Back to the future: old nukes for new

In 1965, Fred Lee, the UK’s then Minister of Power, famously told the House of Commons that 'we have hit the jackpot this time,' with the Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor (AGR). That was maybe a reference back to an earlier episode, when expansive claims were made that the ZETA nuclear fusion test plant heralded a global breakthrough- it didn’t.   Unfortunately, things also went very wrong as the AGR programme unfolded. The first station, on the south Kent coast, was Dungeness B. It was ordered in 1965, but did not start up until 1982, over 17 years later, by which time its cost had reached more than five times the initial estimate, and its output had been scaled down by over 20%. In 1985, two decades after the original order, the second reactor at the station had only just started up. Atomic Power Constructions, the company that won the Dungeness B contract in 1965, had by 1970 collapsed in total technical, managerial and financial disarray:

Project disasters like that might be seen as part of the learning process, though the UK seems hell bent on a repeat, with EDF’s £24bn Hinkley EPR project, to be followed perhaps by more, with a variety of new ‘first of kind’ reactors projects being proposed. As Peter Atherton put it in evidence to a Lords committee: ‘we will be building four different reactor types, with at least five different manufacturers, simultaneously. That is industrial insanity’.  

While some nuclear enthusiasts hope that these Generation III reactors, like the EPR or its rivals, will be successful, there is also pressure to move on to new technology and so called Generation IV options, including liquid sodium-cooled fast neutron breeder reactors, helium-cooled high tempertutre reactors and thorium-fuelled molten salt reactors, at various scales.  As I describe in my new book Nuclear Power: Past, Present and Future, many of them are in fact old ideas that were looked at in the early days and mostly abandoned. There were certainly problems with some of these early experimental reactors, some of them quite dramatic. Examples include the fire at the Simi Valley Sodium Reactor in 1959, and the explosion at the 3MW experimental SL-1 reactor at the US National Reactor Testing Site in Idaho in 1961, which killed three operators. Better known perhaps was and the core melt down of the Fermi Breeder reactor near Detroit in 1966. Sodium fires have been a major problem with many of the subsequent fast neutron  reactor projects around the world, for example in France, Japan and Russia.

For good or ill, ideas like this are back on the agenda, albeit in revised forms. That includes  the currently much promoted idea of scaling down to small modular reactors- SMRs. In theory they can be mass produced, so cutting costs. Not everyone is convinced:  scaling down doesn’t necessarily reduce complexity and it’s that that may be the main cost driver.  One cost offsetting option is to locate them in or near cities so that the waste heat they produce can feed into district heating networks. But given the safety and security risks, will anyone accept them in their backyard? And like all nuclear plants, they will produce dangerous long lived wastes that have to be dealt with.

Fast neutron breeder reactors can produce new plutonium fuel from otherwise unused uranium 238 and may also be able to burn up some wastes, as in the Integral Fast Reactor concept and also the Traveling Wave Reactor variant. Molten Salt Reactors using thorium may be able to do this without producing plutonium or using liquid metals for cooling. Both approaches are being promoted, but both have problems, as was found in the early days. Certainly fast breeder reactors were subsequently mostly sidelined as expensive and unreliable. And as heightening nuclear weapons proliferation risks. The US gave up on them in the 1970s, France and the UK in the 1990s. Japan soldiered on, but has now abandoned its troubled Monju plant. For the moment it’s mainly Russia that has continued, including with a molten lead cooled reactor, although India also has a fast reactor programme, linked to its thorium reactors plans.

Thorium was used as a fuel for some reactors in some early experiments and is now being promoted again- there is more of it available globally than uranium. But there are problems.  It isn’t fissile, but neutrons, fast or slow, provided by uranium 235 or plutonium fission, can convert Thorium 232 into fissile U233. However, on the way to that, a very radioactive isotope, U232, is produced, which makes working with the fuel hard. Another isotope, U234 is also produced by neutron absorption. Ideally, to maximise U233 production, that should be avoided, but experts are apparently divided on whether this can be done effectively.

