Nuclear: too hot to handle

Bloomberg reported last week that the Fukushima meltdown continues to set new radiation records - Tepco Says Highest Radiation Yet Is Detected at Fukushima Dai-Ichi.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, said it detected the highest radiation to date at the site.

Geiger counters, used to detect radioactivity, registered more than 10 sieverts an hour, the highest reading the devices are able to record, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility, said today. The measurements were taken at the base of the main ventilation stack for reactors No. 1 and No. 2.

The Fukushima plant, about 220 kilometers (137 miles) north of Tokyo, had three reactor meltdowns after the March 11 magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami knocked out power and backup generators. Radiation leaks displaced 160,000 people and contaminated marine life and agricultural products.

The Times Union reports that the Japanese are growing suspicious of offical claims and are starting to measure radiation levels themselves - Japanese monitor radiation on their own.

Kiyoko Okoshi had a simple goal when she spent about $625 for a dosimeter: She missed her daughter and grandsons and wanted them to come home.

Local officials kept telling her that their remote village was safe, even though it was less than 20 miles from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. But her daughter remained dubious.

So starting in April, Okoshi began using her dosimeter to check nearby forest roads and rice paddies. What she found was startling. Near one sewage ditch, the meter beeped wildly, and the screen read 67 microsieverts per hour, a potentially harmful level. Okoshi and a cousin who lives nearby worked up the courage to confront elected officials, who did not respond, confirming their worry that the government was not doing its job.

With her simple yet bold act, Okoshi joined the small but growing number of Japanese who have decided to step in as the government fumbles its reaction to the widespread contamination, which leaders acknowledge is much worse than originally announced. Some mothers as far away as Tokyo have begun testing for radioactive materials.

Crikey has some choice words to say about the disaster - Fukushima disaster: worse than Hiroshima.

More gravely serious truths about the severity of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster following the earthquake and tsunami of March 11 have emerged.

Two things are now clear and they justify the following charges: the nuclear experts that the Australian media relied upon should never be trusted again; and social media real-time raw and unfiltered audio and video reports are providing a more truthful and relevant coverage of the aftermath of the continuing nuclear crisis than the selective and filtered copy being carried by print and wire agencies.

While the Bloomberg news report overnight of two extremely high radiation readings being recorded at the Fukushima complex of nuclear plants on August 1 and August 2 are alarming, other significant disclosures are also made in this story.

* The reading of 10 sieverts of radiation per hour outside the damaged reactor buildings was the highest level the equipment used could have detected, meaning the lethality of the contamination was off the scale; and

* For the first time a tenured nuclear expert Tetsuo Ito, the head of the Atomic Energy Research Institute at Kinki University concedes that the melted cores of one or more reactors may have melted through the supposedly failure proof containment vessel floor, sinking deeper into the subsoil and given the nature of the radioactive material concerned, into a position where it can spread a very long distance directly through the subsoil water table.

It took TEPCO and nuclear apologists until last month to even concede that “partial meltdowns” had occurred in up to three of the reactors, even though the only plausible explanation for the caesium contamination detected outside the reactors within 48 hours was the rupturing of the caesium sheaths surrounding the uranium rods upon their exposure to air following the draining of coolant fluid, setting up the requirements for a melt down to occur.

In what would be consistent with a deliberate policy of gradually revealing the truth some months after the event, the Japanese nuclear authorities and government are also now routinely referring to the fact that contamination levels outside the exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi complex include hot spots that are as highly affected as they were around the Chernobyl reactor that exploded in the former Soviet Union 25 years ago.

Which is where social media in Japan is making itself felt.

In a series of widely viewed and replicated YouTube videos a Japan nuclear expert, Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama, has told Japan’s lower house Diet that the nation has failed miserably to make a timely evacuation of the at risk population worst affected by Fukushima radioactive fallout compared to the massive relocation that occurred in the Ukraine in the two weeks after the Chernobyl disaster.

In the English language transcripts of these videos, notably on the Penn-Olsen Asia tech blog, Kodama says he is shaking with anger at the incompetence and dishonesty of the government and nuclear authorities and the TEPCO power company in the aftermath of the accident. He attacks the use of simplistic readings that ignore for example the accumulation of deadly isotopes at the foot of slippery slides in children’s playgrounds in favour of readings at the top from which rain has washed away the contamination.

The readings, like the children, are being cooked, either by ignorance or intent.

Kodama says the uranium equivalent of the contamination released by the three affected reactor cores and four cooling ponds at Fukushima was that of 20 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs:

“What is more frightening is that whereas the radiation from a nuclear bomb will decrease to one-thousandth in one year, the radiation from a nuclear power plant will only decrease to one-tenth.

“In other words, we should recognise from the start that just like Chernobyl, Fukushima I Nuclear Plant has released radioactive materials equivalent in the amount to tens of nuclear bombs, and the resulting contamination is far worse than the contamination by a nuclear bomb.”

Kodama’s testimony, poorly reported in the established Japan media, is circulating in social media in tandem with raw videos of government officials telling a meeting of Fukushima residents demanding urgent help in evacuating to other parts of the country that they should stay put and trust them to reduce radiation. The meeting becomes increasingly angry after one official tells the residents they could evacuate at “their own risk”, while they shout at them for telling them to stay put and die.

The bigger context to these reports from Japan is that the guidance given by nuclear scientists and apologists alike to the media in Australia was disgracefully inaccurate and patronising. The reality of the caesium contamination was ignored, and the quoting of initial radiation readings in the wrong metric was ignored (and later found to be fictitious as well as mischievous, when TEPCO confirmed that it didn’t actually have any capability of measuring contamination within key parts of the complex).

The constant refrain that Fukushima would never be a level-seven disaster such as Chernobyl contained longer in the Australian media than anywhere else, even after the nuclear authorities in France and US broke with the usual protocol of not commenting on other national agencies, and said that it could reach level six or level seven and expressed a lack of confidence in their Japan counterparts.

One thing that is becoming apparent after this disaster is that the truth, like the fallout, is going to force itself on the authorities no matter how much the business, political and scientific establishments try to play it down.

The Climate Spectator has a look at the elevated level of skepticism about nuclear power - Nuclear: too hot to handle.

Recent reports about the potential of BHP Billiton to delay uranium production from its massive Olympic Dam project, and Resource Minister Martin Ferguson’s urging of the NSW coalition government to overturn the state’s ban on uranium mining, suggests differing views about the outlook for the nuclear industry.

