In 2013-14 every UK taxpayer spent £252.53 on looking after nuclear waste. Why make more?

We don't know what to do with nuclear waste, which is toxic for thousands of years and is extremely expensive to look after. In 2013-14 every UK taxpayer spent a staggering £252.53 on looking after this waste. Why make more?

How much is there? 

4.5 million cubic metres (4.9 million tonnes), enough to fill Wembley Stadium four times over. 1,100 cubic metres is very dangerous high level waste and 290,000 cubic metres is intermediate level waste. It's managed by a government body called the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).

4% more will be produced in the future from the UK's continuing nuclear defence capability (waste estimated up to 2060) and its continuing nuclear-powered submarine programme (waste estimated up to 2100). [Source: NDA]

How much does it cost?

It costs £3.31 billion a year to manage the nuclear waste mountain, of which £2.09 billion comes from taxpayers. [Source: NDA]

The government funding comes from the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Its total annual budget last year (2014-15) was £3.4 billion, so two thirds of this is for looking after Britain's nuclear waste mountain.

So on this basis, every one of the 29.7 million taxpayers in the UK spends £114.48 a year on looking after nuclear waste.

But this figure is not the same every year. In 2013/14, 95.8% of the roughly £7.9 billion DECC budget (£7.5 billion) went towards cleaning up the UK's nuclear legacy

Above: pie chart of the DEL budget. Chart by Carbon Brief.

On this basis, every UK taxpayer spends £252.53 a year on looking after nuclear waste.

Whatever the average in the future will be, it will continue for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Perhaps as long into the future as the building of Stonehenge is in the past. And we have no idea why that was built, so will people in the future know what our relics are?

The above chart of DECC's budget during 2013/14 shows what government calls "annually managed expenditure" (AME). Most of this relates to nuclear decommissioning. Most went towards cleaning up the UK's nuclear legacy. Source: Cabinet Office and DECC annual report and accounts. Chart by Carbon Brief.

The costs are rising.

The estimated costs of cleaning up the Sellafield nuclear site rose an estimated £5 billion to £53 billion in February this year, according to a March statement from Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret Hodge. She says: "It has taken far too long for the Authority to deal with management incompetence at Sellafield".

A private consortium, Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), that had been running the clean-up at Sellafield was stripped of its contract in January for reasons of incompetence.

Until the recent cuts DECC's budget was just 1.2% of the total government budget. Since then it's been told by George Osborne to save a further £70 million. The nuclear waste amount can't be changed for safety reasons.

Since most of DECC's budget is for managing nuclear waste, shouldn't the department be renamed The Department for Nuclear Waste?

Where should the waste go?

It's now held in temporary storage ponds on the north west coast of England, in Sellafield. These ponds are deteriorating, and leaks occur. So for 50 years the government and the industry has been looking for a permanent storage place underground.

It has not found one, because nobody wants it beneath their feet, not even the good people of Sellafield themselves.

So, since April the government can override local councils and force nuclear waste dumps on a community, under a law that was rushed through in the final hours of the last parliament. This is like the recent announcement that would allow fracking anywhere that the onshore oil and gas industry wants, against local wishes, if the government says so.

Is this what you want?

None of the above gives me any reason to be confident about Britain building a new generation of nuclear power stations.

Renewable energy can give much better value for money and provide baseload power in the cases of hydroelectric and marine power, and renewable gas, while electricity storage solutions are fast-tracked for Research and Development to store intermittently generated electricity from wind and solar, without leaving a toxic and expensive legacy.

The safest option for nuclear waste is to leave it where it is and not make any more

It is morally wrong to commission more nuclear power stations and create more nuclear waste until we know what to do with our existing waste. And we don't.

The subject of what to do with Britain's existing nuclear waste has reared its hot head again.

Last Thursday, DECC's new minister Baroness Verma was dispatched to Sellafield and the communities of Copeland and Allerdale, where the majority of the nuclear power station and the nuclear waste reprocessing plant's workers live, in the wake of the decision taken by local councillors at the end of September not to be rushed into having all of Britain's high-level nuclear waste buried beneath their feet.

Baroness Verma will need the wisdom of Solomon to deal with this dilemma.

High-level waste is mostly used reactor fuel and materials that have come into contact with it, as well as materials from processing nuclear weapons.

Currently all of Britain’s high-level waste is stored above ground in cooling ponds at Sellafield, and looking after it, and other nuclear waste, consumes over 60% of the Department for Energy and Climate Change's budget, or £1.69 billion a year.

The Government would love a final solution for what to do with all this waste, so that a new generation of nuclear power stations can be built that will create a whole lot more.

The problem is that only two communities in the country have stepped forward to offer themselves as candidates for storing this, the most dangerous material known to humanity.

One, Shepway District Council, voted against such a proposal on September 19.

The other area had already been ruled out as a safe site by Nirex, now the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, in a comprehensive geological survey conducted in the 1990s.

This is because of the presence of deep faults and fractures in the underlying geological structure, and underground water flows which could transport dangerous levels of radioactivity out into the environment.

Nevertheless, the Managing Radioactive Wastes Safety Partnership (MRWS), which was set up by the Labour government with the task of re-evaluating its geology, ignored the Nirex study and conveniently produced a document, “Initial Geological Unsuitability Screening" in 2008 which identified an area of 23 square kilometres which might be a candidate. This was commissioned from the British Geological Survey with a much narrower scope.

No wonder those councillors in West Cumbria are confused.

They are attracted by the jobs and promises of community regeneration from the government, basically a bribe for taking the material. But, not being experts on the subject, they don't know what to make of the conflicting advice that they have been given.

In two weeks' time, the independent Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) is to examine developments in West Cumbria and make a recommendation.

They must decide, along with the MRWS, whether it is appropriate to proceed to the next stage, stage 4, of the assessment of suitable sites, which is a desk-based study.

In doing so they must be bearing in mind the advice of David Smythe, Emeritus Professor of geophysics at Glasgow University, that “by proceeding to stage 4 in West Cumbria, despite the evidently insuperable difficulties of geology and hydrogeology, the NDA and the local authorities may run the risk of legal challenge".

David Smythe is supported in his assessment that MRWS' survey is woefully inadequate, by several other leading academics, including Colin Knight and Chris McDonald, who were the technical assessor and lead inspector at the original Nirex enquiry.

A former member of CoRWM, Professor Andy Blowers also agrees. Even the International Atomic Energy Authority considers that West Cumbria is an unsuitable site.

MRWS' own stooge, Dr Jeremy Dearlove, has attempted to argue that the area has “potentially suitable sedimentary formations".

But his argument has been torn to pieces by David Smythe, who accuses him of using debating tactics and disregarding international guidelines.

Prof. Smythe also accuses the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority of “airbrushing out the history" of the previous attempt to find a nuclear waste repository in West Cumbria, by removing from its website the vast bulk of Nirex documents. He has placed them instead on his own website.

Cumbria is exceptionally well understood region geologically, he says, and it is quite obvious that it is unsuitable to be used as a dump.

In the light of this, Baroness Verma should, in all intellectual honesty, make it clear to the Cumbrian councillors that this is the most objective and complete judgment available, not the MRWS one.

The principle of choosing the location for a site is, admirably, that a community must willingly volunteer. A dump cannot be imposed on a community that does not want one.

Logically, therefore, it seems that nowhere in the country is there a place that is both geologically suitable and where the people are unequivocally in favour of hosting a dump.

We are stuck with the status quo, until a new way of dealing with nuclear waste is found, perhaps with another generation of power stations that can use this waste as a fuel source and render it harmless.

Until science comes up with such a solution, the safest option is to continue storing it overground, at Sellafield, where at least it can be monitored.

Meanwhile, it would be morally wrong to approve the construction of any further nuclear power stations in this country, until a lasting solution of what to do with all present and future nuclear waste is found.

Councils say they're not ready to host Britain's existing nuclear waste

Meanwhile, there is renewed uncertainty also about what to do with Britain's existing legacy of nuclear waste.

Friday was decision day for the three Cumbrian councils who represent the only community in the country which has said it might host an underground dump for the country's most radioactive materials.

Presently, these are stored at Sellafield in cooling tanks above ground.

