Big costs sink flagship nuclear project and they’ll sink future small modular reactor projects too 

 By Susan O’Donnell and M.V. Ramana, January 21, 2024,  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/01/21/big-costs-sink-flagship-nuclear-project/

The major news in the world of nuclear energy last November was the collapse of the Carbon Free Power Project in the United States. The project was to build six NuScale small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). Given NuScale’s status as the flagship SMR design not just in the U.S. but even globally, the project’s cancellation should ring alarm bells in Canada. Yet SMRs are touted as a climate action strategy although it is becoming clearer by the day that they will delay a possible transition to net-zero energy and render it more expensive.

The NuScale project failed because there were not enough customers for its expensive electricity. Construction cost estimates for the project had been steadily rising—from USD 4.2 billion for 600 megawatts in 2018 to a staggering USD 9.3 billion (CAD 12.8 billion) for 462 megawatts. Using a combination of government subsidies, potentially up to USD 4.2 billion, and  an opaque calculation method, NuScale claimed that it would produce electricity at USD 89 per megawatt-hour. When standard U.S. government subsidies are included, electricity from wind and solar energy projects, including battery storage, could be as cheap as USD 12 to USD 31 per megawatt-hour.

A precursor to the failed NuScale project was mPower, which also received massive funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. Described by The New York Times as the leader in the SMR race, mPower could not find investors or customers. By 2017, the project was essentially dead. Likewise, a small reactor in South Korea proved to be “not practical or economic”.

Ignoring this dire economic reality, provincial governments planning for SMRs – Ontario, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta – published a “strategic plan” seemingly designed to convince the federal government to open its funding floodgates. Offering no evidence about the costs of these technologies, the report asserts: “The power companies assessed that SMRs have the potential to be an economically competitive source of energy.”

For its part, the federal government has coughed up grants totalling more than $175 million to five different SMR projects in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan. The Canada Infrastructure Bank loaned $970 million to Ontario Power Generation to develop its Darlington New Nuclear project. And the Canada Energy Regulator’s 2023 Canada’s Energy Future report envisioned a big expansion of nuclear energy based on wishful thinking and unrealistic assumptions about SMRs.

Canada’s support is puzzling when considering other official statements about nuclear energy. In 2021, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said that nuclear power must compete with renewable energy in the market. The previous year, then Environment Minister and current Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson also emphasized competition with other sources of energy, concluding “the winner will be the one that can provide electrical energy at the lowest cost.” Given the evidence about high costs, nuclear power cannot compete with renewable energy, let alone provide electricity at the lowest cost.

Investing huge amounts of taxpayer money in technologies that are uncompetitive is bad enough, but an equally serious problem is wasting time. The primary justification for this government largesse is dealing with climate change. But the urgency of that crisis requires action now, not in two decades.

All the SMR designs planned in Canada’s provinces are still on the drawing board. The design furthest along in the regulatory process – the BWRX-300 slated for Ontario’s Darlington site – does not yet have a licence to begin construction. New Brunswick’s choices – a sodium cooled fast reactor and a molten salt reactor – are demonstrably problematic and will take longer to build.

Recently built nuclear plants have taken, on average, 9.8 years from start of construction to producing electricity. The requisite planning, regulatory evaluations of new designs, raising the necessary finances, and finding customers who want to pay higher electricity bills might add another decade.

SMR vendors have to raise not only the billions needed to build the reactor but also the funding to complete their designs. NuScale spent around USD 1.8 billion (CAD 2.5 billion), and the reactor was still left with many unresolved safety problems. ARC-100 and Moltex proponents in New Brunswick have each asked for at least $500 million to further develop their designs. Moltex has been unable to obtain the required funding to match the $50.5 million federal grant it received in 2021.

Adverse economics killed the flagship NuScale SMR project. There is no reason to believe the costs of SMR designs proposed in Canada will be any lower. Are government officials attentive enough to hear the clanging alarm bells?

