For most of my life I have been against the nuclear industry, primaryily due to the weaponization.
Although this weekend I did read a book about Thorium, and liquid flouride thorium reactors, and this has evolved my viewpoint slightly.
I am not qualified to confirm the opinions within the book(Superfuel), but if the data is valid then it would be useful.
The thing I wonder, is what is the smallest size of Thorium Reactor, necessary to obtain critical mass.
Britain already has Aldermaston, surely a passive safety reactor could be slotted onto there easily, and already has the technical base, to develop such a solution.

Regards

Derrick

Derrick,

Assuming a new thorium reactor development programme is technically feasible here in the UK (and I am not in a position to judge this at present), and that enough money can be raised to support it, then the question of where the development programme should be sited is a key decision in whether it can succeed or not (a suitable local workforce, nuclear and non-nuclear, and a suitable range of local private sector engineering businesses is a necessary component for future success).

Professor Andrew Sherry at the Dalton Institute, amongst others, are currently engaged in using copious amounts of public money to push water up hill, in respect to, growing and maintaining the skilled workforce at the Sellafield site in Cumbria. Sellafield is extremely disadvantaged by its geographical location and we need to be clear what can and cannot be achieved there cost-effectively in future.

If it is to succeed in maintaining a private enterprise culture, the thorium reactor programme should have a management team, that is not predominantly sourced from the existing nuclear industry. This will be impossible to achieve at Sellafield, without very large amounts of public subsidy, to attract and keep skilled people in an area of the country that they would otherwise not want to live. Given its geographical disadvantage, I personally think it is sensible not to attempt major new forms of process development and prototyping work at the Sellafield site any more.

Even if privately insurable cost-effective thorium electricity generation proves not to be possible, one potential spin-off from a thorium research and development programme may be technological improvements that allow us to 'burn' our stockpile of plutonium more cost-effectively than is currently envisaged.

If we choose to move in this direction then some form of plutonium 'burning' facility (based on a working prototype design) could eventually be built and run at Sellafield in Cumbria; however given the previous history of costly overspends, I think it would be a mistake to continue to host large first of a kind prototyping and development programmes there in future.

So where could a thorium research and development programme be sited?

You have suggested Aldermaston. My answer is that I don't know. As you point out the size footprint of the reactor building and the associated infrastructure needed will be a big factor in where it can be sited.

(Perhaps the prototype thorium reactor could be built in combination with some form of gas powered electricity generation plant, so expensive assets such as generator sets and cooling towers etc, could be used to generate a commercial return during periods the prototype reactor was not in operation.)

However before choosing a site the thorium programme managers should agree with the Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR), the wider engineering community and private insurance experts, what aiming for insurable passively safe systems will actually mean in practice and how design evidence, for such, can be clearly presented and evaluated in public in advance of the plant being built.

The question of how to solve the problem of safely storing or disposing of radioactive waste is extremely important issue to be addressed.

(Passive safety considerations not only encompass nuclear processes, but chemical, mechanical and electrical as well.)

It is no good just agreeing a set of semi-secret working arrangements with the ONR and thinking this will be enough to gain pubic support for the programme; the wider engineering community and private insurance experts will need to have enough information to make their own independent assessments of the risks and potential consequences of any engineering system failures at a thorium reactor site as well.

To the question: Why is it important that future nuclear reactors be insurable in the private markets?

At the moment we have a nuclear subsidy regime imposed by DECC that limits or caps the insurance liability of new nuclear power stations in the uk to £1 billion. There is curently no real financial incentive to build passively safe plants under this insurance subsidy regime; passively safe plants might have to pay very similar insurance costs in the private market, but the EPR and AP1000 reactor operators would have to pay much more. This insurance subidy regime, inhibits innovation in the nuclear industry and is locking us into technological solutions where the consequences of failure have proved catastrophically damaging for society. The existance of this insurance subsidy regime is grossly irresponsible, immoral and I believe it is ultimately a criminal abuse of our systems of public governance; it is just one of the regulatory mechanisms expressly used by politicians to pick technological winners, and protect the interests of industrial incumbents by the back door.

