Countries taking another look at nuclear power

Business Times 15 Mar 11;

(NEW YORK) Global expansion of nuclear power may draw more scrutiny as Japan struggles with reactors crippled by the quake.

'This is obviously a significant setback for the so-called nuclear renaissance,' said Peter Bradford, a former member of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 'The image of a nuclear power plant blowing up before your eyes on a TV screen is a first.'

China may consider the effects of the nuclear accident as it completes its energy plans for the 2011-2015 period, Xie Zhenhua, vice-chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said. China is tripling the number of its reactors, building 27 units to add to the 13 now operating on the mainland, according to the World Nuclear Association.

'Evaluation of nuclear safety and the monitoring of plants will be definitely strengthened,' Mr Xie said.

India, which plans for a 13-fold increase in nuclear power generation, will reconsider its expansion as Japan's worst accident in at least 33 years forces a safety review of existing and proposed plants, Nuclear Power Corp of India said.

'This event may be a big dampener for our programme,' Shreyans Kumar Jain, chairman of India's state-run monopoly producer, said in a telephone interview from Mumbai. 'We and the Department of Atomic Energy will definitely revisit the entire thing, including our new reactor plans, after we receive more information from Japan.'

Germany's energy agency Dena recommends a return to phasing out nuclear power and switching off reactors that are similar to those crippled in Japan, the German newspaper Handelsblatt reported, citing an interview with the agency's head Stephan Kohler.

There are 442 reactors worldwide that supply about 15 per cent of the globe's electricity, according to the London-based World Nuclear Association. There are plans to build more than 155 additional reactors, most of them in Asia, and 65 reactors are currently under construction, the association said.

Japan gets about a third of its electricity from 54 nuclear power plants, the third-most after the US and France. Two reactors are under construction and 12 more are planned, according to the association.

In the US, companies including Southern Co and NRG Energy have submitted applications to build as many as 21 new reactors, adding to the 104 existing units.

'Certainly it's going to cause some reappraisals because this is what you call a 'show-stopping' event,' said Robert Alvarez at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies.

US utilities cancelled 14 nuclear plant orders in the wake of the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island reactor in Pennsylvania, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

'The arguments that held sway during the Three Mile Island days will hold sway today with this accident,' said Tom Cochran, a nuclear physicist at the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council.

The US should slow the construction of new domestic nuclear power plants until officials can assess whether the situation in Japan signals a need for additional safety measures, said Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

Twenty-three nuclear power plants in the US were built according to designs that are similar to the Dai-Ichi plant's, he said.

Problems at the reactor may encourage the replacement of older models, said Sergei Novikov, a spokesman for Russia's nuclear holding company Rosatom Corp. 'The global nuclear industry will speed up phasing out first-generation power units and start building new ones,' he said.

Rosatom is building 15 new reactors worldwide, more than any other international supplier, five of them outside Russia. -- Bloomberg

Analysis: Nuclear Power Growth At Risk If Japan Plant Leaks
Gerard Wynn and Bernie Woodall PlanetArk 14 Mar 11;

The growing risk of a significant radiation leak at two Japanese nuclear power plants following Friday's earthquake and tsunami threatens to hurt an industry that has enjoyed a rebirth since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

On Friday, nuclear power advocates and environmentalists staked out familiar ground over the incident. But a wider public debate may be ignited if a major radiation leak occurs in Japan, said Paul Patterson, an energy analyst with consultants Glenrock Associates in New York.

That debate has been largely muted since the 1980s when rock concerts were held to galvanize opposition to nuclear power after the Three Mile Island incident in Pennsylvania and the popular movie "The China Syndrome," that raised awareness of the dangers of a nuclear reactor meltdown.

"The severity of what happens is what is important," Patterson said of the impact of the Japanese incident.

If there is a substantial radioactive release, there could even be questions about whether it could travel on the Pacific jet stream to the U.S. West Coast.

"It is serious and it could lead to a meltdown," said Mark Hibbs, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "And what we're seeing, barring any information from the Japanese that they have it under control, is that we're headed in that direction."

But Naoto Sekimura of the University of Tokyo, said that a major radioactive disaster was not likely.