The leaders of Cumbria county council, and Allerdale and Copeland borough councils, cited [link to their press release] their desire to have legally enshrined their right to withdraw from the process at any time, and a “lack of trust" between the public and the government, as reasons for postponing their decision until January next year.

They issued a statement which also throws into doubt the suitability of the chosen site: "One of the biggest concerns for many residents of Cumbria has been whether the geology of the area is suitable for a repository.

"Although a few geologists believe there is already enough evidence to show that West Cumbria’s geology is unsuitable, most of the experts agree that there is not enough definitive information available at this time."

The councils are to seek clarification from the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on a number of issues.

Managing the UK's existing nuclear waste is phenomenally expensive.

It already eats up more than half of DECC's annual budget, a proportion which is expected to rise to a staggering 70%.

If the UK can't find a safe repository for its existing nuclear waste, should we really be creating any more?

UK Government nuclear policy slammed by Science and Technology Committee

Government funding, R&D and its attitude to the industry nuclear are retarding the chances of a nuclear renaissance in Britain.

Moreover, the issue of the legacy of nuclear waste is not being addressed with sufficient rigour.

Even more surprising, the Department for Energy and Climate Change seems determined to relinquish any responsibility for funding, or helping to secure funding, to maintain nuclear R&D capabilities and associated expertise in the UK.

These are the extraordinary views of Parliament's Science and Technology Committee, which has just released a report on the nation's Nuclear Research and Development Capabilities.

The Committee, headed by Lord Krebs, was tasked with examining whether or not the Government is doing enough to maintain and develop UK nuclear research and development (R&D) capabilities to ensure that nuclear energy is a viable option for the future.

Its conclusion is: "they are not".

The Government's avowed policy is for 16 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity by 2025, possibly rising to up to 40% by 2050.

But Lord Krebs says, "We're setting out on this journey with no map, no driver, and no mechanic to fix the car if anything goes wrong".

The Lords do not consider that Britain is seen by the nuclear industry outside Britain as a serious player, as it has no way of maintaining the breadth of R&D capabilities and associated expertise needed to meet the UK's future energy policies.

This is because successive governments have let the situation slide due to the touchy political nature of the issue.

The result is that the expertise of nuclear scientists, engineers and regulators is being lost as they retire.

Lord Krebs says that the current approach is an "Argos catalogue" one, by which he means buying a new generation of ready-made nuclear power plants from overseas producers.

This means that the UK will lack the skilled staff necessary to regulate the new industry, deal with the legacy issues of waste disposal, or develop, let alone export, new technologies.

The report concludes that ministers don't even recognise that there is a problem. Lord Krebs labels this "complacent" and "lacking credibility".

For example, the Secretary of State for Energy told the Committee that he could envisage a future in which fossil fuels will dominate. This led the Committee to say, "This apparent inconsistency causes us to question whether the current policy framework is sufficient to encourage more secure, low-carbon sources such as nuclear energy and renewables".

The report criticises the confusion in Whitehall about which government department, BIS or DECC, is responsible for UK nuclear R&D capabilities and associated expertise.

This has "led to BIS and DECC tending to look to the other to tackle gaps in R&D capabilities and associated expertise".

They therefore recommend that "for the avoidance of doubt", DECC should be the lead department "in developing a national nuclear policy and R&D roadmap, outlining what R&D capabilities and associated expertise are necessary to support its policies".

This roadmap would detail the co-ordination of R&D and associated expertise, maintain a healthy research base to attract new people and skills, set up international collaboration partnerships, and provide industry with the clarity it needs to encourage them to invest in R&D and associated expertise in the UK.

It should then set up an independent Nuclear R&D Board, made up of experts drawn from the Government, industry and academia.

This board would advise, monitor and report to DECC on the development and implementation of the roadmap and the Government's nuclear strategy, as well as identifying R&D gaps and, where necessary, commission research to fill them.

Funding gap

The National Nuclear Laboratory, which is supposed to help reduce the cost of clean-up and decommissioning, maintain the skill level and attract new people to the industry, is unique amongst similar bodies in other countries in that it receives no funding from central Government.

The Committee wants to see its remit extended to cover applied long-term R&D, under the direction of a nuclear R&D Board, in areas for which no body currently has responsibility, such as advanced fuel recycling and reprocessing and deep geological disposal.

The Coalition is split on nuclear power however, with the LibDems adamant that public money should not be spent on developing new civil nuclear capability.

The Lords therefore hope that funding for this "might come" from the nuclear industry or the reallocation of funding from elsewhere. It suggests taking 1% of the £2.8 billion allocated to DECC to decommissioning and clean up each year.

Nuclear waste

The Lords draw attention as well to the "urgent need to deal with the clean-up of legacy waste" and notes that no body has responsibility for R&D on deep geological disposal.

They lament the lack of a long-term research programme to deal with the UK's plutonium stockpile.

But they also think that the way in which the NDA is developing the framework to deal with the problem of waste from new build nuclear power stations is inadequate, and call on the Government to "clarify the NDA's responsibilities" in this regard, and urgently put forward a credible solution.

On nuclear safety, in the light of the unremitting bad news from Fukushima (unsafe levels of caesium have now been found in Japanese rice for the first time), the report says that the Office for Nuclear Regulation should immediately set up a new Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee.

The last one was disbanded in 2008, with responsibility transferred to the Health and Safety Executive.

The prognosis for nuclear

In the light of this and other recent developments, such as the decision of some companies to withdraw from nuclear newbuild in Britain, and the escalating expense of new nuclear, I myself will be very surprisd to see more than one or two new nuclear power stations built in this country.

I have never been convinced either by carbon capture and storage.

The way forward is, with increasing clarity, energy efficiency and renewables.

DECC must tell us the truth about nuclear waste

The Government must come clean now about what taxpayers will have to cough up for managing existing as well as future nuclear waste.

It's shocking but true: we are not, as I had always understood, investing in a fund to manage our current nuclear waste in the future.

We are paying lip service to it and dodging the question at the expense of future taxpayers.

Moreover, there is total confusion about what provisions are being put in place to manage any future waste from any new nuclear power stations.

Will the real DECC budget please stand up?

Last week, the Guardian published on its website figures which appeared to show that spending by the Department of Energy and Climate Change on nuclear waste management has risen by an astonishing 81%, as part of an overall budget increase from last year of over 146%.

In trying to find out whether this is true I have found out a truth worse than this, as well as an admission that any new nuclear operators are allegedly being asked to contribute to a fund not only to pay for management and disposal of the new nuclear waste which their plants will create, but also for that of existing nuclear waste!

According to the Guardian, in 2009/10 DECC's entire spend totalled £3.18bn, but in 2010/11 it is spending £8.06bn, an increase of 146.02% that is largely due to nuclear liabilities.

This spending, according to the Guardian, breaks down as follows (please scroll down - Blogger is formatting this table weirdly):

DECC spending: £ per topic and change from last year

Topic	Amount	% increase or decrease
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority	£6.9bn	+81.12%
Committee for Climate Change	£4.4m	+12.12%
Low carbon UK	£622.7m	-29.8%
International agreement on climate change	£5.4m	+22.42%
Promoting low carbon technologies in developing countries	£278.6m	+159.52%
Coal Authority	£0.7m	+87.02%
Professional support and infrastructure	£117.7m	-7.62%
Energy	£87.2m	+3.33%
Historic energy liabilities	£104.5m	-106.8%

We already knew that DECC is unique among Government departments because it has to spend almost half of its budget on dealing with existing nuclear waste.

But to see that this has risen to almost almost 86% of overall DECC spending seemed incredible.

Trying to check this figure led me on a very confusing path.

My first port of call was the Guardian itself, where its reporter Simon Rogers said that DECC's press office had told him that the increase in spending was due to increased cost of high level waste management at Sellafield.

I then had several lengthy phone conversations and email exchanges with DECC's press officers, to see whether this was true.

They themselves were clearly struggling to understand what their own departmental figures meant and had to seek clarification more than once.

Now that they have explained them, I am even more concerned that the UK's nuclear liabilities are being left for future taxpayers to pay for.

The increase in the amount allocated to the NDA in DECC's budget is in fact only a paper increase. It is not real.

