Antinuclear

Nuclear power is, and will be more and more, – an economic disaster

Because of costs, the de facto “solution” is firstly to extend reactor operating lifetimes, then partly decommission and dismantle reactors when they are taken out of service, delaying the decontamination of nuclear sites, and pushing all costs into the future. Unfortunately and until the reactors are made safe, they by definition pose almost open-ended risks. These extend from “simple” accidents and technical malfunction, to operator errors, and to the risk of them becoming giant Dirty Bomb targets in civil war, international war, or terror attacks. Even the most extreme non-nuclear industrial risks, notably at “Seveso or Bhopal type” chemical facilities, are pale by comparison.

Nuclear Power Dirty Bomb   The Market Oracle, Oct 28, 2013  By: Andrew_McKillop THE 100-YEAR CURSE Within the next 15 – 20 years as many as 100 industry standard Westinghouse-type 900 MW PWR pressurized water reactors, concentrated in the “old nuclear’ countries will have to be decommissioned, dismantled and their sites made safe – unless political deciders maintain the sinister farce of rubber stamping reactor operating lifetime extensions. The decontamination process could take as long as 100 years. In several countries, especially Germany, Switzerland and probably Japan the dangerous game of politically-decided reactor life extensions – to push back the date of final decommissioning – has already ended or is ending.

But when it does end, nuclear debt will go into overdrive from its already extreme high setting. Nuclear power is capital intensive, lives on subsidies, thrives on false hopes and dies in debt.

Putting a figure on how much the nuclear “decomm” story will cost and how long it will take is in fact impossible – and is signalled by the tell-tale anticipative action of nuclear friendly governments. One stark example is the UK, which now sets decomm as an activity that will only need to start at a generous, or foolhardy 30 or 40 years after the reactor was powered down and removed from the national power grid. Until then, the reactor can sit on the horizon as a contribution to national culture or something “in perfect safety of course”. Decomm periods could or might therefore be 100 years.

DECOMMISSIONING SAGAS  As already noted above, there are no rules, standards and best practice in decommissioning, dismantling and “making safe” or “securing” the former sites of reactors. So there is no standard cost for getting rid of reactors. It is a case-by-case process. This alone prods the highly political decision to set a “delay” between reactor shut down, and decommissioning which as noted above, in the extreme UK case is now set at 30-40 years.

Before the final shut down, of course, reactor operating life extensions can squeeze some more power out of the reactor – and further delay the moment when it has to be decommissioned. Only idiots can pretend this does not expose the reactor to increased risks of accidents. Ask yourselves if you prefer to fly in a 40-year-old airplane, or a new one.

Real-life decomm sagas, as distinct from emergency dismantling following a serious or catastrophic accident as in the case of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima are always – always – a tale of vastly underestimated initial costs and timelines for decomm, followed by massive cost overruns and time overruns. Plenty of examples concern the now-quarter-century old projects, and longer, where initial cost estimates have been exceeded by actual spending by 5 or 10 times, and the decomm project’s time for completion multiplied by 3. And today the projects are not yet fully completed!…….. Continue reading →

October 30, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Slowly unfolding environmental misery – Fukushima nuclear radiation

Even after the company that operates the plant admitted this summer that tonnes of contaminated groundwater were leaking into the Pacific Ocean every day, new accidents have added to the uncontrolled releases of radioactive materials. Last month, newly tainted rainwater overflowed dykes. Two weeks before that, workers mistakenly disconnected a pipe, dumping 10 more tons of contaminated water onto the ground and dousing themselves in the process.

Those accidents have raised questions about whether the continuing leaks are putting the environment, and by extension the Japanese people, in new danger more than 2½ years after the original disaster – and long after many had hoped natural radioactive decay would have allowed healing to begin.

Interviews with scientists suggest they are struggling to determine which effects – including newly discovered hot spots on a wide swath of the ocean floor near Fukushima – are from recent leaks and which are leftovers from the original disaster. But evidence collected by them and the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co, or TEPCO, shows worrying trends.

The latest releases appear to be carrying much more contaminated water than before into the Pacific. And that flow may not slow until at least 2015, when an ice wall around the damaged reactors is supposed to be completed. Beyond that, although many Japanese believed that the plant had stopped spewing radioactive materials long ago, they have continued to seep into the air.

”This has become a slowly unfolding environmental misery,” said Atsunao Marui, a geochemist at the Geological Survey of Japan who has studied contaminated groundwater flowing from the plant. ”If we don’t put a stop to the releases, we risk creating a new man-made disaster.”…… Continue reading →

October 30, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment