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)

The Happy Ranger carrying both steam generators - for AREVA's disaster-prone OL3 EPR nuclear reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland - and eight Greenpeace activists arrived at their destination this afternoon. After the formalities of Finnish immigration, our heroes are now enjoying well deserved baths, hot dinners and celebrations.

A press conference will be held in Helsinki on Friday and we'll bring you all the details from there. This isn't the end of the story so stay tuned.

(A full briefing on Areva's OL3, its many safety issues and negative impact on Finnish climate policy is available here. One of the activists on board, Lauri Myllyvirta, blogged the experience here. There are photos and video, and more photos.)

Posted by Justin at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

French nuclear giant AREVA is upset by the six Greenpeace activists who boarded the transport ship Happy Ranger in the Fehmarn Belt strait between Denmark and Germany. The ship is taking massive steam generators to the construction site of AREVA’s beleaguered OL3 EPR nuclear reactor in Olkiluoto, Finland.

The company says it is ‘saddened that Greenpeace refuses to engage in a calmer debate on energy issues’. Just how this ‘calmer debate’ is supposed to take place in the eyes of AREVA remains unclear. AREVA studiously ignore the issues raised on this blog, for example, although we know AREVA people are avid readers. And a visit to the facility where these large EPR components have been produced will not advance us in the debate on how nuclear energy undermines climate protection or how the choice for nuclear power has shut the door for renewable energies in Finland. A calmer debate? Greenpeace is ready when you are, AREVA.

©Greenpeace/Mueller

The company certainly wasn’t interested in calm debate at the European Commission’s European Nuclear Energy Forum (Enef) this year. Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Sortir du Nucléaire - the only groups invited into the industry-dominated body - walked out accusing Enef of ‘stifling critical voices’, ‘ignoring their concerns and riding roughshod over alternative scientific evidence’. If the likes of AREVA are so sure of themselves and their reactors you have to wonder why they have to resort to such cover-up and cowardice.

On top of that, AREVA spokesperson Jacques-Emmanuel Saulnier seems to think some kind of ‘association’ is ‘opening up’ between AREVA and Greenpeace just because a Greenpeace team visited the AREVA uranium mines in Niger last week. As if inviting people to the hellish nightmare of what AREVA has done in Niger would endear the company to anyone.

In its Happy Ranger press release AREVA also uses a rather strange and inappropriate metaphor…

To quote a well-known saying, "Our house is burning and we are looking the other way". If we apply this metaphor, then Greenpeace's attempts to stand in the way of nuclear power is like preventing a trusted fire service from getting to the blaze.

AREVA is comparing nuclear reactors to a ‘fire service’ fighting against the ‘burning’ that is climate change. Now, we don’t know about you, but if our house was burning we’d want the fire service at the scene immediately. We wouldn’t want the fire service being massively delayed and taking years to arrive like AREVA's nuclear reactors are. By the time the AREVA fire truck arrives the house could be in ruins. And just imagine the highly toxic and radioactive extinguishing chemicals that AREVA uses when trying to put out this fire. Even if they managed to save the house, it would be uninhabitable for thousands and thousands of years.

And don’t get us started on ‘trusted’.

(Get the latest news on the Greenpeace activists’ progress on Greenpeace Finland’s Twitter feed and Nuclear Reaction’s Twitter feed. One of the activists on board, Lauri Myllyvirta, is blogging here. There are photos and video, and more photos.)

Posted by Justin at 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Happy Ranger is taking up speed again with after stopping when two more Greenpeace activists boarded the ship between Gotland and Öland. There are now eight activists aboard bearing witness to this transport of main components of the new Finnish reactor at Olkiluoto - Lauri, Rosa, Tuomas, Mai, Andreas, Jacky, Elisabeth, and Niko.

The Happy Ranger is expected to arrive in Finland tomorrow afternoon.

(Get the latest news on the Greenpeace activists’ progress on Greenpeace Finland’s Twitter feed and Nuclear Reaction’s Twitter feed. One of the activists on board, Lauri Myllyvirta, is blogging here. Here are photos and video, and more photos.)

Posted by Justin at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I was woken up for my watch at 4 am, I had a liter of water in my sleeping bag.

Read Lauri's latest blog post from from the deck of the Happy Ranger...

Posted by Justin at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Greenpeace Finland nuclear campaigner Lauri Myllyvirta is blogging from the deck of the Happy Ranger which Lauri and five colleagues boarded today as the ship transports steam generators to the construction site of AREVA's EPR nuclear reactor at Olkiluoto, Finland.

Find out more here.

