The mystery of the final eleven

According to Reuters, the UK government has offered up another 18 sites as candidates for new power reactors in addition to the four originally outlines (Bradwell, Sizewell, Dungeness, Hinkley Point).

Only 14 sites have ever been used to house power reactors in the UK. If we assume that El Gordo is not going to pick a fight with the Exalted One and that none of the new sites are Scottish, then that eliminates Chapelcross, Hunterston and Torness. So that leaves only seven exiting nuclear power stations.

Where are the final eleven?

EDF Energy are going to save us

EDF Energy has a new advert out. It's interesting to watch. They play on the global warming angle with a vengeance, scary predictions and all. But it's okay! Because they're are going to save us by reducing the carbon intensity of their electricity generation.

What is particularly fun is that EDF Energy is going to achieve this by building new nuclear reactors in the South of England. Of course they don't tell us that. But why should they? Global warming is the greatest threat the planet has ever faced we're constantly told (even more than that planetoid that hit us 5 billion years ago creating the Moon). If it is the greatest threat we've ever faced, then surely it is greater than the threat from nuclear accidents, nuclear proliferation, nuclear waste blah blah blah.

So all hail EDF Energy. They're picking the lesser of two evils.

(Not that nuclear power is really evil at all. In fact, it's lovely.)

And the lucky winner will be...

British Energy's reaction to the government statement reveals their main candidate sites for new reactors.

• Sizewell in Suffolk, already home to two Magnox and a PWR)
• Dungeness in Kent, already home to two Magnox (shut down) and two AGR
• Hinkley in Somerset, already home to two Magnox (shut down) and two AGR
• Bradwell in Essex, already home to two Magnox (shut down)

So which one is going to be first?

Somehow I think Hinkley will be last because Somerset is too close to LibDem territory. The fight might be tougher. Dungeness could be good. Robert Waller says people in Kent tend to vote in a more hard headed way and so might be pragmatic about it. Bradwell currently has nothing going which could present problems with dwindling infrastructure. Sizewell already has a large reactor, so starting there might be piling on the PWRs too much.

I'm going to bet on Dungeness.

Crunch time is here

The Cabinet has given the green light.

Now will they have the strength and competence to push it forward?

All the government should provide is a proper and sensible regulatory framework, clarity on back end processes (if the government is to handle final waste disposal, what charge is to paid for that service) and most importantly bamboo sticks to bludgeon any Usual Suspects who approach nuclear facilities.

Because Alex Salmond has control of the planning system is Scotland, he has ruled out any possibility of new reactors being built here. This of course means that Scotland's energy infrastructure will collapse in the next few years, no doubt to be replaced by natural gas and imports from England if what the government say comes to pass. Maybe in a few years time, "It's Scotland's oil!" will be replaced by "It's England's actinides!" as the new nationalist obsession.

NB you'll note in typical BBC style, right at the top of the article is a link to listen to the "Greenpeace view". As if they have anything original to say.

Crunch time approaches

Thursday is the big day. El Gordo is expected to announce that the nuclear renaissance will at last be coming to these shores directly, (verses indirectly whereby we buy electricity from Flamanville-3 in France).

On the positive side, the BBC article hints that this green light will be entirely at market discretion, with the operators picking up the bill for decommissioning and for waste handling. That is of course as it should be.

On the negative side, it still doesn't stop this Government of All the Talentless from cocking up the second review. This is exactly the kind of ammunition needed to give the Usual Suspects a chance to cause more trouble.

She said it, it must be true

This straight out of the Queen's speech.

My Government will introduce legislation to provide clean, secure and
affordable supplies of energy.

That proves it. El Gordo is going to see the construction of new nuclear power stations in Britain. That's certainly the BBC's conclusion from it. Either way, very good.

Browns Ferry is back

After being shut down in 1985 for a major overhaul, Browns Ferry unit 1 is back online. It came on a week or so ago and then tripped, but now it's back on again again. All three units are at 100%. Just take a look. Happy days are here again!

Nuclear renaissance on BBC News 24

A recent episode of Our World entitled 'Old Man Atom' has just aired on News 24. Not entirely expected of the BBC, it was rather positive in its outlook. The beginning focused on a GE facility in North Carolina, which manufactures fuel rods for export. According to the program, the business is thriving as demand has never been higher.

