Problematic future for nuclear

Problematic future for nuclear

Conference reports should appear to have little economic purpose. It is regrettable that two events of such energy significance as the BEW A G develop...

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Conference reports should appear to have little economic purpose. It is regrettable that two events of such energy significance as the BEW A G development and the UNI C H A L conference should occur together since the reports and papers presented to the meeting deserve attention in equal measure. The accompanying exhibition, extremely well presented but poorly attended, is again something else. What this latter did demonstrate, however, was the extent to which major international engineering effort is committed to symbiotic energy production and distribution in which heat and not electricity plays the major part. Heat exchangers, thermally insulated piping, expansion compensation, pumping and variable speed drives, valves, thermostats and other controls, sys-

tem and consumer metering, corrosion control and standardized consumer connections, system financing and, of course, central heating equipment for building interiors, were all comprehensively demonstrated. Both reports and papers emphasized a developing change that is persisting since the distribution of steam heating fell into disfavour except in Paris where steam is used extensively in a continually developing and expanding service. The lowering of temperature, both in flow and return mains is now seen to have economic justification: a formula taking pipe diameter and lengths of up to 10 km to 30 km into consideration, has been evolved. The two volumes 3 of papers survey member's practical development experience - in contrast with many

Problematic future for nuclear The threat from the proposed European Demonstration Fast Reactor Reprocessing Plant (EDRP) and the Fast Reactor Programme, Lerwick, Shetland,

UK, 3-5 July 1987. Radioactive Waste Management, Christ's College, Cambridge, UK, 6-9 July

1987. Nuclear Energy - the Good News for British Industry, Confederation of British Industry, Centre Point, London, UK, 17 July 1987. All three conferences in their different ways addressed the problematic nature of the future of nuclear power. The Shetland meeting, organized with an overtly antinuclear stance, was concerned primarily with the future radiological consequences of adding another nuclear facility to the Dounreay complex, which, if built, would consolidate the nuclear industry's presence in remote north Scotland until well into the next century. The Cambridge colloquium addressed the short- and long-term management problems of handling radiotoxic waste for many centuries to come; whilst the CBI meeting had some more shortterm issues to address such as the commercial opportunities to be had from the small nuclear family of PWRs planned by the CEGB, the

E N E R G Y POLICY December 1987

fundamental complexities of privatizing the electrical supply industry (ESI) in the UK and the longer term problems this would have for the nuclear industry. As in many conferences and meetings, the question and answer discussion sessions, where assertions can be tested, ambiguities clarified and mistakes corrected, proved to be as, if not more, useful than the formal presentations. Indeed, informal discussions over lunch often proved the most insightful of all. The Shetland meeting was organized by the Campaign Against Dounreay Expansion ( C A D E ) , and fortuitously took place a few days after the publication of reporter Sandy Bell's preliminary report on the E D R P inquiry, held in 1986. The

conferences where scientists describe new theories and propose new technologies. The separate volume of study committee reports is also the U N I C H A L yearbook, covering the statistics referred to. All three are of value to those determined to evaluate changes and trends in energy use and in what should be continuing search for optimum fuels use methods.

Norman Jenkins Farnham, Surrey, UK 1See Norman Jenkins 'A gap that should

be filled', Energy Policy, Vol 14, No 5, October 1986, pp 450-451. 2Published by Vereinigung Deutscher Elktrisit&tswerke, Frankfurt. 3Refer to Secretary General, Dr Eugene Keppler, InternationalUnion of Heat Distributors, Bahnhofplatz 3, Postfach 6140, CH-8023 Zurich.

report, albeit with qualifications, gave the E D R P the go-ahead. A session was hastily inserted into the conference programme to address the report, although all agreed it was too early to make a studied judgement. Rather, some of the local objecters from Orkney and Caithness explained the iniquities of the inquiry procedure. One, the indefatigable mother of three, Francis McKie, of the Orkney 'Dunters', who attended all 95 days of the public inquiry, with children, made an articulate plea for such major energy planning decisions to be examined within a Planning Inquiry Commission (PIC), resurrecting arguments raised after the T H O R P (Windscale) and Sizewell B inquiries. She also reported that BNFL, despite being joint applicants with the U K A E A for EDRP, tried to avoid being linked to the project at the inquiry; perhaps because of taint by association with Sellafield. The C A D E conference brought together delegates from nine countries, including Norway, Denmark, Sweden and intriguingly the Faroe Islands, whose Prime Minister arrived on a gunboat. In fact the conference brought together the Faroese fishermen and Greenpeace, whose relationship had been less than cordial due

