Big nuclear power company decides renewables are a better bet in the U.S.

Grist reports that french nuclear power company EDF has decided that it is better to pursue renewable energy in the US rather than bating a dead horse - Big nuke company decides renewables are a better bet in the U.S..

The world’s largest operator of nuclear power plants is dumping its stake in American reactors, turning its focus instead to wind and solar power. French utility company EDF announced this week that it will sell its stake in Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG), which operates five nuclear reactors in New York and Maryland.

EDF cited cheap power produced by fracked natural gas as the big reason why it’s abandoning its American nuclear facilities. But the company said it will now focus its American business strategy not on fossil fuels but on renewable energy.

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Duke Energy shelves major nuclear project in Florida

Reuters reports that another nuclear power project has been halted - Duke Energy shelves major nuclear project in Florida.

Duke Energy Corp said on Thursday it will not proceed with a $24 billion nuclear power project in central Florida because of licensing delays and doubts about cost recovery ... The announcement was the latest blow to nuclear power investment in the Sunshine State and reflected the boom in natural gas development nationwide.

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Fukushima Decontamination and Cleanup Will Cost $50 Billion

The Diplomat has a look at the cost of cleaning up the Fukushima nuclear disaster - Fukushima Decontamination and Cleanup Will Cost $50 Billion. Presumably this isn't included in most levelised cost of energy numbers disseminated by nuclear power promoters...

In another blow to recovery efforts in the prefecture hit hardest by the 3/11 tsunami and nuclear meltdown, Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology have estimated the cost of decontamination and cleanup to be more than $50 billion. The central Japanese government has earmarked only $11 billion in aid to the struggling region.

“The group has estimated that the decontamination in the no-entry zones will be at around $20 billion, while the other surrounding areas will cost another $31 billion,” said the Japan Daily Press. “The estimates are based on the unit costs that the government provided as well as information collected from the affected municipalities. It also includes the expenses that will be incurred in the removal, transportation and storage of radioactive waste like the contaminated soil and water.”

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RIP Masao Yoshida

The NYT reports that one of the key staff involved in the Fukushima disaster and cleanup has died of cancer - no doubt one of many over time - Masao Yoshida, Nuclear Engineer and Chief at Fukushima Plant, Dies at 58.

Masao Yoshida, a nuclear engineer who took charge of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant two years ago as multiple reactors spiraled out of control after a tsunami, but who ultimately failed to prevent the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, died here on Tuesday. He was 58. The cause was cancer, said the Fukushima plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power.

Mr. Yoshida had been chief manager at Fukushima Daiichi for just nine months when a 42-foot tsunami inundated the site on March 11, 2011, knocking out vital cooling systems to the plant’s six reactors. Eventually hydrogen explosions and fuel meltdowns occurred at three reactors, releasing vast amounts of radioactive matter into the environment.

Although the company was widely criticized for its handling of the disaster, which forced more than 100,000 people from their homes, Mr. Yoshida won praise for his effort to minimize the damage. He has been faulted, however, for failing to invest in adequate tsunami walls at the company’s nuclear power plants when he was head of nuclear facilities. Mr. Yoshida later apologized to reporters, saying he had been “too lax” in his assumptions of how big a tsunami might hit the coastal plant.

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Life after Chernobyl

The Independent has a look at what Bruce Sterling used to call Chernobyl's "Involuntary Park" - Life after Chernobyl: Sergei Gaschak’s photography from inside 'the zone'.

Sergei Gaschak’s photography offers an unparalleled glimpse at animal life inside “the zone”, the area of Ukraine and Belarus that has been officially closed off to human habitation since the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe of 1986.

Using camera traps to take photographs mechanically, as well as taking photographs personally, Gaschak has captured what few have been able to see with their own eyes – the remarkable diversity of wildlife within the zone.

One of the first rescuers on the site of the nuclear disaster, Gaschak has devoted recent years to photographing lynxes, otters, owls and other wildlife, and has even discovered the footprints of brown bears. The exclusion zone stretches for miles around the site of the reactor, and includes Pripyat, which was once a thriving Soviet town of 50,000 inhabitants but has remained a ghost town since the disaster, a time warp of perestroika-era Soviet life.