Posted by Justin at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few days ago the cargo ship The Happy Ranger left France carrying steam generators intended for the nuclear European Pressurised Reactor under construction in Olkiluoto, Finland. As the ship made its way from France to Finland, activists from the Arctic Sunrise boarded the cargo ship and are currently occupying the cranes on deck.

Read on...

The activists have not been removed and intend to stay on board all the way to Finland.

Photos of the action can be seen here and here. The Greenpeace press release is here.

The EPR reactor could be coming to your country. It's worth finding out why that might be a bad idea. You can find out more about this ill-fated reactor on Greepeace's factsheet and read its disastrous history recorded here on Nuclear Reaction.

Update: Greenpeace Finland nuclear campaigner Lauri Myllyvirta is blogging from the deck of the Happy Ranger.

Posted by Justin at 6:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are days when you simply run out of words. How to continue to describe the ongoing construction of the flagship OL3 EPR reactor at Olkiluoto, Finland? We’ve done ‘disastrous’, ‘incompetent’ and ‘farce’. Add to those ‘massively over-budget’ and ‘hugely behind schedule’.

We’re at a loss to describe the latest news from the construction site…

The pipes that form the cooling system around the reactor have been partially welded without any supervision. TVO and Areva are right now investigating how much of the work must be redone and what the consequences are.

This pertains to the same pipes whose weld seams have been investigated before. This time the weld seams are not concerned but welding has been performed to cover cosmetic damages on the surface of the pipes. Welding work has not been, however, documented.

If the entire primary coolant piping had to be redone, it would take three years.

The cooling system is the very important bit of the reactor that prevents the thing getting too hot and going into meltdown. Imagine being the press officer for OL3. We’re struggling to think of a more depressing job.

The EPR, if you need reminding, is supposed to be the most advanced reactor on the planet. The top dog. The big man. Numero uno. This is the design – which its owners AREVA are selling around the world – that is, according to the propaganda, going to usher in the so-called nuclear ‘renaissance’ and lead us to a glorious future where nuclear-generated electricity is abundant, cheap, clean and pixies in funny little hats caper around for our entertainment.

And yet here we are again. Fundamental mistakes at Olkiluoto are compounded by the repetition of the same fundamental mistakes. The OL3 project has been notorious from the very beginning for its inability to get something as essential as the reactor’s welding right – non-existent supervision, lack of training and instructions, and poor quality work.

You’d expect a five year old child to learn lessons faster and shake your head in bitter disappointment if they didn’t. You know when kids do something stupid and you have to tell them not to do it, then they do it again, then again, and you think you're going to go insane with frustration? It must be a bit like at OL3.

AREVA however are hailed around the world by gullible leaders and journalists as potential saviours of the human race. Like we said – words have failed us.

Posted by Justin at 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday, we saw nuclear reactor builders AREVA citing a study that said ‘nuclear power has the smallest land-use footprint of all forms of energy generation’.

The thing is, there’s actually quite a bit of disagreement on the matter. The study ‘Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America’ isn’t the only one to examine the issue.

In his paper ‘Four Nuclear Myths’, Amory B. Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute shows that…

…windpower is far less land-intensive than nuclear power; [solar] photovoltaics spread across land [is] comparable to nuclear if mounted on the ground in average U.S. sites, but much or most of that land… can be shared with lifestock or wildlife, and PVs use no land if mounted on structures, as ~90% now are.

The paper ‘Improving the ecological footprint of nuclear energy: a risk-based lifecycle assessment approach for critical infrastructure systems’ (from the International Journal of Critical Infrastructures, Vol. 1, No. 4.) estimates that nuclear’s land-use footprint is four times higher than coal…

Specifically, a lifecycle assessment of nuclear energy production is important because it captures the release of radionuclides and other toxic materials into the environment... It is concluded that, when critical infrastructure risks are taken into consideration, the actual nuclear footprint may be significantly higher than previous footprint calculations.

Would AREVA care to cite a study taking all this into account?

(And there’s one thing that hasn’t been mentioned: energy efficiency doesn’t use any land at all.)

Posted by Justin at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

We’re once again grateful to lumbering French nuclear ogre AREVA’s North American blog for a quite spectacular piece of greenwash, the title of which is...

The Nature Conservancy: Nuclear Power has a Small Footprint

Now, when it comes to environmental issues, what’s the kind of footprint that springs to mind? It would be carbon footprint, wouldn’t it? A quick Google tells us that there are over four million references to ‘carbon footprint’ out there on the internet.

So reading that headline from AREVA’s blog, what kind of footprint did you first think of?

