french nuclear

IEER: FRENCH-STYLE NUCLEAR REPROCESSING WILL NOT SOLVE U.S.

NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEMS

France Uses Less than 1 Percent of the Natural Uranium Resource, Has Higher Waste Volume;

Reprocessing Still Requires a Repository and Increases Costs, Proliferation Risks.

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 8, 2010: Contrary to some prevailing opinion, reprocessing would not eliminate the

need for a deep geologic disposal program to replace Yucca Mountain. It aggravates waste, proliferation, and cost

problems. The volume of waste to be disposed of in deep geologic repository is increased about six times on a lifecycle

basis in the French approach compared to the once-through no-reprocessing approach of the United States.

A new report by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), a nonprofit scientific research group,

shows that France uses less than 1 percent of the natural uranium resource, contrary to an impression among some

policy makers. The report has several recommendations for President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on

America’s Nuclear Future, which was created to address U.S. nuclear waste issues after the administration’s

cancellation of the Yucca Mountain program.

IEER President Dr. Arjun Makhijani, the author of the report: “In recent years, a ‘French fever’ has gripped the

promoters of nuclear power in the United States. Praise of France’s management of spent fuel by

reprocessing, including its use of the extracted plutonium as fuel in its nuclear power reactors, is now

routinely heard. But it is a fantasy on the scale of the 1950s “too cheap to meter” mythology about nuclear

power to imagine that 90 or 95 percent of the “energy value” of U.S. spent fuel can be extracted by

reprocessing.”

Key IEER report findings include the following:

• On a life-cycle basis, French-style reprocessing and recycle increases the volume of waste that would have to

disposed of in a geologic repository. Reprocessing results in high-level radioactive waste and large volumes of

Greater than Class C waste, both of which must be managed by deep geologic disposal. Their combined volume on

a life-cycle basis is estimated to be about six times more than the no-reprocessing approach that is current U.S.

policy, according to Department of Energy estimates. Low-level waste volume and waste transportation shipments

are also estimated to increase several-fold.

• France spends about two cents per kilowatt-hour more for electricity generated from reprocessed plutonium

compared to that generated from fresh uranium fuel.

• Attempting to combine reprocessing with breeder reactors to convert uranium in U.S. spent fuel in plutonium will

create intolerable costs and risks. Reprocessing plus breeder reactors are much more expensive than light water

reactors today, which are themselves expensive. Such a system is required to convert most of the uranium in spent

fuel into a reactor fuel. Even a single penny in excess generation cost per kilowatt-hour in a breeder reactorreprocessing

system would lead to an added $8 trillion in costs to convert nearly all of the uranium in the 100,000

metric tons of U.S. spent into usable fuel. It would take hundreds of years to accomplish the task and require

separation of tens of thousands of bombs equivalent of fissile material each year. The proliferation risks will be far

greater than today.

• Adoption of French-style reprocessing program would not eliminate the need for a deep geologic repository. Even

complete fissioning of all actinides – an unrealistic proposition – will leave behind large amounts of very long-lived

fission and activation products like iodine-129, cesium-135, and chlorine-36 that will pose risks far into the future --

much beyond the 24,100-year half-life of plutonium-239. In fact, France needs a geologic repository and opposition

to one has been intense there. The French appear to dislike nuclear waste in their backyards as much as people in

the United States.

• Proliferation risks are inherently part of the French (and any other) approach to reprocessing. Even advanced

reprocessing technologies will not significantly reduce proliferation risks. For instance a study authored by

scientists from DOE laboratories, including Los Alamos and Sandia, concluded that it would take only a few days or

a few weeks for proliferant country to make material for nuclear bombs once it had reprocessing plants. It found

that new technologies, including electrometallurgical processing, resulted in “only a modest improvement in

reducing proliferation risk over existing PUREX technologies and these modest improvements apply primarily for

non-state actors.” The IEER report concluded that electrometallurgical increases risks in other ways. For instance,

it is far less difficult to conceal a plant than the present PUREX technology.

Other key findings include the following:

• Six decades of sodium cooled breeder reactor development has so far resulted in failure. Historical experience

indicates no learning curve for the sodium cooled fast breeder reactor, which is the breeder technology that has

received the most development. In fact, the two most recent large scale demonstration reactors, Superphénix in

France and Monju in Japan, have been failures. Superphénix had a cumulative capacity factor of less than 8 percent

before it was shut. Monju has been closed for almost 15 years, following a sodium fire, and has not generated a

significant amount of electricity. Sodium cooled breeder reactors are not commercial today despite global

expenditures on the order of $100 billion over six decades. They face a host of safety, proliferation and cost hurdles

to overcome, some arising from the fact that they use liquid sodium for cooling. They are unlikely to be commercial

in the near future. For instance, Japan’s estimated date for commercialization of the sodium cooled fast breeder is

2050.

• Storage of liquid high-level wastes creates some risk of catastrophic releases of radioactivity. For instance, the

Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority has estimated that a severe accident at the liquid waste storage facility in

Sellafield, Britain, could result in cesium-137 contamination between 10 percent and 5,000 percent of that created in

Norway by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident, which is the worst commercial accident to date, by far. A

catastrophic release of radioactivity from a military high-level waste tank occurred in the Soviet Union in 1957.

