerned, reprocessing is an economic nonsense and should stop straight away."

That will make things even worse for BNFL. Quite part from its problems with MOX (the loss of contracts with Germany and the £40m in compensation to Japan), it has been having problems with its MAGNOX reactors - e.g the largest, Wylfa, has been off-line since April, loosing BNFL vital income. BNFL has also lost a multi-billion dollar nuclear clean-up contract with the US government. Bill Richardson, the US Energy Secretary, said the contract had been withdrawn because of "serious concerns" about BNFL's management and business approach.

Meanwhile, international pressure has been building for a halt to reprocessing, with, for example, Denmark and Ireland calling for a move towards dry storage. And Greenpeace released the results of an NOP opinion poll, which found that 85% of British adults asked oppose radioactive discharges from Sellafield. Even taking into account likely job losses in Cumbria UK public support for a ban was at 64%. Nearly 90% accepted that Britain should not be importing foreign nuclear waste and 72% said Sellafield should continue properly managed storage.

For its part, the UK government seems to be trying to distance itself from the issue, by arguing that ‘the question of whether to reprocess spent nuclear fuel or to seek alternative spent fuel management options should be a matter of commercial judgement of the owners of the material, subject to meeting the requirements of the regulators’. But, coming off the fence a little, it adds that ‘the corrosive quality of spent Magnox fuel when exposed to water would make it extremely difficult to guarantee dry storage for very long periods of time. The resulting need to reprocess spent Magnox fuel would in itself preclude the UK from supporting any proposals for the immediate end to reprocessing as called for by the Danish Government’.

Magnox is clearly something of a special case- the uranium fuel contained in its Magnesium alloy canister is not easily stored, but stripping it down to reprocess it is the major source of waste. Sellafield is under pressure to reduce its emissions - the 1998 Sintra agreement, signed by the government, called for it to reduce or eliminate radioactive discharges by 2000, and to achieve close to zero concentration of radioactive pollution in the sea by 2020. The only way out seems to be to stop generating magnox waste- by closing the Magnox reactors. And that is actually the plan, but not until the last batch of fuel has been reprocessed, around 2012 - although the government says ‘it could be later depending on the throughput schedules achieved’.

Greenpeace claimed that ending Magnox fuel reprocessing by 2012 ‘is unfeasible on their current throughput rates.’ They added ‘This means that either BNFL will have to double throughput and therefore discharges in order to finish reprocessing by 2012, or reprocessing will continue at the current rate, possibly until 2025. Both options are clearly unacceptable under the terms of the Sintra agreement, this could mean that, rather than reducing emissions, there would be a period when they would grow.’

Greenpeace’s website contains extensive information on nuclear issues, including details of Sellafield nuclear site and the impacts of its radioactive discharges on human health and the environment. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk

For the other side see http://www.bnfl.co.uk

Reprocessing to end?

By a 12 to nil vote, with the UK and France abstaining, Ospar, the organisation which controls pollution in the north-east Atlantic, North sea and Irish sea, recently toughened up its policy on nuclear emissions. It decided "that the current authorisations for discharges or releases of radioactive substances from nuclear reprocessing facilities shall be reviewed as a matter of priority by their competent national authorities with a view to, inter alia, implementing the non-reprocessing option (for example, dry storage) for spent nuclear fuel management at appropriate facilities."

Greenpeace saw this as the ‘decisive moment’. "Never before has such a strong message been sent by so many countries calling for an end to reprocessing. This truly isolates the UK and France."

The Department of the Environment issued a statement saying that the government would refuse to be bound by the decision, adding "it is a point of principle that Europe does not have the right to tell us whether we can reprocess or not." Certainly the OSPAR rules state that, if a country votes against, or abstains, it is not legally bound by the decision. However, as Greenpeace noted, "even though the UK and France can rightly claim it is not legally binding, it makes their position morally very difficult - they are going against the wishes of 12 neighbours who want this contamination to stop."

It does indeed look like the future for reprocessing is limited- and, if so, then one of the main problems with nuclear power will be removed. As we noted in Renew 127, reprocessing accounts for around 79% of the collective radiation dose from the complete nuclear fuel cycle per unit of electricity generated. Take that out, and nuclear power looks better. But before anyone runs away with the idea that nuclear might therefore be back in the running as a future energy choice, it’s just as well to remember that we’ve still got the back-log of old waste to deal with, plus all the material that will inevitably be generated by decommissioning. Adding any more by building new plants would be a backward step- dry storage of spent fuel is clearly better than reprocessing it, but even so, after that, we still don’t know what to do with it longterm.

UK Phase Out

Hinkley ‘A’ in Somerset is the latest MAGNOX nuclear plant to be scheduled for decommissioning. As noted earlier, the current plan is for all the MAGNOX plants to close by 2012 so that their fuel can be reprocessed before the B205 reprocessing plant at Sellafield closes. The current timetable for closures looks like this: Dungeness’B’ 2008, Hartlepool 2009, Heysham 2011. According to Stop Hinkley, the local pressure group, the Oldbury MAGNOX, just up the Severn from Hinkley, may be kept going using the new experimental MAGROX fuel, which, as we described in Renew 125, in theory, can be reprocessed in THORP- assuming that’s still around. Stop Hinkley says the new fuel runs at higher temperatures and pressures, which could be a problem for this elderly reactor. Stop Hinkley also want the Hinkley ‘B’ Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor to be shut- it currently has 15 more years to run, and they say that British Energy may in fact close it within 11 years. But in any case, as the RCEP noted, all the UK plants apart from the Sizewell PWR, should be closed by 2025.