The thing is, the particular footprint AREVA are talking about here isn’t nuclear power’s carbon footprint but it’s ‘land-use footprint’. Apparently, ‘nuclear power has the smallest land-use footprint of all forms of energy generation’. We’ll confess to not being familiar with the term. A quick Google tells us that ‘land-use footprint’ has just over 20 thousand references out there on the internet. It’s not a search term used very frequently at all on Google.

So far, so misleading. It’s just one more example of the creative lengths you have to go to when you want to promote a dirty, dangerous and discredited energy source (debunking nuclear, thanks to it being so dirty, dangerous and discredited, is an altogether simpler proposition).

This isn’t to say that the issue of ‘energy sprawl’ and the amount of land we use to generate our power isn’t hugely important. We’re not downplaying it, it’s just that AREVA is coming to the issue suspiciously late and takes the line that ‘nuclear power has the smallest land-use footprint’ but stays silent on just what happens on the land that nuclear power sits on (in their blog post, they’re still calling nuclear power ‘safe, reliable, clean, CO2-free’ without any proof). It smacks of desperation.

Have the good people at AREVA read this passage of the ‘Land Use Intensity’ study from which they quote so approvingly…?

Our definition of impact varies among energy production techniques, so a less compact way of generating energy does not necessarily mean that an energy production technique is more damaging to biodiversity, but simply that it has a larger spatial area impacted to some degree. Moreover, many energy production techniques actually have multiple effects on biodiversity, which operate at different spatial and temporal scales… Further, the longevity of the impacts described here varies. For example, radioactive nuclear waste will last for millennia, some mine tailings will be toxic for centuries…

In other words, AREVA are promoting the part of the study that says ‘nuclear power has the smallest land-use footprint of all forms of energy generation’ but not the part that talks about nuclear power's devastating impact on the environment from uranium mining to land contamination around nuclear reactors to high-level nuclear waste storage. Fancy that.

Posted by Justin at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As we’ve discussed before, there are two questions asked about building a nuclear reactor – ‘How much will it cost?’ and ‘When will it be operational?’- to which there is only one, honest reply: ‘I’ll tell you when it’s finished.’

This week, however, lumbering French nuclear ogre AREVA added a third question to the list: ‘What will the design look like?’…

In an unprecedented step, the UK nuclear safety regulator (HSE’s ND), the French nuclear regulator (ASN), and the Finnish nuclear regulator (STUK) released a joint statement on their respective evaluations of the design of AREVA’s shiny all-singing, all-dancing state-of-the-art third generation EPR Pressurised Water Reactor. You see, all three have discovered the same problem with the reactor’s design…

The issue is primarily around ensuring the adequacy of the safety systems (those used to maintain control of the plant if it goes outside normal conditions), and their independence from the control systems (those used to operate the plant under normal conditions).

Independence is important because, if a safety system provides protection against the failure of a control system, then they should not fail together. The EPR design, as originally proposed by the licensees and the manufacturer, AREVA, doesn’t comply with the independence principle, as there is a very high degree of complex interconnectivity between the control and safety systems.

In short: the EPR’s safety system isn’t independent from its control system. The safety system is there, in case the control system fails, to prevent catastrophic accidents. In EPR’s case, if the control system fails, the currently non-independent safety system could fail as well. And AREVA wants to sell the EPR all over the world.

Needless to say, AREVA responded with an awesome piece of denial, spin and downright fantasy…

The safety of the EPR™ reactor has not been called into question…

Really? So clearly ‘The issue is primarily around ensuring the adequacy of the safety systems’ and ‘The EPR design… doesn’t comply with the independence principle’ actually means ‘there’s nothing to worry about’. Silly us. Need we remind you that the OL3 EPR reactor in Olkiluoto, Finland has been under construction since 2004, the EPR at Flamanville, France has been under construction since 2006. And there are still questions about the ‘adequacy’ of the EPR’s safety systems.

AREVA then move straight to the fantasy…

The EPR™ reactor is currently the most powerful reactor in the world...

(No it isn’t – it hasn’t been built yet.)

AREVA guarantees the safety of its reactor…

(It could guarantee snow in Summer but that wouldn’t make it any more likely. AREVA can make as many guarantees as it likes but what will those guarantees be worth after a major accident? Can you clean up nuclear contamination with a guarantee? Figures vary as to the cost of the Chernobyl disaster but a quarter of a trillion dollars is a conservative estimate. Does AREVA have that kind of money? It will be governments and taxpayers who will be paying for any clean-up.)

So what does this mean? What it always does: more cost, more delays, more uncertainty, more spin, more fantasy, and more distraction from the fight against climate change. It means more of the same from AREVA and those who support them.