• Using more than 1 percent of the uranium resource in a light water reactor system is technically impossible even

with reprocessing and re-enrichment. In light water reactor systems, almost all the uranium resource winds up as

depleted uranium or in spent fuel. Even with repeated reprocessing and re-enrichment, use of the natural uranium

resource cannot be increased to more than 1 percent in such a system. A corollary is that the use of 90 to 95 percent

of the uranium resource or of the material in the spent fuel is impossible in a light water reactor system even with

reprocessing. These are physical constraints that go with the system and also apply to France’s system.

The IEER report also sets out a number of recommendations for the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s

Nuclear Future appointed by Energy Secretary Steven Chu:

• Spent fuel from existing reactors should be slated for direct geologic disposal without reprocessing of any kind; a

suitable path for a scientifically sound program should be set forth.

• In the interim, spent fuel should be stored on site as safely as possible – in low density configurations while in

pools and in hardened storage when moved to dry casks.

• Breeder reactors and reprocessing are not commercial after six decades of development of sodium cooled breeder

reactors, and enormous expenditures. Given the long time frame for commercialization estimated even by some

promoters, the proliferation risks, and efforts already made, it does not appear to be a good investment to spend

more R&D money in that direction. Rather energy supply R&D resources should be focused on development and

deployment of renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency.

• The Commission should request the French company AREVA and/or the French government to supply it with data

on the present use of the natural uranium resource purchased for French nuclear reactors, including, specifically, the

increases in fission fraction that have actually been achieved by reprocessing and recycling.

• The Commission should also request official data on Greater than Class C waste equivalent expected to be

generated on a life-cycle basis in France, and the total volumes and heat generation of packaged waste expected to

be disposed of in a deep geologic repository, including estimates of decommissioning waste.

• The Commission should investigate the public support or lack thereof for repository programs in France and

Britain, the countries with the longest history of commercial spent fuel reprocessing.

• The Commission should make the same requests regarding the British reprocessing program.

• Official analyses of the mechanisms, probability, and consequences of large accidental releases of radioactivity to

the atmosphere from liquid high-level waste storage in tanks should be requested from the French and British

governments.

ABOUT IEER

On March 24, 2010, IEER held a news conference to release documents acquired under the Freedom of Information

Act (FOIA) showing that the outgoing Bush Administration inked 11th-hour agreements with more than a dozen

utilities involving 21 proposed nuclear reactors. As IEER noted, between the output of existing commercial nuclear

reactors and the 21 proposed nuclear reactors covered by the agreements quietly signed by the outgoing Bush

Administration, the U.S. already has agreed to store enough spent (used) reactor fuel to fill the equivalent of not one,

but two, Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste repositories. For more information on the March 24th news

event, go to http://216.250.243.12/ieer/032410.cfm.

The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research provides policy-makers, journalists, and the public with

understandable and accurate scientific and technical information on energy and environmental issues. IEER’s aim is

to bring scientific excellence to public policy issues in order to promote the democratization of science and a safer,

healthier environment.

CONTACT: Ailis Aaron Wolf, for IEER, (703) 276-3265 or aawolf@hastingsgroup.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A streaming audio recording of the news event will be available on the Web as of 5 p.m. EDT

on April 8, 2010 at http://www.ieer.org.

Find the full report: The Mythology and Messy Reality of Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing, at

http://www.ieer.org/reports/reprocessing2010.pdf and the audio recording at

http://www.ieer.org/reports/reprocessing2010-04-08.mp3.

 

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"Why can't the Americans be more like the French?" It's the prevailing pro-nuclear refrain, the latest in the nuclear industry's efforts at fictional reinvention. And until the collapse of his ill-fated and poorly orchestrated presidential run, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was the choirmaster, saying: "If France can produce 80 percent of its electricity with nuclear power, why can't we?" This clarion call to newfound Francophilia (remember "freedom fries?") is based on a number of false assumptions, the most obvious being that if France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy, this equates with success.  A poodlish U.S. press corps has largely lapped up the spoon-fed propaganda that everything nuclear French is magnifique, conveniently forgetting its post 9/11 self-flagellation after it meekly buckled to the Bush administration's misjudged bellicosity. But France's monopolistic dependency on splitting the atom to turn on the lights has come with a huge price -- not only financially but in environmental and health costs. In reality, France is a radioactive mess, additionally burdened with an overwhelming amount of radioactive waste, much of which is simply dispersed into the surrounding environment.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Areva, the French nuclear corporation and biggest atomic operator in the world, is almost wholly owned by the French government. Consequently, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy has gone into high marketing gear -- the Washington Post anointed him "the world's most aggressive nuclear salesman" -- pushing nuclear power to any country willing to pay, most notably in the Middle East. This proliferation-friendly profiteering, however, ignores an ugly situation at home and in other countries where Areva has left its radioactive footprint.

France has 210 abandoned uranium mines. The leftover radioactive dirt -- known as tailings -- along with radioactively contaminated rocks, have been used in school playgrounds and ski-resort parking lots. Efforts to force Areva to clean up its mess have been met with resistance from the company. Historically, uranium mining corporations, including those in the U.S., have not been obliged to pay for cleanup. Many sites remain contaminated today, and disused uranium mine sites carry no warning signs. When a French documentary exposing the French uranium mining mess was scheduled to air on national television in February, Areva tried unsuccessfully to block it from the airwaves. Areva CEO Anne Lauvergeon proclaims transparency as one of the hallmarks of her company. But its failed censorship attempt, coupled with the July 2008 cover-up when a major uranium spill at a nuclear processing plant went unreported to the public for 14 hours, belies that assertion.

