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Nuclear Power Pros
and Cons
December 2007, Update
September 2010
Introduction
After years of debate about the consequences of CO2 emissions, scientists
have finally reached a general consensus – CO2 emissions are perhaps the
greatest threat to mankind we now face and emissions must be drastically
and urgently cut. The general public, along with the politicians chosen to
represent them, are now taking the issue very seriously – although perhaps still not
as seriously as the scientific community is urging.
The general public puts great store in wind power, bio-fuel and energy
saving building design etc, but scientists generally advocate Nuclear Power.
Of course, some scientists are opposed to Nuclear Power, indeed some
Scientists even argue CO2 emissions are unimportant, but it’s the general
consensus that is important. For example: "The Royal Society" (the preeminent
learned society for science in the UK, founded in 1660 and claimed to be the
oldest such society still in existence) has frequently advocated the
building of new power stations (eg their 2003 press release “Government must
show political courage over nuclear power”).
However, for the general public, the considered advice of learned
institutions such as the Royal Society often carries little import. It’s
well known that the odds of winning the UK lottery are pointlessly small,
yet 70% of the UK population still play. Nuclear Power remains unpopular
with the general public, and therefore even the few elected politicians who
have supported
it, such as Tony Blair, have failed to build any new power stations. Even
Tony Blair just talked about Nuclear as 'part of the mix' rather than the
key technology. Almost all new Nuclear Power stations are being built by
authoritarian governments, and even in these cases the
motivation is often the cost of Oil and Gas rather that climate change.
For an intelligent rational person, living in a democracy can be a
depressing state of affairs, nevertheless, all one can do is repeatedly
argue the case and hope that a majority will eventually see the light. In
that spirit I will again outline the case for Nuclear Power, and hope it
will convince a few readers…
The Nuclear Power Debate
(1 of 2) The Upside of Nuclear – Leaving safety aside for
a moment
CO2 Emissions
About 50
Sizewell B style reactors could generate 100% of the UK’s
electricity without any CO2 emissions. This would cut UK CO2 emissions by
25%. In order to decimate CO2 emissions both gas/oil/coal heating (many
industrial processes require heat) and petrol/diesel cars/trucks would have
to be switched to nuclear produced electricity or hydrogen. The challenge
here is cost because converting thermal energy to electricity or hydrogen
and then back to thermal energy is very inefficient. Steam turbine
electricity production and distribution runs at around 33% efficiency, and
the next generation high temperature reactors will probably generate
hydrogen with efficiencies of around 50%. Only by mass producing very very
cheap Nuclear Power can gas/oil/coal heating be phased out and the CO2
problem solved. The economics of
hydrogen/electric cars are easier because the combustion engine is much less
efficient than the electrical motor - the problem here is storage of power
aboard the vehicle. For example, modern trains already use electricity, and
save money compared with diesel engines - yet this is possible because they
use overhead electric cables, not onboard electric storage.
In summary: To solve the C02 problem we must phase out the use of
fossil fuels in heating and transport as well as electricity generation.
Some see Nuclear only as 'part of the mix', but economies of scales are
vital to dramatically bring down the costs of Nuclear far enough to make this possible.
No known renewable fuel could possibly achieve this goal. So the Nuclear
debate is not just about today's electricity production, it's about
completely phasing out fossil fuels across the economy.
Note 1: Transportation is far less a significant source of CO2 that fossil
fuel heating, which is fortunate because onboard storage of power remains a
great challenge. Electric Cars require
lithium batteries, and lithium is a comparatively rare element which is
difficult to procure. Current lithium stocks would not allow for the
widespread adoption of electric bars. Hydrogen looks more likely, although
the storage of hydrogen poses greater challenges than LPG. Efficient
production of hydrogen requires fourth generation nuclear plants, and is
still many years away. Futuristic cities could also place roads underground
in tunnels, and the electricity could be supplied by a connection to the
ceiling (think of a dodgem car).
Note 2: 100% thermal efficiencies would be possible by directly connecting
industrial plants which require heat, such as aluminium smelting, to fourth
generation nuclear plants.
