So, it should come as very little surprise that the nuclear industry has the same ‘flexible’ view on ethics, legality and basic decency when dealing with its own people. In fact, not even the CEO of France’s nuclear giant, Areva, was safe: the Financial Times has recently revealed a catalogue of incompetence, espionage and massive financial failure (follow-up article) swirling around the French nuclear industry:

• Areva purchased a uranium mine for €1.8 billion that was valued at only €1.4 million two years earlier
• after purchase of the mine it became apparent that it contained a fraction of the uranium deposits that the Areva board believed
• a senior Areva executive was exposed as having hired a Swiss private investigation firm to spy on then Areva CEO, Anne Lauvergeon (known as ‘Atomic Anne’ in France)
• Lauvergeon alleges that her husband’s phone was hacked as part of this and is now starting legal proceedings
• the web of intrigue goes as high as the president of France, Sarkozy, who became personally involved when he forced Lauvergeon out and installed a friend of his, Henri Proglio who also happens to be CEO of EDF, one of the largest energy companies in France and the UK
• Areva have now written off almost €2 billion as a result of the failed uranium mine purchase, amid accusations of fraud – although no evidence for this has been revealed so far

This debacle is piled on top of the disastrous nuclear projects that are unravelling in Olkiluoto, Finland and Flamanville, France where Areva are trying to build their new “Nuclear Renaissance” power plants.

It all paints a picture of a desperate industry in turmoil as nuclear power continues its long-term trend of global decline, with the IEA reporting that nuclear is down 10% year-on-year as renewable energy climbs 24%. Given that the industry operates more like a crime syndicate than a legitimate business, it is a little difficult to feel any sympathy.

Along with flying atomic cars and glittering cities on the Moon, the claims of “unlimited, clean and safe energy” that is “too cheap to meter” that the nuclear lobby began promising in the 1950s have been utterly discredited. Let’s hope that the nuclear piranhas continue eating their own and finish themselves off quickly so that the planet can focus its full resources on deploying clean, safe and truly sustainable renewable energy in order to mitigate the worst of climate change.

“Greenpeace activists secretly entered a French nuclear site before dawn and draped a banner reading “Coucou” and “Facile”, (meaning “Hey” and “Easy”) on its reactor containment building, to expose the vulnerability of atomic sites in the country,” AJE reports.

Greenpeace’s point with this action was to highlight the vulnerability of nuclear plants and to criticize France’s failure to have proper safety procedures against terrorists. “This action shows just how vulnerable the French nuclear plants are,’ said Sophia Majnoni d’Intignano from Greenpeace in a statement. D’Intignano said that French nuclear plants are considered safe just because it is believed that they can withstand a flood or an earthquake. “But those aren’t the real risks for our nuclear industry,” D’Intignano said. “It’s the risk of [an] external, non-natural attack, like the risk of terrorism.”

Safety experts have warned about the threat of terrorism to nuclear reactors before. The Italian nuclear engineer and safety expert Cesare Silvi says that the threat of terrorism is one of the reasons why he left his former pro-nuclear stance for solar and other renewable energy sources.

I am sure many of us agree that it would be a good idea to have a strong protection against outside threats, such as terrorism, at our nuclear power plants. And I am also sure that many people would claim that their country’s nuclear safety is in good standard. But apparently this is not the case for nuclear plants in France, and potentially other countries as well. For example, the UK government excluded terrorism as one of the things to consider when they participated in the European wide nuclear stress tests after the Fukushima accident. In fact, most nuclear operators around Europe never stress tested their plants vulnerability against technological or human threats such as a nuclear reactor being struck by a large aircraft.

Greenpeace UK’s executive director, John Sauven, said in a statement that the energy giant should now come clean about other suspected spying cases across Europe. “The company should now give a full account of the spying operation it mounted against its critics. As one of the six companies with a monopoly over electricity supply in this country and a major sponsor of the Olympics, EDF has a duty to come clean”, Sauven said.

The Guardian writes:

“EDF and Greenpeace have fought for years over France’s power production, more than three-quarters of it nuclear. According to confidential court testimony released by a French website, Mediapart, two years ago, EDF had organised surveillance not only of Greenpeace in France, but broadly across Europe since 2004.

In 2006, EDF hired a detective agency, Kargus Consultants, run by a former member of France’s secret services, to find out about Greenpeace France’s intentions and its plan to block new nuclear plants in the UK. The agency hacked the computer of Yannick Jadot, Greenpeace’s then campaigns director, taking 1,400 documents.”

Justin McKeating writes that this verdict shows that the nuclear industry cannot be trusted. “The history of nuclear power is littered with tales of dirty tricks, propaganda and deceit. EDF’s espionage is merely the latest example in a long line”.

Notably the fact that most of the economic figures in support of nuclear power (a couple of typical delusions you’ll find here and here) come straight out of Hogwarts school of magic, wizardry….and economics (more realistic appraisals of nuclear economics can be found here and here). There is the question about the world’s limited stockpiles of fissile material, not helped by the fact that the LWR reactors that make up the bulk of our present capacity are ridiculously fuel inefficient, as in they only actually burn 2-3% of the fissile material present.

And what are we planning to do with all this waste? Various proposals have been made, but no nation on earth has yet to comprehensively solve this problem. Then there’s the glacially slow build rate of reactors, and of course, the nagging issue of nuclear safety.

But is there a better way?

Of course some supporters of nuclear energy would say that all of the problems I’ve just listed off relate to our choice of large light water reactors (as Richard Black at the BBC recently discussed). They claim that alternative designs would result in much safer reactors that are cheaper to build, easier to build and ultimately produce less nuclear waste. Various alternatives to the LWR have been proposed, these include:

High temperature gas Reactors , “modular” Pebble bed Reactors , the advanced CANDU reactor, so-called “fast” reactors and the Molten Salt reactor (MSR).

But could these reactors actually supply us with something better? In the following series of article below, I explored this question by subjecting these designs to a critical review.