Posted by Justin at 6:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, we’ve all heard the hype and propaganda about the forthcoming nuclear ‘renaissance’ with its shiny and new so-called third generation of nuclear reactors. The thing is, it’s looking as if the biggest barrier to this ‘renaissance’ taking place might actually be that shiny and new so-called third generation of nuclear reactors.

You see, this latest generation of nuclear reactors are, to put it mildly, a little on the flaky side…

The design for Westinghouse’s AP-1000 has recently been rejected by the US’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission because ‘a key component might not withstand events like earthquakes and tornadoes’. The projected cost of building them varies wildly as well.

GE Hitachi’s Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) remains in the ‘early design stage’. Late last year, US energy corporation Exelon dropped plans to build a ESBWR in Texas because the ESBWR wouldn’t have earned them the vital government loan guarantees that keep the nuclear industry afloat. GE Hitachi also withdrew the design from the UK’s currently ongoing reactor evaluation process.

Canada’s Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL) also withdrew their ACR-1000 reactor design from the UK process. In July last year Canada’s own province of Ontario pulled the plug on plans to build two ACR-1000s after the project was priced at 26 billion Canadian dollars, three times what the province wanted to pay.

Which leaves us with French nuclear ogre Areva’s infamous European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) design. Two are currently under construction in the world – one in Olkiluoto in Finland and one in Flamanville in France. The EPR design has quickly become a symbol for everything wrong with the nuclear industry – expensive, late, unreliable, and farcical.

How are things going at those construction sites right now. Well, after it being announced that its anybody’s guess as to when the Olkiluoto OL3 reactor may be ready (it’s currently four years late), Areva said this week that the EPR at Flamanville is now running two years late as well. The company is also making a EUR 300 million provision on top of OL3’s rapidly expanding – and profit-killing - EUR 5.5 billion budget.

In fact, all you need to know about building an EPR reactor is summed up in this simple graph…

Click image for a larger version

The graph upturns at the precise moment construction began. How much higher will those lines reach?

The nuclear industry is starting to look like its own worst enemy.

Posted by Justin at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

French nuclear giant Areva is placing full page advertisements in the American media.

But what’s missing from the ads?

Posted by Justin at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bad news from the construction site of the OL3 EPR nuclear reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland arrives with such reliable and alarming regularity you can almost set your watch by it.

First up we have Jouni Silvennoinen, head of OL3 project for Finnish utility TVO, announcing that the reactor might not now be working until 2013, four years later than planned. TVO has now requested a new timetable from Areva, the reactor’s builders. The reasons Silvennoinen gives for this further delay are problems with the EPR reactor’s vital control and instrumentation system design, and ‘accumulation of delays in construction’. And what an ‘accumulation’…

The second piece of bad news is rather more worrying. The Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority Finland (STUK) has suspended welding on OL3’s essential cooling system (one of the most important parts of a nuclear reactor) after…

…STUK’s inspectors noticed deficiencies in the welding of the pipes in the plant’s cooling system between 6th and 8th October 2009. Among the deficiencies observed were that one welder did not have the welding instructions at his disposal, neither was he familiar with the welding requirements, as a result of which an excessive amount of power was being used in the welding. Other deviations noticed concerned the use of shielding gas necessary for welding and the shape of the contact surfaces to be welded.

The reactor’s builders have been told time and time again about the poor standards in the welding of this so-called state of the art nuclear reactor. Why have lessons not been learned? How hard can it be to ensure a welder – working on a nuclear reactor - has proper instructions and knows his equipment?

STUK has previously drawn attention to welding quality and its supervision in the welding of the steel lining of the containment building, amongst others. STUK has also required TVO to take into account what has been learned from this experience in pipe welding and its supervision. The matter will continue to require special attention from TVO as the volume of pipe installation work increases in the near future.

The EPR reactor is supposed to be the future of nuclear power. You don’t need a crystal ball to see what that future’s shaping up to look like. It’s going to be a very expensive future, shoddily built and arriving late. EPR must be stopped.

Posted by Justin at 5:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

‘In preparation for this new reactor boom…’

Areva does its bit for public confidence in its new EPR reactor.

Posted by Justin at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The OL3 nuclear European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), being built by French nuclear giant AREVA at Olkiluoto in Finland, is in such desperate financial trouble it has single-handedly wiped out the company’s half year profits.

The company’s operating profit is down by 97 per cent and net profit is down by 79 per cent – all thanks to the disastrous Olkiluoto EPR project. Facing up to the realities of nuclear reactor construction – the only true answer to the question ‘how much does a reactor cost?’ being ‘we’ll tell you when it’s finished’ – AREVA CEO Anne Lauvergeon has finally admitted that it is impossible to predict the final cost of OL3.