Areva's subsidiary at Tricastin, the huge nuclear complex where the spill occurred -- contaminating two rivers, kept quiet about the accident and then denied the spill endangered human health. Nevertheless, drinking and bathing in the water was temporarily banned, and Tricastin wine growers have struggled to market their products since the accident. Three more accidents in the region followed, prompting the French environment minister to order radioactive readings at all 58 operating French reactors. The dirtiest French nuclear site -- with the cleanest of reputations -- is the vast reprocessing plant at La Hague on the Normandy coast. The nuclear industry has successfully cast reprocessing as "recycling," but nothing about reprocessing could be further from the collections of newspapers and soda cans that recycling conjures in the public's mind's eye. La Hague takes in irradiated reactor fuel -- domestic and from other countries -- and, through a chemical process, separates the plutonium and uranium for theoretical reuse as new reactor fuel. The plutonium is mixed with uranium to make a fuel known as MOX. However, fewer than 20 French reactors use MOX fuel, which in turn can handle only minimal proportions of plutonium, and the waste these reactors produce cannot be reprocessed. Since all reactors also produce plutonium during the fission process -- as much as 40 atomic bombs worth per year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council -- the net reduction of plutonium by MOX reactors is virtually zero and contributes nothing to the recycling of waste fuel.

Instead, 80 tons of surplus plutonium remain at La Hague in the equivalent of hundreds of soda-can-size containers. About 30 tons result from imported irradiated fuel from client countries, most of whom have now cancelled their reprocessing contracts. This is despite a French law that mandates reprocessed waste fuel be returned to its country of origin. Most of the uranium isn't "recycled" either. Ninety-five percent of the mass of spent French reactor fuel consists of uranium that is so contaminated with other fission products that it cannot be reused as reactor fuel at all (although France ships some of it to Russia). The vast majority of the uranium from reprocessing -- nonfissile uranium 238 -- cannot be recycled either and will need to be permanently secured. Furthermore, reprocessing creates huge volumes of liquid radioactive waste and radioactive gases. These are simply dispersed into the sea and air.

As much as 100 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste a year is pumped from La Hague into the English Channel and has radioactively contaminated the seas as far as the Arctic Circle. These liquid wastes have been measured at 17 million times more radioactive than normal sea water according to an analysis by a French laboratory at the University of Breme. In 1998, a Belgian laboratory at the University of Gent measured the aerial discharges from La Hague. The lab found they contained radioactive krypton-85 at 90,000 times higher values than natural levels. Krypton gas released from La Hague has been traced across the globe.

Illness clusters

Two independent medical studies have found high rates of leukaemia in communities close to La Hague. Beaches, fishing and swimming areas have been closed due to concerns about radioactive contamination of the sea water. Exposure to radiation is generally considered one of the four most likely causes of leukemia (along with exposure to chemicals, viruses and genetics). Far from recycling radioactive waste, the French face the same dilemma as everyone else: they don't know what to do with it. France has no scientifically accepted or operating high-level radioactive waste repository. The sole site identified to date -- at Bure close to the Champagne region in eastern France -- has been met with organized opposition and has encountered technical difficulties. France has so much radioactive waste that the government recently approached 3,511 communities suggesting they become home to the so-called low-level radioactive wastes that have nowhere to go. ANDRA, the French national agency responsible for the disposal of nuclear waste, billed the dump project as a boon to local development but refused to publicly identify the handful of communities it says responded positively to the idea of hosting the country's nuclear detritus.

In fact, there is no French love affair with nuclear energy, but rather a deep mistrust of this most secretive of industries. Some of this suspicion dates to the Chernobyl accident in 1986, when a French government spokesman assured the population that the radioactive cloud from the Ukrainian reactor explosion (which eventually dispersed across the globe) had stopped at the French border. Unlike other Western European countries, France mandated no precautionary actions. Consequently, there are numerous hot spots, particularly in eastern France, where radioactive fallout was extremely high. This deception spawned the formation of an investigative laboratory -- CRIIRAD or Commission for Independent Research and Information -- as well as a burgeoning network of close to 815 French anti-nuclear organizations.

In an annual fall poll, up to 60 percent of the French public consistently calls for a phase-out of nuclear energy. On March 17, 2007, 62,000 French citizens demonstrated across France against a proposed new reactor in Normandy. On the same day, a national anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C., turned out one-third that amount. Areva's radioactive footprint also reaches beyond the borders of France. Nowhere is this more evident than in Niger and Gabon, where Areva, under its former incarnation, Cogema, and now under various subsidiaries, has mined uranium, the raw ingredient needed for reactor fuel (and for nuclear weapons) for more than 40 years. The Gabon site is now closed, but joint investigations in Gabon and Niger by an organization of French lawyers -- SHERPA -- along with CRIIRAD -- found significant levels of radioactive contamination and serious health issues in both countries.

