Given the
very positive prognosis for renewables reported in my last Blog, I thought I
would take a new look at the state of play with nuclear power. Judging by
several critical, independent reports, it’s pretty grim. The World Nuclear
Industry Status Report 2012 portrays an industry suffering from ‘the
cumulative impacts of the world economic crisis, the Fukushima disaster,
ferocious competitors and its own planning and management difficulties’.
Key
results of the assessment include:
• Only seven new reactors started up,
while 19 were shut down in 2011. On 5 July 2012, one reactor was reconnected to
the grid at Ohi in Japan followed another on the same site. However, it remains
highly uncertain how many others will receive permission to restart operations
in Japan.
• Four
countries announced that they will phase out nuclear power within a given
timeframe- led by Germany.
• At least five countries have decided not
to engage or re-engage in nuclear programs.
• In Bulgaria and Japan two reactors under
construction were abandoned.
• In four countries new build projects were
officially cancelled. Of the 59 units under construction in the world, at
least 18 are experiencing multi-year delays, while the remaining 41 projects
were started within the past five years or have not yet reached projected
start-up dates, making it difficult to assess whether they are on schedule.
• Construction costs are rapidly rising. The
European EPR cost estimate has increased by a factor of four (adjusted for
inflation) over the past ten years.
•
Two thirds of the assessed nuclear companies and utilities were downgraded by
credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s over the past five years.
• The assessment of a dozen nuclear
companies reveals that all but one performed worse than the UK FTSE100 index.
The shares of the world’s largest nuclear operator, French state utility EDF,
lost 82 percent of their value, that of the world’s largest nuclear
builder, French state company AREVA, fell by 88%.
In
contrast, it says renewable energy development has continued with rapid
growth. Installed worldwide
nuclear capacity decreased again in 2011, while the annual installed wind power
capacity increased by 41 GW in 2011 alone. Installed wind power and
solar capacity in China grew by a factor of around 50 in the past five years,
while nuclear capacity increased by a factor of 1.5. Since 2000, within the
European Union nuclear capacity decreased by 14 GW, while 142 GW of
renewable capacity was installed.
http://www.worldnuclearreport.org/
To
balance that assessment I looked at the World Nuclear Association’s web site,
and their views on the long term potential for nuclear. A key issue must be
uranium reserves- if they are not sufficient then there is no future economic
or otherwise for nuclear.
They reported that the World uranium resources are ample to meet
requirements for the foreseeable future but timely investment in facilities
will be needed to make sure production keeps pace with growing demand, based on
a new edition of the ‘Red Book’, the Nuclear Energy Agency’s
biannual Uranium Resources, production and demand survey.
It said that total identified uranium
resources had increased by over 12% since the last edition, although lower cost
resources have decreased significantly because of increased mining costs.
However, the total identified resources stand at 7,096,600 tU recoverable at
costs of up to $260 per kg. An additional 124,100 tU of resources have been
reported by companies but are not included in official national figures.
So-called undiscovered resources - resources expected to exist based on
existing geological knowledge, but requiring significant exploration to confirm
and define them - currently stand at 10,400,500 tU.
It noted that 440 commercial nuclear
power reactors were in operation around the world at the end of 2010,
representing 375 GWe of capacity and cumulatively requiring 63,875 tU per year.
By 2035, the report found, this can be expected to grow to between 540 GWe of
capacity requiring 97,645 tU and 746 GWe needing 136,385 tU.
It claimed that currently defined uranium
resources are "more than adequate" to meet the high case demand to
2035, but not without "timely investments" in uranium production
facilities. ‘Significant investment and technical expertise will be required to
bring these resources to the market and to identify additional resources.
Sufficiently high uranium market prices will be needed to fund these
activities, especially in light of the rising costs of production’. Secondary
sources of uranium (stockpiles of natural and enriched uranium, downblended
weapons-grade uranium, reprocessed used fuel and the re-enrichment of depleted
uranium tails) will still continue to be required, although their role is
expected to decline post-2013 when agreements between Russia and the USA to
downblend ex-military highly enriched uranium for use in nuclear fuel expire.
Well if we really do get to 764GW by
2035, then, at say an averaged 100,000 tU per annum over that period, we would
then have about 30 years worth left, assuming no further nuclear plant
expansion or new uranium finds.
Using lower grade, higher cost ores might extend that a bit, but mining
and processing it would increase the production of CO2, assuming that fossil
fuels had to be used for this energy. And using nuclear energy for this would
just exhaust the reserves faster.
It doesn’t sound like nuclear fission has much of a long-term future,
unless new breeder technologies and/or thorium based systems are developed, or,
perversely, we use renewables to provide the power for uranium fuel extraction
and processing! Otherwise, 2070-75
or so, and then that’s it…
So what
about thorium? I turned to the Weinberg Foundations website, which was set up
to support the idea. It would be
cheaper, safer and cleaner. www.the-weinberg-foundation.org/ But I also looked at a briefing by Oliver Tickell.
That challenges the idea that thorium as fuel might provide a viable
alternative to reactors using uranium. This he said had become something of a
rallying cry for those who assert
that conventional nuclear technologies are in terminal decline – including a
handful of environmentalists who believe that thorium could provide some kind
‘silver bullet’ solution to the nuclear industry’s woes.
He says
that they are deluded and highlights many drawbacks facing thorium reactors,
including
·
the very high costs of
technology development, construction and operation;
·
marginal benefits for a
thorium fuel cycle over the currently utilised uranium /
plutonium fuel cycles;
·
serious nuclear weapons
proliferation hazards: the molten salt reactor (MSR) technology promoted for
thorium could be used to produce fissile uranium and plutonium at very high
purities well above ordinary ‘weapons grade’;
·
the danger of both routine
and accidental releases of radiation, mainly from continuous ‘live’ fuel
reprocessing in MSRs;
·
the very long lead time for
significant deployment of MSRs of the order of half a century – rendering it
irrelevant in terms of addressing current or medium term energy supply needs.
It claims that it ‘will not be
deployable on any significant scale for 40-70 years.’
Well,
so it could be that they might possibly
be ready when the uranium runs out!
But at what cost? And with
what safety and security implications? See http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v492/n7427/full/492031a.html
Overall, on the basis at least of this
survey, I don’t see much a future for nuclear.
No comments:
Post a Comment