Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Workers at Former Huntington Plants Exposed to Plutonium, Neptunium

HNN has confirmed through publicly available, unclassified documents that the workers at the formerly ‘secret’ Huntington Pilot Plant/Reduction Pilot Plant (HPP/RPP) on the INCO campus were exposed to [at least] “trace quantities” of Neptunium and Plutonium. The Huntington
facility received nickel from reactors at Hansford and Savannah River, as well as the Paducah and Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plants. The Portsmouth, Ohio, plant is located in Piketon, Ohio. Vina Colley, a compensated Portsmouth (Piketon) Diffusion Plant former atomic worker and activist for compensation of workers, believes that plutonium and other residue on
materials sent to Huntington for recycling and decontamination eventually made the Huntington plant contaminated beyond clean up. The material that the Huntington plant received had been used at these various atomic energy plants as part of the chemical flow. Huntington’s job was to reduce/remove the radioactivity and separate the compounds. For instance, once process
separated nickel carbonyl and enriched uranium.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

France's BNP Paribas Quits Bulgaria Belene N-Plant

BNP Paribas SA, France's largest bank by market value, who was hired by the previous Socialist government to help fund the construction of Belene nuclear power plant at the Danube river town, has ditched the project. This has been announced by French media Enviro2B, confirming earlier Bulgaria reports and rumours. State-run power utility NEK, which holds a 51% stake in the scheme, has confirmed that relationships with the bank have been ended by mutual consent without any claims. "Faced with a heated debate started by environmentalists, the French bank BNP Paribas has after all decided to withdraw from the construction of Bulgaria's Belene nuclear power plant, the financing of which the French bank was coordinating," French Enviro2B reports. The news comes two and a half months after German utility RWE abandoned plans to participate in the construction of a 2000MW nuclear plant in the Bulgarian Danube town of Belene due to funding problems.

Hello, and welcome to Nuclear Reaction’s Nuclear Glossary. In this occasional series we’ll be bringing you a handy cut-out-and-keep guide to what the nuclear industry says and what the nuclear industry actually means. Never again will you be confused, fooled or otherwise misled by nuclear industry propaganda, greenwash and false promises.

What they say: ‘Safe’
What they mean: ‘Produces vast amounts of dangerous waste that will be a burden for the next 240,000 years to while dispersing dangerous radionuclides into the environment.’

What they say: ‘Cheap’
What they mean: ‘Hardly affordable even with government subsidies and loan guarantees.’

What they say: ‘We believe nuclear is competitive.’
What they mean: ‘New nuclear power stations will not be built in Britain unless the government provides financial support for the industry.’

What they say: ‘Learning curve’
What they mean: ‘Massive cost and schedule overruns, safety violations, design concerns, and thousands of construction defects.’

What they say: ‘Reliable’
What they mean: ‘Unreliable’

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry
The world's radioactive rubbish is piling up

The Pacific Sandpiper, a specially built cargo ship with safety features far in excess of those found on conventional vessels, left Britain's Barrow port bound for Japan the other day. The security surrounding its departure on Jan. 21 indicates that something out of the ordinary is aboard. The Pacific Sandpiper and several sister ships make no port calls on their voyages between Europe and Japan because they carry potentially lethal nuclear material. But the elaborate and costly arrangement casts light on two of the most problematic and controversial aspects of civilian nuclear power - how to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons material and knowhow to terrorists and rogue states, and how to store nuclear waste safely for the long-term when it can remain radioactive for hundreds of years. With the number of power reactors expected to rise from 435 in 31 countries to nearly 570 in 42 countries by 2020, and with much of this expansion expected to take place in Asia and the Middle East, the need for safeguards on uranium or plutonium processing that could be used to make nuclear weapons is obvious. High-level radioactive waste is accumulating at a rate of about 12,000 tons per year worldwide. Without a long-term solution, the pile of radioactive "rubbish" will become so big and so widely dispersed that it may be impossible to manage safely.

We have to admit we had taken the nuclear industry a bit too seriously until now. After all they had billions and billions and billions of public money, and determined to affect our energy choices and future.

But now we know the industry is not strong at all and need all the help they can get to survive: Two days ago World Nuclear Association was proud to present that “Nuclear named for Copenhagen reductions”. This is what publicly known as a “huge overstatement”. The whole article is based on one single country: Morocco.

They might fool their industry subscribers but not us, we do read other news. There are 55 countries that have communicated their submissions to Copenhagen Accord and 15 of them are the developing countries that communicated their Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions, One of these countries had nuclear plans, which made the industry extremely happy sappy.