More than 300,000 people evacuated the region in the aftermath of the explosion, and only a few hundred stubborn pensioners have returned, defying government bans on settlement inside the zone.

At the time of the disaster, there were few wild animals living in the region around the nuclear plant. But as the humans moved out in the wake of the catastrophe, large mammals appeared and thrived. While the animals showed incredibly high levels of radiation, they still looked normal. There were no giant wolves or three-headed deer.

According to a book on animal and plant life in the zone, A Natural History of Chernobyl, the only abnormalities found in animals has been albino spots and deformities in barn swallows.

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Korean plans for more nuclear power plants delayed or scrapped

The Korea Herald reports that a swathe of nuclear power plants have been cancelled or delayed in South Korea as part of the anti-nuclear backlash following the Fukushima disaster (and the Inchon tidal power project has been delayed for 3 years as well) - Plans for more power plants delayed or scrapped.

The construction of 10 nuclear power plants and one tidal power plant scheduled to be completed between 2013 and 2027 has been either put off or canceled, plant operators said, fanning concerns about power shortages.

The 11 plants, if completed, altogether could have produced about 12.7 million kilowatts of electricity, which accounts for about 6.4 percent of the nation’s power supply.

“We have postponed or canceled some plant construction deals because the government has become more careful about giving out approval after the Fukushima nuclear disaster,” said an official of the Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co.

Nuclear plant Sinuljin-1 and Sinuljin-2, originally set to be completed in June 2016 and June 2017 respectively, had their completion date postponed by at least 10 months, after failing to obtain the government approval on time.

The completion date of Sinuljin-3, Sinuljin-4, Sinkori-5 and Sinkori-6 were postponed by one year for failing to obtain the state approval, and Sinkori-7 and Sinkori-8 construction projects were canceled as the company faced difficulties in securing land for the construction site.

The KHNP decided to put off Incheon tidal power plant by about three years to June, 2020, the officials said.

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Water shortages hit US power supply

New Scientist has a look at the impact the ongoing drought in the US is having on power generation - Water shortages hit US power supply.

As the United States' extended heat wave and drought threaten to raise global food prices, energy production is also feeling the pressure. Across the nation, power plants are becoming overheated and shutting down or running at lower capacity; drilling operations struggle to get the water they need, and crops that would become biofuel are withering.

While analysts say the US should survive this year without major blackouts, more frequent droughts and increased population size will continue to strain power generation in the future.

Power plants are a hidden casualty of droughts, says Barbara Carney of the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Morgantown, West Virginia, because they are completely dependent on water for cooling and make up about half the water usage in the US. That makes them vulnerable in a heat wave. If water levels in the rivers that cool them drop too low, the power plant – already overworked from the heat – won't be able to draw in enough water. In addition, if the cooling water discharged from a plant raises already-hot river temperatures above certain thresholds, environmental regulations require the plant to shut down.

One nuclear plant in Connecticut recently had to shut down because the sea water used for cooling was too warm. Nationwide, nuclear generation is at its lowest in a decade, with the plants operating at only 93 per cent of capacity.

Nuclear is the thirstiest power source. According to NETL, the average nuclear plant that generates 12.2 million megawatt hours of electricity requires far more water to cool its turbines than other power plants. Nuclear plants need 2725 litres of water per megawatt hour for cooling. Coal or natural gas plants need, on average, only 1890 and 719 litres respectively to produce the same amount of energy.

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A climate risk to nuclear power

Climate Central has a look at the problem posed to nuclear power plants by rising temperatures - A climate risk to nuclear power.

Compared to coal and natural gas, nuclear power plants offer a significant advantage when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions – they don't emit any. However, in an ironic twist, it seems that climate change is increasingly causing problems for operators of nuclear plants.

Like coal-fired power plants, nuclear facilities use large amounts of water for cooling purposes. After water has cycled through the plant, it is discharged back into a nearby waterway, usually a lake or a river, at a higher temperature. US state regulations prohibit nuclear plants from operating once water temperatures go above a certain threshold, in part because it could compromise the safe operation of the facility, and also because discharging very warm water can kill fish and other marine life.