The Mega LWR “death spiral”

But first of all what’s wrong with these large LWR’s? I explore some of these issues in part 4 of my little appraisal. Basically it all boils down to a fateful decision taken back in the 1950’s. The US government was in a race to get nuclear reactors up and running for military use, notably for the submarine fleet. A light water reactor was an obvious choice for a compact power source and one that could be developed reasonably quickly. When the civil nuclear industry in the US got going the corporations took these naval reactors, which in many cases they had themselves designed for the military, and simply scaled them up. There are a multitude of reasons why this decision to use mega-LWR’s in preference to anything else was taken (again I review them in part 4), but cost and ease of development were certainly key. But regardless of the “why’s?” the fact is that the nuclear industry did embarked on this plan and in the process of doing this the nuclear industry essentially laid a trap for themselves.

While the submarine reactors had outputs of between 15-60 MW_e the civil nuclear industry began building 500-1,600 MW_e behemoths. These large “megatron” LWR’s were scaled up to the point where they became inherently unsafe – if the cooling system for any reason failed, the reactor would go into meltdown. This meant the cooling systems and all backups related to it (including its backup power generators) HAD to work perfectly i.e. critical system components.

Unfortunately several accidents since then, notably TMI and Chernobyl, revealed flaws in the original design. The only way to correct these flaws was to include further safety systems, as well as by building a large concrete containment dome over the reactors to contain any radiation releases. The end result has been the size and scale of nuclear projects has ballooned in size, as has the costs of new nuclear build (the following video offers a humorous if foul mouthed appraisal of the situation regarding the Olkiluoto reactor in Finland, first of the new (don’t laugh) nuclear renaissance). All these safety critical components also need careful testing prior to commercial operation, meaning the pace of new nuclear construction has slowed to a crawl. Fukushima will now likely lead to another round of recriminations, further expensive upgrades, redesigns and a further round of reactor shutdowns.

Inevitably I therefore see the civil nuclear industry, so long as LWR are favoured as being caught in a never ending death spiral of further mishaps leading to redesigns and costs rises, which leads to reduced orders, which spreads the fixed cost of nuclear over a smaller number of reactors, which raises the cost yet further. All the while these design changes are slowing the pace of build down (leading to yet more cancelled plants), undermining the entire case for nuclear. Indeed its inevitable now that both the US and Britain will now see a major reduction in nuclear energy use in the next few decades (a recent Bulletin of Atomic Scientist’s article http://bos.sagepub.com/content/67/4/30.full discusses this), simply because there is no way they could now build reactors fast enough to cope with the rate they are about to go offline, nor indeed train the staff to run them (many in the nuke industry are getting old and will be looking for their bus passes pretty soon!) Inevitably, as has already happened in Germany, Italy and Canada recently, beyond a certain point cash strapped governments will just run out of patience, pull the plug and turn off the life support.

Criterion of Success…or failure!

In my analysis I established the following criteria with which to judge the relevant “fit for purpose” strengths of these reactor designs.

• Cost, Any alternative to the LWR must be cheaper. Nuclear energy is already more expensive than renewables at current prices, nevermind future prices. So if nuclear has a future its overall costs must be lower.
• Safety, As I said before, the LWR has numerous inherent safety flaws. The number one barrier to public acceptance of nuclear energy is safety. Argue all you want about it, but the LWR design amounts to an elaborate attempt at trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Our preference would therefore be for a reactor that is not just safer, but inherently safer.
• Fuel efficiency, the global stockpiles of fissile material are limited. We could probably maintain the existing stock of reactors going for 50-80 years or so, but given that they only represent 5% of global energy output, that leaves us with the question of where does the other 95% of our energy come from and the obvious question as to whether nuclear energy is just more trouble than its worth. Better fuel economy would mean more reactors and greater market penetration.
• Reduced nuclear waste, the elephant in the room for nuclear energy is the ever growing waste mountain. We’ve yet to come up with a comprehensive solution to nuclear waste and until we do the argument of environmentalists is “if you’re in a hole, stop digging!”. So needless to say if the reactors we now review can generate a lot less waste that would make them a much more attractive proposition to the LWR. Obviously, if the opposite proves to be true, that’s a potential black mark against them.

In addition I also looked at the ability to use the Thorium cycle (given the limits of Uranium supplies), scalability of reactors (these “mega” LWR’s are just too big and unwieldy and can play havoc with the gird of many smaller nations) as smaller reactors might be more flexible, as well as the idea of modular design and mass production of reactors. This latter 2 points being discussed in part 10 of my little series.

If we can prove that any of the reactors we examine can tick all (or most) of these boxes then maybe the nuclear industry has some future, beyond its current Zombie walk to the grave routine with LWR’s.

The Verdicts

All in all my conclusion is that the case for future Generation IV nuclear reactors is much narrower than the supporters of nuclear energy would have you believe. While they do offer some advantages over LWR’s, notably in the area of safety, his comes with strings attached, notably higher capital costs. This is largely a result of the fact that many of these would need to be built from much more exotic materials, such as high temperature stainless steel alloys, Nickel alloys or Refractory materials, while the predominant material of choice in current reactors is steel (stainless and forged ferritic) and concrete. This materials requirement is itself an issue related to the high temperatures these alternative reactors would be required to operate at, not to mention the more aggressive and corrosive environment in some of them, notably the MSR proposals. Of course one to question whether these higher construction costs (and in some cases higher decommissioning costs) are justified.

But overall it is my conclusions that:

The CANDU does close off some of the safety loop holes associated with LWR’s, but it opens up a whole slew of new ones too and generally means higher rates of fuel consumption, lower thermal efficiency and increased amounts of nuclear waste being generated. Indeed, the Canadian government may well have exhausted its patience on this one, as they recently sold the CANDU reactor business for the bargain basement price of $15 million, as well as writing off several billion in outstanding debts. Not exactly a vote of confidence! To me it seems to be a case of the Fed’s picking up the CANDU and throwing it in at the deep end of the pool to see if it will sink or swim. I’ll leave you to guess what’s most likely to happen!