An 8.9-magnitude earthquake centered in northern Japan triggered a series of events at two Tokyo Electric Power Co plants that created conditions for a radioactive leak because there wasn't electric power to circulate cooling water over superheated uranium fuel rods.

The two TEPCO plants, the Daiichi plant and the Daini plant are around 40 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake that led to a tsunami and probably killed more than 1,000.

Nuclear industry advocates on Friday were saying that the ability of the nuclear reactors in Japan to largely withstand the power of the earthquake shows how safe nuclear power is.

But that was before a series of scary announcements from TEPCO that it had lost the ability to control pressure at several reactors and that it was having trouble with a valve that would allow reactor pressure to be eased.

Thousands of residents were evacuated from the immediate area of the Fukushima plants, about 150 miles 240 km north of Tokyo.

Industry experts said the precautions taken at Fukushima showed that enhanced security at nuclear power plants should prevent any disaster. But green groups said the threatened leak showed that the risks were still too high.

"I wouldn't expect there to be a radiation emergency ultimately, they may have something to fix but it's a precaution more than anything else," said Sue Ion, former chief technology officer at British Nuclear Fuels, after Japan declared an atomic power emergency.

Altogether, some 11 Japanese reactors shut down after the earthquake.

Successive layers of security should prevent any leak of radiation, said Jeremy Gordon, an analyst at the World Nuclear Association based in London.

NUCLEAR POWER GAINS RECENTLY

"The reactor designs that are up for consideration today are generation three where the safety systems operate at an even higher level," said WNA analyst Jonathan Cobb.

But environmental groups said the threat of a radiation leak underscored the general risks from atomic energy.

"We've opposed nuclear power for decades, and this is another proof that it can't be safe," said Sven Teske, director of renewable energy at Greenpeace International.

A leading U.S. scientist group said the incident highlighted the grave risk of inadequate back-up power to cooling systems at U.S. facilities.

New interest from governments and investors in nuclear power follows the development of more advanced plants, and a new focus on security of energy supply and moves to reduce carbon emissions. Nuclear plants generate low-carbon power in contrast to fossil fuels and can produce constantly unlike wind and some other clean energy sources.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated last month that about 10 countries have decided to introduce nuclear power and started preparatory infrastructure work, up from four in 2008.

(Additional reporting by Daniel Fineren, Fredrik Dahl, Karolin Schaps, and Scott DiSavino; editing by Martin Howell)

Analysis - Japan accident shows dilemma over atom plant sites
Alister Doyle Reuters 14 Mar 11;

OSLO (Reuters) - Japan's nuclear accident exposes the dilemma of whether to build power plants on tsunami-prone coasts or inland sites where water supplies are unreliable, a problem likely to be aggravated by climate change, experts say.

Many of the world's 442 nuclear power reactors are by the sea, rather than by lakes or rivers, to ensure vast water supplies for cooling fuel rods in emergencies like that at the Fukushima plant on Japan's east coast.

"It's quite a conundrum," said Ian Jackson, a nuclear energy fellow at Chatham House in Britain. "If you are in a geologically stable area, a coastal location is still the best option."

Japan was scrambling to avert a meltdown at the Fukushima plant after Friday's devastating quake and tsunami, which killed at least 10,000 people.

Inland, water supplies can be more vulnerable to heatwaves, floods, temperature swings and dam failures. Water is a prime consideration in siting decisions that include staying clear of geological fault lines, flight paths and cities.

A 2003 heatwave in Europe, for instance, forced Electricite de France to close or lower output at about half its 19 nuclear plants because of temperature limits on the water it returns to rivers such as the Rhone.

Excessively high temperatures can kill fish and other river life, as well as reduce output from the power plants.

"If climate impacts include flood, heatwaves and droughts then you can expect that nuclear plants will have to shut down more often," said Rianne Teule, a nuclear expert with the environmental group Greenpeace in South Africa.

"It will bring more risks," she said. Greenpeace favors a phase-out of all nuclear power.

A study in the journal Nature found that it was very likely that global warming, stoked by human emissions of greenhouse gases, had contributed to the extreme temperatures of the 2003 European heatwave and hence the severity of its impact.

