New report: Prospects for nuclear energy in the UK

This week my nuclear paper for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (“GWPF”) was published: Prospects for nuclear energy in the UK. The GWPF has taken a somewhat more negative interpretation of my report than I expected – yes, we face a real risk of no nuclear on the system from March 2028 after the scheduled closure date of the AGRs and ahead of the opening of Hinley Point C. Only Sizewell B will be left, and while I doubt EDF will schedule re-fuelling that year, if HPC is delayed further, or if Sizewell B has an unplanned outage, then we will have no nuclear running. But I would prefer to focus on the steps that can be taken to avoid such an outcome and ensure the ongoing contribution of nuclear power to the GB grid.

Firstly, the lives of the AGRs were extended. The Office for Nuclear Regulation (“ONR”) has taken an extremely cautious attitude to the graphite cracking issue, and one which is difficult to justify from any kind of objective risk analysis. The idea of making nuclear “less safe” is of course controversial, but increasing the prospect of blackouts is not without risk – winter blackouts would likely be fatal in the UK – and any risk analysis needs to be balanced and proportionate. Beyond that, the Government should fund a handful of new large-scale reactors. Private investors have shied away from the high capital costs and regulatory risks of nuclear – direct Government funding would be the fastet and cheapest way of re-starting the nuclear pipleline.

People have an innate fear of “nuclear” associating it with war, disasters such as Chernobyl, and waste, which often blinds them to the true facts about the technology. However, there is a growing recognition that without nuclear, net zero could be difficult to achieve, especially in northern climes where solar will have a limited contribution, particularly in winter.

Growing interest in nuclear around the world

Just this week, the Energy Institute published an article entitled Is nuclear energy back? which highlights the contribution from nuclear which currently provides around 10% of the world’s electricity, and is the second-largest source of low-carbon electricity, behind hydropower. The existing global nuclear fleet maintains an average capacity factor exceeding 80%, and even reactors reaching their sixth decade of operation achieve these performance levels.

Most countries have plans to de-carbonise their electricity grids and have implemented ambitious plans to build-out renewable generation. However, the growing challenges of these plans are increasingly being recognised – the economics of wind generation are looking increasingly shaky, and to date no solution has been found to the challenge of bulk long-duration electricity storage. Occasionally people excitedly tell me this problem is on the cusp of being solved with “long-duration” batteries that will last for 8-10 hours. This is nonsense – we need to be able to bridge low wind periods lasting weeks not hours, and ultimately, we need to be able to store surplus summer generation for use in winter. Other than hydro, no technology can achieve this, but hydro is expensive to build, and suitable sites are hard to find.

The US in particular is experiencing problems with security of supply with threats of blackouts in both winter and summer across large parts of the country as power grids struggle with the impact of fossil fuel and nuclear generation retirements, and the intermittency of renewables.

All of this is leading to a renewed interest in nuclear power, which is low carbon in operation, and whose output does not depend on the weather. In fact, on a full life-cycle basis, nuclear power has the lowest emissions per unit of electricity generated of any generation technology.

“In fact, it is becoming increasingly evident that at least tripling global nuclear capacity is not just an option; it’s a necessity if we are going to achieve global net zero greenhouse gas emissions and bolster energy security in a cost-effective and equitable manner,”
– Dr Sama Bilbao y Leon, Director General of the World Nuclear Association

16 European Union nations have formed a Nuclear Alliance with the aim of reaching 150 GW of nuclear capacity by 2050, and encouraged the EU to include nuclear in its energy strategy. Last month the EU launched an industrial alliance to promote small modular reactors (“SMRs”). The US and Canada are working to establish a joint regulatory environment to accelerate the deployment of SMRs with plans for demonstration models well-advanced in both countries.

The US is experiencing a change in sentiment towards nuclear and even states such as Illinois with a long-standing moratorium on nuclear power are re-considering their stance. In fact, Illinois lawmakers have just voted by 44 votes to 7 to end their nuclear ban. Holtec International has applied to re-start the previously closed Palisades reactor in Michigan, in a first for the US market, and is also considering an SMR for the site.