The High Temperature Gas Reactor (HTGR) offers an order of magnitude improvement in safety as well as potentially better fuel economy and high thermal efficiency. However, it will likely come at the expense of much higher construction costs (and probably a slower construction rate depending on material choices, which again depends on operating temperature), higher decommissioning costs and possibly higher volumes of nuclear waste (that last point I’ll admit is debatable, see the my post for more on that one). While the HTGR is fairly safe from meltdown scenarios, one would have likely weathered the Fukushima tsunami with minor damage, it also opens up a host of other safety issues, notably the potential fire risk associated with that graphite core (again a debateable point, see my full article here on this for more info).

The Gas cooled Fast Reactor (GcFR) offers the intriguing possibility of being able to transmute stockpiles of nuclear waste into less dangerous forms. However, it comes with a rather hefty price tag with a lot of R&D work still outstanding as the design is only in the early concept stage of development (read we don’t know if it even works yet!). In any event it will not eliminate the need for some geological storage facilities given the length of time it would take to develop and then build a sizeable number of said reactors, not to mention store the waste after its passed through the reactor. This, plus the hefty price tag associated with GcFR’s, could well make the whole idea uneconomic. Also the GcFR comes with some safety issues (it is not nearly as safe as the HTGR) and a severe proliferation risk.

The Molten Salt Reactor (MSR or LFTR) does offer a number of unique options in terms of safety improvements and improved fuel economy, plus reduced waste streams. However, its ability to achieve these goals is often heavily overstated by its supporters. Much like the GcFR above the design is at a very early stage in development, with much research into it abandoned back in the 1970’s. Any MSR reactor and its associated Chemical Processing Plant (CPP) would likely be expensive to build and slow to construct (again given the narrow and exotic nature of the materials choice the design enforces on us). Getting a decent thermal efficiency out of the plant might be problematic, which worsens the economic case for them. Also while certainly safer than a LWR in terms LOCA scenarios, the MSR comes with its own particular safety problems, notably that graphite core (fire!), the risks of a leak of radioactive material out of the CPP, or arguably worse a release of potential toxic and highly lethal fluorine gas. So all in all there may be a case for MSR’s, but its unproven at the moment and likely a much narrower case that its supporters would have you believe.

Indeed probably the biggest enemy of the MSR design is its own nutty cheerleaders who badly need to stay off the Kool-Aid. Casing point, without hours of my analysis article going online they were already running up vast blog strings of flaming trolls galore (see comments section of my page) or starting e-mailing me anonymously with various badly typed swear-word filled comments. I even picked up one or two stalkers trying to find out who I was and where I lived (yes really)! You also see the odd comment involving half baked megloamanic schemes (such as burning off the biosphere for uranium). While the best I can tell, the advocates of the other reactor designs I reviewed seem to have taken their punishment “like men”, the MSR fans reached for the tinfoil hat and the two-litre bottle of kool-aid. I shall leave it to the reader to decide who should be taken seriously!

Small to medium sized modular reactors do offer a good deal more flexibility in terms of how nuclear power could be used and yet a further improvement in safety. However, they also comes with lower economies of scale and thus higher construction costs and worse a slower rate of reactor roll out (at least in the early days). We could claw back on these two issues by mass producing said reactors in large volumes but as I point out (again see the full article), it is far from proven whether that would be economically viable and whether there is in fact a market for large numbers of small reactors.

Also as I outline, the case for small reactors would also require a major shift in public opinion, which post-Fukushima is unlikely to be forthcoming. Most of the reactor designs I’ve mentioned above would be wholly unsuitable for “mass” production, only a handful of PWR, BWR and HTGR designs would be feasible options. Worse still, by and large mass production means “dumbing down” our design, and that means accepting a reactor that’s much cheaper and easier to build but has a lower thermal efficiency, a higher rate of fuel consumption and ultimately produces larger volumes of nuclear waste compared to our “mega” reactors. With the exception of a small number of narrow cases, it’s difficult to envisage how this would offer an improvement on the current status quo.

Decommissioning costs, the Elephant’s still in the room!

Not only are the construction costs of many of these proposed reactors higher, but for some (but not all) the decommissioning costs would actually be higher and worse they will generate more nuclear waste from this process. This being a particular problem for graphite cored reactors such as the HTGR and the MSR. Other Graphite cored reactors are proving to be something of a nightmare to decommission, as I discuss in the section on HTGR’s.

As far as the spent fuel waste is concerned, some of these proposed reactors will indeed produce less, but others will actually produce more of it, thought it’s probably important to clarify what we mean by “more” or “less”. For example, CANDU as I point out, produces about 7 times (by mass) the amount of nuclear waste than a LWR. However, I’m quite sure the CANDU supporters will point out that because the waste from a CANDU is less radioactive it can be packed up much more tightly, reducing the size of any waste storage pen (but can it be packed sufficiently tightly to overcome that 7 times greater output?).

At the other end of the scale the HTGR’s have a very high rate of fuel burn up, and so would produce a lot less nuclear waste (pound for pound) than a LWR. However, the waste from a HTGR is contained within a graphite matrix which increases its volume to a much larger size than LWR waste. Hence one has to question which reactor we can claim “produces less waste”.

In a similar vein some of the waste output from a MSR will be mixed up with fluoride salts, from which it will have to be separated before going into long term storage. Disposal of said wastes have been described as “technically challenging”  although certainly doable. It’s estimated that it’s going to cost some $130 million to process the waste from one tiny 8 MW_th test reactor which ran for just over 5 years. Again it begs the question which reactor can truly claim to have the “smaller” waste footprint and the “cheaper” clean up bill.

Thorium….only for comic book heroes?

The Thorium cycle, as covered throughout my little study, does offer the option of solving some of the long term fuel supply issues surrounding nuclear energy. But the level to which it will do this is fairly narrow, as Thorium fuelled reactors still need fissile isotopes, drawn ultimately from Uranium, for startup purposes. Failing this they require the use of expensive (and generally uneconomic) fast reactors and reprocessing of spent fuel. So yes, while Thorium could help stretch things out, it can only help a little bit, but not nearly as much as the supporters of Thorium reactors would have you believe. Thorium fuelled reactors would still generate substantial quantities of nuclear waste and come with a number of potential proliferation risks attached. Even the UK National Nuclear Laboratories (NNL) pours cold water over the idea.