In Niger, ranked as one of the poorest countries on the planet and, like Gabon, a former French colony, a humanitarian crisis is unfolding that places Areva directly at the centre, along with the Niger government, of what may yet flare into civil war. After four decades of uranium mining by Areva subsidiaries in the poorer northern region of the country -- at Arlit and Akokan in the Sahara Desert -- the country faces an environmental catastrophe that is destroying the lives and livelihoods of the surrounding communities. Radioactive dust is everywhere. Water sources -- already scarce in this desert region -- have been depleted and contaminated. Radioactive metals resulting from uranium processing, have been discarded as scrap or sold in the local markets and used by villagers in household items. Areva, via its Niger subsidiaries SOMAIR and COMINAK, constructed two hospitals at Arlit and Akokan, which are only open to mine workers, and it supplies and pays the doctors who work there. The doctors publicly insist they have never seen uranium-mining-related illnesses caused by radiation exposure, a conclusion CRIIRAD and SHERPA strongly dispute based on the evidence they uncovered in their 2004-2005 investigations in Niger.

SHERPA subsequently found a company doctor who admitted that pulmonary and respiratory illnesses or cancers were never officially diagnosed, because this could harm the company's reputation. One anonymous source told SHERPA that patients with these diseases were told they suffered from malaria and AIDS. Patients who sought a second opinion at the public hospital at Agadez were met with incredulousness by doctors there, who could not understand how their illnesses could have been "missed." SHERPA found one case of a mine worker with advanced leukemia who was refused health evacuation by SOMAIR and who died on the job at the age of 41 leaving behind five children. Around Arlit and Akokan, CRIIRAD found unacceptably high levels of radioactivity -- particularly difficult-to-detect alpha emitters -- in the water, sand and in discarded metals. Water was found to be 10 times more radioactively contaminated than the World Health Organization's "acceptable" level for safe drinking water. Yet Areva's press materials state there is no contamination of drinking water at the two sites.

In 2007, CRIIRAD found radioactive rocks outside Areva's Akokan hospital that were 100 times more radioactive than background levels. A letter from CRIIRAD to Areva CEO Lauvergeon pointing out the problem went ignored. Areva eventually cleaned up the site. Areva's uranium-mining monopoly in Niger ended in 2007 but existing contracts with the Niger government were renewed, and the company was recently awarded the contract for the huge new Imouraren uranium mine, the largest in Africa and due to open in 2012.

The Niger government, meanwhile, has declared open season on northern Niger, awarding close to 140 prospecting licenses to uranium-mining companies from China, India, Canada, the United States and elsewhere in its efforts to become the world's top exporter of uranium -- it currently ranks fifth. Faced with large swathes of the country virtually cordoned off for new mines, some in Niger are fighting back, predominantly the Tuareg, the poorest and most deprived of Niger's northern population.

A largely nomadic people, the Tuareg have seen little of the benefits of uranium mining (they make up 3 percent of the workforce), and their traditional lifestyle has been the hardest hit. They view the government's new mining plans as a "pillaging" of the land, with the Tuareg sacrificed for corporate profit. Some have taken up arms. Others, including exiled leaders in France, are leading advocacy efforts to draw international attention to the plight of their people. Growing desertification in the Sahara has been compounded by the dual effects of climate change and mineral extraction. The Tuareg are dependent on clean water for grazing their animals and growing crops and want to see no more uranium mining until the environmental devastation is cleaned up. They point out that none of the profits from current mining efforts has been injected back into their struggling communities. The Niger government has responded by attempting to eliminate the Tuareg. Amnesty International has identified numerous human rights abuses, including disappearances, torture and summary executions. The Tuareg, fearing an attempted genocide, point to slaughter of their livestock by the Niger military in a further effort to eliminate their way of life. Some observers fear a smaller-scale Dafur in the making.

Areva has actively encouraged the Niger government to deal with the Tuareg problem, and late last year, an Areva vice president told a French government committee that the Tuareg were simply a romantic "illusion," urging his government to aid Niger in crushing them. Niger is not without U.S. help as well. According to a March 2009 article published by In These Times, Congress authorized $500 million in 2005 for a six-year period to counter "terrorism" in the region, despite little evidence of Islamic extremism. With its human rights track record largely a well-kept secret, Areva has been welcomed into the United States, where the company has quietly established 42 offices with 5,300 employees. Its U.S. tentacles extend to virtually every phase of the nuclear fuel chain, from uranium enrichment to radioactive-waste management. With the smoke and mirrors resurgence of nuclear power gaining political and public traction, Areva -- read the French government -- smells huge profits, and the U.S. is prime prey.

Areva is behind the push to revive nuclear-waste reprocessing in the U.S. The separated plutonium would then be blended into MOX fuel and used in U.S. reactors, none of which is adapted to handle the hotter plutonium fuel. Until recently, Areva, in partnership with the U.S. Shaw Group, was running MOX fuel test assemblies at Duke Energy's Catawba nuclear plant in South Carolina before the operation was shut down prematurely for safety reasons. The U.S. MOX fuel was made at the French MOX fuel-fabrication plant at Cadarache, a facility that had been closed due to the danger of earthquakes in the area. The plant was reopened solely to accommodate the U.S. fuel, a move that was challenged as illegal by French anti-nuclear advocates. Areva recently won a contract to build and operate a new uranium-enrichment facility in Idaho. It operates more than 50 percent of this country's dry cask storage operations, where all of the U.S. spent reactor fuel still sits at the 65 reactor sites (there are 104 operating reactors in the U.S.) At least 30 percent of U.S. reactors use Areva-supplied fuel.