When the OL3 project was presented to Finnish government and parliament for (an ultimately positive) decision, TVO said the cost would be EUR 2.5 billion. The contracted fixed budget was EUR 3.2 billion. After years of schedule overruns, safety violations, and thousands of construction defects, the cost of this so-called state-of-the-art third generation reactor - one of just two being built in the world right now – now stands at EUR 5.5 billion. The counter above shows just how much OL3 is over schedule and over budget. To think AREVA describe EPR as ‘a cost effective reactor’.

The profit announcement has resulted in another very public argument between AREVA and the reactor’s owners, Finnish utility TVO. AREVA are demanding TVO help carry some of the financial burden (one billion euros and counting) – despite OL3 being a ‘turnkey’ project with a fixed price – and are threatening to suspend construction until the original contracts are modified.

So now Areva starts blackmailing its Finnish partner in an attempt to force it to cover at least some of the massive cost overrun. Anne Lauvergnon said that Areva will not commence with some of the construction unless TVO agrees to modified contracts. So far, it seems these threats have been made only in the media as TVO says it has not been informed about ‘discontinuing work or presented any conditions for the continuation of work on the OL3 construction site’

The countries – China, UK, US, India, Italy and others – looking to build their own EPRs are surely watching closely. How must potential investors be feeling, watching a reactor builder refusing to complete construction unless contracts are changed in its favour?

The real losers in this are of course Finnish electricity consumers (who face higher bills) and French taxpayers (AREVA is 91 per cent owned by the French state). In other words, the OL3 EPR reactor cannot be completed without massive public subsidies.

Arrogance and a misplaced faith in its own abilities have brought AREVA to this position. Like the rest of the nuclear industry, the EPR reactor is a dangerous and failing experiment (the other EPR being built at Flamanville in France is also hugely over budget and behind schedule, and has seen the same construction problems as OL3). EPR is massively expensive, untried and untested, and a block to the real and urgently needed solutions to climate change – renewable energy sources and energy efficiency programmes.

EPR is unaffordable both financially and environmentally. Construction Olkiluoto must be abandoned.

Posted by Justin at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We’re grateful to Areva’s North America blog for pointing us towards a speech Areva’s Chief Executive Officer Anne Lauvergeon made back in April of this year. Entitled, ‘Nuclear Industry’s Role In Nonproliferation’, the speech was given to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

We’d like to take a look at the number of fascinating things Ms Lauvergeon had to say during her speech…

…the fact is that we witness worldwide enthusiasm for nuclear energy coming from governments, coming from utilities, or electro-intensive industries…

Or, in other words, from vested interests. Notice she didn’t say ‘and the public’ or ‘and environmental groups’. Can a handful of cheerleaders really be described as ‘worldwide enthusiasm’?

Renewable energy sources, she says…

…don’t meet competitiveness requirements as well, needing heavy subsidies in the USA as well as in Europe. It’s not shocking to subsidize a source of energy at the early stage of its development, but we have to be aware of it.

Unlike nuclear energy which is a source of energy late in its development (having been developed in the 1950s) which is still needing heavy subsidies. Nuclear, says Ms Lauvergeon meets ‘all three requirements of sustainability, competitiveness, and security’. How can an energy source be sustainable when it’s reliant on a finite resource, in this case uranium? If it’s so competitive, why has the CEO of French nuclear giant EDF recently called for a ‘level playing field’ to be created so nuclear power can compete with renewable energy sources? How does having to rely on imported nuclear fuel give energy security to those countries without their own supply? Don’t expect answer from the likes of Atomic Anne.

And on and on she went. She dwelled briefly on the myth of the so-called ‘proliferation proof’ closed nuclear fuel cycle (here’s a clue: it isn’t closed and still produces dangerous nuclear waste). Have a quick look at the speech yourself (don’t spend too long – it’s eight pages) and try and find your own favourite piece of nuclear spin. Maybe we’ll offer a prize for the best one.

There was a spectacular piece of easily debunked spin from Lauvergeon in the question and answer session after her speech. It’s indicative of how Areva and the nuclear industry deal with questions. Questioned about the Savannah River Mixed-Oxide (MOX) fuel plant being built in South Carolina, she said…

…it’s a little bit over budget because the decisionaround this facility in Savannah River has taken a little bit more time in to the Department Of Energy forecast in the beginning. So you know when the projects are longer to be able to be developed, it’s very often a little bit more expensive.

In 2007, the Department of Energy costed Savannah River at $3.6 billion. In 2009 the cost was $4.8 billion. That’s a budget overrun of 33 per cent with costs set to rise still further. That’s a definition of ‘a little bit more expensive’ of which we’ve previously been unaware.

