Latest selected extracts from my Triple Crunch log
Page last updated: 2 February 2010
Vermont Senate votes to close a nuclear power plant when its licence expires in 2012.
25 February 2010. This on the grounds of aging problems: 3 radioactive leaks, a burst pipe and a collapsed cooling tower. California took such action in 1989, but no state has in the 20 years since. With its original 40-year operating licence expired in two years, Entergy’s Yankee plant in Vermont had applied for a 20-year extension to keep it open once, as many of the US’s 103 nuclcear plants will have to do.
Michael Grunwald in Time magazine describes “Why Obama’s nuclear bet won’t pay off.”
18 February 2010: “If you want to understand why the U.S. hasn’t built a nuclear reactor in three decades, the Vogtle power plant outside Atlanta is an excellent reminder of the insanity of nuclear economics. The plant’s original cost estimate was less than $1 billion for four reactors. Its eventual price tag in 1989 was nearly $9 billion, for only two reactors. But now there’s widespread chatter about a nuclear renaissance, so the Southern Co. is finally trying to build the other two reactors at Vogtle. The estimated cost: $14 billion. And you can be sure that number is way too low, because nuclear cost estimates are always way too low.”
Around 60% of Germans still favour nuclear reactor shutdowns.
11 February 2010: The current legal obligation is to phase out nuclear reactors after 32 years of service. The latest public opinion polls show around 60 per cent favouring the current phase-out legislation, passed by the former coalition of Social Democrats and Greens. At least two of the country’s 17 nuclear reactors would have to be shut down this year, and nuclear reactors provide about a quarter of the country’s electricity.
French nuclear industry in crisis as EDF and Areva go to war.
18 January 2010: EDF says Areva has halted uranium supplies and stopped removing spent fuel for treatment in an increasingly bitter row over their contractual relationship. The heads of the two state operators are askingg Sarkozy to adjudicate. Areva supplies 68 per cent of the uranium used in EDF’s reactors. EDF, which provides 77% of French electricity from its nuclear plants, has stocks for several months. The row has been cited as one of the factors behind France’s failure to secure the contract to build reactors in Abu Dhabi.
Areva weighs cheaper reactors after failure of Abu Dhabi bid.
15 January 2010: An internal review has been launched to assess whether to reintroduce the simpler second-generation CPR1,000 reactors, which it stopped building 20 years ago. “Safety standards in the US and Europe would not allow a second-generation reactor to be built,” an Areva executive acknowledges: but 20% of countries that would accept the lower safety standards.
My view: Money first then, nuclear safety second. And how many nuclear experts do they still have on staff who built one of these reactors twenty years ago?
Eon and Centrica say they are less likely to build clean coal and new nuclear power plants after Copenhagen.
21 December 2009: This will mean higher energy prices, in the absence of an agreement helping the carbon price.
Managers at the Sellafield complex to be fined for exposing staff to radioactive contamination.
4 December 2009: A substantial penalty is expected from Carlisle crown court following a successful criminal prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive. This comes just a week after an eminent group of scientists and military experts (a Pugwash Group led by General Sir Hugh Beach) described the method for storing nuclear waste at the plant as “ludicrous”: “100 tonnes of separated plutonium sitting in tin cans.” Sellafield is now owned by a consortium comprising Areva, Amec and URS Washington.
Health and Safety Executive has wide-ranging safety concerns about new nuclear reactor designs.
27 November 2009: “We have identified a significant number of issues with the safety features of the design that would first have to be progressed. If these are not progressed satisfactorily then we would not issue a design acceptance confirmation,” says a spokesman after a study of the latest French EPR (Areva) and US AP1000 (Westinghouse) reactor designs. The biggest issue is that the operationa and safety systems are not separate. The best analogy might be a car in which if the steering fails, the brakes might too. The HSE is independent from both government and industry. It also professes to be understaffed for the nuclear oversight role it has. The companies have until a reactor review in 2011 to comply.
My view: French politicans have now demanded a public enquiry into the state of the French nuclear industry. British politicans should demand the same about the British nuclear industry (which of course, is owned by the French nuclear industry).
UK government refuses to provide any details for 5 security incidents at nuclear plants last year.
22 November 2009: These were mentioned in the latest annual report of the Office of Civil Nuclear Security, as is required by government guidelines for incidents including “any unauthorised incursion on to the premises”, “any incident occurring on the premises involving an explosive or incendiary device”, “any damage to any building or equipment on the premises which might affect the security of the premises”, “any theft or attempted theft of any nuclear material” and “any theft or attempted theft, or any loss or unauthorised disclosure, of sensitive nuclear information”. But no details were given, and a written parliamentary question has been given the blanket “not in the national security interest” response.