Congratulations to the hard working staff of the World Nuclear Association who has been working day and night to keep the spirits up in a dying industry.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:
Italy govt contests regions' anti-nuclear stance

Italy has turned to its Constitutional Court to overrule regional anti-nuclear energy laws, the government said on Thursday, raising stakes in its drive to revive nuclear power. The centre-right government will challenge laws which bar construction of nuclear power stations in the southern regions of Puglia, Campania and Basilicata in order to defend its right to set energy policy, Economic Development Minister Claudio Scajola said. "If we do not contest the three laws it would create a dangerous precedent which could lead regions to adopt other decisions negative for siting infrastructure the country needs," he said in a statement.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Ahmadinejad says Iran will start producing higher-grade nuclear fuel
‘Iran's President ordered his nuclear chief yesterday to start producing higher-grade fuel, raising the stakes in a dispute with the West days after claiming to have accepted a UN-drafted deal. The announcement, made by President Ahmadinejad on live television, drew an immediate reaction from Britain, which said that it was "clearly a matter of serious concern". Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, called for an increase in international pressure on Iran. The US, Britain, China and other major powers have proposed that Iran send most of its low-enriched uranium abroad in return for nuclear fuel refined to a level of 20 per cent for use in a Tehran reactor producing medical isotopes. Mr Ahmadinejad appeared to accept the deal last Tuesday. However, a draft of the agreement seen by British MPs showed Iran still refusing to accept UN conditions, and yesterday Mr Ahmadinejad told Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation to start producing higher-grade reactor fuel.’

The events of history can be made or changed by the smallest of events. What if Isaac Newton had missed the apple falling from the tree? If only Einstein’s nurse has understood German we would know what his dying words were. Would Napoleon have won the Battle of Waterloo if his hemorrhoids hadn’t prevented him from riding his horse?

Take Stephanie Cooke quotation of famous German phycisist Werner Heisenberg in her book ‘In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age’. Heisenberg ‘later contended the atomic bomb was not inevitable’…

‘In the summer of 1939 twelve people might still have been able, by coming to mutual agreement, to prevent the construction of atom bombs.’

It seems amazing that such a small number of people could have held the future of nuclear weapons (and thus nuclear energy) in their hands. When the Second World War broke out many scientists joined the American atom bomb project in the hope that it would act as a deterrent to any German bomb being built and used. Only later – after completing the American bomb - did they discover that the German programme had been a failure and abandoned. That knowledge had been kept from them and as General Leslie Groves, the Manhattan Project’s leader, admitted, ‘the main purpose of the project was to subdue the Russians’.

Those 12 people knew in 1939 what destructive power the Bomb would have (warnings about atomic weapons had been made as early as the 1900s). A decision from them to abandon the science of nuclear weapons seems such a small thing now and yet the consequences have been huge.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Germany's Nuclear Power Extension Splits Merkel's Government
‘Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- German plans to extend the running time of nuclear-power plants split Chancellor Angela Merkel's government after her environment minister suggested a 40-year limit on their operating life. "What the environment minister said isn't the view of the government," Guido Westerwelle, vice chancellor and head of Merkel's Free Democratic Party coalition partner, said on ZDF television. Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen's comments in a Feb. 6 newspaper interview come as Merkel seeks to negotiate the extension with utilities as part of a plan for Germany's future energy mix she wants to present by October. Merkel won Sept. 27 elections pledging to reverse a 2002 law mandating the closure of Germany's 17 nuclear plants by about 2021. She holds to the coalition agreement to extend nuclear plants as a "bridge" to renewable power, her spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said today.’

How about this: the new wind turbines installed in just 2009 alone will generate as much electricity as 12 large nuclear reactors:

click image for larger version

According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), ‘the world’s wind power capacity grew by 31% in 2009 adding 37.5 gigawatts to bring total installations up to 157.9 gigawatts’.

Only one nuclear power station went online in 2009 and not one did in 2008. It has been 22 years since nuclear power was able to make the contribution wind did last year. It’s an unbelievably poor performance from a struggling nuclear industry even when you take into account the many problems and dangers building new reactors entails.

The International Energy Agency/Energy Technology Perspectives 2008 Blue Map that suggests a four-fold global expansion of nuclear by 2050. That’s a massive 1,300 large reactors being built in the next 40 years. Even if that wildly optimistic target were to be met it would cut greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector by just 6%.

The wind energy market, on the other hand, is expending so quickly it is already a year ahead of the projections Greenpeace made in our Energy Revolution scenario. According to GWEC, the wind turbines installed at the end of 2009 will save 204 million tons of CO2 every year. That figure will only increase and quickly. It’s a knock-out blow for nuclear power. Wind energy is clean, reliable and easy to install – everything nuclear power isn’t.

A report in Canada’s Toronto Star yesterday states that the four aging nuclear reactors at the Pickering B Nuclear Generating Station on the shores of Lake Ontario (arguably Canada’s most dangerous nuclear facility) will limp on to the end of the decade when they will be closed for good. It’s been decided that the four CANDU reactors just aren’t worth the cost of rebuilding them.

The news holds a mirror up to the nuclear industry across the world: the country is closing its nuclear reactors and its plans to build new ones are suspended or cancelled. Where Canada leads the rest of the world must surely follow.