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Confi'rence reports

to the latter's opposition to Faroese whale fishing. But on the EDRP, they were as one in opposition, and Greenpeace's ship Moby Dick was symbolically moored alongside the Faroese Navy ship clearly visible through the conference hall windows. It was clear from the very strong representation from the Nordic and North Atlantic islands, especially the fishing communities, that the radiological consequences of an expansion of nuclear activities at Dounreay, added to the extant concern over Sellafield discharges, meant the environmentalpolitical impact of nuclear developments in the UK were being internationalized. In fact, shortly after the conference Norway's Environmental Minister Mrs Sissel Roebeck wrote to the UK government expressing astonishment that the Norwegian objections to the E D R P inquiry were 'neither reflected nor even listed as references' in Sandy Bell's interim report.

Plutonium e c o n o m y spectre Animosities of different sorts were forgotten, too, with pledges by the local Liberal MP, Jim Wallace, Scottish Nationalist MEP, Winnie Ewing, Labour MP Frank Cook, who had helped turn away N I R E X from his local Billingham constituency, and members of the West German and Danish Parliaments, to work together across the political divide to halt the EDRP. The spectre of the 'plutonium economy' - a de rigeur issue for nuclear opponents a decade earlier with the Flowers Commission report in 1976 and Windscale Inquiry in 1977/78 was raised by Mycle Schneider, Director of WISE in Paris. He pointed out the long-term plans of the Eurobreeder Club, both for 'commercial' recycling of plutonium and its prospective military use, especially by the French in neutron weapons. Shortly after the conference, reports in the Guardian newspaper, as well as New Scientist and New Statesman magazines, suggested that the UK government itself had begun to have serious reservations about the financial implications of the whole Eurobreeder club.

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Other matters arising such as the new assessment of radiological contamination from the present Dounreay plant, by Dr Robert Wheaton, one of a new breed of independent radiological consultants to emerge in the post-Chernobyl world made press - and political waves too. Another issue, post-Chernobyl, was the constant refrain 'it can't happen here'. The self confidence of the nuclear proponents, especially the fast reactor advocates ('the plutonium people') was criticized in an excellent historical review by Walt Patterson, a nuclear consultant, who has long preceded the post-Chernobyl growth in such specialists. Patterson argues that the fast reactor is not just another reactor technology it has become almost a religious quest! In perhaps the best anecdote of the conference, Patterson related that in his view the born again egregious ebullience of the fast reactor fetishists was reminiscent of the inaugural flight of the world's first fully automated plane. Packed with journalists fed and watered from fully automated dispensers, the plane soared skyward as the simulated voice of the tannoy explained how perfect everything was. A f t e r r e v e a l i n g all the t e c h n o statistics, the message ended with: 'Everything is absolutely perfectly in order, so sit back and enjoy your flight - your flight - your flight - your f l i g h t ' . . . The designers had overlooked Murphy's Law. Murphy's Law also played its part at the Cambridge conference.

O E C D radwaste programmes It is hard to say whether the Mayday cancellation of N I R E X ' s plans for shallow trench disposal of low-level nuclear waste was fortuitous for the conference organizers, IBC Technical Services, of the Cambridge Colloquium. Although it once again gave a high profile to the problem, seemingly intractable, of public acceptability of locating sites for the disposal of nuclear waste, it also meant that the last paper of the conference, by Maurice Ginniff of UK Nirex Ltd, was out of date by the time he delivered it. Thus the sentence 'Ministers have agreed

that investigations of these (potential) sites should be approved by Special Development Order procedure, and it is hoped to begin work on these four sites this summer' revealed the shambles that now characterized nuclear waste management policies in the UK. Mr Ginniff's paper was eagerly awaited through the conference in the hope he would reveal the behind-thescenes politics between NIREX, the Department of the Environment and the advisery committee, R W M A C , that preceded the decision to 'dump' the shallow disposal nuclear dump investigation programme. However, this colloquium was disappointed, as Mr Ginniff, although expressing an obvious personal disappointment at the turn of events, kept a 'straight bat' to all questions bowled at him to elicit a little insider's indiscretion.