A DECC spokesman said that the cash that actually went ‘out of the door’ to the NDA for its decommissioning work was £1.7bn.

This is in line with the NDA's business plan, which says that government funding in 2010/11 is £1.69bn, rising to £2.022bn in the following financial year and £2.249bn in 2012/13.

But the Government reviews every three or five years the cost of nuclear waste management over the next 100 years.

The spokesman says "obviously that figure goes down as we spend money each year".

Personally, I have never known it to go down.

In fact, as he says, "...it can also go up. That is what has just happened".

Yes, this is what we expect.

He says the estimate "has increased by £5bn [to £55bn], and Government budgeting rules mean that our expenditure tables also need to reflect that".

The real cost of dealing with existing waste

This £55bn figure is a mystery. I can't find a source for it anywhere.

I can find that the NDA's Nuclear Provision for 2010/2011 alone was just over £49 billion, and that The National Audit Office put the cost of dealing with the waste and decommissioning of the U.K.'s 19 reactors at £73bn in 2008.... a much higher figure.

What will be the real cost of dealing with existing waste? In truth, nobody really knows.

But assuming that £55bn is the figure DECC is using, the £5bn increase is just a 10% increase on the one it was using before.

Yet the Guardian says the spending has gone up 81%. What, I wanted to know, accounts for the other 71%?

Is it because the NDA has to build a new pond store at Sellafield (see last month's report by Dr. Mike Weightman, the chief nuclear inspector at the Office for Nuclear Regulation?

No.

Is it because of the inspection of our military nuclear waste which has just taken place?

No. Both of these are covered by the NDA's regular spending.

Creative accountancy

It is actually an accounting trick.

There is no money.

It is a note attached to the budget which means "we hereby observe that will have to pay out £xxx billion of cash at some point in the future".

This sounds like the kind of creative accountancy that has gotten public finances into the mess they are in right now.

To help us understand it, let's try to analogise the situation to household spending.

If I know I have to spend £100,000 to maintain my house over the next 100 years, I might choose to pay £1000 a year into an interest bearing account to accrue as future source of funding.

Is the nuclear liability money being spent this way, I asked DECC?

No.

The spokesman was very clear about this. He wrote: "You might then ask, is this extra £5bn we’ve noted money that is set aside and kept in a separate pot somewhere, (like a pension)?

"No," he answered himself. "Think of the reference to it in the accounts as a formal record of the fact that we’ve changed our estimate of the grand total of what we think will need to spent in future."

In fact the pension plan is a great analogy. If you or I don't put a regular amount in to our pension plan then we know there will be nothing there in the future when we need it.

But DECC is not actually putting money into a fund to manage our nuclear liability, it is just stating that the money needs to be there in the future.

Where will it come from?

Who knows?

Remember, this is a taxpayers' liability.

But I have discovered even more than this.

New nuclear waste

In a phone conversation with another press officer, he admitted that new nuclear operators like Horizon and EDF are being asked to contribute to a fund not only to pay for management and disposal of the new nuclear waste which their plants will create, but also for that of existing nuclear waste.

I double checked that this was what he meant.

I said, "Are you seriously saying that the Government is not putting aside cash to deal with our nuclear legacy but is asking nuclear operators to do so? What do they think of that?"

If I were a nuclear operator I would be outraged.

But the question was dodged. He was having a hard time explaining it in the first place, and merely reiterated the line that the Government is taking a responsible position.

DECC's line on new nuclear waste is "New nuclear operators will be required by law to put money aside from day one to pay for the eventual decommissioning costs and their full share of waste disposal."

The law is the Energy Act 2011, under provision for the nuclear operator’s Funded Decommissioning Programme (FDP).

The value of the FDP is calculated using a “Waste Transfer Price” of, currently, £1 billion per reactor, although this is being debated by the Nuclear Liabilities Financing Board.

But Greenpeace's economist Ian Jackson has calculated that due to the extra work needed to comply with post-Fukushima safety requirements, the estimate is out by £445 million.

If there are 10 reactors built, taxpayers will end up forking out £4.45 billion to make up the shortfall.

Furthermore, the maximum price cap on all other costs has also been underestimated, he says, and should be £11.2 billion higher.

The Nuclear Liabilities Financing Board is the quango looking at the FDP issue, setting this cap.

But who exactly is doing its work?

According to the minutes of the Board's meetings, which are held every two or three months, representatives of the consortia hoping to build new nuclear power stations, Horizon, and NNB Genco (the consortium of EDF Energy and Centrica), have regularly attended its meetings.

Not only that, they seem to be setting the agenda and terms.

The minutes for December 2010, January and April 2011 illustrate how the Board and the office for Nuclear Development are letting NNB Genco design and explain the Fund, its structure and its role.

Isn't this a case of the tail wagging the dog?

Why are the private companies which stand to benefit from obtaining the lowest cost imposition able not only to attend the meetings of those who are setting the terms for private sector liability, but actually design these terms?

Moreover, there is no mention in any of the minutes of any real detail, for the sake of transparency.

Crucially, there is also no mention of whether the operators are supposed to be liable for any decommissioning costs of existing waste, as the DECC press officer said.

The whole business is, at best completely unclear, and at worst downright irresponsible.

There are serious concerns here over the extent to which taxpayers in the future are going to have to pick up the tab for dealing with not just current but future nuclear waste.

DECC should come clean.

And no new plants should be built until we have an absolutely cast iron guarantee that taxpayers will never have to pay any more than they already do to manage this monstrous and effectively always deadly liability.

Huhne calls nuclear policy an expensive failure

Chris Huhne, the UK's Energy Secretary, yesterday called the UK nuclear policy "a runner to be the most expensive failure of post-war British policy-making"?

But it's even more expensive than he says!

Speaking to the Royal Society, Britain's most prestigious scientists, he was astonishingly frank.

"We manage the world’s largest plutonium stocks – more than a hundred tonnes – and they will need guarding for as long as it takes us to convert it and build long-term deep storage. And if we don’t, we will have to guard it for tens of thousands of years." he said.

High thought they seem, the figures he quotes are actually relatively low.

Those for managing the existing legacy are higher than the £59bn he mentions - referencing the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

The NDA's Nuclear Provision for 2010/2011 alone was just over £49 billion.

The last estimate for the cost of dealing with the waste and decommissioning of the U.K.'s 19 reactors, by the National Audit Office in January 2008, was £73 billion over 100 years, almost £12 billion (18 per cent) higher than the 2005 estimate.

But if one year's custody and decommissioning cost £49 billion, how much will it cost over the next century?

As Huhne said, though "I cannot be confident that the figure will not rise again as we discover yet more problems."

Meaning: it sure will.

The cost of dealing with this existing situation - mostly waste management - is huge - almost half of DECC's budget, and already, using the NAO's 2008 figure, about £1000 per UK individual.

Then Huhne quotes Arup's figures for the cost of energy: "Offshore wind is assessed at £130 per megawatt hour, gas with carbon capture at £95 per megawatt hour, and nuclear at £66 per megawatt hour".

I don't believe a gas plant with CCS will be built for at least 10 years. The technology is untested and too expensive.

SSE is having a wobble about the cost and asking for more cash from the Treasury now.

I'm not optimistic about its chances.

By 2020, offshore wind costs will have come down much further, just as nuclear costs are rising.

Offshore wind is a good bet. DECC has just launched a programme to bring costs down.

Tidal energy is fast rising. 31 projects are underway.

It is good that progress on keeping nuclear safe is being made. The safety record of UK nuclear reactors is excellent.

But this progress means that there are further delays and costs associated with new build. It's not surprising that companies like E.ON and SSE are pulling out.

My prediction is that no more than one new nuclear build will happen, and maybe not even that.

It will go over budget, over schedule, and do nothing to help us meet 2020 carbon reduction targets.

Too little, too late, too expensive, too risky, too compromising for future generations.

People call anti-nuclear campaigners irrational, but there is nothing irrational about that.

Weightman warns nuclear industry to do more research

Above: Dead cattle in barn on ranch at Namie, radiation exclusion zone, Fukushima Prefecture: photo by Tachyon (via Rocket News 24, 11 April 2011.