Brayton Cycle and Hydrogen Production….rumours of Rankine’s death have been greatly exaggerated

A proposal common to all Generation IV reactors, and some renewable power plant proposals (notably geothermal), is to use Brayton cycle instead of the Rankine cycle for power generation. This would offer a substantial improvement in terms of energy efficiency, and furthermore could bring down the costs of installation. However, there is still some work to do on this issue, so I won’t write off the Rankine cycle just yet! Similarly, the higher material limits required to raise reactor operating temperatures up to the level necessary to utilize the Sulfur-iodine process and make hydrogen directly (using the reactors heat) could well render the whole idea uneconomic. If we want hydrogen (from nuclear) that badly, build a reactor with a lower operating temperature out of cheaper materials, generate electricity and hook it up to an electrolyser! Less efficient yes, but likely cheaper. And if we really want hydrogen on the cheap, ditch the reactor and use CSP or wind energy!

Fusion?

Finally, I also had a look at Fusion power . This is the great white hope of nuclear energy and it has to be said we are making progress, but it’s a case of slow and steady progress. Indeed I would question whether we are in a position yet to even estimate how long it will take for fusion power to become commercial available…if indeed ever! Recent news from ITER is not positive, its now not due to go online till 2026, which would imply a completion of experiments in 2046. And it will take sometime beyond that before we wind up with a viable working commercial fusion reactor. As I speculate (here), it would likely be the latter half of this century (or the beginning of the next one) before we start to see Fusion play any sort of major role in mass global power generation. Also the first generation of Fusion reactors will be dependant on supplies of Lithium for fuel, of which there is only a limited global supply available, something that limits the amount of energy which can ultimately be generated from Fusion reactors, probably to between 8-20% of global energy use depending on whose figures you believe. Where does the other 92-80% come from?

And of course we have to contemplate the possibility that commercial Fusion energy never arrives. While speaking personally, I still have confidence that the necessary breakthroughs will be achieved according to a reasonable timetable, it would be foolish to blindly assume that they will. To build any nations energy strategy on the forlorn hope that fusion power will arrive on the scene by a certain date, makes about as much sense as selling your house and all your worldly goods because some preacher told you the world was going to end on a particular date.

Curb your enthusiasm!

All in all, my conclusions are that the case for future Generation IV nuclear reactors is much narrower than the supporters of nuclear energy would have you believe – even the case for Fusion doesn’t look that clear cut! And again I would note that this last point about Fusion is important, the way the nuclear energy supporters (and indeed many politicians and members of the public) go on you’d swear Fusion was already a slam dunk. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Nuclear energy supporters need to curb they’re enthusiasm for nuclear energy and accept that due to the high capital costs of reactor construction and the limited fuel supplies it will always only ever be a small bit player in a big energy market, at least as far as the current century is concerned. It currently generates about 1.9 – 5.1% of global energy (depending on how you do your maths) and I don’t see how it can be expanded beyond that level, indeed if they manage to maintain this level I suspect they’ll be doing well.

Even the most optimistic nuclear energy program we can draw up still has a substantial energy gap and something else will have to fill it. This of course means we’ll need to rely on renewables for substantially more energy than we currently get from it. Which means many nuclear energy supporters need to overcome their pathological hatred of renewables and if they are truly serious about combating climate change (as many claim to be) then they need to quit trying to throw the baby out with the bath water.

“I soon came to the conclusion that neither international cooperation nor technological advancements would guarantee human societies to build and safely run nuclear reactors in all possible conditions on Earth (earthquakes, floods, droughts, tornadoes, wars, terrorism, climate change, tsunamis, pandemics, etc.). I am sadly reminded of this turning point in my life as I listen to the news about the earthquake, tsunami and extremely worrying nuclear crisis in Japan.”

Silvi warns that “there will definitely be worse accidents” if we continue with nuclear power:

“Why not consider Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima as warnings of greater catastrophes to come and avoid the inevitable by shutting them down, much like changing your diet and/or lifestyle after finding out that your cholesterol or blood pressure is elevated, rather than continuing down the same path until a heart attack or stroke strikes?”

According to Silvi the world could easily replace nuclear power simply by reducing our energy usage and introducing energy efficiency programs:

“Nuclear today only generates about 12 percent of the developed world’s electricity. By instituting an energy efficiency program,” Silvi suggests, “we could fill the gap caused by shutting them all down and put this malevolent genie back into the bottle.”

And the public in Italy seems to agree with Silvi’s anti-nuclear sentiments as they voted against new investments in nuclear energy in a recent referendum in the country. In Japan only 19 of the 54 country’s nuclear reactors are now operating. The others are offline for various reasons since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. At the same time the country’s wind farms are fully operational and were actually unscathed by the massive earthquake disaster. And people claim that nuclear is a stable energy source…

Firstly, the UK government has announced that it will be excluding terrorism as among the things to consider in the stress test. They’ve also excluded Sellafield, much to the annoyance of the Irish government, using the lame excuse that it doesn’t generate any power (but does contain the bulk of the country’s dangerous nuclear waste!)…..of course the fact that “suspected” terrorists have already been caught creeping around Sellafield, suggests that terrorism at Sellafield is a major risk and concern. Granted anyone who looks foreign and has a foreign accent is probably a suspected terrorist to these xenophobes who guard the place, but they won’t be that jumpy if the place was making ice-cream cones now would they!

For those in the UK who don’t know, contrary to what his Gerriness the Baron of Northstead would have you believe, Sellafield is probably the major bone of contention in Anglo-Irish relations. The view from Dublin is that, London took its “ultra safe” nuclear rubbish bin and because it was so safe they pushed it as far away from London as they could…..right opposite our coastline! Hence Irish annoyance over this exclusion of Sellafield from this stress test.

