Does radioactivity becomes more hazardous once we've touched it?

Of course not. Radioactivity is radioactivity (of the various varieties there is of course) whether it's just lying in ground for 2 billions, or whether we dig it up and manufacture some fuel rods out of it.

So then what is this neurotic obsession with radioactive material, that was lying in the ground, once it is extracted?

Timmy makes a good observation.

Further, think about what the actual complaint is even if it does leak. There
used to be lots of uranium in the ground here. Now some of it has gone back into
the ground. Scary, eh?

Once we take some uranium out of the ground, what's wrong with allowing it seep back in? It was already there in the first place!

It's like the epic tale of 10ft metal pipe. A nuclear operator orders 10ft of metal pipe. As with all materials, there is some natural radioactivity in this pipe. The technicians get the pipe, but only need to use 9ft of it. The remaining 1ft is scrap. However, because of this natural radioactivity, the pipe must be treated as low level waste. Can't see a coal fired power station being particularly bothered about that.

This highlights more stupidity about waste arguments. Best one is depleted uranium and the outrage that opponents display towards the buildup of this EEvil substance. We take natural uranium out of the ground, which has a specific activity of 12.8 MBq.kg^-1* and return it as depleted uranium, which has a specific activity of 12.3 MBq.kg^-1. In doing so, we've made the ground less radioactive. Surely the radiophobes should like that. But because the radioactivity is something that we've touched, it automatically becomes worse than what was sitting in the ground naturally.

On nuclear waste as a whole. By disposing of vitrified fission products, which will decay to below the activity of uranium ore within 600 years, the legacy we are actually leaving for future generations is a ground, which is less radioactive in the long term than it would be otherwise.

Think about that!

*Figures are in becquerels per kilogram of uranium, ignoring all the other stuff in the ore.

A few opening observations

Courtesy of the Guardian, we get this damning report from the Nuclear Consultation Group. It opens with a criticism of the handling of the energy review by the Government of All the Talentless, but then moves on to making their own case for why new nuclear power stations should not be allowed.

Here are some observations.

Health aspects

The entire Radiation Health Effects sections appeared to be an exercise in FUD. The COMARE reports have repeatedly given nuclear power a clean bill of health, yet they delighted in constantly raising doubts over whether that was enough. There was no sense of perspective added through acknowledging that if there is uncertainty as to the health effects of nuclear power, that puts it way ahead of coal, where there is no uncertainity: it is unhealthy.
The most damaging reference they had was to a Russian study, which they quoted as,

"As Prof Alexey Yablokov, Director of the RussianAcademy of Sciences, Moscow
concludes, ‘each year it has become clearerand clearer that the real
consequences of this catastrophe are much morewidespread and severe than has
been predicted’ (Yablokov, 2006, p. 34)."

This amused because the prediction told of millions dead and we know how valid that is. It also amused because put next to the extracts from UNSCEAR 2000, it looks rather shallow; a line of rhetoric rather than a line of facts.

Economics

I don't know what it is with this lot, but why is it so difficult to accept that new nuclear operators will have to operate in a market economy? The government has said repeatedly (and the opposition have agreed) that this is a private sector matter. The only job of the government is to lay the regulatory foundations for new nuclear build. The operators are meant to pay their way. If this looks unpalatable to investors, they won't come. Simple as that.

The pessimism is overbearing. Olkiluoto-3 and Flamanville-3 are currently under construction, but they talk as though this is already a withering wine. Does anyone seriously expect France is not going to build more? Even Fortum in Finland has not be deterred by the delays in Olkiluoto-3 and are studying the possibility of building a second EPR. Besides, while Olkiluoto-3 has run into some trouble, there are a host of recent projects in places like China, South Korea and Argentina that have come in on budget and on schedule.

Their perception of the past is also rather dodgy. Saying that Sizwell B did not have a consultation is totally untrue. The public enquiry took years and is partly responsible for the cost overruns. Their line about previous British efforts resulting in a "handful of unreliable and uneconomic units that supply less than 20 per centof our electricity" is also misleading since at its peak, the nuclear sector provided almost 30% of our electricity. It's only dwindling now because the older reactors are shutting down. On the other hand, it is fairly accurate to describe the Magnox and AGR designs as unreliable and uneconomic. That's why the technology is not being followed up and we are looking at LWRs and CANDUs now.

Safety

A vicious smear is laid upon the name of the AP-1000 by suggesting that it cannot take an aircraft strike or that it lacks safety systems required for Sizewell B, which incidentally was also built by Westinghouse. This is of course rubbish.