Note 3: Carbon sequestration technology could only prevent CO2 emissions
from fossil fuel heating by attaching it to the individual boilers in
industrial plants. This is just not going to be possible. In fact, carbon sequestration technology
is highly speculative and over hyped, we may never
see even a large commercial fossil fuel power plant storing its CO2 underground.
Cost
Looking at the costs in detail: Westinghouse claim a three year build time and $1bn construction cost for its
new
AP1000 reactor after
(huge) volume production discounts. Allowing for 5%
funding of the construction costs, running costs and decommissioning costs
this gives an all in cost of 2.2 US cents per KWHr which equates to
cheaper
electricity from nuclear than any fossil fuel based generating facility, including
Australian Coal power with no sequestration or CO2 emission charges (more
info). China has licensed the AP1000 reactor and is expected to offer
them for sale. The Indian Steel Power and Infrastructure company Abhijeet is
in the process of buying a 1,000M megawatt Coal plant from China with both
the equipment and the construction crew coming from China. In the same
way mass produced off the shelf Chinese AP1000s complete with Chinese construction crews
could be available in the future. Remember the first CD players cost
hundreds of pounds, today they sell for peanuts - technology costs often revolve
around economies of scale.
UPDATE SEP 2010: The numbers above are
out of date, they predate the rise in commodity prices (fuel, steel,
concrete). Also, since no one is yet mass producing plants, they are
untested. The recent $20.4bn UAE contract for four South Korean 1.4GWh
plants comes out at an 'overnight cost', meaning up front build cost, of
$3,643/kW. Running and decommissioning costs will add about the same amount
again over the course of the plants lifetime. All in all these 4 plants
might end up making electric for about $0.07 per kWh based on a 40 year
lifetime and a 10% discount rate. The UAE is a fossil fuel exporter currently
burning its own resources to make electricity, the nuclear plants are
expected to save them money. The four plants will
be built simultaneously over a four year period. The reactor designs are
tried and tested, by contrast the four new European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) reactors being built
in France and Finland are well behind schedule and budget. Why didn't the
Euopeans stick with tried and tested designs? The new reactors have
more sophisticated safety features and burn fuel more efficiently. However,
many now believe the EPR is a white elephant, excessively expensive compared
with older designs, and excessively inefficient compared to pending fourth
generation designs. By dragging their feet the French may have killed the
EPR project - making Nuclear Work is about developing multiple power
stations, new designs pose challenges, the first few are always excessively
expensive. How can the EPR possibly compete with Chinese designs, given the
Europeans are currently building 4 plants, and the Chinese are building more
than 100? China is almost certainly destined to be the leading nuclear
supplier of the 21st Century, both because it the epicentre of nuclear
construction, and because it's state capitalist system allows the sort of
gigantic long term financial commitments the nuclear industry demands.
Although the Chinese leadership once dropped the nuclear ball and many
Chinese nuclear scientists emigrated, within the last few years the new
leadership has placed nuclear at the heart of industrial policy, and they
are rapidly overtaking the world.
The UK's mixed record with the cost of
Nuclear Power is no guide to the economics of mass produced modern reactor
designs. Indeed, even the older French reactors have proven economically
successful and today France enjoys the lowest electricity prices in the EU.
Fourth generation plants, which are now at the experimental phase, would be
significantly cheaper to run. Current plants burn around only 1% of the
uranium in the fuel rods, the remainder becomes waste for burial or
recycling. Fourth generation plants burn around 60% of the uranium, although
some ambitious designs burn all the fuel never producing any waste at all
(plutonium fast breeder reactors).
Commercial fourth Generation reactors are expected to appear around 2025.
Some fourth generation reactors have a modular design, coal power station boilers could be
swapped for nuclear power units, avoiding scrapping the entire plant. This
potential to upgrade coal plants is vital in China, a country which has
recently been installing as many coal fired power plants every two years as
the UK has built since the industrial revolution. Japanese companies are also working on
sealed self contained garden shed sized fourth generation plants costing
just a few million dollars and making electricity at around $0.10 per KWh (link).
UPDATE SEP 2010: It looks as if China is increasingly looking toward fourth
generation plants. A recent article,
China poised to dump fossil fuels for nuclear, in a Chinese Communist
Party controlled publication stresses the role of fourth generation
technology. In August 2010 China switched on its first experimental fourth
generation reactor.
