Kick Nuclear's Newsletter January 2022

HUNTERSTON CLOSES

At noon on 7th January 2021, Hunterston nuclear power station in Ayrshire closed down for the last time, after 46 years of service. It consisted of two “Advanced Gas-Cooled Nuclear Reactors” (AGRs) able to produce, it was claimed, enough energy to supply 1.7 million homes.  

It joins the 2-reactor AGR power station at Dungeness whose permanent closure was announced last year.

That leaves 13 reactors still operational in the UK, 12 of the obsolescent AGR type, 6 of which are due to shut down by 2025 and the rest by 2030. The 13th, Sizewell B, opened in 1997, and is of the newer Pressurised-Water Reactor (PWR) type and is due to remain in service until at least 2034.

So what is the future for nuclear power in the UK? In 2019 it was planned that a new generation of some ten new two-reactor nuclear power stations (soon reduced to eight) should be built to replace the AGRs.

So far only one of these has started construction, at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Two others are still at the planning stage, plans for power stations at the other sites having been cancelled or not taken up.

The construction of the station at Hinkley C has been bedeviled by serious problems, though the company building Electicité de France (EDF) still claims it will be operating by 2026.

However that was before it was suggested recently that a new design fault had been discovered in the “European Pressurised Reactor” (EPR) design that was being built at Hinkley.

Two EPR reactors in China are the only EPRs that have successfully begun operating though both took much longer to build and cost much than originally budgetted.  

CGN, the Chinese operator of the two EPR reactors announced on July 2021 one of these reactors was being “shutdown for maintenance” because “a small number of damaged fuel rods…[had] caused an accumulation of radioactive gases in the primary, sealed circuit of the power plant.”

However, the French Commission for Independent Research told France’s nuclear safety authority that a whistle-blower had informed them that what she described as a “leak” (of radioactive gases) was caused by damage to more than 70 fuel rods rather than the five CGN had claimed and that the damage was caused by “abnormal vibrations” which indicated a possible design fault in the reactor pressure vessel.

French nuclear authorities in consequence halted construction of the EPR in construction in France in Flamanville (already 11 years late in completion) and recommended that Finland did not start-up the almost-completed EPR station being built at Olkiluoto (13 years late).

In the UK, The Nuclear Free Local Authorities network (NFLA) has written to the Minister of State for Energy and the Head of the Office of Nuclear Regulation calling for an indefinite halt to construction work at the new Hinkley C nuclear plant whilst the impact of the Taishan-1 nuclear accident in China is investigated. The Chair of the NFLA Steering Committee, Councillor David Blackburn, wrote to the then Minister of State for Trade Policy, Greg Hands, and Chief Executive Mark Foy outlining concerns that a radioactive gas leak at the Taishan 1 reactor in China has uncovered a potentially fatal design flaw which could have a serious impact.

It doesn’t seem that the government has acceded to this request, but certainly if a design fault is found to require fixing, this is likely to delay Hinkley C’s completion for a considerable period and add a lot to its spiralling cost.

In 2018 EDF dug more than 100,000 tonnes of radioactively-contaminated mud from the bed of the Severn near Hinkley Point dumped it into the sea less than two miles from Cardiff. This led to to widespread protests and and the license to dump there was not renewed when it ran out. However, in August 2021 the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) granted a licence for dumping in the sea off Portishead, near Bristol instead and EDF started dumping many more tonnes of the mud there.

Opposition to the dumping increased after a “Bristol Channel Citizens Radiation Survey” concluded that the spread of man-made radioactivity from reactor discharges into the Severn Estuary was far more extensive and widespread than previously reported. 

The survey was undertaken by groups from both sides of the Bristol Channel after EDF Energy refused to carry out post-dumping surveys of the Cardiff Grounds and Portishead sites where the dumping took place.

 The survey found that shoreline concentrations of two radio nucleides (Caesium 137 and Americium 241) typical of the effluents from the Hinkley reactors and indicators of the presence of Plutonium 239/240 and 241, do not decline significantly with distance from the Hinkley site as Government and Industry surveys had previously reported. Overall, the study found significant concentrations of Hinkley-derived radioactivity in samples from all 11 sites surveyed, seven along the Somerset coast and four in south Wales and found unexpectedly high concentrations in sediments from Bristol Docks, the tidal River Avon, the Portishead shoreline, Burnham-on-Sea and Woodspring Bay.

Also, campaigners on both sides of the estuary have applied for judicial review of the decision by MMO to allow dumping at the Portishead site.

Meanwhile plans for building nuclear power stations at Sizewell C and Bradwell B lie gathering dust, as they have for many years, the plans for Sizewell C since 2012, when EDF claimed that we would be able to cook our Christmas dinners in 2017 with electricity generated from Sizewell C.

This may change if the The Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill, introduced into Parliament on 26th November 2021, and currently going through Parliament is passed. This introduces a new financing model (The “Regulated Asset Base” (RAB)) for nuclear power projects which essentially loads construction costs on the consumer while construction is going on. This contrasts with the “Contracts for Difference” model being used for the construction of Hinkley C, where developers finance the whole cost of construction of the power station but in return for being paid an agreed fixed price (the “strike price”) for the plant’s electricity output once it is operating. The latter model has great disadvantages for both the constructor and the tax-payer. If the project collapses during building the constructor loses all the money they’ve put into the project. If it succeeds then if the strike price is higher than the price it can be sold at on the market then the government (and ultimately the tax-payer) has to pay the difference and since the strike price arrived at is more than double the declining cost of electricity from renewable sources, this sum will be very large.  

