2016-08-09 Nuclear Insecurities
1) National Insecurity
Any nuclear power plants (npps) built with Chinese involvement would amount to selling them our national security.
2) Fuel Supply Insecurity
Any existing or new npps would suffer from increasing insecurity of fuel supply, notably from Russia and Kazachstan.
3) Physical Insecurity
All fission npps give off 'decay heat' after shutdowns, whether operational or emergency. If a npp loses both the grid connection and the standby generators, the batteries would last only 4 to 8 hours before decay heat causes the reactor cores and spent fuel pools to overheat and all containments to be breached in hours to days. This happened at Fukushima, where three reactors discharged major radioactive releases to the air, land and sea.
The probability of a given radioactive release is assessed by assigning probabilities of failure to each link (e.g. a pump or pipe or valve) in the billions of possible chains of events. However, some threats from hostile states and terrorists, such as airliners, missiles, drones and cyber attacks, were not anticipated when many existing npps were designed. The same may apply to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, storm surges and sea level rise, and to new npps. So not all the chains can be identified and even fewer are considered in practice. Therefore the probability of a major radioactive release is an underestimate, logically unknowable, and must be taken as inevitable. Hence npps suffer fatal physical insecurity from an unknowable number of threats.
4) Human Insecurity
Chernobyl resulted in fallout over 40% of western Europe, while 2400 km away in the UK, the fallout on hill farms in Scotland and Wales resulted in compensation being paid for 25 years. Fukushima caused the evacuation of some 100,000 citizens, the loss of many livelihoods including farming and fishing, and of up to 8% of Japan for decades. So the human and economic consequences of major radioactive releases are such that the populace experiences life-threatening human insecurity and demands immediate shutdowns of all npps in the country. This happened in Japan after Fukushima, and even five years later, hardly any have been re-started, while the cleanup is expected to take at least forty years.
5) Energy Insecurity
The magnitude of a 'worst case' release is about 100 times those from Chernobyl and Fukushima. The cost of such a release has been put at about € 6000 billion. This is about three times the UK GDP, but is uninsurable. Yet the size of npps has increased and with clustering (as at Fukushima and proposed for HPC) disasters can involve more than one. Also spent fuel in the cooling pools has been built up, with re-racking, instead of using the more costly off-site dry cask storage and secure underground repositories. So the potential radioactive releases are now even larger. After the next major one anywhere in the world, all npps, whether old or new, incomplete or operating, would become ‘stranded liabilities’ and most likely be shut down immediately, with energy insecurity seen as the lesser of two evils.
6) Delivery Insecurities
Npps are subject to very limited price competition, due to the cost and time required for regulators to evaluate each design. Also they are very complex constructs, subject to weather and component delays, with no 'learning' from series production to cut cost. Instead they suffer from 'specification creep' during the very long construction times, often due to safety concerns arising after the design and evaluation. Hence most new npps exhibit the delivery insecurities of huge delays and cost overruns. The EPR (as proposed for HPC) at Olkiluoto is nine years late and has doubled in cost, while that at Flamanville is six years late and has tripled in cost.
7) Capacity Insecurity
Talk of Hinkley Point C (HPC) providing 7% of UK electricity is not a virtue, but 'too many eggs in one basket'. HPC is proposed to comprise 2 x 1600 Mwe npps, but close-coupled, so many 'common-mode' failures could arise. Hence the Short Term Operating Reserve (STOR) would have to be increased to 3,200 MWe. But Dinorwig took 10 years to build and without a STOR of 3200 MWe, any unplanned outage of HPC would subject the GB grid to massive capacity insecurity.
8) Investment Insecurity
Most countries have long decided against nuclear power. Following Fukushima in 2011, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, later joined by Belgium and Spain, have also decided against or are phasing it out, showing that other solutions are possible. For Germany, several independent studies show that 100% of electricity could be supplied from renewable energies. The German government appointed an 'Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply'. It accepted their findings and adopted the 'Energiewende' (Energy Transition). My analysis for the UK shows that wind power could supply up to 75% of electricity, with the balance from gas-fired power, before 'Power-to-Gas' long-term storage is required to reach 100% renewable energy. So new supply should be from wind and solar farms which are ethical, sustainable and secure investments, much cheaper to finance and much quicker to deliver. Conversely, npps would suffer massive investment insecurity.