(2 of 2) The safety side of Nuclear
The general public has four main safety concerns about nuclear:
(a) Cancer Clusters around Nuclear Plants
There have been some reports that suggest an increased rate of cancer or
childhood lukemia around Nuclear Power Stations. The major government
studies have failed to find any link (eg
Distribution of childhood
leukaemias and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas near nuclear installations in England
and Wales), and since radiation levels around nuclear installations are the
same as everywhere else, it is hard to see how there could be one! More
recently studies have been looking at a link between high voltage power
lines and cancer, so far these results are inconclusive, but if there were
clusters around power stations that could be a cause. Clusters or no
clusters, the numbers are tiny - mobile phone radiation is probably a
greater threat, but for most people the convenience of a mobile phone
outweighs the possible risk. Ironically, studies do clearly show
asthma
clusters in the vicinity of coal fired power stations but the general public
appears far less concerned about them.
(b) Waste Disposal
High level nuclear waste from today's plants, primarily spent nuclear fuel rods, remain
radioactive for up to 10,000 years, and the general public usually cite it
as their number one concern on Nuclear Power. However, when asked about the
amount of waste generated member of the public generally wildly over
estimate the volume of waste produced. In fact, a power station like
Sizewell B produces only three cubic metres of high level waste per year (link
and link).
Even if all the UKs electricity was produced by nuclear it would take 500
years to fill the Royal Albert Hall with high level waste. By
contrast we could fill the Albert Hall with general UK land fill waste every
two hours – clearly a much more pressing issue.
Although there is a great deal of debate about building long term waste storage facilities,
in actual fact this debate is pointless. We don't need long term waste
disposal sites buried underground, constructing them would be a waste of
money, leave the decisions to more advanced future generations. Future
generations will probably recycle or burn waste, not bury it underground.
People say it's too dangerous to have this waste sitting around, but the nuclear submarines and stock
piles of nuclear weapons we have sitting around are just as bad. To worry about such a small
volume of waste is completely irrational.
For every cubic metre of high level waste about three times as much
intermediate level waste is produced. It comprises some reprocessing wastes
and some activated reactor components salvaged during decommissioning. It
does require some shielding and longer lived isotopes are buried more
deeply. Lead is sufficient for this. Due to the low levels of radioactivity
compared to high level waste, there is no technical problem in disposing of
this properly. Some highly toxic chemicals wastes such as cyanides represent
a much greater hazard.
Low level waste comprises 90% of all waste. Most of it is clothes and rags
contaminated with small quantities of radionuclides. They do not represent a
large hazard and can be buried in shallow landfills such as Drigg at
Sellafield. The chemical hazards from all manner of other wastes from other
industries represent as much or more of a threat than low level wastes from
the nuclear industry.
Fourth generation plants produce far less waste and burn off the most
dangerous isotopes, so high level waste would remain radioactive for only 500
years.
(c) Will Uranium run out?
Although Uranium is a finite resource
there is enough to last thousands of years. In practice an alternative
energy source, such as Fusion, is likely to come along long before then.
Uranium is about 40 times as abundant as silver in the Earth's Crust. Fourth
generation plants are so efficient that even the existing stocks of uranium
would last for several hundred years.
(d) Earthquakes and Terrorism
Most nuclear plants are designed to withstand earthquakes by shutting down
safely in the event of a tremor. Today there are several Japanese Nuclear
Plants running in earthquake prone areas, and there have been examples of
automatic reactor shut downs due to ground acceleration exceeding trip
settings. For example on July 12 2007 a powerful earthquake shook Japan’s
northwestern coast killing nine people and injuring 1,000 people. At the
Kashiwazaki Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant the reactor automatically shut down.
The shaking of the site also caused a small fire, and a tank of very mildly radioactive
heavy water waste spilled and leaked outside the plant. The spillage of some
low level liquid waste and the fire represented no risk to human safety,
and, even though it
attracted a lot of publicity, it did not actually represent a design failure
– for cost reasons only critical parts of nuclear plants are protected from
earthquakes.
Since Sep 11th protection against terrorist attacks is under review. David
Kyd, a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said:
"Reactors have the most robust engineering of any buildings in the civil
sector — only missile silos and nuclear bunkers are built to be tougher.