That the much anticipated “nuclear renaissance” has been stalled – at least in western democracies – appears to be beyond doubt, at least in the short term. But the medium- to long-term outlook is subject to much conjecture, and seems to depend on how you answer two questions: Who is going to want it? And who is going to pay for it?

In the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear crisis, we noted that the nuclear industry was unique among energy sources in that it relied on the indulgence of public opinion – unless, of course, you live in a country like China – to be built. This has been borne out by events in Germany and Italy, and the continuing angst in Japan.

But it’s not the only problem – even in those countries where nuclear is supported by the government, the question remains, who is going to pay for them? And it seems clear that the private sector is not.

Advocates for nuclear power in this country like to present the industry as the lowest-cost clean energy alternative to fossil fuels. But this ignores the fact that nuclear plants are massively expensive and involve huge up-front costs, invested well in advance of a commercial return because of the long lead times.

And it is completely dependent on government support. As Citigroup analysts pointed out in a 2009 analysis on the economics of the nuclear industry, there hasn’t been a plant in the world built without the relevant government assuming much of the construction, operating and financing risk. There is not a single insurer, banker or construction company in the world that is willing to assume that risk.

France is often cited as the glowing example of low cost nuclear energy, but the French government effectively wrote off the capital investment of its nuclear fleet, meaning that the operating companies such as EdF and GDF Suez have been able to book what the International Energy Agency described as billions of dollars in “nuclear rent."

Now, the assumption that nuclear will be cheaper than competing “clean” technologies such as coal with carbon capture and storage is being questioned again, particularly in light of the extra costs that will become an inevitable consequence of post-Fukushima safety reviews.

Nomura Securities analyst Kyoichiro Yokoyama last week released a detailed assessment of competing clean baseload technologies, in which he concluded that the cost of nuclear was considerably higher than that of even coal with carbon carbon and storage.

Yokoyama noted that low costs had been a key selling point for nuclear power, underpinned by an analysis from the IEA and the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency last year that suggested that the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) for coal-fired plants with CCS comes out 25-40 per cent higher than that for nuclear plants, with or without a carbon price. But Yokoyama said that, since the Fukushima Daiichi incident, an increasing number of people have been questioning the real cost of nuclear power generation.

“Some observers have noted that the cost of the various subsidies paid when nuclear plants are constructed is not factored in and it has also been pointed out that the estimation of costs associated with spent fuel has tended to be overly optimistic,” he wrote. “In many cases, the details of these amounts are unclear or unspecified, which makes calculating the actual cost of nuclear power generation somewhat problematic.”

He drew on research from MIT that noted how the cost of disposing of spent fuel and numerous regulatory and political risks associated with operating licences, including gaining the approval of residents, meant the capital costs were considerably higher (around 2-3 percentage points) than for thermal generation. MIT suggested that this translated into a LCOE for nuclear power generation of $US60-$US65/MWh for the US and Germany and $90/MWh for the Czech Republic. These costs are roughly the same as for coal-fired generation with CCS.

The question of costs and the ability of the private sector to come to the party has been raised on several occasions in recent weeks in the UK, which is keen on pressing ahead with its nuclear rollout. A joint venture between France’s EDF and the listed UK utility Centrica plans to roll out of three or four nuclear plants by the end of the decade.

Last week, Lakis Athanasiou, the utilities analyst with London-based investment bank Evolution Securities, warned that Centrica should "not touch (the new nuclear venture) with a barge pole," particularly if the UK government is unwilling to take construction risk.

The Evolution Securities view reinforces renewed concerns expressed by other investment specialists such as Citigroup, which a week earlier said new nuclear was not an investable option for public equity markets and listed companies such as Centrica or Germany’s RWE.

“The cost of capital based on those risks would be way too high to give you an electricity price which is affordable,” Citigroup’s utilities analysts told reporters at a briefing in London. "You would be looking at a project cost of capital of at least 15 per cent. That would require a power price of about 150-200 pounds per megawatt hour (based on 2017 money) to make that project work," he said, noting it is three to four times as much as current UK spot power prices.

"We think (nuclear energy) is uninvestable for public equity markets. EDF may be willing to take on the construction risks but none of the other (big utilities) are willing to do that." EDF, he noted, is an exception because it is majority-owned by the French government.
In that 2009 report, Atherton noted that three of the risks faced by developers – construction, power price, and operational – are “so large and variable that individually they could each bring even the largest utility company to its knees financially. This makes new nuclear a unique investment proposition for utility companies.” He noted that UK government policy remains that the private sector takes full exposure to the three main risks. “Nowhere in the world have nuclear power stations been built on this basis,” he said.

Further delays and cost overruns at new generation nuclear plants being developed in Europe by French companies have also raised questions about the cost factor, particularly with the extra safety measures that would appear to be an inevitable consequence of the Fukushima incident. EDF said the new generation European pressurised reactor (EPR) at Flamanville, in north-western France, has been further delayed and is now expected to open in 2016 (rather than 2014), and its budget has now jumped out to €6 billion ($8 billion). It was originally to be built by 2012 at a cost of €3.3 billion.

Another French company, Areva, is experiencing similar problems at its EPR plant in Finland.

And in weirder nuclear news, the ABC has a report on some Swedish dude who had a "meltdown" occur on his stovetop - Man tries to build nuke reactor in kitchen.

A Swedish man who tried to build a nuclear reactor in his kitchen says he started the experiment "just for fun".

Richard Handl, 31, from Aengelholm municipality in south-western Sweden, was detained by police two weeks ago and says he started the project as a hobby. "I have always been interested in nuclear physics and particle physics," he said.

In May, he launched an English-language blog, Richard's Reactor, in which he charted his progress in the project, complete with pictures.

His plan was "to build a working nuclear reactor. Not to gain electricity, just for fun and to see if it's possible to split atoms at home." ...

Mr Handl's blog can be found at http://richardsreactor.blogspot.com.

Cross posted from Peak Energy.

Fukushima was always worse than thought

[Update - 25th]

Meltdowns confirmed at Fukushima reactors
Shinichi Saoshiro, Stuff.co.nz

"Now people are used to the situation. Nothing is resolved, but normal business has resumed in places like Tokyo," said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Tokyo's Sophia University.