Radiation fears Professor Terry Lee of Surrey University attempted in his presentation to explain the social-psychological components of different attitudes towards nuclear power and its risks, a matter crucial to NIREX. He used a multivariate chart to explain the interrelationships between social location, educational achievement, 'scientific' or 'non-scientific' outlook when personal judgements are made on nuclear risk. Professor Lee said one useful way to understand the undoubtedly deepseated fears of radiation was to recourse to the little known study of 'gremlinology', whereby bad happenings can be blamed on the elusive gremlin. Immediately after he introduced this novel approach, his overhead projector blew a fuse and the whole proceedings, despite over 50 technical experts present in the audience - was cut short! The conference itself began with some detailed lectures on radiation and the history of radiological protection (as developed by the International Commission on Radiological Protection, ICRP) given by Dr Jack Vennart, formerly director of the Medical R e s e a r c h Council's R a d i o b i o l o g y Unit. Much of this was routine for an expert audience. The most interesting revelation was that not a single mem-

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ConJFrence r~Torts bet of the ICRP is a woman, despite the pioneering work done by Mme Curie and continued today by Dr Alice Stewart. Other technical papers of note were those on new developments in waste management at Sellafield by two BNFL scientists and on-site radwaste encapsulation technological breakthroughs by M. C o o p e r of the U K A E A and Dr C.P. Haigh of CEGB. Perhaps, however, the most interesting papers were on policy issues. In an excellent widespread review of progress and problems of radwaste programmes in O E C D countries, Jean-Paul Olivier, head of waste management at the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) in Paris, brought those with more project-specific or 'desk top vision' up to date with reports on Belgium, Canada, France, Federal R e p u b l i c of G e r m a n y , J a p a n , Sweden, Switzerland and the USA. It is in the USA that the greatest problem seems to arise due both to the multilayered political system, buttressed by a system of laws permitting intervention in national programmes and the sheer volume and geographical spread of existing radwaste. The paper by Stewart Boyle, Energy Campaigner for UK Friends of the Earth and the only independent critic given a platform - showed that some of the stop-start problems of the US system characterized the UK situation too.

Difference of opinion An interesting disagreement, which could have widespread policy implications, came to light with the contraditions that emerged between the papers by Dr Frank Feates, Chief Inspector of the UK Department of the Environment's Pollution Inspectorate and that by J. Harrington, the Deputy Chief Inspector of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. The disagreement came over the potential for on-site dry storage. Mr Harrington stated that: Both wet and dry storage of fuel involves s o m e risk of radioactive release in the

event of loss of water from ponds or containment failure in the dry stores. The UK strategy, therefore, is to transfer the

ENERGY POLICY December 1987'

fuel to the licensed site at Sellafield for reprocessing. Although it is undoubtedly the UK strategy to ship spent nuclear fuel to Sellafield for reprocessing, it is not correct to impute that it is because of fuel integrity problems and radiological exposure from degraded spent fuel. The Magnox fuel was designed to be reprocessed, originally for the plutonium for military use, and more latterly for recycle in thermal and fast reactor cycles. Dr Feates of DoE stated that: Dry storage of fuel which has never been stored in water has been adapted success-

fully at one (Magnox) station, Wylfa. (Although) reprocessing of Magnox fuel at BNFL's Sellafield plant is therefore likely to continue until at least the early years of the next century, studies are in hand (that) indicate that Magnox fuel which has been wet can be safely stored and disposed of unreprocessed, if necessary, (my emphasis). This is an important difference in emphasis between the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and the Pollution Inspectorate, because as Mr Harrington showed in his own pie chart, over 70% of low-level waste arisings the material that has caused NIREX such difficulties - arise because of the contamination effects of reprocessing itself. Two final points of note: Dr Feates stressed that the DoE priority policy objective was 'to ensure that the creation of wastes from nuclear activities is minimized'. In an immediate volteface he then admitted that as the only way to achieve this objective was to halt all nuclear activities, the DoE had chosen to interpret the word ~minimize' as 'optimize', and this, then, is the Department of Energy policy objective. Dr Feates also conceded that despite erroneous impressions to the contrary, BNFL's reprocessing contracts do not include 'return to sender' clauses stipulating all the waste must go back to its country of origin. Rather the contracts specify that the same 'Curie content' must go back. In practice this means the UK retains all the low-level waste arising from foreign contract reprocessing, as well as some of the intermediate level waste. In exchange a very small volume of

high-level waste will be substituted. The consequence of this solution is a vast volumetric increase in low-level waste to add to NIREX's policy problem. But as was remarked by one of the company representatives present, that could be good news for the company even if it was bad news for everyone else.