The company's U.S. plans also extend to new reactors, where it hopes to grab at least 33 percent of the U.S. market according to its Web site. This includes a proposal for seven of its unproven "generation three" design, the Evolutionary Power Reactor, billed as the world's largest reactor. (It is called the European Pressurized Reactor everywhere but the U.S.) Seven EPR reactors are slated for six U.S. sites, although so far only two sites -- at Calvert Cliffs on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Calloway near St. Louis -- have filed initial applications. George Vanderheyden, chief executive for UniStar, the company hoping to build the EPR at Calvert Cliffs, says the EPR "will be one of the most expensive technologies in the United States to build." UniStar has partnered with the French state electricity company, Electricity de France (EDF), on the project. However, cost may not be the only challenge. The two Areva EPR reactors under way -- in Finland and France -- have already run into trouble. The Finnish reactor at the Olkiluoto nuclear site started first, in August 2005, but has already fallen three years behind schedule after safety and quality-assurance problems with the piping, containment liner and concrete base slab were discovered. This has put the Finnish EPR 50 percent over budget at a current estimated cost of at least $6.7 billion. Areva partner Siemens has pulled out of the project, leaving Areva to buy out Siemens' share at an estimated cost to the company of $2.6 billion.

When construction began in December 2007 on a second EPR at the Flamanville site in France on the Normandy coast, similar problems quickly arose. By the summer of 2008, the French security agency had shut down the construction site -- managed by EDF -- due to safety concerns about technical and quality-control problems with the reinforced steel used in the concrete base. EDF insists the Flamanville EPR will open on schedule in 2012 despite news reports that put the project nine months behind schedule after just nine months of construction. But in early March this year, EDF ran afoul of the European Commission, which raided the company's offices, suspecting EDF of antitrust violations and illegal price hikes. EDF has come into the public spotlight before. In May 2006, a confidential security report prepared by EDF was leaked to French activists and the media. The document claimed to show that because the EPR could withstand the impact of a military jet it could also defend against a commercial jet airliner.

But when analyzed by John Large, an independent nuclear engineer in the U.K., these claims were deemed to be "entirely unjustified." Large said the documents showed the EPR had "an almost total lack of preparation to defend against the inevitability of a terrorist attack." Congress and the White House have not yet been asked why they will allow U.S. tax dollars to flow to a French corporation for new nuclear projects on U.S. soil. Or why so many new nuclear installations are even needed when the cheaper, cleaner and safer alternatives of renewable energy are readily available. And especially why they will allow U.S. tax dollars to enrich a corporation with such an ugly track record on human rights.

Before another genocide in Africa is too late to stop, it is time those questions were asked.

