The nuclear option

Saturday, June 28, 2008

There's something of the austerity of Old Salem about the town of Pori on the west coast of Finland. People spend up to nine months hunkered down against the cold and dark, and you can see their pragmatism in the plain concrete and clapboard architecture. Today the sky is blue and the place awash with light, and walking the streets couldn't be more pleasant, yet I feel as though I'm pacing a hall of mirrors. The world of energy will do this to you.

Half an hour's drive through the forest, French and German companies are building a vast nuclear power station, Olkiluoto3, which, like its sister construction in France, has been beset with problems. Nonetheless, the pair are being presented as part of a "nuclear renaissance", driven by the price of fossil fuels, the need to reduce carbon emissions and the perceived impossibility of meeting our energy needs via renewable sources. Encouraged by the UK government, a behind-the-scenes scramble for control of the sites supporting our existing fleet of 19 reactors is under way, on the assumption that these will be the most likely spots for new-build. With up to a third of these old stations due for retirement within 20 years, the UK is being seen as a beachhead from which new fleets might be rolled out across Europe and the world. This week Gordon Brown was enthusing about the jobs they would create.

Areva, the French leader of the consortium behind Olkiluoto and of the putative renaissance, hopes to sell 100 of its new European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) stations by 2030. At somewhere between €2.5bn and €5bn each (£1.9bn and £3.9bn), the stakes are high. Their sales pitch is simple and not a little scary: namely, that this is now our only low-carbon option. At present, just under a fifth of our electricity is nuclear-derived, though this accounts for a small fraction of a total energy consumption.

Energy is a looking-glass realm of shadow and illusion. The longer you gaze into it, the more people you talk to, the more opaque it becomes, until you're not sure whose science, statistics, predictions to trust - even knowing that the choices we make now could determine the future of our planet and that if we get them wrong, nothing else will matter. Dr Kevin Anderson, of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, seems to sum up the situation when he tells me: "Most of the questions we ask about energy in this country are misinformed questions looking for simplistic answers." According to the Tyndall Centre's Decarbonising the UK report, simple measures like phasing out standby facilities on electrical goods and imposing minimum mpg standards on cars could produce a 47% reduction by 2050. In the face of which nuclear becomes an option, Anderson says: don't let anyone tell you it's a necessity. Even the industry concedes that no fresh capacity could be ready much before 2018 anyway.

To this opacity must be added native prejudice. When James Lovelock, founder of the Gaia theory (that planet Earth should be looked upon as a self-sustaining organism, to whom we are incidental) came out in favour of nuclear energy as the only serious alternative to fossil fuels in 2004, it shocked generations of post-60s, environmentally-conscious Britons. The Windscale fire of 1957, the partial meltdown of a US reactor core at Three Mile Island in 1979, the Chernobyl horror of 86 - these are what we remember first about nuclear energy, closely followed by Meryl Streep as Karen Silkwood, The China Syndrome, Mr Burns and Blinky the fish and Homer Simpson munching doughnuts with his feet on the control panel. More recently, that decommissioning the fleet of British-designed Magnox and Advanced Gas-Cooled (AGR) Reactors built between the 1950s and 1970s will cost not less than £73bn. And rising.

We also know that we were lied to throughout the programme - about cost, efficiency and safety. Much of this had to do with the military origins of the British nuclear programme: Prime minister Harold Macmillan covered up the true causes of the Windscale fire because it was being recklessly pushed to produce the H-bomb, against scientists' warnings, and he didn't want to spook his American allies. As with our transport system and the Comet jetliner of the 1950s, there's a case to be made that we suffered from being first. Calder Hall, opened in 1956, was the world's first commercial nuclear station. Electricity produced in all the stations was significantly more expensive than in those burning fossil fuels, but the figures were massaged to look better.

Prophets of the "nuclear renaissance" are aware of the PR problem they face in the UK, and are going out of their way to assuage our fears by appearing open and honest. At the Areva plant in Chalon/St Marcel in Burgundy, I'm treated to a view of reactor vessels being made. I find these big industrial processes stirring in the same involuntary and somewhat guilty way that I do sight of a fighter jet, but the revelation of that day was how simple a pressurised water reactor is. In principle, such a plant differs little from a steam engine: the reaction creates heat; heat converts water to steam; steam drives a big turbine to generate electricity. Simple. But for the radiation, of course.