Rising sea levels are also a long-term consideration for siting power plants that will operate for decades. Higher sea levels would aggravate storm surges or the impact of tsunamis.

The U.N. panel of scientists said in 2007 that the sea level is likely to rise by between 18 and 59 cms (7 and 24 inches) this century, more if there is a big thaw in Greenland and/or Antarctica.

"Deciding where to site a plant is tricky," said Nils Boehmer, a nuclear physicist at the environmental group Bellona in Norway.

Placing plants inland often exposes them to the risk of higher water temperatures in summer, reducing generating capacity. "Then you end up that the best place is on the coast where there is a risk of a tsunami," he said.

An added consideration is that environmental rules are getting tougher in many nations.

Last year, Exelon Corp. said it would shut its Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in New Jersey in 2019, about 10 years before its license expires, as part of an agreement to let it keep operating without expensive cooling towers.

New Jersey had wanted Exelon to install a new cooling system at the plant, the oldest reactor operating in the United States, to reduce the threat to fish and other life.

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

What will spark the next Fukushima?
An untrustworthy nuclear industry, incompetently regulated, is leading the world into greater and greater danger
John Vidal guardian.co.uk 14 Mar 11;

The gung-ho nuclear industry is in deep shock. Just as it and its cheerleader, the International Atomic Energy Agency, were preparing to mark next month's 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident with a series of self-congratulatory statements about the dawning of a safe age of clean atomic power, a series of catastrophic but entirely avoidable accidents take place in not one but three reactors in one of the richest countries of the world. Fukushima is not a rotting old power plant in a failed state manned by half-trained kids, but supposedly one of the safest stations in one of the most safety-conscious countries with the best engineers and technologists in the world.

Chernobyl blew up not because the reactor malfunctioned but because an ill-judged experiment to see how long safety equipment would function during shutdown went too far. So, too, in Japan, it was not the nuclear bits of the station that went wrong but the conventional technology. The pumps did not work because the power supply went down and the back-up support was not there because no one had thought what happened was possible.

Even though Japan had been warned many times that possibly the most dangerous place in the world to site a nuclear power station was on its coast, no one had taken into account the double-whammy effect of a tsunami and an earthquake on conventional technology. It's easy to be wise after the event, but the inquest will surely show that the accident was not caused by an unpredictable natural disaster, but by a series of highly predictable bad calls by human regulators.

The question now is whether the industry can be trusted anywhere. If this industry were a company, its shareholders would have deserted it years ago. In just one generation it has killed, wounded or blighted the lives of many millions of people and laid waste to millions of square miles of land. In that time it has been subsidised to the tune of trillions of dollars and it will cost hundreds of billions more to clean up and store the messes it has caused and the waste it has created. It has had three catastrophic failures now in 25 years and dozens more close shaves. Its workings have been marked around the world by mendacity, cover-ups, secrecy and financial incompetence.

Sadly, the future looks worse. The world has a generation of reactors coming to the end of their days and politicians putting intense pressure on regulators to extend their use well beyond their design lives. We are planning to double worldwide electricity supply from nuclear power in the next 20 years, but we have nowhere near enough experienced engineers to run the ever-bigger stations. We have private companies peddling new designs that are said to be safer but which are still not proven, and we have 10 new countries planning to move into civil nuclear power in the next five years.

It gets worse. More than 100 of the world's reactors are already sited in areas of high seismic activity and many of 350 new stations planned for the highly volatile Pacific rim where earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural hazards are certain to happen. We still have not worked out how to store waste and, we now know that we cannot protect stations from all eventualities.

What the industry and governments cannot accept are the two immutable laws of life – Murphy's law and the law of unintended consequences. If something is possible to go wrong then it will, eventually. It may be possible to design out the technological weaknesses but it is impossible to allow for the unknown unknowns.

Next time the disaster may have nothing to do with an earthquake or a tsunami, but be because of terrorism, climate change, a fatal error in an anonymous engineering works, proliferation of plutonium or a deranged plant manager. If there were no alternatives than employing nuclear power to light up a bulb or to reduce carbon emissions then the industry and governments might be forgiven. But when the stakes are so high, the scale is so big and there are 100 other safer ways, it seems sheer folly to go on in this way.