Talk:Nuclear power in the United Kingdom

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[edit] Economics

I take exception to the following statement (under 'Economics'):

"However there are several reasons to expect significant improvement if new nuclear power stations are built"

and the subsequent argument.

New nuclear build will be subject to exactly the same factors that have made existing capacity such a colossal waste of money, with the added risk from the use of relatively new technology (EPR reactors), and the decreasing availability over time of high grade uranium ore. Current experience with the only new nuclear power scheme under construction in Europe (the Olkiluoto 3 reactor in Finland) shows no improvement a history which has seen NO nuclear power station ever built anywhere, ever, come in on budget or to deadline. As of December 2006, construction of Olkiluoto 3 was reported to be 18-24 months behind schedule, and this isn't even 18months into the work, originally scheduled to take around four years - see http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.aspx?Feed=AP&Date=20061204&ID=6245665

This delay alone has cost one of the principle partners in the project (Areva of France) E500m in fines, and "Areva admitted in July that the problems at the Olkiluoto 3 site will have a major impact on the company's full year results". Other cost overruns on the project are causing Areva problems, with the Financial Times reporting that they are "also facing growing problems and costs in Finland where it is building with its German partner Siemens the first of its new generation EPR reactors" (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/fd47a13a-8f04-11db-a7b2-0000779e2340,_i_rssPage=415f2042-300f-11da-ba9f-00000e2511c8.html)

There are also a number of credible studies which have concluded that nuclear power is an expensive and dangerous distraction from the business of tackling climate change and moving our energy system towards a more sustainable footing - see for example:

http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/14-2.pdf

http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/pages/060306.html#nuclearpubs

http://www.feasta.org/documents/energy/nuclear_power.htm

http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/z_sys_PublicationDetail.aspx?PID=209

http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/grea_p.aspx?id=374

http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/nscoverstory.htm

http://www.newstatesman.com/200605290008

http://assets.panda.org/downloads/fullnuclearreprotwwf.pdf

http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/ilex_report.pdf

http://www.libdems.org.uk/media/documents/policies/Nuclear-tax-bombshell.pdf

As such, in my view, it would be more valid to state, in place of the assertion currently set out, that:

"Whilst the nuclear industry asserts that a new generation of nuclear power stations would avoid many of the acute problems which have dogged the construction and operation of all previous plants, this remains to be substantiated, and in the meantime, many other studies have concluded that nuclear power remains at best an expensive non-solution to the pressing problems of moving our energy systems onto a sustainable footing and tackling climate change"

with some links to the references I have cited.

I'd be interested in any comments on this.

Regards

4ndy8 10:41, 26 January 2007 (UTC)4ndy8

That statement is actually taken from one of the "credible studies" you cite: page 3, of paper 4 ("The Economics of Nuclear Power"), of the Sustainable Development Commission's "Is nuclear the answer?" report, see [1]. I thought it encapsulated the hopes of the pro-nuclear lobby pretty well, and included it to represent their views for a balanced article section (I also put in the rarely noted fact that even the newest Sizewell B is hopelessly uneconomic). Personally I doubt their hopes will be fully realised, as the Finnish EPR saga is beginning to show. But I did think it a reasonable portrayal of their views/hopes, and costs should indeed go down to a degree for those reasons. Adding evidence showing it is not working out in Europe would be great, so are not being substantiated. But if it is an accurate portrayal of their argument, as the SDC suggest, it should be left I think. Rwendland 15:39, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

The majority of links that you cite are from anti-nuclear organisations. They oppose nuclear power on principle, based on concerns about the possible health and environmental effects. As these concerns have not been realised over many years of safe nuclear operation, these organisations have constructed a number of false arguments about nuclear power - one of which being that it is necessarily expensive (others being that it produces too much CO2; or that the Uranium will run out soon). They don't even try to make economically sensible assumptions about nuclear power, and given their principal aims, I wouldn't expect them to.

