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Rebound of Nuclear Plants Raising Worries Over Waste
BRUSSELS - As France presses ahead with building more next-generation nuclear reactors, new evidence emerged Friday to suggest that industry and governments may be unprepared to handle the increasingly toxic waste that will result.
Highlighting the importance of the technology in France, both as its main source of electricity and as a major export industry, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France announced late Thursday that Électricité de France, Europe's biggest power producer, was awarded the contract to develop a second atomic reactor using next-generation technology.
EDF beat competition from the gas and power company GDF Suez to lead the construction at an existing nuclear site at Penly in northern France.
Areva, the company based in Paris that designed the so-called EPR, says the new system will generate far more electricity more safely than previous reactors, is easier to construct, and will last longer.
Areva, the world's biggest reactor maker, also says the EPR - which is expected to generate more than 1,600 megawatts, making it more powerful than any other reactor in commercial use - will use about 15 percent less uranium and produce 30 percent less waste.
But an anti-nuclear group said that information it gleaned from industry reports - publicly available but which have received little attention so far - show that waste from the EPR will be more radioactive by a factor of seven because more uranium is burned up. That will make it more expensive to handle and store safely, according to Greenpeace, which provided the details on Friday to the International Herald Tribune.
"Despite the French government's global marketing of the EPR as cheap and safe, the evidence proves otherwise," said Rianne Teule, an international nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace who is based in Amsterdam.
The next wave of reactors "poses an ever-increasing burden on people's budgets and danger to their health, now and far into the future," Teule said.
Patricia Marie, a spokeswoman for Areva, said the claim by Greenpeace was "grossly inaccurate." She said the waste would be 15 percent more radioactive at the most.
There are currently 58 reactors in operation in France. There are no EPRs in operation anywhere in the world, but the first is under construction at Olkiluoto, an island in the West of Finland, and the second in Flamanville, in northern France.
Teule said the evidence about the radioactivity of the waste was drawn from a report by Posiva, a waste disposal company owned by Finnish nuclear operators, and from the Swiss organization Nagra, which oversees management of nuclear waste.
Teule said the waste would pose greater dangers to workers from higher radiation doses during transfer and storage than current waste. She also said the waste would need to be stored for longer in areas above ground, where it is potentially exposed to terrorists.
Those factors, among others, would increase the overall cost of nuclear energy - costs that Teule said were not properly accounted for by industry and governments.
There are no long-term facilities for disposing or burying high-level nuclear waste anywhere in the world, although Posiva is digging a tunnel at Olkiluoto in anticipation of final approval for storing waste a quarter of a mile underground.
U.S. authorities have sought to put high-level waste inside Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, but that plan is foundering because of local opposition.
Spokeswomen for Posiva and Nagra said they were unable to give any immediate comment about the reports.
Hans Riotte, the head of the Radiological Protection and Radioactive Waste Management Division at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris, said waste from the EPR, although smaller in volume, would be more radioactive than existing forms of high-level waste because it would be denser. But Riotte was unable to say whether it would be more radioactive by a factor of seven, as Greenpeace contends.
Riotte conceded the waste would have to be stored above ground longer to cool, but said that waste-handling and storage procedures could be adapted to deal with much more toxic waste without much added expense.
"Any financial impacts are likely to be relatively small," Riotte said.
Marie, the spokeswoman for Areva, said the company "was confident that all costs have been taken into account" for construction and operation of EPR reactors.
Greenpeace has vowed to oppose construction of the new plant in France, but has not said how it would pursue that goal.
Areva reported rising sales this week for 2008 as its uranium mining and reactor construction businesses benefited from increasing demand for nuclear power.
But any reports about the cost, or safety, of its EPR model still are a sensitive matter for the company, which is competing to become the designer of reactors for the next generation of nuclear plants in the United States and elsewhere.
Problems at the EPR site in Finland mean the reactor already is badly overdue and vastly over budget, even though it was designed to have a shorter construction period than previous models.
The site has been plagued by water-logged concrete, faulty welds and flawed pipes, delaying the reactor start date by at least three years and raising costs by roughly 50 percent.
Two more EPR reactors, called Taishan 1 and 2, are slated for construction in China. Areva said the design was also being used by Électricité de France and the large German utility, E.ON, bidding to refurbish the fleet of aging reactors in Britain.
Areva also is vying sell the technology to the United Arab Emirates as part of a project led by Total and GDF Suez.
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25 Comments so far
Show Alldeleted double post
James Kanter says "There are no long-term facilities for disposing or burying high-level nuclear waste anywhere in the world..." This is not true.
For several generations, Big Pharma, Big Chemical and Big Agriculture have had long-term facilities for disposing and burying their high-level chemical waste - everywhere in the world. Why should the nuclear energy industry be singled out and required to have designated storage sites (i.e., Yucca Mtn.)? Why can't the nuclear energy industry simply follow in the footsteps of the aforementioned Big 3?
In the scheme of life, it is the responsibility of air, water, soils, plants and animals to absorb wastes. That is why they (and we) are here. It is our collective job.
What's more important - the global economy and the high comfort level of consumers or the health of consumers, the planet Earth and future generations?
Nuclear power plants ...let 'er rip!
Nuclear waste is cancer on earth forever increasing. No one has the right to profit by condemning future generations to horrific death and disease from increasing and bioconcentrating loads of nuclear waste, impossible to keep out of the environment for the tens of thousands of years of its half-life. The French had gone down this road years ago, ocean dumping nuke waste out of sight out of mind. Their free lunch is at the expense of life on earth.
theinitiate
Billy -y4
Hi! So we can continue this conversation on this interesting article. So it seemsto me that what the nuke industry considers improvements are just a variation or a shell game with the multiple problems with itself. The 15% more radio active was stated by Patricia Marie, from Areva the nuke company itself, she's pronuke -so you're telling me those in the business don't know what they are talking about? Plus, as horrible as waste is, why would we want to make it more horrible? What is that you're saying about it having to stay in the cooling pools just an extra couple of months? oh, just that much longer for someone to have the chance to grab it... The worst of all of this is that even the idea of burying in the ground is laughable. It's the same kind of thinking we've always use for our waste-we'll jus thide it an it'll go away out of sight out of mind. Well over time how many Nuke plants will we have all over the world needing a place to "hide their waste -think about 30 years from now, 50 -100 ... Then think about all those wholes in the earth filled with the most deaadly poison, most destructive substance in the world -not only to humans and Animals-BUT TO THE PLANET IT'S SELF!!
Ya'know, that comfort level someone mentioned is ridiculous. Let's worry about that and not whether we have ground under our feet to exist... Humans are soft- too soft.
Please learn the facts not 1950's science fiction.
Radioactive materials simply are not anywhere near as bad as you depict them. This is particularly true when compared to many poisonous chemical agents, which are far more acutely deadly, or are more carcinogenic or mutagenic. Many of the most toxic chemical agents are also gases or highly volatile or soluble liquids and are much more difficult to prevent from release to the environment. The bottle of Chlorox, in nearly every US home presents a much greater hazard and causes more environmental harm than all the waste in Yucca Mt. ever will.
There are many persistent organic compounds, particularly certain halogenated hydrocarbons that are far more bio-accumulative than any radionucleides, and have harmful effects at vanishingly small concentrations. These substances have spread around the world and their hormone-disrupting effects are observable around the world.
Radioactive materials have never been implicated in any kind of ecological harm. Even the Chernobyl permanent evacuation zone is full of healthy wildlife. The contribution of radioactive agents to human cancer is tiny compared to chemical agents, and food and lifestyle choices.
What will result in devastating ecological harm - including a possible geologically unprecedented mass extinction is the simple chemical CO2.
---USAn---
Over the past 60 years, how many people how died from nuclear power plants in the US? Zero.
Over the past 60 years, how many people have died from air pollution caused by dirty coal-driven power plants? Too many to count.
There is a moral imperative to produce clean safe nuclear energy.
The US has already shown that this can be done. We receive 20% of our power needs from nuclear energy. We are the largest producer of nuclear energy in the world. When was the last accident in the US? How many people died?
France produces the highest percentage of its electrical energy from nuclear reactors—78% as of 2006. Have you read of any massive deaths in France from nuclear power? Any deaths at all?
We have a 60 year track record of showing that this can be done safely and cleanly. Otherwise, why would environmentalists like Obama and Al Gore both support it? It's cheap, clean energy. We need more of that. Nuclear power is here to stay.
joehope
Is 'brilliant stupidity' an oxymoron? Are "moral imperatives" dictated by corporate-sponsored government officials, popes, rabbis, priests, ministers, and imams - or by the thinking being that resides within ourselves?
The only fact that I know for sure: B.O. and Al Gore are not environmentalists. They both work for the American Empire - and neither one of them gives a flying you-know-what about American citizens.
Gore and Obama have done far more than you ever have to save the environment.
Like what? Join the corporate polluters? Yeah, that's "saving the environment" ! Tell you what. We'll put a nuclear power plant in your own back yard and see if you can prove that nuclear is "safe" after a year.
No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make safe and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for historical or even geological ages. To do such a thing is a transgression against life itself, a transgression infinitely more serious than any crime perpetrated by man. The idea that a civilization could sustain itself on such a transgression is an ethical, spiritual, and metaphysical monstrosity. It means conducting the economical affairs of man as if people did not matter at all.
– E. F. Schumacher “Small is Beautiful”
Peace
Paranoia runs deep both inside industry and outside. Our track record is poor. When the earth is spoiled, she will will destroy us and start over.
There are so many mixed comments here, with hints of truth and lots of doubt.
Yes, there have been many more deaths and injuries attributable to non nuclear industries, so what?, this does not mean that nuclear power plants and nuclear fuel issues are inherently safer.