Nakano said that by confirming the meltdowns now, Tepco may be hoping the news will have less impact. The word "meltdown" has such a strong connotation that when the situation was more uncertain more people would likely have fled Tokyo, he said.


Japan nuclear plant confirms meltdown of two more reactors
Guardian

[Update - 24th]

Fukushima owners failed to follow emergency manual - report
NZ Herald, 23rd May

It appears likely that the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant did not follow the procedures to prevent a hydrogen explosion, NHK World reports.

NHK obtained the manual for the No.1 reactor, where the hydrogen blast occurred on March 12th, one day after the tsunami destroyed the reactor's cooling system.

The manual calls for releasing air from the vessel when the pressure is projected to rise to 853 kilopascals - double the operating limit.

The manual NHK has obtained shows that the pressure inside the vessel was close to the level that requires a venting operation 13 hours before the explosion occurred.

But the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), did not start the operation until 6 and a half hours before the explosion, and the operation was carried out just one and a half hours before the blast because it was hampered by high-level radioactivity.

[Update, 20th May]
Scandals in Japan have a familiar pattern. Revelation is followed by reassurance, which on further disclosure, is soon followed by denial, and dissembling before a scapegoat is produced and symbolically offered up to the public for (hopefully) a ritual cathartic closure. It's a kind of theater.

Japanese nuclear boss quits over $15bn loss
Al Jazeera, 20th May.
"I wanted to take managerial responsibility and bring a symbolic close,'' he told reporters, bowing during the news conference. "We are doing our utmost to settle the crisis."

Tepco also announced it will be permanently shutting down its four damaged reactors at the Fukushima plant.

"Today’s loss figures do not account for the huge amount of compensation that is going to have to be paid out to more than 80,000 people who have been directly affected by the disaster, having to be relocated outside the 20-30km zone," our correspondent said.

Tepco has not made an estimate for the likely cost of compensating all victims. Analyst forecasts have ranged from around $25bn up to $130bn, if the crisis at the nuclear complex drags on.

Tepco president resigns over Japan nuclear crisis
Telegraph (UK), 20th May.
Fuel rods appear to have largely melted at three of the plant's reactors after a March 11 earthquake triggered a tsunami that knocked out cooling systems...

"I am resigning for having shattered public trust about nuclear power, and for having caused so many problems and fears for the people," Mr Shimizu told reporters, bowing in a traditional Japanese apology during a news conference.

Mr Shimizu's resignation was widely anticipated because heads of major Japanese companies are expected to step down to take responsibility for even lesser scandals and problems.

Insurance not withstanding (see BNC comments below) TEPCO shares are now one level above junk bond status as the costs mount.

Moody's cuts Tepco to one notch above junk on compensation plan
Reuters, 16th May.

[end update]

While a prominent Australian based pro nuclear site went in hard and fast (prematurely) extolling the safety of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor and its operators; decrying any popular press report of dangers as alarmist, two months on a clearer picture begins to emerge.

Several themes were proposed about the failure in the face of the massive earthquake that struck the Tohoku region. But one, which increased in height with time, was that no one could have foreseen the danger presented by the Tsunami. This has now been revealed as false. It was foreseen; TEPCO was warned.

Japan govt body detailed tsunami risks before March 11:documents
Reuters, May 15

A government body conducted analyses on the damage tsunamis of various scale would inflict on a nuclear power plant, according to documents made public on Sunday, adding to allegations that Japan and its largest utility failed to heed warnings.

The latest revelation, reported by the Mainichi daily, emerged as the government prepares to help Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) compensate victims of the crisis at the tsunami-crippled nuclear Fukushma Daiichi plant.

The government and Tokyo Electric Power have repeatedly described the combination of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the ensuing 15-meter (46.5 foot) tsunami on March 11 as beyond expectations.

The institution affiliated with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, however, analyzed the dangers of tsunamis ranging from 3 meters to 23 meters in a report originally published in December.

"Our analysis shows that a tsunami of a certain height (some 7 meters in the absence of a seawall and some 15 meters if one were present) or higher would have almost a 100 percent chance of damaging the reactor core...," the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization said in the report.

[presumably this means if the reactor were at or near sea level - as the Fukushima plant is ~10 meters above it]

"We presume a tsunami of at least 7 meters would destroy the functions of a seawater pump and that of at least 15 meters would destroy outside equipment such as an electrical transformer."

Through out the early phase of the disaster BNC continued to claim that no damage had occurred to the containment. Many fancy annotated pictures (the site loves them) with big arrows were posted. In fact investigators are now conducting an inquiry reassessing the time-line of events and now believe that the reactor containment may have been damaged by the earthquake. This is not totally surprising given the size of the earthquake.It also explains the later leaks.

Tokyo Electric: reviewing records of how nuclear crisis unfolded
Reuters, Mon May 16

Japanese officials have said until now that the apparent meltdown in three of the reactors at Fukushima was caused by the loss of power to cooling systems when the tsunami knocked out backup diesel generators.

A finding that the reactors were damaged by the quake itself could complicate the growing debate on the future of nuclear power in Japan at a time when Tokyo is under pressure from local officials to tighten safety standards.

"We want to review the data from the 40 to 50 minutes between the time of the earthquake and when the tsunami struck,"

Kyodo news agency quoted an unnamed source at the utility on Sunday as saying that the No. 1 reactor might have suffered structural damage in the earthquake that caused a release of radiation separate from the tsunami.

The utility said on Sunday that a review of data from March 11 suggested that the fuel rods in the No. 1 reactor were completely exposed to the air and rapidly heating five hours after the quake.

By the next morning - just 16 hours later - the uranium fuel rods in the first reactor had melted down and dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel, the cylindrical steel container that holds the fuel at the core.

The No. 2 and No. 3 reactors are expected to have gone through a similar process and like No. 1 are leaking most of the water being pumped in a bid to keep their cores cool.

In parliament on Monday, government officials were grilled by an opposition lawmaker over their immediate response to the nuclear crisis.

"We can certainly say that if the venting took place a little earlier, we could have prevented the situation from worsening," Nuclear Safety Commission Chairman Haruki Madarame told parliament.

Both Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Trade Minister Banri Kaieda said that they had instructed Tokyo Electric to go ahead with the venting but that the company had taken time to act.