The use of molten salts may help with some of these problems, perhaps making it easier to play with the nuclear chemistry and tap off unwanted by-products, but it is far from proven technically or economically. The economics is certainly challenging. Nuclear plants of any sort may not be competitive in the emerging electricity market, as renewables get ever cheaper and their market share expands, but some nuclear options might be able to compete in the heat and synfuel markets. However, even that is unclear- renewables may also be able to compete in meeting these end uses, with fewer side effects.   

Back in the 1950s, President Eisenhower launched Atoms for Peace initiative, promising US aid with the world-wide development of bountiful nuclear energy, and that idea has lingered on. In 2006, under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) backed by President George W Bush, US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said that ‘GNEP brings the promise of virtually limitless energy to emerging economies around the globe’. After Fukushima and the economic challenges to nuclear presented by gas and renewables, GNEP was in effect abandoned and we don’t hear rhetoric like that so much: nuclear is on the defensive, only supplying 11% of global electricity as against 25% from renewables, with the cost of the later falling rapidly, while nuclear costs seem to be rising inexorable. Whether the new Generation of fission technologies will be able to resuscitate it remains to be seen.  It doesn’t seem a good bet: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6316/1112.1  And if you still have hopes for fusion, see this: http://thebulletin.org/fusion-reactors-not-what-they’re-cracked-be10699

All this and more is covered in my new IOPP  book ‘Nuclear Power: Past, Present and Future’: http://iopscience.iop.org/book/978-1-6817-4505-3

*If you are a real devotee of nuclear history, take a look at this new long, partisan and somewhat overwhelmingly chaotic video selling thorium molten salt reactors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6mhw-CNxaE

The end is near

Some say that, almost whatever we do technically, we are all doomed to damage the planet so much that civilisation will collapse. Tinkering will not help.  A recent NASA funded study by the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, said that technical fixes lead to continued resource consumption: ‘Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use.’

This is a version of the so-called Jevons paradox: increased resource-use conversion efficiency cuts the cost of consumption which therefore can continue to expand, so that resources are exhausted.

Is that really the case?  Renewable energy sources can supply energy for ever, or at least as long as the sun lasts- they are never used up. However, building the energy conversion technology does need energy and resources.  Some of the specialist materials used in some of these plants may be scarce, although some can be recycled from earlier projects or substitutes found. More significantly, the energy needed will initially have to come from conventional sources. Some say that there won’t be enough fossil energy to build the replacement system, and that might be the case if we continue to use most of it for other things. So we might insist that in future most fossil energy is earmarked just for the renewable expansion programme. However, gradually, and as fossil availability and/or use declines, renewables can provide most of the energy for the next phase of renewable expansion, until a stable state is reached, with renewables supplying all energy and only marginal maintenance and replacement work  then being needed. Some might add nuclear fission to the mix as an interim option, but the increased amount of energy needed to sustain nuclear as fissile fuel reserves dwindle may make it a poor choice for this role, quite apart from the risks. New breeder technology might stretch the fissile reserves and fusion could open up another possible future, but for the moment at least that is very speculative. Renewables are only sustainable options we have at present.

Whatever the mix, how quickly we can reach the point at which renewables can bootstrap expansion will depend on how rapidly we want to make the change over, and on what we do about energy use and wider economic growth.  If we are aiming at a steady state, low or zero growth future, then the resource and energy problems become more tractable. But that may take time. Depending on which renewables are adopted, there may also be other impacts- for example on land use and water resources. They may limit what can be done, for example in terms of using biomass. But in theory a transition could be made, although it will require careful management and also, arguably, some major social changes. 

Here is where the NASA-backed analysis gets quite radical. It suggests that since we can no longer feed endless growth, in that context, the inequitable use of resources by minorities and elites will be increasingly provocative. Indeed, in almost Marxian terms, the study suggested that, ‘accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels.’ Moreover, unless that is challenged ‘the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society’. That is on top of whatever direct damage in being done the planet. However, while not indicting exactly who might make this change, it concludes ‘collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion’. 

