Expansion of Nuclear Power in Europe

The combination of aggressive carbon emission reduction targets and concerns about the security of gas supplies from Russia is driving a pretty rapid expansion of nuclear power in Europe.

The Swedes have just repealed a law requiring them to phase out nuclear power and seem likely to join the list of countries building new plants.

Several European countries are opting for nuclear energy and there is concern about the reliability of Russian-supplied fuel after Moscow's gas dispute with Ukraine last month.

Poland wants its first nuclear plant by 2020 and Britain decided last year to replace its ageing nuclear reactors and create new sites. France has ordered its 61st nuclear generator and Finland is building the largest reactor in the world, which is expected to open in 2011.

Sweden has some of the most ambitious greenhouse-gas targets in the world and plans to become carbon neutral by 2050. It wants to abolish fossil fuels as a heating source by 2020 and use half of its energy from renewable sources by 2030.

"The nuclear phase-out law will be abolished," a government spokesman said yesterday. "The ban in the nuclear technology law on new construction will also be abolished."

As Larvatus Prodeo notes, even the enormous cost blowouts we associate with nuclear power are not dampening enthusiasm in Finland.

Cloak and Dagger: DIO targets Japan

I'm a bit of a sucker for real life spy stories. But I missed this interesting report in the Canberra Times on the Australian Defence Intelligence Organisation's targets. They focus on the interest in Japan since Japan is such a close Australian ally. The shock that one would spy on an ally seems pretty naive but adds to the story!

According to briefings seen by The Canberra Times, DIO's Transnational, Scientific and Technical Intelligence branches keep a close watch on Japan's nuclear power industry and civilian space programs.

According to one Defence intelligence analyst, this is more than a watching brief. ''We put quite a lot of effort into the Japanese target,'' he said. ''After all they have lots of nuclear reactors, an advanced space sector and an enormous stockpile of plutonium.

Of course if you write such a story you can expect a bunch of guys in dark glasses to arrive at your house and turn the place upside down.

More on Nuclear Suppliers Group

The Financial Times has an editorial supporting the moves by several countries, including New Zealand, to add several conditions to the US-India agreement on sale of uranium to India for nuclear power.

Mr Bush’s allies say it is a pity the international community is dragging its feet in this way. They argue that the deal is strategically smart because it has ended 40 years of hostility between India and the US and balances the rising power of China. But the costs far outweigh any benefits. This deal makes a mockery of the non-proliferation treaty. And it threatens to accelerate the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan. This is because every pound of uranium that India is allowed to import for its power reactors frees up a pound of uranium for its bomb programme.

The NSG will again convene next month and must apply as many conditions as possible to India’s nuclear programme before giving the deal the go-ahead. Better still, the next US president should ditch the entire policy. He should opt for an approach that reforms the rules of the nuclear game both for America’s friends and foes.

While the Fairfax papers in New Zealand report that Indian officials are applying pressure in the other direction. Added safeguards would very likely lead to the collapse of Indian political support for the deal.

India Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar said his nation will not be pushed on the deal.
"The NSG exemption should be clean and there should be no additional condition," Kakodkar said.

"They may want to push, but India can't be pushed. Civil nuclear cooperation is important, but that doesn't mean at any cost....

"Should we allow ourselves to be pushed? Are we not Indians? Are you not proud of yourself and what you are doing?" Kakodkar said.
India's ruling Congress Party is demanding the deal go ahead with a clean waiver.
"Nothing which impinges or seem to impinge on India's national interest will be acceptable," party spokesman Manish Tewari said.

India and the Nuclear Trade

Until now the Australian Government's policy not to sell uranium to non-signatories of the NPT has been a moot point.

With the vote in the Indian parliament last week it will presumably come under more pressure to follow the Coalition government and make a special India-exception to this long-standing Australian policy.

I can't see how to read such a development as anything other than a slap in the face to sagging international non-proliferation efforts but obviously the question is complex, particularly given the possibility the deal would ease the rate of increase of India's greenhouse gas emissions.

Greg Sheridan gets in early with an entertainingly hyperbolic stance.

In his speech, Singh listed 10 countries with which India has particularly good relations. Australia was not among them.

I suspect that very soon we will enter the top 10 with a bullet or sink to a previously unimagined place of infamy in the Indian mind. This Indian parliamentary vote was mighty important for us, too.

See also Lowy Interpreter.

Australian Labor Party and Nuclear Power

Somewhat surprisingly a senior Union figure and former NSW Premier Bob Carr pushed the idea of an Australian Nuclear power industry at the Australian American Leadership Dialogue in Washington at the end of last week. Rudd told ABC radio that he remains opposed.

One big concern for Australia is finding the power to fuel their booming minerals industry if an ETS makes coal fired power stations uneconomic.

More of New Zealand's Nuclear History

Following up on the previous post, one concrete effort in the direction of nuclear power that neither Templeton nor the ODT seem to be aware of is that there was a small research reactor maintained by the School of Engineering at the University of Canterbury during the sixties and seventies. It was given to New Zealand as part of Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace programme which was designed to encourage the development of nuclear power internationally and was apparently a major kick start to the Indian weapons programme. But I'll have to leave that for another post.