Susan O’Donnell is adjunct research professor and primary investigator of the CEDAR project at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia.

January 22, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | energy, news, nuclear, nuclear-energy, nuclear-power | Leave a comment

UK’s nuclear obsessions kill off its net zero strategy

The new Roadmap reads like an outing to a massive nuclear sweet shop. On top of Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, we’ll have one more big one. And then we’ll have lots of Small Modular Reactors, all over the country. And we’ll have a new fuel processing plant. And a new Geological Disposal Facility – at some much more distance point. And so on and on. 24 fantastical Gigawatts to be designed and delivered by 2050.

Jonathon Porritt, 18 Jan 24

After 14 years of Tory mismanagement, the UK finds itself bereft of an energy strategy.

This was finally confirmed in the release last week of the Government’s new Nuclear Roadmap. At one level, it’s just the same old, same old, the latest in a very long line of PR-driven, more or less fantastical wishlists for new nuclear in the UK. But at another, it’s a total revelation.

For years, a small group of dedicated academics and campaigners have suggested that the UK Government’s Nuclear Energy Strategy is being driven more by the UK’s continuing commitment to an “independent” nuclear weapons capability than by any authoritative energy analysis. For an equal number of years, this was aggressively rebutted by one Energy Minister after another, both Tory and Labour.

The new Nuclear Roadmap dramatically changes all that. It sets to one side any pretence that the links between our civil nuclear programme and our military defence needs were anything other than small-scale – and of no material strategic significance. With quite startling transparency and clarity, the Roadmap not only reveals the full extent of those links, but positively celebrates that co-dependency as a massive plus in our ambition to achieve a Net Zero economy by 2050.

“Startling” is actually an understatement. Such a comprehensive volte-face is rare in policy-making circles. Every effort is usually made by Ministers to obscure the scale (let along the significance) of any such screeching handbrake turns. That is so not the case with the new Roadmap.

Courtesy of the latest forensic work done by Professors Andy Stirling and Phil Johnstone at Sussex University (who have been absolutely at the forefront of seeking to bring these links into the public domain over many years – often with mighty little support from mainstream environmental organisations, let alone “independent” commentators), chapter and verse of this volte-face can be laid bare. Just three o examples from the Roadmap:

• “Not only does this Roadmap set a clear path for the growth of nuclear fission…it acknowledges the crucial importance of the nuclear industry to our national security, both in terms of energy supply and the defence nuclear enterprise.”

• “Government will proactively look for opportunities to align delivery of the civil and nuclear defence enterprises, whilst maintaining the highest standards of non-proliferation.”

• “To address the commonalities across the civil and defence supply chains, and the potential risk to our respective nuclear programmes due to competing demand for the supply chain, the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is working closely with the Ministry of Defence and the Defence Nuclear Sector.”

And there’s a whole lot more than that! As Andy Stirling has said: “Without any reflection on what this says about previous efforts to suppress discussion of this issue, the Government is now openly emphasising its significance.”

Indeed!

As usual, the UK’s ill-informed and unbelievably gullible mainstream media would appear to have missed the significance of this gobsmacking inflection point. So one can hardly expect them to have grasped its even more significant implications for UK energy strategy as a whole. In every single particular.

Let me briefly unpack some of those particulars:

1. Nuclear

The new Roadmap reads like an outing to a massive nuclear sweet shop. On top of Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, we’ll have one more big one. And then we’ll have lots of Small Modular Reactors, all over the country. And we’ll have a new fuel processing plant. And a new Geological Disposal Facility – at some much more distance point. And so on and on. 24 fantastical Gigawatts to be designed and delivered by 2050.

The reality couldn’t be more different:

• We will indeed end up with Hinkley Point C – at a staggering of cost of somewhere between £26 billion and £30 billion, with consumers paying twice as much for its electricity as they will for offshore wind. And it will almost certainly not come online until the end of the decade, 15 years on from the time it was meant to be up and running.

