Things aren’t looking too radiant for the uranium industry and its assorted spruikers — including the George Monbiot types on the left who think nukes are the only solution to climate change. The new Flamanville nuclear reactor that has been under construction for years at the very northwestern tip of France is facing new delays and higher costs.
We’ve been reporting on delays and cost blowouts at Flamanville for nearly nine years so the news of more isn’t especially surprising.
In April, French power giant EDF said that problems with the welding at the site might have an impact on the costs and the schedule for starting the nuclear reactor. On Wednesday, the company confirmed that 33 of 148 inspected welds showed quality defects and needed to be repaired. As a result it had “adjusted the Flamanville schedule and construction costs”. It won’t start up until the fourth quarter of next year and the final cost has been revised up from €10.5 billion to €10.9 billion”, or AU$14.7 billion.
When we first reported problems at Flamanville in 2009, it was going to start in 2013 with a cost of €4.5b, up from €3.3b.
The Flamanville plant in France is one of three being built in Europe using the new European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) technology. The other two projects are the Olkiluoto project in Finland (which is more than a decade late), and the controversial Hinkley Point project in Somerset (which, based on December 2017 figures, will cost £20.3 billion (AU$36 billion) and start in 2025). Funding is still being finalised for Hinkley Point. Another EPR project in Taishan China is expected to go into full operation this year. However, there’s doubt about whether a Japanese-financed planned nuclear plant in Cumbria in the UK will go ahead. The start-up of a plant in the UAE has also been delayed.
Meantime Canadian uranium miner Cameco has laid off 500 workers and shut down the world’s largest uranium mine, McArthur River, and another mine, Key Lake, in a bid to force up prices as uranium continues to drag along at its lowest price levels since the mid-2000s.
As ever, the industry claims to be optimistic about the future of nuclear power around the world.
I seem to recall that the British noticed very unusual diseases in the community closest to Sellafield. The radiation was background level only so the cause was unclear. Perhaps there are more issues with nuclear power than are generally discussed.
One thing that really annoys me is the way that pro-nuclear shills use Climate Change as an excuse for pushing the supposed benefits of their toxic industry. Nuclear power is totally unrealistic solution for the energy supply and Climate Change issues that face Australia (and the world), Australia could move to 100% renewable energy at far less cost and far quicker than it would take to build and commission nuclear reactors to replace coal-fired power stations.
So long as a good balance of wind, solar and pumped-hydro was built there would be no problem with supply issues either.
Once you do the arithmetic you’ll find that arithmetic nuclear really is the only answer to climate change. Then you realise that it doesn’t matter what it costs.
Except the arithmetic doesn’t add up no matter how many times you glibly claim that it does. Pro-nuclear shills are almost as fact-averse as Climate Change Deniers.
Okay, what is the arithmetic you wish to challenge? We can all have a go at checking it…
Why don’t you show me yours first, after all you’re the ore who raised the whole subject of “arithmetic”?
Arithmetic? Well, let’s check out the concept of 100% wind-plus-storage. Australians average about 1 kW for their electricity alone, that’s 24 GW for all of us. Now we must include power for heating, transport, aviation, electro-metallurgy and fused cement. That can be estimated at 67 GW total. That much wind capacity at say, 1 $/W would be achievable at 67 G$. However, the load factor for wind is only 30% or so. So we must install more capacity, 67/.30=220 GW, about 220 G$, still achievable.
That extra production must be stored for use when the wind doesn’t blow strongly enough. If you take 50 days as the requirement for storage (I think Johannsen et al used 7 weeks), that requires 220*50*24=264000 GWh of battery storage. Car batteries cost somewhere north of 200 $/kWh, so the national storage would cost about 53,000 G$, about two hundred times as much as the cost of the wind turbines.
On the other hand, 67 GW of nuclear, at 5 $/W would cost 335 G$, and three years of fuel could be stored in the back shed for a negligible fraction of that. You might tweak my figures to get a factor of two difference, but the ballpark of 53,220/335 =158x is a superiority of nuclear electricity over renewables that you just can’t beat.
Need to add the ongoing security and storage/waste costs. Probably good to also nominate who’s back shed the cheap stuff is going to be securely stored in, they may want a few $/w as well.
Your first paragraph is about the only bit that makes sense.
If your battery costings were correct industry wouldn’t be clamouring to adopt them and market analysts wouldn’t be forecasting renewables with storage to undercut nuclear and fossil fuels in the next 20-30 years.
Try limited supply of high quality Uranium, the issues with both storing & keeping tabs on nuclear waste, the ongoing technical issues with building anything later than a Generation III reactor, the fact that it takes well over a decade to build a single reactor. I could go on, but shills like you never listen to facts anyway, so I won’t waste my valuable time.
Where the hell do you get your ridiculous numbers from, the back of a wheeties packet? You’re making a hell of a lot of ridiculous assumptions, & your numbers are also hideously out of date. Your comments about storage of fissile material also prove that you know SFA about what you’re talking about.