(More details as we get them.)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Jordan and U.S. Move Closer to Nuclear Pact
‘WASHINGTON - Jordan is in advanced talks with the Obama administration to conclude a civilian nuclear-cooperation agreement with the U.S., according to Jordanian and U.S. officials. Successful completion of the negotiations would make Jordan the second Arab state in less than a year, following the United Arab Emirates, to secure nuclear assistance from Washington. Any pact would constitute an international treaty and need the approval of Congress. The talks come as Iran is accelerating its production of nuclear fuel, raising the prospect of an expanding nuclear-arms race in the Middle East. An accord with King Abdullah II's government in Amman would allow U.S. firms to transfer nuclear equipment, fuel and expertise to Jordan, which is one of only two Arab countries to have signed a peace agreement with Israel.’

That was the message Greenpeace Mediterranean took to the Turkey’s parliament yesterday interrupting Prime Minister Erdogan as he addressed his AKP party.

Mersin and Sinop are two coastal towns chosen by the Turkish government to be the sites of new nuclear reactors. It’s a measure of how completely unsuccessful successive governments have been in realising their nuclear ambitions that Mersin was first licensed for a nuclear plant in 1976. There’s still no sign of construction starting 34 years later.

One local newspaper is calling our Greenpeace colleague ‘Mersin’s 13th member of parliament’. The town has 12 MPs but it was clear yesterday just who really represents the townspeople’s interests.

(More information in Turkish - including CNN video of the action - is available at Greenpeace Mediterranean’s I Lovve Nuclear website)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Despite billions spent on cleanup, Hanford won't be clean for thousands of years
‘Some radioactive contaminants at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation will threaten the Columbia River for thousands of years, a new analysis projects, despite the multibillion-dollar cleanup efforts by the federal government. The U.S. Department of Energy projections come from a new analysis of how best to clean up leaking storage tanks and manage waste at Hanford, a former nuclear weapons production site on 586 square miles next to the Columbia in southeastern Washington. Oregon officials say the results, including contamination projections for the next 10,000 years, indicate the federal government needs to clean up more of the waste that has already leaked and spilled at Hanford instead of capping and leaving it, a less-expensive alternative.’

We’re not sure who’s advising President Obama on nuclear energy policy but we’d suggest he gets some new advisers and fast. His current ones seem to be feeding him a lot of bogus information.

At a question and answer session earlier in the month, the President had this to say…

Nuclear energy has the advantage of not emitting greenhouse gases. For those who are concerned about climate change, we have to recognize that countries like Japan and France and others have been much more aggressive in their nuclear industry and much more successful in having that a larger part of their portfolio, without incident, without accidents. We’re mindful of the concerns about storage, of spent fuel, and concerns about security, but we still think it’s the right thing to do if we’re serious about dealing with climate change.

Where to start with all that?

Nuclear energy has the advantage of not emitting greenhouse gases.

Wrong. The mining, milling and enrichment of uranium and the production of nuclear fuel all create plenty of greenhouse gases. So does the construction of nuclear reactors.

Japan and France and others have been much more aggressive in their nuclear industry… without incident, without accidents.

Without accident? Tell that to Hisashi Ouchi. Oh, you can’t – he’s dead. A worker at the JCO Tokaimura Plant in Japan, in 1999 Ouchi received a fatal does of radiation in a criticality accident and dies of radiation sickness 83 days later. Tell that to the workers at Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant. Built to withstand earthquakes, it was closed in 2007 by – you guessed it – an earthquake. It then suffered a series of fires. And the number 5 reactor at Hamaoka that was closed by an earthquake last year.

Without incident? Tell that to the people living close to France’s Tricastin nuclear facility who in 2008 were told not drink well-water, water their crops or swim or fish in the rivers contaminated by 18,000 litres of uranium solution. Tell it to the people of Akokan in Niger where the street have been contaminated by French nuclear company AREVA’s uranium mining. What about the plutonium that was unaccounted for at France’s Cadarache nuclear site? What about the French reactor design with safety system trouble?

We could go on and on and on.

Who’s putting these words in Obama’s mouth? Its sounds worryingly like it might be the nuclear industry. The issue of nuclear energy demands an informed debate. The industry isn’t interested in giving that debate to us. Obama shouldn’t be playing the same game.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Vermont Yankee's Radioactive Waste Likely Leaching into Connecticut River
‘Representatives of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, just three days after downplaying the likelihood that any radioactive tritium had been leaked into the Connecticut River, is now admitting, according to local television station WMUR, that it is likely that this dangerous radioactive material has reached the Connecticut River. Radioactive tritium, a byproduct of nuclear power generation, was first detected in the groundwater around the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in November 2009. The source of the leak is still unknown. Curt Hebert, the Vice President Vermont Yankee's parent company Entergy, told WMUR that they are digging a hole in a spot where they have discovered a very high level of tritium contamination outside the plant to see if they can find a leak there. While the yet undiscovered leak at Vermont Yankee is much less serious than the nuclear core meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, it does underscore the danger and persistence of the nuclear pollution created as an ordinary by product of nuclear power plants. The mantel of clean energy does not cover nuclear power.’