Chernobyl effects still around

Levels of radioactivity from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster are likely to remain high in parts of Northern Europe for 100 times longer than originally estimated, according to a report published in the journal Nature. Researchers from Britain and the Netherlands found that the environment is not cleansing itself as fast as expected, particularly in the case of one element, radioactive caesium.

Generally, after a nuclear accident, ecosystems have a self-cleaning capacity - radioactive caesium becomes immobilised in the soil so that plants and animals accumulate it less easily. However, fourteen years after Chernobyl it has been found that this substance is not completely immobilised by the soil, but can be re-released to the ecosystem. Restrictions on some foods in both the former Soviet Union and the UK, including sheep, forest berries, mushrooms, and fish, may have to remain in place for up to 50 more years.

Further info from Niamh Tye, NERC Communications. Tel: 01793 411727. Fax: 01793 411510 ntye@nerc.ac.uk

Back in the USSR..

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has abolished the nation’s environmental protection agency, the State Committee on the Environment, ostensibly to help save money and cut bureaucracy. The agency’s functions will be turned over to the ministry of Natural Resources, which oversees oil and gas development, logging, and mining. As the Environment Councils Newsletter Habitat put it ‘Putin has made it clear that he is no friend of the environment’.

However, at least the burnt out Chernobyl reactor is to be made a bit safer- thanks to a £500m pledge from the West (mainly G7 and the EU), linked it seems to an agreement to close the other Chernobyl reactors, to upgrade the leaking containment structure that was put in place after the accident back in 1986. It will take at least 5 years though to make it safe- and then it will only last for a few decades. And its going to be difficult work - as has also been found out by the team trying to decommission the old Windscale pile (which caught light in 1957). Evidently there are worries that the fissile material inside may react adversely when attempts are made to work on it.

Sources:Environment Council Newsletter June, Guardian 6 July.

MOX : return to sender

The long saga of BNFL’s shipment of faulty mixed Uranium and Plutonium Oxide fuel (MOX) to Japan continues, with the announcement that it is to be returned to Sellafield from Japan, the same way it came - by sea under armed escort. BNFL has agreed to replace the fuel and also to pay £40m compensation to the customer, the Japanese nuclear company Kansai. Given that BNFL is still state owned, the total bill to the UK taxpayer could reach £100m. Organising the shipment will take between two and three years since up to 50 countries will have to agree to the ship, carrying highly toxic plutonium, in a form that would be very attractive to terrorists, sailing in their waters. It will also require US Congress approval, since the plutonium incorporated into the fuel was originally manufactured there. And after that the whole process will have to be repeated with the replacement fuel. All these movements are likely to attract opposition by environmental groups

Climate Change won’t help Nuclear

The electronic conference run earlier this year by the World Energy Council included half a dozen or so papers on nuclear power. Compared with the nuclear rhetoric often emerging at international energy gatherings, most were somewhat muted.

Steven Kidd from the Uranium Institute commented that although nuclear plants produced around 17% of the worlds electricity at present ‘given that there are relatively few reactors currently under construction and that some of the early plants are scheduled for closure, further increases in world electricity output will mean that this share is set to fall’. He was not sanguine about opportunities for renewal of nuclear growth- except possibly in China. ‘Although the economic turbulence in this region has not been helpful, this region appears likely to continue to be the main growth area. In particular, China could feasibly embark on a construction programme similar to that of France in the 1970s and 1980s.’

He went on ‘Elsewhere the economics of new nuclear plants do not look good, unless one takes a pessimistic view of fossil fuel prices and utilises a low discount rate. Combined cycle gas turbine plants of similar generating capacity can be built for one third of the capital cost of a nuclear plant, and will also be open several years earlier. This is a powerful set of arguments for private financiers.’

He concluded ‘hopes for renewed nuclear growth are now largely based upon the connection with the global warming debate on emissions targets.’ But he felt this was not a reliable route since it was ‘unclear how far various countries will go down the road of carbon taxes, emissions permit trading and the like’.

About the only ray of hope he seemed to offer, apart from redoubling efforts to generate clean, cheap and safe nuclear technology, was that renewables might not work! ‘High hopes are placed on renewable energy resources and it will take time to demonstrate that their possible contribution is insecure, to say the least’.

Hans Holgar Rogner and Lucille Langlois from the International Atomic Energy Agency were also somewhat muted on the prospects of a nuclear renewal based on concerns about Climate Change. ‘It is true that nuclear power offers governments the opportunity to achieve a number of national policy goals, including energy supply security and environmental protection, particularly by reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. But these policy-related "benefits" are vulnerable to policy change, and are insufficient by themselves to assure a nuclear future. Similarly, the further internalisation of externalities - to a large extent already imposed on nuclear power - is a policy decision and it is unclear when and to what extent such policies will be implemented. Those who pin their hopes for nuclear growth on externalities or on the Kyoto Protocol - and ignore reform and the need to innovate - will be doomed to disappointment. The nuclear industry has to bootstrap itself to economic competitiveness by way of accelerated technological development and innovation.’

The London based consultancy Environmental Resources Management recently pointed out that just maintaining the EU's nuclear contribution at 23% of electricity generation would require the construction of 80 new reactors by 2025, which would create 1500 tonnes of nuclear waste, including 20 tonnes of plutonium.