Nuclear generation in Asia has more than doubled in the past decade, led by China, which has added nearly 40 reactors and has a goal of adding 150 more in the next 15 years. South Korea continues to develop new reactors while Japan is in the process of re-starting plant which was forced to close after Fukushima. India aims to triple its nuclear capacity by 2032, while Bangladesh expects its first reactor to start up in 2024.

The United Arab Emirates is also building new nuclear with its fourth reactor at Barakah opening soon, which will increase the share of nuclear in its generation mix from zero to 25% in just four years. Turkey is building a four-unit plant at Akkuyu and Egypt is building its first nuclear plant at El-Dabaa, becoming the second African nation with nuclear power after South Africa.

Nuclear is far safer than people think…

There have only been two major reactor accidents in the history of civil nuclear power – Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi. The Chernobyl plant had a unique design, and involved an intense fire and explosion after workers carried out testing after disabling automatic shutdown mechanisms. It is the only nuclear accident which involved radiation-related fatalities. At Fukushima, containment structures were severely tested, with some release of radioactive material, initially due to venting, and then from subsequent hydrogen explosions.

In over 18,500 cumulative reactor-years of commercial nuclear power operation in 36 countries there have only been around 30 documented fatalities associated with nuclear accidents (although long-term data relating to Chernobyl are not readily available). At Three Mile Island there was no radiation leak outside the plant.

At Fukushima there were no deaths during the nuclear accident itself and so far, instances of illness and death in people that may have experienced radiation exposure have do not appear to be statistically different from the wider population. By comparison, 19,500 people were killed by the tsunami.

Nuclear has among the lowest mortality rates of any generation technology – various data sources show similar results although the death rates for wind, solar and nuclear are all so low, their relative positions lie within the margins of error for the data. Most of these deaths occur in the supply chains for example mining the raw materials used in the production of the facilities, and fuel in the case of nuclear – the rare earth metals required for wind turbines and solar panels also require mining, as do the metal ores for steel production and concrete reinforcement. With off-shore wind, there are also deaths related to transport to the windfarm and accidents from working at height.

Part of the fear of nuclear power can be traced to public safety campaigns. In the 1950s the UK Government produced before and after pictures of British cities in a nuclear attack, and over the following decades there were various booklets and films informing the public on how to survive nuclear war. This culminated in the widely mocked Protect and Survive in the 1980s, after which the public information campaign was discontinued. In the US Duck and Cover, released in 1951, scared a generation of post-war children about the risks of nuclear war – by the end of the decade, 60% of American children reported having nightmares about nuclear war. In the 1960, plans were drawn up for fallout shelters.

At the same time, civil nuclear organisations treated public concerns with contempt, and, instead of calming fears, amplified them. A similar effect was seen with the MMR vaccine – after later disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield suggested the vaccine caused autism, the dismissive attitude of the UK Government which paternalistically refused to allow parents the choice of separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines gave rise to conspiracy theories, particularly as GPs simply repeated the official mantra that MMR was safe while refusing to enter into further discussion on the subject. People don’t enjoy being dismissed as stupid, and having their concerns shut down, and tend to lose trust in the authorities as a result. The release of the film The China Syndrome just days before the Three Mile Island incident hardly helped matters, boosted by alarmist reporting in the media.

The reality is that all heavy industries carry physical safety risks. The Bhopal disaster in 1984 occurred at a pesticide factory. 40 tons of methyl isocyanate, a toxic gas, leaked out of the factory and drifted across the city, exposing nearly half a million residents. Over 3,000 people were killed over the following days, and in the years since it is estimated that the total death toll was between 15,000 and 20,000 people. The disaster caused ongoing illness, including birth defects, while studies have shown that men born in Bhopal in 1985 have a higher risk of cancer, lower education accomplishment and higher rates of disabilities compared with those born before or after 1985. The disaster has had and continues to have a profound effect on the city, decades after the event.

