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)

While we’re on the subject of France’s nuclear antics, how about this: President Sarkozy is about to designate Mururoa, an atoll in French Polynesia and the site of more than 180 nuclear weapons tests between 1966 and 1996, as a site of ‘remembrance and territorial pride’.

As a Greenpeace report said back in 1995, the ‘interior of the atoll is effectively a vast, unregulated high-level radioactive waste dump’. Yes, this should serve as a permanent reminder of the dangers of nuclear weapons, but a source of pride?

So we got to thinking. Just what was it that happened on Mururoa that makes Sarkozy so very proud? Was it this…?

Perhaps it’s the fact that for 30 years successive French governments lied about there being ‘no radioactive fallout from French nuclear tests, or leakage of radioactivity into the lagoons at Moruroa’ that gives President Sarkozy warm, partriotic feelings.

One thing he shouldn’t be feeling proud of is his own government’s treatment of the victims of French nuclear testing in the Pacific. Many Polynesians will be excluded from the compensation programme due to strict restrictions imposed by the French senate. It’s a strange set of priorities, celebrating pride in a blasted island but not the sacrifices made by the people on the road to France’s nuclear ‘glory’.

Posted by Justin at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You may remember that back in July this year, the summer weather put a third of France’s nuclear reactors out of action. It was just too darn hot to keep the reactors safely cooled and France was forced to import electricity from the UK.

So, we can expect things to improve now the colder winter weather is on the way? Er, not so much…

The subsidiary of EDF, which manages the network of power lines, said that France will have to import 4 000 megawatts (MW) of electricity "for several weeks from November 2009 to January 2010, according to a study released Friday. This is equivalent to the production of 4 nuclear reactors.

This strong dependence of France on other countries for its electricity needs is because of the downtime suffered by the French nuclear facilities this year. Fifteen of 58 nuclear reactors were shut down Friday for maintenance, uranium refuelling, because of various problems, according to a source familiar with the matter.

So that’s France’s nuclear: out of action when it’s hot, out of action when it’s cold. To add insult to injury, parts of France may see power cuts because the French grid isn’t designed to accept large imports of electricity. To think France is regarded as the world leader when it comes to nuclear energy technology. Somebody somewhere really didn’t think this all through.

Posted by Justin at 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Russia’s space agency is turning the clocks back to the 1950s. In a move straight from a bad Cold War-era science fiction movie, it is ‘planning to build a new spaceship with a nuclear engine’. Yes, (*big, serious film-announcer’s voice*) an ATOMIC ROCKET! Russian space chief Anatoly Perminov said a ‘preliminary design’ for an ATOMIC ROCKET! could be ‘ready by 2012’. It will ‘then take nine more years and 17 billion rubles ($600 million, 400 million euros) to build’ the ATOMIC ROCKET! Let’s ignore for the moment the wisdom of throwing megawatt-class nuclear reactors into the sky (the thought of one re-entering the atmosphere at 25,000 feet per second is certainly a sobering one). Instead, if we factor in the usual nuclear projections and predictions, the ATOMIC ROCKET!’s design should be ready sometime around 2020. It should be built sometime around 2035 and maybe, possibly, fly sometime around 2040. All for a cost of 75 billion rubles.

Meanwhile, the public and the private came together for French president Nicholas Sarkozy this week. Nicholas is famed for his tireless globe-trotting as the nuclear industry’s most ruthless salesman (rumours that he’s about to star as Ricky Roma in a remake of Glengarry Glen Ross have been denied). He just loves seeing tons of public money being wasted on useless white elephants. We did wonder where he got the idea for his nuclear boondoggles until we read about his personal presidential shower. It cost 245,000 euros of public money and he never used it. It’s a dirty business, the nuclear industry. When will Nicholas come clean?

And so to Iraq. ‘The Iraqi government has approached the French nuclear industry about rebuilding at least one of the reactors that was bombed at the start of the first Gulf war.’ This week, in continuing violence, 150 people were killed in two suicide bombings which raised questions about the competence of the country’s security services. The government has called for international support to help it combat terrorism. The country’s politicians are divided on laws needed to conduct national elections in January next year, and so threatening the country’s constitution. A new nuclear reactor? What could possibly go wrong?

(You can read more exciting Tale of Nuclear Insanity here, here, here, here and here.)

Posted by Justin at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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)

Nuclear proliferation remains a nightmare for all of us. What would happen if terrorists or rogue states were to get there hands on the plutonium produced by nuclear reactors?

The nuclear industry must therefore keep a close watch on the nuclear waste they produce. Strict auditing processes must be observed to ensure plutonium does not fall into the wrong hands.