According to the New York Times' Matthew L. Wald, the Braidwood Generating Station, located about 60 miles southwest of Chicago, was recently granted a waiver to continue operating despite the fact that the unusually hot and dry summer had heated the water it was taking in to a toasty 102 degrees Fahrenheit – 2 degrees above the legal operating limit for the plant.

Like much of the country, Illinois has had an extremely hot summer. In fact, Illinois had its warmest January-to-June period on record.

According to Wald's story, operators of the Braidwood plant have been hit by the combination of extremely hot days and very warm nights. Nationally, thousands of daily high temperature records and warm overnight low temperature records have been set this summer.

The Times quoted Craig Nesbit, a spokesman for Exelon, Braidwood's operator:

"Asked whether he viewed Braidwood’s difficulties as a byproduct of global warming, Mr Nesbit said: “I’m not a climatologist. But clearly the calculations when the plant was first operated in 1986 are not what is sufficient today, not all the time.”

Climate Central's Alyson Kenward reported on the threat that climate change poses to electricity generation in 2011, when she detailed problems that a 2010 heat wave caused for operators of the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama.

"With river water so warm, the nuclear plant couldn’t draw in as much water as usual to cool the facility's three reactors, or else the water it pumped back into the river could be hot enough to harm the local ecosystem, says Golden. But for every day that the Browns Ferry plant ran at 50 per cent of its maximum output, the TVA had to spend $1 million more than usual to purchase power from somewhere else, he says.

What happened in northern Alabama last summer, at the largest of TVA's nuclear power plants, did not present a human safety concern. Operators knew there was never a risk of an explosion or nuclear meltdown, nor was there a threat of leaking radioactive material. But the prolonged spell of hot weather put the TVA at risk of violating environmental permits, with hefty fines as one consequence and potential harm to the Tennessee River ecosystem as another.

It’s not the first time high temperatures have affected the performance of the Browns Ferry plant, and extreme heat is a growing concern for power plant operators across the Southeast."

With global warming already increasing the odds of extreme heat events, the challenges faced at Braidwood and Browns Ferry are likely to become more common in the coming years. It's an open question as to whether the nuclear industry is prepared for this. As the Union of Concerned Scientists' David Lochbaum told the Times, “Nuclear plants like Goldilocks weather – not too hot, not too cold, but just right." Such weather is getting harder and harder to come by.

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Japan to probe 'active faults' under nuclear plants

AFP reports that Japan is rather belatedly trying to work out if its nuclear plants are built on fault lines - Japan to probe 'active faults' under nuclear plants.

Japan's nuclear safety watchdog on Wednesday ordered a probe into claims the country's only working nuclear power station sits on an active tectonic fault.

The order came as Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCO) readied to refire a second reactor at the Oi plant, western Japan, just weeks after the first unit was restarted, ending a brief nuclear-free period in earthquake-prone Japan.

A spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said KEPCO had to re-examine the Earth's crust underneath Oi, while the operator of the Shika plant in nearby Ishikawa also had to carry out further studies.

The decision came after geological experts argued both plants are likely sitting on active faults and could be vulnerable to earthquakes if tectonic plates shift.

Japan's entire stable of nuclear reactors was shut down in the months after the disaster at Fukushima when an earthquake-sparked tsunami knocked out cooling systems causing meltdowns that spread radiation over a large area.

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Japan’s Former Leader Condemns Nuclear Power

The New York Times reports that Japan's Prime Minister during the Fukushima disaster thinks the country should completely abandon nuclear power - Japan’s Former Leader Condemns Nuclear Power.

In an unusually stark warning, Japan’s prime minister during last year’s nuclear crisis told a parliamentary inquiry on Monday that the country should discard nuclear power as too dangerous, saying the Fukushima accident had pushed Japan to the brink of “national collapse.”

In testimony to a panel investigating the government’s handling of the nuclear disaster, the former prime minister, Naoto Kan, also warned that the politically powerful nuclear industry was trying to push Japan back toward nuclear power despite “showing no remorse” for the accident. ...