On its US blog, French nuclear giant AREVA has a ‘Clean Energy Quiz’. It really is quite something. It manages to undermine wind, solar and other truly clean and renewable energy sources in favour of giving nuclear a great big boost.

Here we go again with nuclear energy being called ‘clean’. If AREVA PR people think nuclear is clean we’d hate to see their houses. Imagine the shocking state of their kitchens if nuclear is their idea of cleanliness. Remind us never to go for dinner at an AREVA spin doctor’s house.

In an interview elsewhere on its blog, AREVA’s CEO ‘Atomic’ Anne Lauvergeon insists ‘nuclear power isn’t THE solution’. She says nuclear is just part of the ideal energy portfolio but the way AREVA regards wind and solar in the likes of its quiz, that’s like someone telling you they love you while punching you in the face.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

The impacts of uranium mining on indigenous communities.
‘The climate change debate positions nuclear power as a partial solution to carbon emissions according to some scientists and politicians. Uranium mining speculation lacks comprehensive health and safety regulations while the ethics of Canadian exported uranium, which can lead to depleted uranium used in zones of war, needs greater scrutiny. Abandoned uranium mines and the subsequent hazards experienced in forgotten communities have also been virtually ignored in Canada leading to tragic, unmitigated circumstances. The long-term negative impacts of uranium mining can be witnessed in the small, rural community of Déline (North West Territories) which has a Dené population of 800 people. They are located right on the shore of Sahtu (Great Bear Lake) about 300 miles north of Yellowknife. Great Bear Lake is considered to be one of the last great fresh water lakes in the world. This area on the north shore of Sahtu was the site of radium mining from 1934 to 1939, and then a uranium mine from 1943 to 1962. During the mining era the Dené of Déline, mostly men worked as labourers and as coolies carrying gunny sacks of radioactive uranium ore and concentrates on the transportation route. Waste from both radium and uranium mines were dumped directly into the lake and used as landfill. Port Radium was owned and operated by a Canadian crown corporation but uranium ore and concentrates were extracted, milled and sold to the US Government for the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb during the Second World War.’

President Barack Obama is to signal a major step-change in the global nuclear industry this week when he announces loan guarantees for two nuclear reactors to be built in the US.

Two? Only two? Some nuclear ‘renaissance’ this is shaping up to be. We thought the US needed dozens of new nuclear reactors? What about the 26 with licence applications. Without loan guarantees from government (which means the public pays the bill if anything goes wrong with the reactors’ financing), it’s highly unlikely they’ll be built. Don’t believe us? Just ask UniStar Nuclear Energy who have suspended plans to build a new reactor at Nine Mile Point because of ‘uncertainties over the availability of federal loan guarantee money for new nuclear power plants’.

Of course, just because a nuclear reactor gets a loan guarantee doesn’t mean its going to be generating electricity any time soon. It can take years for construction and operating licences to be granted and, as they’ve found at Olkiluoto in Finland, actually building the thing can take a lot longer than that. Loan guarantees don’t guarantee very much.

You would have thought that after sixty years the nuclear industry would have learned to look after itself by now without help from government and taxpayers. But no, like a middle-aged man who still lives with his mother, nuclear energy just can’t bring itself to go it alone and stand on its own two feet.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

German CDU minister wants nuclear out
‘Germany's environment minister is defying his fellow conservatives by calling to get rid of nuclear power. Norbert Roettgen is an ambitious politician. A few months ago, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel handed him the environment brief, few knew about his convictions. Today, his bold stance on nuclear power dominates headlines in Germany. Roettgen, 45, earlier this month broke with a campaign pledge of his Christian Democratic Union when he said the party should "carefully consider whether we want to make nuclear energy our unique feature," adding that, "even after 40 years there is no sufficient acceptance in the public for nuclear energy."’

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Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Nuclear incident exposes 217 workers at Bruce Power
‘The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission says that as many as 217 workers may have been exposed to radioactivity at the Bruce nuclear power station on the shores of Lake Huron while refurbishing a reactor in late November. It is believed to be one of the largest mass exposures to radiation at a Canadian nuclear site. The company operating the station, Bruce Power, says that according to its estimates none of the workers received doses exceeding regulatory limits, although there are concerns that the amounts may have come close to the maximum safe exposures. The CNSC, Canada's nuclear safety watchdog, issued the estimate of the number of people that might have been affected in a regulatory filing today in Ottawa. The incident will be among those discussed by the regulator at a meeting of its board on Thursday.’

Of all the nuclear waste France has sent to Russia since 2006 for reprocessing, less than 10% has ever been sent back. That’s 3,090 tonnes out of 33,000. The rest is dumped in Russia, often in the open air. This is the ‘clean’ and ‘safe’ nuclear energy US President Barack Obama was mythologizing yesterday.

© Pierre Gleizes / Greenpeace

Greenpeace are demanding a moratorium on the export of nuclear waste from France to Russia. That’s why yesterday Greenpeace France activists blockaded the Tricastin nuclear facility to prevent a shipment of nuclear waste leaving for its Russian dumping ground.