Waste

The figure that 60 years of operation of Generation III+ reactors will only add 10% to our current volume of nuclear waste (most of which isn't waste!) is a promising one. However, this lot insist on putting a negative spin on it by converting this into radioactivity, which in this case becomes a five fold increase from 78×10¹⁸ Bq to 360×10¹⁸ Bq (they actually said . Makes it look more scary, doesn't it?

Of course, this abuse of mathematics only proves what we already know; that radioactive material becomes less radioactive with time. Spent fuel straight out of reactors decays to 0.1% of its initial activity within a few decades. Naturally, the legacy wastes have had a lot of time to decay, while the new stuff will still be fresh and bubbly.

This figure work really proves nothing horrible. It's volume that matters. Radioactivity is such a fleeting thing.

Politics

They betray rather too much of their Lovinsite agenda with sporadic references to a decentralised grid and the innuendo about needing demand side reform (energy rationing I assume). It's not their job to put out a political vision. They're supposed to be reviewing the viability of allowing new nuclear build.

They also delight in partaking in the renewables vs nuclear straw man. Why is there not room for both? We do want to reduce dependency on fossil fuels, don't we?

It's a somewhat disappointing document. It looks well referenced, but it seems that in most cases, the writers looked at those references then made up their own conclusions.

Updates! Updates! Updates!

More re-writes have arrived.

Principles of fission

Paying for it

Is nuclear the most independent energy source?

All energy sources rely on natural resources to make them go. Nuclear relies on actinides. Coal, oil and gas rely on their respective fossil fuels. Wind relies on wind, solar on sunlight, geothermal on subsurface heat. This means that the economics of each power source is dependent upon these inputs to a large degree. If fossil fuels are expensive in a particular area, the fossil fuel economics will be comparatively poor. If availability of wind or sunlight is poor, then ditto for those energy sources.

Nuclear is like fossil fuels in that it depends on a market commodity, whose price can vary. However, unlike fossil fuels, it is not vulnerable overall to that price because the requirement for fuel is only a small fraction of the overall cost. Like renewables, nuclear is mostly capital intensive, with most of the money going into building the power station in the first place. However, despite this, nuclear avoids the pitfalls of renewables of being dependent upon the quality of natural goods in the area.

It looks like nuclear is relatively independent of either critical factor for other energy sources. Does this mean that nuclear economics should be the least variable of all energy economics?

The nuclear crash

A month ago, I argued that the Conservatives were a safer bet when it comes to getting more nuclear power stations in the UK. One of my arguments was that the Conservative back benches are more favourable than the front benches meaning the pressure would be on a Conservative government to push more towards nuclear as compared to a Labour government, which may be hindered by the back benches and especially any potential coalition partners (no-one other than the Ulster Unionists like the Tories so there's no worry about coalition partners with a Conservative Hung Parliament).

Mark Field, MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, validates my point by writing a neat article arguing for stronger support for nuclear power.

A lot of what he said we've been saying for ages of course, but there were a few interestings things. One point was how nuclear proponents in Britain are not attacking the opposition head on with their doom-mongering and falsehoods, but rather trying to sidestep their issues by arguing the situation with global warming and energy security is so dire we have no choice but to accept these negatives.

Another point, which got me thinking, was the factors that led to the halt in nuclear construction in the 1980s. It is easy to always blame an overburdeonsome regulatory framework, one which imposed unecessary and unproductive red tape on the industry, on this dry spell. That is of course a major factor, but there are other issues of the time, namely the oil shock, and the 1980s high interest rates.

Mark correctly points out that the oil shock caused a dramatic reduction in energy consumption. Lower than expected demand is not good for nuclear. Similarly, high interest rates affect nuclear economics far more dramatically than fossil fuels.

This is because of the difference between CAPEX, capital expenditure, and OPEX, operating expenditure. In the context of power stations, CAPEX would be the cost of building the facility in the first place, while OPEX is the cost of running the facility, including the cost of the fuel.

Comparing fossil fuels and nuclear, one thing becomes abundently clear: fossil fuels are OPEX intensive, while nuclear is CAPEX intensive. Fossil fuels need a constant supply of fuel to keep the plant going, so they have the burdeon of this constant expense throughout their life. Nuclear fuel on the other hand is only a tiny proportion of the overall cost. The energy density of uranium is so great that a few tonnes of uranium will keep a reactor going for a year. However, a nuclear reactor, with all its sophistication (anyone can burn some coal, but making uranium go critical on water is not a job for the sloppy) and its need for containment structures and the like, entails comparatively higher construction costs.

This is to nuclear's disadvantage. It's better to be OPEX intensive than CAPEX intensive. The neat thing about being OPEX intensive is that you spend your money as you are making money. Sure the incessent cost of the fuel must be a pain, but at least your generating power - and revenue - as you buy. If you're CAPEX intensive, all your money is paid up front and you have to hope your forecasts were correct because you are dependent on many years of production to earn back the money.

