News Archive – April 2005

New Nukes: another view

Paul Brown asks in The Guardian, will Britain go nuclear? He says the problem, even if public opposition could be overcome, is that new nuclear stations cannot be built in time to solve the 2010 shortfall in carbon emissions. There are formidable problems in getting any new design licensed quickly, and that would have to be done before a lengthy public inquiry could get under way. Opponents calculate that even doubling the UK’s current nuclear capacity, which contributes 20% of electricity needs, would only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8%, because the big problems such as transport would not be tackled. More carbon dioxide and money could be saved with energy efficiency than any other single measure, but the Government has done little to promote it. One benefit of considering nuclear power would be to bring these contradictions into the public eye and raise questions about the Government's failure to solve the nuclear waste problem.

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Guardian 28th April 2005

Reactor Hazards

A new report by two leading scientists and an international energy specialist on the hazards of different nuclear reactor designs world-wide, has concluded that risks from reactors in the West have been significantly increasing over the last few years and the likelihood of accidents occurring is now higher than ever. The report, published by Greenpeace on the 19th anniversary of Chernobyl, also highlights the potential for safety problems in modified PWR designs, such as the AP1000 Pressurised Water Reactors – which are being promoted by BNFL and its subsidiary Westinghouse as the reactor of the future.

download report (pdf, 2.1MB)

New Nukes: Oxera report

The Independent and The Telegraph wrongly interpret an article from economics consultancy, Oxera, as saying that building a new generation of nuclear power stations would be a much cheaper way of meeting the UK’s ambitious targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions than persisting with an expansion of renewable energy.
 
Independent & Telegraph 25th April 2005

Environment Times 25th April gives a more accurate assessment of the article.
 
You can read the article itself (pdf) and No2nuclearpower's assessment.

 

British Energy – no new nukes

British Energy isn't interested in building new nuclear plants in the U.K., its chairman said Tuesday, in an effort to quash rumors that the nuclear operator is looking to expand its influence. But Europe's largest nuclear operators, RWE AG (RWE), E.On AG (EON) and Electricite de France, all have U.K. subsidiaries, and are considering forming a consortium to build new nuclear plants in the UK.

Speaking at a conference in London, British Energy Chairman Adrian Montague pressed home the idea that the company is only trying to extend the life of its existing fleet, not build an entirely new one.The task of extending the life of existing plants may not be much easier than building new power plants, however. The AGRs have suffered from serious problems in their graphite cores. While the new generation of water-cooled reactors can achieve a 90% load factor, BE plants are lucky if they produce at 80% of their capability. Last year, British Energy had to ratchet down its projected output from 66 terrawatt-hours to 59.5 TWh. Despite the problems, BE will submit plans to the government later this year to extend the life on the 1.1-gigawatt Dungeness plant, which is scheduled for retirement in 2008. If British Energy doesn't manage to get life extensions, the government may allow other nuclear operators to build new plants. Europe's largest nuclear operators, RWE AG (RWE), E.On AG (EON) and Electricite de France, all have U.K. subsidiaries. Analysts posit they could form a consortium to build a new nuclear plant if the U.K. government came up with the right financial incentives. "We are interested by the debate (on nuclear) in the U.K.," Goulven Gaillat, head of economic strategy development in EdF's generation branch, said. "The first step is to get the political support and then of course we would consider the option of building a nuclear plant in the U.K."

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Dow Jones 12th April 2005

Committee on Radioactive Waste Management

The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) – an independent committee appointed by the UK Government to review options for radioactive waste management – has launched its second consultation.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4407421.stm
CoRWM reduced its long list of options down to a short-list after its first consultation. The Commitee has been asked to make recommendations to the UK Government by July 2006. The consultation document can be downloaded as a pdf.

The fact that CoRWM has "gone back to the drawing-board", unlike previous consultations which assumed that waste would be buried deep underground, was widely welcomed by environment groups. As was its committment to wide consultation and opennes and transparency. However, Greenpeace pointed out when the establishment of CoRWM was announced in March 2003 that: “A vital piece of the public consultation process is missing, because the Government has refused to announce an end to the production of more nuclear waste”.
 
Greenpeace's website details over 70 sites which have either been considered for nuclear waste dumps since the 1970s, or where nuclear waste is already stored. Although earlier searches for a nuclear waste dump have proved to be a failure, the geology of the sites has not changed. If the decision making process decides that a nuclear dump is the best way forward, then geologists are likely to recommend a return to one or more of these sites. On the other hand CoRWM may listen to those who say the science of deep disposal is too uncertain to give any confidence that a nuclear dump will not leak much sooner than expected, returning its toxic brew to the surface. Waste could then end up stored at any one, or all, of the existing storage sites.

“But whatever the Consultation Process decides, whichever site or sites are chosen, radioactive garbage will continue to arrive, and the risks will continue to increase, threatening the environment, and the health of future generations of residents, until this economically disastrous and dangerous industry is finally closed down for good” said Greenpeace.

See also History of nuclear waste disposal >>

Nuclear Decommissioning Authority

The NDA took over operations at Sellafield, Dounreay and the Magnox sites on 1st April 2005 Over the next 14 years or so reprocessing will be run down, and 17,000 jobs will be lost across Cumbria, according to the Carlisle News and Star. The BBC said staff on the site are likely to be cut by 8,000.

Meanwhile Nuclear clean-up contractors could make a profit of up to £4bn from deals that start going out to tender in the next year. British and foreign companies stand to earn margins as high as 20 per cent from the state-funded nuclear clean-up programme established last week, according to the Independent on Sunday 3rd April 2005.

The Observer 3rd April 2005 rounded up how the NDA will clear up after the nuclear industry's first half-century of activity. And the nuclear journal, Nuclear Engineering International (31st March 2005) goes into a little more detail, and discusses some of the controversies surrounding the NDA's role in continuing to produce nuclear waste.