The Free Press: The Reactor Relapse Takes 3 Hits To The Head

Ethical MarketsTrendspotting

HARVEY WASSERMAN, Senior Editor – The Free Press

Intro by Stephan A. Schwartz
The civilian nuclear power industry both civilian and naval was created during the Cold War at enormous taxpayer expense to manufacture a high profit industry that would assure the technology remained active and viable. Bomb making alone just couldn’t do that.

Admiral Hyman Rickover, who essentially single handedly created the nuclear navy, arguably the most successful, because financial viability was not a consideration, application of nuclear technology, thought so little of nuclear as a civilian energy source that after he retired he asked the Congress to invite him to testify on this.

This final testimony over 30 years ago is now forgotten but well worth reading. Rickover felt that a truly viable civilian nuclear industry was impossible. It would never be genuinely able to exist without massive government subsidies but, much more importantly he did not believe it could be kept safe. With his long experience he believed that nuclear systems had to be run as a military operation with no consideration about profit. In his view only personnel under force of military discipline could make such a system viable and safe. He also realized that civilian nuclear power invariably led to attempts to create nuclear weapons.

To my astonishment a number of major figures in our culture have recently come out in favor of nuclear, believing it is the only way through the Green Transition in the face of climate change. They seem oblivious to the fact that no real solution for nuclear waste has ever been found, and that, just as Rickover predicted, every country — with the exception of Japan, a special case — that has developed a civilian nuclear power industry has gone on to use that as a base to become a military nuclear power. Just consider what the world is now facing from Pakistan and Iran, and North Korea, which got its guidance largely from the first two countries.

This essay, with sources, presents a pretty realistic exegesis on the current state of this dark side technology.

Harvey Wasserman is author of SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH (www.harveywasserman.com).

The much-hyped “Renaissance” of atomic power has taken three devastating hits with potentially fatal consequences.

The usually supine Nuclear Regulatory Commission has told Toshiba’s Westinghouse Corporation that its “standardized” AP-1000 design might not withstand hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes.

Regulators in France, Finland and the UK have raised safety concerns about AREVA’s flagship EPR reactor. The front group for France’s national nuclear power industry, AREVA’s vanguard project in Finland is at least three years behind schedule and at least $3 billion over budget.

And the Obama Administration indicates it will end efforts to license the proposed radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. After more than fifty years of trying, the nuclear industry has not a single prospective central dump site.

“If history repeats itself as farce, then the nuclear power industry represents the most incompetent jester of all time,” says Michael Mariotte of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service. It “seems intent on repeating every possible mistake of its failed past-from promoting inadequate, ever-changing reactor designs to blowing through even the largest imaginable budgets. If the computer industry followed the practices of the nuclear industry, we’d still be waiting for the first digital device that could fit in a space smaller than a warehouse and cost less than a family’s annual income.”

Nuclear sites throughout the world sit on or near earthquake faults. Ohio’s Perry reactor was damaged by a tremor in 1986, just before it went on line. In 1991 Hurricane Andrew did $100 million in damage to Florida’s Turkey Point, causing a critical loss of off-site communication. In 2007 a massive earthquake shook Japan’s Kashiwazaki, shutting seven reactors ( http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2007/1573).

And radioactive waste continues to build up at sites throughout the world, including some 50,000 metric tons here in the US.

The vote of no confidence from regulators in three European countries has stunned AREVA, not to mention its potential customers, including the United Arab Emirates. “It hasn’t helped at all,” says one key source. (http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/ articles/djf500/200911110905DOWJONESDJONLINE000473_FORTUNE5.html ) “One of the key arguments has been that the EPR is safer than all the others.”

That AREVA would sell reactors to the UAE at all has raised widespread fears that atomic Bombs will soon proliferate throughout the Middle East. Both India and Pakistan got radioactive weapons materials from their commercial reactors.

AREVA’s design safety fiasco follows a Pink Panther-style stumble in October, when federal and state officials bailed on a massive media celebration planned for the Cadarache nuclear facility’s 50th anniversary. As much as 39 pounds of plutonium dust is now believed to contaminate the historic research center, enough to make numerous Nagasaki-sized Bombs. According to the Financial Times ( http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fbb38bd0-bab3-11de-9dd7-00144feab49a.html) “the discovery that France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) had wildly under-estimated the quantity of plutonium dust that would accumulate – and then delayed notifying the Nuclear Safety Authority – has led the latter to hand its findings to the public prosecutor, who will decide if there should be an investigation into the CEA’s management … This is a severe blow to the credibility of the CEA, flagship of French nuclear research, and to Cadarache, soon to be the site of the world’s first fusion reactor.”

The uproar, writes Peggy Hollinger, has “cast a shadow over the Nuclear Safety Authority’s behaviour since it became independent of the government.”

Finnish regulators have also gone to virtual war with AREVA over the catastrophic Olkiluoto project. In a conversation with me in southern Ohio this summer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v43ahQHvObI) CEO Anne Lauvergeon blamed AREVA’s problems on the Finns. But similar complaints are now coming from French regulators over AREVA’s parallel project at Flamanville, in northern France.

AREVA has also run afoul of British regulators, who say its massive incursions into the UK’s nuclear industry have raised serious safety concerns.

Meanwhile the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s critique of the Westinghouse AP-1000 reactor has shattered the industry’s expensive image of a “renaissance” that is “ready to go.” As the machine of apparent choice at vanguard sites throughout the US, the industry has touted the AP-1000 as a standardized “cookie-cutter” design that might make reactor construction and operations easier to manage. Regulators in Florida and Georgia have already imposed massive consumer rate hikes to pay for proposed AP-1000 reactors. An army of high-priced lobbyists is pushing hard for huge subsidies and loan guarantees to go into the Climate Bill.