Nuclear Power for New Zealand?

Well I continue to see idle references to the possibility of nuclear power in New Zealand. And like the Otago Daily Times editorialist I was aware that fairly concrete plans to build nuclear power stations here did once exist.

I was very surprised today though to discover in Smiths Books a bound copy of a submission to the 1977 Royal Comission on Nuclear Power Generation in New Zealand by the group Ecology Action.

I had no idea that there was ever a Royal Commission, presumably this is because I did not read Malcolm Templeton's 'Standing Upright Here' carefully enough (it's a little dry). Nor it turns out did I properly read the ODT editorial which quite clearly discusses the Royal Commission, but anyway.


Despite the name of the organisation, Ecology Action deputed four members of the Physics Department at the University of Otago to write their submission, led by Professor W. J. Sandle. As a result the submission is very well informed, in fact it's a remarkable document. Writing just after the first oil shock and before the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents the world the authors are anticipating seems very like our own. Take this for example:

Four contemporary concerns -- growth, weapons proliferation, energy and the environment -- interact in that problems associated with them reinforce and fee upon each othe. These concerns have, by virtue of their social significance, entered the public arena where they have found a common and legitimate focus in nuclear power.

Ecology Action list as concerns about nuclear power firstly the capital costs. This was second on my list of objections in 2008 for reasons we will come to. After this they cite concerns about the safety of reactors (now largely a solved problem if one is prepared to spend enough) and of the nuclear fuel cycle in general (still a serious concern). They cite weapons proliferation and concerns about nuclear terrorism including the possibility of terrorists building nuclear or radiological bombs. These seem to me to be perhaps more serious concerns internationally now than they were then.

It becomes painfully obvious how little has changed in the nuclear power industry and energy technology generally.

So the following statement is as true today as it was when it was written

There should be no commitment to a nuclear power programme in New Zealand until there has been a clear and convincing demonstration of the effectiveness of a method of high-level waste containment which guarantees safe sequestration for an indefinitely long period. No such method presently exists.

Technically we believe we know how to store high level waste but no country has yet permanently stored any.

Surveying alternative energy sources the authors list wind, biofuels, waves, solar thermal, solar power (photovoltaic solar panels), ocean thermal power and tidal power. With the exception (so far as I know) of ocean thermal these are exactly the alternative energy sources that we now anticipate will be useful in the near future and in the case of wind, biofuels, solar thermal and solar photovoltaic power they supply a not inconsiderable quantity of power in many countries.

This is a good point for those who hope for a technological fix to the questions of global warming. Except in very special circumstances scientists can see these fixes coming a long way off and are usually disappointed in how long they take to become economic. Roughly speaking the technology we have now is likely to be the technology we will be able to use to limit climate change.

One remarkable thing has changed since 1977 though and that is the scale of the anticipated power consumption in this country. In 1977 energy consumption was growing at a rate of 6.5% per year and it was hoped to keep growing at that rate. By my rough calculations from a figure in the submission energy consumption has only doubled since 1977.

At this rate of growth, and supposing half of all energy was supplied by nuclear power generation, then in 2010 we would have needed 13 600MW nuclear power plants. Wow!

As a senior manager in the New Zealand electricity department said in 1975

On present indications of future electricity consumption, it has been shown New Zealand will require about 1200 MW of additional nuclear generating capacity each year from 1990.

These days our power needs grow by only maybe 200 MW each year and our average consumption is maybe 4700 MW.

This is why no one was worried about reserve capacity which was my number one reason not to build a nuclear power plant.

But it really takes your breath away to think of the size of the country and size of the economy people anticipated at that point. It's also an object lesson in the dangers of attempting to forecast too far into the future.

Shopping for a Nuclear Power Reactor

I've been asked to explain why nuclear power plants come in such inconveniently large sizes.

The main reason is economies of scale. The huge costs associated with safety measures mean that the industry in the US and Europe has focussed on building progressively larger plants. In fact 1200MW is considered mid-size.

Now it is true, that many reactors, including smaller reactors, have in the past been built to various one-off designs often employing the nuclear engineering expertise retained by governments of nuclear weapons nations. If you're familiar with complicated one-off technical projects, like the baggage handling system at Heathrow say, you will know that things often go awry with delays and enormous cost overruns being commonplace.

With no great indigenous nuclear engineering expertise, New Zealand should certainly go with one of the established companies like Westinghouse, Areva or General Electric, and use one of their established designs. The great thing about the internet is that you can go shopping for nuclear power reactors in minutes! When you do you will find that the smallest off-the-shelf reactors currently mentioned on their sites are 1154MW, 1200MW and 1500MW respectively. (Areva has recently supplied a pair of 1000MW plants to China but these were actually constructed by the Chinese, so for better or worse I am not counting them.)