"We had instructed them to go ahead with the vent and I think Tokyo Electric was trying to do this. Even though we asked them repeatedly to vent, it did not happen and so we decided to issue an order. All of us there, including the prime minister and myself had said it should be done as soon as possible,"

Personally¹, this does not completely surprise me. Most Japanese do not live up to the myth of the Samurai. Japan is very hierarchical.

Much is made of the "defense in depth" strategy adopted by nuclear power plants. But defense in depth surely means more than just repeating the same (potentially flawed) subsystem over and over. Two examples. Almost all of the diesel generators were located in the basement. Mainichi Daily termed this a "lack of diversity".

Nuclear power plant disaster highlights importance of diverse safety measures
Mainichi Daily, May 16

After the crisis emerged at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, I heard experts lamenting that Japan had multiple safety measures in place but lacked an important factor: diversity.

Take, for example, the power generators at the plant. Altogether there were 13 diesel-powered generators designed to start up in the event of a power cut. Even if some failed, there would be spares. But almost all of these generators were set up in the same way, below ground level...

If the plant had adopted a diverse safety plan and placed some of the generators on higher ground, the situation may have been different. Of course it may not have been the perfect solution, but it seems like the obvious thing to do.

Researchers have in the past warned of the possibility of multiple facilities being crippled by a single cause -- such dangers were pointed out in a lawsuit aiming to halt operations at the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant. But why didn't officials count this as a real risk at Fukushima?

Why indeed? Because credentialed promoters of nuclear power are all convinced of the safety of the measures they propose and tend to argue that dissenting views are alarmist. Up until the explosion, the engineers at Chernobyl apparently held the same belief.

One possible underlying cause is that the group promoting nuclear power plants in Japan lacks diversity itself, and is exclusive.

Sound familiar?

In Japan, nuclear power plants have been promoted by a group comprising the government, electric power companies, manufacturers and universities. It is a body propped up by the official stance that Japan's nuclear power plants will not succumb to a major disaster. In the past, when the minority warned of the dangers, this body branded them "anti-nuclear" and dismissed their opinions as "extreme arguments."

But the safety of nuclear power plants is a scientific issue dealing with risks, not a matter of ideology. Scientifically, "absolute safety" is not possible.

Just substitute "Australia", "University of Melbourne" (or at least one of its most prominent graduates, Z. Switkowksi) and "Mining Industry" - which sometimes appears to be the defacto government anyway ;-)

Back to the matter of the water levels. TEPCO has only now, two months after the event, managed to obtain an accurate measurement of the actual water depth in the reactor cores - its not near the top.

I am not an engineer, but losing and not having an operable back up, of perhaps one of THE most important control system sensors for the duration of the disaster does not sound like adequate defense in depth.

More importantly, if true, this means that the technicians running the plant were flying partially blind. A point that was made by previously at The Union of Concerned Scientists after examining pictures of the control room after the event and here.

What does this say about all TEPCOs reassurances of a stable water supply?

Probably LUCK as much as design prevented a worse fate.




Compare these revelations to some of the early cocky statements from BNC.

cold shutdown within a few days

Now anticipated by the end of year.

The nuclear reactor containments were undamaged by the tsunami or earthquake

Obviously wrong.

There will be no breach of containment and no release of radioactivity beyond, at the very most, some venting of mildly radioactive steam to relieve pressure.

3. The only reactor that has a small probability of being ‘finished’ is FD unit 1. And I doubt that, but it may be offline for a year or more.

4 Yes, they are insured. No, the costs won’t be $50 billion, more like <<$1 billion depending on what needs to be repaired, and this will all be on-site work. I am happy to be quoted forever after on the above if I am wrong… but I won’t be. Barry Brooke, 12th March.

All wrong.
The emphasis since has been on radiation deaths, which, if they occur will not be for some time, and difficult to prove.



“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” Albert Einstein.


1. I lived there for a while.

Reviewing the Reviewers

A long while is shorter than it seems.

I have been kindly provided (thank you CV) with copies of the reviews mentioned in The least Fortunate Island, one of which was cited by George Monbiot in his “I’m shocked, shocked, I tells ‘e” article published globally to the delight and disdain of many depending on prior convictions.

This post provides a summary of two reviews, one used by George Monbiot in his public tiff. George bends it a bit.

My take on this issue. I think about it this way:

Just as no individual cancer can be easily attributed to Chernobyl, no individual weather event can be easily attributed to climate change.

Does this mean we ignore the cumulative effects of an increase in temperature? No. So how about those of radiation?

[edited]
One of the reasons for the adoption of the (conservative) Linear No Threshold model is that the consequences of making a Type II statistical error (i.e. failing to detect an effect when there is one) are so serious (i.e. cancer).

Pro Nuclear advocates of a self proclaimed green persuasion (Nuclear Greens) should remember that taking action against climate change started well before all the evidence was in for the same reason.

This is the precautionary principle.

Read the rest if you need some sleep material…

Areva steps into the sun in Queensland

The Climate Spectator reports that recent speculation that Areva's push into solar thermal power would soon bear fruit has proved to be true, with the company announcing a 44MW CSP plant to supplement the existing coal fired plant at Kogan Creek in Queesnland (OK - it not as good as a Spanigh or Californian style large scale pure CSP plant with molten salt storage, but its a step forward) - Areva's sunshine test.

It’s been just over a year since French nuclear giant Areva bought out the aspiring solar thermal energy developer Ausra, but the purchase of the Californian-based company with the Australian-grown technology may be about to pay dividends.

On Wednesday, Areva announced it had confirmed financing details with the federal government and its joint venture partner CS Energy for a 44MW solar booster project at the Kogan Creek coal-fired power station on Queensland’s Darling Downs. The company hopes that it will be the first of a string of projects to be announced in Australia, the Middle East, India, Africa and the US over coming months that could lead to $1 billion of revenue within 3-5 years, and set Areva on its way to becoming a leading player in the global solar energy market. It’s pitching all its solar hopes on this one technology.

The Kogan Creek Solar Booster project gave Prime Minister Julia Gillard a wonderful new photo opportunity, and the government some hope that one of the many projects to which it has allotted grants may finally come to fruition. The $105 million project, which will begin construction in the next few months and be completed by 2013, will receive $32 million from the federal government’s renewable energy demonstration program, as well as $35 million from a Queensland government fund. CS Energy will contribute the rest.