• We may possibly get Sizewell C, though the Government cannot currently guarantee the required level of investment. So a Final Investment Decision is unlikely before the next Election. At which point, Starmer may come to his senses and kill off this absurd white elephant.

• We will never get a third big reactor. The economics are literally impossible to justify.

• We are unlikely to get more than a couple of hugely expensive Small Modular Reactors, at some indeterminate point in the future, even with a new “flexible approach” to planning and financial inducements. Even that may prove to be an illusion. As Professor Steve Thomas has written: “Advocates of Small Nuclear Reactors claim they are cheaper and easier to build, safer, generate less waste, and will create many jobs compared to existing large reactor designs. These claims are unproven, misleading, or just plain wrong. Worldwide, no commercial design of SMR has even received a firm order yet.”

• And we may or may not get life extensions for the last five power stations in the “legacy fleet” – subject to regulatory approval, which may not be all that easy given extensive cracking in their reactor cores.

In short, the Roadmap is just a massive diversion from reality. Entailing incalculable opportunity costs. And putting at risk our entire Net Zero by 2050 strategy.

Ministers know all that. But they don’t really care. Our nuclear weapons programme (including upgrading Trident) will be protected as a consequence of this, via an unceasing flow of public money into the civil nuclear cul-de-sac, at a time when our defence budget is already massively overstretched. So who cares about the missing 24GW?

2. Renewables

We’ll continue to see new investment into renewables here in the UK, despite (not because of) government policy, which has seriously messed up our offshore wind industry, maintained a de facto ban on onshore wind, couldn’t care less about solar, witters on vapidly about tidal without doing anything etc etc.

Meanwhile, on a global basis, renewables continue to boom. Here are a few facts – in contrast to over-excited sightings of nuclear unicorns:…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Why don’t people see this?

Why don’t our mainstream media offer any serious critique of what’s going on here?

Why don’t our opposition parties rip to shreds this tissue of preposterous illusions?

The reasons for this almost complete silence can be traced back to successive governments’ grim intent to hang onto our so-called “independent nuclear deterrent”. At literally any costs…………………………………………………………………….more https://www.jonathonporritt.com/uks-nuclear-obsessions-kill-off-its-net-zero-strategy/

January 20, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | energy, news, nuclear, nuclear-energy, nuclear-power | Leave a comment

Work officially ‘started’ at Sizewell C Nuclear on Monday – but it was really only political theatre.

Ipswich Star,  By Paul Geater 18 Jan 24

This week we had big fanfares and a major ceremony to “mark the start” of construction at Sizewell C.

But what did it all mean? 

In one sense construction has already started. Land has been dug up, mature trees have been cut down, and one of the new entrances to the site is being cleared.

However, the Final Investment Decision (FID), the point at which the various parties are committed to building the station is still, apparently, several months away – so Monday’s ceremony really does look like nothing but a piece of political theatre.

What is clear, though, is that there is clear political will for this project to go ahead. The Government and the official opposition are both committed to it whatever the cost they may be exposed to.

I can understand that. I still don’t think it makes a great deal of economic sense – but given the uncertainties across the globe and the need to move to carbon zero energy I can see why they want to proceed with nuclear whatever the cost.

Personally I don’t have any concerns about the potential safety of the plant – while there are potential dangers with nuclear generation the experience over the last 60 years in this country suggests it can be operated safely.

And given that there are already two nuclear plants at Sizewell that need to be protected from the sea, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to put the new plant next to them so the protection can be shared.

 I still have serious concerns with EDF and the government – who must be seen as equal partners in the project – over the way it is going to be built and the devastating impact it will have on local communities.

By adopting a “bull in a china shop” attitude towards its construction, EDF and the government are planning to cause substantial environmental damage to some of the most precious parts of the Heritage Coast that are closely linked in with Minsmere and Dunwich Heath……………………………………

Creating a new nature reserve two miles inland is great – but it can’t replace a massive area that’s directly linked to the coast.