The stress test will also apparently not include such factors as mega-Tsunami (potentially generated by the Cumbre Vieja) or future sea level rise due to climate change. While one can say that the risks from either of these two, the former in particular, are indeed a very low risk in any one given year, but you have to remember that most of the UK nuclear sites are coastal, most have had an active plant on site for 50 years, and that the decommissioning will lead to waste still being on site in a 100 years time. And of course the industry plans to add further reactors to said sites. Thus given the long period of time in which radioactive material will be on site (centuries), this sort of raises the probably of such a calamity affecting these sites at some point in the future from “unlikely” to “not that unlikely”. Now I’m not suggesting there’s any need to panic, these are long term problems, which needs long term solutions. A simple committent to moving the waste from existing reactors off site as soon as that’s possible (preferably into deep storage) post-decomissioning, and building future reactors a little further inland (10-20 km’s should do it) would solve both of these problems. But the industry seems aghast at even these measures. Indeed it’s unclear to what degree the issue of flooding will even be considered in the stress tests. This is particularly significant when you bear in mind the 1999 La Blayais flooding incident which almost led to a loss of diesel generators (much like at Fukushima) at a French nuclear plant.

At the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious here, but isn’t the whole point of a stress test that it be stressful? If we exclude such factors as I’ve mentioned the end result will be a stress test that all plants will pass with flying colours. Greenpeace will naturally scream “STITCH UP!”, the public will not be assured, nor will the financial institutions (whom nuclear industry will be seeking loans off, if new reactors are to go ahead) and the nuclear industry will go back to puttering in its sandbox with its EPR and MOX toys….until the next accident or financial crisis! Nothing worthwhile will be achieved, and no doubt the nuclear cheerleaders will lap it up with glee and appear on this blog to remind us how only 2 men & a dog were killed at Chernobyl or how great the LFTR (Kool-aid fuelled reactor) is.

The thing that puts me off nuclear power is the constant “helicopter parenting” we see from governments on the topic. If any other industry had made the same litany of monumental (and costly) screw-ups they’ve made it would have been killed off through government regulations ages ago. Fifty years after the first “commercial” reactors went online the nuclear industry is still living with its parents who have to sub it a few bob now and then. Isn’t it about time for nuclear power to flee the government nest and go get a proper job?

The nuclear industry, like the banks, is in desperate need of some “tough love” from regulators. This means a stressful stress test, that will see the shutdown of a few of our older power stations (which truth be told probably never should have been built in the first place) as well as getting the industry to ditch silly boondoggle ideas like MOX, Fast Reactors and fuel reprocessing, while forcing them to start cleaning up the waste issue and get things like deep geological storage moving a pace (with the exception of Sweden and Finland there has been practically no movement on this issue!). This would of course mean lay-offs in some sectors of the nuclear industry, some big contractors being stung badly, but of course it would also mean more jobs in other areas. In essence it might serve to scare the industry straight.

Even thought the “stress test” results haven’t been published yet, the fallout is already underway. My suspicion is that the German government’s decision to announce its phase out of nuclear power plants (again!) is probably an attempt by Merkel (in an election year) to head off the inevitable wave of bad publicity that the stress test will generate (some German plants will fail, but not enough to stop the Greens yelling FIX!, and the result will be to cause more public unease than reassurance).

Indeed Germany is perhaps a warning to the rest of the world nuclear industry of what’s in the future if they don’t mend their ways and start washing the dirty linen in public. While I reckon some countries (notably the UK, see my thoughts on UK energy here) can probably get by without nuclear, I’m not convinced this applies to all nations, and Germany is top of my list. I’m not sure Germany can meet its energy needs without being heavily dependant on imports of some sort (some of which will inevitably be Shale gas from Poland and French nuclear power) or fossil fuels (coal) without resorting to nuclear power. However, the nuclear industry in German has now made itself such a pariah that this is simply not an option any more. Regardless of the technical arguments, the German public simply will not support new nuclear construction – period!

And in fairness to the German nuclear industry, they aren’t that bad, indeed it’s often been the foul ups of Germany’s neighbours (the French and British) or those further afield (Japan and Russia) who’ve gotten them a bad name. But the point that Germany proves is that there is a tipping point to public patience on the nuclear issue. Push any public beyond that tipping point and that public support will just collapse. And at that point it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are, or what industry says or promises, the public response will be a firm No Nukes! You can go on Newsnight, put on you’re best Boris Karloff voice and tell everyone that without nuclear “the lights will go out”, follow it up with an evil laugh, and the public still won’t care. You can give out about windfarms all you like and claim that coal kills a Gazillion people a year and it won’t matter, the point where such scare tactics, never mind logical debate, would have worked will be in the distant past.

All in all its possible that these “stress tests” will be about as useful as the ones offered by the Church of Scientology! And the only people who benefit from a tame nuclear stress test are a pile of vested interests and Kool-aid drunk nuclear cheerleaders. In the longer term even the nuclear industry itself will lose out.

Many people will recognise that description of George Monbiot in his role as one of Britain’s leading environmental journalists. Sadly, few of those descriptors apply to the George Monbiot who is now championing nuclear energy.

The George Monbiot We Knew

Until quite recently, Monbiot was unequivocal that nuclear energy was not worth the risks. Here he is in 2005:

“…nuclear power spreads radioactive pollution, presents a target for terrorists and leaves us with waste that no government wants to handle.”

He was also certain that nuclear was not the optimal solution for climate change mitigation. He approvingly quoted a paper from physicist, Amory Lovins:

“Expanding nuclear power would both reduce and retard the desired decrease in CO2 emissions.”

He rounds off that article with an attack on the UK’s chief scientific, Sir David King, for his support of nuclear energy: “I fear that the government’s chief scientist is mutating into its chief spin doctor.”

He pushes home his point in 2006:

“To start building a new generation of nuclear power stations before we know what to do with the waste produced by existing plants is grotesquely irresponsible. … If, as a result of slow leakage into the groundwater, radioactive materials from a burial site kill an average of only one person a year for one million years, those who made the decision to bury them will – through their infinitesimal and unrecorded impacts – be responsible for the deaths of a million people.”

His positioned softened in 2009, stating that he would not oppose nuclear provided it met four conditions:

1. Its total emissions – from mine to dump – are taken into account.

2. We know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried.

3. We know how much this will cost and who will pay.

4. There is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will be diverted for military purposes.

His second condition was not met in 2009, it is not met today and there is no sign of it being met at any time in the foreseeable future. We do not know where to put our nuclear fission waste, which needs storing somewhere securely for at least 100,000 years. This means his first condition is also not met – if we don’t know where to put it we certainly do not know its total emissions. Similarly, we cannot know the cost so his third condition cannot be met. In theory, in a perfect world, his fourth condition can be met – but in reality there is no chance of guaranteeing it. We can never be certain what happens in democratic governments, let alone in the less stable regions of the world where theocracies and dictatorships exist on a political precipice.