Hundreds of people have been killed in refinery accidents while thousands have died in mining accidents. 1,100 people were killed and over 2,500 injured when a garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed in 2013. In 2020 hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate detonated at the port of Beirut killing more than 200, injuring over 6,000 in what is considered one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. No industry is free from risk, and while people often cite potential long-term harms from radiation, this is not unique to the nuclear industry as various chemical disasters attest. Yet the production of pesticides has not been banned in response to Bhopal, nor do people generally react in fear to the words “chemical plant” despite the horrors of chemical warfare – that link does not exist in the public consciousness.

If the nuclear renaissance is to properly take hold, there needs to be better public information about the true risks and benefits of the technology in order to build wider public acceptance.

…and the issue of nuclear waste is smaller and less difficult

Another of the common objections to the use of nuclear power, other than safety, is the issue of waste. There are four types of nuclear waste:

High Level Waste (“HLW”) – is generally in liquid form, and is a by-product of the re-processing of spent fuel from nuclear reactors. It represents 3% of the total volume of nuclear waste but accounts for 95% of the radioactivity. Liquid HLW is mixed with crushed glass in a furnace to produce a molten product which is then poured into stainless steel canisters, each of which holds approximately 150 litres of waste. This is a process called “vitrification” and converts the waste into a stable, solid form for long-term storage and disposal. In the UK, this process takes place at the Sellafield site in Cumbria. The canisters are then placed into an air-cooled store until a suitable disposal route becomes available.

The current practice is for the facility to store the vitrified HLW for at least 50 years before disposal which allows for much of the radioactivity to decay away and the waste to cool. The waste is then easier to transport and dispose of. When a disposal facility becomes available, each canister is placed inside two further containers before disposal.

The preferred option for managing HLW is geological disposal, which involves placing packaged radioactive waste in an engineered, underground repository, where the rock provides a barrier against the escape of radiation. There is no intention to retrieve the waste once the facility is closed.

Intermediate Level Waste (“ILW”) – ILW represents 7% of the total volume of nuclear waste. It may require treatment such as super-compacting, cutting or drying before being packaged for storage and disposal. Most ILW is packaged in 500L drums or 3m³ steel boxes, with the waste being immobilised in cement-based materials. These packages are held in interim stores until a suitable disposal route becomes available. As with HLW, the preferred option s for geological disposal.

Low Level Waste (“LLW”) – 90% of all nuclear waste is LLW. Most LLW from the UK has been disposed at the Low Level Waste Repository in Cumbria since 1959. The waste was initially placed into landfill-style trenches but is now grouted in metal containers before being stacked in concrete lined, highly engineered vaults. A cap will cover the containers when the vaults are full. The Dounreay site in Scotland also has a new LLW repository which will accept solid waste from Dounreay site operations and the nearby Ministry of Defence’s Vulcan Naval Reactor Test Establishment.

LLW disposal facilities have very specific limits on the amounts of different radionuclides that they can accept. A very small fraction of solid LLW, notably graphite from reactor cores, cannot be disposed of in existing facilities because it would take them close to their permitted radioactivity limits. This waste can also be difficult to separate from associated ILW, so is generally included with higher level waste for long-term disposal. Authorised landfill sites can accept LLW with very low levels of radioactivity for disposal alongside municipal and commercial wastes. Increasingly, LLW is sent for recycling. Metals with low levels of surface radioactivity can be recycled. Some LLW, such as plastic, textiles and oils, can be incinerated, leaving only ash and filter dust.

Nuclear Materials – these are radioactive items which have potential value and are not currently considered as waste, including uranium and plutonium, which can be used to make nuclear fuel, as well as spent nuclear fuels, which could be reprocessed and reused. At present, these materials are safely stored in case there is a need for them in future, and if no future use is found, the government will reclassify the material as waste.