The drop in consumption after the oil shock is a problem for a CAPEX intensive energy source since there is less demand for its energy without a corresponding drop in investment. For a fossil fuel power station running on reduced power because of a lower than forecast market demand, at least they have the consolation of not having to pay as much for fuel, reducing OPEX. And naturally, since those fat loans are going to be used to cover CAPEX rather than OPEX, it goes without saying that the high interest rates of the 1980s were not kind to nuclear prospects.

So that's another couple of reasons to add to the grand list of factors bringing about the nuclear crash.

• The oil shock reducing energy demand.
• High interest rates.
• High regulatory burgeon.
• Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
• CND smears.

Nothing new to see here

A commenter referred me to an anti-nuclear page here. When Helen Caldicott is quoted in the second line, you know they're in trouble.

There was a
disaster at Windscale in 1957 (that would have been much worse if the wind
had been blowing inland instead of out to sea),

A 50 year old accident at a military facility doesn't exactly have much relevance to today.

There was a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 released large amounts of radioactivity over a
very wide area,

Old news.

There has been extensive
radioactive contamination from the Dounreay nuclear reactor,

Hardly the first facility to release some dangerous material and it certainly won't be the last. But given the rather limited effect this has actually had, despite the fear mongering, this is hardly a reason for blanket opposition to nuclear power as a whole, particularly given the advances that have led to Generation III+.

In late July 2006 there was an accident at Sweden's Forsmark nuclear power
station which was described as a near-meltdown by Lars-Olov Hoglund, a Swedish
nuclear expert (see Spiegel
Online, 2006-08-07, and report in the International
Herald Tribune, 2006-08-04).

A more recent example of FUD.

Nuclear reactors, nuclear reprocessing plants and the trains that carry nuclear
materials around the country are inviting targets for terrorists (see how a
Daily Mirror reporter planted a 'bomb' on a train carrying nuclear waste,
July 2006). In a similar way, nuclear materials being transported around the
world can easily be attacked or hijacked by terrorists.

Tabloid journalism at its worst.

When all the overt and hidden subsidies are taken into account, nuclear power is
much more expensive than any other source of power, including renewable sources
(see some
figures on costs quoted in "Is
it all over for nuclear power?". There is a much fuller account in Helen
Caldicott's book.).

That source uses the junk study from the non economics foundations as its reference, which basically consisted of saying, "Ooh, let's add another couple of pennies for this thing and how about another penny here. Wow, look how expensive it's become!"

Significant amounts of CO2 are released by the nuclear industry:

If junk science was the same as junk food, the authors of this website would be diabetic.

Nuclear power may consume more energy than it produces.

Caldicott said that, did she? She's even more insane than I realised. I suppose France has discovered the secret to perpetual motion then.

No solution has yet been found to the problem of disposing of dangerous nuclear
waste, much of which will remain dangerous for more than 10,000 years. No human
institution has ever survived that long.

Closer than the other website, but still the cigar is way off.

Contrary to what many people imagine and often suggest as an advantage of
nuclear power, it is not available 24/7 throughout the year. Just like wind
power, and all other sources of electricity, nuclear power is intermittent.
Nuclear power stations stop producing electricity during routine maintenance and
unscheduled breakdowns, and the 'load factor' (the amount of electricity that is
actually produced compared with the theoretical maximum) is normally well short
of 100%.

Capacity factors are now about 90%. Much better than solar or wind. If 90% isn't good enough, then 30% definitely isn't.

In its 'normal' operation, the nuclear industry releases radioactivity into the
environment that causes
damage to health.

What dark fear mongering is this?

The wide distribution in the world of plutonium and enriched uranium increases
the chances that terrorists will be able to get hold of enough to make either a
'dirty' conventional bomb or even an atom bomb.

Why bother? There are so many easier ways to cause mass destruction.

The technology for nuclear power has much in common with the technology needed
for the production of nuclear weapons.

Not quite. Swimming pools have much more in common with the weapons the Nazis used to kill their prisoners. I suppose swimming should be banned too?

Security of supply: some uranium comes from politically-unstable countries like
Kazakhstan and those supplies cannot be guaranteed.

Very, very deceptive! Most comes from Australia and Canada. Just think of what the Bloc Quebecois would do to us!

In recent heat waves, nuclear power plants have been shut down owing to
shortages of cooling water and unacceptable damage that would be caused by the
discharge of hot water into the environment (see Our
nuclear summer). This kind of problem is likely to become worse as global
temperatures rise.

