World Nuclear Association Blog

The World Nuclear Association has launched WNA Buzz, a new part of our website that will include not only blog entries from WNA, but also links to the best social media and nuclear updates from around the world.

If you've been following this blog on an RSS feed you can now transfer to the WNA Buzz feed at http://www.world-nuclear.org/WorkArea/blogs/blogrss.aspx?blog=3402

So please head over to WNA Buzz, we hope you like it.

It takes time to plan and build a nuclear power plant. For that reason some people mistakenly say nuclear power isn't the right answer to combatting climate change because carbon dioxide emissions reductions are needed urgently.

Of course this doesn't make sense as soon as one considers the 441 reactors currently in operation that are already avoiding the emissions of two and a half billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, compared to coal.

But are people right to say that to get any additional savings from nuclear would take a long time because plans for any new reactors would have to start from scratch? Again the plain answer is no. There are around 60 new nuclear power plants already under construction and due to come into operation over the next few years. When operational, these plants will help avoid the emissions of another 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. To save the same emissions from wind power you would need around 75,000 2MWe turbines.

Even more immediate emissions savings can be made through operating those reactors already in operation for longer. For some this is through lifetime extensions, and already many nuclear power plants have started or plant to operate beyond their initial expect lifetimes.

For other nuclear plants additional generation, and therefore emissions savings, come from changes in political policy. One recent example of this is the reversal of the short-lived nuclear phase-out plans in Germany, as reported recently by WNN.

The new policy in Germany will see nuclear power plants operating for between 8 and 14 years longer. The additional greenhouse gas emissions savings from these extended operations will save a total of 1,800 million tonnes of CO₂, compared to coal fired generation. 

(Taken from WNA's Nuclear Power in Germany Profile)

For more information on how nuclear energy can help combat climate change please check out our Nuclear Energy and Climate Change page.

The latest UN climate change conference starts today in Cancun, Mexico. Under the Kyoto Protocol the first round of emissions reduction targets are set to end in 2012 and as yet there is no sign of a new agreement to take the international response to climate change forward.

Compared to the meeting in Copenhagen twelve months ago the Cancun conference is rather low key. Copenhagen, it had been decided, was the deadline for reaching a new agreement. A massive media campaign had built up expectations that failed to recognise that the preparatory negotiations ahead of the meeting in Denmark had not progressed enough to make an agreement likely.

30,000 people descended on Copenhagen, trying to get into a conference centre that couldn't accommodate safely all those wanting to attend. People queued all day to get their conference passes only to be told a few hours later that the centre was being shut to almost all non-governmental delegates.

As world leaders arrived in the final days of the conference the now-familiar hurried rush to put together an agreement that bypassed much of the tortuous negotiations that had taken place over the previous two years failed. The Copenhagen Accord that emerged from the conference was little more than a collection of existing pledges that recent analysis has determined would fail to make effective cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, but instead would result in an average increase in global temperatures of 3-4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century.

The Copenhagen meeting also took place in the lengthening shadow of "Climategate". A leaked collection of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the  University of East Anglia were spun to cast doubt on the integrity of the climate scientists involved, and consequentially the research they carried out. A review of the latest report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found a reference that claimed that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. The claim was untrue and was referenced from a WWF report, rather than a peer-reviewed document.

Subsequent inquiries largely exonerated both the East Anglian scientists and the overall conclusions reached in the IPCC report. Tellingly no further examples of dodgy references emerged and the single mistake regarding the Himalayn glaciers did little to weaken the scientific basis of the 3,000 page report. However, the failure of Copenhagen lent itself to a narrative which saw public attention turn away from climate change as an issue .

Away from the scandal, the case for climate change has not weakened over the last year. The dip in the warming trend in 2007-2008 that sceptics took as evidence that global warming had stopped has reversed and 2010 looks like being one of the warmest years on record.