One thing she did get right however was this…

Two billion people are currently living without access to electricity, left by the wayside. And no electricity means life expectancy of 35 or 40 years. We cannot allow this situation to continue.

It’s a shocking state of affairs that cannot, we agree. And yet with stories like those of Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother and her newly solar-powered homestead, it’s all too apparent that Areva and Anne Lauvergeon don’t offer the cheap, secure and quickly-provided solution these two billion people – not to mention the rest of us - so urgently need.

Posted by Justin at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So how are things going at the construction site of the OL3 EPR reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland? The builders, Areva, can update us…

Sounds like it’s all going perfectly well. No mention of the three year delay until the reactor is completed or the nearly two billion euro cost of that delay. Funny that.

There’s also a curious figure on Areva’s blog concerning the number of people working to complete the OL3 EPR: 3,500 to be precise. That’s quite a different number from the 9,000 UK environment minister Ed Miliband said each new EPR in the country will provide. Who’s right? As ever when it comes to nuclear power, don’t trust the numbers.

Posted by Justin at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Washington Post: Obama: Iran cannot be permitted to be nuke power
’WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says he is "not reconciled" to the idea of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon within a year. The president told The Associated Press in an interview that U.S. government planning is running in precisely the opposite direction. He said a nuclear-armed Iran would likely trigger an arms race in the already volatile Mideast and said that would be "a recipe for potential disaster."’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Obama: Iran cannot be permitted to be nuke power" »

Posted by Justin at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After Areva - builders of the disaster-prone state-of-the-art third generation OL3 European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) in Olkiluoto, Finland - lost its reputation and credibility over the project, it only had one thing left to lose: its dignity.

And so it happens. The recriminations over just who is to blame for the world’s largest prototype reactor being massively over budget and over schedule, which doubts over its design and construction, have begun. Areva are now engaged in a very public and childish game of he-said-she-said with the reactor’s owners, Finnish utility TVO and nuclear safety agency, STUK.

Jukka Laaksonen, director general of STUK says…

They (Areva) started planning when they won the contract, which was of course too late. They should have used two years for planning (in advance)… The French did not understand at first the Finnish system, that no important device can be built before the plan is approved.

Areva weren’t going to take that lying down and managing director of Finnish operations, Osmo Kaipainen, argued back…

"Authorities are never satisfied" when it comes to meeting safety regulations, he said. He added that TVO was slow delivering Areva-Siemens' documents to STUK for validation, needed before moving from one building task to another.

Those pesky safety agencies and their fussy ways about… safety. Whatever next? We’re not sure if we’d like to eat a meal cooked by an Areva executive – let’s hope they wash their hands and cook the chicken properly.

TVO managed to confuse things further by saying Areva had spent "significantly more time on planning" than the contract asked for. STUK say not enough time was spent by Areva on planning, TVO say too much time was spent. You’d feel sorry for Areva if they hadn’t made a complete disaster of the OL3 construction from the very start and were capable of giving a straight answer to a straight question themselves.

On the whole, Areva, TVO and STUK all look and sound like children squabbling over which of them gets the biggest piece of cake. If it was up to us the three of them would be sent to bed without any supper.

(Apparently Areva have declared the OL3 EPR as the first child of the ‘rebirth of the nuclear industry’. Boy, it’s going to be an ugly baby.)

Posted by Justin at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In May we told you that the review being conducted by the UK’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate into new reactor designs had issues with EDF and Areva’s European Pressurised Reactor (EPR). Further details are now coming out about how the Inspectorate regards the EPR design as ‘significantly compromised’…

The Health and Safety Executive, which oversees the NII, said that the EPR design could be rejected for use in Britain if its concerns could not be satisfactorily addressed. “It is our regulatory judgment that the control and instrumentation architecture appears overly complex,” the NII letter [to EDF] said. “We have serious concerns about your proposal which allows lower safety class systems to have write access [the ability to override] to higher safety class systems,” it continued.

The letter also highlighted concerns about the absence of safety display systems or manual controls that would allow the reactor to be shut down, either in the station’s control room or at an emergency remote shutdown station.

In other words, the NII don’t trust the designs of EPR’s control and safety systems. Areva is apparently ‘scrambling to produce revised plans’, a situation mirrored in Finland where plans for the control system for the massively late and over-budget EPR being built in Olkiluoto have been described by Finland nuclear watchdog STUK as ‘without a proper design that meets the basic principles of nuclear safety’.

Apparently, in the UK’s case, ‘the design assessment phase could be delayed well past its expected completion in 2011.’ So in Finland, so in the UK. Areva and EDF are nothing if not consistent.