We then moved onto India, insatiably ravenous for more reliable supplies of electricity. After the nuclear walls have come down between the West and India over its weapons program, GE forsees new opportunities for nuclear expansion on the sub-continent, which is desparately needed to curb the damaging power cuts constantly being faced.

There was, however, a public perception problem in Mumbai as a significant number of people there were not really aware of the significance of nuclear energy in electricity generation and merely saw it as a tools of the military. One person was not even aware India used nuclear power for electricity at all (it's not too shocking really when you consider neither Sarkozy nor Royal knew of its importance to country of which they wanted to be president).

A particularly interesting part was the focus on India's attempts to develop thorium reactors as a way of improving energy security and ensuring non-proliferation (the regular fuel cycle isn't particularly useful either, but with thorium it's pretty much impossible). These reactors were touted as the future of energy in India. I was just impressed that a Beeboid had heard of thorium at all.

Kirk will be pleased.

It was an interesting programme and a reassuring one to any nuclear supporter. The attitude to nuclear power was positive. The featured sites looked professional. The personnel, all speaking up for their energy source, were likeable. Anyone would leave with the impression that a nuclear renaissance was underway and just warming up.

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.

How to have a British nuclear renaissance

Election season is in full spin throughout much of Britain with devolved legislatures and local councils going up for election. So who cares? The important one is the election in 2009 or 2010, which may very well see the Conservatives returning as the largest party in the House of Commons, if only in a hung parliament.

In the interests of nuclear power, that most cuddly of energy sources, would it be better to have the Blue-Green warrior in Downing Street, or would we rather keep the Dour One?

Yesterday, Iain Dale interviewed the Shadow Secretary of State for Trade, Industry and Energy, Alan Duncan MP. Yes those subjects are part of the same office. It's hard to keep track sometimes and parties keep on changing their mind how they organise their Cabinets.

Iain cut straight to the point and asked the Right Honourable Member Rutland and Melton what the Conservative position on nuclear power is. Okay, anything short of him standing up a yelling in Tom Cruise fashion that he's in love with every fissile nucleus in the universe is bound to not be enough for me.

But objectively I have to say he made the Conservative position look rather favourable. He said the LibDems have their heads in the clouds with their unequivocal opposition and that simply depending on renewables alone to fill the energy gap in the face of a need to reduce fossil fuel use is somewhat impractical.

He also said that a Conservative government would aim to streamline planning regulations to avoid prohibitively burdeonsome enquiries and that with the new level playing field, they would support any investor building a new reactor if they desired.

Still, he said Tony Blair's commitment to bring nuclear power back with a vengeance was a little too extreme. I like vengeance, but to be fair to Duncan, he was right when he said that Labour has yet to demonstrate any policy to back up that rhetoric.

Essentially, both parties are the same. They want to level the playing field for new nuclear build and depend on the market to make the choice. That's perfectly fine for both parties. While the Labour vengeance rhetoric is enjoyable, I suppose the Conservatives deserve credit for being more transparent about the reality of their policy.

So who to vote for?

To split the difference between Lab and Con, look at the wider parliamentary parties. The Labour front bench is more pro-nuclear than the back benches, meaning a Labour government may face internal strife over giving too much support. Bad. The Conservative front bench is less pro-nuclear than the back benches, meaning a Conservative government may face internal strife over giving too little support. Good!!

And then there's the LibDems. A hung parliament is the most likely outcome of the next general election. The tipping point will be who is the largest party. Ming the Merciless of the LibDums has already implied, if not admitted, that he would go into coalition with El Gordo long before Cammy. Essentially, the big competition is between a Conservative minority government and a Lab-Lib coalition (which worked so well in the late 70s).

I think it's pretty obvious which one would be better for the nuclear revival in the UK. The Conservatives are the safer bet.

Vote Blue, Go (annoy a) Green!

(See the interview with Alan Duncan at 18 Doughty Street.)

British Energy on the move

British Energy say they want new nuclear build by 2016.

BE is in the doldrums financially at the moment, saddled with the legacy of trying to make a profit with inefficient gas cooled reactors while everyone else makes an slaughtering with cheap North Sea gas.

With North Sea production becoming ever less able to meet energy demand in the UK, it makes the prospects look better. The threat at this point is interest rates and the Usual Suspects.

Chances are, they would get support from Europe, which would inevitably lead to the EPR being built. Still, if they are going to build loads of LWRs, there's always room for a couple of HWRs to reuse of the spent fuel.