They are designed to be earthquake-proof, and our experiences in California
and Japan have shown them to be so. They are also built to withstand
impacts, but not that of a wide-bodied passenger jet full of fuel. A
deliberate hit of that sort is something that was never in any scenario at
the design stage." Studies done since Sep 11th on the impact of
passenger jets on various reactors have been classified for security reasons
- so there may be a degree of risk. Airplane cockpit doors are now kept locked to
prevent the hijacking of large aircraft because the consequences are also
horrific if they are used against targets such as the World Trade Centre
(2,974 deaths). Also the military are now aware of the risk of hijacking and
the potential to attack nuclear plants. The new EPR reactors currently being
built in
France and Finland have a double containment wall system designed to withstand impact from
passenger jets.
(e) Risk of an Accident
Chernobyl
The Chernobyl Disaster is of course the accident that really changed the
perception of nuclear power in the minds of the general public. After
Chernobyl politicians abandoned nuclear power in several European countries,
and a moratorium was placed on new plants in many other countries- although
interestingly not in Ukraine where the disaster actually occurred.
During the daytime of April 25 1986, reactor 4 was scheduled to be shut down
for maintenance. A decision was made to test the ability of the reactor's
turbine generator to generate sufficient electricity to power the reactor's
safety systems in the event of a loss of external electric power. As
conditions to run this test were prepared another power station unexpectedly
went offline. The Kiev grid controller requested the test be postponed as
electricity was needed to satisfy the evening peak demand. The ill-advised
safety test was then left to be run by the skeleton crew night shift. Many
of this reactor crew had been drafted in from coal powered plants and had no
experience in nuclear power plants, others had only a little experience
in nuclear submarine power plants.
A combination of inexperience, miscommunication, failure to follow
procedure, and bad design led to the top blowing off the reactor, which was followed
by a fire sending material into the atmosphere. Normally reactors are built
with a containment chamber which prevents material escaping even in the
event of meltdown, the Chernobyl reactor did not include this basic safety
feature. The disaster created a radioactive cloud which floated over Europe. In Sweden workers at
the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant 1,100 km from the Chernobyl site found
radioactive particles on their clothes. It was Sweden's search for the
source of radioactivity, after they had determined there was no leak at the
Swedish plant, which led to the first hint of a serious nuclear problem in
the western Soviet Union.
The 2005 report prepared by the Chernobyl Forum, led by the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and World Health Organization (WHO), attributed
56 direct deaths (47 accident workers, and nine children with thyroid
cancer), and estimated that there may be 4,000 extra deaths due to cancer
among the approximately 6.6 million most highly exposed.
A 30km radius area (the “Zone Of Alienation”) around the reactor remains to
this day mostly evacuated. Today the Zone has become something of a wildlife
haven and has provided some interesting research about the impact of
radioactive contamination (see
BBC News Story).
Hiroshima was rebuilt after the US Nuclear attack on it, in this isolated area of the Ukraine cleaning up was not deemed worth
the cost.
Three Mile Island
The next most significant accident in the history of commercial Nuclear
Power was the 1979 Three Mile Island Accident in the USA (the
serious 1957
Windscale
Fire in the UK was at a military reactor used for weapons production). At Three
Mile Island operators under stress misdiagnosed a fault after a series of
instrument failures and ended up with a partial reactor core meltdown (The
Three Mile Island project started in 1968. Today technology has vastly
improved and such an accident is believed impossible with the latest reactor
designs). Although the reactor core partially melted it was still contained
within the reactor building so there was no leakage. However, in the week following the accident,
some steam and hydrogen was very controversially removed from the reactor by deliberately venting straight to the atmosphere. The average radiation dose to people
living within ten miles of the plant as a result of this venting was
calculated at about equal to a chest X-ray, therefore it was deemed a safe
operation and no one was evacuated
from the area. The accident occurred, by some strange fate, just 12 days
after the release of the popular film “The China Syndrome”, in which Jane
Fonda investigates a fictional near-accident in a nuclear plant. Although
the accident caused no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the
nearby community, it destroyed US public support for Nuclear Power.
Accident Analysis
According to the World Nuclear Organization, a major private-sector
organization that seeks to promote the nuclear power, “Apart from Chernobyl,
no nuclear workers or members of the public have ever died as a result of
exposure to radiation due to a commercial nuclear reactor incident”.