The Economist describes fragility of EDF’s nuclear campaign in face of stretched finances.
19 November 2009: Having acquired British Energy and Constellation Energy, it plans to build 11 new reactors (four in Britain, four in America, two in China and one in France). It also plans to form consortia building build four plants in Italy and bidding to build several in the United Arab Emirates. But debt now stands at €37 billion ($53 billion) and could rise to €65 billion by 2017-18, according to an HSBC report.
Incoming EDF boss says the French nuclear industry isn’t working, and needs a complete rethink.
18 November 2009: Henri Proglio, who takes over as executive chairman in a few days, tells the French daily Les Echos he wants to “have a French nuclear industry that works. That means that we have to rethink the whole industry”. He criticises the multi-billon euro reactor contract in Abu Dhabi and says the creation of Areva was a “mistake”, and that EDF should have a stake in Areva’s reactor business.
My view: There are days, compiling this log, when it is easy to believe that fiction can’t hope to match real life. The French government owns 84% of EDF. They appointed Monsieur Proglio. What is going on?
Vattenfall drops plans to sell parts of the Swedish electricity grid to finance UK nuclear plants amid a storm of criticism.
12 November 2009: The utility had been one of the favourites to build nuclear plants but now says it has no such plans and won’t even discuss the possibility for at least a year.
My view: EDF are having major problems with finance too. This is going to be the acid test for the UK nuclear renaissance: who is going to pay?
Nuclear safety authorities from France, Finland and UK ask Areva to modify its EPR reactor design.
6 November 2009: The concerns are over the “independence principle”: there is too high a degree of interactivity between the control and safety systems, according to the three countries’ regulators. Siemens has decided to quit its partnership with the reator designer, Areva.
My view: A good investigative journalist really needs to go to town on the French nuclear industry and its problems. Could this be one reason they have such great solar feed-in tariffs?
Almost one third of EDF’s 58 reactors have been out of service of late - either for maintenance or for other reasons.
4 November 2009: As a consequence, for the second year running, France will have to import electricity at peak hours during the winter to avoid the risk of black-outs.
My view: I wonder if the increasing downtime of nuclear is factored into the economic calculations?
Secret UK government promise to nuclear industry to tax families to provide subsidy.
19 October 2009: The Guardian reveals that the government is doing what it promised not to. The planned levy would aim to guarantee a floor price for carbon of €30 and ideally €40 in the ETS. This would add £44 to the average £500 electricity bill.
My view: I recall the conviction with which we were assured the private sector would be paying the nuclear bills without subsidy.
Finnish Olkiluoto reactor is further delayed.
19 October 2009: It should have cost €3bn (£2.72bn) and been working this year, but will now cost at least €5.3bn and miss its revised completion date of mid-2012. The latest delay involves Finland’s nuclear safety regulator halting welding on the reactor and criticising poor oversight by the sub-contractor, supplier and TVO. TVO and Areva are now locked in arbitration over responsibility for the overun.
My view: Meanwhile the rhetoric of the nuclear renaissance rolls on. This week the EDF CEO is telling the UK we need 30% of our electricity from nuclear, and someone very close to the top of government tells me he and others in the utility industry lobby hard for a slow-down of renewables.
50th birthday celebrations at France’s Cadarache nuclear facility marred by plutonium leaks.
16 October 2009: Government ministers and officials have to cancel their visits to the flagship facility after kilograms of unrecorded plutonium are discovered as a result of years of sloppy fuel manufacturing. Scientists had been expecting to find 8 kg during the dismantling of a 44 year old plutonium workshop, but have found at least 22 kg and this may be as much as 39 once the work is complete.
My view: I wonder what the governmental tolerance level is to these kinds of incidents. How many such events would it take to make them think about a retreat from nuclear power, as opposed to a simple cancelled visit?
Ex Minister offered top job with EDF not a year after clearing it to buy the UK’s nuclear plants.
13 September 2009: When John Hutton was Business Secretary less than a year ago he signed off on the £12.5bn deal that handed British Energy’s eight nuclear power plants to French government-owned EDF. His appointment will need to be cleared by the independent Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which advises the Prime Minister, but they rarely oppose revolving-door appointments.
My view: To allow ministers and officials to take top jobs with companies they are supposed to regulate is to ask for national energy insecurity. Such appointments should be banned. (4 October: He turns the job offer down).