Coal power stations have the same problem. The wind turbines weren't turning much either.

Risk of flooding.

Here's an idea. How about not building them in a floodplain?

Nuclear power is an inflexible source of electricity that is only suitable for
'base load'. It cannot respond quickly to peaks in demand for electricity.

That's why we have hydroelectric power or gas or any manner of other power sources that can be cycled rapidly in conjunction with a nuclear baseload. Wind and solar are not predictable and therefore not controllable so they cannot respond at all to peaks in demand, quickly or slowly.

Nuclear power only provides electricity. It does not address the problem of
reducing CO2 emissions from space heating and road transport (except under the
unlikely scenario that nuclear electricity would be used for a significant
amount of space heating and charging of electric vehicles).

Neither do solar or wind.

It has been calculated that, if enough nuclear fission reactors were built to
meet most of the world's demand for electricity, exploitable sources of uranium
would be exhausted in about fifteen to twenty years (see Energy Beyond Oil by
Paul Mobbs, Matador, 2005, ISBN 1-905237-00-6). If the more risky fast breeder
reactors could be made to work reliably (not an easy job), this might yield
fifty or sixty years of electricity. In a similar way, thorium could in
principle be converted into nuclear fuel but this has not yet been shown to be
practical and supplies of thorium are in any case limited.

I'm impressed they knew about fast reactors and thorium. Still, there figures are way off. And if the supply is so limited, what are they worrying about? It will guarantee than the next generation of nuclear power stations will only be used as a stop gap measure for renewable expansion since there couldn't be another generation after that.

As exploitable sources of uranium become exhausted, prices will rise. And as
higher-grade ores are exhausted, more energy will be consumed and more CO2 will
be released in processing the lower-grade ores that remain.

That junk science addiction repeats itself.

Opportunity cost: As Friends of the Earth and others have been pointing out,
money spent in propping up the nuclear industry is money that would be much more
profitably spent on expanding renewable sources of energy.

Now the reality. Much more money will be spent on expanding fossil fuel use to fill the energy gap left as renewables can't expand sufficiently rapidly.

What is a cooling tower?

A curious confusion of nuclear image continues to endure. This is a cooling tower:

And this is the emblem of the campaign group Nuclear Free Vermont:

As Stewart Peterson raised, this clearly shows that NFV are opposed to cooling towers. I say we bring them to Britain, because their campaign against cooling towers will favour the nuclear industry there. In Britain, most nuclear reactors are on coast lines and as such use open cycle cooling. This means they don't have cooling towers. On the other hand, coal power stations are dotted inland across the country and frequently feature a field of these things, for example Didcott or the area formerly known as Drakelow.

It would seem more logical for the glorious containment domes to be the image associated with nuclear power, but in fact it is the cooling towers, more accurately to be associated with coal, which have stuck to nuclear. Even the banner of the main website, made by a kind supporter of nuclear party (in the Liberal Democrat party no less), makes focus of cooling towers. In fact, I suspect the power station featured may indeed have been Drakelow coal power station in the Midlands of England. I certainly know I had to paint out a chimney stack before using it.

It's probably no surprise myths about nuclear power last if such a fundamental and emperically disproveable perception remain fixed in the public mindset.

While on the subject of Nuclear Free Vermont...

How can it be "clean" when it produces lethal radioactive waste that will be
dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years and for which scientists have not
yet found a permanent solution?

The Greenpeace random number generator makes a return appearance. The worst datum that could be used is ten thousand years and even that betrays the reality of the situation because that is the time it takes unreprocessed spent fuel to decay to below the activity of the original uranium ore, itself not the most lethal material found in nature.

If nuclear power were "safe", why would all the towns surrounding the reactor
need an Evacuation Plan that requires hundreds
of hours from local officials and volunteers for meetings,
trainings and drills, a Plan that many citizens doubt would work if there were a
serious accident in Vernon?

That is obviously because ignorant organisation such as NFV perpetuate fear of nuclear power forcing city planners to react by creating the assurance of an escape route. Incidentally, other types of facilities often have emergency escape plans. Curiously, the nuclear ones are needed the least.

Britain continues to mess with mess

From the oh so respectable Reuters regarding the latest NDA estimate inflation.

There's around a 3% jump in the cost of decommissioning due to an "improved understanding of the costs involved in cleaning up the nuclear reprocessing plant Sellafield."

Their improved understanding does not seem to include the facts that:

1. There is no need to fully return Sellafield to brownfield status (which is the basis of the estimate) when the expertise and infrastructure is already in place for handling future, more advanced fuel cycle facilities.
2. They don't need to tag on the costs of cleaning up the non-nuclear munitions activities at Windscale to the nuclear decommissioning estimates.