But I fear that battle is lost now. With both the current government and the likely future government keen on the project, the best we can hope for is that some new habitats will make up for the lost treasures………………….

There’s also been a failure to really engage with local people. There have now been local community forums set up but they are being treated with suspicion by many.  https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/24054795.opinion-sizewell-c-still-doesnt-engage-residents/

January 20, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | energy, news, nuclear, nuclear-energy, nuclear-power | Leave a comment

Dissension in the nuclear lobby – it had to happen – Small Nuclear versus Big Nuclear.

Comment. As the UK fumbles its way through its “Civil Nuclear Roadmap” folly, the Rolls Royce lobby paints Hinkley and Sizewell projects as obsolete trash, and touts Rolls Royce’s non existent small reactors as Britain’s energy salvation .

 Jeremy Warner: Outsourcing Britain’s nuclear renewal is insanity.
Rolls-Royce’s modular reactors are an obvious way to break free of EDF’s
grip.

Here we go again. Einstein’s definition of insanity is to keep doing
the same thing and expecting different outcomes. You would think that the
Government had learned its lesson on nuclear renewal after the debacle of
Hinkley Point C. Clearly not.

Having already made the same mistake once, by
pledging a replica of the ruinously costly Hinkley at Sizewell on the
Suffolk coast, ministers are doubling down and promising a third such
monstrosity somewhere else.

According to the Government’s “Nuclear
Roadmap”, published last week, another of these leviathans in an as yet
unspecified location is to be given the go-ahead later this year. On the
most recent estimates, Hinkley Point C is expected to cost at least 80pc
more than its original budget and is years behind schedule. Some fear that
it won’t be until the early 2030s before the reactors are fully
operational, such have been the technical and safety complications
encountered in the construction phase.

Ministers have also had to agree to
punishingly expensive output prices to persuade the main developer,
France’s state-controlled EDF, to build in the first place, committing
consumers to high electricity costs for decades to come. So much for the
promise once made by the ever courteous Vincent de Rivaz, the one-time boss
of EDF in Britain, that Hinkley Point would be cooking our Christmas
lunches by 2017.

Even allowing for the learning process – theoretically,
later projects to the same design should cost less, with past mistakes
taken on board – it beggars belief that the Government should attempt to
repeat such a tried and demonstrably poor value for money technology.

Given the experience of Hinkley Point C, why are we still pursuing the hugely
costly, largely obsolete technology of EDF’s gigawatt stations when there
are perfectly viable, but smaller, homegrown alternatives just waiting for
the opportunity to fill the gap? If we are to spend £28bn a year of
taxpayers’ money on going green, as promised by Labour, we should at
least be confident that a large part of the wider economic benefit is
reserved for UK supply chains, and is not instead squandered on supporting
jobs abroad in France, China, Denmark and the US.

 Telegraph 13th Jan 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/13/uk-go-full-nuclear-ensure-solutions-british/

January 15, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | energy, news, nuclear, nuclear-energy, nuclear-power | Leave a comment

The real reason why the USA pushed for the world to “triple nuclear power” at COP 28.

While China dominates the wind- and solar-power sectors, nuclear energy is one area where officials believe the U.S. could compete with its long menu of newer reactor types and fuels.

U.S. puts diplomatic clout behind sales of cutting-edge reactors that have yet to show commercial success

Washington Heats Up Nuclear Energy Competition With Russia, China

By William Mauldin and Jennifer Hiller, Jan. 6, 2024  https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/washington-heats-up-nuclear-energy-competition-with-russia-china-f2f18e75

WASHINGTON—To compete with its biggest geopolitical rivals, the U.S. government is looking toward small nuclear reactors.

Not a single so-called small modular reactor has been sold or even built in the U.S., but American officials are trying to persuade partner countries to acquire the cutting-edge nuclear reactors still under development by U.S. firms. The goal: to wrest nuclear market share from Russia—the global industry giant—and defend against China’s fast-growing nuclear-technology industry.

