There are 440 existing plants with a further 168 planned so far. With the prospect of a proliferation of nuclear power generation, any decision about proceeding with a new generation of nuclear plants should first consider a number of popular myths:
1 Nuclear is carbon neutral.This ignores the CO2
component in the:
• construction of power plants;
• mining, milling and enrichment of uranium; Oil 75 2 1.5 0.5 0 1 50 Millions bar rels per
day of conventional oil
25 0 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 Peak oil Temperature Temp. degr ees C
• transport of fuels and waste;
• disposal of waste in long-term security; • decommissioning of plants and safe
disposal of remains;
• development of new mines and rehabilitation when exhausted.
2 Nuclear is cheap. A fourth generation nuclear
plant would cost up to £1.7 million per MW. With an installed capacity of ~1300MW this amounts to £22.1 million. In addition there is the cost of mining uranium ore, waste disposal and decommissioning. By comparison, a
combined cycle gas generation plant costs £350.000/MW.
3 There will be no taxpayer subsidy. ‘The
government will not provide subsidies, directly or indirectly to encourage Britain’s energy companies to invest in new nuclear power stations’ (Malcolm Wicks as Energy Minister October 2006). This includes the £70 billion estimate for waste disposal. The answer is to give the contract to the French company EDF, which will, by definition, qualify for a subsidy.
200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 Carbon emissions (MtC) 2000 2010 2020 Year 2030 2040 2050 0
Figure 12.8 Tyndall recommended CO
290 per cent abatement rate for the UK
2000 2010 0 25 50 75 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060
Carbon neutral energy
Million barr
els per day of
conventional oil
124 Building for a Changing Climate
For politicians, the fundamental question of the limitation of reserves of high grade uranium is resolved by the prospect of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel to create plutonium that can be reused several times over. This is despite the embarrassment of the Thorpe reprocessing enterprise.
The main concern here is that separated plutonium is only mildly radioactive. This means that a small amount could easily be handled illicitly and a only a few kilograms would be needed to make a nuclear weapon.This danger came to light after the US shared reprocessing technology with India who then used the separated plutonium to make an atomic bomb. In 1998, the Royal Society warned that the plutonium stockpile from reprocessing spent fuel ‘might, at some stage, be accessed for illicit weapons production’. In 2007 a second report repeated that ‘the status quo of continuing to stockpile a very dangerous material is not an acceptable long term option’ (von Hippel, 2008, p70).
Worldwide, 440 nuclear power plants account for 14 per cent of global energy use at the time of writing. As the international energy situation becomes increasingly fraught, politicians are reconsidering their position regarding nuclear energy. For example, India is planning to install 470GW of nuclear capacity by 2050. China is planning for 80GW by 2020. The UK could stand proxy for the nuclear Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in this respect. The note of alarm is reaching an ever higher pitch among UK politicians as they realize that the country really does face an energy crisis during the next decade. This is because of the inevitability that the output from nuclear power stations will fall from around 23 per cent of the total to about 7 per cent by 2020 as old plants are decommissioned. In fact it will be nearer 5 per cent if predictions about the growth in energy demand are correct. The question is, what will bridge the gap?
In the Energy White Paper of 2002 there was confidence that renewables would go a long way to meeting the shortfall. Most of the bets were placed on wind power. A decision on nuclear power was placed on hold. There would be a concentration on wind power up to 2020. However, since then it has become increasingly
obvious that a focus on wind alone will guarantee that the vacuum will not be filled, especially if we consider that energy demand will have risen on the basis of a net 1 per cent per year growth from 9.87EJ in 2002 to 11.8EJ in 2020.
One option would be to resort to fossil fuels. An increase in gas generation would be an obvious stratagem, but this commodity is not only becoming more expensive, it would also blow a hole in the government’s commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 10 per cent by 2010 with a target of 20 per cent by 2020. At the time of writing both goals seem to be receding.There could be a resurrection of coal generation but this would be difficult as large scale generating plants like Drax in Yorkshire are in terminal decline. And again, the climate change commitment would be undermined.
For these reasons amongst others, more and more politicians are becoming reconciled to the fact that a new generation of nuclear plants is the only way to fill the generating gap without reneging on CO2 abatement commitments. But this opens a new Pandora’s box of problems. First there are the logistics of initiating a programme of new stations. There is a general acceptance that the critical mass of stations to make a programme viable in terms of economy of scale is ten, which would certainly fill the energy void left by the demise of all present generation plants. Is this feasible?
According to Professor Tom Burke of Imperial College, a former adviser to the one-time Department of Energy, even if work were started immediately (June 2005), a plant would not be operational before 2015. It would take an optimist to believe that three plants would be operational by 2025. In fact, when account is taken of the licensing and planning process and the business of putting together a financial package, the timescale is considerably extended. Then there is the construction phase, which can be up to 10 years. Next there is the question of cost. Gone is the optimism that once stated that ‘nuclear electricity would be too cheap to meter’. Now the estimate is that a plant would cost between £1.3 million and £1.7 million per Megawatt installed capacity. The capacity of each plant would be between 1200 and 1500MW. Gas plants, by comparison, cost around £350,000 per MW capacity.
The government will have a hard job persuading the market to invest in capital intensive projects carrying a number of risks within a liberalized and therefore uncertain energy market.The risks include:
• open-ended lead-in time including licensing and planning consents;
• public opposition; there is still a hard core of committed opponents who will galvanize public opposition;
• security risks in an environment of increasingly sophisticated terrorist operations;
• the chance of fissile material falling into the hands of rogue states;
• safe long-term waste disposal including the waste from existing generation plants; • the reluctance of lending institutions to
provide capital for high risk, long-life, capital intensive projects;
• the track record of the nuclear industry in its concealment of accidents;
• insecurity regarding return on capital unless the government guarantees a 40 year feed-in tariff, which is against the principles of a liberalized EU market.
On the last point one banking adviser has stated: ‘You need some kind of government or regulatory commitment to force people to contract to buy nuclear power.You would have to be careful to make it apply to all suppliers so none are disadvantaged and all share the same risk’ (Observer, ‘Business Focus: the Energy Debate’, 8 May 2005, p3).The verdict on this by Tom Burke is: ‘The argument that the government makes people sign a forty year contract to take nuclear power and then agrees to take back the liabilities and uses public money to do it is ludicrous’ (Observer, ibid).
An additional problem relates to the skills base necessary to create a new generation of nuclear plants. Currently there are shortages at all levels: scientists, engineers, technicians, craftspeople and manual workers. Graduates do not perceive the industry as a good career choice. Nor are there people with the skills necessary to administer regulatory and licensing
procedures. This is highlighted by the fact that the Health and Safety Executive’s present capacity to examine new technologies is one- tenth of a person per year according to the Institute of Physics.