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Civaux in southwestern France is a stereotypical rural French village with a square, a church and a small school. On a typical day, Monsieur Rambault, the baker, is up before dawn turning out baguettes and croissants. Shortly after, teacher Rene Barc opens the small school. There is a blacksmith, a hairdresser, a post office, a general store and a couple of bars. But overlooking the picturesque hamlet are two giant cooling towers from a nuclear plant, still under construction, a half-mile away. When the Civaux nuclear power plant comes on line sometime in the next 12 months, France will have 56 working nuclear plants, generating 76% of her electricity.
In France, unlike in America, nuclear energy is accepted, even popular. Everybody I spoke to in Civaux loves the fact their region was chosen. The nuclear plant has brought jobs and prosperity to the area. Nobody I spoke to, nobody, expressed any fear. From the village school teacher, Rene Barc, to the patron of the Cafe de Sport bar, Valerie Turbeau, any traces of doubt they might have had have faded as they have come to know plant workers, visited the reactor site and thought about the benefits of being part of France's nuclear energy effort.
France's decision to launch a large nuclear program dates back to 1973 and the events in the Middle East that they refer to as the "oil shock." The quadrupling of the price of oil by OPEC nations was indeed a shock for France because at that time most of its electricity came from oil burning plants. France had and still has very few natural energy resources. It has no oil, no gas and her coal resources are very poor and virtually exhausted.
French policy makers saw only one way for France to achieve energy independence: nuclear energy, a source of energy so compact that a few pounds of fissionable uranium is all the fuel needed to run a big city for a year. Plans were drawn up to introduce the most comprehensive national nuclear energy program in history. Over the next 15 years France installed 56 nuclear reactors, satisfying its power needs and even exporting electricity to
other European countries. There were some protests in the early 70s, but since then (with one important exception discussed below), the nuclear program has been popular and remarkably non
controversial. How was France able to get its people to accept nuclear power? What is about French culture and politics that allowed them to succeed where most other countries have failed?
        Claude Mandil, the General Director for Energy and Raw Materials at the Ministry of Industry, cites at least three reasons. First, he says, the French are an independent people.
The thought of being dependent for energy on a volatile region of the world such as the Middle East disturbed many French people. Citizens quickly accepted that nuclear might be a necessity. A popular French riposte to the question of why they have so much nuclear energy is "no oil, no gas, no coal, no choice." Second, Mandil cites cultural factors. France has a tradition of large, centrally managed technological projects. And, he says, they are popular. "French people like large projects. They like nuclear for the same reasons they like high speed trains and supersonic jets." Part of their popularity comes from the fact that scientists and engineers have a much higher status in France than in America. Many high ranking civil servants and government officials trained as scientists and engineers (rather than lawyers, as in the United States), and, unlike in the U.S. where federal administrators are often looked down upon, these technocrats form a special elite. Many have graduated from a few elite schools such as the Ecole Polytechnic. According to Mandil, respect and trust in technocrats is widespread. "For a long time, in families, the good thing for a child to become was an engineer or a scientist, not a lawyer. We like our engineers and our scientists and we are confident in them."
        Thirdly, he says, the French authorities have worked hard to get people to think of the benefits of nuclear energy as well as the risks. Glossy television advertising campaigns reinforce the link between nuclear power and the electricity that makes modern life possible. Nuclear plants solicit people to take tours--an offer that six million French people have taken up. Today, nuclear energy is an everyday thing in France. Many polls have been taken of French public opinion and most find that about two-thirds of the population are strongly in favor of nuclear power. It's not that the French don't have a gut fear of nuclear power. Psychologist Paul Slovic and his colleagues at Decision Research in Eugene, Oregon, discovered in their surveys that many French people have similar negative imagery and fears of radiation and disaster as Americans. The difference is that cultural, economic and political forces in France act to counteract these fears. For example, while French citizens cannot control nuclear technology anymore than Americans, the fact that they trust the technocrats that do control it makes them feel more secure. Then there is need. Most French people know that life would be very difficult without nuclear energy. Because they need nuclear power more than us, they fear it less.
Civaux baker Jacques Rambault, admits that this technology is potentially dangerous and needs skillful management. As Chernobyl showed, the Russians, he says, were not "up to the task. But the French scientists and engineers are." For other citizens, rubbing shoulders with workers at the plant has made this once exotic technology an everyday thing. Many other risks concern them more. Madame Schoumacher, who has lived in Civaux most of her life, says "I would be much more frightened living next to a dam [France has about 12% hydroelectric power] or getting into her car in the morning."
Others like bar owner Alain Cauvin cite "mad cow disease as being much scarier than nuclear power.
Ironically, the French nuclear program is based on American technology. After experimenting with their own gas-cooled reactors in the 1960s, the French gave up and purchased American Pressurized Water Reactors designed by Westinghouse. Sticking to just one design meant the 56 plants were much cheaper to build than in the US. Moreover, management of safety issues was much easier: the lessons from any incident at one plant could be quickly learned by managers of the other 55 plants. The "return of experience" says Mandil is much greater in a standardized system than in a free for all, with many different designs managed by many different utilities as we have in America. Things were going very well until the late 80s when another nuclear issue surfaced that threatened to derail their very successful program: nuclear waste.
French technocrats had never thought that the waste issue would be much of a problem. From the beginning the French had been recycling their nuclear waste, reclaiming the plutonium and unused uranium and fabricating new fuel elements. This not only gave energy, it reduced the volume and longevity of French radioactive waste. The volume of the ultimate high-level waste was indeed very small: the contribution of a family of four using electricity for 20 years is a glass cylinder the size of a cigarette lighter. It was assumed that this high-level waste would be buried in underground geological storage
and in the 80s French engineers began digging exploratory holes in France's rural regions. To the astonishment of France's technocrats, the populations in these regions were extremely unhappy. There were riots. The same rural regions that had actively lobbied to become nuclear power plant sites were openly hostile to the idea of being selected as France's nuclear waste dump. In retrospect, Mandil says, it's not surprising. It's not the risk of a waste site, so much as the lack of any perceived benefit. "People in France can be proud of their nuclear plants, but nobody wants to be proud of having a nuclear dustbin under its feet." In 1990, all activity was stopped and the matter was turned over to the French parliament, who appointed a politician, Monsieur Bataille, to look into the matter.
        Christian Bataille resembles the French comedian Jacques Tati. His face breaks into a broad grin when asked why he was appointed to this task. "They were desperate," he says. "In France, executive power dominates much more than in Anglo-Saxon countries. So that if the Executive asks parliament to do something it means they are really at the end of their ideas." Bataille went and spoke to the people who were protesting and soon realized that the engineers and bureaucrats had greatly misunderstood the psychology of the French people. The technocrats had seen the problem in technical terms. To them, the cheapest and safest solution was to permanently bury the waste underground. But for the rural French says Bataille, "the idea of burying the waste awoke the most profound human myths. In France we bury the dead, we don't bury nuclear waste...there was an idea of profanation of the soil, desecration of the Earth."
        Bataille discovered that the rural populations had an idea of "Parisians, the consumers of electricity, coming to the countryside, going to the bottom of your garden with a spade, digging a hole and burying nuclear waste, permanently." Using the word permanently was especially clumsy says Bataille because it left the impression that the authorities were abandoning the waste forever and would never come back to take care of it. Fighting the objections of technical experts who argued it would increase costs, Bataille introduced the notions of reversibility and stocking. Waste should not be buried permanently but rather stocked in a way that made it accessible at some time in the future. People felt much happier with the idea of a "stocking centre" than a "nuclear graveyard". Was this just a semantic difference? No, says Bataille. Stocking waste and watching it involves a commitment to the future. It implies that the waste will not be forgotten. It implies that the authorities will continue to be responsible. And, says Bataille, it offers some possibility of future advances. "Today we stock containers of waste because currently scientists don't know how to reduce or eliminate the toxicity, but maybe in 100 years perhaps scientists will."
        Bataille began working on a new law that he presented to parliament in 1991. It laid plans to build 3-4 research laboratories at various sites. These laboratories would be charged with investigating various options, including deep geological storage, above ground stocking and transmutation and detoxification of waste. The law calls for the labs to be built in the next few years and then, based on the research they yield, parliament will decide its final decision. Bataille's law specifies 2006 as the year in which parliament must decide which laboratory will become the national stocking centre Bataille's plan seems to be working. Several regions have applied to host underground laboratories hoping the labs will bring in money and high prestige scientific jobs. But ultimate success is by no means certain. One of these laboratories will, in effect, become the stocking centre for the nation and the local people may find that unacceptable. If protesters organize, they can block shipments on the roads and rail. The situation could quickly get out of hand.
Nuclear waste is an enormously difficult political problem which to date no country has solved. It is, in a sense, the Achilles heel of the nuclear industry. Could this issue strike how we can continue our nuclear program."