So, in reality, none of Monbiot’s conditions for not opposing nuclear can be met. He lectures us on why this is such a fundamental problem:

“The most fundamental environmental principle, taught to every child before their third birthday, is that you don’t make a new mess until you have cleared up the old one. It seems astonishing to me that we could contemplate building a new generation of nuclear power stations when we still have no idea where the waste from existing nukes will be buried.”

Fukushima Meltdown Brings Nuclear Epiphany

Following the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan on March 11 and the subsequent growing catastrophe that engulfed the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex, Monbiot published an article just 5 days later, stating “The Fukushima crisis should not spell the end of nuclear power.“At this stage, TEPCO (the Japanese power company who own and manage the nuclear reactors) were issuing calm reassurances that there was little to worry about – “All 6 units of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station have been shut down.” (March 13) – as we simultaneously watched videos of nuclear containment buildings exploding and multiple experts warning that the situation was far worse than official reports suggested. Very clearly, TEPCO’s claim that all the reactors were “shut down” was at best ‘misleading’.

With each passing day it became clear that Fukushima was a growing disaster. A few, short weeks later it was elevated to International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) level 7 – the highest level, only matched previously by Chernobyl. To say that Monbiot’s assertion was premature is a colossal understatement. TEPCO subsequently admitted that “The radiation leak has not stopped completely and our concern is that it could eventually exceed Chernobyl.”

Monbiot reiterated his four conditions for not opposing nuclear and added a fifth in his March 16 article:

“To these I’ll belatedly add a fifth, which should have been there all along: no plants should be built in fault zones, on tsunami-prone coasts, on eroding seashores or those likely to be inundated before the plant has been decommissioned or any other places which are geologically unsafe.”

Note that he has seemingly forgotten about the threat of terrorism even though there seems little evidence that the world has become a more stable, secure place in the past six years. He also seems unaware that the same chief scientific adviser to the UK that he pilloried in 2005 as being nuclear’s “chief spin doctor” warned that ““a mass of rock” off the Canary Islands was “waiting to collapse into the Atlantic” causing “giant tsunamis””, adding “Britain would have a six hour warning before a 30ft wave hit us”.

So, Monbiot’s growing list of conditions all fail – but this does not dampen his growing affection for nuclear. Although, deciphering Monbiot’s position is quite difficult when he makes statements such as:

“I despise and fear the nuclear industry as much as any other green: all experience hath shown that, in most countries, the companies running it are a corner-cutting bunch of scumbags, whose business originated as a by-product of nuclear weapons manufacture.”

Who does he think will build and manage nuclear reactors in the UK – or anywhere else – except the “corner-cutting bunch of scumbags“?! At this point a person who makes decisions based on evidence and reason might start backing away from nuclear. Not the new George Monbiot. He is now more convinced than ever:

“As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.”

After his March 16 article, he no longer mentions his four five conditions. They have simply vanished.

Chernobyl? General ‘Buck’ Turgidson Assesses the Impact

Monbiot is now aggressively advocating nuclear and going on the attack against a growing chorus of criticism directed at him:

Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution.

He even uses the strap line “How the Fukushima disaster taught me to stop worrying and embrace nuclear power” which is a play on Kubrick’s classic movie, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb“. Just like General ‘Buck’ Turgidson from the movie, Monbiot’s assessment of mass death and suffering is akin to “having our hair mussed.”

In order to dismiss the impact of Chernobyl as being relatively insignificant Monbiot offers up his readers a single number for total deaths: 43.

That number is cherry-picked from the IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency – whose stated purpose is to “seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy“. Those 43 are the poor souls who were immediately affected by radiation that came pouring out of Chernobyl, mostly firemen, engineers and other first responders. They received massive doses of radiation and died quickly, in days or weeks. However, the 43 that Monbiot claims (subsequently increased to 47 in a later article) is most certainly not the full extent of the excess deaths that resulted from Chernobyl. Here are a selection of estimates:

• World Health Organisation (WHO) / IAEA = 9000 “…there may be up to 9,000 excess cancer deaths due to Chernobyl among the people who worked on the clean-up operations, evacuees and residents of the highly and lower-contaminated regions in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.” http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr20/en/index.html
• International Agency for Research on Cancer = 16,000 “…about 16,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancers may be expected due to radiation from the accident and that about 16,000 deaths from these cancers may occur.” http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2006/pr168.html
• TORCH (independent scientists, commissioned by the German Green Party) = 60,000 “…the worldwide collective dose of 600,000 person sieverts will result in 30,000 to 60,000 excess cancer deaths.” http://www.chernobylreport.org/?p=summary
• Greenpeace = 93,000+ “…approximately 270,000 cancers and 93,000 fatal cancer cases caused by Chernobyl. The report also concludes that on the basis of demographic data, during the last 15 years, 60,000 people have additionally died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident, and estimates of the total death toll for the Ukraine and Belarus could reach another 140,000.” http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/chernobylhealthreport.pdf
• New York Academy of Sciences = 985,000 deaths as a result of the radioactivity released. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects#New_York_Academy_of_Sciences_publication + http://www.napf.org/articles/db_article.php?print&article_id=141

There is clearly a very wide range of estimates of total mortality as a result of Chernobyl and it is impossible to ever know the true number. But one thing is clear: the true death toll resulting from Chernobyl far exceeds the handful that George Monbiot wants us to believe.

Also, note that the WHO are effectively muzzled by the IAEA following an agreement in 1959 whereby the WHO cannot publish anything regarding radiation or nuclear technology without the approval of the IAEA. So, even the nuclear industry’s marketing department admits there may be up to 9000 excess deaths due to Chernobyl. And this says nothing about the tens of thousands of excess cancers, the miscarriages, birth defects, people displaced from their homes, all the lives wrecked by each of these things and the crippling economic costs – all of which continue today.