This year's meeting in Cancun therefore faces a number of challenges. The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol finishes in 2012. Time is now probably too short to be able to develop a full replacement or follow-on. One option being considered is to extend the Kyoto Protocol to keep the infrastructure and various initiatives and mechanisms running as an interim measure. However Japan has already opposed this, pointing out that the Kyoto Protocol does not include major greenhouse gas emitters such as USA, China and India.

The Cancun Conference therefore faces the urgent need to deal with the Kyoto Protocol's 2012 deadline, while at the same time there is a need to take stock and deal with the issue that the original plan and timetable for developing a new agreement has failed. The next twelve days of negotiations should give us a better idea of whether UNFCCC progress can recover from Copenhagen's disappointment.

Find out more how nuclear energy can help contribute to a low-carbon future with our Nuclear Energy and Climate Change section.
 

We are starting to roll out some improvements to our Reactor Database. We are rearranging the presentation of data for individual reactor records to group together related information. The database will also only display those fields where we have data, so, for example, there are no longer blank rows for "Output" for reactors under construction.

We will also be adding links to related web pages, including WNN articles, WNA Info Papers and external websites.

More improvements are planned, please let us know if you have any ideas on how we can improve the database further.

Today the UK government has announced that it is scrapping plans to support a £30 billion ($47.7 billion, €34.4 billion) tidal barrage because "Government believes that other options, such as the expansion of wind energy, carbon capture and storage and nuclear power, represent a better deal for taxpayers and consumers at this time." WNN reports on the full story here.

Writ large in the announcement is a section proclaiming No subsidy for new nuclear power, in which it is stated:

"...the Government’s policy (is) that there will be no public subsidy for new nuclear power.

To be clear, this means that there will be no levy, direct payment or market support for electricity supplied or capacity provided by a private sector new nuclear operator, unless similar support is also made available more widely to other types of generation.

New nuclear power will, for example, benefit from any general measures that are in place or may be introduced as part of wider reform of the electricity market to encourage investment in low-carbon generation."

While this may seem downbeat, the statement that nuclear power will be treated similarly to other low-carbon generation should any general measures be put in place would be in sharp contrast to nuclear power's treatment under past so-called carbon measures.

A leading example of peculiar past treatment is the Climate Change Levy. The levy was introduced in 2001 and designed to be "part of a range of measures that are designed to help the UK meet its legally binding commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

The levy was to be applied to business use of energy, whether electricity, coal, coke or gas. Unsurprisingly for a tax called a climate change levy designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions exemptions were put in place for low-carbon energy sources, in particular low carbon electricity generation. Businesses could gain exemptions by buying electricity from low-carbon renewables. There was even special treatment for power from 'good-quality' CHP. However, missing from this list of exemptions was low-carbon nuclear electricity. No provision was made for either current nuclear power or new build.

The European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is another example of less-than-level treatment of nuclear. Under the scheme industrial carbon polluters, including fossil fuel generators, have their greenhouse gas emissions capped at a level that reduced year on year. Under the ETS participants are allowed to use credits from the Clean Development Mechanism, a scheme set up under the Kyoto Protocol, as a way of offsetting their own emissions. But yet again the Clean Development Mechanism arbitrary excludes nuclear projects, not supporting (for example) any project that would attempt to substitute nuclear generation in place of one of the the hundreds of coal power plants being built in China.

Of course, while today's announcement states that there is and will be no specific subsidy for nuclear the same is not the case for other low carbon sources. The Renewables Obligation, introduced in 2002, requires electricity suppliers to source a growing proportion of their electricity from renewables or face the obligation of paying a penalty for any shortfall. At present the penalty is a substantial £37 per MWh.

So in contrast to this history of anything but equal treatment for nuclear today's announcement is welcome.

 Nuke Power Talk, a blog run by Dr Gail Marcus has just posted an interesting article about the WNA-WNN Design Showcase, a competition aimed at encouraging better asthetic designs for nuclear power plants.

While some may think how a nuclear power plant looks is not one of the highest priority issues, Dr Marcus draws the interesting comparison to the challenges faced by proposals for new wind turbines. Planning applications for large numbers of wind turbines frequently face objections on grounds of visual impact.

