New fast breeder nuclear reactor for Dounreay, Scotland

[kristopher]

Let me apologize for omitting the fact that this is a story from 1966; I want you to know I didn't do it lightly. When I first read the article, I was struck by how similar the arguments presented were to those being used today. Since this gives us a view of how those predictions of the value of nuclear power were borne out by what actually came to pass I thought the historical lesson justified the omission from the title bar. My apologies to anyone that thinks I decided poorly.

9 February 1966 BBC
New nuclear reactor for Dounreay

A nuclear reactor described as "the system of the next century" is to be built at the Dounreay power station on the north coast of Scotland.
...

'The future'

At a press conference, Mr Cousins said there had been a change in attitude towards nuclear power and many local authorities had wanted the PFR built in their area.
...Scientists say the technology used by the PFR is the most economical way to produce electrical power.
...The new reactor will benefit the local economy in Caithness with 700 construction jobs to be filled.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/9/newsid_2730000/2730083.stm

The legacy

Scottish nuclear fuel leak 'will never be completely cleaned up'

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has abandoned its aim to remove all traces of contamination from the north coast seabed
Rob Edwards
The Guardian, Wednesday 21 September 2011 07.48 EDT


<snip>

...Tens of thousands of radioactive fuel fragments escaped from the Dounreay plant between 1963 and 1984, polluting local beaches, the coastline and the seabed. Fishing has been banned within a two-kilometre radius of the plant since 1997.

The most radioactive of the particles are regarded by experts as potentially lethal if ingested. Similar in size to grains of sand, they contain caesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, but they can also incorporate traces of plutonium-239, which has a half-life of over 24,000 years – meaning that is the time period for half of the material to break down.

The particles are milled shards from the reprocessing of irradiated uranium and plutonium fuel from two long-defunct reactors. They are thought to have drained into the sea with discharges from cooling ponds.

In 2007, Dounreay, which is now being decommissioned, pleaded guilty at Wick sheriff court to a "failure to prevent fragments of irradiated nuclear fuel being discharged into the environment". The plant's operator at the time, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, was fined £140,000....

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/sep/21/scottish-nuclear-leak-clean-up


Background from research report to Scottish Parliament

Research Note 01/03
9 January 2001

DOUNREAY

The Dounreay Nuclear Power Development Establishment, situated near Thurso, Caithness, was established in 1955 primarily to pursue the UK Government policy objective of developing fast breeder reactor technology. It was located on a remote Second World War airfield partly for safety reasons as new technology was to be used. Today the only operating reactor on the site is at the Ministry of Defence Vulcan Nuclear Reactor Training Establishment (VNRTE), which shares emergency facilities with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), but is separate in all other regards.

Nuclear power stations
Electricity is produced from nuclear power stations in much the same way as it is in conventional power stations. The difference is in how the steam that drives the turbines is produced. In conventional plants, fuel (e.g. gas, coal) is burnt to produce heat in order to convert water to steam. In nuclear plants the heat needed is produced from nuclear reactions within a reactor.

Fast reactor technology
The fuel most commonly used in nuclear reactors is uranium. Natural uranium consists primarily of two different isotopes: uranium-238 and uranium-235. Only uranium-235 can be used as a nuclear fuel, but in conventional thermal reactors providing research and uranium-238 can be transformed into plutonium-239, which itself can be used as nuclear fuel.
Fast breeder reactors can convert uranium-238 into plutonium-239 at a rate faster than they consume their original fuel. This means that in theory, with multiple recycling of fuel, fast reactors could extend the energy output from the world's uranium fuel reserves 25 fold.1

Fast breeder technology, with its associated increases in fuel efficiency, was considered a solution to the UK's future energy needs in the 1950s.

End of the fast reactor programme
Fast breeder technology at Dounreay seems to have been undermined by a number of factors. In 1988 the Government announced that funding was being withdrawn from the fast reactor programme as it was not going to live up to its economic potential. In June 1998 Donald Dewar, then Secretary of State for Scotland, and John Battle, then Energy Minister at the DTI, made a joint statement indicating that whilst the technology had been useful in the development of the nuclear industry, it was the case that:

"there is no economic case for supporting commercial reprocessing at Dounreay over the longer term."

It seems likely that the decision to halt the fast breeder programme and decommissioning was based not only on economic considerations but also on the fact that there were safety concerns over Dounreay's condition and activities, making the site politically sensitive.
The decommissioning decision is that Dounreay will accept no more commercial reprocessing contracts other than those where legally binding contracts already exist. The work involving these contracts is expected to cease in 2006.


THE DOUNREAY SITE
Dounreay's reactors
Three reactors were operated on the civilian site at Dounreay over a period from 1958 to 1994. These reactors are all now closed and they, together with the supporting laboratories and fuel processing areas, are in various stages of decommissioning.

1958 Dounreay Materials Testing Reactor (DMTR) comes online
1959 Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR) comes online
1969 DMTR ceases operation
1974 Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) online
1977 DFR ceases operation
1994 PFR ceases operation

The Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) and Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR) are undergoing stage 1 decommissioning whilst the Dounreay Materials Test Reactor (DMTR) having already undergone stage 1 decommissioning, is under a care and maintenance regime...

<snip 17 pages>

The cost of decommissioning and restoring the Dounreay site is estimated to be in the region of £4 billion over a 50-60 year timescale. These costs will be met by the public purse.