To balance your anti-nuclear bias, here is what the World Nuclear organisation says http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html

Perhaps more directly relevant to this wiki article is the relevant section of the UK govts Energy Review which shows that nuclear is cost-competitive with fossil fuel, much cheaper than wind, and generally one of the better options when carbon is taken into account. http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file32014.pdf

Furthermore, the DTI provides this cost-benefit analysis for nuclear compared to gas generation (which is the default cheapest alternative). In most scenarios nuclear is competetive. http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file31938.pdf

18:10, 28 January 2007 (UTC) Colin ___

Thanks for feedback.

Colin, I can see now that what is written under the Economics section is based very squarely on parts of the SD report as you state. As an aside, perhaps a direct reference would be in order?

You also write "I thought it encapsulated the hopes of the pro-nuclear lobby pretty well, and included it to represent their views for a balanced article section." I think you are right - it does exactly that. However, my query stems from the fact that the article does not make it clear that these are the views of the nuclear industry, rather it reads as though they are framed as objective commentary. Your summary of this section of the SD report omits many of the balancing counterarguments and the overall conclusion of the SD, which is far less optimistic. Hence my request to reframe the section along the lines of "Whilst the nuclear industry asserts..." - I still maintain that this would more accurately reflect the nature of the section and the reality of the situation.

Not sure who the second comment is from, but you state "these concerns [of 'anti nuclear' organisations] have not been realised over many years of safe nuclear operation."

I am not sure how you would seek to define "many years of safe nuclear operation." If you look at just one high profile UK site - Sellafield - then you will presumably be shocked to discover that "Between 1950 and 2000 there have been 21 serious incidents or accidents involving some off-site radiological releases that merited a rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale, one at level 5, 5 at level 4 and 15 at level 3. Additionally during the 1950s and 1960s there were protracted periods of known, non accidental, discharges to the atmosphere of plutonium and irradiated uranium oxide particulates.[18] These frequent incidents, together with the large 2005 Thorp plant leak which was not detected for nine months, have led some to doubt the effectiveness of the managerial processes and safety culture on the site over the years."

This is from Answers.com - not known to be an anti nuclear campaigning organisation (nor, I would contend, are IEER/Science for Democratic Action or the SD Commission or Feasta or NEF or the New Statesman or the Lib Dems - none of these can accurately be described as 'anti nuclear organisations').

This is a little beside the point, however - it is the merits of the case which are at stake, and as you say many of these organisations do oppose nuclear power on the balance of the arguments for and against. You also state that such anti nuclear organisations "don't even try to make economically sensible assumptions about nuclear power." I would contend that this is exactly what many of them do - for example the NEF report, pp.34-41 which undertakes a detailed analysis of the economics of nuclear power. Also worth analysing is the Rocky Mountain Institute report on the competitive economics and climate saving potential of nuclear power compared to similar investment in other technologies, principally efficiency measures. The conclusion is that for the same money, you get more energy and more climate improvement from efficiency and renewables, so the opportunity cost of nuclear power (even ignoring health, accidents, terrorists, and insurmountable waste problems) is a poor investment if your intention is to cost effectively provide for the energy requirements of the human race in a socially, environmentally and economically optimal way.

4ndy8 16:29, 29 January 2007 (UTC)4ndy8

____

First 4ndy8, apologies for the confusion - it was I (Colin) who posted the second reply - I put the attribution at the start instead of the end. I've shifted this.

Second, I don't necessarily want to descend into an argument defending nuclear power's safety record, but I will illustrate what I mean using your own facts. You cite Sellafield as a typical example (though it happens to be the oldest civil nuclear site) stating that it has had 1 level 5 accident, 5 level 4 incidents etc. Looking at the INES scale you will see that only level 5 and above represent offsite risk. The particular level 5 incident at Sellafield was the Windscale fire of fifty years ago. So there has only been one serious accident, that was fifty years ago, and even this incident did not occur in a nuclear power station - it was a nuclear pile, which had the sole purpose of making plutonium for weapons. Since that time all western nuclear power stations have included containment buildings that have been 100% effective in preventing such large releases of radioactive material even in the event of a core melt. Even though Three Mile Island was a level 5 event, it did not result in significant offsite risk and nobody was harmed because of the containment building. The only other incident at a civil nuclear power station that has ever resulted in a release like this was Chernobyl, which was an unsafe design and did not incorporate a containment building.