The post-Fukushima Weightman report into nuclear safety has been welcomed by the Government and industry as being favourable, but contains warnings to the industry.

Chris Huhne has interpreted the report on the UK's nuclear power stations and facilities as giving the green light to nuclear newbuild, but critics have claimed it is "rushed".

The report, by Dr. Mike Weightman, the chief nuclear inspector at the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), "sees no reason to curtail the operation of power plants or other nuclear facilities in the UK" in the wake of the powerful earthquake and subsequent tsunami which crippled the Japanese plants in March, according to Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, who laid it before Parliament yesterday.

Huhne told the Commons that Weightman "believes the industry has reacted responsibly and appropriately, displaying strong leadership for safety and safety culture".

But the report makes a number of recommendations, including reviews of emergency procedures, of techniques for estimating radioactive source terms, and of the adequacy of the system of planning controls for commercial and residential developments off the nuclear licensed site, which will add to delays and costs for any developers.

It also charges the nuclear industry and the ONR to have "more open, transparent and trusted communications, and relationships, with the public".

Obfuscation was a widespread criticism of the industry in Japan and worldwide, both before and after the tsunami.

Although the Weightman report does say "there is no need to change the present siting strategies" for new nuclear power stations in the UK, it adds that the nuclear industry should "review the dependency of nuclear safety on off‐site infrastructure in extreme conditions" and look at flooding, power-supply and storage risks.

Caroline Flint, speaking for the first time in her new role replacing Meg Hillier as Labour's Shadow Energy Secretary, gave full support to the report, adding, "Now the Tory-led Government needs to give investors the support and confidence they need to deliver the construction of new capacity in the nuclear industry”.

Sellafield criticism

Sellafield is singled out for criticism by Dr. Weightman's report, saying that Sellafield Ltd, the company which runs the site, Britain’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority which owns Sellafield, and the British Government “all regard urgent progress with the legacy ponds and silos remediation and retrievals programme as a national priority”.

“This priority is reinforced by the example of the Fukushima accident, where the vulnerabilities of an older plant were not sufficiently recognised and addressed,” says Dr. Weightman.

“The main focus for the site must remain the retrieval of the radioactive inventory from these facilities and the processing of the material into safer waste forms,” he reports. “In the meantime, contingency measures are put in place.”

The report says the storage ponds for nuclear waste at Sellafield, some of which are up to 50 years old, "can never be brought up to modern standards".

The heat-generating capacity of the radioactive material stored in the ponds is lower than that of fuel in an operating nuclear power plant, so accident scenarios generally develop over longer timescales than those modelled for nuclear power plants.

Sellafield’s management is reviewing the plant’s cooling, ventilation, inerting and containment systems and “the availability and reliability of these systems under accident conditions”, but the work has “yet to be completed”.

Flooding, venting and power supplies
The report also cautions about the danger of flooding.

It warns nuclear plant managers and developers (reiterating the point made in June in the Government's Response to Consultation on the Revised Draft National Policy Statements for Energy Infrastructure) that they must examine "the effects of the credible maximum scenario in the most recent projections of marine and coastal flooding", and "demonstrate that in principle adaptation to such a scenario would be possible".

The nuclear industry must "initiate a review of flooding studies, including from tsunamis, in light of the Japanese experience, to confirm the design basis and margins for flooding at UK nuclear sites".

It should also look at the ventilation and venting routes of radioactive gas and liquids for nuclear facilities.

The report admits that detailed information is not available on the performance of concrete, other structures and equipment, in earthquakes (Recommendation IR‐15).

Nor is there sufficient evidence about the "robustness and potential unavailability of off–site electrical supplies under severe hazard conditions" (Recommendation IR‐17).

Rushed report

Back in the Commons, it was left to Caroline Lucas of the Green Party to be one of the few MPs expressing scepticism, calling the report "rushed out", because of the lack of evidence backing the overall claim.

She complained that by being released in the form of a Written Statement it offered "little chance for Parliamentary scrutiny".

She added "It will do little to reassure the British public that the nuclear industry can be trusted to power our energy future".

Greenpeace provided evidence for this view by pointing out that its release is "significantly ahead of the major international comparable reviews into the implications of Fukushima", which are:

• 31 December: ONR's final report on EU stress tests.
• April 2012: Independent peer review of the national reports on the EU stress tests
• March 2012: UN action plan on nuclear safety
• August 2012: The Convention on Nuclear Safety meeting to consider the lessons of Fukushima.

Louise Hutchins, Greenpeace Senior Energy Campaigner said: "It's designed with one objective - to give the green light to a new generation of nuclear power stations, irrespective of the safety, environmental or rising financial costs of those nuclear stations. This is government complacency."

Labour's Paul Flynn, a long-time critic of nuclear power, agreed: "The country needs consideration of the full implications, principally the cost that is making nuclear power unaffordable and uninsurable throughout the planet.

"We are not getting that and we should ask the Government to do their full job and present us with a report that is comprehensive and full."

Under questioning, Mr. Huhne admitted that an email had been sent immediately after the Fukushima disaster from an official in the Business Department warning that it must not derail the UK's expansion of nuclear power and appealing to the industry to help the Government present the pro-nuclear case.

In answer to criticism that Dr Weightman could have looked at the costs of nuclear newbuild, Mr. Huhne said the Dr. Weightman "quite rightly, as the chief nuclear inspector charged with safety, takes the view that safety comes first regardless of the issues of costs".

Chris Huhne is progressing with plans to establish the ONR as a statutory body. Dr Weightman is to report within a year on the progress industry is making to improve standards, including plant layout, flood defences and other issues.

Nuclear mining and waste problems - unsolved

Last night's BBC Radio 4 programme Costing the Earth provides an excellent glimpse of these awful twin challenges facing the nuclear industry.

It visits a mine in Kazakhstan, where most of our uranium comes from - since the environmental regulations are almost non-existent, and rich countries make the mining of the fuel too expensive. Do we really want our power to be dependent on such unethical horrors?

Tom Heap, the presenter, then goes to the USA's Grand Canyon where he meets Navajo Indians who tell him that mining companies took the uranium they needed from the mine but didn't clear up the radioactive waste left behind, with the result that the local residents' drinking water is radioactive.

Closer to home, he visits Cumbria and finds that - as with everywhere in the world - after 50 years of nuclear power the problem of disposing of its radioactive waste is still not solved.

He shows that despite Government claims that nuclear power will get no new tax subsidies, this is likely to be impossible in the three areas of dealing with waste, loan guarantees for construction of new power stations and for liability if anything goes wrong.

Jamie Reid, pro-nuclear Labour MP for Sellafield - where the Thorp reprocessing plant takes nuclear waste from Japan and is the largest earner of yen in the UK economy - says that subsidies are bound to be required for nuclear to work.

The conclusion? Nuclear power should go back in the genie's bottle. It's too dangerous and expensive to be allowed to solve the problem of climate change. We're going to have to look for other solutions.

Listen here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zphnr.

The shocking truths about nuclear waste

It's not just that nuclear power is scary. It's very expensive and we don't know what to do with the waste. This post substantiates this claim.

The cost of dealing with existing nuclear waste

I was completely shocked when I discovered that over 60% of the Department for Energy and Climate Change budget is spent on decommissioning existing nuclear sites.

It's almost unbelievable. They don't tell you in their budget of course. I had to dig it out, and here are the links.

The decommissioning of existing nuclear power stations is currently managed by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Its 2010-11 budget is £2.8bn, of which £1.69 billion comes from the taxpayer via DECC. DECC's overall budget in this year is £2.9bn.

This leaves just £1.2 billion for DECC to do everything else. Just think about that for a moment. It's a cost that can't be cut because it would be too dangerous to do so. Therefore the only thing that could be done when DECC had to cut its budget in the Spending Review was to cut everything else.

The last estimate for the cost of dealing with the waste and decommissioning of the U.K.'s 19 reactors, by the National Audit Office in January 2008 was £73 billion over the next hundred years. This was 18% above initial estimates, and the costs of even near-term actions are still rising when they should have stabilised.

This factors out to a cost of £1000 for each and every household in the UK for 100 years. What could we do with that money? Payoff our mortgages? Save that public library or hospital?

