French nuclear cock-ups: not coming soon to a reactor near you

The collapse of the EdF takeover of British Energy is the right decision for the wrong reasons.

The private shareholders in British Energy, Invesco and M&G Investments who own 22%, greedily holding out for a higher share price, have shocked the pro-nuclear, pro-business BERR with their decision to reject EdF's £12 billion offer. The French state-owned EdF wasn't too pleased either. That sort of thing wouldn't happen in France.

The government sold all but 35% of its stake in British Energy last year. They probably rue the day now because they would love to have the £4bn in the Treasury coffers and the nuclear newbuild to go ahead. Conservative MP Peter Luff said the collapse was not necessarily a bad thing - if it had gone through, EdF would have "owned over a quarter of all electricity generation in the UK and the competition effect would've been very serious." I quite agree.

Business Secretary John Hutton has put a brave face on it: "We thought it was a good deal and were ready to accept." Like a pathetic salesman he tried to tout the land still available for anybody who wants to build a new nuclear power station: "Our commitment to nuclear power is clear.... BE still has potential sites and sites are available from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority."

Meanwhile, British Energy is not exactly performing well. It announced in July that its Heysham and Hartlepool reactors, currently off-line due to faults, will now cost at least twice as much to repair - over £100m. Its chairman confessed that "output from our nuclear stations last year was disappointing." No kidding. And they say windfarms don't deliver.

French nuclear headaches to be exported to Britain

For those who think that new nuclear power is not a solution to either high energy prices, energy security or climate change, the EdF/BE news was positive, especially in view of the scandal rocking the French nuclear industry at the moment.

On July 7, Areva accidentally poured at least 18 cubic meters of liquid containing at least 75 kilograms of uranium onto the ground and into the river at the Tricastin nuclear site, prompting local authorities to launch an official enquiry and local people to be banned from drinking their own water. Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo has ordered an overhaul of France's nuclear supervision as well as groundwater checks around all nuclear plants.

President Sarkozy is keen to export French nuclear know-how around the world. Since his election, he has signed cooperation agreements on civilian nuclear energy with Algeria, America, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates, among others.

France has 59 reactors supplying 80% of its electricity. The Tricastin site is a major part of the French nuclear industry, with over 5,000 employees and many sub-contracting companies. It includes the military research facility of Pierrelatte, the EDF power plant, a factory for converting natural uranium (Comurhex), and a uranium enrichment factory (Eurodiff). The latter two are subsidiaries of Areva, which wants to build new nuclear power stations in Britain.

In June a consortium led by Areva won a 17 year contract to clean up Sellafield, worth at least £50m a year. Malcolm Wicks said in a parliamentary answer just before the summer recess that the contract specified no limit on the risk to the taxpayer in the event of an accident like that at Tricastin.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has given Areva indemnity if there were to be an incident, provided that it is insured against the first £140m of the damage costs.

NDA slammed for management failure as clean-up costs rise

We could have funded two London Olympics just from the rises in the estimated costs of cleaning up our nuclear waste over the past two years. The estimate is now around £73bn, according to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).

An audit of the NDA, published also in July, says there are "inherent risks" in the way the body operates, pointing out that half of its income is dependent on unreliable sources such as fuel reprocessing at Sellafield's Thorp plant (closed since a leak was discovered in 2005). It also highlights management and accounting failures; simple things like not taking notes at minutes has led to budgetary confusion.

The audit is by the government's Select Committee on Business and Enterprise. The NDA is funded by Government funding and from commercial income. The commercial slice is "volatile and over time will decline as sites progressively close and move into the decommissioning phase," says the report. "The grant-in-aid portion of the NDA's income already represents a very sizeable proportion of BERR's annual budget - 42% of the original total Departmental Expenditure Limit (DEL) for the 2007-08 financial year."

The nuclear dilemma

It is said that your position on nuclear power comes down in part to your response to this dilemma: which is worse, the local damage caused by nuclear leaks and processed fuel lying around for 4.5 billion years (which Is the half life of depleted uranium), or the global catastrophes caused by runaway climate change?

However Britain doesn’t need to build major new power stations to keep the lights on and maintain security, according to a report just released by independent consultants Pöyry.