The project was originally announced last year as a 23MW facility, but improvements in the final design and in the technology since it was first awarded the grant means that it will be able to run at a capacity of 44MW at peak solar times. That makes it the largest project of its type in the world, and the first commercial-scale operation for Areva Solar, which previously had an 8MW booster plant at the Liddell power station in NSW and a 5MW Kimberlina demonstration plant at Bakersfield, California, where much of its recent technology improvements have been achieved.

The technology, conceived by Dr David Mills at Sydney University, before he and his partners moved to California in the search of venture capital, is known as Compact Linear Fresnel (CLFR) which uses modular flat mirrors to focus the sun’s heat onto centralised receivers, where water flowing through a system of tubes is boiled, producing steam. The major achievements over the last 12-18 months has been upgrading the ability to deliver medium pressure, saturated steam to be able to provide high pressure, superheated steam (400°C), a breakthrough that will increase its range of applications, including to industrial ones and lower its costs.

Areva says booster projects such as that at Kogan Creek are particularly attractive because they reduce the levelised cost of electricity to 30 per cent below that of stand-alone solar thermal power plants, mostly because they take advantage of existing infrastructure (including grid connection) and they can be built in a year or less.

Areva says these sort of projects will allow the company to deploy rapidly in the 30MW-50MW project range, increase the customer’s comfort level with the technology and ability to deliver – a crucial step towards executing on a large scale basis. It sees plants on a scale of around 100MW-140MW would be an optimum size for this type of facility.

Still, the ability to deliver super-heated steam means that the technology can also operate on a stand-alone basis. It is still in the running in the government’s solar flagships contest, with a stand-alone 250MW facility that it proposes to develop with WindProspect, also in Queensland. It has also been involved with the Midwest Solar consortium in WA, although it is unclear where that project is heading at the moment.

Solar thermal has taken a back seat to solar PV in recent years, thanks to the generous government incentives that have caused a massive increase in scale in the PV industry, and huge reductions in costs, driven also by price pressure from Chinese manufacturers.

Areva believes its technology is the lowest CSP (concentrated solar power) offering on the market, although that remains to be seen, because not much of any solar thermal technology has been developed at scale. Certainly, it uses the least amount of land. It claims it generates up to three times more peak power per hectare of land than competing solar technologies. This high energy density translates into lower costs, a smaller environmental footprint, and an ability to produce a simple, modular system that is easily scaled.

“I think there is space for both solar PV and solar thermal,” says Tom Bartolomei, senior vice president at Areva Solar. “Everyone recognises the improvement in PV in cost scales – as we enhance our skill sets in building these things, that’s where we will get better value per megawatt hour. That will take time.” He says installation costs for booster systems will likely come in around $1,500 to $2,000 per kilowatt, while those for standalone units will be between $3,000-$4,000/kW.

Cross posted from Peak Energy.

The least Fortunate Island

My final wrap up of the Fukushima (fortunate island) Nuclear Power Plant, starting with the media driven “he said, she said” spat between two high profile campaigners.

The Guardian has published an article by Helen Caldicott as a rebuttal to George Monbiots earlier article. This stoush could go on for a while.

Central to Monbiots argument was this quote:

"In no sense did Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences or the New York Academy of Sciences commission this work; nor by its publication do we intend to independently validate the claims made in the translation or in the original publications cited in the work. The translated volume has not been peer reviewed by the New York Academy of Sciences, or by anyone else."

Which is very similar to the text available at the website of the Annals of the New York Academy of Science posted 4/28/2010:

The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences issue “Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment”, therefore, does not present new, unpublished work, nor is it a work commissioned by the New York Academy of Sciences. The expressed views of the authors, or by advocacy groups or individuals with specific opinions about the Annals Chernobyl volume, are their own. Although the New York Academy of Sciences believes it has a responsibility to provide open forums for discussion of scientific questions, the Academy has no intent to influence legislation by providing such forums. The Academy is committed to publishing content deemed scientifically valid by the general scientific community, from whom the Academy carefully monitors feedback.

What the top quote says is that it is only the TRANSLATED volume that has not been peer reviewed. This quote could be misread

When The General Electric Talks

General Electric has sniffed the traces of Iodine 131 in the air and noted that the public doesn't like it. "Right" or "wrong" from a purely technical nuclear energy point of view GE thinks that a punt on solar, or a slice of renewables subsidies (?) might be a better option. That or its PR designed to distract from their old designs at Fukushima.

General Electric Announces Record Solar Efficiency, Plans To Build Largest U.S. Solar Factory
Reuters, April 8, 2011

General Electric (GE) has been reinventing itself as a green energy behemoth, beginning with a focus on wind energy, then the smart grid and more recently led lighting and solar. They've even developed an electric car charging station called the WattStation.

This morning they are announcing another big step along the path of its rapid push into the thin film solar market, taking direct aim at First Solar (FSLR). The push has been fueled by key acquisitions particularly of PrimeStar of which it acquired a minority stake in 2007, has had a majority stake since 2008, and today announced it has completed a full acquisition of the company. PrimeStar was developing the cadmium thin film solar panels which is the same technology First Solar is using.

GE is saying that its full sized thin film solar panel developed with PrimeStar has been independently certified to be the world's most efficient thin film solar panel at 12.8 percent aperture area efficiency. First Solar reported during its latest earnings report that it had reached 11.6 percent and that it expects to hit 12 percent within a few months. A 1 percent increase in efficiency results in a 10 percent reduction in energy cost, so the current spread isn't insignificant.

GE also announced that it will invest $600 million to build the largest solar panel production facility in the US. At full capacity the 400MW facility will produce enough panels each year to power 80,000 homes. The location of the plant is expected to be announced soon and it's great to see they will keep manufacturing in the US.

The good news for GE's solar business doesn't end there. They are also announcing more than 100MW in new orders for its thin film products which include the panels and inverters.

Fukushima No. 1 plant designed on 'trial-and-error' basis
Asahi Shimbun, 7 April 2011

While changes improved safety at the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power plant, overconfidence, complacency and high costs stymied such action at the now-crippled Fukushima No. 1 plant, according to people familiar with the situation.

Asia, North-South: Nuclear, Climate, Energy and Efficiency

It's been a while since the last round up of “local” news. Below is a long link fest of articles about Asian views on the events in Japan, nuclear power, climate change, energy and efficiency. I've added a little link table of contents at the top to help speed navigation.