So in these many years of Nuclear Power Generation we have had one totally
irresponsible accident in a decaying eastern block country that, according to
the World Health Organization, is responsible for around 4,000 deaths
(taking account of all deaths in the past and the future). To put that into
perspective China is currently losing more than 7,000 miners a year just digging up coal
to feed its many power stations (link). After that coal is burnt organizations like the
WHO estimate the number of premature deaths in China caused by the coal burning
airborne emissions is in the hundreds of thousands. In fact, the World Bank
recently estimated
worldwide deaths from fossil fuel burning air pollution at 5 million people per
year - replacing fossil fuels with
nuclear would save as many lives as 1,000 Chernobyl accidents a year!!!
Yet, the number of deaths from climate change in the future is likely to
dwarf even this shocking number.
Conclusions
Update: March 2011: This article was written before the
Nuclear catastrophe still unfolding in Japan. Fukushima is vastly more
serious than Three Mile Island, it might conceivably end up killing more
than the 4,000 people
Chernobyl killed. So
Chernobyl is now no longer alone, there are now two very serious accidents in the history of
civilian nuclear power nuclear. How does this fact alter the
debate?
Of course the accident shouldn't have happened, they knew they were
operating in an earthquake zone but they just hadn't thought through the
dangers of tsunamis, the sea wall wasn't high enough, the generators were in
the basement etc. Also this accident wouldn't have happened with new
Generation III+ designs which have passive safety feature, ie don't melt
down when the cooling system fails.
Nevertheless, it has happened, and it reminds us that: THE RISK OF A NUCLEAR
ACCIDENT IS ALWAYS NON-ZERO.
Nuclear disaster is always possible, it could happen during a war, or by
some catastrophic act of God.
The question is are the positives
greater than the negatives? This disaster reminds us that
human life hangs by a thread, there are many ways thousands, millions or even
billions of people could die, eg in an earthquake, meteor strike, war, revolution, plague, pollution,
climate change etc.
At the end of the day, even if Fukushima killed a million people, the risk has to be worth taking.
What are the implications for the Nuclear Industry? In the Ukraine people
actually became less fearful of Nuclear Power after the
Chernobyl accident because they understood that their
worst nightmares weren't grounded in reality. Combined with post crisis
power shortages and a greater sense of communal idealism and discipline
developing in response to the terrible tsunami, I expect the Japanese public
will eventually become less fearful of Nuclear Power as a result of this
accident. But outside the Ukraine Chernobyl had a big impact on public perceptions by feeding populist
nightmares. Countries with strong pragmatic government like
China, Russia, Turkey, Brazil etc are going to ignore this disaster. The big problem
lies in Western Democracy which is already reeling from higher oil prices,
poor education, political gridlock, inefficient economic models and out of
balance economies. An irrational move away from Nuclear is yet another nail
in the coffin of Western Liberal Democracy. It's a big problem for Germany, a country that needs cheap power for manufacturing and is the
only remaining
really successful economy in Western World (countries like Norway, Australia
and Canada have such huge natural resources and low population densities
that they could be run by monkeys and still thrive).
Clearly the scientific community is right in their long held pro Nuclear
viewpoint, the argument is more black and white than it is shades of grey.
However, given the long failure of alternative fuels, climate change
treaties and rising emerging market power consumption, I believe the issue is now critically
important and the educated must make every effort to enlighten the general
public. Solving climate change does not need any adjustment to human
lifestyle, mass produced nuclear power offers the dream of cheap, clean and
limitless power. The world will not just be saved, it will be transformed.
It is ironic that idealistic notions of social equality led to socialism, a philosophy which instead of enriching
the average man actually plunged him into poverty, sometimes even starvation. In the same way,
Environmentalists who hold the future of the planet so dear to their heart,
have fought against Nuclear Power and in the process created a hellish world
of fossil fuel dependence which has served only to impoverish and pollute
our world. Unworthy nations have profited and wars have been waged
over a filthy and primitive resource which should have been phased out years
ago. In the Darwinian world we live in, drive, courage and intelligence
allow life to thrive - stagnation, indecisiveness and irrationality lead
eventually to death. |