The government expects the new funding model to attract a wider range of private investment into new nuclear power projects; certainly they have signally failed to do so with the old model over the last few years. With energy bills already rapidly increasing, consumers, however, many well object to paying much more again for financing the building of nuclear power stations that will take many years before they come into operation and may even never do so. 

And in December 2020, the government pledged £1.7bn to “support at least one large-scale nuclear project by 2025” (presumably Sizewell C).

If all this sounds like desperation, I think it is.

There has been talk of starting building Sizewell C in 2022, but its cause has not been helped by the report of the suspected design fault in the EPR reactor in China or the seeming collapse of the agreement between the British Government, EDF and the Chinese state-owned  company Chinese General Nuclear (CGN) for CGN to take a majority stake in building two Chinese-designed reactors at the projected Bradwell B nuclear power station, in return for taking a one-third stake in the Hinkley Point C power station and a 20% one in the projected Sizewell C one.

Thus the Financial Times reported in July 2021 that the UK government was exploring ways to remove CGN from all future power projects in the UK, including Sizewell C “according to people close to the discussions” and presumably Bradwell C. This could be put the other way. Since CGN’s investments in Hinkley C and Sizewell B was dependent on being allowed to build a Chinese-designed reactor at Bradwell, CGN will surely withdraw its investment from at least Sizewell, and probably Hinkley C too unless it sees the possibility of its investment there making a profit. The government’s pledge of £1.7bn in Sizewell C is perhaps an attempt to plug the gap in financing the project caused by CGN’s very likely withdrawal. (Though the gap caused would amount to at least £4bn, 20% of the £20bn current projected overall cost of the project.)

My own view is that Hinkley C will be completed, but there is no chance presently that Bradwell B will ever be built and it is very likely EDF will not go ahead with Sizewell C unless the government invests heavily in it. 

FUKUSHIMA: ANOTHER PROBLEM!

At Kick Nuclear’s Friday vigils outside the Japanese Embassy (for details see front page) we have begun handing out a new Fukushima Nuclear Disaster 2022 Update that I’ve written (copies sent at request) 

In this update I talked about the continuance of the disaster, including the problem of dealing with well over a million tonnes of radioactive water already, and continually rising, being stored in tanks as a result of the need to keep the reactors’ melted-down fuel cool by pouring water down through the ractors. Japan’s current plan is to dump all this water in the Pacific, after it has been subject to a treatment process that removes a lot of the radioactivity, but not all (It doesn’t remove the tritium or all of other radio nucleides), thus polluting the Pacific.

What I completely overlooked however was the problem of what to do with the of course this doesn’t result in a diminution of the radioactivity involved, it just means it gets highly concentrated in a much smaller volume. The resulting mixture is characterized as “slurry”.

“But where to put it?” an article dated 10/1/22 by Robert Hunziker in Counterpunch asks.

He continues, “How to handle and dispose of the radioactive slurry…is almost, and in fact may be, an impossible quagmire. It’s a big one as the storage containers for the tainted slurry quickly degrade because of the high concentration of radioactive slurry. These storage containers…in turn, have to be constantly replaced as the radioactivity slurry eats away at the containers’ liners.

“Radioactive slurry is muddy and resembles a shampoo in appearance, and it contains highly radioactive strontium readings that reach tens of millions of Becquerel’s per cubic centimeter. Whereas, according to the [US Environmental Protection Agency], 148 Becquerel’s per cubic metre…is the safe level for human exposure. Thus, tens of millions per cubic centimetre is “off the charts” dangerous! Instant death…

“Since March 2013, TEPCO has accumulated 3,373 special vessels that hold these highly toxic radioactive slurry concentrations. But, because the integrity of the vessels deteriorates so quickly, the durability of the containers reaches a limit, meaning the vessels will need replacement by mid-2025.

“Making matters ever worse…the NRA [US Nuclear Regulatory Authority] has actually accused TEPCO [the Tokyo Electric Power Company] of “underestimating the impact issue of the radioactivity on the containers linings,” claiming TEPCO improperly measured the slurry density when conducting dose evaluations. Whereas, the density level is always highest at the bottom, not the top where TEPCO did the evaluations, thus failing to measure and report the most radioactive of the slurry. Not a small error.

“As of June 2021, NRA’s own assessment of the containers concluded …31 radioactive super hot containers had…reached the end of operating life…another 56 would need replacement within the next 2 years.

“Transferring slurry is a time-consuming highly dangerous horrific job, which exposes yet a second issue of unacceptable risks of radioactive substances released into the air during transfer of slurry. TEPCO expects to open and close the transfers remotely. But, TEPCO, as of January 2, 2022, has not yet revealed acceptable plans for dealing with the necessary transfer of slurry from weakening, almost deteriorated containers, into fresh, new containers.  (Source: TEPCO Slow to Respond to Growing Crisis at Fukushima Plant, The Asahi Shimbun, [2/1/22]

“Meanwhile, additional batches of a massive succession of containers that must be transferred to new containers will be reaching the end of shelf life, shortly.

“Another nightmarish problem has surfaced for TEPCO…In the aftermath of the 2011 blowup, TEPCO stored radioactive water in underground spaces below two buildings near reactor No.4. Bags of a mineral known as zeolite were placed to absorb cesium. Twenty-six tons (52,000 lbs.) of bags are still immersed with radiation readings of 4 Sieverts per hour, enough to kill half of all workers in the immediate vicinity within one hour. The bags need to be removed.

“TEPCO intends to robotically start removing the highly radioactive bags, starting in 2023, but does not know where the bags should be stored. Where do you store radioactive bags containing enough radioactive power to kill someone within one hour of exposure?...”