If you are interested in entering the competition the deadline for submissions is 1 December.

by Ted Rockwell

In 1897, House Bill 246 proposed that the Indiana Legislature change the value of Pi to 3.0:
"A bill for an act introducing a new mathematical truth and offered as a contribution to education to be used only by the State of Indiana free of cost by paying any royalties whatever  on the same…And be it remembered that these noted problems had been long since given up by scientific bodies as unsolvable mysteries and above man's ability to comprehend."  Luckily, the bill failed in the Senate, and never became law.  A science/legal quagmire was avoided.

Yucca Mountain, the purported “solution to the nuclear waste problem” has been subjected to similar actions to define nature arbitrarily, but has not succeeded in repelling them.  It now faces laws requiring answers to unanswerable questions with little connection to reality.  Let me explain.

The term “nuclear waste” is a misnomer.  The material in question has several components:  fissile nuclear fuel awaiting recycle; fertile uranium that can be converted to fuel in “breeder reactors”; billions of dollars worth of fission products, including “rare earths,” that will probably be recoverable; and a small amount of residual material with no further use.  The residual waste will remain within the ceramic fuel structure or be melted into a glass.  It cannot be harmful unless it’s removed from its sealed container.  The residual waste can be safely stored in an appropriate warehouse structure.  Maybe we should put up some OSHA warning posters: DO NOT EAT THE GLASS!

Let’s look at the “nuclear waste problem” – not as defined by lawyers or computer modelers, but by its effects on people and the environment.  What's the problem?  Anti-nuclear activist, Sheldon Novick (“The Electric War”), wrote that nuclear waste is no more dangerous than many other industrial wastes we handle routinely – and that’s if we let it loose, which we don’t.

Over the past half century, has “nuclear waste” ever had any deleterious effects on people or the environment?  The answer is simply NO.  When removed from the reactor, the used fuel is placed for several years in large open pools until 99+% of the radioactivity is decayed away.  Then it is stored in robust stainless containers on the plant sites, and many utilities invite visitors to touch the containers, measure the radiation, and satisfy themselves that they are harmless.  And they are of no interest to terrorists.
 
The scientific issue is simple and straightforward.  But implementing it has become a nightmare.  To make the problem go away, decades ago, plant owners calculated that the ultimate safety solution, the Yucca Mountain concept, could be paid for through a minimal surtax on the sale of electricity, and they “solved the waste problem” that way. 

But it didn’t end there.  Contradictory court rulings, state laws, and declarations by U.S. Presidents and by the National Academy of Sciences became entangled.  “Defining the requirements for Yucca Mountain” became a lucrative game and attracted lots of players.  But in fact, after a few hundred years, the radioactivity becomes comparable to some harmless, natural materials.  “But let’s be conservative.  Call it 1000 years…make it 10,000”  And somewhere between the Academies and the courts, it got to be a million years.  Will the cure for cancer still be a problem a million years from now?  Will the human race even exist then?  Will the YM site be under water?  Or in an active volcano field?  Where will the leakage paths to the water-table be?  No mortal can answer such questions.

We have a choice.  Lawyers and politicians could take years, trying to restore YM to its former place.  But if they succeed, we will have converted a non-problem into an unworkable situation.  We must not go that way.  People made this situation; people can unmake it.  Any law or rule can be amended.  President Obama correctly stated that used fuel can stay where it is for decades more, without posing any significant hazard.  Whatever his motive for doing so, Obama’s action presents us with a logical occasion to re-define the issue in light of current realities, and proceed to solve it sensibly.

If we are willing to accept mercury into our homes in fragile glass fluorescent light-bulbs, and use various metal poisons in solar panels, both of which maintain full toxicity forever, why should radioactive materials that get less and less toxic each day be fearful for a million years?

There is no call to reduce nuclear safety.  The law and commonsense both require that all realistic safety questions associated with radioactive material be fully explored and dealt with.  But the current Yucca Mountain specifications do not facilitate that process.