Monbiot’s claim of 43 47 excess deaths due to Chernobyl is not simply wrong. It is an obscene lie. He must know about the wide-ranging credible estimates that put total fatalities in the thousands or tens of thousands. He must know that the IAEA is the marketing department for the nuclear industry – the same industry that he describes as “liars” and “scumbags“. And yet, for the purpose of assessing the impact of Chernobyl, a cherry-picked number from the nuclear industry that not even the nuclear industry quotes is the gospel truth for General ‘Buck’ Turgidson George Monbiot.

Radiation dangerous? Bananas!

Now George moves on to the thorny problem of radiation toxicity. He ‘cites’ a nifty graphic from a well-known web-based comic: XKCD, Radiation Dose Chart. It offers a guide to radiation based on relative doses, starting with ‘sleeping next to someone’ and ‘eating one banana’. Monbiot found this quite convincing. Perhaps because he chose to in preference for doing the least amount of research on the subject?

Radiation comes in different forms and can be delivered by different mechanisms. The key fact not shown in Monbiot’s preferred comic is that external emitters of radiation (e.g. getting an x-ray at the dentist) are not the same as internal emitters (e.g. drinking milk contaminated by caesium). Once radioactive products have entered the body (via water, food or from the air) they are emitting radiation directly into cells and their deleterious effect is multiplied massively. So background radiation is not at all the same as having radioactive plutonium in your lungs or radioactive caesium in your bones or radioactive iodine in your thyroid.

Bananas? Bananas contain potassium. Your body contains potassium. When you eat a banana, your body ejects the same amount of potassium that you just consumed, thereby making bananas radiation-neutral. Also, as you would expect, the radiation delivered by bananas is very different to that delivered by fissile materials that come out of a nuclear reactor that is in meltdown. For some reason, this has not occurred to George Monbiot.

Note the warning at the foot of the XKCD graphic – which Monbiot clearly did not: “If you’re basing radiation safety procedures on an internet image and things go wrong, you have no one to blame but yourself.” Indeed.

The False Dichotomy: Nuclear or Coal

The key argument that Monbiot appears to be pushing (as best one can discern from the multiple, frantic articles published over the last few weeks) to defend his nuclear crusade is that our energy choice is “nuclear or coal” and therefore “nuclear or unmitigated climate change“. This is a false dichotomy.

The choice for our energy future – and therefore climate change mitigation – is nuclear energy or renewable energy.

Remember that Monbiot circa 2005 said, “Expanding nuclear power would both reduce and retard the desired decrease in CO2 emissions.” This was confirmed by the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission: “doubling nuclear capacity would make only a small impact on reducing carbon emissions by 2035” and “the risks of nuclear energy outweighed its advantages.” That advisory panel has since been closed by the pro-nuclear Tory government – which is one way to get rid of inconvenient facts when you have an ideology to push ahead with.

Monbiot is backing the wrong horse in the climate change mitigation race. Reality shows that renewables are being deployed at a phenomenal rate and global renewable energy generation now exceeds nuclear. Remember, nuclear has been subsidised, developed and deployed for almost 60 years; renewables have only received serious investment in perhaps the last decade.

New nuclear reactors are barely being deployed quickly enough to match old reactors going offline. The disaster at Fukushima is unlikely to improve that. Indeed, Germany have since announced rapid closure of their nuclear reactors and to accelerate their plan for 100% renewable energy.

The other tactic that Monbiot has employed to justify a rush to nuclear energy is that nuclear will become cheaper in the future. He made the following bizarre statement while debating Caroline Lucas of the Green Party:

“So while you can say wind at the moment costs less than nuclear … My guess, because I haven’t yet seen a comparative study, and I don’t believe one exists, is that when we get up to those sorts of levels, nuclear is likely to be quite a lot cheaper.”

That beggars belief. He is making “guesses” based on non-existent studies about the costs of nuclear and renewables decades in to the future while admitting that right now nuclear is the more expensive option. And contrary to Monbiot’s “guessing”, the evidence suggests the very opposite. Nuclear continues to climb in costs while renewables continue to fall:

• Does nuclear power have a negative learning curve? Real escalation in reactor investment costs while solar and wind falls. “New nukes have gone from too cheap to meter to too expensive to matter for the foreseeable future.”

The George Monbiot of Today

There is no coherence to Monbiot’s arguments. He demonstrates all the traits of the climate change deniers he has fought for many years. He cherry picks numbers, ignores all credible evidence that undermines his position and abandons his arguments as soon as they prevent him pushing forward with his new-found love of nuclear. He is making statements which he must know to be untrue. He is “guessing” about costs of technology decades in to the future in order to justify his beliefs.

George Monbiot is in denial of reality in order to protect an emotional attachment to what he erroneously believes is a solution to global warming. He is advocating a technology that brings catastrophic risks, highly toxic waste, is too expensive, too slow and unreliable to build. Nuclear energy will starve the renewable sector of the funds and resources it needs and which offers the best chance of preventing catastrophic climate change.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time Monbiot has succumbed to superficial arguments from vested interests. He was fooled by the lies of the climate change deniers regarding the stolen CRU emails. He was fooled by a single paper from a rightwing think tank, RWI Essen, to the extent that he called Feed In Tariffs and solar energy “The German Disease”? He has now been fooled by the lies of the nuclear lobby.

For many, this inconsistency and lack of coherent, evidence-based reasoning is now too much. George Monbiot can no longer be considered a credible commentator.

George Made Some New Friends

To finish on a positive note for George, he has made some new friends and allies with his nuclear epiphany. Among them are the billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries, and who are possibly more responsible than any others for funding climate change denial. They also strongly support nuclear energy. Why? Because they know that nuclear offers no realistic threat to their fossil fuel golden goose. The George Monbiot that we knew would have gained a clue from that fact….

Kelly Rigg, from the global climate change alliance (GCCA), writes on the Huffington Post:

“Colleagues and I have been directly corresponding with Yoshinori Ueda leader of the International Committee of the Japan Wind Power Association & Japan Wind Energy Association, and according to Ueda there has been no wind facility damage reported by any association members, from either the earthquake or the tsunami.”

