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Designs for new UK nuclear reactors are unsafe

Designs for new UK nuclear reactors are unsafe

Terry Macalister

27th November, 2009

Major setback for nuclear energy plans as watchdog’s report finds flaws in US and French models

Britain’s main safety regulator threw the government’s energy plans into chaos tonight by damning the nuclear industry’s leading designs for new plants.

The Health and Safety Executive said it could not recommend plans for new reactors because of wide-ranging concerns about their safety.

The leading French and American reactors are central to plans for a nuclear renaissance aimed at keeping the lights on and helping to cut carbon emissions. The government needs to build a number of nuclear power stations in the next 10 years to replace old atomic and coal plants.

HSE approval

But the HSE has to approve the safety of the designs before they can be built.

‘We have identified a significant number of issues with the safety features of the design that would first have to be progressed. If these are not progressed satisfactorily then we would not issue a design acceptance confirmation,’ the agency concluded following a study of the latest French EPR and US AP1000 reactor designs.

Kevin Allars, director of new build at the HSE, admitted frustration that the design assessment process was already behind schedule owing to insufficient information from the companies promoting the reactors and a lack of enough trained staff in his own directorate.

The HSE’s public report expresses ‘significant concerns’ about the lack of separation between the safety protection and control systems on the EPR reactor design promoted by Areva and EDF of France.

Design faults

The safety body says another part of the reactor is ‘not entirely in alignment with international good practice’.

The report says it has raised a number of issues with EDF and Areva relating to the structural integrity of the EPR and it concludes: ‘It is too early to say whether they can be resolved solely with additional safety case changes or whether they may result in design modifications being necessary.’

The design put forward by Westinghouse, the American firm now owned by Toshiba of Japan, is also criticised, with the HSE saying the safety case on internal hazards has “significant shortfalls”.

It criticises the company for a “lack of detailed claims and arguments” to support various assertions, while questioning aspects of the civil and mechanical engineering plans as well as the structural integrity and “human factors”.

It also complains that the reactor design was submitted in feet and inches rather than metric figures.

Delay

Industry experts said the HSE was in a pivotal position to make or break the government’s wider plans because it could delay the planned reactors from coming on stream from 2017.

That is the time that ministers fear an “energy crunch” because most existing reactors will have been retired, many coal plants shut down and renewable power insufficiently advanced to take over.

John Large, a leading nuclear consultant, said: ‘The HSE as an independent agency will come under tremendous pressure to push through these designs. But if it stands up to [the] government and stops or delays these designs for two or three years until it is satisfied then developers could lose interest and we could fall behind in the queue of countries waiting to build nuclear.’

Allars said he had not received any pressure so far from the government. While he had beefed up his staff and hoped to quicken the speed of his work, he insisted it was not his problem to worry ultimately about delays.

Independence

‘I am independent of government, and independent of industry and I will do what I need to protect society from any dangers of nuclear power. I will only be in a position to agree a generic design assessment if I get the right information [in future] to do that,’ he said.

The HSE said it might allow so-called exclusions over some of its concerns under which it would allow construction to proceed on the understanding that the problems would be addressed later.

Jean McSorley, consultant to Greenpeace’s nuclear campaign, said it was highly likely reactor designs would not be ready for final sign-off at the end of the design process.

‘This could leave the utilities and construction companies with real problems finishing projects, and that’s very risky for them financially. Investment companies will also want to delay putting money into these projects until it is decided who takes responsibility for any potential cost overruns and delays,’ she said.

Areva shrugged off the concerns raised by the HSE.

‘It is important to emphasise that this is a normal part of what is a very transparent process and that it is entirely expected, as part of the design assessment process in the UK, for issues to be identified and resolved prior to licensing and construction,’ it said.

This article is reproduced courtesy of the Guardian Environment Network

27 November, 2009
Climate change linked to civil war in Africa

Climate change linked to civil war in Africa

Ecologist

25th November, 2009

Higher temperatures cause declines in crop yields and ‘economic welfare’ which increases the risk of conflict

Climate change is likely to increase the risk of conflict in African countries over the next 20 years, says a US study.

Research led by the University of California Berkeley looked back at two decades of fluctuations in temperature and civil war across the continent.

They found that a 1°C increase in temperature correlated with a 4.5 per cent increase in civil war violence in the same year and a 0.9 per cent increase in conflict incidence in the next year.

When the researchers restricted their analysis to look just at countries that have a history of conflict, the 1°C rise in temperatures led to a 49 per cent increase in civil violence.

Crop yields

Researchers said temperature rises could hit crop yields by between 10-30 per cent and affect entire communities that depend on agriculture for income.

Agriculture accounts for more than 50 per cent of gross domestic product and up to 90 per cent of employment across much of the continent.