Nuclear waste reprocessing in France is a scam. AREVA and EDF claim that 96% of nuclear waste can be reprocessed. However just 1% finds its way in to MOX (Mixed Oxide fuel). The rest is sent to Russia where most of it is simply dumped and never reprocessed. Nuclear industry claims about ‘recycling’ are simply spin, hype and propaganda. Forget about ‘safe’ and ‘clean’.

(More information and photographs are available in French from Greenpeace France’s website)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Iran will not suspend enrichment in return for radioisotopes
‘Iran will not suspend its sensitive high level enrichment in return for radioisotopes as offered in a letter by three world powers to the UN atomic watchdog, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday. "It is not at all rational to say that Iran should not produce (isotopes and uranium) and stop its (enrichment) plant and that they will provide its needed medicine," ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told ISNA news agency. "We will not examine offers which lead to the shutting down of Tehran reactor," said the spokesman, in an almost word-for-word repetition of a statement he made on February 10. Iran started enriching uranium to 20 percent on February 9 to fuel its Tehran research reactor making medical radioisotopes amid international concern over its atomic ambitions.’

The saying ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’ warns us against getting too excited about something simply because the early signs look good. And so it is with President Obama’s announcement this week that his government is to give loan guarantees worth $8 billion to the nuclear industry so it can build two new nuclear reactors. One loan guarantee doesn’t make a nuclear ‘renaissance’.

People forget that the US nuclear industry is in complete disarray. As Time magazine points out…

Despite the prospect of new taxpayer guarantees — and the cradle-to-grave subsidies that already promote this 50-year-old industry at the federal and state level — utilities keep scrapping or delaying plans for new reactors… Peter Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has calculated that of the 26 new applications submitted to the NRC since 2007, nine have been cancelled or suspended indefinitely, and ten more have been delayed by one to five years. Utilities like Exelon, Duke Energy and FPL have ditched or scaled back their nuclear ambitions.

Many people who support nuclear energy are able to see past the serious issues of nuclear safety (or lack of it), the waste we don’t have a clue what to do with, the inherent unreliability of such complex machines as nuclear reactors, and the fact that nuclear power can at best make only a small dent in greenhouse gas emissions. President Obama himself could certainly have been wearing blinkers with AREVA corporate logos on them this week. He talks of ‘safe’ nuclear power like it exists. If he talked of unicorns in the same tone of voice they’d impeach him.

But even if you can accommodate those huge failings into your pro-nuclear argument, the terrible economics of nuclear energy remain a deal-breaker. Back to Time…

[N]uclear costs keep spiraling out of control; last year, the estimates for several reactors doubled, and for one Pennsylvania reactor more than tripled. This is why credit rating agencies keep downgrading utilities with nuclear ambitions, which increases their borrowing costs and makes their projects even more expensive. Even with the federal guarantees, the new reactors at Vogtle are expected to boost local electricity bills by 9% — and like most nuke-friendly states, Georgia has enacted a law ensuring that ratepayers won't get their money back if the utility fails to complete the plant.

This isn’t a just a feature of the nuclear industry in the US. It is a story repeated all over the world where plans to build new reactors are drawn up. Ask Canada, ask Turkey, ask Bulgaria, ask Finland.

So President Obama can throw huge amounts of cash at the nuclear industry, some of it might even work and a few reactors might get built. But it’s too little, too late. By the time his money is helping the nuclear industry (if it does), the vital opportunity to fully embrace renewable energy and energy efficiency will have been missed.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:
Fourth generation nuclear power may not be the clean energy silver bullet

New models for nuclear reactors have been attracting a lot of interest recently, with all sorts of ideas touted as the solution to the problems of the standard designs in use today. The huge cost, and delays and budget over-runs in construction, of third generation reactors such as Areva’s EPR, along with concerns about their safety, has inspired a search for new smaller designs, including some that are only the size of a garden shed. There is also renewed excitement over fourth-generation reactor technology that can use spent uranium fuel as its feed-stock. Bill Gates has been advocating one version of that technology, the “travelling wave reactor”, and has invested in a company developing it. The promise is great: cheap power without the waste problems that have still not yet been solved. Gates says we need an “energy miracle”, and fourth generation nuclear power is it. But there are also some nuclear experts who warn that the promise is a snare and a delusion. The International Panel on Fissile Materials, which campaigns against nuclear proliferation, has released a report on “fast breeder” reactors, one version of fourth generation technology that is decades old, but is earning a new lease of life as a potential solution to the problem of dealing with nuclear fuel waste.

The International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) has condemned Fast Breeder Reactors. ‘After six decades and the expenditure of the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars,’ it says, ‘the promise of breeder reactors remains largely unfulfilled and efforts to commercialize them have been steadily cut back in most countries.’

In a damning judgement, the IPFM report says that the reactors are ‘plagued by high costs, often multi-year downtime for repairs (including a 15-year reactor restart delay in Japan), multiple safety problems (among them often catastrophic sodium fires triggered simply by contact with oxygen), and unresolved proliferation risks’.