She reports that the Kamisu wind farm, which is located 300km from the epicenter of the earthquake, managed to survive without any damages. Mostly thanks to its “anti-earthquake battle proof design”. According to Yoshinori Ueda most of the wind farms in Japan are now operational. The remaining ones are offline due to grid failures caused by the earthquake and tsunami.

So while the awful nuclear crisis continues, with experts warning that the Fukushima disaster could become worse than Chernobyl and that the deconstruction of the plant could take decades, this story really should give a boost of confidence to the renewable energy sector. And it seems that the stock markets agree on this. The stock price of Japan Wind Development Co. Ltd. has risen from 31,500 yen on 11 March to 74,700 yen today. And the Guardian reports that the Japanese nuclear crisis has made shares in renewable energy sources rocket as public and investors recoil from the nuclear energy industry.

Fukushima really does makes the case for renewable energy, as Antony Froggatt writes on BBC.

Another article worth reading is this one by Leuren Moret on “Japan’s deadly game of nuclear roulette“. It was published seven years ago and warned about the potential consequences of investing heavily in nuclear energy near such a dangerous earthquake zone as Japan:

“Of all the places in all the world where no one in their right mind would build scores of nuclear power plants, Japan would be pretty near the top of the list.”

It’s like Naomi Klein says. Our societies have become addicted to extreme and reckless risk-taking.

The photo shows the second hydrogen explosion at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 3 reactor in Japan.

The ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan has sparked new life in the nuclear energy debate in many countries. And the fear for possible nuclear accidents in other countries forces politicians to reconsider and review their current energy policy stance.

The continued protests against nuclear energy in Germany has seen an upswing during these past days. About 60,000 people formed a chain around a nuclear power station in Germany this weekend to protest its continued operation. And chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to announce the suspension of the country’s plans to extend the life of its nuclear power stations later today, the Guardian reports.

In USA people and politicians are starting to question President Barack Obama’s plans to expand and build new nuclear power plants to meet growing energy demands in the country. The independent and strongly pro-nuclear Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, have said that the USA should “put the brakes on nuclear power plants“:

“I don’t want to stop the building of nuclear power plants. But I think we’ve got to kind of quietly put, quickly put, the brakes on until we can absorb what has happened in Japan as a result of the earthquake and the tsunami and then see what more, if anything, we can demand of the new power plants that are coming on line.”

In Britain the Green lawmaker Caroline Lucas have said that the Japanese nuclear crisis strengthens the case against new nuclear construction. “You will never be able to completely design out human error, design failure or natural disaster,” she said. Walt Patterson, associate fellow at London’s Chatham House thinktank, said that, the financial damages of a potential nuclear accident also played a big role in shaping the energy debate in Brian and Europe.

“That is undoubtedly going to filter back to the debate in Europe as a further factor in the very dubious economics of these plants,” he told Reuters.

The plans to expand nuclear energy in India for around $175 billion might, in light of the current situation in Japan, see a strong public backlash, analysts and experts say:

“The Japan accident has created a very, very tough situation for India, actual implementation of nuclear power projects will now certainly take a backseat,” said Debasish Mishra, Mumbai-based senior director at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. “It will be very difficult to sell the idea of nuclear power to people for any political party after the Japan disaster.”

While the nuclear crisis in Japan might not change the Chinese government’s plans to develop more nuclear power it could force China to review their energy policies. The current situation in Japan “may become a factor in the drafting of China’s energy plans, Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said in Beijing.”

“The accident in Japan may trigger increased public concerns over building atomic plants,” said Dave Dai, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Daiwa Securities Capital Markets Co. “China will become more cautious while developing nuclear-power plants but is unlikely to alter its long-term nuclear development plans.”

“In Berlin an estimated 50,000 people have joined a demonstration against nuclear power in the run-up to the German general elections.

The rally was headed by a convoy of 350 tractors, which drove past the office of Chancellor Angela Merkel,” Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports.

Back in 2001 the former Social Democratic chancellor, backed up by the Greens, pushed through a new legislation in 2001 that would phase out nuclear energy from Germany within two decades. But the Social Democratic and Green government lost the election in 2005 to a right-wing coalition consisting of the current Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats and the liberal Free Democrats.

Angela Merkel, who successfully blocked a strong climate deal for the European Union last year, now wants to scrap the nuclear phase-out legislation that the SPD pushed through in 2001. This is similar to what is happening in Sweden after a coalition of right-wing parties won the recent election there. According to Merkel, Germany “cannot phase out nuclear energy as quickly as some imagine.”

“But in the long term, that’s to say in the second half of the century, we will experience a large amount of renewable energy sources. We are convinced that we will be able to stop using nuclear energy at some point”, Merkel said.

The Social Democratic chancellor candidate, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, is accusing Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats and the liberal Free Democrats “of leading the country into an energy policy dead-end and endangering domestic security.”

On the same day as the anti-nuclear protest in Germany were taking place Greenpeace released a survey which found that 59% of Germans are against Merkel’s proposal to extend the deadline for the country’s already aging nuclear reactors.

“Our responsibility is to phase out power plants that endanger the health and livelihoods of future generations, said Greenpeace Finland’s nuclear campaigner, Lauri Myllyvirta at a speech the Brandenburg Gate.

“Each year nuclear power plants are kept running means more nuclear waste, more uranium mining, higher risk of accidents. There is no excuse: Climate change can be best tackled without nuclear plants. The nuclear phase-out in Germany is one of the reasons for the success of wind and solar energy all over the world. A relapse into nuclear power in Germany would send a very bad signal to other countries.”

Nils Diedrich, a political scientist at Berlin’s Free University, says that if Merkel and her right wing coalition manage to push through this pro-nuclear legislation “we’ll see a real battle”. He warns that “then there will be massive demonstrations.”

Although Germany is one of the leading countries in renewable wind energy it still has a dirty and toxic energy portfolio. 42% of the country’s energy comes from coal and 23% from nuclear energy. Only about 15% of the energy comes from clean renewable energy sources such as wind and solar.

Images from the Gruene.de