Questions and obvious answers

The questions:

Will TVA finish Watts Bar 2?
What types of reactors will TVA build as part of their plan to build two new units?

The obvious answer:

EdF has ordered the EPR for Flamanville-3. It's still great to see so new projects getting underway.

Currently, in the A vs A vs G vs W war, A is making a clean sweep.
Areva: 2
AECL: 0
GE: 0
Westinghouse: 0

The battlefield is of course still young.

The many non arguments of the anti-nuke

The Dallas Morning News cover the potential American nuclear renaissance. (Remember the present real nuclear renaissance is taking place in Asia whether Gunter likes it or not!) There's some nice positive stuff, particularly the bit about reliability improving moving capacity factors to above 90%, but then there's the negative...

Some industry critics say the regulatory changes have lowered safety standards,
increasing the risk to the public.

Since emperically, the risk to the American public from nuclear power has been 0, nil, negligible, nadda, zip, even before the 70s and 80s regulatory ratchetting and despite the relatively limited knowledge and experience, this statement amounts to pure FUD.

Lessons from past accidents and near-misses, they say, are being written off.

Well the worst past accident has been Three Mile Island, which would be included in that zero risk bit. The lessons of TMI and other incidents have already been learnt and incorporated into the new, sophisticated Generation III+ designs.

Critics of nuclear power warn that the bullish environment could end with a
single accident.

That could be true, but only because those critics will exploit any accident to the full power of the propoganda machine.

They cite one of the most recent close calls, in 2002, when workers at the
Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio found a football-size hole in the nuclear
reactor vessel head caused by a boric acid leak. If the hole had opened up, it
could've caused a meltdown.

A simple statement masks a huge complexity of implication. In order for their to be a meltdown if- that's if- the hole had opened up, all the emergency safety systems would have to fail as well. NIRS is washing over that little detail with a double coat of FUD.

But what if a meltdown had happened? That's the operator's problem, not the public's. The public is only to be concerned if they are threatened by it and before they would be threatened, the radioactive material would have to get past the infamous containment structure. It's a MacGuffin for a reason. It's all part of failsafe engineering.

At the time, 72 out of the nation's 113 licensed reactors were found to have
parts such as fasteners, valves and circuit breakers that did not conform to
their safety specifications. Some were provided by counterfeit suppliers that
later faced criminal charges.

And yet nothing happened. It is of course right for those who breach regulations to face the consequences, but the whole point about the NRC reforms is that those regulations are not necessarily boosting safety.

Coming soon to Freedom For Fission... Browns Ferry and Davis-Besse.

Fingers crossed

Blair says new nuclear power stations will be built and smacks Cameron.

A NEW generation of nuclear power stations will be built with enough capacity to
generate at least as much electricity as Britain’s nuclear industry does today,
Tony Blair told MPs.

Promising stuff if they can deliver (and that 'if' is larger than the power output of a French reactor when it comes to this government). Gordon Brown, the likely next Prime Minister, appears to back Blair on this one, which is good. If so, then there is the chance that something positive could come out of Brown's inevitable premiership, if they don't screw up the process leaving it a mess (and that 'if' is larger than the power output of all French reactors combined!).

As for David Cameron, what does he have to say on the matter? Well I can't find anything. Our blue/green hero seems to waffle on incoherently. He attacked the Queen's speech for only promoting fear without offering solution (Greenpeace must have written it) but he himself seems to offer sympathy without solution. Hell, if he just gave an outright "no", at least he'd be taking a firm position. At the moment, he seems to not want to commit to any solution, merely make speeches about how passionately he cares for the problem.

Oh well, there are a few years left for the Blair/Brown government. Maybe they can get something positive done (there's a first time for everything).

Edit: Blair is so dedicated, he even took a trip to Sellafield. That was nice of him.

Is Japan on a quest for world domination?

It could be. A bunch of major Japanese technology companies seem to be getting in on the act.

The latest is Hitachi.

They're teaming up with GE in their nuclear operations, which would include as a matter of course, the ESBWR.

Only recently, Toshiba bought Westinghouse from BNFL, which gives them a hand in the ever more popular AP-1000.

And Mitsubishi are getting involved with Areva.

How long before AECL starts seeing Japanese partnership?

The truth is more inconvenient than Al ever thought possible

The IEA is calling for more nuclear power to increase energy security and tackle carbon dioxide emissions.

How inconvenient... for Greenpeace.