Take the Cadarache nuclear facility in France, which is currently being decommissioned, for example. How much plutonium does it have? Easy, it has eight kilogrammes of plutonium. Sorry, make that 22 kilogrammes. Yes, that’s right. No, wait a minute, it could be ‘in the region’ of 39 kilogrammes. In fact, the amount of plutonium at Cadarache has been massively underestimated.

France’s Nuclear Safety Authority has suspended decommissioning at the site, saying the ‘underestimation of the quantities of plutonium reduces safety margins calculated to prevent criticality accidents’. The underestimation was found by Cadarache’s owners, the Atomic Energy Commission, in June this year but they didn’t report it until October. You can tell they put a premium on transparency, trust and public confidence, can’t you?

So, how much of this plutonium may have been stolen to make nuclear weapons or is otherwise unaccounted for? We’ll never know – until it’s too late, obviously – because the operators of Cadarache (which has 19 nuclear installations) have absolutely no idea how much plutonium they were supposed to be safeguarding.

Posted by Justin at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some news that French energy giant EDF might have preferred to keep quiet has emerged in French newspaper, Liberation…

The paper said 13 percent of French radioactive waste produced by power group EDF could be found in the open air in a town in Siberia to which access is forbidden. The paper said it based its information on an investigation due to be broadcast on TV channel Arte on Tuesday.

Access to the UF6 nuclear waste storage facility in Seversk, Siberia might be forbidden (in’s known as a ‘closed city’) but in this hi-tech age, very few things remain hidden…

View Larger Map

Look at all those rusty storage tanks. The city was formerly known as Tomsk-7 and in 1993 was the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents. In 2000 contamination of rivers around the facility was said to have reached ‘staggering levels’ and the ‘worst ever recorded’.

EDF has finally admitted that a large part of its nuclear waste is sent to Russia…

An EDF spokeswoman declined to confirm the 13 percent figure, or that waste was stored in the open air, but confirmed EDF sends nuclear waste to Russia. "We send waste to Russia for treatment, and they send 10 to 20 percent of it back to us to be used in French power plants," she said.

A whole 10 to 20 percent? Wow. So what happens to the other 80 to 90 percent? Sounds very much as if it’s in Seversk somewhere. This, however, is how the nuclear industry likes things – out of sight and out of mind. Like the beginnings of the nuclear reaction – in dangerous and contaminating uranium mining – they don’t want you to think about what happens at the end either.

Posted by Justin at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The nuclear industry has the world’s most powerful people believing its fairy tales. A compliant and gullible public are seemingly happy to have their pockets constantly rifled by these nuclear pickpockets in search of subsidies. The nuclear industry spends millions on propaganda and planting pro-nuke stories in the media, making sure we all buy into their empty promises and so allow this status quo to continue.

Then there are days when you have to wonder if the nuclear industry really doesn’t care how it looks to the rest of us.

How about the story that ‘nuclear experts are using household cleaner Cillit Bang to clean radioactive stains at a UK nuclear power plant after watching an ad that showed dirt being stripped from a 10p coin’? Surely that’s a sign of a nuclear industry no longer worried about looking terrifyingly insane or worried that the rest of us might think they’re terrifyingly insane. Hey guys, why not try a little bicarbonate of soda? We hear white wine’s pretty good for removing stains as well.

Then there’s this:

Worsening working conditions, inadequate pay rises, pressure to work faster and safety concerns…

No,it’s not a description of 19th century working conditions as described by the likes of Charles Dickens in his novels. It’s the description of 21st century working conditions at France’s Tricastin nuclear power plant as described by independent experts. ‘We work on top of each other in the nuclear reactor which is very narrow and where it's hard to operate,’ said a 53-year-old worker. A hundred or so years ago we used to make children climb up chimneys to clean them. It seems the practices remain the same at nuclear reactors, only the ages of the workers have changed. When the nuclear industry is running its reactors as if they were factories in the early industrial revolution, you know it must think it can get away with anything…

…like contaminating enough soil at one nuclear reactor ‘to fill Yankee Stadium with radioactive sludge a foot deep’. That’s 1.63 million cubic feet of soil in case you were wondering. Yet Entergy, Indian Point nuclear power plant’s operators, want to extend its working lifetime by another 20 years. Such an attitude is admirable in a way – it speaks of an almost courageous a lack of vanity on the part of the nuclear industry. It looks a mess and just doesn’t care.

Somebody somewhere thinks this is all a price worth paying for ‘safe’, ‘cheap’, and ‘reliable’ electricity. That somebody? The industry with its propaganda, politicians who believe the propaganda, and you with your open wallet.