Marcus’ stream of abuse is designed to intimidate any independent thinking on your part. But since he has been unable to improve on any of the numbers quoted, please rest assured that your tentative conclusions can survive the bullying. By all means continue to seek facts, improve the arithmetic, explore the truth.
You know, Roger, I will waste my valuable time. Not for your sake, but for the sake of those without their heads up their “you know where”.
1. Limited Technical Expertise. The know-how required to build, maintain & fuel a nuclear reactor is highly specialized, & that know-how is actually extremely limited globally.
2. Limited Materials. Like the know-how, the materials required to build & fuel a nuclear reactor are also highly specialized, & again quite limited on a global scale.
3. Long Construction Lead-times. Seriously, unless you have a cheap & abundant work force, you’re looking at a 10-15 year time-frame between breaking ground & generating even 1 Watt of Electricity. We need solutions to Climate Change *now*, not sometime between 2030 & 2040.
4. Limited Fuel. Unless you want to build a MOX Reactor, which will exacerbate problems 1-3 significantly, then you’re going to be limited to newly enriched Uranium to fuel your power station. According to the WNA (World Nuclear Association, a highly pro-nuclear organisation) there is about 100 years worth of economically viable uranium at *current* levels of use.
5. Limited efficacy in reducing emissions. Ziggy Zwitowski, a strong proponent of nuclear power, has admitted that even a tripling of current nuclear capacity would only reduce emissions by around 10%-12%, much less than the world currently requires. This is largely due to the fact that the nuclear fuel cycle is actually incredibly energy & CO2 intensive. Of course, tripling nuclear capacity would also reduce the amount of commercially available uranium.
6. More reactors equals more waste. Seriously, most Countries can’t even deal with the nuclear waste they currently produce, yet you’d happily see a near quadrupling of that waste stream. Also, consider the security threats posed by improperly secured fissile materials, weapons grade material & low-grade waste. You’d really have to hate your children to want to leave that kind of nightmare behind for them.
7. Water requirements. Nuclear Power is, by far, one of the thirstiest forms of electricity in the world. Not the best fit for one of the driest continents on the planet.
8. Cost. Contrary to your claim, Nuclear Power cannot be built for only $5/watt. Again, unless you have access to a cheap & abundant labour force. The average cost of nuclear is much closer to $7-$8 per watt, once you account for overruns, waste management & insurance. Running costs will only rise as the more easily obtainable uranium runs out.
9. Risk of Catastrophic Failure. As rare as these are, the odds will only increase the more nuclear power stations we build, especially if we try to rush build them. Even outside of catastrophic failure, we have seen far too many breaches at a variety of nuclear power stations, uranium mines & enrichment facilities.
10. T&D Losses. Like Coal, large centralised nuclear power stations have to push their electricity out over very large distances. This leads to fairly significant losses in electricity during transmission & distribution……far less of a problem for smaller, more distributed forms of electricity.
That is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does highlight the worst issues regarding going nuclear.
Your renewable energy comparison above deliberately seeks to limit itself to only a single source of energy, whereas anybody with even half a brain know that the best solution is a mixed-technology approach, one which incorporates solar (PV & Thermal), wind, Tidal/Tidal Stream, Bio-gas, Run of the River Hydro & Osmotic Power…..to name a few. Combined with Distributed Generation, a variety of different storage types & demand management (greater energy efficiency) would achieve much greater emissions reductions, in a shorter time frame & smaller cost, than nuclear ever could.
Excellent summation Marcus. I would add 3 more items.
Some 10 years ago a British parliamentary enquiry (its online) found that cleanup costs of a few mothballed nuclear plants were so astronomical (over 70 billion pounds), they decided to just secure the sites at a cost of around 100 million pounds per year, and leave it for a future generation to work out.
An emerging technology using blockchain and a smart energy network will allow millions of solar/battery fitted homes across the nation to supply an abundance of base load power. With subsidies we could fit out millions of homes in just a few years. The trouble with this in Australia is of course our dumb, gutless and in the pocket of business politicians.
It won’t be long before proton batteries make their way onto the market. Being a carbon and water based technology (check RMIT’s press release) I predict it will quickly become a cheap alternative to lithium batteries.
Ah, some numbers from Marcus that we can check and share…
1. Limited nuclear know-how. True. But France was able to rapidly scale up its nuclear workforce in the 1970s, just as China is doing so now. As we move into mass production of nuclear reactors (SMRs), there will be a concurrent surge in nuclear education worldwide.
2. Materials for building reactors are (not) limited. Not true, just an empty accusation. Marcus doesn’t even say what these imaginary rare materials are. Steel? Steam? Uranium?
3. Construction times for reactors. The construction time shortens with each repetition of a design. In domestic production, the big Chinese reactors are taking four years for nth-of-a-kind domestic build, and the Koreans have taken five years for the export build of five big nth-of-a-kind reactors in the Persian Gulf, although yet to be started up. Factory built designs (SMRs) like NuScale are designed to be installed in two years for the first module, decreasing for subsequent modules.