Korea – nuclear power

ASEAN – region rethinks nuclear

Myth of Japanese safety shattered

Vietnam – energy efficiency, climate change and efficient lights

Thailand – Japan, nuclear, climate

Singapore – Japan, nuclear, regional consequences

Malaysia – nuclear safety: are developing nations ready?

India – Nuclear Safety in light of Fukushima, protests over large nuclear facility at Jaitapur. Prominent scientists call for moratorium.

END – Next Post: Garnauts Gambit

N is for Nuclear, N is for Nitrogen

Updated at end

In the wake of the disaster at Fukushima, Japan is faced with an immediate short term energy deficit, which may become a long term energy problem should public sentiment force the Government to reconsider its current nuclear program. One immediate solution appears to be a rapid increase in the use of LNG.

LNG prices may rise by $5

Indian Express, Mar 19 2011

As Japan does not have reserves of gas and crude oil, it imports more than 80% of its energy requirements.

It is expected that 60% of the shutdown power capacities will be substituted with coal-based capacities, while LNG-based capacities will make up for the rest. The 40% substitution with gas-based capacities to boost the gas demand by 6 to 8 million tonne per annum which represents around 11% of the total global spot LNG trade in 2009. This would in addition to Japan’s substantial LNG imports of 63.9 MTPA, which account for 35% of total LNG trade during 2009.

RI ready to add LNG supply to Japan 

The Jakarta Post, /15/2011

BPMigas spokesman Gde Pradnyana said on Monday that Japan might turn to Indonesia to meet the surge in the country’s gas needs to generate electricity to compensate for the decline in the power supply from nuclear reactors.

He said that 20 cargoes of LNG from the Bontang Plant in East Kalimantan were still available for sale. At present, Japan is one of the main buyers of LNG produced at the Bontang Plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Corp. and other Japanese utilities may increase outputs of gas, oil and coal-fired power plants to replace production from the 11 nuclear reactors closed last week following the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that hit on Friday. About 30 percent of Japan’s power supply comes from 54 nuclear reactors.

“Japan lost around 25 percent of its power supply following the disaster. As the crude oil price is more expensive now, it will buy more gas to generate electricity,” he said, adding that the recovery of the nuclear plant was predicted to take a long time.

Indonesia is the world’s second largest LNG producer with most of its production coming from three plants — the Arun Plant in Aceh, Bontang Plant in East Kalimantan and Tangguh Plant in Papua.

Torbjoern Kjus, oil market analyst at Oslo-based bank DnB NOR, said “The immediate direct effect on incremental oil demand for power generation will probably be about 150,000-200,000 barrels a day,” consisting of light-sweet crude for direct burning and low-sulfur fuel oil, assuming the grid is still able to distribute power.

LNG prices jump after disaster

FT.com, March 14 2011

Natural gas prices have jumped as dealers are braced for Japan to step up its purchases to replace the large amounts of nuclear power capacity knocked out by Friday’s earthquake and tsunami.

Japan is the world’s largest buyer of liquefied natural gas, a form of super-cooled gas shipped in tankers from exporters such as Qatar and Algeria. Any abrupt change in its energy demand could therefore affect commodities markets.

The earthquake has shut down 9,700 megawatts of nuclear capacity, equivalent to about a fifth of the country’s total capacity. Analysts expect that Japanese utilities will scramble for crude, thermal coal and LNG as replacements. They fear that Tokyo may close more atomic reactors for inspections in coming months.

The cost of UK natural gas for delivery in a month, seen as an indicator of LNG as Britain is a large importer of super-cooled gas, rose on Monday by as much as 7.7 per cent, extending its gains since the earthquake to 12 per cent.

The contract traded as high as 64.5 pence per therm, a two-year high.

The other stop gap is of course our old friend coal. The Australian has an unusually (even by its standards) scathing attack on the situation in Japan. But then The Oz loves coal.

It could have been worse!

Amid the tragedy of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, another tragic drama continues to unfold.

Updated at end - it is worse

In a nut shell, the phrase “it could have been worse” seems to be the defense adopted (in the press at least) by those still willing to defend the almost certainly critically tarnished PR sheen of nuclear power. Yes, it is remarkable that the six reactors located on the coastline facing a geologically active tectonic plate survived the initial earthquake and impact – and it was probably lucky that three of them were temporarily shut down prior to the event for maintenance. But this does not “prove” the inherent safety of the technology. It does prove that concrete of sufficient thickness and mass does not get washed away by a 5-7 meter tsunami.

The Sydney Morning Herald has a useful graphic.

The ever ready Ziggy (Neutron) Switkowski hit the press early:

Threat from meltdown only minor: Ziggy Switkowski (13th)

The impact of any meltdown in Japanese nuclear reactors damaged by the recent earthquake will be small compared to the devastation caused by the quake itself and the subsequent tsunami, Australia's best-known nuclear power expert says.

Talk about shifting the Overton Window…

"The contribution, if any, to this [disaster] from the nuclear fleet, I expect even under worst case scenarios is going to be small," he told Fairfax Radio Network today.

"That's not to deny that people are always concerned and justly concerned about the integrity of the nuclear reactor network," Dr Switkowski said.

"The Japanese reactors are probably as good as you can find around the world, but this magnitude 9 earthquake may well have tested the limits of their design."

"It could then over time just settle in and the reactor would be irreversibly damaged, or if there was an explosion - and it would be a chemical explosion, nuclear reactors can't have atomic explosions - then there would be both physical damage and the release of radiation."

The risk of an uncontrolled loss of containment of the core, releasing large amounts of radiation, was very, very small, and the radiation would probably not spread very far, he said.

Noting that people had been evacuated from a 20-kilometre exclusion zone around the reactors, he said, "I would think that the possibility that there would be significant build-up of radiation outside the zone would still remain low."

And the next day…

Japan nuclear health risks low, won't blow abroad, experts say (14th)

Health risks from Japan's quake-hit nuclear power reactors seem fairly low and winds are likely to carry any contamination out to the Pacific without threatening other nations, experts say.

"But there are obviously serious concerns about ensuring that the core of one of these reactors where the cooling isn't working remains under control and does not melt and does not create radiation leaks."

Describing this as the worst case scenario, he said the melting would effectively destroy the core of the reactor.