‘Economic welfare is the single factor most consistently associated with conflict incidence in both cross-country and within-country studies. It appears likely that the variation in agricultural performance is the central mechanism linking warming to conflict in Africa,’ said the study.

Improve agriculture

The authors said rising temperatures over the next 20 years were likely to outweigh any potentially offsetting effects of strong economic growth.

‘Given the current and expected future importance of agriculture in African livelihoods, governments and aid donors could help reduce conflict risk in Africa by improving the ability of African agriculture to deal with extreme heat.

‘Such efforts could include developing better-adapted crop varieties, giving farmers the knowledge and incentives to use them,’ said the authors.

Useful links
Study: Warming increase the risk of civil war in Africa

27 November, 2009
Rare iceberg flotilla in southern pacific poses threat to shipping

Large numbers of icebergs last floated close to New Zealand in 2006, when some were visible from the coastline – the first such sighting since 1931.

An iceberg up to 200 metres long had reached 160 miles south-east of New Zealand’s Stewart Island on Tuesday, Australian glaciologist Neal Young said.

He could not say how many icebergs were at large in the south Pacific, but said he had counted 130 in one satellite image alone and 100 in another.

New Zealand oceanographer Mike Williams said the icebergs were drifting at a speed of about 16 miles a day, and he expected most would not reach New Zealand. He said he was “pretty sure these icebergs came from the break-up of the Ross sea ice shelf in 2000” – an ice shelf the size of France and the origin of the 2006 flotilla of icebergs.

Temperatures have risen in the Antarctic Peninsula area near South America by as much as 3C in the last 60 years, and “whole ice shelves have broken up,” Young said. But he said the iceberg flotilla south of New Zealand came from the Ross Sea, a completely different area of Antarctica, and the event was unrelated to climate change(DEBATABLE

26 November, 2009

Pretending the climate email leak isn’t a crisis won’t make it go away

The response of the greens and most of the scientists I know is profoundly ironic, as we spend so much of our time confronting other people’s denial. Pretending that this isn’t a real crisis isn’t going to make it go away. Nor is an attempt to justify the emails with technicalities. We’ll be able to get past this only by grasping reality, apologising where appropriate and demonstrating that it cannot happen again.

It is true that much of what has been revealed could be explained as the usual cut and thrust of the peer review process, exacerbated by the extraordinary pressure the scientists were facing from a denial industry determined to crush them. One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

One of these papers which was published in the journal Climate Research turned out to be so badly flawed that the scandal resulted in the resignation of the editor-in-chief. Jones knew that any incorrect papers by sceptical scientists would be picked up and amplified by climate change deniers funded by the fossil fuel industry, who often – as I documented in my book Heat – use all sorts of dirty tricks to advance their cause.

Even so, his message looks awful. It gives the impression of confirming a potent meme circulated by those who campaign against taking action on climate change: that the IPCC process is biased. However good the detailed explanations may be, most people aren’t going to follow or understand them. Jones’s statement, on the other hand, is stark and easy to grasp.

In this case you could argue that technically he has done nothing wrong. But a fat lot of good that will do. Think of the MPs’ expenses scandal: complaints about stolen data, denials and huffy responses achieved nothing at all. Most of the MPs could demonstrate that technically they were innocent: their expenses had been approved by the Commons office. It didn’t change public perceptions one jot. The only responses that have helped to restore public trust in Parliament are humility, openness and promises of reform.

When it comes to his handling of Freedom of Information requests, Professor Jones might struggle even to use a technical defence. If you take the wording literally, in one case he appears to be suggesting that emails subject to a request be deleted, which means that he seems to be advocating potentially criminal activity. Even if no other message had been hacked, this would be sufficient to ensure his resignation as head of the unit.

I feel desperately sorry for him: he must be walking through hell. But there is no helping it; he has to go, and the longer he leaves it, the worse it will get. He has a few days left in which to make an honourable exit. Otherwise, like the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, he will linger on until his remaining credibility vanishes, inflicting continuing damage to climate science.

Some people say that I am romanticising science, that it is never as open and honest as the Popperian ideal. Perhaps. But I know that opaqueness and secrecy are the enemies of science. There is a word for the apparent repeated attempts to prevent disclosure revealed in these emails: unscientific.

The crisis has been exacerbated by the university’s handling of it, which has been a total trainwreck: a textbook example of how not to respond. RealClimate reports that “We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day.” In other words, the university knew what was coming three days before the story broke. As far as I can tell, it sat like a rabbit in the headlights, waiting for disaster to strike.

