My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

Officials reveal about 2 Trillion Becquerels of Fukushima radioactive material flowed into ocean every month during 2013. enenews.com

Fukushima governor okays nuclear waste storage in return for almost $3 billion in subsidies. rt.com

The final shipment of used fuel from the UK’s Sizewell A nuclear power plant has been sent for reprocessing at Sellafield, marking the end of a five-year operation to remove all fuel from the site. world-nuclear-news.org

Westinghouse announced Thursday that it will deliver fuel for three reactors at OKG’s Oskarshamn nuclear plant in Sweden. nuclearstreet.com

 

         I have often mentioned that there are serious problems with getting investors interested in nuclear power. Today, I will drill down into this subject a bit more. The International Energy Agency recently published a report on the World Energy Investment Outlook covering the next twenty years.

          Annual global spending on energy is estimated to rise from one trillions six hundred million in 2013 to two trillion by 2035. Less than half of the forty trillion that will be spent between 2013 and 2035 will go to meet growth in energy demand. The rest will be spent will be used to ” offset declining production from existing oil and gas fields and to replace power plants and other assets that reach the end of their productive life.”

          About sixteen trillion four hundred million dollars of the forty trillion will be spent on electricity. Forty percent of this will be spent on transmission and distribution of electricity. Only six percent of the electricity budget is slated to be spent on nuclear assuming a modest growth in the use of nuclear power.  Six percent of electric power investment for nuclear projects does not seem like a lot but there is fierce competition for every dollar spent on electricity.

         Nuclear projects use to be considered good investments because the energy was usually presold at a fixed price that guaranteed a good long term return on investment. Recently the turbulence in the energy market including low cost natural gas from fracking has brought an end to this practice. Now nuclear will have to sell into the short term market and may not be price competitive. For the past fifteen years, the U.S. reactors have been burning fuel made from decommissioned Russian nuclear warheads. The cost of this fuel was well below the cost of new uranium fuel. This program just ended so the price of nuclear fuel will rise. By some estimates, the world has already passed peak uranium production.

        Many of the world’s power reactors are nearing the end of their original licensed lifetimes. They are becoming more and more expensive to keep operating and some have already been shut down because they could not compete in the energy market. So investing in existing nuclear power plants is problematic. Investing in new reactors is risky because many of the new designs have not been built, tested and approved yet.

       Perhaps the biggest reason to be wary of investing in nuclear power is that there will most probably be another major nuclear accident in the next few year. There could be deliberate terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants. Nuclear power plants could be destroyed intentionally or accidentally in regional conflicts. If any of these things happen, the public backlash against nuclear power will definitely make it less attractive as an investment.

       Individual nuclear power projects required enormous funding which can be in the billions. Many different factors are involved in investment decisions. In the end, what really matters is the confidence that investors have in profiting from their investment over time. Given the problems discussed above, it is not a mystery why nuclear power is having problems finding investors.

There was a major science meeting recently on Fukushima’s link to wildlife problems on West Coast. enenews.com

Strontium-90 from Fukushima has been found along west coast of North America. enenews.com

U.S. levels new Iran sanctions as nuclear talks falter. usatoday.com

The final shipment of used fuel from the UK’s Sizewell A nuclear power plant has been sent for reprocessing at Sellafield, marking the end of a five-year operation to remove all fuel from the site. world-nuclear-news.com

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

         I have blogged before about the involvement of nuclear technology and fuel in international affairs. Major nuclear nations like France, Japan, China and Russia are dedicating resources to make the export of nuclear technology and fuel a major part of their future trade programs. The BRICS nations, (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are banking on nuclear reactors for as major sources of domestic energy. They are planning and constructing reactors and sharing some nuclear technology.

        Japan suffered the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March of 2011 and turned off all of their nuclear reactors. In spite of widespread public rejection of nuclear power, the Abe government is determined to restart the Japanese reactors and to export nuclear technology and fuel to boost their economy.

         India has major problems with energy generation. Brownouts and blackouts are common and projected to get even worse. India is hoping that nuclear reactors will help solve the problem. They are working on conventional reactors as well as working on creating reactors that could burn thorium as a fuel. India has vast reserves of thorium.

        India did not sign any of the international nuclear non-proliferation treaties because they consider nuclear weapons a necessary deterrent to Pakistani nuclear weapons. The U.S. and India worked out an arrangement in 2008 to put safe guards in place to insure that any nuclear technology that the U.S. shares with India will not be diverted to nuclear weapons programs.