Even the nuclear industry itself doesn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about them. Only this week India announced that its first commercial Fast Breeder Reactor (which is at least 40% over budget and a year late) will be delayed for at least a year. Japan’s experimental Monju Fast Breeder plant in Fukui Prefecture has been closed since 1995, following a series of safety scares. The last one in Europe, the Super Phenix, closed in 1996 after operating for just 53 months in the 11 years it was open.

One US Admiral Hyman Rickover said that fast breeder reactors are…

…expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair…

Who was Hyman Rickover? He was the man who invented the nuclear submarine. He offered that criticism of fast breeder reactors in 1956. That’s 60 wasted years and 50 billion wasted dollars ago.

More information on the report is over IPFM website.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

France more worried about uranium than Nigeriens after military coup
‘One is hard-pressed not to cringe when reading about the outrage expressed by French officials over the recent coup d'état in Niger - not to say the distress itself is not bona fide, however, the motives behind it are not. Because their apparent desire to protect the human and civil rights of the Nigerien citizenry is a simple guise meant to shield their genuine and not-so-altruistic motives, which is protecting Niger's uranium operations. And if one thinks the French Republic will sit on the sidelines while freedom-loving people are in danger of losing freedom, think again. Reports have surfaced that if the junta, for whatever reason, takes a hostile policy toward France, Paris would not hesitate to deploy forces to impose its will and protect its interests. This wouldn't be too difficult a task, with French troops already stationed in Senegal, Gabon and Cote d'Ivoire. The enemy in Niger is not tyranny - it is instability; and not because it threatens the inalienable rights of Nigeriens, but because it threatens the economic interests of the French’

While the city was submerged in water on Friday night, Greenpeace Italy took a sailing tour of the city in three inflatable boats.

Greenpeace/Francesco Alesi

Unveiling banners reading ‘Nuclear: a dangerous waste of time’ and ‘Nuclear: False Solution’, our colleagues were there to highlight the Italian government’s reckless plans to build at least four nuclear reactors. Each will cost five to six billion euros (before the inevitable cost overruns) and won’t be operational for at least ten years meaning Italy will miss its EU target to reduce CO2 emissions 17% by 2020. It will also mean waste of the vital resources that could be used to establish clean, renewable energy projects and energy efficiency programmes – measures that can be put in place right now.

Greenpeace/Francesco Alesi

According to the latest UN report presented last November in Marrakech, Venice is likely to end up underwater some time in the next 60 years because of climate change. The future of the city and the planet is at stake. Can the Italian government and their fellow leaders around the world act in time?

(More information is available in Italian on Greenpeace Italy’s website, photos are available on their Flickr page. Their Nuclear Lifestyle website has collected 50,000 signatures in just two weeks. The action was covered by la Repubblica)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Major Fallout Predicted Over Obama's Nuclear Power Proposal
‘While President Obama has announced an offer of $8.3 billion in loan guarantees for two new nuclear reactors, worries about potential cost overruns, health risks and safety concerns lead many to believe his proposal may cause far more harm than good - assuming that the reactors can be successfully built. Should the builder borrow money and then default on the loan, the Obama administration's guarantee means that the lenders and investors would not suffer the financial loss. Instead, taxpayer money would be used to cover the cost. Administration officials have said that the companies involved would pay fees to cover the possibility of default and that these loan guarantees would not cost taxpayers money. However, both the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office have estimated that the risk of default on a guarantee for new nuclear reactor construction could be as high as 50 percent. Construction of nuclear reactors also consistently run into large cost and deadline overruns. The company that built the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia, where the two new reactors would be, initially estimated construction costs of $1 billion for four reactors. By 1989, that number had risen to $9 billion for only two reactors. Now, the estimate for the two new reactors is approximately $14 billion.’

In an interview last week Jacques Besnainou, chief executive officer of French nuclear corporation AREVA’s U.S. unit, said: ‘What Wall Street needs to see, and Main Street as well, is that we are able to build on time, on budget.’

He’s completely right. Wall Steet and Main Street do need to see that the nuclear industry is able to build on time and on budget because, in the entirety of its 60-year history, it’s been an abject failure at doing both.

Of course, Mr Besnainou is only telling half the story because what his industry also has to show us all is that it is able to mine uranium and produce nuclear fuel in a way that doesn’t devastate people’s lives and the environment. Or is the implication that we shouldn’t worry or care about what goes on at the start of the nuclear chain? We notice, for instance, that it’s business as usual at AREVA’s mines in Niger despite the military coup that took place in the country last week.

The industry also needs to show us all that it can deal with the highly radiaoctive waste that nuclear reactors produce in a safe, clean fashion. AREVA in particularly are singularly failing in that regard. Again, is the implication that we shouldn’t worry or care about wat happens at end of the nuclear chain?