• Nobody has ever been killed by radiation from the UK civil nuclear industry.
• Apart from Chernobyl, no member of the public anywhere in the world has been killed by radiation from the civil nuclear industry.
• In the last 20 years (since Chernobyl) there hasn't been a level 5 or higher release of radiation from a civil nuclear power station anywhere in the world.

Hopefully this makes it clear what I meant by "many years of safe operation". Every industry has accidents. The nuclear industry causes fewer deaths than any other major source of electricity production. Far fewer.

It is exactly this absence of deaths, or in fact any evidence of harm from nuclear power, that has forced the anti-nuclear lobby to construct other arguments to bolster their cause (e.g. that it is supposedly too expensive).

I would still contend that most of the organisations you cite (with the exception of the New Statesman) are anti-nuclear. They are, as a matter of policy, opposed to nuclear power on ethical grounds (mistakenly, IMHO). They construct their economic arguments to support their anti-nuclear "ethical" stance. They don't try to make an economic case for nuclear power.

Simple observation of energy policies around the world shows, over and over, that countries will chose nuclear power as the next most cost-effective option if they do not have an abundance of cheap fossil fuel or hydro sites.

I agree that energy efficiency measures offer greater savings per £ than any method of electricity production, but assuming we are going to continue to build replacement/new sources of production, nuclear is among the most cost-effective. In general renewables, other than hydro, are not, at present.

19:55, 29 January 2007 (UTC) Colin

____

Thanks Colin

I'm pushed for time, so I will focus for now on a couple of points you raise, and a couple of assertions.

You restate your contention that nuclear power is safe, and has a record of "many years of safe operation", with reference to the documented accident events i previously cited. in your view, the fact that only one event has been reported at above level 5 demonstrates this safety. i could quibble about your interpretation of 'offsite risk' here - clearly, as the scale states, events at below level 5 can and do have both on- and offsite implications, and this does not translate as "there [having] only been one serious accident, that was fifty years ago". i will not delve into the details of other interpretations than yours of the three mile island disaster here, but [2] for example has some interesting quotes from those close to the incident.

if you are happy for many events at, say, level 4 and below to regularly occur, i would contend that each of these represents loss of control and failure of safety systems at nuclear installations, and that any number of these may have had the potential to escalate further and be more damaging. the fact that we have been relatively lucky should not be used to eulogise the safety of these inherently very hazardous installations, and the potential consequnces from the inevitable breaches of normal operating conditions which we will inevitably continue to face as long as we use these technologies will be subject to the same laws of chance which gives this traditional incident severity pyramid, which is the same as in other areas of industrial risk (ie relatively few very serious events at the top, large numbers of more minor events further down the pyramid). risk assessment shows that low probability of very serious incidents still equates to very serious risks, and this is what we live with, increasing this risk with every additional nuclear installation. we are also here focusing solely on the uk industry. what chernobyl showed was that, like global warming, nuclear incidents are no respectors of national boundaries, and the uk remains at risk from reactors elsewhere.

of more major concern, in my view, are events not covered by this scale - so called 'normal releases' of radioactive materials, and leaks, spills and other releases from power plants and related sites. again, sellafield and dounraey are cases in point - the recent revelations that leaks of serious quantities of highly radioactive materials from containment vessels at sellafield continued for months - months! - without detection caused widespread condemnation and outrage. you can surely understand why the governments of Ireland and Norway are so concerned about these installations that they have been petitioning the European Commission and others to get them closed down for many years. similarly, the revelations from Dounraey, in September 2006 that the operators were "fined £2 million for spilling radioactive waste(2). Last year, its regulators reported that 250 safety failures had taken place since 1999(3). Among them was Dounreay’s generous gift to the community of containers used to store low-level radioactive waste. They were to be turned into a Santa’s grotto for local children(4). Another report showed that fissile waste was being stored in paint tins or simply left where it had been found(5). One former employee claimed that samples from Dounreay’s radioactive effluent tanks were collected for analysis with a wellington boot on a piece of string, as the proper equipment had rusted up(6) A Catalogue of Idiocy Also worth a read is Decaying and dangerous, the legacy of a flawed nuclear vision. Similar stories emerge around the world.