And what happens after the hundred years is up?

The cost of dealing with the radioactive waste from new nuclear power stations

The government has argued that new nuclear build should not be subsidised by the taxpayer and that companies should come up with a plan to manage the waste they create. They are currently allocating £1 billion per reactor.

But if I divide 19 into the 73 billion figure above I get nearly £4bn, not £1bn.

Now we all know that costs always rise never fall. We know from experience this particularly applies to the nuclear industry (see Paul Brown and Greenpeace's excellent voodoo economics report). Who is going to pick up the bill when these private companies say they can't afford to deal with the waste?

Let's take an analogy: successive Tory and Labour governments told us that PFI schemes were quick way to get infrastructure built at low cost to the taxpayer. We are now finding out that in fact it is the taxpayer that is being required to pick up much higher bills than they would have done in the first place for a longer period of time from many PFI schemes.

In some contracts, council tax payers will be paying for things that have already ceased to be a service.

And there is the problem of finding out what legal entity is liable for these future costs. Many PFI schemes have been sold on so many times in just a few years it has in some cases become hard to find who is now responsible. And what happens when companies go into receivership?

Yet nuclear waste will be around for hundreds of years. How much more difficult will it be? Who exactly will the contracts be with? You can imagine very easily what is most likely to happen... Taxpayers will pick up the bill.

But we are talking as if there is a solution to nuclear waste already, and there isn't.

What should we do with existing nuclear waste?

CoRWM, the independent Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, said in 2006 nuclear waste should be kept forever in a specially built safe storage facility deep underground.

But while the government pointed to this as the solution to waste from any new plants, CoRWM said it only meant this solution to apply to waste from Britain's old military nuclear programme dating back to the 1950s, so called legacy waste (see below for the link).

The government has asked for communities to volunteer to have nuclear waste stored in its location in return for a sweetener and bribes. So far, only one has come forward, the already nuclear-industry dependent area around Copeland, Cumbria, for which the government has been made to set up a “community fund” in return for allowing the continued operation and expansion of a low-level waste repository, where lightly contaminated material such as clothing is stored.

Experiments and discussions are still ongoing to determine whether and how high-level nuclear waste could be stored underground. The Office of Government Commerce has this year reviewed the Government management of the Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS) geological disposal programme, but the report has not yet been published.

The truth is we don't yet know what to do with existing nuclear waste.

Should we trust the government and industry on dealing with nuclear waste?

The Nuclear Liabilities Financing Assurance Board (NLFAB), which is stuffed with industry insiders, has one page on the DECC website, where its membership, remit and minutes of its meetings are published. It has discussed having a separate web presence and meeting NGOs but the current status of this work is not clear, since its minutes are only publish every six months and are extremely opaque giving almost no information.

This lack of information extends to the main DECC nuclear waste website and the MRWS website, most of which hasn't been updated since 2009.

This kind of secrecy does not inspire any confidence at all.

Do the experts believe we should have nuclear newbuild?

CoRWM does not believe that there should be any new nuclear build, because we don't know what to do with the existing waste. It can't actually come out and say so publicly, because that will be overstepping its remit.

But if you read between the lines of this document you can see its members struggling with themselves over how to phrase their intention in a politically acceptable manner.

Page 2 says "CoRWM’s intention to provide advice on the maintenance of public confidence in the management of new build wastes could be construed as support for new build. Such an interpretation would not be correct".

Its position statement on existing nuclear waste disposal - that it can be buried underground provided that a suitable site is found - "might be seized upon as providing a green light for new build. That is far from the case."

I think these experts, who have spent 10 years looking into the problem, are making their position quite clear. There should be no new nuclear power stations because we don't know what to do with the waste.

The Health and Safety Executive is currently evaluating proposals for new nuclear power stations submitted by energy companies. No doubt these will be sent back to the drawing board following the Fukushima incident.

The timetable for nuclear newbuild

The government was hoping that new nuclear build could start around 2014. The average length of time to construct a new nuclear power station is eight years. This means they won't be up and running until at least 2022.

Yet new wind farms take three years to build. Most renewable energy takes far less than 8 years.

Why are we wasting money and time on nuclear power when the money could be going into renewable energy, which is a lot safer and leaves no lasting toxic legacy?

There are many arguing that renewable energy is not up to the job. It's intermittent and unpredictable. But these criticisms only apply to wind power and photovoltaics.

There are many other technologies which I am describing in other blog posts, which, while not necessarily being market ready, certainly are just as market ready as carbon capture and storage, which is unproven at a commercial scale, and which the government is certainly relying upon to maintain business as usual while tackling climate change.

If the amount of investment that will be invested in new nuclear build was invested instead in taking these technologies forward, there is no doubt in my mind that Britain could be a world leader in, to pick just a few examples:

• geothermal
• marine power
• anaerobic digestion with CHP
• almost zero energy buildings
• nano-scale thermoelectric, thermionic or thermovoltaic devices
• photosynthesis-based dye solar cells
• solar cooling.

All renewable energy is solar power. It has been around for much longer than nuclear power. In 1878, the first solar parabolic dish was used to make ice. But even now this solar thermal market ready technology is largely unknown yet it has huge potential.

The 21st-century should be the solar age. Why waste money on nuclear?

The curse of uranium mining

“The people here don’t know about radioactivity, but there are still many people who do not drink the water in Arlit...They say they are sick when they drink it,” says Almoustapha Alhacen, who lives in a town built for nuclear mine workers in northern Niger, a parched desert area.


This is a glimpse of life at the other end of the uranium fuel supply route (right: where uranium originates and goes) for a plant like Fukushima.

Can nuclear-power ever be sustainable? Not unless it cleans up its act. It is just as criminally irresponsible in sourcing its raw materials as the fossil fuel industry. Read on...

Hell on earth

In a harsh environment in sub-Saharan Niger, French nuclear company AREVA has created a hell on earth amongst its indigenous population.

Here you would find great clouds of dust, caused by detonations and drilling in the mines, which cloud the air at the end of the day. Mountains of radioactive industrial waste and sludge sit in huge piles, exposed to the open air.

And the shifting of millions of tonnes of earth and rock have contaminated the groundwater source, which is quickly disappearing due to industrial overuse.

AREVA's majority shareholder is the French government. In 2009 Niger produced nearly 7% of the world’s uranium and is one of the four largest suppliers of uranium to the European Union. Northern Niger holds the world’s third-largest uranium deposit.

Foreign investors from China, Australia, South Africa, America, and Canada have flocked to the landlocked Saharan state recently. At least 139 research and exploitation permits have been sold in less than a year without any transparency or prior public discourse, says a local NGO.

Evidence has emerged that the permits corruptly enriched Mr. Tandja, the ousted president, and devastated the Touareg population.

Abject poverty

A landlocked-Saharan place in West Africa, Niger is a country where 60 percent of people are facing severe food shortages; it has the lowest human development index on the planet, despite the fact that Areva makes huge profits from its mining operations.

Arid desert, scarce arable land and intense poverty are hugely problematic - unemployment, minimal education, illiteracy, poor infrastructure and political instability are rife.


AREVA established its mining efforts in northern Niger 40 years ago, creating what should have been an economic rescue for a depressed nation.

Yet, AREVA’s operations have been largely destructive, claims Greenpeace, whose experts visited the area at the beginning of last year together with experts from French independent laboratory CRIIRAD.

In 40 years of operation, a total of 270 billion litres of underground prehistoric water have been used, contaminating the water and draining the aquifer, which will take millions of years to be replaced. There have been consequent droughts and the death of farmers' cattle. No compensation has been provided.

Health and environmental findings

In collaboration with the French independent laboratory CRIIRAD and the Nigerien NGO network ROTAB Greenpeace have found the following:

• The concentration of uranium and other radioactive materials in a soil sample collected near the underground mine was found to be about 100 times higher than normal levels in the region, and higher than the international exemption limits.

• On the streets of Akokan, radiation dose rate levels were found to be up to almost 500 times higher than normal background levels. A person spending less than one hour a day at that location would be exposed to more than the maximum allowable annual dose.