Anybody for DUPIC, a fast reactor, a nuclear program not hopelessly intermingled with the government's military activities?

Concerning DUPIC

DUPIC stands for Direct Use of spent PWR fuel In CANDU. Yeah, not the best acronym in terms of reflecting what it stands for but it's a cool word.

I make a reference to it on the waste page. Stewart Peterson at NIOF has something more extensive. So here is the Support DUPIC campaign button.

'Urgency needed' on nuclear waste

So says the Beeb. Never say they pass up an opportunity to make nuclear sound difficult.

It's pretty usual stuff to most of us. A proper geological repository is necessary and we better get our finger out on this one.

They say it will take decades. That is probably because of all the annoying litigation involved, just like they say it will take over ten years to build a new reactor even though they can all be built in less than four.

The one thing that did strike me was this.

CoRWM's extensive three-year investigation of the issues has dismissed other
disposal options, such as putting the waste on the ocean floor or flying it into
the Sun.

It actually concerns me that three years was spent and the expense of the tax payer endulging such options as flying nuclear waste into the Sun. We knew it was geological disposal from the beginning. The waste volumes are so small it is a technically easy proposition. Sure the BBC make it look scary, but for fifty years, those figures are a pittance on the industrial scale. Yet they spent three years wondering if flying it into the Sun was a viable option?

This does not bode well for a professional handling of what should be an easy situation.

The Groaniad

The Guardian and its columnists are not known for being the most reliable source of comment, but lately, they really seem to have lost it. First, we have Polly Toynbee's submission to the International How-Many-Political-Ad-Hominems-Can-You-Fit-Into-One-Article Tournament.

For some reason the old deniers, barely batting an eyelid, shifted over to
nuclear as the only salvation, though those who have been so wrong owe a little
humility when it comes to next steps. Many hail from a bizarre tradition of
right wing bad science: remember Andrew Neill as Sunday Times editor running a
dangerous campaign that denied HIV caused Aids, branding the latter as a disease
only of gays and the wildly promiscuous.

Her essential thesis is that only rabidly right-wing ex climate-deniers support nuclear power. We all know how long it took James Lovelock to get over his climate skepticism.

I don't know what about nuclear makes it right wing. As I pointed out in my swipe at the Tories, nuclear, with its large-scale power reactors feeding power into a monopolistic national grid is quintessentially socialist. The right wing approach taken by Dave, consistent though impractical, is for people to own their own power sources. Still, that doesn't stop ever rabid Polly from asserting beyond doubt that to be right wing is to be a fan of bad science, while to be left wing is to hold yourself to the highest of Popperian standards.

The science-based realos tend to be on the left, conviction fundis on the right.

So we'll ignore Lysenkoism, claims that Chernobyl will kill millions, incessant GM food scares, and worst of all, New Age "medicines" like homeopathy. It's Polly so we shouldn't get too worked up about what she says.

The wise will keep a hawk's eye on the money. Nuclear is not and never was
feasible without heavy subsidy. When the government swears there will be no
price guarantee or subsidy, none of the experts believes it - though the
industry naturally pretends. Investors will only build on a worldly-wise
understanding that the state will step in, one way or another. Always has,
always will.

The conspiracy theory nouveau rears its ugly head again. But even if she is right, didn't she just previously say this?

A ring of off-shore wind turbines round these blustery islands would give
permanent energy.

Renewables continue to receive far greater subsidies than anyone things the nuclear industry might need. Why all of a sudden are subsidies so wrong as soon as nuclear comes into the equation (particularly for Polly "Let's nationalise everything" Toynbee).

Even the CEO of the US nuclear power company Dominion said that, despite US
government wishes for new nuclear power stations, he would not build, to avoid
giving credit raters Standard & Poor's and his own chief financial officer
"a heart attack".

Then why are Dominion preparing applications for combined operating licences GE ESBWRs?

The eyes of would-be nuclear builders, meanwhile, are on Areva, the French
government- subsidised company building in Finland the first new nuclear station
anywhere in decades.

This of course was immediately caught by Polly's fan blog. It is rather typical for a chattering class European to completely forget that Asia too does have some role on the world stage. Between Asia and Eastern Europe, there is a fair amount of new construction going on.

Then there's a bunch of stuff where she assumes the economics for our old gas cooled reactors will still apply to Generation III+ reactors, which is again a double standard because she would only accept consideration of the newest and most advanced wind turbines. So enough of Polly's madness. What about a guest editorial from the science editor of the Ecologist (isn't that an oxymoron?)?