Like we said, we’re only told half a story by the nuclear industry. The likes of AREVA can talk the talk but we’ve yet to see them walk the walk. As Wealth Daily puts it, Mr Besnainou sounds ‘like he might be ready to sing "Kumbaya" around a glowing hunk of uranium’ but actions speak louder than words.

While we’re hearing a lot of the latter we’re seeing precious little of the former. Nuclear energy has a long way to travel before it’s anywhere close to being accepted as clean, safe, cheap, reliable and a solution to climate change. And it’s a road with no end in sight.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Monju reactor gearing up for a restart after long shut down
‘The Monju prototype fast reactor (FBR) in Japan has completed a government-mandated procedure to ensure the reactor is safe to restart following a sodium coolant leak which forced it out of action almost 15 years ago. It could restart as early as next month. The final requirement in the procedure was cleared with a decision by the Cabinet Office's Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC) to support the evaluation by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's (METI's) Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) that Monju is safe to resume operation. METI told the NSC on 15 February that it had determined that the Monju FBR was ready for safe operation. NSC announced on 22 February that it had now completed its assessment of METI's evaluation and found it to be "reasonable." Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), which operates Monju, will now seek permission from the Fukui prefectural government and the municipal government of Tsuruga to restart the reactor. JAEA said that it hopes to restart the unit by the end of March. The FBR will operate on a trial basis for the first three years after it resumes operation.’

Here’s French nuclear corporation AREVA caught in a jaw-dropping and disgraceful piece of greenwash on the Discovery Channel’s ‘The Green Room’…

We can’t believe the Discovery Channel fell for it. It’s a classic of PR spin by AREVA which blatantly ignores several unpleasant facts about nuclear waste reprocessing in France. If you want a corrective to this glossy AREVA propaganda, you should take a look at Eric Guéret and Laure Noualhat’s film Déchets - Le Cauchemar du Nucléaire (Waste - The Nuclear Nightmare). As the International Panel on Fissile Materials’ blog puts it…

Constantly facing the AREVA PR that states that 96% of the nuclear materials are "recycled" through the reprocessing scheme, the reporters inquired where the recovered uranium, roughly 95% of the mass of spent fuel, does end up. In fact, AREVA has been sending most of the reprocessed uranium (23,000 tons were still stored in France at the end of 2008), to Russia officially for re-enrichment. In fact, even if all of that uranium had indeed been re-enriched, which is not the case, over 90% of the mass remains in Russia as enrichment tails. This material is waste, because there is absolutely no economic incentive to re-enrich it, in particular considering the hundreds of thousands of tons of "clean", first generation enrichment tails that are stored in Russia and in the other major enrichment countries, including in France (close to 260,000 tons at two sites). The message that AREVA's "recycling" ratio had to be corrected from 95% to less than 10% of the original mass send a shockwave through the French political landscape.

In the Discovery Channel film, AREVA describes nuclear as ‘a very green form of energy’, ‘a very clean technology’ which produces ‘relatively small volumes of waste that has to be disposed of’ (260,000 tonnes?). It’s difficult to know whether to laugh at AREVA’s audacity or be incandescent at the deception. We wouldn’t tolerate such transparent lies from our children and yet AREVA clearly think they can get away with it.

Now, this is a family blog and we don’t like to use bad language. So we’ll restrain ourselves to comparing AREVA’s claims to the solid waste produced by male cows.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

NRC investigates Calvert Cliffs' unscheduled shutdown
‘Federal inspectors are at Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant this week to investigate an unexpected shutdown of both reactors last week, which a plant spokesman said apparently was triggered by melting snow leaking through the plant's roof. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent a five-member "special inspection team" Monday to the 1,750-megawatt plant near Lusby in Calvert County, which is owned by Constellation Energy. It's expected to remain there all week, NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said. "There was never any danger," the NRC spokeswoman said, "but we want a better understanding of why it happened and what steps they're taking to prevent a recurrence." Both of the plant's nuclear reactors shut down automatically Thursday morning as a result of electrical malfunctions, evidently triggered by "a small roof leak" of melting snow, according to David Fitz, spokesman for Constellation Energy Nuclear Group, a subsidiary of the Baltimore-based power company. Snow melt "trickled down onto an electrical breaker," Fitz said, which caused an "electrical fault" and loss of power to one reactor. The electrical problem on one reactor caused the other to shut down.’

© Greenpeace / Basil Tsimoyianis

In an historic decision, and after the tireless campaigning by local residents, Greenpeace and other pro-environment groups, the Vermont State Senate has voted this week to shut down the aging and dangerous Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor. The reactor’s owners Entergy’s had lobbied hard to extend the lifetime of the 40-year-old reactor, however the Vermont Senate voted to shut down the nuclear plant as scheduled in 2012.

© Greenpeace / Basil Tsimoyianis

Poor Vermont Yankee was one of the more unloved pets of the nuclear industry, causing trouble and making a mess everywhere. It’s little wonder they’ve decided to end her (and the state of Vermont’s) suffering – she’s been a liability for years. We kept a close eye on her. What we’ve seen was hair-raising. The escape of radioactive particles during refuelling. In July 2008 the coolant system was leaking 60 gallons of water a minute. In 2007, rotting wood in the construction of one of the cooling towers caused it to collapse - further poor maintenance also led to a ‘reactor scram’ and shutdown in the same year.