The U.S. hopes that putting its clout behind a new technology can cement future commercial and diplomatic relationships and chip away at China’s and Russia’s ability to dominate their neighbors’ energy supply.

The Biden administration also sees nuclear energy as a way to export reliable green (?) energy, since nuclear-power plants split atoms and don’t burn carbon-based fuels that contribute most to climate change. With Russia’s broad 2022 invasion of Ukraine sending Poland and other European countries looking for new energy partners, U.S. officials and industry leaders see a potential opening in the market for U.S. exports to compete with China’s growing nuclear ambitions.

While China dominates the wind- and solar-power sectors, nuclear energy is one area where officials believe the U.S. could compete with its long menu of newer reactor types and fuels. The U.S. aims to sign agreements for partnerships lasting 50 years or longer to provide U.S. technology to Moscow’s former energy partners and to fast-growing countries in Southeast Asia worried about overreliance on Chinese and Russian energy.

“If we’re the supplier, we support the energy security of our allies and partners,” said Ted Jones, head of national security and international programs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, a U.S. industry group. “We help prevent them from finding themselves in the situation of Europe with respect to Russian gas and nuclear.”

At the core of the U.S. campaign is a technology, yet-unproven in the U.S., called a small modular reactor, or SMR. SMRs generate about one-third the energy of a conventional nuclear reactor and can be prefabricated and shipped to the site. Among other potential advantages, they are intended to be cheaper than larger reactors, which often have to be custom designed, and they can be installed to meet growing demand for energy, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

‘Very, very long-term strategic partnership’

U.S. officials say they are working with developers of SMRs, and the government-run Export-Import Bank and the U.S. International Development Finance Corp., to win overseas orders that will bring down costs and build an order book for the new technology, all while linking the countries’ energy systems to the U.S. and its allies. By 2035, the U.S. Nuclear Energy Agency estimates that the global SMR market could reach 21 gigawatts of power, enough to power two billion LED lightbulbs.

“It’s important that the United States maintains that leadership in the transition from the laboratory to the grid and deployment and commerciality,” said Geoffrey Pyatt, the State Department’s assistant secretary of energy resources. “It’s about building a very, very long term strategic partnership.”

To make nuclear-energy exports a viable tool of foreign policy, U.S. companies will have to prove they can deliver smaller reactors for export on time and budget, a goal that has eluded larger nuclear-power plants in the West.

The U.S. has yet to build an SMR, and none is yet under construction in the U.S. The concept’s economics remain unproven, as does the timeline for building such a reactor. One company, Kairos Power, recently received construction approval for a demonstration project in Tennessee. It plans to focus on the domestic market. NuScale Power, one of the major U.S. players, recently canceled an SMR project in Idaho when a group of utilities in the Mountain West couldn’t get enough members to commit.

To make the concept work, most SMRs’ developers would need a pipeline of orders so they could move into factory-style production, lowering unit costs.

Among the potential customers U.S. industry and government officials are looking at are Polish energy company Orlen, which wants to build SMRs designed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank and U.S. International Development Finance Corp. have offered to arrange up to $4 billion in financing for a plant planned by NuScale in Romania, with an aim of going online in 2029 or 2030. U.S. officials also say they are in discussions with Bulgaria, Ghana, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and the Philippines on new nuclear projects.

China is leading the world in reactor construction and recently started commercial operations of a plant with two SMRs. The country is now building 22 of the 58 reactors under construction around the world, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. China has built reactors in Pakistan and aims to join Russia as a major exporter of nuclear technology.

Last year, China and the U.S. were jockeying to provide civilian nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. Washington appeared close to a deal, part of a regional pact with Israel, but it was derailed by Hamas’s attack on Israelis in October and the subsequent war in Gaza.

U.S. sales pitch: We’re less risky than Russia and China

Russia’s state-owned Rosatom, meanwhile, is a major exporter of both reactors and nuclear fuel.

