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ARE WE GOING NUCLEAR?

Mike Follows considers how politics and market forces could see UK taxpayers stumping up the cost for nuclear power despite strong scientific evidence of its may drawbacks.

Calder Hall in England was the first reactor in the world built to provide electricity. Now 442 reactors in 32 countries provide 16 percent of the world's electricity. The UK produces 20 percent of its electricity this way, yet all but one of our existing reactors is due to close by 2023. Nuclear power was championed originally as a source of cheap energy - 'too cheap to meter' - but no reactors have been built since the 1980s, as accidents (Three Mile Island 1979, Chernobyl 1986), spiralling decommissioning costs (£100 billion) and the problem of nuclear waste sapped confidence. But faced with the threat of global warming, nuclear power is making a comeback. Finland (in 2005) and France (in 2007) are the first European countries to build new nuclear power plants since 1994.

Relations between Russia and the UK turned decidedly chilly following the Litvinenko affair. This would be of little consequence except that Russia is currently the world's biggest oil producer and could turn off our gas supply. Energy prices are on the rise: oil prices topped $100 a barrel for the first time on 19 February 2008. All this is reviving memories of 1973 when OPEC (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) held the world to ransom by restricting the supply of oil to inflate prices. Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that nuclear power is regaining popularity. All of a sudden nuclear is being seen by some as the best candidate to plug the energy gap, forecast to be 20 percent by 2015. And nuclear is mooted as a renewable source of energy.

Opposition to nuclear

Nuclear has its detractors. We can only have genuine energy security when we produce electricity from resources available within our own borders. And nuclear power cannot wean us off our dependence on gas - half of which is used for domestic heating. Most oil goes on road transport so, unless we switch to electric vehicles, nuclear power would not be much help there either.

However, nuclear will be sold to the public as the best way of mitigating our greenhouse gas emissions. Doubtless, nuclear power has a tiny carbon footprint compared to fossil-fuelled power stations. But, as Greenpeace points out, ten new reactors would cut the UK's total carbon emissions by just four percent - and then only after 2025. This would have little impact on our target of a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. And pushing for nuclear would divert investment from renewable energy technology such as wind and wave.

We can meet our emissions targets without resorting to nuclear power. Increasing efficiency reduces demand for energy. Investment in energy conservation instead of nuclear would result in seven times the reduction in carbon emissions. One way to conserve energy is to install small, decentralised, power plants (like roof-mounted solar panels and wind turbines); currently two-thirds of energy from power stations in the UK is lost through wasted heat - up the chimneys and down the power lines - because it is produced too far from where it is needed.

The Government's proposal

The Government wants private companies to build and run nuclear power stations without public funding. French energy giant EDF has already said it plans to build four nuclear plants without subsidies in the UK - the first in 2017. German power company E.On and Britain's Centrica have also expressed interest.

Opponents maintain that the nuclear industry has a history of cost overruns - the new Finnish reactor at Olkiluoto is already two years behind schedule and 50 percent over budget, just two years into construction. This would not be a problem provided it were to remain privately funded. But the UK Government has already hinted that it would step in if public safety was compromised, so the taxpayer may still foot the bill for the long-term disposal of waste. Also, if delayed too long, nuclear may not plug the energy gap or contribute to reduced carbon emissions.

More reasons to be cautious about nuclear

Nuclear can be challenged on energy grounds but there are further arguments against it - including the proliferation of weapons, reactor safety and waste disposal.

In the same way that cannabis is blamed for introducing people to harder drugs, nuclear power generation can act as a gateway to the development of nuclear weapons, which is why the US and others are eager for Iran and North Korea to stop their nuclear programmes. But by building more nuclear power stations, Britain loses the moral argument against other states wanting to develop nuclear power, increasing the risk of proliferation.

Aside from spectacular accidents, leukaemia clusters in children near to 16 west German nuclear reactors were reported in the British Medical Journal in 2006. But the biggest problem with nuclear is what to do with the waste. With an activity of 78 million terabequerels, there is about half a million cubic metres of nuclear waste in Britain, enough to fill London's Royal Albert Hall five times over. The UK alone is sitting on over 3,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste (HLW) and getting rid of it safely is a pressing problem.

Deep geological disposal?

In July 2006 the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) considered a variety of disposal options for HLW (www.corwm.org.uk). CoRWM recommends deep geological disposal though, until a site for deep disposal is chosen, it recommends safe and secure 'interim' storage.

The committee also suggests short-lived waste could be buried in shallow pits at up to 30 existing nuclear sites repositories. Only when it is stored at or near ground level can waste be retrieved easily, giving future generations the opportunity to exploit any scientific or technological breakthroughs that might be just over the horizon. But waste stored in this way is vulnerable to terrorist attack, or can be stolen to make dirty bombs.

In 1976, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution led to the 'Flowers Report', which stated the need to demonstrate, 'beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure the safe containment of long-lived highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future.' Does deep underground disposal satisfy this criterion?

Over a decade ago, Bill Glassley and his group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California developed a computer model of Yucca Mountain - the proposed deep storage for HLW in the United States. It showed that heat from the waste would lead to the formation of corrosive chemicals that would threaten the integrity of the canisters causing the waste to leak within the space of a few hundred years. Nevertheless, Yucca Mountain has since been selected. 

If not deep disposal, what are the alternatives?

The 2003 Columbia disaster illustrates that blasting waste into space is a non-starter. Other ideas are quite ingenious, though inherently flawed. Canisters of HLW would be hot enough to melt their way to the bottom of the Antarctic ice sheet, with ice refreezing over them. However, global warming risks melting the ice caps and dispersing the waste. Waste could be buried in subduction zones, where oceanic plates are forced to 'slide' under the continents. Apart from being unstable and prone to earthquakes and volcanoes, subduction zones can be discounted with a back-of-the envelope calculation. Plates typically move less than ten millimetres per year so, in ten thousand years, the waste canisters will have moved 100 metres from where they were dumped, a long way short of being subducted.

A more realistic option would be to bury the waste in the geologically-stable abyssal plains of the ocean floor. The proposal is to drop the waste in rocket-shaped penetrometers, which would use the kinetic energy of their descent to burrow many tens of metres into the soft clay. Though this is ruled out by the UK's obligation under the London Dumping Convention of 1983, it might be worth proposing a change in the law. Another good option is so-called 'remix and return'. This blends high-level waste with uranium mine and mill tailings down to the level of the original radioactivity of the uranium ore, before returning it to empty uranium mines, facilitating a cradle-to-grave cycle for all radioactive materials.

It looks as if the UK Government has given the green light to the principle of nuclear power and is going to let the market decide whether reactors get built. So, the probability of the country going nuclear goes hand-in-hand with energy prices. And the dice will be loaded even more in favour of nuclear if the Government introduces a levy for greenhouse gas emissions. But to suggest that the UK taxpayer will not share some of the cost is a little disingenuous. The Government has already said it will intervene if public safety is compromised so, ultimately, it looks as if we will be lumbered with the clean-up costs.

Without a viable disposal plan, the nuclear option is irresponsible. In the 1990s the Tories investigated the most geologically-suitable disposal sites. And just like episodes of Pop Idol, the various sites were whittled down to just one, just next door to Sellafield. But the 1997 proposal for an underground laboratory (the Rock Characterisation Facility) at the site was rejected. Given the current climate, it is quite possible that the reasons for rejecting the original proposal might well be overlooked.