The amount of nuclear waste is tiny for the amount of electricity generated – the volume of HLW is equivalent to a dishwasher table per person in the UK. The entire volume of this waste to date is 1,470 m³, after almost seven decades of nuclear power generation during which time, over 3,000 TWh of nuclear power has been produced. Although the volumes are small, the only country to have found a permanent solution for nuclear waste is Finland, which is currently constructing a deep geological repository. The UK is working on developing a similar solution.

Unfortunately, nuclear waste was not always treated so well, and this in large part informs public concerns over nuclear waste. Up until the early 1990s, spent fuel rods were stored in open air ponds at Sellafield in Cumbria. The operation to clean up these ponds is not scheduled to be completed until 2054. The site also contains buildings constructed decades ago, and, due to sparse record-keeping in the past, little is known about their contents such as discarded gloves used when cutting up spent fuel rods and are obviously contaminated. Former staff have been interviewed to try to gain insights into what is in these buildings and what went on there.

Valuable work was done at Sellafield in the past, for example, the production of plutonium-238 used in early cardiac pacemakers, but now the site is synonymous with nuclear hazards requiring a vast and expensive clean-up. But the treatment of legacy waste should not be conflated with the current approach to nuclear waste. Even if no new reactors are built, this legacy problem will remain, but we are not adding to it. The handling of nuclear waste is now cleaner and more secure, and while a long term geological depository is yet to be developed, the current temporary storage facilities are safe. The nuclear materials are contained, and their volume is such that the status quo can safely be maintained for many years to come.

All forms of electricity generation involve waste, and while not all of this waste is radio-active, some of it can be highly toxic. The waste from lithium-ion batteries is much larger in volume terms than nuclear waste, and has significant disposal challenges. Nuclear waste is also much more dense than other waste – the nuclear waste generated from commercial nuclear power plants since 1950 would fit on a football field stacked 30 feet tall. Up to 97% of nuclear waste can be re-used, compared with up to 96% for lithium ion batteries, c.80% for solar panels, and c.85% for wind turbine blades.

Nuclear is the only generating technology where developers are required to have a fully funded de-commissioning and waste-management plan in place from the outset. The Energy Act 2004 sets out various obligations relating to the de- commissioning of off-shore windfarms which the Government intends will comply with international obligations including removal of structures to allow safe navigation of the relevant waters. The rules for de-commissioning on-shore wind projects vary widely by location, with different rules in different countries. Some countries have no specific legislation covering this with requirements being set out within the individual planning consents for each project. In the US, some parts of the foundations may be left in place. Most wind turbine blades end up in landfill – while they are chemically inert and are unlikely to cause environmental damage, they take up space which is a problem in countries such as the UK where landfill space is running out.

Nuclear power is not without its problems, but safety and waste are more problems of perception than reality. The real problems are still that the capital costs are beyond the private sector, which is also deterred by the regulatory environment, with overly burdensome approvals processes, sometimes disproportionate conservatism, and an ongoing risk of new and expensive obligations being added. Sometimes these additions are sensible such as the requirement to move the backup generators at Fukushima – had those conditions been met, the incident at the plant would not have happened. But sometimes they are not reasonable, such as the ONR’s approach to the graphite cracking issue as described in my report.

If governments are serious about promoting a new wave of nuclear construction, they need to address these concerns. Regulatory processes need to be streamlined, and international co-operation should be advanced to avoid duplication of effort. And state funding for new reactors should be considered. In the UK, various incentive schemes have failed to deliver more than one new reactor in a quarter of a century. It’s time to stop wasting time and for the Government to make the funding available from the public purse. There’s a good chance it would be able to sell stakes in these plants once they are built, and by establishing a pipeline of new reactors, investor confidence could be built which might incentivise some level of private capital in new projects thereafter.

New large reactors take time to deliver. The fastest current technology is the APR-1400 with an 8-year build time – with the time for planning and other consents, this would easily exceed a decade. There’s no time to waste – governments need to act fast if nuclear power is to make a serious contribution to the energy transition.