The fact that is we have a major problem with spent nuclear fuel, how to handle/transport it, safeguard it, and dispose of it. Over the years the answers are always complicated by the unknowns. What happened to the idea of sending the spent fuel into the sun?, too risky. What happened to the idea of using it for breeder reactors?, never got off the ground really. Storing it is fraught with long term exceptional dangers, even in the spent fuel pools at reactor sites. Burying it in the ground cannnot guarantee that some time in the future the contamination will not seep into water aquifers. Dumping in the ocean is even scarier as the containment drums erode.
The only sensible comment here was the notion of decreasing energy use. Converting to less toxic, safer renewable energy is right up there also. If we stay the course we will not have to worry about another problem, population control. The balance is tipping, it was horrifying to read another article here at CD about Australia.
People are afraid of radiation. To me this appears to be an inherent fear, the understanding? that weird uncontrolled things may happen. Yes, there is more danger from radiation effects secondary to flying in aircraft then living 10 miles from a nuclear power plant. People should be greeted with a radiation hazard sign when they board a plane. Ludicrous? The real fear comes from the need to collect and concentrate this deadly stuff, and now whether it will fall into the hands of terrorists.
I am familiar with some of the workings inside a nuclear power plant. No matter how safe it is made to sound, there is always potential danger with metal fatigue, effects of high pressure on joints, operator errors. Deaths do occur, maybe not the Chernobyl or Hiroshima/Nagasaki scenarios.
Interesting comment about Jordan's cancer rate. I wonder if some of the Middle East illness is attributable to spent uranium fuel used in armor busting munitions.
A nuclear power plant is similar to a house without a septic system. There's no safe place anywhere for the waste.
Remember to write your U.S. Senators about the $50 billion in nuclear bail-in money that the Senate appropriations committee snuck into the stimulus bill late at night. That pig can be opposed on the Senate floor, and it can be opposed in the House-Senate compromise bill.
----
Real long-term commenters are disregarding the nuclear ad agency's paid boiler room bloggers, who produce nothing but waste products dumped on this board.
The uncertainties and inaccurate support associated with nuclear powers underscores the need for development of alternative energy (ie wind, solar tidal). Although the initial expenditures may exceed nuclear power, the operating costs and environmental risks will be less.
I have to put up with a lot of pro-nuclear propaganda on the TV and worse, people buying into it and even associating nuclear with "self defense". Maybe this is just MS where education is zippity doo da but I came a across a couple of folks who argued that somehow nuclear produces more electricity and is "cheap". When I talked to them about nuclear waste, they argued that it would take care of itself and when I proved them wrong and pointed out that making waste from it is cheaper than reusing it, they jump up in joy and say "YIPEE ! You're so cool Dennis ! You know what ! In addition to our guns and bazookas, we can use nuclear power to blow down the terrorists any day because that's self defense !!" Good gawd, such amorals !
Waste is a huge problem, and the nuclear industry still has to prove it, but it can be solved. Some recycling is already being done in England and France, and Russia is actually importing some waste from France with the intention of reprocessing and selling it back to France as new fuel. Japan has a program: http://www.jnfl.co.jp/english/reprocessing.html
Our own DOE and Argonne National Lab are also working on the problem:
http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/Frontiers/2003/d5ee.html
There is also an international cooperative (GNEP)working on new technology incuding waste disposal. http://www.energy.gov/media/GNEP/06-GA50035e_2-col.pdf
There is a friendly competition between companies and governments all over the world in both new reactor designs and waste recycling and disposal. It should just be a matter of time before its ready to roll. The eventual goal is NO disposal of long half-life waste, and NO plutonium accessible anywhere in the process.
no
Green alternatives like geothermal, wind, solar, tidal are paying off now.
The same conservatives that have brought us to the brink, that deny overpopulation, global warming and who favor corporate monopolies are pushing us to put our dwindling billions into centralized uninsurable nukes.
Spreading cancer on earth forever with no nuke waste disposal means is another irresponsible, centralized, hugely expensive, net energy losing, taxpayer funded, pork barrel, neo-con faith-based solution.
The same scientists who have established the crisis of global heating as a plain fact to the world are the ones saying that nuclear energy is a crucial part of the solution. This irony is quite lost on the anti-nuclear vaudeville and jamboree.
I love the suggestion of a previous poster about opening the Anti-nuclear Science Museum next door to the Creation Science Museum in Kentucky. In addition to sharing management, and appealing to the same clientele, they could save expenses on a two-for-one advertising campaign.
Would anybody care to offer an opinion on James Hansen's interviews on the Integral Fast Reactor which eats its nuclear waste, or the Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor which prevents the creation of new waste. Both can operate for centuries without any further mining, and could be operable in six years.
For those who aren't familiar with him, Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies[1] in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Earth Sciences Division.[2] He is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. Hansen is probably best known for his public testimony on climate change to Congress in the 1980s that first raise broad awareness of the global warming issue. Recently he was censored and his climate reports were both censored and edited by the Bush administration. He fought them by going public.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/11/28/hansen-to-obama-pt-iii-fast-nuclear-reactors-are-integral/