Wall Street has made it clear it will not finance (or insure) new reactor construction unless backed by the federal treasury. Congressional critics warn half the reactor construction loans are likely to go into default. “This only underscores Moody’s assessment that new reactors are ‘bet the farm’ investments,” says Michele Boyd of Physicians for Social Responsibility. “So why is the federal government going to back these projects with US taxpayer dollars?”

Now these critiques from the American NRC and regulators in Britain, France and Finland confirm that no safe standardized design exists, either here or in France, and that the industry could be years away from finalizing one that can be successfully deployed.

The same applies to radioactive waste. The Obama Administration now seems poised to finalize its promise that “all license defense activities will be terminated” on the proposed Yucca Mountain dump ( http://www.lvrj.com/news/memo-casts-doubt-on-license-for-yucca-repository-69639342.html ). Distinguished by its $10 billion price tag and the visible earthquake fault running through it (not to mention the dormant volcanoes that surround it and the water perched at its peak), Yucca is bitterly opposed by some 80% of Nevada’s citizenry. After a hugely subsidized half-century of futility, the US reactor industry has not a single named prospect for a centralized commercial waste dump. The “solution,” as put forth by Stewart Brand and other industry advocates (http://kpfa.org/archive/id/55967; about 32 minutes in) seems to be focussed on leaving high level radioactive waste at the sites and letting future generations deal with it. In the years since the Shippingport (PA) reactor opened in 1957, the industry’s go-to device is a concrete “dry cask” with vent holes and armed guards.

Meanwhile, despite repeated industry denials, the bad news about the health impacts of reactor radiation pours in. “Downwind or near eight reactors that closed in the 1980s and 1990s,” says New York-based expert Joe Mangano, “there were immediate and sharp declines in infant deaths, birth defects, and child cancer incidence age 0-4” when the reactors shut. “The highest thyroid cancer rates in the U.S. are in a 90 mile radius of eastern PA/New Jersey/southern NY, an area with 16 reactors at 7 plants, which is the greatest density in the U.S.”

The near-simultaneous demise of Yucca Mountain with the regulatory credibility of the AP-1000 and AREVA EPR, along with the attacks by Moody’s and other financial critics, might come as a death blow to any such technology in a sane society. But the financial reach of the atomic lobby remains powerful in Congress and the White House.

At this point, the only certainty about the future of reactor construction is that still more shoes will drop on an industry whose decomposed credibility has become legend.

How Countries Can Integrate Wind Power Smoothly Into Power Systems
Science Daily

The Green Transition gets realer.

Some countries already get a substantial share of their electricity consumption from wind power: Denmark 20%, Spain and Portugal 11%, Ireland 9%, and Germany 7%. Power systems have to cope with variable electricity consumption. Variable wind power will increase variations that the power system has to manage. According to a recent IEA WIND report, wind energy is rather smoothly integrated as system operators get on-line production levels and forecasted production estimates in their control rooms.

High penetration of wind power is foreseen in many countries and regions globally. Therefore the impacts of wind power on power system reliability are widely studied. Wind integration impacts report by a research task for the Wind agreement of International Energy Agency (IEA) has been compiled from work done in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, UK and USA.

Adding large amounts of wind power requires reinforcing the existing transmission grid, including the interconnectors between countries and regions. New transmission lines may be needed where the wind resource is situated far from the existing network. Wind power will also increase the use of operational balancing power and thus increase balancing cost in the power systems.

The estimates for added balancing costs from investigated studies are increasing wind power production costs by 1-4 €/MWh. This is 10% or less of the wholesale value of the wind energy. Experience from West Denmark shows that the balancing cost from the Nordic day-ahead market has been 1.4-2.6 €/MWh for a 24% wind penetration (of gross demand). This is in the middle of theoretically estimated results.

Production from larger areas helps integration

It is easier to balance load and wind production from larger areas. This is because both wind variability and uncertainty will be reduced when geographically diverse power plants are aggregated. Additionally, larger balancing areas also can pool balancing resources. Large open electricity markets combined with intra-day and real-time trading lead to lower electricity costs. This market design also facilitates wind integration, because forecast errors of wind power production are much lower some hours ahead than day-ahead, and forecast errors also decrease when combining distributed wind power plants.

A wide, strong transmission network is a prerequisite for large electricity markets and aggregation benefits to smooth out variability. Increase in interconnection capacity between certain countries is needed in addition to national efforts, allowing stronger trading of (also) wind generated energy. Building the transmission for final amount of wind power will be more cost effective than reinforcing the grid piece by piece. Ambitious wind power targets in Ireland, Denmark, Germany, UK and US already foresee major upgrades in the transmission network. This is challenging, as building permits for new lines are difficult to obtain.

Studies show that despite its variability, wind power can contribute for a certain percentage to meeting the peak loads in a reliable way. This so called capacity value of wind power is lower than for conventional power, and will decrease as the wind penetration level increases.

New electricity storage has still low cost effectiveness for wind penetration levels of 10-20% (excluding some hydro power and pumped storage). With higher wind penetration levels the extra flexibility offered by storage will be beneficial for the power system operation. However, other forms of flexibility from generation units or flexible loads can offer cheaper solutions, if available to the power system. In any case, it is not cost effective to provide dedicated back-up for wind power in large power systems, just as it is not done for individual electricity consumption.