In his testimony, Mr. Kan said that Japan’s plant safety was inadequate because energy policy had been hijacked by the “nuclear village” — a term for the power companies and pronuclear regulators and researchers that worked closely together to promote the industry. He said the only way to break their grip was to form a new regulatory agency staffed with true outsiders, like American and European experts.

“Gorbachev said in his memoirs that the Chernobyl accident exposed the sicknesses of the Soviet system,” Mr. Kan said, referring to the 1986 explosion of a reactor in Ukraine, which spewed radiation across a wide swath of Europe. “The Fukushima accident did the same for Japan.” ...

He complained that nuclear regulators and the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, or Tepco, kept him in the dark about crucial details in the days immediately after a huge earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, knocked out cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, causing three of the plant’s reactors to melt down.

He said he tried to be fully open with the public and hid nothing. But he seemed to undermine that claim when he disclosed that in the early days of the crisis he feared it could spiral out of control, even as his own ministers were giving public reassurances that they had the plant under control.

He said he feared additional meltdowns could “release into the air and sea many times, no, many dozens of times, many hundreds of times the radiation released by Chernobyl.”

Those fears led to the most extraordinary moment of the crisis, when Mr. Kan walked into Tepco’s headquarters after being told the company wanted to evacuate its staff from the crippled plant. He demanded that they stay, saying he was prepared to put his own life on the line to prevent the disaster from worsening.

He also defended his visit to the plant on the day after the earthquake, which has been widely criticized for distracting plant personnel at a crucial juncture in their efforts to save the overheating reactors. Mr. Kan told the panel that he wanted to get an assessment directly from the plant manager because he felt Tepco officials in Tokyo were not giving him enough information.

But his strongest comments came at the end of his testimony, when a panel member asked if he had any advice for the current prime minister. Mr. Kan replied that the accident had brought Japan to the brink of evacuating metropolitan Tokyo and its 30 million residents, and that the loss of the capital would have paralyzed the national government, leading to “a collapse of the nation’s ability to function.”

He said the prospect of losing Tokyo made him realize that nuclear power was just too risky, that the consequences of an accident too large for Japan to accept.

“It is impossible to ensure safety sufficiently to prevent the risk of a national collapse,” Mr. Kan said. “Experiencing the accident convinced me that the best way to make nuclear plants safe is not to rely on them, but rather to get rid of them.”

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Germany’s $263 Billion Renewables Shift Biggest Since War

Bloomberg has a look at Germany's switch from nuclear power to renewable energy - Germany’s $263 Billion Renewables Shift Biggest Since War.

Not since the allies leveled Germany in World War II has Europe’s biggest economy undertaken a reconstruction of its energy market on this scale.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is planning to build offshore wind farms that will cover an area six times the size of New York City and erect power lines that could stretch from London to Baghdad. The program will cost 200 billion euros ($263 billion), about 8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2011, according to the DIW economic institute in Berlin.

Germany aims to replace 17 nuclear reactors that supplied about a fifth of its electricity with renewables such as solar and wind. ...

Already, the program is expanding markets for Suntech Power Holdings Co. (STP), the world’s biggest solar panel maker, and Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS)., the largest maker of wind turbines. It’s hurting utilities from RWE AG (RWE) to EON AG (EOAN), which have stepped up cost-cutting to curb losses from closing nuclear stations early. ...

“The German energy transformation is as challenging as the first moon landing,” said Peter Terium, who in July takes over as chief executive officer of RWE, Germany’s second-largest utility. “It’s a huge challenge we’ll be able to master only if everyone works together.”

Germany is among the first nations to grapple with a global need to upgrade power stations. By 2035, at least $10 trillion of investment is needed to add 5,900 gigawatts of generation worldwide, more than five times the capacity of all U.S. utilities, the International Energy Agency estimates. Half of that will come from renewable. A gigawatt is about enough to supply 800,000 homes in the U.S. and a bit less than the capacity of a nuclear reactor.

“If Germany succeeds, it could be a role model for economies all over the world,” said Claudia Kemfert, DIW’s senior energy expert. “If it fails, it will be a disaster for Germany’s politicians, society and economy.”