 

SO, you thought that France was the nuclear system to follow.......? Read on....

 

/05/2008 : Financial Post
McCain's French kiss


http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/05/12/the-limits-to-nuclear-mccain-shouldn-t-try-to-follow-french-disaster.aspx



McCain's French kiss
Financial Post: May 13, 2008, 12:10 AM
 

The Republican nominee backed nuclear this week, but the U.S. shouldn't try to imitate the French disaster
By Lawrence Solomon
 

If France can produce 80% of its electricity with nuclear power, why can’t we?,” asks U.S. presidential candidate John McCain. Nuclear power is a cornerstone of Senator McCain’s plan to combat climate change, which he is unveiling this week. McCain thinks he is asking a simple rhetorical question. As it turns out, he is not. His question is technical, with an answer that will surprise him and most Americans. Nuclear reactors cannot possibly meet 80% of America’s power needs — or those of any country whose power market dominates its region — because of limitations in nuclear technology. McCain needs to find another miracle energy solution, or abandon his vow to drastically cut back carbon dioxide emissions.
    Unlike other forms of power generation, nuclear reactors are designed to run flat-out, 24/7 — they can’t crank up their output at times of high demand or ease up when demand slows. This limitation generally consigns nuclear power to meeting a power system’s minimum power needs — the amount of power needed in the dead of night, when most industry and most people are asleep, and the value of power is low. At other times of the day and night, when power demands rise and the price of power is high, society calls on the more flexible forms of generation — coal, gas, oil and hydro-electricity among them — to meet its additional higher-value needs.
    If a country produces more nuclear power than it needs in the dead of night, it must export that low-value, off-peak power. This is what France does. It sells its nuclear surplus to its European Union neighbours, a market of 700 million people. That large market — more than 10 times France’s population — is able to soak up most of France’s surplus off-peak power.
     The U.S. is not surrounded, as is France, by far more populous neighbours. Just the opposite: The U.S. dominates the North American market. If 80% of U.S. needs were met by nuclear reactors, as Senator McCain desires, America’s off-peak surplus would have no market, even if the power were given away. Countries highly reliant on nuclear power, in effect, are in turn reliant on having large non-nuclear-reliant countries as neighbours. If France’s neighbours had power systems dominated by nuclear power, they too would be trying to export off-peak power and France would have no one to whom it could offload its surplus power. In fact, even with the mammoth EU market to tap into, France must shut down some of its reactors some weekends because no one can use its surplus. In effect, France can’t even give the stuff away.
    Not only does France export vast quantities of its low-value power (it is the EU’s biggest exporter by far), France meanwhile must import high-value peak power from its neighbours. This arrangement is so financially ruinous that France in 2006 decided to resurrect its obsolete oil-fired power stations, one of which dates back to 1968.
France’s nuclear program sprung not from business needs but from foreign policy goals. Immediately after the Second World War, France’s President, Charles de Gaulle, decided to develop nuclear weapons, to make France independent of either the U.S. or the USSR. This foreign policy goal spawned a commercial nuclear industry, but a small one — France’s nuclear plants could not compete with other forms of generation, and produced but 8% of France’s power until 1973.
    Then came the OPEC oil crisis and panic. Sensing that French sovereignty was at stake, the country decided to replace oil with electricity and to generate that electricity with nuclear. By 1974, three mammoth nuclear plants were begun and by 1977, another five. Without regulatory hurdles to clear and with cut-rate financing and a host of other subsidies from Euratom, the EU’s nuclear subsidy agency, France’s power system was soon transformed. By 1979, France’s frenzied building program had nuclear power meeting 20% of France’s power generation. By 1983 the figure was about 50% and by 1990 about 75% and growing.
    Despite the subsidies, the overbuilding effectively bankrupted Electricite de France (EdF), the French power company. To dispose of its overcapacity and stay afloat, EdF feverishly exported its surplus power to its neighbours, even laying a cable under the English Channel to become a major supplier to the UK. At great expense, French homes were converted to inefficient electric home heating. And EdF offered cut-rate power to keep and attract energy-intensive industries — Pechiney, the aluminum supplier, obtained power at half of EdF’s cost of production, and soon EdF was providing similar terms to Exxon Chemicals and Allied Signal.
    These measures helped but not enough — in 1989, EdF ran a loss of four billion French francs, a sum its president termed “catastrophic.” The company had a 800-billion-franc debt, old reactors that faced expensive decommissioning, and unresolved waste disposal costs. To keep lower-cost competitors out of the country, France also reneged on an EU-wide agreement to open borders up to electricity competition.
    France’s nuclear program, in short, is an economic disaster, and a political one too — 61% of the French public favours a phase-out of nuclear energy. “Is France a more secure, advanced and innovative country than we are?,” McCain also asked. “I need no answer to that rhetorical question. I know my country well enough to know otherwise.”
    But McCain does not know France well enough to know why nuclear power’s negative record over there says nothing positive about what it can do for people over here, on this side of the Atlantic.
Financial Post
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of
The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud .
E-mail: LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com. Fourth in a series.

