It’s going to be a nuclear ‘renaissance’, they’ve told us. A dormant (or dying) and discredited nuclear industry was going to spring back to life, provide cheap, safe, reliable and clean electricity, and save us from catastrophic climate change. But then…

Turkey’s government announced over the weekend that it is cancelling (for the fourth time) its farcical tendering process to build the country’s first nuclear reactor (following the likes of Canada, Bulgaria, South Africa, Texas, Missouri, Idaho, Alabama, and the rest who’ve all seen their own nuclear plans fall through).

In the UK is looks like a big chunk of the jobs that were hyped by the British government as part of the nuclear ‘renaissance’ may be going to go to overseas contractors. We hate to say we told you so.

Hard-headed capitalists like Citigroup are calling new nuclear reactors ‘corporate killers’ and an utter financial nightmare for potential investors offering non-existent returns.

Bearing all this mind, you be forgiven for asking, ‘just what kind of renaissance is this anyway?’ Where’s the rebirth and revival?

The Renaissance that swept Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries produced masterpieces that have the power to inspire awe even to this day: Gutenberg’s mighty printing press, Michelangelo’s David and the Sistine Chapel, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, the far-sighted vision of Copernicus and Galileo… to name but a very small few.

So where are the nuclear ‘renaissance’s major works and masterpieces? What does this 'renaissance' have to show for itself? The EPR reactor being built in Olkiluoto, Finland and Flamanville, France is supposed to be the ‘renaissance’s flagship endeavour. Is it the nuclear ‘renaissance’s Mona Lisa? If it is, it’s one drawn in crayon by a five year-old with his eyes shut.

Is the Turkish government, who can’t build a nuclear reactor after four attempts, the nuclear 'renaissance’s Michelangelo? Is Westinghouse, which lacks the vision to see that its new AP-1000 reactor design might need to include safety systems so it can ‘withstand events like earthquakes and tornadoes’ the nuclear ‘renaissance’s Galileo? It's starting to look pathetic.

With the nuclear industry facing yet more accusations (this time from Peter A. Bradford a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 1977 to 1982) of seeking ‘to shift ever more economic risk to taxpayers who are already staggering under the weight of other federal bailouts’, it seems the nuclear 'renaissance' shares just one thing with its historical counterpart: the leading exponents of both being reliant on the money from generous patrons.

The nuclear ‘renaissance’ is really shaping up to be the ‘renaissance that wasn’t’.

Posted by Justin at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Britain poised to lose jobs as £10bn nuclear power plant contract goes to US
‘Thousands of jobs that were to have been created in Britain to build the next generation of nuclear power plants could be heading overseas instead, after Westinghouse, the nuclear company sold by the government three years ago to Toshiba, chose one of its largest shareholders as the lead contractor to build reactors. Westinghouse is expected to confirm this week that it has appointed US-based Shaw Group to head up its £10bn nuclear programme, passing over the favourite for the contract, rival engineering group Fluor. Industry sources said that Shaw is likely to source far more reactor components from overseas than Fluor, which has close relationships with British manufacturers. The Unite union claimed that 10,000 new jobs in the UK would not be created as a result of Shaw being selected.’

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An independent expert commissioned by Greenpeace has found the two nuclear reactors currently being built in Finland and France have serious safety flaws in their design. Dr. Helmut Hirsch, Scientific Consultant for Nuclear Safety says the design of AREVA’s much heralded third-generation EPR reactor is ‘contradictory to the foundation of nuclear safety’.

A nuclear reactor’s control systems are supposed to be independent, so that a failure of one system doesn’t compromise the whole reactor. This is not the case with the EPR – its systems are interlinked. ‘In the worst case,’ says Dr Hirsch, ‘this can lead to a minor incident developing into a severe accident.’ This has led to the nuclear regulators in the UK (who are evaluating the EPR design as part of their nuclear ‘renaissance’), France and Finland to jointly express their concern with this design flaw.

This is on top of ongoing serious problems at the construction of the OL3 EPR at Olkiluoto, Finland. Last week it was found that the pipes in the reactor’s essential cooling system (the part of the reactor that prevents a meltdown) have been welded using unacceptable methods without any supervision or written records. The surface of the pipes had been welded to cover up damage which may have weakened the pipes beyond repair.

The number of defects in OL3’s construction is around 3,000. The Finnish nuclear regulator STUK has detected many that were in fact approved by AREVA’s quality control but can we be certain that STUK has found them all? In 2006 STUK admitted that they could not be sure due to the high number of problems.

What we can be certain of however is that the EPR reactor is a dangerous and failed experiment. The safety flaws highlighted by Dr Hirsch reveal that there can be no confidence in the safety of the EPR design. The massive budget and schedule overruns show that a programme of building EPRs across the planet, as AREVA plans, presents a very real threat to the fight against climate change. Neither must we forget the legacy of nuclear accidents.

EPR, like nuclear power as a whole, not only threatens our safety, but takes and wastes the vital money, time and resources that we need to expand renewable energy and energy efficiency programmes if we are serious about saving our climate. The risks are too great. EPR must be abandoned immediately.

Read Dr. Hirsch’s report here. Greenpeace’s EPR factsheet is here.

Posted by Justin at 3:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Peak Uranium? Our nuclear future might be shorter than we thought
‘We’ve all heard of Peak Oil (even if there’s some doubt about whether we’ve heard the truth over when it’s going to actually kick in), but there’s no need to worry –nuclear power will step in to fill the gap, right? Well, not for long, perhaps, at least according to Dr Michael Dittmar and his new analysis of the global nuclear industry…’

Read more »

Posted by Justin at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Nuclear power is a dangerous distraction to real solutions.”
Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director, Greenpeace International

“Have a French nuclear industry that works. That means that we have to rethink the whole industry.”
Henri Proglio, the incoming boss of EDF

“For a nuclear power station to be built at Kirksanton, the Haverigg windfarm would have to be demolished.”
Jill Perry, Green Party candidate for Copeland, UK

Posted by Justin at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Why should we trust the nuclear industry when it doesn’t trust itself? That’s the underlining question of a Greenpeace report released this week.

The Harper government has tabled the Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act in Parliament. The bill would, if passed, artificially cap the liability of a nuclear operator for accidents at $650 million – a miniscule fraction of the likely actual cost of a nuclear disaster. Why?

Read on…

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