• Although AREVA claims no contaminated material gets out of the mines anymore, Greenpeace found several pieces of radioactive scrap metal on the local market in Arlit, with radiation dose rate reaching up to 50 times more than the normal background levels. Locals use these materials to build their homes.

• In four of the five water samples that Greenpeace collected in the Arlit region, the uranium concentration was above the WHO recommended limit for drinking water. Historical data indicate a gradual increase in uranium concentration over the last 20 years, which can point at the influence of the mining operation.

• A radon measurement performed at the police station in Akokan showed a radon concentration in the air three to seven times higher than normal levels in the area.

• Fine (dust) fractions showed an increased radioactivity concentration reaching two or three times higher than the coarse fraction. Increased levels of uranium and decay products in small particles that easily spread as dust would point at increased risks of inhalation or ingestion.

• Death rates due to respiratory infection in the town of Arlit (16.19%) are twice that of the national average (8.54%).

AREVA, with its attempt to create a nuclear renaissance, brings to these communities the threat of losing the most basic elements necessary for life - poisoning their air, water and earth.

“We worked with our bare hands! ...The mining company never informed us about the risks... we relied on what God decided.” - Salifou Adinfo, a former driller for AREVA, Arlit, Niger, November 2009.

“We are already radiated. We are no more useful. We can only watch.” SOMAIR laundry worker Gigo Zaki, seen here at a tap so generously provided by AREVA.

“AREVA is coming to our country and making money, but we are the ones suffering and this must be addressed,” - Fatima Daoui.

Corruption and profits while locals are in poverty

Government spokesman Mahaman Laouali Dandah says there is ample evidence that corruption is an important part of doing business in Niger Production at COMINAK, located a few kilometres from the town of Akokan, commenced in 1978.

Unlike SOMAIR, COMINAK is an underground mine.

With a depth of 250 metres and over 250 kilometres of galleries, COMINAK is the largest underground mine in the world.

On average, the mines produce over 3,000 tonnes of uranium and net €200 million in sales each year.

A third mine, Imouraren, is planned to start production in 2013 and is projected to be the largest uranium mine in Africa and the second largest in the world, with an annual production capacity of 5,000 tonnes of uranium.

AREVA’s revenues for 2008 (most recently published) were €13.1 billion, with a profit of €589 million.

SOMAIR generated €161.7 million of that revenue by producing 1,743 metric tonnes of uranium.

COMINAK earned sales of €100.6 million for its supply of 1,289 metric tonnes of uranium concentrate.

Nuclear power sustainable? Don't make me laugh.

11 reasons to oppose nuclear power

I'm going to attempt to summarise the reasons why we should abandon nuclear power. I'll give a summary and then try and go into more depth.

1. The sourcing of uranium leaves a terrible legacy and can never be sustainable or carbon neutral. This is the elephant in the room that no one ever discusses.
2. Nuclear power stations can never be totally safe. Even though designers cater for every foreseeable event, it is the unforeseeable ones which have created the disasters of the last 50 years in Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island and many other smaller ones
3. Nuclear waste remains radioactive for tens of thousands of years. It already costs in the UK £3 billion or £1000 per person per year to look after the existing legacy. How can it be safe, responsible or cost-effective to bequeath this to a distant and unknown future population?
4. It is not carbon neutral, or low carbon, but emits in its life-cycle about 30% of the carbon of gas generation, not including mining and looking after the radioactive tailings that results
5. It is highly centralised and so more vulnerable than a decentralised system
6. The nuclear industry has a reputation for secrecy and dissembling of the truth. This includes information about safety and costs which invariably rise. We need a power supply from sources we can trust.
7. We can satisfy our power needs from a mixture of existing and almost market ready renewable technologies, implementing the smart grid, low- and zero-carbon building design and refurbishment, better planning, more efficient transportation and other energy and resource efficiency.
8. New reactor designs are commercially unproven and improperly costed.
9. Uranium supplies will run out within 70 years - sooner as more plants are built. Why not invest instead in developing the renewable technologies whose fuel we will be able to use for much longer into the future?
10. Many power stations are on the coast. They will not be safe in 50 or 100 or more years' time when the sea level has risen as the Antarctic ice cap and glaciers melt.
11. Renewable energy (the source of it, i.e. the fuel) is free, and there is plenty of solar power - which fuels the wind, the waves, the tides and biomass growth - to supply the energy needs of the planet many times over. This means operating costs are in general lower as there is no fuel requirement. If only resources and subsidies currently channeled into nuclear and fossil fuels were channeled into renewable energy technologies, we could easily meet our needs this way.

Below, find some notes supporting some of the above statements. I will hopefully add to these in future posts.

Safety

None of the four Generation III designs submitted to the UK regulators for pre-licensing assessment have been proven commercially; they are design concepts without working prototypes to test their safety.

Nuclear waste

Are we expected to believe our energy companies will be around in any time over a few decades hence, for thousands of years, to pay for the full cost of management of the new radioactive waste produced?

How many companies are here now that were here 500 years ago let alone tens of thousands? None.

Existing nuclear waste is currently managed by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Its 2010-11 budget is £2.8bn, of which £1.69 billion comes from the taxpayer via DECC. DECC's overall budget in this year is £2.9bn. This means that the cost of managing existing radioactive waste is a staggering 58% of the Department's total expenditure.

The cost of looking after the waste for each new power station is estimated to be about £1 billion.

Uranium mining

The World Nuclear Authority admits that in "emerging uranium producing countries" there is frequently no adequate environmental health and safety legislation, let alone monitoring.

It is considerately proposing a Charter of Ethics containing Principles of Uranium Stewardship for its members to follow. But this is a self-policing voluntary arrangement. Similarly, the International Atomic Energy Agency's Safety Guide to the Management of Radioactive Waste from the Mining and Milling of Ores are not legally binding on operators.

To produce enough uranium fuel - about 25 tonnes - to keep your average (1300 MW) reactor going for a year entails the extraction of half a million tonnes of waste rock and over 100,000 tonnes of mill tailings. These are toxic for hundreds of thousands of years.

The conversion plant will generate a further 144 tonnes of solid waste and 1343 cubic metres of liquid waste. To supply the number of power stations worldwide expected to be online in 2020 would mean generating 50 million tonnes of toxic radioactive residue every single year.

Uranium mining has often been a disaster for indigenous peoples. this includes as just one example the people in Niger around Areva's mines. The area has suffered conflict for ownership due to the huge profits involved, and the water table has dried up leaving cattle dead and farmers destitute. Radioactive contaminated goods have been found in street markets in villages.

British Energy is responsible for purchasing uranium in the UK.

Costs

Insurance: Nuclear plant operators have limited liability in the case of an accident. Any cost over £700m is covered by the taxpayer. Are taxpayers prepared to take on board the full insurance liabilities, which in the case of Chernobyl have already run to several tens of billions?

The cost of the new generation plant being constructed in Finland, which was alleged to be cost-effective and show what could be done by the new generation designs, has soared during the construction phase.

The same is true of its sister plant in Flamanville in France, now under construction.

Nuclear is not low carbon

Nuclear power produces roughly one quarter to one third of the carbon dioxide as the delivery of the same quantity of electricity from natural gas.

This is according to the Integrated Sustainability Analysis (ISA) by The University of Sydney, which concludes that the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of nuclear power varies within the range 130-160 g/kWh.

A second estimate (below) by Storm van Leeuwen and Smith (SLS) is higher because it reflects best practice, especially for waste treatment and disposal, and because the reality of errors and problems in the nuclear cycle typically raises the energy cost well beyond the planned level. ISA’s estimate includes all GHG emissions from the nuclear cycle.

Breakdown:
Construction: 12-35 CO2 g/kWh
Front end: 36 CO2 g/kWh
Back end: 17 CO2 g/kWh
Dismantling: 23-46 CO2 g/kWh
Total: 88-134 CO2 g/kWh

To compare: GHG emissions from gas-fired electricity generation are about 450 g/kWh.

By contrast, the U.K. Government’s 2007 Nuclear Power Consultation accepts industry estimates that, across its whole life-cycle, nuclear power emits 7 - 22 g/kWh.