9) Business Insecurity
Most countries are addressing the energy security and climate change concerns with supply from renewable energies along with demand reduction and electricity savings. The scope for demand reduction in the UK is shown in the Adonis study commissioned by a previous government. For all energy-using products, savings are usually possible until the energy used is about twice the thermodynamic minimum required for each task. An excellent example is lighting, where the savings achieved between incandescent and LED lights is about 90%. Moreover, the UK imports most of it's enduse equipment, appliances and lighting, and much industrial machinery, which is renewed after about 5 to 15 years. The energy use per new unit is decreasing and the electricity demand in the UK is falling. In Germany, energy saving is supported by policy, and electricity demand is expected to fall 50% by 2050. So the grid can be balanced significantly by demand reduction and electricity savings, which are much quicker and cheaper to deliver. Conversely, npps would cause business insecurity with insecure and uncompetitive power and lesser capabilities in the sustainable energy technologies that sell well at home and abroad.
10) Job Insecurity
Claims that HPC would offer e.g. 25,000 jobs are not a virtue. UK industry is not able to build complete npps, so the imported content would be very high. Most UK jobs would be low-skilled and last less than the construction time, leading to job insecurity. Meanwhile overseas companies such as Siemens are investing in UK manufacture of wind turbines for both home and overseas markets. This reduces the imported content and increases high-skilled UK jobs in manufacture, supply chain, sales and marketing, installation, and operation and maintenance.
Recent articles
2021-09-29 Nuclear Power and the EU Taxonomy
Around September 2021, the European Commission considered the inclusion of nuclear power in the taxonomy for future investments in energy. This was based on a single report from the European Joint Research Centre, which still has close links with the nuclear industry and is widely perceived as playing a promoting role for nuclear energy within the European Union. The JRC Report ignored the report of the German Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply of 2011, which had lead to Germany phasing out nuclear power by 2023. The European Commision also ignored 'Sustainability at risk, A critical analysis of the EU Joint Research Centre technical assessment of nuclear energy with respect to the "do no significant harm" criteria of the EU Taxonomy Regulation, of 2021-09 by Dr. Christoph Pistner, Dr. Matthias Englert and Dr. Ben Wealer, for the Heinrich Boell Foundation.2023-06-06 Nuclear Power Has No Future
The UK government proposes to build nuclear power plants totalling 24 GW.This implies Hinkley Point C, Sizewell C and about six more of similar size.The Labour party proposes to include nuclear power in it’s new ‘green’ energy policy.Yet nuclear power has no future, as shown in this document of 3 pages with 52 references. The first section shows that nuclear fuel may be effectively exhausted before 2050, when the climate targets should be met. The second section shows that the costs of nuclear power have risen over time, and are now uncompetitive. So nuclear power must be replaced by sustainable and affordable options such as energy savings and renewables like wind, solar and storage. The third section shows that nuclear power conflicts with energy savings and renewables, so impairing the business case and deterring investment.So the UK should phase out nuclear power and join the rest of the world in deploying energy savings and renewables.Although this document is published after the latest Government and Labour Party proposals,I have published many earlier documents on nuclear power, dating from 2006-0-19. (See below).Most notably, my report on the Fukushima disaster was published on 2012-04-11, with copies sent to several MPs and Ministers.2022-10-05 Nuclear Nonsense
The new UK government appears to support the previous government’s proposal of building new nuclear power plants. The Labour party proposes to include nuclear power in it’s new ‘green’ energy policy. However such nuclear proposals are nonsense, as shown in this 4-page due diligence assessment.2022-08-12 Stopping Sizewell C and all nuclear power in favour of a rational energy policy
