www.no-waste.org

THE SUSTAINABLE ENERGY
and ANTI-URANIUM SERVICE

Nuclear fission is settling into the triangle that economists use to frame the debate on energy policy; namely economic feasibility, reliable supply, and environmental compatibility. Its supporters are more pleased than disturbed by the fact that even within this framework, many questions remain about the advisability of nuclear power. As far as they are concerned, the main point is that it has become increasingly possible to conceal nuclear energy's unique potential for catastrophe behind a wall of arguments that distract from the basic issues of safety and security. This development is no coincidence but rather the result of a deliberate and tenacious strategy pursued for years by operators and vendors in the major nuclear power producing countries.

The global reactor fleet is "ageing". This innocuous term is like a facade that covers an entire edifice of expertise about material and metal technology. These disciplines do not just deal with simple "wear", but rather with highly complex changes to the surface and the substance of metallic materials. These processes and their consequences are very difficult to calculate on an atomic level. It is also very difficult for monitoring systems to identify them reliably, and above all promptly, when high temperatures, strong mechanical loads, aggressive chemical environments and ongoing neutron bombardment from nuclear fission are all working simultaneously on components that are crucial to safety. Corrosion, radiation damage, and fissuring of both surfaces and the welded seams of central components have all occurred over the past decades. Serious accidents are often avoided because damage is discovered just in time by monitoring systems or by routine checks during down times and repairs. Sometimes these discoveries are made purely by chance.

We must also consider the effects that deregulated electricity markets in many of the countries that have nuclear power plants. Deregulation leads to higher "cost awareness" in every individual plant with very concrete consequences, such as personnel layoffs, longer intervals between checks, and shorter deadlines with the attendant time pressure for repairs and fuel rod replacements. None of this enhances safety.

At a 2003 meeting of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) in Berlin, participants listed eight "serious incidents" in the preceding few years that had raised concern. The list of incidents with potentially disastrous results included the following:

By Gerd Rosenkranz at WISE - Nuclear issues information service

Ok, it’s inconceivably dangerous and not at all green, but is it sustainable and cheap?

If the present global output of electricity were obtained entirely from nuclear reactors, and as efficiently as best practice allowed, for how long could all the uranium of all the known ore bodies in the world keep them going? The answer: just under nine years.

quoted from Nuclear Power, The Phantom Solution by ALAN ROBERTS.

Nuclear energy is not only a high-risk technology in terms of safety, but also with respect to financial investment because without state subsidies, it does not stand a chance in a market economy. Under special, state-controlled conditions, companies continue to profit from nuclear energy. Extending the licences of older reactors is an attractive option for operators but disproportionately increases the risk of major accident.

For investors trying to decide whether to replace or build new power stations under market conditions, nuclear plants are clearly not their first choice. This is amply demonstrated by empirical evidence. In the USA, reactor builders have not been awarded a single new contract since 1973 that was not subsequently cancelled. In Western Europe - with the exception of France - reactor builders waited a quarter of a century before receiving a contract for a new plant in 2004. Now they have one at Olkiluoto in Finland. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 28 nuclear power plants with a total capacity of around 27,000 megawatts were under construction worldwide in 2005. Almost half of these projects have been plodding along for 18 to 30 years now. As far as a number of them are concerned, no one believes they will ever generate electricity - in fact, the normal term for such projects is "abandoned". The remaining plants that are expected to be completed in the near future are almost all in East Asia, and are being built under conditions that have little or nothing to do with a market economy.

As marginal as the role of nuclear energy is compared to the gigantic expansion in power capacities worldwide, operators of nuclear plants are making determined efforts to extend the licences of existing reactors far longer than originally planned. The average age of all the reactors in operation in 2005 was just around 22 years but proponents are lobbying for extending operating lives to as much as 60 years.

The fact that nuclear plant operators are calling for an "overtime" period demonstrates their unwillingness to invest in new plants for business reasons. Instead of investing in new nuclear or non-nuclear technologies, these companies are sapping the substance of their reactors without regard for their growing susceptibility to failure.

Back during the time of large-scale, state-sponsored monopolies, investors could assume that consumers would eventually refinance their capital even if the reactor performed poorly. In today's deregulated electricity markets, however, this is no longer the case. With exorbitant initial investments and payback periods extending over decades, nuclear power is not compatible with deregulated markets.

In contrast to other systems, nuclear power plants incur enormous costs even after decades of operation. These include disposing of radioactive waste, guarding closed reactors, and ultimately decommissioning the reactors following a more or less lengthy "cool-down" period. All these investments have to be earned over the course of plant operation as well as put aside for use at a much later period of time. These costs, including accident insurance, differ from country to country. They are all the more difficult to estimate given that normal discount trajectories do not apply to the anticipated time periods. At a discount rate of 15 percent, for example, costs incurred after 15 or more years are negligible. However, because they will burden our children in the real world, these costs represent another source of uncertainty in reactor financing and in determining the price of generating electricity by nuclear power.

Several consortiums are trying to obtain a combined licence for building and operating new reactors but as they never tire of saying, it will not work without government support. The authorisation process alone for a new reactor series is expected to cost around US$500 million and thus far, no one knows how expensive the reactors themselves will be. To remain on the safe side, the companies are calling for subsidies of billions of dollars, which President Bush is now planning to provide. The new energy bill passed by Congress in the summer of 2005 allocates US$3.1 billion in subsidies for nuclear energy over a period of ten years. The state is also supposed to assume liability for serious accidents, and not least of all, solve the question of final waste disposal.

Nuclear technology thus occupies an absolutely unique position. Half a century after entering commercial markets, fuelled by subsidies in the billions, it still requires and receives state support for every new project - precisely as if it needed assistance to enter the market for the first time. Astonishingly, this extraordinary practice is also advocated and demanded by those politicians who otherwise loudly insist on "more market conditions" in the energy sector. In many industrial countries, these very same politicians produce market theory arguments to campaign against subsidising the launch of renewable energy from solar, wind, hydro, biomass and geothermal sources. But there is yet another essential difference: the future of nuclear energy is past, whereas the future of renewable energies is just beginning.

It sounds paradoxical that nuclear energy was successfully introduced to the market because there was not enough of a market to make it uneconomical. Due to the grid monopoly at the time, electricity supply was considered a "natural monopoly", and it was also considered a basic necessity of life and as such was sustained by state-owned, state-supported, or at any rate monopoly-like companies. This meant that in most industrialised countries, the state also set the tone for the introduction of nuclear energy, initially for either overt or covert military reasons and later for partially or exclusively industrial reasons.

By Gerd Rosenkranz at WISE - Nuclear issues information service

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