James Arathoon

The Report into The World Nuclear Industry Status 2012 by Mycle Schneider and Antony Froggatt does not pull any punches. This is the summary:

Twenty years after its first edition, the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2012 portrays an industry suffering from the cumulative impacts of the world economic crisis, the Fukushima disaster, ferocious competitors and its own planning and management difficulties.

Key results of the assessment include:
. Only seven new reactors started up, while 19 were shut down in 2011. On 5 July 2012, one reactor was reconnected to the grid at Ohi in Japan and another unit is expected to generate power on the site within two weeks. However, it remains highly uncertain, how many others will receive permission to restart operations in Japan.
. Four countries announced that they will phase out nuclear power within a given timeframe.
. At least five countries have decided not to engage or re-engage in nuclear programs.
. In Bulgaria and Japan two reactors under construction were abandoned.
. In four countries new build projects were officially cancelled. Of the 59 units under construction in the world, at least 18 are experiencing multi-year delays, while the remaining 41 projects were started within the past five years or have not yet reached projected start-up dates, making it difficult to assess whether they are running on schedule.
. Construction costs are rapidly rising. The European EPR cost estimate has increased by a factor of four (adjusted for inflation) over the past ten years.
. Two thirds of the assessed nuclear companies and utilities were downgraded by credit rating agency Standard and Poor's over the past five years.
. The assessment of a dozen nuclear companies reveals that all but one performed worse than the UK FTSE100 index. The shares of the world's largest nuclear operator, French state utility EDF, lost 82 percent of their value, that of the world's largest nuclear builder, French state company AREVA, fell by 88 percent.
In contrast, renewable energy development has continued with rapid growth figures.
. Global investment in renewable energy totaled US$260 billion in 2011, almost five times the 2004 amount. Over the same period, the total cumulative investment in renewables has risen to over US$1 trillion, which compares to nuclear power investment decisions of about $120 billion.
. Installed worldwide nuclear capacity decreased again in 2011, while the annual installed wind power capacity increased by 41 GW in 2011 alone. Installed wind power and solar capacity in China grew by a factor of around 50 in the past five years, while nuclear capacity increased by a factor of 1.5. Since 2000, within the European Union nuclear capacity decreased by 14 GW, while 142 GW of renewable capacity was installed, 18 percent more than natural gas with 116 GW.
. In Germany, for the first time, power production from renewables was only second to lignite, exceeded coal, nuclear power and natural gas. The German renewable electricity generation thus corresponded to 29 percent of French nuclear production.

"The market for nuclear is shrinking year by year, while renewable energy deployment continues at pace and in an ever increasing number of countries. With nuclear power becoming more expensive than a widening range of renewable energy technologies this trend will only continue", said Antony Froggatt, co-author of the report.
"The fact that plant life extension seems the most likely survival strategy of the nuclear industry raises serious safety issues. Most critically will be to what extent and for how long nuclear safety authorities will be in a position to withstand growing pressure from nuclear utilities to keep operating increasingly outdated technology", states lead author Mycle Schneider.
One third of the nuclear countries generated their historic maximum of nuclear electricity in 2011, which raises troubling questions on the extent of the nuclear safety assessments or so-called "stress tests" carried out around the world after 3/11.

poo,

I think that you missed some important footnotes from this section.

Installed worldwide nuclear capacity decreased again in 2011, while the annual installed wind power capacity increased by 41 GW in 2011 alone. Installed wind power and solar capacity in China grew by a factor of around 50 in the past five years, while nuclear capacity increased by a factor of 1.5. Since 2000, within the European Union nuclear capacity decreased by 14 GW, while 142 GW of renewable capacity was installed, 18 percent more than natural gas with 116 GW.
. In Germany, for the first time, power production from renewables was only second to lignite, exceeded coal, nuclear power and natural gas. The German renewable electricity generation thus corresponded to 29 percent of French nuclear production


5 Note that nuclear plants usually generate between two and five times more electricity per installed GWe than
wind turbines.
6 Note that the electricity generation per installed GWe varies considerably between energy sources.

