Nuclear energy and its discontents

Nuclear energy and its discontents

                               By  SUNIL  KEWALRAMANI

                                      CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER,  GLOBAL MONEY INVESTOR

                                                                                                                                  September 11, 2009

 Chart : First electricity production by nuclear energy
Experimental Breeder Reactor EBR-I, 20 Dec.1951, Arco, Idaho, USA

 At the outset, the Indo-US nuclear deal appears path-breaking and allows India to regain its techno-commercial independence and sovereignty that we lost in 1978. The deal is supposed to contribute to sustainable development, energy sustainability and fight against climate change.  Unlike solar and wind energy, nuclear technology is the only one that can meet power demand 24 hours a day, although disruptive innovations in solar and wind energy can change that.  It is believed that a stable, prosperous, ecologically balanced India is good for the sustainability of the world.  However, it takes time to buy and set up new nuclear reactors.  Cases in mind are French reactors in China and Russian reactors in Koodankulam India.  The Olkiluto 3 reactor being built in Finland is more than two and a half years behind schedule, and cost overruns exceed Euros 2.5 Billion.

  Nuclear power provides 77 per cent of France's and 19.4 per cent of United State's electricity today.  According to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, each EPR (European Pressurized Reactor) that replaces a natural gas-fired electricity plant saves two billion cubic metres, or 70.6 billion cubic feet, of natural gas each year, and that each EPR that replaces a coal-fired plant reduces CO 2 emissions by 11 million tons.

   On June 26, 1954, at Obninsk, Russia, the nuclear power plant APS-1 with a net electrical output of 5 MW was connected to the power grid, the world's first nuclear power plant that generated electricity for commercial use. On August 27, 1956 the first commercial nuclear power plant, Calder Hall 1, Eng-land, with a net electrical output of 50 MW was connected to the national grid.

As of 30 June 2009 in 31 countries 436 nuclear power plant units with an installed electric net capacity of about 370 GW are in operation and 48 plants with an installed capacity of 42 GW are in 15 countries under construction.

As of end 2007 the total electricity production since 1951 amounts to 59,450 billion kWh. The cumulative operating experience amounted to 12,750 years by the end of 2007.

Charts :

Nuclear power plants under construction, June 2009 (IAEA 2009, modified)

Nuclear share in electricity generation, 2008 (IAEA 2009, modified)

Number of nuclear reactors worldwide by age as of March 2009 (IAEA 2009)

Nuclear Power Plants, energy availability factor 1991 - 2008 (IAEA 2009)

Nuclear energy provides about 15 per cent of the world's electricity. Some 30 nations generate nuclear power; 10 to 20 are expected to join them in the next 10 years. At present there are 370 reactors in operation. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations watchdog, reckons that 1,400 new reactors may be built between now and 2050.

  This expansion is creating a conundrum for western policymakers, one with which the US administration is now urgently grappling. Nuclear power may be necessary to help the world meet climate change goals and guarantee energy supply. But it also brings with it considerable security concerns. Detaching peaceful nuclear energy from devastating weaponry is sooner said than done. The fuel for most modern nuclear power stations - enriched uranium - in more potent forms is used for nuclear arms. Washington and its allies do not want the expansion in civil nuclear power to allow any more nations to diversify into atomic weapons.

MIDDLE EASTERN MARKETS :  The lucrative fusion of politics and business

In a few weeks Abu Dhabi will write nuclear history when it unveils the winner of a multibillion dollar tender, writes Peggy Hollinger. With the initial reactors set to launch around 2016, the Emirate will be the first Arab state to have nuclear power. Where Abu Dhabi goes, others will follow: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan have all voiced desire for nuclear power.

The budding new market has drawn considerable political and commercial interest. Political concerns may be of the highest order; how lucrative the nuclear business opportunities really are remains unclear.

The international interest in the Middle Eastern market far outstrips its commercial value, says Steve Kidd, of the World Nuclear Association. According to WNA estimates, outside of Iran only two nuclear reactors will be operating in the region by 2020 and just four by 2030. "It is not a lot compared to China where you could win contracts for up to 40."