4. Uranium resources worldwide — are effectively limitless. Marcus implies that the world is going to run out of uranium fuel in 100 years (thank you for using numbers). However his source (WNN) says that it is the currently proven-up (i.e., with drillholes) mining reserves that will last that long. Miners for most commodities only prove up 3 to 5 years supply! With two grams of uranium per ton of average dirt, there is enough in your front garden to last the family a lifetime. And that’s when it’s being consumed by the currently installed, horribly inefficient, slow-neutron reactors.
5. Efficacy at reducing emissions? Nuclear is the only baseload power that is 100% carbon-free. Marcus says that tripling world nuclear capacity would reduce emissions by “only” 10 to 12%. Don’t be horrified! That reasoning implies that increasing nuclear capacity 30-fold would reduce emissions 100%. Such an expansion requires mass production, and it can be done.
6. Waste? More reactors means less damaging waste dumped into the environment. The average Australian currently emits about 10 tonnes of CO2 (5000 m³) every year. In contrast, nuclear electricity for 1 kW per person creates only one gram of fission products per year. Burying one gram per year for each of us is a trivial engineering chore. But Marcus implies that it is forgivable for us to be dumping fossil carbon into the greenhouse, whereas it is somehow improper to be burying the alternative as trivial amounts of solid waste.
7. Nuclear plants are ideal for desalination. It is true that any generation of electricity by steam requires about 60% of the incoming energy to be dumped into the environment. Unless the plant is on the seaside, that usually requires the evaporation of precious fresh water. However heat from the condenser could be used for recycling and desalinating water for as many people as its electricity supplies.
8. High capital, low running costs. True. But nuclear plants are slowly paid off over 30 years, twice the lifetime of wind turbines, and once the capital is paid off all profits are money for jam for up to 100 years after construction. Recycling of fuel is still a contentious issue, but in any case should cost less than one cent per kilowatt-hour.
9. Risk of public hysteria. True. Thousands of unnecessary evacuees continue to suffer, afraid to return to their homes, businesses and jobs. Anonymous scaremongering is being made easier by the Internet, and politicians profit more by promising to protect the people from an imaginary threat, than by reassuring them that they are being silly. One solution is more openness, with incidents at all levels being continually reported into the Internet.
10. Transmission and distribution losses – occur more when intermittent generation in one part of the grid sloshes for large distances in search of balancing intermittent supply. Nuclear electricity is at least baseload, so it travels at maximum voltage for the minimum distance between generator and consumer.
That list is far too long. It would have been easier on fellow Crikey readers to have exchanged each point one at a time. Perhaps I should stick to providing one answer at a time, regardless of how long the list of issues raised.
For the sake of the conservation of energy…let me just say Bollocks
I concur, most of Rogers points are 50s fantasy bordering on delusional in a world where the promise of cheap, non polluting, renewable energy is evolving at an exponential rate.
I should have written ‘delivery of …’ not ‘promise of …’
Hopefully one day Crikey comments will have an edit function.
Bref says that renewables are getting cheaper and cheaper, implying that 100% renewable energy is in reach. However, we can only get to 100% renewable energy if we can buy enough storage. Unless you can improve on the arithmetic at top of the thread, you cannot deny that storage is impossibly expensive.
Without storage, 100% non-carbon energy is only achievable if we “include nuclear in the mix”.
Roger, renewables are getting cheaper, this is demonstrably true. Battery storage is evolving and with the advent of proton battery technology will become very cheap. If you add millions of solar/battery equipped homes to the other sources of renewable energy such as wind, hydro and large scale solar, the country would have more than enough base load capacity. Your pie in the sky nuclear solution is both un-economic (according to independent experts) and not deliverable in a less than 20 year time frame.
Bit of a worry that James Lovelock, who put the Gaia concept into a scientific framework, supports nuclear power as does George Monbiot. If the science does stack up, – which seems doubtful but might if CO2 was your only measure – the risk and economic cases do not.
100% is going to be very difficult. James Hansen is another who thinks nuclear is a must. Efficiency and load management will have to be serious priorities. Electrifying the transport sector will put huge additional demands on the grid. It’s difficult to see how we can get out of the climate pickle without massive lifestyle changes, including drastically cutting sheep and cattle numbers.
James Lovelock comes from a time where the promise of nuclear energy was overwhelming. Ultra cheap, clean and plentiful. Before reality set in.
I haven’t done the maths, not being either a nuclear physicist or meteorolgist, or pure mathematician. After reading from respected scientists that the incredibly concrete-rich nuclear reactors would not be able to pay back their own emissions within 40 years. The manufacture of concrete is extremely carbon intensive, and nuclear reactors are the most concrete intensive structures on the planet. Happy for anyone to set me straight here, but if the figure is more than 20 years, it’s a non-starter (at least 20 years to get going on one reactor let alone the many that would be needed.)
Forgetting the waste aspect, forgetting the nimby aspect, we have a problem that requires a complete solution with virtually zero emissions within 30 years at worst. How do we get there if our efforts to get there cost us 40 years of emissions?