When the emails hit the news on Friday morning, the university appeared completely unprepared. There was no statement, no position, no one to interview. Reporters kept being fobbed off while CRU’s opponents landed blow upon blow on it. When a journalist I know finally managed to track down Phil Jones, he snapped “no comment” and put down the phone. This response is generally taken by the media to mean “guilty as charged”. When I got hold of him on Saturday, his answer was to send me a pdf called “WMO statement on the status of the global climate in 1999”. Had I a couple of hours to spare I might have been able to work out what the heck this had to do with the current crisis, but he offered no explanation.

By then he should have been touring the TV studios for the past 36 hours, confronting his critics, making his case and apologising for his mistakes. Instead, he had disappeared off the face of the Earth. Now, far too late, he has given an interview to the Press Association, which has done nothing to change the story.

The handling of this crisis suggests that nothing has been learnt by climate scientists in this country from 20 years of assaults on their discipline. They appear to have no idea what they’re up against or how to confront it. Their opponents might be scumbags, but their media strategy is exemplary.

The greatest tragedy here is that despite many years of outright fabrication, fraud and deceit on the part of the climate change denial industry, documented in James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore’s brilliant new book Climate Cover-up, it is now the climate scientists who look bad. By comparison to his opponents, Phil Jones is pure as the driven snow. Hoggan and Littlemore have shown how fossil fuel industries have employed “experts” to lie, cheat and manipulate on their behalf. The revelations in their book (as well as in Heat and in Ross Gelbspan’s book The Heat Is On) are 100 times graver than anything contained in these emails.

But the deniers’ campaign of lies, grotesque as it is, does not justify secrecy and suppression on the part of climate scientists. Far from it: it means that they must distinguish themselves from their opponents in every way. No one has been as badly let down by the revelations in these emails as those of us who have championed the science. We should be the first to demand that it is unimpeachable, not the last.

monbiot.com

Coal industry scores sweetener in ETS deal

“Overall, the most important thing is that we get the legislation passed this week so the prime minister can go to Copenhagen with legislation for the introduction of the emissions trading scheme. We need the momentum before Copenhagen, not after.’’

But the ultimate fate of the deal, nutted out between the coalition’s chief climate change negotiator Ian Macfarlane and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, still hangs in the balance.

Shadow cabinet ticked off on the agreement at a meeting this morning but the joint coalition party room is still considering the deal.

The meeting will be a major test of Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull’s authority with the Nationals flagging their opposition to any deal and up to a third of Liberal politicians suggesting they could oppose it.

Cuts to household package

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Senator Wong said today the package, which will cost the budget an extra $204 million over the next four years, was ‘‘fiscally responsible’’.

It includes extra expenditure of $1.28 billion over the next four years but this will be offset by cuts to the package for households, which will shave $910 million from the cost.

But Mr Rudd denies poor families will be worse off from the changes.

‘‘We don’t intend with our families and in particular low-income families to shoulder the pain of the adjustment,’’ he told reporters. ‘‘This has to be done equitably across the entire economy.’’

A transitional electricity cost assistance program of $1.1 billion will be established to assist medium and large manufacturing and mining businesses with scheme-related increases in electricity prices.

Agricultural emissions will be excluded from the scheme and offsets for agricultural emissions abatement will be included.

Voluntary action by households will now allow Australia to go beyond its 2020 emissions reduction target.

The scheme will be amended to ensure that all existing and future purchases of GreenPower will be counted.

The road to Copenhagen

If they pass the Senate, Mr Rudd hopes to play a prominent role in negotiating a new global climate treaty at a summit in Copenhagen next month. Senate approval would mean Australia backing what would be only the second domestic emissions trading scheme outside of Europe to pass into law.

The United States and New Zealand, which are also trying to pass carbon trading laws, are eyeing developments in Australia closely.

Mr Rudd’s revised scheme still remains far from assured as opposition parties are deeply divided over it, with some conservatives vowing to vote against the laws regardless of the deal and some moving to delay the vote until February 2010.

If the laws are again rejected by a hostile Senate after a failed August vote, Mr Rudd would have a trigger for a snap election on climate change.

“A vote on the bill must be held before parliament rises this week. Passing the CPRS this week will give Australian businesses the certainty they need to make investments,” Mr Rudd said.

“It will also mean Australia goes to Copenhagen with a means to deliver its targets and provide a much-needed boost to negotiations on a global deal.”

Greens politicians disagreed.

“Today is a black day for Australia’s green future, and we intend to campaign on this all the way to the next election. It’s polluters payday in parliament house,” said Senator Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens, which have five seats in the Senate.

UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December will seek to reach agreement on broader, and tougher, strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally to replace or expand the existing Kyoto Protocol, whose first phase ends in 2012.

AAP, Reuters

Solar’s rapid evolution makes energy planners rethink the grid

The initiative, called RETI, is an attempt to build a statewide green grid in an environmentally sensitive way that will avoid the years-long legal battles that have short-circuited past transmission projects.