One of the main reasons is clearly political. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in France, home to some of the world's leading nuclear companies such as EDF, GdF-Suez and Areva. These firms – all among the bidders in Abu Dhabi – are key tools in President Nicolas Sarkozy's nuclear diplomacy in the Middle East: tough on Iranian enrichment ambitions, but open to selling know-how to those countries willing to abide by international rules. "It is the best way to show Iran that we are not against the Middle East having nuclear technology," says one French government official.

France also believes that there could be huge wider commercial gains to be had from nuclear deals, especially in defence and infrastructure. The Elysée has sent Philippe Marini, a senator, to the region to explore ways of bolstering French interests. The recent decision to open the share capital of state-owned Areva to sovereign wealth funds was one early result. "Civil nuclear power is clearly closely tied to political strategy," notes Mr Marini. Meanwhile, several Middle Eastern funds have struck deals with French companies.

The 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania and the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine, as well as the anti-nuclear movie "The China Syndrome" paint a rather grim scenario of what a nuclear accident could entail.  The new generation of nuclear plants is designed to be safer, using fewer pumps and piping and relying more on gravity to move water for cooling the hot nuclear core.  Nuclear reactors are contained inside a huge structure of reinforced concrete with walls as much as five feet thick to make sure that even if a serious accident does occur, radiation is not released into the environment. The Chernobyl reactor did not have such a structure.  Even with these advances;  in July 2008;  at a nuclear plant in Provence, France; 163 pounds, or 74 kgs, of untreated uranium leaked from a faulty tank during a draining operation, seeping into the ground and then into rivers that flow into the Rhone.  After this incident, a burst underground pipe at another site north of Tricastin,  which leaked a tiny amount of uranium inside plant grounds, and another accident at Tricastin itself, when 100 employees were contaminated by radioactive particles that escaped from a pipe. 

    The US nuclear industry has itself suffered from decades of stagnation, with an ageing labour force and little entrepreneurial motivation.  USEC, a company that had a monopoly on producing the electric utilities' fuel of the future, is itself facing a brownout.  It's stock price has plummeted from $ 11 two years back to $ 5 today. It has alienated its utility industry customers and spent vast resources on construction of a complex new plant that has not met its original projections. The US Energy Policy of 2005 provides loan guarantees up to 80 per cent of the project cost, production tax credits of $ 18 per MWe for new nuclear capacity through 2021 and insurance protection up to $ 500 million against delays during construction. It is surprising that despite the industry being in existence for over 50 years, it has still not been able to stand on its own legs.

 According to the Department of Atomic Energy, India has enough indigenous uranium for 10,000 MW of nuclear power for 30 years. Present mismatch in uranium availability is a consequence of poor foresight and inadequate prospecting and mining.  Besides, the planned 40,000 MW of nuclear power will cost no less than $ 100 Billion or Rs 4 lakh crores.

   Nuclear power plants emit virtually no carbon dioxide, no sulfur, no mercury. Even when taking into account "full life-cycle emissions"—including mining of uranium, shipping fuel, constructing plants and managing waste—nuclear's carbon-dioxide discharges are identical to the full life-cycle emissions of wind and hydropower and less than solar power.  However, one study has determined that to make a significant contribution towards stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide; about 21 new 1,000-megawatt nuclear plants will have to be built each year over the next 50 years, including those needed to replace existing reactors, all of which are expected to be retired by 2050.  This indeed calls for a tall order.

 For two AP-1000 nuclear plants designed by Westinghouse for Florida utility Progress Energy, the estimated cost is $ 14 Billion (over $ 6000/kW). MidAmerican Energy Holdings, a power utility owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, shelved its own nuke plan earlier this year, saying it no longer made economic sense.

   There are only two vendors (Japan Steel Works and France's Creusot Forge, part of Areva) who are able to supply critical reactor components. The biggest bottleneck is in the huge reactor vessels that contain a plant's radioactive core.  At present, only one plant in the world is capable of forging the huge vessels in a single piece, and it can produce only a handful of forgings a year.  Besides, there is a severe shortage of nuclear engineers.