It recognises that this will be hard: ‘While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing.’ Does that sound familiar?

www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists

There are other views, some of which, rather optimistically look to new technology changing the growth-consumption link, empowering those previously mostly excluded from economic progress and heralding a post-capitalism transition: http://isa-global-dialogue.net/the-end-of-the-world-the-end-of-capitalism-and-the-start-of-a-new-radical-sociology/   And also http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun

While some of this analysis may be overdone (new technology can also be used by the elites to buttress their control), it is clear that changes are underway, including in the energy economy, with self-generation by ‘prosumers’ and grass roots energy co-ops challenging the market power of some of the conventional corporate energy suppliers and that is part of a wider rethink about the future.   

Seventeen years into the century, millennialism, powered by serious concern about the future, continuing global economic uncertainties and heightened climate change worries, seems to have finally arrived, some of this prefigured in Jeremy Leggett’s 2014 book ‘The Energy of Nations’.  He saw some big global economic risks ahead, most of them being likely to interact and lead to another major global financial crash, but this one worse, as the world markets get hit by energy price shocks due to peak oil, a collapse of the shale gas boom, a collapse of carbon asset values as climate change hits, plus wider economic problems due to climate impacts. But he said mobilizing renewables and redeploying energy funding could soften the crash and set us on a road to renaissance. Some say peak oil has been delayed, although equally it may have been accelerated by low market prices, but either way he may be proved right- we are in for a crisis.  Summary/chapter 1 at: www.jeremyleggett.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/The-Energy-of-Nations-thru-ch1.pdf  His latest book, ‘Winning the Carbon War’, brings the story up to date: although gains have been made, the crisis has not been averted and the battle continues, with Trump being the latest challenge: http://www.jeremyleggett.net/ebook/

 Though looking to the future, if IT/AI expands, longer term, we may all be redundant!  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/20/silicon-assassins-condemn-humans-life-useless-artificial-intelligence   Homo Deus included!

Why the UK backed nuclear

The UK government has backed the Hinkley Point C nuclear project and is keen on several follow ups- maybe 16GWs in all, with perhaps many more to follow. The Hinkley decision was widely challenged, with even the Economists saying Hinkley was ‘pointless’: www.economist.com/news/leaders/21703367-britain-should-cancel-its-nuclear-white-elephant-and-spend-billions-making-renewables. The Telegraphs was similarly dismissive: www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/09/15/hinkley-point-will-be-obsolete-before-it-even-starts-but-theresa/

So why is all this happening?

The National Audit Office said that ‘supporting early new nuclear projects could lead to higher costs in the short-term than continuing to support wind and solar’. In which case ‘the decision to proceed with support for nuclear power therefore relies more on strategic than financial grounds: nuclear power is needed in the supply mix to complement the intermittent nature of wind and solar’.  That last bit is odd - as the NAO admitted, nuclear is inflexible and can’t balance variable renewables. www.nao.org.uk/report/nuclear-power-in-the-uk

There must be other explanations. ‘We systematically examined a range of different possible reasons for official UK attachments to nuclear power’, says Emily Cox, a co-author of a report from the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, but ‘none of these are satisfactory to explain the intensity of support for nuclear power maintained by a variety of UK Governments’. Especially since, as the report claims, civil nuclear power was recognised in the Government’s own detailed analyses to be expensive and otherwise ‘unattractive’ compared to other low carbon options. There may be other factors, but Cox said that from their review ‘it seems that pressures to continue to build nuclear submarines form a crucial missing piece in the jigsaw’.

That conclusion seems a little odd. The team says that to acknowledge this possibility, ‘is not to entertain a conspiracy theory. It can be understood instead, in terms of more distributed and relational dynamics of power. Building on literatures in political science, we refer to this as a ‘deep incumbency complex’. Such an evidently under-visible phenomenon would hold important implications not only for UK nuclear strategies, but also the wider state of British democracy’. https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=2016-16-swps-cox-et-al.pdf&site=25s

The report documents strongly-held views in UK defence policy, that nuclear-propelled submarines form a crucial military capability, with, another co-author Dr Phil Johnstone noted, ‘strong fears that without continued commitment to civil nuclear power, the UK would be unable to sustain the industrial capabilities necessary to build nuclear submarines.’ The report identified many key links between UK submarine and civil nuclear supply chains.

According to the third co author, Professor Andrew Stirling, ‘what is remarkable about this pressure for a nuclear bias is that it is well documented on the military side, yet remains completely unacknowledged anywhere in official UK energy policy documentation.’ Although they did find one defence policy document that considered the possibility to ‘mask’ some of the costs of nuclear submarine capabilities behind spending on civil nuclear power.