Posted by Justin at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

AP: Exelon delays plan for Texas nuclear plant
’COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Power generator Exelon Corp. said Tuesday it has called off plans for now to build a new nuclear plant in Texas because of worries over the economy and the limited availability of federal loan guarantees. The Chicago-based company, the largest nuclear power generator in the U.S., is the second company in the past two months to postpone work for a new nuclear plant. St. Louis-based AmerenUE said in April that it was suspending work on a reactor in Missouri. "We just aren't in a place to pursue the nuclear project," John Rowe, Exelon's chairman and CEO, told The Associated Press in an interview regarding the company's plans to add two nuclear reactors in Victoria, Texas. But the projects are so expensive, running an estimated $6 billion to $8 billion per unit, that they are proving difficult to finance.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Exelon delays plan for Texas nuclear plant" »

Posted by Justin at 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Financial Times: French government forces Areva's 'iron lady' to bend
’Areva's board meets today to rubber stamp what was always inevitable - the sale of the nuclear group's transmission and distribution business and its stakes in a number of blue-chip companies. This is what Areva's main shareholder, the French government, has long wanted to fund the rising investment needs of its nuclear champion. This is what Jean-Cyril Spinetta, its new chairman - also the chairman of Air France-KLM - is going to recommend. He is also expected to confirm that the government, which, through different state or state-controlled institutions, owns more than 90 per cent of Areva, has agreed to open up the company's capital to new investors, although perhaps not the investors Anne Lauvergeon, Areva chief executive, would have wanted. Ms Lauvergeon, sometimes called France's "iron lady", has long campaigned for a market flotation to open up the group's capital, which is only traded through investment certificates. However, the government has always regarded Areva as a strategic national asset. It now wants to raise funds which are urgently needed not just for investments, but also to finance the â‚2bn ($2.8bn) Areva needs to buy out Siemens, its German engineering joint venture partner.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: French government forces Areva's 'iron lady' to bend" »

Posted by Justin at 8:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How this works:

The accumulating costs above are based on the EUR 1.7 billion overrun announced by Areva/TVO plus an extra EUR 1.2 billion which will be needed to purchase electricity that has not been produced by Olkiluoto-3 since its projected start.

These costs will eventually be paid for by Nordic electricity consumers and French taxpayers, either through higher bills for customers or through taxes.

The financing of Areva’s EPR programme isn’t going well at all. It needs ‘between eight and 10 billion euros by 2012 to fund its investment programme’ and a desperate French government are putting parts of the company up for sale.

Related posts: EPR: Enfant Terrible of the French Nuclear Industry

Posted by Justin at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

AFP: Funds to shut nuclear plants fall short
’VERNON, Vt. (AP) - The companies that own almost half the nation's nuclear reactors are not setting aside enough money to dismantle them, and many may sit idle for decades and pose safety and security risks as a result, an Associated Press investigation has found. The shortfalls are caused not by fluctuating appetites for nuclear power but by the stock market and other investments, which have suffered huge losses over the past year and devastated the plants' savings, and by the soaring costs of decommissioning. At 19 nuclear plants, owners have won approval to idle reactors for as long as 60 years, presumably enough time to allow investments to recover and eventually pay for dismantling the plants and removing radioactive material. But mothballing nuclear reactors or shutting them down inadequately presents the most severe of risks. Radioactive waste could leak from abandoned plants into ground water or released into the air, and spent nuclear fuel rods could be stolen by terrorists. During the past two years, estimates of dismantling costs have soared by more than $4.6 billion because rising energy and labor costs, while the investment funds that are supposed to pay for shutting plants down have lost $4.4 billion in the battered stock market.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: US reactors to be abandoned as decommissioning cost rocket" »

Posted by Justin at 8:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

AFP: EPA to rebuild uranium-contaminated Navajo homes
’FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) - The federal government plans to spend up to $3 million a year to demolish and rebuild uranium-contaminated structures across the Navajo Nation, where Cold War-era mining of the radioactive substance left a legacy of disease and death. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its Navajo counterpart are focusing on homes, sheds and other buildings within a half-mile to a mile from a significant mine or waste pile. They plan to assess 500 structures over five years and rebuild those that are too badly contaminated. "These families, with the resources they have, they would not be able to put up a new home for themselves," said Lillie Lane, a spokeswoman for the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection
Agency. "We don't know how radiation in the home affected these families, but in the end people will be living in safe homes." Between the 1940s and the 1980s, millions of tons of uranium ore were mined from the 27,000 square-mile reservation that spans Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Many Navajos, unaware of the dangers of contamination, built their homes with chunks of uranium ore and mill tailings.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: EPA to rebuild uranium-contaminated Navajo homes" »

Posted by Justin at 6:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From top to bottom, the nuclear industry is built on uncertainty. If a representative of company building a nuclear reactor gives you a firm answer to the questions ‘how much will it cost?’ and ‘when will it be finished?’ they are lying to you. The only truthful answers to those questions are ‘I’ll tell you when it’s finished’ and ‘I’ll tell you when it’s finished’.