    Of concern in any nuclear deal is the how the disposal of waste products can be handled safely and economically.  When you produce enriched uranium, you also produce depleted uranium, which is less radioactive than the original ore, or natural uranium.  This comes in the form of uranium hexafluoride, which is a solid at room temperature.  The villain of the piece in depleted UF6 is the fluorine, which, when it disassociates from uranium, becomes a corrosive gas. Most UF6 in the US is being stored in slowly rusting metal containers in the open air, not a preferred solution for what becomes a corrosive gas if exposed to the atmosphere. The US government is building two facilities just to deal with the government's own inventories of depleted UF6.  Those are over 700m kgs.  The drawback is that the government's process produces uranium oxide and hydrogen fluoride, which is not as pure as that required for industrial application.

    Reprocessing is a problem because it can produce separated plutonium which is easier to divert for weapons production than plutonium contained in highly radioactive fuel. Case in mind is North Korea. Besides, commercial reprocessing plants produce so much plutonium that keeping track of it all is rather cumbersome and next to impossible. This makes it easier to divert plutonium enough for weapons without the loss being detected.

   The progress of the global industry is by no means guaranteed. Several factors may impede it. Public opinion may harden against nuclear power. Private sector investors may refuse to commit the vast sums that will be needed. A worldwide shortage of skilled engineers and manufacturing facilities for essential components is likely to be the greatest obstacle to delivering reactors fast enough to meet demand. Practical solutions for the long-term storage of radioactive waste remain elusive.

  Yet the most serious concern of all over the nuclear renaissance remains the link to proliferation. Power stations are not, in themselves, much of a risk - the problems lie in the uranium enrichment process, which can be employed to develop both civil and military versions of nuclear power.

To understand why this issue is at the centre of the US administration's international programme, it is important to focus on the three key factors inspiring the nuclear renaissance.

First, there is security of supply. Driven by the development of emerging economies such as China and India, global energy demand could rise by as much as 45 per cent by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency, which represents rich energy-consuming countries. As concerns have grown about the future availability of fossil fuels, which will be increasingly provided by a small number of large suppliers, energy consumers have come to see the virtue in diversifying their sources of supply.

Second, there is economics. The economics of nuclear power are fiercely contested, and highly sensitive to changes in variables such as construction costs. What is unarguable, however, is that it provides an energy source not linked to the oil price.

Even for oil- and gas-rich countries, such as Iran and the UAE, another Middle Eastern country keen to build civil reactors, nuclear generation makes sense because it frees up more of their hydrocarbon resources for export. The earnings from those exports "would easily pay for investment in nuclear energy", says Hans-Holger Rogner of the IAEA. Given likely long-term oil and gas prices, "It makes economic sense."

Finally, there is the growing pressure to meet climate change goals. The US and its allies accept that the global struggle to cap greenhouse gas emissions means nuclear energy options must be available. Nuclear energy is almost free of emissions and, if growing energy consumption is not to lead to soaring concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it is likely to play an increasingly important role.

 New processing technologies are being developed to limit the amount and accessibility of weapons-grade materials.  At an international level, governments need to strengthen current international anti-proliferation efforts to give the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) more information about a country's nuclear-related activities and IAEA inspectors greater access to locations. Plants that enrich uranium for power plants can also be used to enrich for bombs; this is the path Iran is suspected of taking in developing a weapons program.  An ambitious expansion of nuclear power would require a lot more facilities for enriching uranium, thus enhancing the potential risk.  A nuclear renaissance is expected to be led by countries in Middle East and Africa—where a nuclear-energy programme could lead to development of surreptitious weapons. 

    To safeguard its monopoly, USEC (United States Enrichment Corporation) and affiliates in the US government imposed trade barriers on foreign, principally European producers of uranium enrichment services.  This, in turn motivated Europeans to build competing uranium enrichment plants in the US.  Since the Europeans are using proven centrifuge enrichment technology, which has substantially lower energy requirements than USEC's ancient gaseous diffusion plants; in an era of conservation of precious energy, the European technology deserves careful attention should the government feel going nuclear is indeed the way to go. Urenco, the Dutch uranium enrichment company is building its new plant in New Mexico. Areva, the French nuclear engineering group, is setting up shop in Idaho. Each of the new facilities will produce initially, 3m Separative Work Units, or SWUs per year. 

  The IEA has estimated that to keep the increase in global temperatures to acceptable levels, the world's nuclear capacity might have to increase more than five-fold by 2050.

Growing international moves to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions, likely to be given fresh impetus at the forthcoming UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December, also make nuclear power look more attractive.