"It could then over time just settle in and the reactor would be irreversibly damaged, or if there was an explosion - and it would be a chemical explosion, nuclear reactors can't have atomic explosions - then there would be both physical damage and the release of radiation."

And the next day…

Ziggy predicts nuclear Australia (15th)

The immediate past chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation said he anticipated Australians would be apprehensive about adopting nuclear power after the unfolding crisis in Japan but he believed Australia would eventually use it as an energy source.

"I remain convinced that in our future we will see nuclear power," he said on ABC-TV last night.

"We do need clean energy, we are an energy-hungry nation."

The lack of thought in that throw away line beggars belief.

Dr Switkowski, who is a nuclear physicist, said what was happening in Japan was unlikely to occur in Australia.

"We are not geologically active, we aren't in the path of typhoons and hurricanes and tsunamis," he said.

But environmentalists said the problems in Japan proved nuclear power was never safe.

"Japan's nuclear plants were built with the latest technology, specifically to withstand natural disasters, yet we still face potential meltdown," Greenpeace spokesman Steve Campbell said.

I'm sure this face time with the press is all out of a dear love of his subject, but we already have other opinions;

Nuclear power's great leap forward

The Climate Spectator has yet another article spruiking the fantasy of the nuclear renaissance, with all the usual wild claims being made about Gen IV reactors (only 20 years away - we need to get on board right now !) - Nuclear power's great leap forward.

The Chinese Academy of Science announced on January 26 that it planned to finance the development of a program to develop thorium fuelled molten salt reactors (TFMSR). This is the first of four "strategic leader in science and technology projects" that the Chinese Academy of Science will be supporting. ...

The Academy stated that"The scientific goal is to develop a new generation of nuclear energy systems [and to achieve commercial] use [in] 20 years or so. We intend to complete the technological research needed for this system and to assert intellectual property rights to this technology."...

So, can we expect to see the Chinese announcement catalyze the countries and researchers who have been working on TFMSR’s for years to put together a team to deliver a second TFMSR program?

Given the intellectual capital developed 50 years ago by the talented team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, under the leadership of the visionary Dr Alvin M Weinberg, it would be surprising if a team were not assembled and funded to deliver a second TFMSR program.

Well - I'm sure the reason it failed the first time around is no longer applicable - so we'll see if these reactors can compete with solar and wind in 20 years or so time.

The CS has another article criticising a lot of the fantasising going on by the nuclear lobbyists - Behind nuclear's new face.

With Martin Ferguson calling for a nuclear power debate at the ALP National Conference and the Weekend Australian’s front page headline reading, "Nuclear power's friendly new face," it's looking like the nuclear lobby has been busy.

Of course that’s what lobby groups do – lobby. Except in this case the lobbying is being done by the Minister responsible for Australia’s renewable energy portfolio and the story in The Australian was written by a reporter, not a lobbyist.

It would be tempting to think that, after four weeks of fire, floods, and historic storms, the national debate would be focusing on how to make our country more resilient with tough, flexible housing options, infrastructure designed for the 21st century and a sustainable, cheap, low-risk energy mix.

But no. The months leading up to the Labor Party's National Conference will now be filled with environmentalists calling on the Prime Minister to clarify her position on nuclear power – with all the accompanying leadership speculation that will encourage. And it will be necessary to spend precious time and resources once again outlining the reality of nuclear power.

If it remains on the agenda, it looks like nothing but a train wreck for federal Labor. However the issues raised by The Australian need to be addressed well before the National Conference in late July.

As the headline suggests, the story is about the possibilities still open to a nuclear power industry – nuclear power as friendly and small. But there are five central assertions made by the nuclear industry in the article that, in the interests of an informed debate, need closer examination.

The first is contained in the opening lines: “Nuclear electricity generation is undergoing expansion in some countries and intensified research as nations seek to restrict carbon output and diversify their sources of power.”

Wrong. Nuclear power is declining in market share. In fact, while expansion is happening in China, Korea and Russia, in the rest of the world, the number of reactors are stagnating or decreasing. In Europe, for example, there has been a net decrease of nuclear capacity by 7,200 MW since year 2000. Twenty years ago, in 1989, there were 177 reactors in what is now known as the EU-27; today there are only 144. What we see is a decline of nuclear power, not an expansion.

Secondly, there is the suggestion that "mini reactors may be one way to go, supplying specific locations."

Mini nuclear plants are the stuff of science fiction. None of them have even developed enough on paper to be seriously considered for construction. None are licenced, which by itself is a process that takes many years.

Thirdly, the article raises the potential of Generation IV reactors, saying they are "now under research for possible future development." The Generation IV project covers several technologies that now lie more in the realm of theory, such as gas-cooled fast reactors, and others that would be helium-cooled instead of the present water-cooling.

Nobody seriously thinks about deployment of Gen IV before 2030 – including the International Energy Agency in its most recent scenarios (World Energy Outlook 2010, or Energy Technology Perspectives 2010).

The article‘s fourth point is that nuclear power "has gained support among some environmentalists and many long-standing opponents as an effective way to reduce global carbon emissions and combat climate change."

This is nonsense. The fact is, no established environmental groups support nuclear power, quite the opposite. During the climate conference in Poznan in 2008, more than 300 NGOs signed a declaration against nuclear power and its inclusion in the CDM – including every large group such as WWF, Friends of the Earth, CAN, etc.

The fifth point they make is that "Finland has several plants already and is expanding its complex at Olkiluoto from two to three plants."

The third reactor of Olkiluoto has been a disaster for Europe’s “nuclear renaissance”. Promoted as a flagship of brand new, improved, reliable and economic Generation III+ reactors, the project was passed through the Finnish parliament in 2002 with a price tag of €2.5 billion. When the construction started in 2005, the contract was already at €3.2 billion. Since then, thousands of technical problems have caused massive delays, so the construction is now officially four years behind schedule (the reactor should have started in May 2009 but will not be in commercial operation before 2014), and the cost has climbed up to €6 billion so far, with more troubles, delays and extra costs very likely to come.

Next, the article asserts that "a true environmental cost-benefit analysis is difficult because of the uncertainty inherent in the long-term storage and disposal of waste.“

"Uncertainty" is the operative word. What we do know is the UK government is preparing to pay well over $A110 billion to clean up some of its old installations. Though it’s fair to say that while no one knows how much it costs to safely store nuclear waste for over 100,000 years, it‘s probably a lot.