The list goes on and on. Nuclear waste was put in casks that hadn’t been tested properly. A delivery of lead shielding from another nuclear site turned out to be ‘hot’ (radioactivity from it was found to have exceeded federal radiation levels). Metal fatigue was found in metal nozzles used to supply water and maintain the temperature in the reactor core.

The New England Coalition, a Brattleboro citizen organisation and nuclear watchdog group was nearly bankrupted due to the costs of bringing cases to the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, the panel that acts as the judicial arm for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Burlington Free Press reports that this terrible state of affairs was ‘compounded by misinformation the company gave to legislators, sometimes under oath’. Senior staff were ‘disciplined, either reprimanded or placed on administrative leave’ including the Site Vice President. A massive shortfall in the reactor’s decommissioning budget means it looks like the US taxpayer is going to have to pay over another multi-million dollar nuclear bailout. Then earlier this year Vermont Yankee’s owners Entergy, after first trying to cover it up, admitted that radioactive tritium was leaking from the reactor and had reached the Connecticut River.

That’s one hell of a list. So farewell and good riddance Vermont Yankee. You will not be missed.

Along with the commitments by the Canadian authorities to shut six reactors at the Pickering nuclear plant, that brings the number of reactors listed this year to be shut down to seven. And it’s only February. With more and more new nuclear projects being postponed or cancelled and the designs for the new generation of reactors being found by inspection bodies across the world to be unreliable, untested, and unsafe, this so-called nuclear ‘renaissance’ is going nowhere.

Greenpeace USA: Vermont Senate vote shows that Obama's nuclear renaissance is dead on arrival

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Sarkozy to oust Areva CEO Lauvergeon - Wansquare
‘PARIS, Feb 25 (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has decided to oust Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of French nuclear reactor maker Areva (CEPFi.PA), Wansquare website reported on Thursday. The president plans to use cost overruns relating to the delayed construction of its first third-generation reactor in Finland as the pretext for terminating Lauvergeon's contract, Wansquare said, citing sources close to the president. Areva declined to comment. The president's office would not comment. Areva shares were down 1.7 percent at 326 euros by 1245 GMT.’

As we discussed yesterday, Vermont Yankee is a nuclear reactor with so many dangerous fault, defects and problems that if it was a house or a school it would have been condemned and demolished years ago. We just seem to be far more tolerant when it comes to problems with our nuclear reactors - Vermont Yankee isn’t alone in its pathetic decrepitude.

Take the two reactors at Calvert Cliffs which were shut down unexpectedly last week when ‘melting snow leaking through the plant’s roof’ and ‘trickled down onto an electrical breaker’. It really was that simple. To think we worry about terrorists storming nuclear reactors or flying jets into them. A reasonably determined al Qaeda operative could bring the nuclear energy sector to its knees with a ladder and a bucket of icy water.

Meanwhile at Hanford, America’s nuclear complex in the state of Washington and one of the most hellishly radioactive places on the planet, work to dig up waste contaminated with plutonium has had to be stopped…

Problems related to the incidents included hazards not being adequately identified and responsibilities of workers not matching their training or qualifications, said Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board staff in a weekly report just released. "Worker and management responses demonstrated a failure to implement lessons learned" from previous problems encountered by other Hanford contractors, the safety board report said.

A failure to implement lessons learned? What is it with the nuclear industry and its stubborn refusal to learn lessons or implement them? Imagine if you had a child like that – that kept reaching out for pans of boiling water in the kitchen despite being told not to over and over again, that kept trying to drink bleach – you’d being looking for some kind of therapist. The nuclear industry, may we remind you, is 60 years old. It really does fly against the theory of natural selection. Species of animal that behave like that tend to become extinct very quickly.

The radioactive seagulls are back at Sellafield. In truth they’ve never been away but it seems that the owners of the nuclear plant in the north west of England (another of the most hellishly radioactive places on the planet) have decided it’s time for another cull.

You see, the birds swim in the water of the outdoor nuclear waste storage pools, become contaminated and then take flight to bomb the surrounding area with radioactive poop. So Sellafield hires a sharpshooter who bags the birds whose carcasses – which are classed as nuclear waste - are stored in a big freezer on the site for safe keeping. Apparently there are 350 ‘mostly birds but also some small mammals’ in the freezer. (It’s good to know the number – the Sellafield Freedom of Information people didn’t want to tell us when we asked last year.)

Now, you’re probably asking yourself: ‘Why do they store nuclear waste in pools in the open air so birds can get in, get contaminated and then bomb the surrounding area with radioactive poop? Isn’t some kind of net or cover in order?’ To which we’d reply: 'Be fair. They’ve only been shooting at the birds for twelve years or so. We could blame Sellafield’s owners but it’s clearly a failure to implement lessons learned by the seagulls.'

Have a good weekend.