It says that if the UK government can meet its EU renewable energy targets and its own action plan to reduce demand through energy efficiency, then major new power stations (either coal, nuclear or gas) would not be needed to meet the country's electricity requirements up to at least 2020.

Government says 'yes' to feed-in tarriffs - or does it?

The use of feed-in tariffs as an incentive for microgeneration, which have proved so successful in Germany, "will be investigated", according to a press release from Defra*.

The announcement was buried deep within a release about home energy use advice on 18 November, but is the first time that such a positive statement has been made by the government on the issue.

This will be welcomed by many people - but there's one thing wrong with the announcement - it shouldn't have been made! Someone in Defra dropped a clanger.

Many and loud have been the clamours for such a tarriff over the years, from the industry - eg the Renewable Energy Association - but also recently both the Conservatives and the LibDems have made it their policy. The reason for it is that countries which have such a tarriff have generated robust renewables industries, and it's been highly effective in increasing the amount of renewable electricity generated, combating climate change and helping countries meet EU targets.

The reason the Treasury has rejected it for years and years is, of course, the cost: up to eight times the current subsidy level.

The feed-in model guarantees producers a fixed price - 49 euro cents for a KW/h photovoltaic electricity in Germany and Italy, and 50 cents in Greece - for electricity generated from PVs. It was introduced in Germany in 2000, and revised in 2004 to cover the full costs involved in producing solar electricity, sparking a boom. Germany will have almost 20 times as much PV by the end of 2007 as in 2000 when there was just 44MW, according to the German Solar Industry Association. It has led to around 800,000 properties having the technology installed and 55 percent of the world's photovoltaic power is generated on solar panels set up between the Baltic Sea and the Black Forest.

In the UK we have the Renewables Obligation, which compels suppliers to purchase an increasing proportion of electricity from renewable sources. In 2006/07 it is 6.7% (2.6% in Northern Ireland) and will rise to 10.4% by the period 2011-12, then by 1% annually for the five years following. It has often been criticised for being ineffective, bureaucratic, slow, and in particular excluding small generators such as householders.

However, when I sought clarity for the announcement and more details from Defra, I was referred to BERR, being responsible for energy, as the press office knew nothing about it.

The spokesperson for BERR went away to investigate, and came back to say there was no work, no plans, and certainly no policy at the moment on feed-in tarrifs, and no idea why Defra stuck this in.

I should go back and ask Defra.

Back there, I asked Kate Belson at Defra to dig into it and eventually she came back and announced that the announcement "was just stuck in as an example of all the things we'll be considering" to encourage microgeneration.

It was included merely as an illustration. I wonder why that was picked out in particular.

So, sadly, don't get excited.

Defra is slightly more radical than the Treasury or BERR, so perhaps they're being cheeky. All the same, campaigners for feed-ins should use this as a lever for what it's worth and press the government on exactly what investigations they WILL be pursuing.

[* the announcement is buried as the third bullet point in the second list of bullet points.]

How long is a long time?

Current government policy on energy technology is based on a curious mismatch of ideas about time

Ideas of 'a long time' vary according to context in the Low Carbon Kid's analysis of the government's Energy Market Outlook published two days ago.

There is enough uranium ore in the world to meet currently projected demand for up to 85 years, according to current estimates from the Euratom Supply Agency.

Renewable energy will, by contrast and by definition, last forever. Oh yes, and it's free.

Technologies which use renewable energies as a fuel source will therefore have application forever.

In other words, investing now in developing new renewable energy technologies would produce expertise that would provide a strong foundation for industries that could last for centuries, rather than, by contrast with nuclear technology, one century.

Technologies' lifetimes

Technologies have their lifetimes.

Steam power has lasted roughly 250 years. The internal combustion engine may last (it first appeared in 1850) 200 years.

Nuclear power looks set to last for 150 years at the most.

Water power (mechanical) has been around for at least 2000 years and will probably never go away.

Electricity as a clean means of conducting energy may also be around now as long as we are.

Renewable technologies generating electricity and heat will obviously improve and change with innovation, but they will be around also as long as we are, it's safe to assume.

What the government says

In the long-run we believe increased prices and global demand will help maintain reliable uranium supplies, thus not representing a constraint on any new nuclear build in the UK.
This is not a long run in my books. It is a medium term run as it is looking not 85 years but 15 years into the future.