France's 60 operating PWRs emit a relatively benign 29 tonnes of carbon dioxide
per megawatt-hour; but that is for today's high-grade ores, which will last a
few years at best. Once we consider the next grade of uranium ore down, then
nuclear power burns up considerably more energy than it generates and its
emissions will exceed those even of coal.

That's even too much for SLS. High grade ores can last for at least another 50 years, and that's the known reserves. Further exploration yields more resources. Madness of the highest degree. Timmy can barely contain his frustration.

Newsnight roundup

A lively debate happened on Newsnight. I'm sure they'll put up the programme for viewing online soon.

They had four politicians from different parties, Labour (the energy minister Malcolm Wicks), Conservatives (Alan Duncan), Liberal Democrats (Ed Davy) and Greens (Caroline Lucas).

Here's the roundup.

Malcolm Wicks fought a reasonably good fight and talked the most sense.

Alan Duncan spouted incomprehensible crap that meant nothing.

Ed Davy made allegations about stealth taxes. He cited precedent that no nuclear power station has come in on budget and were built with subsidy (no surprise given they were built during the days of regulation in the energy industry). But of course, they were Generation II reactors that were a litigation nightmare to build. With proper licensing procedures, such problems should be reduced. First time problems sometimes occur, but the beauty of standardisation is that they get caught first time and not repeated. Besides, nuclear projects are hardly the only things to overrun. Scottish Parliament anyone?

He also said we needed more focus on other sectors among which he named geothermal. If only we had any geothermal resources his point might have been valid.

He also brought up the waste issue. He said it was different from other types of waste. That's right. It's contained unlike other forms of waste. It's also produced in manageably small quantities and throughout the lifetime of Generation III+, the volume of total radwaste will only increase 10% on what we currently have.

Caroline Lucas was full of bile. She said underwriting accidents was a large subsidy, obviously working on the explicit assumption that nuclear power stations are death traps, Chernobyl et al. Not only is she ignorant, but she is reprehensibly so.

There was also crap about renewables and nuclear being incompatible because they use a different kind of grid. Well large wind farms need the National Grid as much as anyone and I haven't heard her complaining about those. It is also the classic pie in the sky thinking that microgeneration will solve all of our energy problems alone so that large baseload generation will not be required.

Then there was this gem. She said it was uneconomic. She also said that by signalling to investors that nuclear is desired, they would no longer invest in renewables. But if nuclear was so uneconomic, why would they invest in it at all unless renewables were even more uneconomic to the point of ridiculous? It is a classic have your cake and eat it too fallacy. When it comes to renewables, Greens as a whole always insist that money should be no object, but as soon as nuclear is on the cards, suddenly economics leaps to the forefront. That's called not making a fair comparison.

So in conclusion usual fuddite and pie in the sky rubbish with a dash of conspiracy theory nouveau (the whole stealth tax business).

PS I originally said the Olkiluoto 3 delays were purely a litigation issue. In fact, it is due to planning and supply issues, which can partly be attributed to the regulatory framework and partly to some technical problems associated with prototypes.

NEW! Decommissioning

All good things must come to an end. Even nuclear reactors.

It's not an issue that comes up a great deal overall, but in Britain, recent estimates from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority have given ammunition to the opposite. Therefore, not surprisingly, this new page dedicates a fair proportion of space to the British situation and why the NDA figure is misleading.

The important thing to remember about Britain is that with all those graphite moderated reactors, costs were bound to be higher anyway.

Latest updates

Over the past couple of days, I've made some updates to some important pages.

The oft mentioned issue of energy security has been tackled.

The issues of final geological disposal have been expanded, including the Yucca Mountain fiasco.

The radiation and pollution page has been rewritten featuring a more comprehensive discussion of the high carbon allegation.

The recent shutdown of the THORP facility at Sellafield has been added to what is now the log of minor accidents formerly the Mihama page.

Storm in a teacup

It has become as legendary as the MBH Hockey Stick. I'm talking about the paper by Storm van Leeuwen and Smith entitled Is Nuclear Power Sustainable?. Their thesis is that throughout the life cycle of a nuclear power station, it will produce as much carbon dioxide as a third of the natural gas cycle. The recent flurry of press attention has prompted much quoting of this conclusion.

In the mean time, here are some important things to consider about the SLS paper and its use by various characters. For starters, there is a real have your cake and eat it too fallacy about its use. SLS assume the use of low grade ores to evaluate long term sustainability. This is fallacious for two reasons, one that it invokes the old Limits to Growth nonsense and another it assumes we will use low grade ores at all. But the important thing is that high grade ores will be used for the next few decades. That means this paper does not really apply to the generation of reactors we are proposing should be built now. Again, we can return in 60 years time to discuss whether yet another generations of reactors is a good idea, but for now, we are discussing the generation for the next few decades.