So it’s not the issue of nuclear weapons as such that’s driving civil nuclear, as some suggest, so much as the need for nuclear submarine power units. Well maybe, although that’s a relatively small industrial activity. But its expansion to help build Small Modular Reactors (similar in some ways to sub reactors, with Rolls Royce involved with both) might change that. But that’s still only part of the story: surely the overlap between the technologies for producing fissile material, and for the use of this material in nuclear plants, bombs and submarine power units, along with the perceived need for the retention of the associated expertise, may also play a role. See this earlier analysis:  www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2530828/bombs_ahoy_why_the_uk_is_desperate_for_nuclear_power.html

That covers a lot more people- one way or another, the whole nuclear sector. And it links in to a wider issue, which arguably has played a larger role, employment protection. Much has been made of the number of jobs in the nuclear industry and the role of nuclear expansion for creating more. That has certainly had a major impact on trade union views, with the TUC and GMB union backing Hinkley: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/16/hinkley-point-good-enws-workers-economy-not-stop

It is interesting, in this context, to look back at the 1980’s when, after a protracted battle between pro and anti nuclear power unions, in 1986, in the wake on Chernobyl, the TUC backed a nuclear ‘moratorium and review’ policy. In the same year, the Labour Party had confirmed its 1985 anti-nuclear stance, with a two thirds majority for phasing out of civil nuclear.  The then quite dominant Transport and General Workers Union said it was ‘clear and unambiguous in its position on nuclear power. We support a halt to nuclear expansion and a safe and planned phase out of nuclear power in this country’. So what changed?  

The Labour Party had gone into the 1987 national election with a manifesto talking of ‘gradually diminishing Britain’s dependence upon nuclear energy’, but was unable to unseat the Tories, whose subsequent electricity privatisation and liberalisation programme put the unions on the defensive- they sought to protect energy jobs across the board. It seems they are still at it! A sub-text to that is the low level of conviction by most of the unions at that time that renewables could provide viable alternative employment. In it 1988 Nuclear Energy Review, the TUC said ‘renewables are not going to make a big contribution to Britain’s energy supplies over the next 20 years’. Well it’s taken 28 years but they are now big and growing, creating jobs. But still often blocked by the continued support for nuclear.  

Whatever the reasons for the current commitment to nuclear, the reality is that its backing by some key unions makes it harder to challenge: www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jeremy-corbyn-facing-backlash-from-unions-momentum-chair-rachel-garrick-and-bill-esterson-over-hinkley-c-nuclear-plant-opposition_uk_579c874de4b0f42daa4a43c5  The claim that renewables can create more  jobs may fall on deaf ears. Economic and safety arguments similarly.  We are back where we started in the early 1980s. Then it was the slow patient grass roots lobbying work of groups like SERA, taking the arguments out to trade union and Labour Party branches, that eventually changed the mood- along with Chernobyl! Does all that have to be repeated? Do we have to challenge every silly assertion made by the likes to GMB all over again? Like this one: www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/low-wind-days  But also go on the offensive re jobs? Seems like it. Here’s a start: www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2988060/if_its_jobs_they_want_labour_and_the_unions_must_back_renewables_not_hinkley_c.html

And also the the ‘1 million climate jobs’ booklet produced by the Campaign on Climate Change: http://www.climate-change-jobs.org

For a full account of the twists and turns of Trade Union and Labour Party policy on nuclear power in the 1980s, see the series of OU Technology Policy Group reports I produced: TPG Occasional Papers No. 4 (1981), 14 (1987) and 17 (1988).

Also, for a much more recent input, see my ‘Green jobs and the ethics of energy’, in Hersh, M. (ed) ‘Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability’ Springer, London: http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9781447166177

For a very different view of UK nuclear history see Simon Taylor’s ‘The Fall and Rise of Nuclear Power in Britain’. He sees the governments Chief Scientists, Sir David King and Sir David MacKay, as having playing key roles in recent developments:  www.uit.co.uk/the-fall-and-rise-of-nuclear-power-in-britain