It is an inevitability that their house of cards would crumble. Their motivations may be ideological, naive utopian visions of living in a simpler golden age of disease and poverty (Yes their ulterior motives don't invalidate their arguments. The fact that those arguments are rubbish is what invalidates them.), but for the rest of the world, environmental concerns remain genuinely environmental concerns.

As such, the more the threat of carbon dioxide is bigged up by the like of Greenpeace and Stern and Gore, the more people will see that the one large scale and readily expandable source of carbon free power, which has after all worked for the past 50 years without bringing about the apocalypse, is worth a second look in face of a new apocalypse.

Then there's the news of a second African nuclear power station on the cards.

And China planning to add to their already growing list of nuclear projects.

Also inconvenient!

It looks like Eskom's provider is up for bidding. At the moment they have two Framatome units, so it might give the EPR a head start in the race, but that is by no means a guarantee. As for China, they have both many PWRs from a variety of vendors and a couple of PHWRs, so it really is anyone's game to win.

Second EPR is almost upon us

From the people that brought you around 3% of the electricity consumed by Britons...

Flamanville-3 has been approved by the EU (how nice of them). And where there's one, there'll be others, especially in a place like France. It looks like nuclear power is here to stay in Europe. That's fortunate because the UK will be needed ever more of French electricity as it continues to allow excessive Greeniness to undermine its efforts to look after its economic needs.

There's a press kit available now on the EDF website.

BP remaining silent on nuclear

Rod Adams has a problem with BP's vision.

The problem is not that they have rejected nuclear. It's that they don't even acknowledge its existance. That should be taken as good news. Helen Cadicott hates it and won't stop going on about it, because she thinks she can convince other people of its evils. But those who ignore it, would do so because they don't believe they can make a case.

If you aren't going into the sector, but can't find any good reason for your customers to buy their product, you keep silent and hope they forget about it. BP's silence should be taken as a vote of confidence.

But why are they not getting involved?

Simple. It's too difficult. Nuclear power is very technical. It takes a lot of knowledge and a lot of expertise in the relevant fields, expertise that BP simply doesn't have because it is too busy producing hydrocarbons. That's its job and it does it very well. If they were to try to enter the nuclear sector, they would be eaten alive by GE, AECL, Areva, not to mention all the operators if it went into the downstream areas.

By contrast, how hard is it to build a windmill? The nuclear industry has no place for bit players. The science is complex and the technology big in scale. You are either all in or not. There is no room for dabbling, as BP is doing with wind and solar (though they are the largest provider of solar panels, but that says more about the size of the global solar industry).

So there really is not a problem with BP's vision. It makes perfect sense for what they are capable of offering (and you can hardly expect Vivienne Cox to propose a vision for another company). At the same time, I fully expect the nuclear companies to do their jobs are get their rightfully deserved piece of the action.

As Lisa Stiles-Shells said in the debate with Caldicott, it's about an energy mix, reflective of the situation, which varies both in time and space. Nuclear must be utilised more, and there is nothing Simon Hughes or Helen Caldicott can do to stop it, but we still need hydrocarbons, particularly in the transport sector (and again there is nothing Simon Hughes or Helen Caldicott can do to stop it). BP has a better record in providing that than many of its competitors.

A world energy read

Key World Energy Statistcs 2006 from the IEA (2MB pdf)

The most noticeable thing about it is how many colours there are. The second most noticeable thing is that is has lots of statistics in it as you would expect.

The graph comes from page 16 showing the nuclear production. Over the period between 1994 and 2004, nuclear production worldwide grew by 20% and within the OECD by 15%.

You may be wondering where all this OECD capacity came from if nuclear power has been "dead" all these years. First, the OECD includes Japan, which is committing to expanding its nuclear sector as part of a strategy of energy security. Second, just because new reactors are not being built, it doesn't mean that capacity is not being expanded. In the US, efficiency improvements and capacity uprates totalling near 5GW, has achieved the effect of adding capacity, without actually building new units.

So to the question of why there has been no new build recently, why build a new unit when there is so much potential to squeeze more capacity out of the ones you've already got?

More $oule$$ $hilling

This time it's from Entergy, currently operating nine units around the US and in a race with Dominion to be the first to operate GE's pumpless ESBWR.

Their vice-president presents The Myths and Truths of Nuclear Energy.

It comes complete with the slogan, "Go nuclear! Because you care about the air." I don't quite understand what Jennifer Lopez has got to do with it though.