Among the last acts of the Johnson government was the approval of a new nuclear plant - Sizewell C. The claim was that it would increase energy security and reduce carbon emissions. But the invasion of Ukraine has underlined that all nuclear sites are targets, and reduce national security. Also nuclear power would be far more costly than energy savings and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, with storage, and could not be generating electricity before 2030. They need uranium for fuel, yet almost half comes from Russia and Kazachkstan, so that the money and carbon costs would increase twice as fast. Moreover, they require huge amounts of energy to manufacture and build, so reducing energy security until construction is complete, and this energy repaid. Yet Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C are coastal sites, at risk from flooding by sea level rise and storm surge by 2100. As decommissioning and site clearance would take at least 50 years, they would need to be shutdown before 2050. Many reasons for stopping Sizewell C and all nuclear power are given in this collection of five documents.2022-08-13 Nuclear Power And Weapons Are Killing Us
The Manhattan Project in the US covered every stage of the production of nuclear weapons. This included the mining and refining of uranium, enrichment to 80 to 90% U235 for uranium bombs, fuelling nuclear reactors with uranium to produce plutonium, and reprocessing the spent fuel to extract the plutonium for plutonium bombs. It was recognised from the beginning that these processes and plants would give rise to radioactive releases that would be harmful to the plant operators and the general public, yet they were never informed. This continues to the present day, when the nuclear weapon and power industry does everything in its power to deny and understate the many and extensive harms done to all living things. To this has been added the use of uranium in bunker-breaking bombs and tank-busting shells, that spread the dust so formed over their own forces, the enemy forces, and innocent bystanders, harming them all for generations to come. The human harms include many and extensive cancers, and also non-malignant diseases such as stillbirths, deformities and mental impairment and heart disease. With so much harm already done to humans that will take up to lifetimes to express, and so much nuclear debris laying in wait to harm even more humans, it is essential to identify every strategy and measure that can reduce the total harm.This document covers the first warnings of nuclear harms in the 1950s and - following studies beginning in the 1960s - five books of evidence by Dr Ernest Sternglass in 1981, Mr Harvey Wasserman et al in 1982, Dr John Gofman in 1990, Mr Paul Zimmerman in 2009, and Professor Chris Busby et al in 2010.2022-06-14 Energy Transition Technologies
This is prompted by the Energy Hierarchy of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. From the most to the least sustainable, Tier 1 is Energy Demand Reduction, Tier 2 is Energy Efficiency, Tier 3 is Utilisation of Renewable, Sustainable Resources, Tier 4 is Utilisation of Other, Low-GHG-Emitting Resources, and Tier 5 is Utilisation of Conventional Resources as we do now.2022-06-18 Nuclear Insecurities
This is a three-page re-cast of 2016-08-09 Nuclear Insecurities (below).It includes 16 criteria under the original 10 headings, supported by 21 references.2021-06-09 The Futility of Fusion - A Dream Too Far
For the Presentation, Conclusions and a document with references, click on Read More. Nuclear fusion power on earth poses extreme technical challenges. One is the attainment of at least 100 million degrees C for long enough to produce net energy. Another is that any power plant fuelled with Deuterium and Tritium must 'breed' enough Tritium to sustain itself. Yet fusion power is futile because it cannot be deployed at a meaningful scale before 2050. This is the target date for Zero Carbon - hopefully limiting Global Warming to less than 2 C. So by this date all energy must be supplied from proven renewable sources such as Solar Photovoltaics, Wind Power, Hydro Power, sustainable Biomass and Solar and Deep Geothermal Heat.2021-03-26 District Heating for the UK
This is a proposal for District Heating for carbon reduction in the UK.It follows the passing of enabling legislation in Scotland, with help from Denmark.2016-12-01 Energy Solutions for Sustainability
This note reflects Danish and German precedents on energy solutions, from which I have learnt the underlying principles.Humankind requires not energy but energy services such as illumination, movement and thermal comfort. Germany realisesthat it is not enough to set targets for reducing carbon emissions; policies, plans and actions are also required. It has adoptedthe ‘Energiewende’ energy transition plan for 80 to 95% carbon reduction by 2050. 1 Solutions for sustainable energy servicescan be determined by following a few fundamental principles and metrics, enumerated in this document.