The report begins by saying
In the short term, the main concern is the extent to which
we can be confident that energy can be delivered when and
where it is needed, i.e. reliability.
In the medium term, the focus is on the availability of
infrastructure, the planning process and supply chain issues
such as the availability, both within the UK and
internationally, of raw materials, machine components and
project management and engineering skills.
In the longer term, there is a wider range of options open to market participants, including significant capital investment and the development of new technology. Given this, the key concern in this time-frame is likely to be the availability of primary sources of energy.
In this discussion, short term is therefore about up to 12 years (2020); medium term seems to be the same actually, as over the same period the same concerns apply, but might extend a further 10 years as the Grid infrastructure is updated; and long term is any time beyond this.

Governments usually can't see beyond the electoral term of office. They are therefore bound by the need to balance the books - they can't spend too much public money.

Nuclear power stations in general take twice as long to build as coal power stations - ten as opposed to five years.

It's therefore curious that nuclear stations are being backed by ministers as they neither address the short term issues or the very long term issues.

New build nuclear power stations will be up and running around 2020. They would last until around 2095, then the fuel runs out. And anyway they will be worn out.

Before then, there is plenty of time to implement 15% of our generating needs from renewables that are currently proven - wind power, ground source heat pumps, solar thermal, and solar electric.

In the medium term government policy should signal to the markets that they should invest In the newer technologies - marine current turbines, wave power, tidal power and more advanced solar photovoltaic generation.

In particular the more predicatable sources - marine currents, tides, geothermal, heat pumps - should be prioritised.

So that after 2020 these are increasingly phased in.

in the medium
term the electricity generating industry faces a substantial
challenge in ensuring delivery of the new generating
capacity that will be needed if demand continues to rise. [p 37]

All the more reason for speeding up the planning process.

[And we haven't even mentioned the very very very very long time that nuclear waste poses a threat for]. If Stonehenge had nen a nuclear reactor it would be well glowing still.
> Energy Market Outlook

Thinking about installing solar electricity?

Thinking about installing solar electricity? Then learn from others' mistakes!

The results of field trials and lessons from 500 real-life systems in the UK over seven years are now available online from the Large-scale and Domestic PV Field Trials programme.

They have been grouped together for ease of use on aspects of design, installation, commissioning and operation.

The pie-diagram is the result of a survey of users' feelings about their PV installations!

Other useful Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR) technology sites

> Renewables website
> Sustainable Technologies
> Technology Programme
> Technology Strategy Board
[What a shame that Gordon and Malcolm don't pay any attention to them]

Don't let the Government water down renewables targets!

Today's story in the Guardian that the Treasury and Department Formerly Known as the DTI (BERR) are seeking to persuade Gordon Brown to scupper the European renewable energ targets is a brilliant piece of journalism.

We already know (from witnesses from the renewables/efficiency industry who have sat on the relevant committees and consultations such as Jeremy Leggett and Andrew Warren) that for the lifetime of this government the Treasury under Brown has blocked many attempts to back renewables.

We know that the government thinks nuclear power new build is a one-solution-fits-all option for addressing climate change.

We know the reason is that it believes that the nuclear costs won't be borne by the taxpayer but business.

Instead BERR believes that reaching Germany's current position of 9% renewable electricity by 2010 would cost the taxpayer £4bn.

We know that the off-balance sheet Treasury debt caused by PFI is in the tens of billions area (they won't reveal exactly how much).

In this context it seems to these antediluvian mandarins that despite the length of time it will take nuclear to get up and running and the urgency of the climate change crisis, it's better to wattewr down targets than attack the problem on all fronts.

This is a monumental act of cowardice. What is needed is strong leadership like that shown in Germnany, the world leader in renewables.

German industry is reaping the benefit of its R&D investment in wind and solar with bursting order books abroad.

Britain has missed the boat so many times.

We need a massive push to force the Climate Change Bill, EU targets and Energy Bill to enshrine positive long-sighted policies that will benefit Britain for the next hundred or more years.

Not policies that will saddle us with guilt, regret and a legacy of nuclear waste for thousands of years.

The Low Carbon Kid urges Greenpeace to take the government to court again for its smoke-and-mirrors second nuclear consultation.

The sad thing is the Tories also back nuclear power. Only the LibDems would go for the ambitious targets. But they have no power.