It is, however, not leaks, but the radioactivity released in 'normal operations', particularly from reprocessing, is perhaps the biggest single danger to environmental and human health (assuming you accept that radioactive emissions are inherently hazardous, and that we are bound by the epidemiological principle and dose-effect relationship that there are no 'safe' levels of these substances). The Joint Letter of the Nordic Environment Ministers to the British Minister for the Environment highlights this issue in terms of discharges from Sellafield. see also [3] and countless other sources.

i won't go into leukaemia clusters etc, but i think we have ample cause for concern here, and that your blanket assertions that

"Nobody has ever been killed by radiation from the UK civil nuclear industry" and "Apart from Chernobyl, no member of the public anywhere in the world has been killed by radiation from the civil nuclear industry."

are simply not true, or at the very least, not verifiable, and therefore invalid. there have been many accounts over the years of much higher radioactivity levels around nuclear power plants (see for example Japan, where it was found to be 10 000 times higher than normal. do you contend that such increased levels of radiation have no health effects? Many reports - for example this report, "raise[s] the spectre of health damage from radiation exposures thought to be entirely safe."

also, there is the issue, which you do not mention, of the whole life cycle for nuclear fuel, from mining to waste. do you argue that mining uranium, in other countries, does not cause deaths?

add in the colossal problem and expense (and energy requirement, over the years, which will almost certainly exceed the useful energy we extract from the fuel in our nuclear power stations) of nuclear waste management (lets not pretend there is any 'disposal' option) and the moral issue of committing many future generations (some further away from us in the future than stone age man is in the past) to managing our nuclear waste legacy, and attempting to 'keep it safe'; the fact that there is a demonstrable link between 'civilian' nuclear power and nuclear weapons production and proliferation, and the bottom line that, if we invested the same amounts of money in other technologies (primarily simple ones concerned with improving aspects of energy efficiency) we would get greater energy and carbon saving returns, then i don't see a credible argument for a new generation of nuclear power stations - in the uk or elsewhere.

4ndy8 23:10, 8 February 2007 (UTC)4ndy8

_____

4ndy8, amongst all your suggestion and innuendo of matters you "won't go into" you haven't actually identified anybody who has been killed by radiation from civil nuclear power stations apart from Chernobyl. My statement regarding the UK nuclear industry's "many years of safe operation" still stands.

As the main article states, the COMARE report found no evidence to link leukaemia with nuclear power stations. There have been no accidental deaths from radiation from any civil nuclear power station apart from Chernobyl. None of the headline grabbing stories that you mention (Dounreay et al) have actually caused any observed harm. The burden of proof is upon you if wish to assert that harm has been caused.

I find it irksome that you suggest that I might be "happy" to accept many level 4 events. I never said any such thing. In fact there have only been a handful of level 4 events in the whole history of nuclear power worldwide, and by definition none of them harmed anybody off-site.

Regarding "normal operations", average public exposure from normal operation of the nuclear industry in the UK is approximately 0.0009 mSv per year. If you wish to assert that this has caused any deaths then the burden of proof is again on you. You should be aware that average natural background radiation worldwide is around 2.4mSv per year. This varies considerably across the globe. In some parts of the world natural background radiation rises up to a hundred times the normal background level (that is, more than 200,000 times the level of exposure from the nuclear industry in the UK) yet there is no empirical evidence of any increased cancer risk in such areas.

23:15, March 16 2007 (UTC) Colin

[edit] Government loses nuclear power case!

That'll teach 'em :) [4]