Germany’s efforts in the industry are sending shocks through European power markets. When it’s windy and sunny, turbines and solar cells flood the grid with electricity, undermining the economics of natural-gas fired generators, since clean energy has supply priority over fossil fuels.

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Japanese firms considering geothermal plants in Fukushima

Reuters has a report on interest in developing geothermal power stations in the Fukushima area - Japanese firms considering geothermal plants in Fukushima.

Japanese firms are looking at building several geothermal plants in a volcanic zone in the area worst hit by last year's nuclear disaster, a project that could gain momentum after the government eased restrictions on drilling this week.

The head of a group of firms that have studied the potential of a geothermal project in Fukushima said on Friday a consortium of about 10 companies would meet local people by early May to explain their plans to build plants with a total capacity of 270 megawatts, which would be Japan's biggest.

The consortium plans to work with local communities, including those who run hotels and inns at hot springs, to develop geothermal energy, Masaho Adachi, the chairman of Japan Geothermal Developers' Council said.

The council has already held a meeting with local government officials in the central zone of Fukushima, home to the nuclear plant crippled by an earthquake and tsumani last year, he said.

Along with high costs, protests by local communities fearful of the impact of a geothermal plant on hot springs have prevented such projects from taking off in the past.

"We should spend together a period of more than 10 years before having geothermal plants running," he said in an interview with Reuters on Friday, referring to activities such as collecting data, test drilling and environment assessment. Adachi declined to name the companies forming the consortium.

The Nikkei newspaper earlier said that the Fukushima project by a consortium of companies including Idemitsu Kosan Co and Inpex Corp would cost around 100 billion yen ($1.2 billion), with operations set to start in 2020.

Since the crisis, interest in renewable energy has jumped and a government subsidy scheme, similar to those in many countries in Europe, to force utilities to buy renewable electricity is due to start in July. ...

Studies show Japan, a land of volcanoes, ranks as the world's third-richest nation in geothermal power. A government study last year showed it has the potential for business to derive 14,000 MW of energy, but it currently has only 540 MW worth of commercial plants due to restrictions on development in national parks, where most resources lie.

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More Problems at Calif. Nuclear Plant

The WSJ has a report on more safety issues at US nuclear power plants - More Problems at Calif. Nuclear Plant.

More failed pressure tests of critical equipment at a Southern California nuclear-power plant raised new concerns about safety and possible electricity shortages this summer.

Edison International's Southern California Edison utility said Friday four steam tubes, or metal pipes, that carry radioactive water failed pressure tests. Three other tubes ruptured during testing earlier in the week, prompting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to send a team to investigate.

SoCal Edison said it was taking the ruptures seriously, and was looking for alternative power sources to serve customers.

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The energy paper’s peculiar logic about nuclear power

Crikey's Bernard Keane has a look at energy minister Martin Ferguson's inexplicable obsession with expensive and unnecessary nuclear power- The energy paper’s peculiar logic about nuclear power.

Energy Minister Martin Ferguson’s long-awaited energy white paper — released yesterday in draft form — adopts a peculiar approach to domestic nuclear power.

As befits the product of a Labor government, it makes clear nuclear power is off the agenda for the time being. “The Gillard government unambiguously does not support the use of nuclear energy in Australia,
noting that at present there is no necessary social consensus over this technology nor is there currently a compelling economic case …” the draft says.

If you subscribe to all those theories about how Ferguson is a secret agent of the uranium industry, you might almost see in that phrasing an attempt to suggest that, but for the lack of a “social consensus”, nuclear power would be on the table for consideration.

But there’s more: the draft goes on to suggest that, in the event “new low‐emissions baseload energy or energy storage technologies” can’t be commercialised over the next 15 years, a long-term switch to nuclear might need to be reconsidered. And in doing so, the draft is realistic:

“Given the long lead times for plant approval and construction and for development of appropriate regulatory frameworks, this would necessitate a decision to move ahead considerably in advance of expected deployment — lead times would be at least 10 years, with 15 years more probable. If this were the case, such a decision would need to be taken by the latter part of this decade if deployment was required by 2030 or 2035.”