ESI privatization and nuclear power The CBI conference was supposed to be concerned with the "good news" for the UK nuclear industry, falling as it did just a few days before Lord Marshall, CEGB Chairman, ceremonially began the on-site construction work with a massive diaphragm wall at Sizewell B for the UK's first foreign reactor, a SNUPPS Westinghouse design PWR. Indeed in his own ebullient presentation, the noble Baron Marshall of Goring expressed his pleasure that after the tortuous delay of the Sizewell B Inquiry, the CEGB had now issued hundreds of contracts to the best and the brightest in British industry for PWR work. However, under questioning he was forced to admit that despite his personal desire to get the British nuclear industry going again, good commercial practice demanded that he would not use a British manufacturer for the pressure vessel. The further bad news for U K pressure vessel manufacturers was that the CEGB would probably never turn to them, as the pressure vessel was so crucial they had to choose an experienced supplier (Framatome of France) and could never take a chance on an inexperienced UK supplier. Much of what was said at the CBI conference, by Tom Mclnerney of NIREX, Neville Chamberlain, Chief Executive of BNFL, and Eddy Ryder, Nil Chief Inspector, has been heard in various forms before. Engineers' Trades Union leader, Gavin Laird gave a boisterous support for nuclear power, though he admitted disquiet at the provision of South African and Namibian uranium for the UK nuclear programme. The special guest appearance of Dr Hans Blix, Director-General of the

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Conference reports~News of the World Bank International Atomic Energy Agency was interesting because of some risque observations he made. Opening with a variation on Mark Twain - reports of the death of nuclear power were highly exaggerated - Dr Blix went on to state that he felt the USSR had a more appropriate sense of urgency, by reopening the other nuclear plants at Chernobyl a mere seven months after the accident, whereas in the USA the second reactor at Three Mile Island took seven years to get back into service, despite the far less serious nature of the accident. Rising to his own hyperpositive theme - but to the serious astonishment of NIREX personnel present Dr Blix went on to argue controversially that 'the management and disposal of nuclear waste was one of nuclear power's assets'. This was because of its comparatively small volume and the known technologies of safe containment. Dr Blix did add, however, that he recognized that acute public anxiety over anything radioactive was a social fact with

which the nuclear industry had to live. As one participant wryly observed, with regard to the management of nuclear waste in the UK, even though NIREX tried to adopt the best practicable environmental option (BPEO), the UK government had redefined BPEO as 'best possible electoral opportunity', withdrawing their lowlevel dump plans a mere two weeks before the 1987 election campaign began. The opening address to the conference was by the new junior energy minister with responsibilities for nuclear and electricity production, Mr Michael Spicer. Although he gave the now routine endorsement of a balanced energy policy, including coal, nuclear and an element of renewable technologies such as wind and wave, if and when they are proved economically competitive, there was an underlying theme that Mr Spicer was very careful to keep codified: the status of nuclear power in the government's plans to privatize the ESI. Although Mr Spicer did not say exactly what

would happen, he did 'confess to a prejudice that should allow for as much competition between the component parts as is possible'. In briefings made to the press in the weeks following the conference, DoE ministers began to float the notion that if nuclear power could not compete on the open market without state ('taxpayers') subsidy, then it would have to be 'sacrificed' to the ideological demands of the privatization programme. All in all, it was clear from chit chat over wine (or 'Perrier water!) and coffee that the privatization matter was the burning issue at the conference, even though cards were played close to the chest in public comment. And the overall message from all three gatherings was that there is yet much to play for in the problematic future that nuclear power holds for us all.

News of the World Bank

ject supported by a US$63 million credit from the World Bank's soft loan arm, the International Development Association (IDA). Burma has successfully exploited its petroleum resources by its own efforts over the last 20 years but the development of Burma's substantial gas resources now needs to be accelerated. This is just at a time when financial resources are scarce and when the country lacks modern petroleum technology to meet the many adverse conditions confronting oil production today, matched by the natural decline in productivity of the country's oil fields. The IDA project will help develop further the onshore gas field at Payagon. It will also introduce modern petroleum technology to improve oil recovery. Specifically the project includes: drilling 12 wells to increase gas production to about 1 million

The Congo in crisis Being an oil producing country does not exclude having major economic and financial crises and in fact the reverse may be true under some circumstances, see World Bank News of 23 July 1987. The People's Republic of the Congo falls into the last category. Two World Bank loans aim at helping the Congo deal with the problem by going to the heart of the matter, ie the first loan for US$70 million is for a structural adjustment in the economy and the second loan for US$15.2 million aims to support public enterprises, including those in the energy sector. The Congo is a good example where oil revenues are not always a source of

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enormous benefit to an economy. The 1986 collapse in oil prices, the World Bank News points out, greatly exacerbated an already difficult economic and financial situation in the country. The structural adjustment loan is aimed at restoring a better balance between the public and the private sectors, including instituting a sound framework for management in the public sector helped by the second loan.

Burma's gas project The World Bank News of 23 July 1987 announces that Burma will alleviate chronic energy shortages that are hindering the country's economic growth with a gas development pro-

Dr David Lowry Energy and Environment Research Unit, The Open University Milton Keynes, UK

ENERGY POLICY December 1987