But the rapidly evolving solar photovoltaic market may moot the need for some of those expensive and contentious transmission lines, requiring transmission planners to rethink their long-term plans, according to Black & Veatch, the giant consulting and engineering firm that does economic analysis for RETI.

In short, solar panel prices have plummeted so much as to make viable the prospect of generating gigawatts of electricity from rooftops and photovoltaic farms built near cities.

“This has pretty significant implications in terms of transmission planning,” Ryan Pletka, Black & Veatch’s renewable energy project manager, told me last week. “What we thought would happen in a five-year time frame has happened in one year.”

That’s prompted Pletka to radically revise the potential for so-called distributed generation—solar systems that can plug into the existing grid without the construction of new transmission lines—to contribute to California’s need for 60,000 gigawatt hours of renewable electricity by 2020.

When Black & Veatch did its initial analysis last year, it predicted that photovoltaic solar could contribute 2,000 gigawatt hours, given the high cost of conventional solar modules and the fact that a next-generation technology, thin-film solar, had yet to make a big commercial breakthrough.

Pletka’s new number is a bit of a shocker: Distributed generation could potentially provide up to 40,000 gigawatt hours of electricity, or two-thirds of projected demand.

“Certainly some of the new transmission lines will be needed but not as many as before,” he says.

That analysis also calls into question the need for as many large-scale solar power plants. Currently there are about 35 Big Solar projects planned for California that would generate more than 12,000 megawatts of electricity.

A game-changer has been the rapid rise of thin-film solar. Thin-film solar modules are essentially printed on glass or other materials. Although such solar panels are less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity than traditional crystalline modules—which are made from silicon wafers—they can be produced more cheaply.

In the past year, utilities like Southern California Edison have signed deals with First Solar, the thin-film powerhouse, to buy electricity from four massive megawatt thin-film solar farms. And in September, China inked an agreement with the Tempe, Ariz., company to build a 2,000-megawatt power plant, the world’s largest.

The next day, Nanosolar, a Silicon Valley startup, announced it had secured $4.1 billion in orders for its thin-film modules, which it claims will be even more efficient and cost less to produce than those made by First Solar.

Meanwhile, California’s two biggest utilities, PG&E and Southern California Edison, this year each unveiled initiatives to collectively install 1,000 megawatts of distributed solar generation. SoCal Edison will put solar arrays on warehouse roofs throughout the Southland—First Solar snagged the first big contracts—while PG&E is focusing on ground-mounted solar systems near its existing substations.

So what’s behind this rooftop revolution in solar?

Partly it’s due to a glut in the solar panel market. The global economy collapsed last year just as solar module makers ramped up production. But it’s also a result of technological innovation and economies of scale that have made thin-film solar, for instance, competitive. Strides have also been made in cutting installation costs, which typically account for half the price of photovoltaic systems.

The solar market, of course, is heavily dependent on government incentives—in the United States and overseas—and thus vulnerable to disruption. But the trajectory remains one of falling prices and thus Black & Veatch’s projections pose a conundrum for transmission planners.

Given that transmission projects can take a decade to complete, power bureaucrats make their plans based on 10-year projections of energy costs according to Pletka. That wasn’t much of a problem when planning transmission for, say, a grid supplied by natural gas-fired power plants as the technology or the market was not likely to change radically.

Not so for solar, where technological advances and fast-changing market conditions are shaking long-held views that photovoltaic power, or PV, is not ready for prime time.

“I’ve worked in renewables since the ‘90s and I myself had written off solar PV for years and years and years,” Pletka says. “That’s a firmly rooted mindset among everyone who works from a traditional utility planning perspective.”

“We present this new information on photovoltaics to people and it’s still not sinking in,” he adds. “It would cause a major shift in how we plan.”

While fewer massive transmission projects would be needed if California generates gigawatts of electricity from rooftops, the distribution network will need to be upgraded and a smart grid created to manage tens of thousands of pint-sized solar power plants.

Cities, Pletka notes, could become generators of electricity rather than consumers of power.

“It brings up questions people haven’t had to talk about before,” says Pletka.

Author: admin

Designs for new UK nuclear reactors are unsafe

Designs for new UK nuclear reactors are unsafe

Major setback for nuclear energy plans as watchdog’s report finds flaws in US and French models

Climate change linked to civil war in Africa

Climate change linked to civil war in Africa

Higher temperatures cause declines in crop yields and ‘economic welfare’ which increases the risk of conflict

Rare iceberg flotilla in southern pacific poses threat to shipping

Pretending the climate email leak isn’t a crisis won’t make it go away

More on this story

Coal industry scores sweetener in ETS deal

Solar’s rapid evolution makes energy planners rethink the grid