That is, to get a domestic nuclear power industry up and running by the 2030s we’d have to be making decisions in the next few years about developing a skills base and a regulatory framework and starting construction on reactors that on average take nine years — but can take up to 20 — to build.

But there are some flaws and inconsistencies in the draft’s analysis of the issue.

It uses International Energy Agency data to argue that global use of nuclear power will increase from 6% to 7% over the next 25 years. “The Fukushima nuclear incident in Japan in 2011 is not expected to significantly affect nuclear growth in the medium to long term, although some countries may be prompted to diversify their energy base with natural gas, coal and renewables,” the draft concludes. But as we pointed out back in May, Fukushima has prompted several countries, including India and China, to pause and review their nuclear industry development plans, or in some cases abandon nuclear power altogether.

Moreover, nuclear power will actually decline as a source of power in the overall global energy mix because most of the world’s 439 nuclear reactors were built decades ago and are now nearing the end of their life cycles. In January, there were 60 new reactors under construction worldwide — nowhere near enough to replace the reactors that will be shut down over the coming decade. Nuclear power is an ageing, shrinking energy source globally.

That’s a mere detail, though, compared to the strange twist in logic the draft uses about nuclear power. The draft commendably urges state governments to privatise energy generation and distribution assets:

“The Australian government notes that government ownership of energy assets may act as a barrier to effective competition, particularly where new entrants may not have sufficient certainty around their ability to compete with public businesses in the energy markets. This can arise from private investors not being certain that the decision‐making by government businesses is fully commercial and that the projected returns are in line with the risks they are bearing, or from the potential for governments to intervene to deliver particular budget or reliability outcomes. An appropriate focus should be given to ensuring competitive neutrality in the interim, with continued privatisation remaining the preferred policy goal.”

Well put. This elicited the odd sight of the notionally free-market Labor Queensland and Liberal NSW governments angrily rejecting the idea of privatisation. But that logic vanishes when it comes to its proposals regarding nuclear power. Nuclear power is so astonishingly expensive to construct — it is easily the most expensive possible form of power generation, with sources such as Moody’s rating agency and The Wall Street Journal estimating construction costs at $7000-8000 per kilowatt-hour — and reactors take so long to build and are so prone to cost blowouts that nuclear power is beyond the capacity of the private sector to fund. Instead, either direct government funding or government loan guarantees for billions of dollars are critical to reactor construction.

That is, while the draft paper urges governments to get out of power generation and distribution, its “fallback” option of nuclear power requires a massive intervention by government in the power generation sector.

This is why it’s particularly amusing to see federal Coalition types such as Greg Hunt spruiking nuclear power when the two things critical to it — a carbon price, to make coal-fired power more expensive, and a heavy government role in power generation — are anathema to them.

Subsidies or loan guarantees aren’t the only form of state intervention when it coms to nuclear power. The costs of cleaning up the aftermath of a nuclear catastrophe are potentially huge and the subject of greater focus since Fukushima. “What is changing is our view of the sheer magnitude of liability associated with an event risk occurrence,” Moody’s concluded in April this year, while noting that the industry had an overall strong safety record. Moody’s had already issued a warning about the financial risks associated with nuclear power in 2008. Governments are ultimately the ones who will pick up the bill for cleaning up after nuclear accidents.

And none of that factors in the cost of storing nuclear waste securely for tens of thousands of years.

There’s one other flaw in the draft’s reasoning on nuclear power. Nuclear power has lower operating costs once it is built than many other forms of power generation — at least assuming the cost of uranium doesn’t get out of hand. That means the overall costs of nuclear power — combining construction and operation — are more competitive than would be the case based on construction alone.

But according to a 2008 US analysis by financial advisers Lazard, nuclear power overall is more expensive in megawatt-hour terms than wind, biomass, geothermal and gas combined-cycle, and about the same cost as solar thermal. Of these, geothermal and biomass are both baseload power sources, and baseload solar thermal (which also high construction costs, but even lower operating costs than nuclear) is already in operation in Spain. The draft’s carefully-constructed scenario in which renewable baseload capacity can’t be commercialised at a cost below that of nuclear power already looks highly improbable.

All of which begs the question of exactly why the draft makes such an effort to propose a backstop role for nuclear energy?

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