By Verity Hambrook, Industry RE Sustainability, Jan 2012 Tweet
Countries must consider the risks and complexities of decommissioning nuclear reactors

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned that phasing out nuclear power could result in a 6.2% rise in carbon emissions by 2035. Faith Birol, chief economist at the IEA, delivered this grim message last week at the 2012 World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. “We will see higher CO2 levels if we take out one of the major technologies that help us deal with climate change,” he said.

This comes in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, after which a number of countries, including Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and Mexico, have elected to abandon nuclear power in favour of alternative renewable energy sources. The IEA firmly believes any surges in renewable energy prompted by a move away from nuclear power would be eclipsed by a massive increase in coal use that could have disastrous consequences for the fight against climate change. Birol said the world was on track to see an increase in coal demand twice the size of Australia’s current steam coal exports and a rise in natural gas requirements equivalent to two-thirds of Russia’s current net gas exports.

This is a gloomy outlook for our beleaguered world. And, the risks and complexities in phasing out nuclear power don’t end there. Only last week, the energy wing of Siemens, estimated that phasing out nuclear power, as planned in Germany, would cost the country between 1.4 trillion euros and 1.7 trillion euros by 2030. The company believes investments in renewable energy, natural gas and other substitutes for nuclear power will go far beyond previous reckonings.

Germany – one of the first countries to announce its intention to shut down nuclear reactors and cancel plans for new nuclear sites – currently gets approximately one quarter of its electric power from nuclear sources. Despite the government’s commitment to its decision, there are German voices of dissent. Jurgen Grossman, chief executive of RWE, Germany’s second largest utility, described the policy changes as a “Herculean Task” in a speech in which he also noted he knew of no industrialized country that was “even rudimentarily able to rely on renewable energy”.

The German government says it plans to replace a 20GW in nuclear capacity by building at least 10GW in wind and solar plants and at least 10GW in highly efficient gas-fired power stations. It is this renewed dependency on fossil fuels that is seen as a backward step by the green sector. Replacing low emission nuclear power with fossil-fuel sources will inevitably stop carbon emissions from falling.

In addition to funding new sources of power, the decommissioning of nuclear power incurs a considerable amount of cost on its own. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the total cost of decommissioning a nuclear power plant can range from $280 – $612 million. In France, decommissioning the Brennilis Nuclear Power Plant, a fairly small 70MW power plant, has cost in excess of 480 million euros and is still pending after 20 years.

Only after a facility has been completely decommissioned, is it released from regulatory control, and the licensee of the plant is no longer liable for its nuclear safety. The cost and scale of any decommissioning project depends on a number of factors, including the timing and sequence of the various stages of the program, type of reactor of facility, location of the facility, radioactive waste burial costs and plans for spent fuel storage. While there are supposed to be funds in place to finance final decommissioning of any nuclear plant, in many countries, these funds are not sufficient.

It is undeniable that the Fukushima crisis accentuated the critical risks associated with nuclear reactors. But we musn’t forget that nuclear power is one of the most highly regulated technologies in the energy sector. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has stringent checks in place to ensure compliance with its standards.

Simply scrapping nuclear power could be seen as a drastic response, when in reality, the crisis really just highlighted the need for a reassessment of the way we produce nuclear power and protect reactors.

“Many of the nuclear reactors were created in the 1970s and 1980s and the industry has seen very little innovation since then. The average age of nuclear reactors is 27 years,” says David Beer, Director of IndustryRE Sustainability. “The current amount of water needed to protect reactors will be unsustainable in the future. Water shortage is fast becoming a recurring symptom of our changing climate. We need to rethink how we harvest nuclear power and build better facilities designed to protect waste. Our innovations must be resilient to our changing and unpredictable climate and must provide long-term solutions.”

For a country like France, complete decommissioning just isn’t an option. The country gets more than 75% of its power from nuclear reactors. In fact, France has recently reaffirmed it’s commitment to nuclear energy and is resolute that modernisation is the only solution.

In December 2011, Rolls-Royce won a 250 million euro contract with AREVA to supply safety instrumentation and control technologies and systems for the French nuclear reactor modernisation programme. The systems will be installed in the twenty-strong French fleet of 1300 MW nuclear reactors operated by EDF. Rolls-Royce says the focus is on digital nuclear safety, performance and providing long-term support.

Without doubt, the implementation and progress of this project will be watched by a cautious world over the coming years.