According to the latest World Nuclear Industry Status Report, it was building 24 reactors: 19 large reactors in countries from Turkey to Bangladesh, a barge to be equipped with two small reactors under construction in China but intended for use in Russia, and three reactors at home. Of the reactors under construction in Russia, two are large; the third is an SMR that would use liquid metal for cooling. Rosatom started commercial operations of two SMRs on a floating barge in 2020, though that project took longer and cost more than expected.

Washington is counting on partner countries’ interest in working with U.S. firms and what officials are selling as a less risky tie-up than working with Moscow and Beijing on projects that have a lifespan of 50 years or more.

“It’s never good if our allies are dependent on a potential adversarial country for energy,” said Bret Kugelmass, chief executive of nuclear-power startup Last Energy, which plans to build microreactors that would generate 20 megawatts of electricity and be sited near factories.

The process for hammering out a network of government and commercial deals can take years, with U.S. officials working alongside foreign counterparts, export credit agencies, nuclear-energy firms and utilities, not to mention the U.S. Congress. Russia and China have the advantage of state-led financial sectors to fund projects that can span a decade until power flows.

U.S. industry executives and government officials say they are now working on shortcuts to marketing reactors, including setting up a single government-to-government deal that includes corporate contracts and public and private financing assistance.

The new deals are designed to appeal to partner countries that want a simpler path to getting a reactor, without the heavy dose of Chinese financing that U.S. officials say might have strings attached.

January 8, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | energy, news, nuclear, nuclear-energy, nuclear-power | Leave a comment

TODAY. Nuclear Industry’s New Year Resolution – “Let’s get sloppier about safety

yeah, well - it’s a new day, it’s a beautiful new year - let’s look on the bright side. The global nuclear lobby is certainly doing that with its glowing plans for tripling of nuclear energy by 2050

Safety is now a downgraded priority. A couple of today’s examples – Japanese nuclear safety regulators lifted an operational ban on a nuclear plant owned by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, deciding that it’s now safe after all.  In the USA, the NRC (federal nuclear safety agency) decides that  cracks in a backup emergency fuel line at a South Carolina nuclear plant are not so serious any more.

Let’s forget the nuclear industry’s history of major (and continuing) disasters, “minor” mishaps and near-misses. And let’s forget the dangers of crumbling old reactors, untested new gee-whiz ones, cracking and corroding copper pipes and waste containers, terrorism risks, drone dangers, cyber-security hazards, transport risks, extreme weather events, weapons proliferation, mishaps in space, and crookedness and corruption in the industry.

Yey! let’s waltz away into 2024 with the jolly prospect of nuclear power solving the climate crisis, energy crisis and so on. We can brush up the old big reactors (saves us the cost of scrapping them – leave that job to our grandchildren ), build myriad little tiny reactors in every country, (sell them especially developing places that have no expertise in nuclear technology) , and bring happiness and wealth to that small but highly organised phalanx of global nuclear ‘Influencers” – while the rest of us party on, and our bought politicians smile benignly.

After all, there are the various nationall safety and radiation protection agencies to save us . Right?

Trouble is – safety reporting procedures are designed to protect the nuclear industry, not the public.

Agencies like USA’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission rely on the International Atomic Energy Agency – whose brief is to promote the nuclear industry - a brief beautifully expressed by its slimy Director General, Rafael Grossi.

Let’s consider- the “safety” of ionising radiation:

• The established health ministeries rely on the Commission on Radiological Protection, which relies on The Radiation Protection Commission which relies on the international Commission on Radiological Protection, which relies on the IAEA / RERF (Reference Materials)
• The IAEA / RERF relies on the military industrial nuclear complex of five veto-wielding Security Council members

They pass the nuclear safety handball back and forth between each other - as the nuclear-industrial-military complex rolls on towards armageddon.

December 30, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | energy, news, nuclear, nuclear-energy, nuclear-power | Leave a comment