The headline numbers don't exactly compare like with like. Ref:

http://www.worldnuclearreport....-EN-V2-LQ-Summary.pdf

page 6.

Best regards

Roger

Thanks for that Roger. This is the conclusion reached in The Report into The world Nuclear Status 2012 by Mycle Schneider and Antony Froggatt.

Conclusion
Prior to the March 2011 (3/11) Fukushima disaster, the nuclear industry had made it clear that it
could not afford another major accident. Over the past ten years the industry has sold a survival
strategy to the world as the nuclear revival or its renaissance. In reality many nuclear companies and
utilities were already in great difficulties before the triple disaster hit the Japanese east coast in 2011.
Fifteen months after 3/11, it is likely that the decline of the industry will only accelerate. Fukushima
continues to have a significant impact on nuclear developments everywhere. Fifteen years ago,
nuclear power provided over one third of the electricity in Japan, but as of May 2012 the last
operating reactor was closed. The Japanese government is facing massive opposition to nuclear
power in the country, thus making the restart of any reactors difficult. The controversy over the
restart permission for the Ohi reactors in the Kansai region illustrates the dilemma. Germany shut
down half of its nuclear fleet after 3/11. Japan and Germany could be leading a new trend. The
German direction is clear with the possibility of Japan following: an electricity system based on
highly efficient use and renewable energy technologies, even if many questions remain, including the
timescale, local versus centralized, grid transformation and smart system development. It appears
increasingly obvious that nuclear systems are not competitive in this world, whether from systemic,
economic, environmental or social points of view.
The nuclear establishment has a long history of failing to deliver. In 1973-1974, the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) forecasted an installed nuclear capacity of 3,600-5,000 GW in the
world by 2000, ten times what it is today. The latest example was from Hans Blix, former Director
General of the IAEA, who stated two months after 3/11: "Fukushima is a bump in the road...". The
statement is both crass and far from today's reality.

For a long time now Areva has been silent on the completion date for the new EPR at Olkiluoto, in Finland. The last available completion date estimate, of August 2014, was from the Finnish generator TVO.

Now TVO has updated the stockmarket that the new nuclear station will not be delivered by this date and no new completion date is available.

http://www.tvo.fi/www/page/3830/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18862422

There may now be a possibility that the delays at Olkiluoto will start impacting commissioning of the new EPR at Flamanville. Areva may not want to or indeed be able to run highly skilled commissioning teams at both sites simultaneously.

So will Areva commssion Olikuoto first and delay Flamanville commissioning for another 1 or 2 more years or commission Flamanville first and delay Olkiluoto for another 5 or 6 more years? Very expensive either way.

The Times is running a story today that EDF will be asking the UK government for a strike price of £165 per MWh for the new nuclear power station complex to go ahead at Hinkley point. (Up-rated for inflation of 2% per year this will be about £200 per MWh in 2022. For the market rate to equal this in 2022 energy prices would have to rise 15% a year for the next 10 years.)

So this is confirmation that privately funded new Nuclear (not including insurance and waste subsidies) will be more expensive than offshore wind.

Given the political heat over off-shore windfarm costs, it doesn't seem realistic for the government to get parliamentary approval for such a high strike price for new nuclear.

According to the governments current timetable they cannot send EDF a letter of comfort, confirming an agreed strike price, until two months after a final version of the Energy Bill has received Royal Assent - which DECC currently plans to achieve in January 2014.

EDF are saying they want to make the final investment decision at the end of the year.

Thus the publically stated positions of DECC and EDF remain contradictory as well as politically unrealistic.

James Arathoon

Started a new forum thread on "Engineering Electricity Market Reform"

http://www.theiet.org/forums/f...d=47622&enterthread=y

James Arathoon