Finally, the article says that: "Nuclear power provides an environmental benefit by almost entirely eliminating airborne wastes and particulates generated during power generation. This is offset by the relatively small volumes of radioactive wastes that are produced that must be managed prior to ultimate disposal."

This is not true. The largest volumes of nuclear waste are generated during the fuel chain, ie. during uranium mining, processing, enrichment and fuel fabrication. Very roughly, operation of one reactor of 1,000 MW capacity results in hundreds of thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste in the front end of the cycle (ie. before the fuel eventually reaches the reactor), then has routine emissions during operation (namely tritium – and this is not negligible, there are solid and strong epidemiological studies proving increased incidence of childhood cancer in the neighbourhood or nuclear reactors).

The most dangerous waste, however, comes in the form of spent fuel: One 1000 MW reactor generates about 20 tonnes of spent fuel every year. This is enough to poison millions of people, and will remain deadly for over 100,000 years. Those 20 tonnes of spent fuel also contain 200 kg of plutonium – enough to build 20 nuclear bombs.

The nuclear energy debate in Australia is diverting attention away from the real need to plan how we harness our unparalleled renewable resources. The real question is, in whose interest is it? One thing is for certain, it’s not the Australian public.

The ABCs The Drum Unleashed ran an article by Vassilios Agelidis (Director of CERPA and Prof. School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications UNSW) back in December addressing this issue - Too late for nuclear.

Once again the call has arisen for Australians to debate whether the nation should adopt nuclear power as part of our energy mix.

It's a divisive issue that can arouse deep passions among those for and against. But instead of diving into this old argument yet again, we really need to ask whether it is in fact too late and the nuclear option has already passed Australia by.

[The] course of events in Australia up till now means that, even if we opted for nuclear tomorrow, it will not be possible any time soon, and the reality is it should not be pursued at all because it's simply not our best option.

[The] Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering considers the new energy technology choices available to the nation and finds nuclear may be cost-competitive with wind or a combination gas turbine-and-carbon capture model (CCGT-CCS) in 20 to 30 years time. By 2040, it rates CCGT-CCS, geothermal, solar thermal and nuclear as cost-competitive.

But the ATSE considers each of these technologies only in isolation. A viable and realistic model, however, will be based on integrated renewable energy sources and energy storage systems working together in a complementary, hybrid system.

Meeting our future energy needs is going to be expensive, but we can choose where we spend. Investing in technologies where Australia has significant intellectual property and expertise will not only provide the platform for future hybrid renewable energy generation systems (wind and solar for instance, which are shown to have complementary availability), but will would allow us to develop energy technologies rather than import them.

Nuclear is not a cheap option. [Costs] on the Olkiluoto nuclear plant, being built by French firm Areva, have blown out to almost double the initial 3 billion euro price tag and the reactor remains years from completion (see above). Let’s not forget... that nuclear power is based on a finite resource and requires enormous amounts of cooling water, limiting possible locations within Australia to our already crowded coastlines. Dry cooling or hybrid systems do exist but [may not be] suited to hot climates such as ours.

If we were to adopt nuclear energy, our investments will instead benefit the countries that invested in nuclear earlier than us, such as France and South Korea, and have a lead of many decades in technology and infrastructure.

Those countries that have already taken the lead to address their own energy needs need not be the beneficiaries of our poorly thought-out investment decisions if we consider carefully what sort of energy future we can build for ourselves.

The discussion thread following the article runs to 204 comments of frequently bitter claim, counter claim and accusation. Observing this and other discussion threads I notice some confusion and misunderstanding among seemingly intelligent people. Just because the words "thorium", "breeder" and "reactor" can be formed into a string that passes the linguistic requirements of grammatical sentence structure does not instantly mean the object a/. exists or b/. is a viable "solution". Placing the roman numerals "IV" after the abbreviation "Gen" does not make a planned or developmental technology instantly mature and rapidly deployable. Notice the words "planned" and "scheduled" from the Chinese Academy above.

The Economist notes that large scale reactors may indeed be a thing of the past - Thinking Small:Mini nuclear reactors. With referecne to the troubled Finnish reactor...

Combining several small reactors based on simple, proven designs could be a better approach than building big ones.

But despite the best efforts of EDF and Areva, which are building the reactors, both are behind schedule and, at over $5 billion apiece, well over budget. With results like these, it is little wonder that the vaunted “nuclear renaissance” has failed to materialise.

A global race is under way to develop small-reactor designs, says Paul Genoa of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry body in Washington, DC. He estimates that more than 20 countries have expressed serious interest in buying mini-reactors.

Regulatory and licensing procedures are lengthy, so little will be built until around 2017, he says. But after that the industry is expected to take off. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates that by 2030 at least 40 (and possibly more than 90) small reactors will be in operation.

Russia is an early adopter. Rosatom, the state nuclear-energy giant, is building a floating, towable power station in a St Petersburg shipyard. The Akademik Lomonosov, due to set sail in 2012 for waters near Russia’s far-east town of Vilyuchinsk, will be followed by at least four other floating nuclear plants for the country’s Arctic regions.

And at a mere $550m a pop they cost a fraction of what a traditional reactor does (though they also provide less power).

One advantage of small reactors is their modularity. Extra units can be added to a plant over the years, incrementally boosting output as capital becomes available and electricity demand rises. Moreover, a modular facility would generate revenue as soon as the first reactor is fired up, after a few years of construction. A big reactor traditionally takes a decade to erect.

Not all nuclear nations have entered the fray. France has studied micro-reactors’ potential in spaceship propulsion, but for generating power on Earth, big reactors are best, says Christophe Béhar, in charge of nuclear energy at the country’s Atomic Energy Commission.

Sceptics fear that these small, cheap reactors will not be enough to revive the nuclear industry. Mycle Schneider ... says licensing and building small plants will take far too long to be profitable. As the costs of solar, wind and biogas power continue to fall, investors will increasingly favour household energy-producing kit and transmission technologies that let consumers sell excess production to neighbours and utilities, he says. South Africa’s decision in September to abort construction of a small reactor, even though about $1.3 billion had been spent, illustrates the sort of financial risk the sector faces.

But proliferation fears remain, and may even be worse with small scale reactors like those described above. The interesting thing is the move by team nuclear towards modularity which has been a key concept among team renewables for some time.

Cross posted from Peak Energy with additional material by SP.