Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: The reality of France's aggressive nuclear power push

[bananas]

http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-reality-of-frances-aggressive-nuclear-power-push

The reality of France's aggressive nuclear power push
By Mycle Schneider | 3 June 2008

Article Highlights
- Developing countries that have expressed interest in French nuclear power technology can't implement it anytime soon.
- A French-led global nuclear power renaissance is problematic, since the country's nonproliferation record is poor.
- French nuclear reactors aren't as safe as its promoters claim.
- Nuclear power provides only a small portion of total French energy consumption.

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But is he correct? For starters, he makes a convenient mistake--mixing up the words "electricity" and "energy." In 2007, nuclear energy provided 78 percent of France's electricity, which corresponded to 39 percent of its commercial primary energy but only 18 percent of its final energy. Primary energy is the energy contained in the fuel when it enters the system, while final energy is what is left over for the consumer after processing, transformation, and distribution. In the case of large nuclear or coal-fired power plants, only about one-quarter of the primary energy reaches the consumer's home, office, or factory. In France, more than 70 percent of final energy is provided by oil, gas, and coal, of which one-half is oil alone, just as in many other countries. This year, the country will face an all-time record energy bill of more than $80 billion.

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Further claims that French nuclear power costs are "the lowest in the world" can't be substantiated because nobody knows the cost of the entire domestic nuclear program. For decades, the civilian program has profited from direct and indirect subsidies, in particular through cross-financing with the nuclear weapons program. Current estimates don't appropriately take into account eventual decommissioning and waste-management costs, which remain a concern and quite uncertain. (In addition to post-fission waste, 46 years of uranium mining has left 50 million tons of waste for eventual cleanup and remediation, the cost of which is unknown.) Official final disposal cost estimates for long-lived high- and intermediate-level fission wastes vary between $21 billion and $90 billion.

Still, fantastic claims about the benefits of French nuclear power persist. In May, the French ambassador to Canada wrote in the National Post, "France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation." Last year, France exported 83 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and imported 27.5 billion kilowatt hours--obviously, a large net export. But the ambassador neglects to mention that France cheaply exports base-load power and imports expensive, essentially fossil fuel-based, peak-load power to use in its citizens' wasteful winter heating systems. Net power imports from Germany, which is phasing out nuclear power, averaged about 8 billion kilowatt hours over the last few years, and the emissions linked to these imports are attributed to the exporting country, not France. But the radioactive waste stemming from its exported nuclear-generated power--equivalent to the output of a dozen reactors--remains in the country.

Nor do any of the above arguments begin to deal with nuclear safety. In the existing French nuclear fleet, the number of safety-relevant events has increased steadily from 7.1 per reactor per year in 2000 to 10.8 in 2007, even as Électricité de France (EDF) stresses that serious events are declining. This is a disturbing trend considering that the entire fleet is aging and conceivably, such events will only increase with age. There are also the construction errors AREVA has made while building new plants, which are based on the EPR design that the company is hawking worldwide. Last December, the company started an EPR project in Flamanville, France, where French nuclear safety authorities noted that basic technical specifications and procedures such as proper concrete pouring hadn't been followed, culminating in an unprecedented and unlimited May order to stop cement pouring.

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[madokie]

1. The sooner people see that nuclear energy is not going to save us

the quicker we can get on with solving the problem. Today what we need to be doing is converting our direct burn coal powered plants to using a gasifier for the reduction of co2 being produced. Don't worry about sequestation at this point just take advantage of the less co2 thats being made to start with to help buy us some time as the other options are being worked on, are sorted out. I read 50 to 60% less co2 is produced in using the gasifier process.

[dbackjon]

3. WRONG

Nothing that promotes coal is good. Nuclear is far superior in every aspect to any coal scheme.

Keep killing the planet with the anti-nuke hysteria.

[madokie]

4. no hysteria here bud

I have no intention of promoting coal, all I'm saying is we should be a little smarter about how we go about burning the stuff, thats all.

[Massacure]

2. The one half of frances final energy being oil is a no brainer.

Just to make a point about the importance of oil, lets take a look at the United States. The United states goes through about 20,000,000 barrels of oil per day. A barrel of oil contains an equivalent amount of energy of 1700 kiloWatt-hours. So if you multiply the 20 million barrels of oil per day by the 1700 kWh in a barrel of oil by 365 days in a year, we see that the total U.S. oil consumption is equivalent to 12410 terraWatt-hours of electricity. By comparison the United States consumed 3717 terraWatt-hours of electricity in 2004. If we were to use electricity to manufacture transportation fuels in the United States, we would have to quadruple our electricity production, assuming we could convert electricity to a usable transportation fuel with 100% efficiency.