Opponents counter that even a large expansion of nuclear power would have only a small impact on the overall global level of emissions. Pro-nuclear experts acknowledge that, while it may not be a crisis-solving "silver bullet", it can be one of several "silver buckshot" that, combined, can make a difference.

India, a nation of 1.1 billion people—and one beset both by crushing poverty and a tumultuously expanding economy—has 15 nuclear power reactors already at work. Eight more are under construction, more than in any other nation. The Department of Atomic Energy lauds the greenhouse benefits of nukes, but the main impetus is sheer gigawatt lust. That would include building reactors such as those at Kaiga Generating Station in a clearing in the jungled Western Ghats mountains about 20 miles inland from southwest India's seacoast. Coming upon the two 220-megawatt, pressurized heavy-water reactors is like stumbling into a thumping big factory in the middle of Yellowstone National Park. The region gets more than 15 feet of rain yearly, and its forest is home to increasingly threatened species.

Back near the Indira Gandhi center a 500-megawatt breeder reactor is under construction and set to start up in 2010. Four more are to follow by 2020. India is very efficient at manufacturing plutonium fuel from their original uranium fuel load, which greatly increases the amount of energy they produce. But critics worry that the plutonium could possibly get in the wrong hands.

In part because of proliferation concerns, the U.S. has sworn off such breeder reactors for the time being. But outside powers have little leverage over India's nukes. With few exceptions they are entirely homegrown. India gave itself little choice about going it alone. In 1974, it set off an underground nuclear explosion using plutonium surreptitiously diverted from a test reactor that Canada helped it build in the 1950s.

India became a nuclear pariah. Other countries suspended technical assistance, and Canadian engineers walked off a job in Rajasthan. The Indians finished the plant themselves.

India is now enthusiastic masters of all things nuclear. The uranium fuel in Kaiga's reactors comes from mines west of Calcutta; workshops in the south provide the plant with gleaming, 65-foot-high, 110-ton steam generators that drive electric dynamos. Control systems, zircaloy fuel tubes, and 22-ton reactor components arrive from Hyderabad.

The Obama administration and its main allies, believe they must strengthen the rules of the game before the next wave of reactors is built. The focus of their attention is a conference next May in New York, which will review the 40-year-old nuclear non-proliferation treaty. More than 160 countries will attempt to broker stronger rules that widen the use of civil nuclear power, while penalising those states that try to diversify their programmes into weapons production. However, suspicions and resentments between the members of the nuclear club and those aspiring to join it mean reaching an agreement will not be easy.

Securing tougher rules is only one part of US strategy. Other ideas being considered include an IAEA proposal to create a small number of huge nuclear fuel banks that will supply a large number of reactors. The merit of this idea is that it will mean most countries have no justifiable reason to enrich their own uranium in the way Iran is currently seeking to do.

Separately, other ideas are being promoted to ensure the safety of nuclear materials. In particular, the US wants to promote a nuclear security conference in Washington next March, one that aims to ensure nuclear materials do not fall into the hands of terrorists.

 There are signs that some countries are prepared to stay out of uranium enrichment. The UAE, for example, has said it has no interest in acquiring fuel cycle capability, and is open to the idea of importing fuel from an international supplier.

But there is also resistance. Some states that may want to develop nuclear power, such as developing countries belonging to the Group of 77 and the Nonaligned Movement, say they need the confidence that a reliable supply of nuclear fuel will be available. A small number of fuel banks, they say, cannot provide that.

Others, including such leading emerging economies as Brazil and Egypt, have refused to sign the NPT's "additional protocol" that gives the IAEA the power to conduct unfettered inspections of a nation's nuclear facilities. Almost every country in the world, including Iran, has signed the NPT - except India, Pakistan and Israel. However, only 123 have signed the additional protocol and only 91 have brought it into effect.

There is some scepticism about the chances of a deal being reached at the NPT review conference in May. Suspicion that the US and other nuclear powers are setting the rules to suit their own ends remains high. The last NPT review attempt in 2005 ended in a flop. Four years on, the stakes have been raised. If the 2010 conference goes the same way, the consequences will be grim - for the world's security, prosperity and climate.

Note : Mr Sunil Kewalramani is a WHARTON BUSINESS SCHOOL MBA and Chief Investment Officer, Global Money Investor.