The latest example is this story about how…

…the U.S. Energy Department is negotiating with the Tennessee Valley Authority and at least one other potential client to use mixed oxide fuels from a $4.86 billion facility under construction at Savannah River Site.

It’s a story couched in so many ‘might’s and ‘potential’s as to be practically worthless. The mixed oxide (MOX) plant production plant at Savannah River is scheduled to open in 2016. Would you put money on the plant opening that year? Remember that the facility is being built by Areva of Olkiluoto and Flamanville infamy, and that the Savannah construction has already been issued with a ‘notice of violation’ for multiple failings in quality control evaluations, construction procedures and safety testing.

So we have the Tennessee Valley Authority which ‘might’ take MOX fuel for six existing reactors - and three reactors that ‘might’ be built some time in the future – from a production facility that ‘might’ be ready in 2016.

This is just another demonstration of the danger and deceit inherent in the nature of nuclear power. We have renewable technologies ready to go today that are cheaper, safer, quicker and easier to construct, and will make a significant impact on climate change. And yet governments around the world would rather rely on the ‘might’ of a nuclear industry which offers none of those promises.

Posted by Justin at 5:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The transportation of the enormous (and we mean HUGE) components required to build nuclear power plants is really a metaphor for the nuclear industry as a whole: huge, lumbering, slow-moving, a logistical nightmare, and causing a massive inconvenience to all concerned.

Take the two steam generators being built in France by Areva for the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in America. Seventy feet long and weighing 510 tons each, the generators will sail across the Atlantic and up the Chesapeake Bay to Port Deposit. The 70-mile journey from Port Deposit to Three Mile Island will take 20 days as the 26-axle self-propelled flatbed trailers have a top speed of just three miles an hour.

‘A small army of 100 workers is expected to accompany the generators in a column about a mile long…[T]he trip will take the generators over 20 bridges that either will have to be braced to carry the 850-ton combined weight of each generator and transporter, or, in three cases, bypassed altogether… Eighteen traffic signals along the proposed travel route will have to be temporarily lowered, along with numerous utility wires, and trees will have to be cut, all to give the generators the vertical clearance they need to pass.’

See? It’s a metaphor. Will the nuclear industry, moving at a snail’s pace like these generators, get there in time? Are you, like the bridges of Lancaster County, braced for what a nuclear ‘renaissance’ will take? The environmental damage, the uncertainty, consultations and concerns bypassed altogether?

Or will the nuclear industry end up like the nuclear turbines that were destined for Canada’s Point Lepreau reactor a few months back? That’s sunk. Here’s hoping.

Posted by Justin at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

China View: IAEA discovers traces of uranium in Syria
’CAIRO, June 6 (Xinhua) -- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Friday that it has found traces of processed uranium in a second site in Syrian capital Damascus, Pan-Arab Al-Arabiya TV reported on Saturday. The IAEA is investigating a U.S. intelligence report which claimed that a secret DPRK-designed nuclear reactor that Syria has almost completed for the production of plutonium.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: IAEA discovers traces of uranium in Syria" »

Posted by Justin at 2:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There’s more hype and spin on AREVA’s North America blog today as it tries to sell the idea that the company is on the frontline against nuclear proliferation.

As part of this commitment to remove weapons-grade material from stockpiles, AREVA has partnered with the Shaw Group to build the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. This facility when complete with convert the weapons-grade plutonium into MOX fuel for use in commercial nuclear power plants. This $4.9 billion project now under construction employs some 1,000 workers and is being built for DOE.

We’ll move swiftly over the fact that the construction at the Savannah River Site was recently issued with a ‘notice of violation’ for multiple failings in quality control evaluations, construction procedures and safety testing.

Instead we’ll focus on AREVA’s claim that MOX somehow helps in the battle against nuclear proliferation. In reality, MOX presents a greater proliferation risk than even conventional nuclear fuel. The plutonium required to create MOX could be stolen by terrorists and can be diverted to nuclear weapons programmes by countries. Once the MOX fuel is produced, the plutonium content is also easier to extract than from other varieties of nuclear fuel.

So, AREVA’s MOX plant may well remove ‘weapons-grade material from stockpiles’ but it certainly doesn’t remove the dangers.

Posted by Justin at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)