Posted by Justin at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In November 2007, Anne Lauvergeon, President and Chief Executive of French nuclear energy incompetents Areva boasted…

In a world enjoying a growing energy thirst, we have in our hands nuclear energy: a formidable asset to build an energy sustainable future. It means that one of the answers to the issues of achieving security of supply, competitiveness and the fight against climate change is already available to us.

Nuclear energy can already help us against climate change?

Oh really?

Tell that to the French government who are this summer are being forced to import electricity from the UK because its inland nuclear reactors cannot operate properly in the summer heatwave…

Fourteen of France’s 19 nuclear power stations are located inland and use river water rather than seawater for cooling. When water temperatures rise, EDF is forced to shut down the reactors to prevent their casings from exceeding 50C […] One power industry insider said yesterday that about 20GW (gigawatts) of France’s total nuclear generating capacity of 63GW was out of service.

Yes, this amazing, cheap, reliable and safe technology that is going to save us from rising global temperatures can’t work when the temperature rises. Really. The world’s major exponent of nuclear power, the one that is supposedly going to lead us the promised land of a nuclear ‘renaissance’, is having to import electricity because its own reactors aren’t up to the job. Nuclear power is supposed to save us from climate change but can’t work when the climate changes. That’s what they call a Catch-22.

With temperatures only set rise in the coming years, it looks like France has a big problem. And they’re not alone. There are over 400 nuclear power plants across the world. How many are inland and rely on river water for coolant? Not that coastal reactors are any better. Look for example at the CanDU facility in Ontario, Canada which is actively contributing to climate change.

So what’s the solution? In France, desperate times demand desperate measures when a country is so reliant on nuclear power…

EDF must also observe strict rules governing the heat of the water it discharges into waterways so that wildlife is not harmed. The maximum permitted temperature is 24C […] In 2003, the situation grew so severe that the French nuclear safety regulator granted special exemptions to three plants, allowing them temporarily to discharge water into rivers at temperatures as high as 30C.

Can these strict rules governing reactors’ discharges survive in the face of rising global temperatures? One would imagine not. In other words the nuclear industry will be allowed to damage the environment more than it already does.

‘In order to save the planet we must destroy it,’ should be its new slogan.

Posted by Justin at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)

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)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Bloomberg: Gulf’s Push for Nuclear Experts May Delay U.K. Plans
June 15 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. utilities risk falling behind with plans to build nuclear power plants because Middle East nations may use higher salaries to lure skilled workers, reactor builder Westinghouse Electric Co. said. “These nations have no legacy program to use as a source for nuclear expertise,” said Adrian Bull, U.K. stakeholder relations manager at Westinghouse, a unit of Japan’s Toshiba Corp. “If you have literally nothing to go on, you have to be the Chelsea or Real Madrid and buy in the people from elsewhere.” Oil-producing nations including the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait plan nuclear plants to meet growing energy demand at home while exporting fuel abroad. The U.A.E. plans to select companies to develop an atomic power program by the end of this year and has a 2017 target date for completing its first reactor, the same year Electricite de France SA plans to start a new British nuclear plant.

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Gulf’s Push for Nuclear Experts May Delay U.K. Plans" »

Posted by Justin at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Whitehaven News: 'Rogue' radioactive material to be sent to France
’This is the batch of eight Mox fuel assemblies made at Sellafield and later found to be "falsified" in its specification data after being shipped out to customers in Japan. The faked pellets scandal led to loss of business confidence in BNFL and for a time Japan refused to strike any further deals with Sellafield. The fuel, a mixture of plutonium and uranium, was sent back to Sellafield - seven years ago. Now, after several years "evaluating the best options", agreement has been reached with the government that the "rogue" fuel batch, along with a another eight, will be shipped to France for treatment - but not until 2014/15.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: 'Rogue' Sellafield radioactive material to be sent to France" »

Posted by Justin at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Today’s Zaman: Turkey's nuclear dreams face uncertain future
’Turkey's long-running dream of having a nuclear power plant is surrounded by uncertainty despite the fact that a recently concluded tender on the construction of the country's first nuclear power plant is about to be finalized. Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yildiz said the final decision on the tender would be made in June, but it seems that incertitude about the matter will not be cleard up easily even if the tender is discussed at a Cabinet meeting. As only one company entered the tender and the price offered is considerably high, the Cabinet will not be able to make an easy decision. Moreover, the global economic crisis has taken its toll on funds that were to be allocated to the nuclear power plant contract.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Turkey's nuclear dreams face uncertain future" »

Posted by Justin at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)