So case closed? The paper is valid for the future, but not for right now? Not quite.

First off, carbon dioxide released during the nuclear life cycle is basically a proxy for energy inputs. That means we look at the energy inputs required and convert that to a carbon dioxide output? But what if the energy did not come from fossil fuels? What if enrichment was powered by nuclear electricity as it is in France? What if the ships used to bring uranium over from Canada and Australia were nuclear powered? What if the ground vehicles used in mining, transport and waste disposal were powered by hydrogen or other synthetic fuels produced from nuclear reactors? If this is done, the carbon dioxide emissions plummet. In fact, coal power tends to be a large part of the assumed energy input leading to a gross overestimate of carbon dioxide.

Then there's the use of energy inefficient diffusion enrichment, which is going out of fashion very quickly in favour of centrifuge enrichment, the lack of attention to reactor life extensions particularly in GenIII+ allowing more amortisation of construction energy inputs, ignoring improved mining methods such as the in-situ leaching, and just overestimating the costs of everything else (it would have helped if they didn't use 20 year data).

But the major fallacy is trying to describe a scenario, inaccuracy aside, that involves us using low grade ores to fuel thermal uranium reactors in much the same way we do today. By the time we are forced to move to low grade ores, technology will have improved and the higher fuel prices of the low grade ores will make them much cheaper, if they are not cheaper already by then. Improved technologies are fast reactors and thorium reactors and this is the long term future of nuclear fission. Under this scenario, the requirement for raw uranium drops dramatically as fast reactors breed more fissile material out of the uranium already extracted. Add this to the use of thorium, where we start going after a completely different mineral, which is far more abundant. The scenario SLS describe will never apply.

Tony knows how to whip up a storm

He may not have long to go but he's sure going out true to form. His recent announcement that nuclear would be a serious consideration for the future energy mix in Britain has caused commentators all over the place to start the bashing.

Timmy deals with some of it.

It's all rather boring really. No-one seems to really be particularly well versed in nuclear technology. How can any talk about waste without mentioning the all-important process of vitrification even if just to dismiss it? How can anyone talk about uranium depletion without talking about thorium even if just to dismiss it?

Such ignorance can be seen on display on Question Time last night when the topic came up. I think we all knew it would, and I knew I would have reason to cringe when I found out Simon Hughes MP was also to be on the programme. He did not disappoint (after all since the LibDems are never going to be in power they can say whatever sounds good and never have it put the test). He regurgitated the same old tired dogma, blissfully unaware, or perhaps deliberately ignorant (vitrification, Simon?). Plus he made a big deal about cost and the alleged subsidies new reactors would receive. Nuclear requires no more subsidy than renewables do (double standard right there) and only in the form of a price floor. Certainly any new build will not be funded from taxpayers' money. So by actually saying that they would, he outright lied to the audience.

The problems with current decommissioning is due to the legacy of the Magnox program and the early nuclear development, which included weapons. Plus traditional graphite moderated reactors are a git to decommission anyway (VHTRs are a different story though). The advanced LWRs or HWRs that would be built are not the same as the reactors we have currently.

An amusing bit at the end as Frederic Forsyth, who seemed much more informed, mentioned how Finland was building its reactor, Simon Hughes went on the defensive mumbling like he was having a nervous breakdown about how they were the exception... Except for Japan, China, Russia, India, soon to be Canada, the US, perhaps even Australia (although I'll believe it when I see it) and of course very shortly France, the nuclear darling (curiously our nearest continental neighbour didn't get any mention).

Then there was the women with the flower who seemed to be very certain of her concerns despite confusing uranium and plutonium. Ken Clarke MP demonstrated a bit of knowledge by suggesting we could make plutonium from the uranium we have got (I'm hoping for an ACR win). Of course, fast reactors are the future. The answer to her question though in the short term is that importing uranium is not the same as importing natural gas. With uranium, we buy a shipment as we're set for some time. With natural gas, we require a constant supply.

But outside of Question Time, the question that keeps popping up is why no-one seems interested in investing.

The French seem rather keen to get into the nuclear act in Britain (they probably see more money in running reactors here rather than pumping it across the channel from reactors in France, which is what they will be doing in ever greater quantities if we allow our current fleet to go unreplaced).

The key issue is certainty. No investor is going to invest, no matter how profitable an idea in the right circumstances, if the environment does not look suitable. They are waiting for the government to say that they will support politically new reactors by streamlining procedures and by declaring what measures they will take to internalise the perceived external costs of emissions from the use of coal and gas. They also want some guarantees against binge gassing, which happened in the 90s destroying the economics of nuclear power then (although with Magnox and AGRs it doesn't take too much). Yes, it's no secret that low cost fossil fuels are cheaper than nuclear. At the moment though, fossil fuel prices are up and concerns over environmental effects means nuclear is competitive.