I believe that the 600MW figure quoted by the Electricity Comission comes from older designs. Several of these companies have built reactors this size but no longer seem to be doing so. In principle one could try to place orders but it's very unlikely they would rejig their current setup for a single reactor, and if they did it would be unlikely to be cheap.

Eagle-eyed followers of the IAEA's indispensible Power Reactor Information System will note that the Indians have been building a series of 200MW reactors. According to the Switkowski report this design was "appropriated" from the Canadians in the late 1960s. You may recall that there are many issues with the proper separation between civilian and military nuclear endevours in India, and that India is not a signatory of the NPT. So I doubt we will be pursuing this avenue. Sadly the Canadians are now apparently building 1200MW reactors, there goes that number again.

Taking a Deep Breath

The Hive and the Otago Daily Times are right to argue that we should be able to calmly discuss the benefits or otherwise of nuclear power. This would be a great step forward.

My post yesterday may not exactly have achieved this. It's frustrating that media accounts of this issue do not clearly address the technical issues, such as reserve capacity, or the financial ones such as capital costs.

I remain of the opinion that these two issues mean that any discussion of the future role of nuclear power in New Zealand will be very short. When an established company such as Areva, Westinghouse or General Electric builds an affordable 400MW reactor we should revisit the issue. At that point, or when plans for such reactors are announced, nuclear power enthusiasts should lobby Government to set up the regulatory framework that would be required to licence and operate a nuclear power plant. This would allow power generating companies to properly assess the economics of nuclear power in New Zealand. The need for such a framework was the one of the main recommendations of the recent Switkowski report on nuclear power in Australia. I'd recommend this report to anyone interested in the issues related to starting a nuclear power industry and I do think that Australia should be thinking seriously about the issue. Be warned that it takes a very optimistic view of the challenges involved. (The nuclear power enthusiast should watch the outcome of the Australian Labor party's internal machinations on this issue, and the related issue of uranium mining, and attempt to take advantage of any nuclear regulation regime set up in Australia in the next few years.)

On the subject of regulations; I'll note here that while the nuclear free legislation bans nuclear weapons and nuclear powered warships, I do not believe that civilian nuclear power stations are illegal in New Zealand. Any lawyers out there willing to argue the toss?

Questions to Ask a Nuclear Power Salesperson: First in a Series

The chattering classes in New Zealand are having one of their periodic flirtations with nuclear power. There have been not one but two polls on the subject, one of which suggested that as many as 36% of New Zealanders might be ready to consider it as a possible solution for New Zealand's current power shortages and rapidly increasing carbon footprint. It's getting discussed on the TV and radio. Even artists, opposed to the environmental devastation of wind farms, are wanting to go nuclear! What ever happened to nuclear free New Zealand?

It seems to me that despite the various emotional issues that tend to lead to differences of opinion between the left and the right on this issue, there are pretty hard headed reasons why New Zealand will never build a nuclear power station.

So if you are faced with a nuclear power salesperson why don't you try to find out the answer to some of these questions.

Question 1: Who is going to build and maintain all that reserve capacity?

Power stations, including nuclear power stations, sometimes have to be taken off line because of some issue at the plant. When that happens you need an equal amount of power generation sitting around ready to fire up so that the lights don't go off. Currently the largest power stations in the grid are less than 400MW, so that's roughly the reserve power generating capacity we are currently struggling to maintain. A nuclear power station that we would want to buy might put out as much as 1200MW of power. It seems we would need to MORE THAN TRIPLE our already stretched reserve power capacity to put a nuclear power station on the grid. Oh and you can't build two nuclear stations and leave one idling, unlike coal fired stations and hydropower, nuclear power stations can't be switched off for long periods. This issue is what the statement from the Electricity Commission is trying to get at.

(To give you an idea of the numbers, average demand in New Zealand at the moment is about 4500MW and apparently you can expect a nuclear power station to be on-line about 90% of the time, as opposed to 30% for wind. Oh and I disagree with the Electricity Commission that we would even want to think about a 600MW nuclear plant, but it is true that they have been built that small, and smaller. That's another blog post; and 600MW would mean nearly doubling reserve capacity in any case.)

Question 2: Where are you going to get the US$7 billion to build one?

There are lots of arguments that nuclear power may work out to be economic in the long run, particularly if carbon emissions become sufficiently expensive. (The Electricity Commission say that it may only be twice as expensive as our current power generation, although estimates of the cost vary widely and depend on whether a well established design is being used and how many plants are being built.) However, a really significant fraction of the cost of the power is the cost of the power plant itself. This makes nuclear power hugely capital intensive. Given that this is an enormous problem for the well-established nuclear power industry in the US it's likely to be pretty difficult to solve in New Zealand.

Make sure you ask the nuclear power salesperson about these issues before you ask them about long term waste storage, safety, the lack of nuclear engineering expertise in New Zealand, or the future price and availability of uranium!

Oh, and ask your politicians why they are not investing more in energy conservation measures, wind power, solar power, and my current favourite solar thermal.