Areva claims that its EPR design, a so-called third-generation evolution of the standard pressurised water reactor, will result in the safest and most efficient nuclear plant ever built. At Olkiluoto, two Swedish-built reactors, dating from 1978 and 1980, sit next to a peaceful, wooded bay and loom over the site where workers in fluorescent safety vests swarm among the concrete and cranes and forests of steel reinforcement rods. The official site tongue is English, but signs and safety warnings appear in several languages, testament to the fact that the workers come from more than 40 different countries. No one in Europe has been keen on building nuclear since Chernobyl and by 1999 Areva was on the verge of closing down the flagship Chalon plant. Fortunately for them, they didn't, but both Olkiluoto and its twin in Flamanville have been dogged by a shortage of workers and sub-contractors with what engineers call "necessary competence".

Like the French, the Finnish worry far less about nuclear issues than we do. There has never been a serious incident here and the question, "How do you feel about nuclear energy?" is generally met with "I haven't thought about it much" by the people of Pori. Pressed further, most citizens said: "I know some people are against it," but couldn't name anyone who was. Olkiluoto provides electricity only for shareholders in its owner TVO, who consist of local industries and some residents. The company is non-profitmaking. The plant has been commissioned on a turnkey basis, meaning that the €2.5bn agreed in the contract is what TVO, the eventual owner, will pay, with Areva and its German partner, Siemens, carrying the huge cost over-run. All sides insist that no state subsidies are involved, although there are dark mutterings about cheap loans from Germany and France. Either way, Olkiluoto is a loss leader, based on a presumption of untold billions attending success.

Olkiluoto's third-generation template was always intended to withstand the impact of a military airplane, but after 9/11 the Finnish government insisted that it be able to take a hit from an airliner. Thus, the outer APC shell hides another thick "outer" shell, which gives way to a steel-lined "inner containment" shell, capable of containing explosions to a force of six atmospheres. The reactor building sits on top of a 3 metre-thick concrete basin, which is designed to catch and douse the melting reactor core should the worst happen, so making a second Three Mile Island (or real-life China Syndrome) impossible.

Building one of these is a complex business, with the various processes needing to be timed to keep construction moving, and a misplaced wrench having potentially disastrous consequences.

And this is what makes the events of 2006, when Finnish inspectors found the concrete being poured to be too watery, so surprising. The steel sheath which lines the reactor chamber was also found to be sub-specification. Naturally, environmentalist groups like Greenpeace had a field day, the more so because similar problems were discovered at Flamanville, where French inspectors shut construction down. When I ask the French site manager at Olkiluoto, Rémi Sénac, about this, he looks as though I've punched him in the face. An engineer and construction manager who might have been pressed into retirement 10 years ago, Sénac now finds his experience of working on nuclear power plants in the 1970s is highly prized. He explains that the nuclear hiatus following Chernobyl left a severe shortage of engineers and sub-contractors with the "necessary competency". On top of this, the Finnish government and TVO required as many local firms as possible, but no one had ever made concrete to the volume and specification necessary for OL3.

Philippe Knoche, the project manager assigned to turn things round, winces as he remembers that annus horribilus. He admits there were failings on the site, and declines to take credit for the improvements made since, saying only that "There's still a lot to do, but we are taking a step-by-step approach." He sounds offended when confronted with allegations that Areva's tribulations resulted from sub-contractors (particularly east European ones) being hired on the basis of price. "Did we do things in countries where they work on the cheap, in order to keep the price down?" he says testily. "For me, this is nearly racism that some countries should have this reputation. Our specifications are the same: we don't care where they come from."

He declines to say how much money his company is set to lose on Olkiluoto, only that "provision has been made," but that it will be finished at all cost.

There are two ways to look at this: first, that the nuclear industry hasn't changed; second, that when vigorously applied, regulation works. In Finland, inspectors must sign off every document and piece of work on site.

The Finnish solution to the problem of nuclear waste has been to build a deep "depository", 400 metres under the ground. Here, waste will be stored in chambers, encased in thick tubes, until such time as technology furnishes a better solution. Nothing here appears scary, and as I look around, I wonder if I'm being blase. The question Olkiluoto seems to suggest is how to ensure that Finnish-style nuclear culture applies everywhere.

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