When and if the government says they do want new reactors, investors will be more enthusiastic.

Blair shows support for nuclear

... which is more than he's got at the moment.

He gets the occasional thing right.

Normally I would be very pleased, except in the arduous task of increasing support for nuclear power, having it be promoted by Blair in his current political state may do more harm than good. Fence sitters may turn against the idea simply because it is Blair promoting it.

Of course this is all very interesting, but the real interest is in the comment posted on BBC Have Your Say. Mixed opinions, but some important points.

Blair won't let Iran have nuclear power.

Not true. He won't let Iran have high-enriched uranium, with which they could make a bomb. The deal the EU is trying to broker with Iran involves them buying low enriched uranium for LWRs from Russia and then subsequently returning them there after use. No enrichment is to be done under Iranian control. Anyone can have nuclear power, just not nuclear weapons. That is reserved for the US, the UK, France, Russia and China, plus India, Pakistan and Israel because, even though they're not supposed to have them, they got them anyway and we can't be arsed to deal with that.

Taxpayers paying for it.

Actually, EDF and Areva are wanting to get some action in this country and they don't require government money to do it, just a straightening out of the regulatory procedures. I don't recall seeing any mention of EDF or Areva. The irony is that if we don't generate our own nuclear power, we will probably end up paying a premium for extra nuclear power from France. They're already contributing as much as renewables to our electricity needs.

Nuclear power does produce carbon dioxide.

Not much. Construction and decommissioning produces some. Mining and enrichment produces some and so does spent fuel handling. But that is only because these emissions are proxies for energy inputs, generally assumed to be from oil and coal. If we could use nuclear power to provide the energy for these processes, then we eliminate the emissions. We can eliminate enrichment emissions immediately by using a nuclear power station to provide the energy as is done in France. The rest require synthetic fuels of various sorts, which may work in the future.

But more importantly, all energy source require inputs. Wind does too. It take more concrete to build a capacity of wind turbines than a nuclear power station generally. Nuclear emits less over the fuel cycle than photovoltaics and generally about the same as wind, although there is some regional variation (Germany for instance sees lower emissions for wind). In general, it is around 5% of the natural gas cycle.

Safety, blah, blah, blah.

I liked the comment about the golf ball that can melt its way down to China. I wonder if any of these posters can name anyone in Britain who has been killed as a result of the civil nuclear industry. There will be very, very few.

A few just refuse to believe the idea that containment structures are built to take large impacts. Then there's this scary proposition from Paul in Scotland.

Chernobyl was the result of a seemingly insignificant design fault.

Paul, if you think that using graphite-water-uranium or omitting a containment structure amount to "seemingly insignificant" design faults, I don't want you anywhere near the design of our new reactors.

If this is about energy independence, where is our uranium?

Good question. We have some plutonium, which we could feed in Advanced CANDUs (they're my favourite). But the important thing is that because we only need small amounts of fuel, we won't have the problem of being short term fluctuations in supply like we saw with Russia and Ukraine. Fossil fuels require effectively a constant stream of fuel. Nuclear does not. If we restart the fast breeder program, this issue dissolves completely.

There's precious little uranium left.

Ignoring the exaggeration about uranium depletion, it's all about the thorium people. That's the long term. Which brings up another point, we're only talking about another generation for now. We have enough high grade ore to last till then. In 50 years, we'll return and restart the debate over whether we need fission in the face of what is available then. And I seriously doubt thermal uranium reactor will be the industry standard by then.

Waste

The random number generator at work again. 100,000s of years etc. Like this little gem from a guy in Malvern.

This must be Mr Blair's idea of going out with a bang, with the added bonus
that he and his decisions will be remembered for 200,000 years.

It is apparently toxic for that long. Some people have no grasp of the concept of exponential decay. Most of the decay happens in the first couple of centuries. The waste continually gets less hazardous. For most of the term espoused, it is at a very low level of activity. And with vitrification (and didn't see that term mentioned in any of the posts questioning what we do with the waste) it is safely contained. And of course, with proper actinide use, particularly with fast breeders and accelerator-driven systems, it takes only 600 years for the activity of the waste to drop below that of the original ore.

Only the clown college course in nuclear physics teaches that waste is glowing hot for thousands of years.

Would you have a nuclear power station in your backyard?

Yeah, sure. Better than a fossil fuel power station or a water treatment works or a wind farm.

Well okay, that's the gist of what was going on there. Random numbers, fearmongering, misinformation. It's like a Greenpeace rally.