Additionally, no one can convince me that the mining and the care of the huge piles of tailings at uranium mines is carbon-free. It takes a lot of – almost certainly fossil-fuelled - energy to move that amount of rock and process the ore. But the carbon cost is often not in the country where the fuel is consumed - certainly in the case of the UK. So that's why it's called ‘carbon free’.

The threat of rising sea levels

The Met Office has said that rising sea-levels, increased wave height and increased storm surge height must all be considered in the planning of the UK's future nuclear stations.

Their report was commissioned by British Energy. It concludes future power plants will need to be further inland and may need added protection.

At Sizewell in Suffolk, for example, site of Britain's most modern reactor, the prediction is for the most severe storm surges to be 1.7 metres higher in 2080 than at present. But that's only if the Greenland ice sheet doesn't melt. If it does, much of it will be underwater.

At Dungeness in Kent, the storm surge increase could be up to 0.9 metres. Already this plant, which is sited on land only two metres above sea-level, is protected by a massive wall of shingle which needs constant maintenance in the winter. Waves erode so much of it that it needs to be topped up constantly with 600 tons of shingle every day.

Renewable alternatives

Britain doesn’t need to build major new power stations to keep the lights on and maintain security, according to, for example, this report by independent consultants Pöyry.

Space and water heating counts for 83% of domestic energy use and about the same for office use. Together, offices and homes account for around 35% of UK energy use. Ie, 28% of total UK energy use.

Providing 40% of this by passive solar, solar water heating, heat pumps, domestic CHP, and woodchip/pellet boilers, would account for a significant proportion of the amount of power requirement as that required to compensate for the loss of old nuclear power stations.

It would have almost as great an impact in a shorter time scale and far cheaper but with little environmental impact than building new nuclear power stations, as well as creating more, sustainable jobs.

Who's going to pay for new nuclear waste disposal?

The government has published a new consultation on the decommissioning of new nuclear power stations and what to do about all the new radioactive waste they'll create.

It specifies guidelines and principles for developers of new nuclear power stations in how to set up a Funded Decommissioning Programme. It underlines the principle that developers alone, not taxpayers, should pay for the decommissioning of plants and the storage and disposal of waste, which is covered under a separate consultation.

But the question is, will the cap on developers' costs be set high enough to avoid taxpayers one day footing some of the bill?

What does it cost now?

Existing nuclear waste is currently managed by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Its 2010-11 budget is £2.8bn, of which £1.69 billion comes from the taxpayer via DECC. DECC's overall budget in this year is £2.9bn.

This means that the cost of managing existing radioactive waste is a staggering 58% of the Department's total expenditure. Because of its nature, this expenditure cannot, of course, be cut.

What will it cost in the future?

To avoid future waste adding to this bill, the Government says that a fund should be set up by developers to pay for new costs, and the consultations explain how the funds should be managed and what they should be used for.

The cost for each new power station is estimated to be about £1 billion. The question is, whether this estimate is sufficient, given the history of escalating costs in this area.

A parallel Waste Transfer Pricing Methodology explains how the cost of disposal will be determined, since the hypothetical (currently) Geological Disposal Facility has yet to be constructed. Rough costs for such a facility were estimated by the NDA a year ago, at around £20 billion, at current prices, but are dependent on the geology of the site.

The government expects that a cap will be set on the waste transfer price, but at a very high level - three times current cost estimates. But it's impossible to be certain that costs will not exceed this figure, so there will be an additional "risk free" to compensate the taxpayer for accepting this risk.

Companies interested in building new nuclear power stations have been lobbying the government furiously in an attempt to keep the cap amount down. But if the cap is set at the wrong level, the taxpayer will end up footing the extra bill.

The first plant is expected to be built by EDF and Centrica by 2018. However, on Tuesday, Alistair Philips-Davies, energy supply director at Scottish and Southern Energy, said he was now unsure whether this schedule could be maintained. "Often these things are a little bit more expensive than you think and come in a little bit later than you think," he told a committee of MPs, raising some wry smiles.

The current position held by the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), which advises the government on this matter, is that "a range of issues, including social, political and ethical issues, arising from a deliberate decision to create additional wastes should be considered as an integral part of the new build public assessment process."

These issues are not covered in the consultation, however.

There is also a new consultation on the Strategy for the Management of Solid Low Level Radioactive Waste from the Non-Nuclear Industry in the United Kingdom. This includes waste from hospitals, the pharmaceutical sector, research and education establishments.

West Cumbria not ruled out as nuclear waste dump

In a week that saw the European Commission approve underground burial as a way to dispose of high-level nuclear waste, Defra published a geological report on the suitability of West Cumbria for this kind of geological disposal.

The study looks at the Copeland and Allerdale areas, where Allerdale, Copeland and Cumbria County Councils have set up the West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS) Partnership to ensure that people living in the area are involved in making an informed decision about whether or not to proceed with a facility siting process.

This area is the only one in the country to have come forward as a candidate for taking nuclear waste.

The study's conclusions are ambiguous, not ruling out the suitability of the area, but advocating further investigation. It rules out parts of the West of Cumbria, but raises the possibility that part of the Lake District could be a potential store.

This was condemned by local activists against the dump. Senior energy campaigner Ben Ayliffe said the report meant “almost anywhere” in the Lake District could become a dump for the UK’s radioactive waste.

The MRWS Partnership said they needed more detailed investigations before there could be any “real idea" of where the site could be located, if anywhere.

Minister of State for Energy Charles Hendry said: “We must progress implementation of geological disposal, the long-term sustainable solution for dealing with radioactive waste.

“The report, commissioned from the British Geological Survey, is a step forward. The geological disposal facility site selection process is based on voluntarism and partnership and these results do not present any reason why West Cumbria cannot continue to consider whether or not to participate in that process.”

The exclusion criteria, defined by two independent groups of experts, mainly examine whether there is any risk of the security of the dump being compromised in the future by anyone seeking to extract resources or the need to protect the quality of exploitable groundwater.

If the Partnership chose to proceed further, increasingly detailed geological and other criteria assessment would have to be undertaken.


Keekle Head, a 70 hectare former opencast coal mine near Whitehaven, Cumbria, which Endecom, a company owned by SITA UK, has bought to use for the disposal of low and very low level radioactive construction and demolition waste.

Budgets slashed but programmes to continue

It could have been worse. With both environment departments, DECC and DEFRA, having their budgets slashed by around 30%, funding for climate change and transport infrastructure remains relatively intact, although the delivery channels and funding mechanisms are set to change radically. Here is a summary:

Transport

The review pledges to support transport infrastructure, including £14 billion for national rail improvements, the construction of Crossrail, plans to create a new high-speed rail network, an incentive scheme offering up to £5000 towards the cost of a new ultra low emission vehicle from January 2011 and electric car charging infrastructure.

International development

This is an area that has been ring-fenced, with an increase in Official Development Assistance to 0.7% of gross national income from 2013, and a new watchdog, the Commission on Aid Impact, to keep an eye on value for money and whether UK plc receives benefit from the spending.

£2.9 billion is pledged over the spending review period for international climate finance, to be funded jointly by DfID, DECC and DEFRA, in line with agreements made at Copenhagen and the UN climate talks.

Climate change and energy

£200 million is pledged to make sure that offshore wind plans continue, including the vital adaptation of ports to be able to accept the large vessels that are required for installing the huge turbines.

The Renewable Heat Incentive, which was in doubt and the subject of energetic lobbying, is to go ahead, as is the Green Deal. The RHI is to be funded by £860 million of Annual Managed Expenditure from next April. It is expected to encourage investment in anaerobic digestion, solar water heating and biomass projects.

"The Government will not be taking forward the previous administration's plans of funding this scheme through an overly complex Renewable Heat levy," the review adds. I.e., it will be funded by the government rather than the market.

The review says, “this will ensure the UK meets its 2020 renewable energy targets while making efficiency savings of 20%, or £105 million a year, by 2014-15 compared with the previous government’s plans."

The Green Investment Bank is to be set up using £1 billion, carved from departmental budgets and what the Chancellor called "additional significant proceeds from asset sales", to provide collateral for private financial investments in green infrastructure projects, such as offshore wind farms.