[kristopher]

1. NRC can no longer ignore "staggering" cost of waste disposal and storage in licensing decisions

Press release

Cooper: NRC can no longer ignore "staggering" cost of waste disposal and storage in reactor licensing and relicensing

Economist Details $210 to $350 Billion in Costs That Undercut Case for New Reactors and Extended Life for Old Reactors; True Cost of Nuclear Power is $10-$20 Higher Per Megawatt Hour.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - December 19, 2013 - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must start taking into account the full cost of nuclear waste disposal and storage, which would add up to a third of a trillion dollars to the price tag of nuclear power, according to a declaration filed today with the NRC by economist Mark Cooper of the Vermont Law School. Cooper details how acknowledging the full cost of nuclear power would both dramatically undercut the rationale for relicensing of existing reactors and the licensing of proposed reactors and also make nuclear power far less attractive in comparison to wind, solar, and expanded reliance on energy efficiency.

Cooper presents his latest calculations about the cost of nuclear power in a declaration filed with the NRC as part of the court-ordered Draft Waste Confidence Generic Environmental Impact Statement process. Cooper is a senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment of the Vermont Law School. In addition to detailing the three dozen most at-risk reactors in the United States in "Renaissance in Reverse: Competition Pushes Aging U.S. Nuclear Reactors to the Brink of Economic Abandonment" (2013), Cooper is also the author of "Policy Challenges of Nuclear Reactor Construction, Cost Escalation and Crowding Out Alternatives" (2009).

In the NRC filing, Cooper states: "Are the economic costs of at-reactor nuclear waste storage and disposal in a permanent repository large enough to affect the economics of nuclear power and, therefore, should the Nuclear Regulatory Commission consider those costs in its nuclear licensing decisions? The answer is simple and clear – these costs are so large they must be considered. Conservatively estimating these costs, I put the total cost in the range of $210 to $350 billion, in real, undiscounted dollars. That is a figure that is certainly large enough to demand consideration by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."

Commenting on his analysis, Cooper said: "The economic numbers are crystal clear. Nuclear waste management costs are staggering and should be included in any proper analysis of the economics of nuclear reactors for purposes of issue new licenses of renewing old ones. Given the substantial scale of these costs, any cost-benefit analysis that 'hides' such numbers is simply not credible. The fact that some of these costs have been socialized and taken off the shoulders of the industry does not make them any less expensive, burdensome, or relevant in determining the full and true cost of nuclear power."

The Cooper declaration looks at a range of scenarios including heavy reliance on on-site reactor storage of nuclear waste in casks (which must be fully replaced at a cost of $100 billion or more every 100 years) and the use of one or more Yucca Mountain-style repositories. The economist notes that the estimates of nuclear waste storage and disposal are subject to the same kind of runaway cost increases that the industry sees when it comes to projections for construction of new reactors.

In the declaration, Cooper concludes the extra cost per unit of nuclear reactor output with nuclear waste storage and disposal would be "in the range of $10 to $20 per megawatt hour ($0.01 to $0.02/ kWh) of electricity generated by the rectors that produce the waste. This is equal to 10 to 20 percent of the cost of nuclear power from newly constructed reactors as calculated by the Energy Information Administration. Compared to the cost of the other resources included in the Energy Information Administration analysis, the cost of waste management would make nuclear power much less attractive as a resource."

Cooper explains that factoring in the extra cost due to waste storage and disposal could be the tipping point for existing older reactors. "… the cost of nuclear waste management is even larger compared to the operating costs and margins of existing reactors. Several operating reactors have recently been abandoned because their operating margins of $9 per MWh are insufficient to cover their costs and meet the revenue requirements that their owners demand and others may face a similar fate. Waste management costs of $10 to $20 per MWh must be considered very significant in evaluating the economics of aging reactors. The majority of the license renewals that are pending at the Commission, or expected to come before the Commission in the next few years, involve reactors whose operating costs and margins are no better than the margins for reactors that were recently retired before their licenses expired."

The declaration also points out the cost of storing "stranded" nuclear waste – stored at reactors that have been shut down – can be up to five times the cost of maintaining waste at an operating reactor. Given the likelihood of further shutdowns of currently operating reactors, this is a cost-multiplier issue that cannot be ignored, according to Cooper.

Cooper pointed out that his estimate of the cost of nuclear waste storage and disposal would have been even higher if he had included the risk of nuclear reactor accidents and the cost of decommissioning outdated reactors.

Friday is the NRC deadline for comments in the wake of a 2012 U.S. Court of Appeals decision that resulted in suspension of all U.S. reactor licensing and re-licensing decisions until NRC completed a study of the environmental impacts of its failure to site a repository for disposal of spent reactor fuel. The federal government estimates that just over 141,000 metric tons of spent fuel either already has or will be produced under existing reactor licenses and reactors under construction. Meanwhile, after decades of trying to site a repository, Yucca Mountain has been cancelled and no other repository has been proposed.

Cooper prepared his declaration in support of comments on a draft Environmental Impact Statement by the NRC regarding the environmental impacts of spent fuel storage and the feasibility of siting a spent fuel repository. Attorney Diane Curran will submit the comments Friday on behalf of more than 30 environmental organizations. The groups contend that NRC has failed to satisfy the 2012 court decision ordering the EIS, and therefore must continue the current moratorium on reactor licensing and re-licensing that the NRC imposed in response to the court order.

http://216.30.191.148/wasteconfidencerule/

Declaration submitted to NRC
http://216.30.191.148/wasteconfidencerule/2013-12-16%20Mark%20Cooper%20Final%20Declaration%20re%20spent%20fuel%20costs.pdf