Whilst his groups other ideas on global warming are entirely against the currently accepted causes, i.e.basically man-made, his facts contained in the above article are perfectly true

 

French power myths

Financial Post, Posted: May 21, 2008, 7:44 PM by NP Editor

France may export massive amounts of nuclear power, but that success doesn’t come without its difficulties

By Mycle Schneider

In his rebuttal to Lawrence Solomon’s May 13 column on France’s nuclear power system, French ambassador Daniel Jouanneau made a number of highly misleading claims (letter, May 16). These assertions are especially relevant in light of France’s recent entry into Ontario’s potential multi-billion market, in which Franco-German Areva NP, the world’s largest nuclear vendor, is competing against Japanese-owned Westinghouse Electric Co. and Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.
Working in France on nuclear issues for 25 years, four of them as a direct advisor to the Environment Minister’s Office, I am familiar with the French nuclear establishment. The Ontario government should thoroughly scrutinize both the French nuclear program in general and, in particular, the ongoing difficulties of Areva NP in meeting quality-control standards, deadlines and budget terms at its current building sites in Finland and France.
The ambassador’s general claims conveniently confuse electricity and energy. While nuclear energy provides 78% of France’s electricity, this corresponds to only 18% of the total energy that consumers use. In other words, France’s nuclear program does not come close to “ensuring its energy independence.” Oil meets almost half, and fossil fuels over 70%, of France’s final energy needs, as is the case in many other countries. Moreover, all of France’s uranium is imported.
“Since 1970, 50% of France’s CO2 emissions have been avoided thanks to nuclear energy.” That statement by the French ambassador is flatly wrong. France’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2006 were some 13% lower than in 1970, but even higher than by the middle of the 1980s.
“Efficiently meeting the power needs of its population”? Let’s rather say, the government-owned electricity utility — Electricité de France (EDF) — deploys massive efforts to encourage ever more electricity use, in particular in the form of highly inefficient space heat. Picture this: To generate electricity, you heat water and lose between half (a modern gas plant) and two-thirds (a nuclear plant) of the energy in the transformation process, plus an additional 7% to 10% in the grid before the electricity heats air in the home. A modern natural gas or oil-based central heating system loses less than 10% of the energy in the form of waste heat.
“Environmentally responsible”? The Hague plutonium factories emit thousands of times the amount of radioactivity of a French nuclear power plant and cause a collective dose to the world population comparable with those that resulted from the major accidents in 1957 at Kyshtym in Russia or Windscale in the U.K.
France’s nuclear energy policy is anything but “innovative.” The best example is the nuclear establishment’s total inability to adapt to the failure of the plutonium-fuelled fast-breeder program. Having squandered tens of billions of dollars on the plutonium economy, it now sits on two giant plutonium factories at The Hague, despite having lost nearly all of its foreign commercial reprocessing clients. Yet Areva continues to boast that one gram of plutonium is “equivalent” to one ton of oil. It is amazing that such an apparently valuable resource gets a zero value in the accounts of EDF, owner of a stunning 50-ton plutonium stockpile — at US$100 per barrel of oil, the plutonium should be worth more than US$30-billion! Even more amazing, the Dutch pay EDF to rid them of their plutonium separated at The Hague. Usually, one sells a valuable resource.
“France is the world’s largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation”? France in 2007 exported 83 terawatt-hours and imported 27.5 TWh, indeed a large net export. What the ambassador does not say is that France cheaply exports baseload power and imports very expensive, essentially fossil fuel peak-load power to use in madly wasteful heating systems in the winter. Net power imports from nuclear phase-out country Germany alone averaged about 8 TWh over the last few years. The CO2 emissions linked to these imports are, of course, attributed to the exporting country and not to France.
Finally, the ambassador states that “France is about to deploy new-generation reactors.” After 2.5 years of construction, the Franco-German European Pressurized Reactor project in Finland is two years behind schedule and US$2.3-billion, or 50%, over budget. The equivalent EPR project in France started on Dec. 3, 2007. The nuclear safety authorities carried out an inspection the same day and noted the company’s failure to meet basic technical specifications and procedures. Following inspections revealed more significant insufficiencies.
These difficulties stem from knowledge-management problems that can only get worse. Some 40% of EDF’s operators and maintenance staff will retire by 2015. Facing a formidable shortage of skilled workers, France has already started fishing in foreign waters for willing students. As the French Embassy points out on its Web site: “Indeed, the need for students in atomic energy is estimated at 1,200 graduated students a year for the next 10 years, although nowadays the number of graduated students is of 300 per year. … Among the most significant initiatives stands the creation of an international master in 2009, which contents will be taught in English in order to be open to French but also to foreign students.”
France’s nuclear program produces not only a bag of kilowatt-hours but also numerous problems, many of them hidden as negative system effects. Countries wishing to import French nukes should look behind the curtain first.

Financial Post
Mycle Schneider is a principal in Paris-based Mycle Schneider Consulting and is the author of World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2007. mycle@orange.fr
--

Member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM)
www.fissilematerials.org

Member of the Independent Group of Scientific Experts (IGSE)
on the detection of clandestine nuclear-weapons-usable materials production
www.igse.org

Right Livelihood Award 1997
(Alternative Nobel Prize)
www.rightlivelihood.org/recip.htm

 

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