The paybacks received by customers signing up to Feed-in Tariffs may be reduced or, in the language of the report, “improved... rebalancing them in favour of more cost-effective carbon abatement technologies". This will happen at the next review stage for the FITs, and save £40 million in 2014-15. A further 70 million a year on average will apparently also be saved by using “support for lower value innovation and technology projects".

Up to £1 billion is to go towards the first for carbon capture and storage (CCS) plants – see separate post. This money comes from general taxation and will not require an increase on electricity bills. Whether such an increase will be introduced in future will be decided at the same time as the reform of the climate change Levy to support the carbon price, after spring 2011.

However, DECC's core budget is being slashed by 30% in real terms by 2014-15 by focusing on key priorities and cutting projects which do not give “value for money".

DECC says it will reduce resource spending by 18% in real terms, and increase capital spending by 41% in real terms. The Department’s Administration budget will be reduced by 33%.

The status of the Marine Renewables Development Fund, which allocates funding for wave and tidal, is at this stage unclear.

The government remains committed to obtaining 15% of energy from renewables by 2020.

Continuing to protect the stockpiles of nuclear waste at Sellafield is assured: no cuts there. In fact, spending will increase, to compensate for a projected decrease in the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's income.

But future nuclear power takes a hit with the axing of Government funding for the National Nuclear Centre of Excellence.

DECC is reviewing the work delivered at arm’s length by bodies such as the Carbon Trust, Energy Saving Trust, and the delivery arm of Ofgem. The Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes is also being reviewed.

Fuel poverty and energy efficiency

DECC is to undertake a review of fuel poverty policy to address this stubborn problem. The language here, as with the Green Deal, is “working as an an enabler rather than the default provider" of energy efficiency services to households, in partnership with the private sector.

So, it is envisaged that private enterprise will take over gradually from the Warm Front programme, saving £345 million by 2013-14. There is no indication, as yet, what kind of quality controls will be in place to avoid quick fixes and get long-term value for money.

From April 2011, energy suppliers will provide greater help with the financial costs of energy bills to more of the most vulnerable fuel poor households, through Social Price Support – with total support of £250 million in 2011-12 rising to £310 million in 2014-15.

The Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency scheme, which met with loud opposition from quarters in the private sector, is to be simplified. The first allowance of sales for 2011-12 emissions will now take place in 2012, not 2011.

In a surprise move for participants, revenues from these sales, totalling an anticipated £1 billion per year by 2014-15 world, rather than being recycled to participants in the scheme, go into the Treasury coffers [see separate post], making it a carbon tax.

The government will make permanent the temporary increases to Cold Weather Payments provided in the past two winters, at a cost of £50 million a year, so that eligible households receive £25 for each seven day cold spell recorded or forecast where they live.

DECC will issue guidance to re-emphasise best practice on heating, cooling and lighting Government buildings. This guidance will encourage departments to reduce waste on energy costs, helping to reduce the Government’s £95 million annual energy bill, whilst saving carbon emissions at the same time.

Environmental management

DEFRA will continue to invest in flood defences and coastal erosion risk management, with £2 billion allocated over the spending review period.

DEFRA has had its budget cut by a similarly huge amount to DECC - 29% - by more than halving its number of Arms Length Bodies to 39. It will reduce its running costs by £174 million over the period.

The environmental stewardship scheme, which pay farmers to take conservation measures to protect biodiversity, has had its budget slashed by £66 million by 2014-15, but the review says it will remain open to all farmers in England.

Seven waste PFI projects face the axe, because it's judged they aren't required any more to meet landfill diversion targets, saving £3 million. These include the North London Waste Authority's plans, which received the single largest award of waste PFI funding in March 2010 and the £1 billion Cheshire project. The full list is:

• Cheshire West and Chester, and Cheshire East
• Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire (‘Project Transform')
• Gloucestershire
• Leicestershire
• Milton Keynes and Northamptonshire
• North London Waste Authority
• South London Waste Partnership.

11 other waste PFI projects currently in procurement well remain so, and the 21 other deals that had already been signed are secure.

> http://cdn.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sr2010_completereport.pdf

Australia is rubbing its hands due to nuclear new build

Uranium mining is expanding all over Australia. The Government is relishing the idea of making lots of money from the nuclear renaissance being predicted (but not yet proven).

Australian greens are fast losing the optimism they felt when the Labor Party won the last election. It's clear that the temptation to make money at the expense of the environment and traditional peoples under the pretense of it being 'low carbon' is too much for them.

Western Australia

In Western Australia BHP Billiton Ltd is to develop one of Australia's largest untapped uranium deposits, after the state government where the deposit is located lifted a ban on mining the nuclear power feedstock.

The 10-kilometre-long (6 miles) Yeelirrie deposit, located about 1,000 km north of Perth in west Australia, is estimated to contain about 52,000 tonnes of uranium.

Elsewhere in Australia and Canada uranium mining has been a disaster for indigenous peoples (as it is most everywhere in the world, ironically). Over half of the world’s uranium is in Australia and Canada.

South Australia

In South Australia, in August the Australian Government approved the expansion of a controversial uranium mine, Beverley ISL. This was dubbed a “blank cheque licence for pollution”.

“Fundamentally, they have allowed the area of pollution from the Beverly mine to be expanded quite significantly,” ground water specialist Dr Gavin Mudd told The Epoch Times. Dr Mudd, a lecturer in environmental engineering at Monash University, says he has looked at the data from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and it is not convincing.

“Until they have got that data on the public record that has been independently verified by people not subservient to the mining industry I think they really have been given a blank cheque to leave groundwater in a much worse state than before.” (The Epoch Times Sep. 2, 2008)

Elsewhere in the Territory, on Oct. 31 BHP Billiton said it plans to have the first of five planned stages of expansion at its Olympic Dam mine in production by 2013. The first phase of expansion is to optimise the existing underground operation and increase its production capacity to 200,000 tonnes of copper, 4500 tonnes of uranium and 120,000 ounces of gold. This is an open pit.

Northern Territory

At the Ranger mines (Northern Territory), on Nov. 17 Energy Resources of Australia, which is 68.4 per cent-owned by Rio Tinto, announced that it expects to find 30,000 to 40,000 t U3O8 in the Ranger 3 Deeps area east to the current Ranger 3 operating pit. ERA has performed extensive exploration in the area over the last two years.

In October the company signed an agreement to supply uranium oxide to an electric utility in China. They also signed "a safety accord." Here is a record of how safe it is:

Almost 15,000 litres of acid uranium solution leaked in a 2002 incident, and since then a further nine leaks ranging from 50 litres to more than 6,000 have been reported on the South Australian Government's Primary Industries website. Spills of 1000+ litres:

* Apr. 22, 2006: spill of 14,400 litres of solution containing approx. 0.5% uranium
* Oct. 31, 2005: spill of 23,700 litres of mining solution, containing approx. 0.06% uranium
* Aug. 8, 2005: spill of 13,500 litres of extraction fluid containing approx. 0.01% uranium
* Mar. 7, 2005: spill of 50,000 - 60,000 litres of injection fluid
* Dec. 8, 2004: spill of approx. 2,300 litres of mining solution, containing 0.028% uranium
* June 13, 2002: spill of 1,750 litres of brine solution
* June 7, 2002: spill of 1,500 litres of injection fluid in the well field
* May 5, 2002: spill of 14,900 litres of water containing 0.0018% uranium (Australian May 7, 2002)
* May 1, 2002: spill of almost 7,000 litres of brine solution containing some uranium (ABC May 2, 2002)
* January 11, 2002: spill of 60,000 liters of groundwater containing acid and uranium, after pipe rupture (ABC, The Age, Jan. 12, 2002)

Plans to expand a nuclear dump at Muckaty station north of Tennant Creek, are being pushed forward with no regard for the indigenous Aborigines who own the land. The new, supposedly greener, Australian government Minister Martin Ferguson has failed to deliver a Labor election promise to overturn the Howard Government's Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act, which earmarks a series of sites for nuclear waste dumps.

Senator Ludlam asked him on Tuesday at a senate hearing on the matter: "How can Martin Ferguson wash his hands of this issue and allow small Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory to cop this waste in a repeat of the worst nuclear colonialism of the past?"