        Now India and Japan are discussing a working relationship to cooperate in the development of peaceful nuclear power for India. India recently elected a new government headed by Prime Minister Modi who is known as a strong conservative. India is seeking investments from Japan and working to calm Japanese fears of nuclear proliferation. Japan wants detailed written guarantee from India to limit nuclear weapon tests and they also want close inspections of India’s nuclear facilities.

       Indian Prime Minister Modi is traveling to Japan to meet directly with Japanese Prime Minister Abe to discuss nuclear cooperation next week during a five day visit. This is the first visit of Modi to Japan since he was elected. The press has announced that no new agreement will be signed during the visit. One of the main topics that will be discussed at the meeting is the belligerent rise of Chinese militarism in South East Asia. India is interested in a new amphibious aircraft built by Japan. Japan’s Abe is seeking to expand its network of security partnerships to counter China.

       Japanese nuclear technology companies are eager to gain access to the Indian nuclear power market. Their industry has suffered since Fukushima shut down the domestic Japanese reactors. India’s twenty nuclear power reactors now supply about two percent of India’s electricity. The government hopes to build almost thirty new reactors that would allow nuclear power to make up almost thirty two percent of India’s power needs.

       I find this movement of major nuclear exporters to focus on less developed and third world countries for their future nuclear technology market disturbing. There will be problems with nuclear proliferation, corruption, lax regulation and more big accidents that will turn the world against nuclear power.

Physicists say Fukushima reactors pose eternal threat to humanity.  en.ria.ru

Friends of the Earth, an opponent of nuclear power that fought for the permanent closure of San Onofre last year, has set its sights on California’s other nuclear plant following the release of a dissenting opinion by a former resident inspector. nuclearstreet.com

A problem on the non-nuclear side of the plant caused Browns Ferry’s unit 1 reactor to shut down automatically Tuesday. nuclearstreet.com

The third stage of the generic design assessment (GDA) for the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR) is to begin in September after regulators completed their initial high-level assessment of the Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy reactor design without identifying any fundamental issues to prevent it from being built in the UK. world-nuclear-news.org

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

         The recent major quake that shook California has increased concern over the ability of the last nuclear power reactor in California to withstand strong earthquakes. The Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County has been criticized before on the grounds that it is not safe to operate because of its proximity to geological faults.

         When construction began in the 1960s, there were two known faults in the area. A year after construction began, another big fault called the Hosgri Fault was discovered offshore near the site of plant. The Hosgri Fault had caused a 7.5 quake in the past. Critics demanded that the plant be built to be able to withstand another 7.5 quake. After a heater public debate, the plant was rebuilt to be able to withstand another 6.5 quake. The plant was constructed with that possibility in mind.

        In January of 2009, a new fault that was named the Shoreline Fault was discovered offshore from the Diablo plant seven miles closer than the Hosgri Fault. This fault is not thought to be as serious a threat to the plant because it is estimated that it could only generate a 6.5 quake, one tenth as powerful as the Hosgri could generate. On the other hand, research is still going on with respect to exactly where the new fault extends and one expert raised the possibility that it could run under the plant although this has been denied by the plant operators. If the fault does run under the reactor, it is possible that a major quake could crack the ground open and shatter the Diablo nuclear reactors along with the spent nuclear fuel pools. This would be a horrendous disaster.

         A 2013 Nuclear Regulatory Commission report on the Diablo Canyon plant concluded that ” the nearby Hosgri, Shoreline, Los Osos, and San Luis Bay fault systems are capable of producing ground motions that exceed the plant’s safe shutdown precautions.” The report questions whether the plant’s critical equipment is capable of withstanding the shaking that these faults could cause. The conclusion of the report was that the reactors at Diablo Canyon should be shut down until tests could be conducted that would should that the plant was able to withstand possible quakes from the fault systems in the area.

        What actually destroyed the nuclear plant at Fukushima was the tsunami that followed the offshore earthquake in the area. Although the Diablo plant is eighty five feet above sea level, there is still concern that a tsunami caused by one of the offshore faults could endanger the plant. While the Diablo plant does supply about seven percent of the electricity in California, the repercussions of a nuclear disaster at Diablo Canyon would cost much, much more than the loss of the electricity now being generated by the plant.

Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant: