France Closing Oldest Nuclear Plant

Subtitle:  The Plant Did Not Reach 40 Years - Forget 60

Well, that has got to sting, at least to those nuclear cheerleaders who constantly repeat the (false) claim that nuclear plants last for 60 years.   France announced this week the closure of its oldest nuclear plant, after only 39 years of operation.    The reactor is at Fessenheim, near the border with Germany and Switzerland.  

Nuclear Power Plants in France
(Fessenheim at the top-right of figure)
source: Wikicommons

From the report, "Germany demanded that France close down Fessenheim following reports that a 2014 incident there was worse than earlier portrayed."  see link to news article. 

The French are committed to shutting down many of the country's nuclear reactors by 2025, thereby reducing the nuclear share of electricity from 75 percent to 50 percent.   

As written earlier on SLB, nuclear plants do not run for 60 years, despite claims that they do by the nuclear cheerleaders.    In fact, see link, nuclear plants require costly upgrades after 20 to 30 years, and certainly do by age 40.   The problem is one of safety and economics.  Safety requires the upgrades to worn and degraded parts.  However, the upgrades are so costly they do not achieve a return on the investment when the plant is shut down and retired from service a short time later for any of dozens of reasons.   At some point in the nuclear plant's life, it is simply throwing away money to invest in the upgrades necessary to keep the plant in compliance with safety standards. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California  
Copyright (c) 2016 by Roger Sowell, all rights reserved

Nuclear Plant May Have Unsafe Steel

Subtitle:  France May Have Installed Unsafe Steel In Flamanville Reactor

Several recent articles, including this one from BBC (see link), and this from RT (see link) state that the new nuclear power plant under construction in France's Flamanville complex has reactor vessel components with high carbon content; making the steel weaker than it should be.  

EPR Reactor Vessel for Flamanville, France

From the BBC article:

"In a joint statement, Areva and EDF said new tests were under way on the "reactor vessel head and bottom".

"It said this followed initial tests which had shown "greater than average carbon content" - something French regulators said caused "lower than expected mechanical toughness" in the steel."

This nuclear plant is the new, 1600 MWe EPR design, or European Pressurized Reactor.  Another EPR is under construction at Olkiluoto, Finland.   The planned new reactor at UK's Hinkley Point is to also have the same EPR design.   

Not having access to the laboratory test reports for the reactor components at Flamanville, it is not possible to assess the problem.  However, a few comments are in order. 

First, what quality control measures are in place that would allow such steel to be fabricated and installed?   It would appear that French regulators are remiss in their duty to ensure only acceptable materials of construction are used. 

Next, what impacts will occur if (and when) the reactor is rejected as unsafe?  How long will a new reactor require for fabrication and installation?    What will be the cost impacts?  Will the plant be finished, or abandoned as hopelessly costly?   Alternatively, can the reactor be modified at this time and made safe?  What will be the cost and schedule impacts of such modifications?

Next, what impact will there be on future plants?  Is the reactor at Olkiluoto made of the same steel?  The Hinkley Point EPR reactors are also stated as made from the same steel.  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. 
Marina del Rey, California USA

copyright (c) 2015 by Roger Sowell 

French Nuclear Reactors Too Old - Cannot Cut It

An excellent article from EurActive,com, dated 8/18/2014, showing the weakness of aging nuclear power plants not just in France, but other countries in Europe.  As the nuclear plants grow older, their time off-line for maintenance and inspection increases.  see link

Yet another reason nuclear plants do not last 60 years, as some advocates claim.  Still another reason nuclear plants have higher costs per kWh produced: their output falls off as they age, and capital costs and fixed operating costs must be spread out over fewer and fewer kWh sold.    From the article:

" EDF's average load factor for its French nuclear fleet [was] 73 percent in 2013, which is also down from its highest level of 77.6 percent in 2005, the company's 2013 results show."  (load factor is the ratio of the actual output to the nameplate capacity)

The nuclear plants also become less and less reliable as they age, requiring 100 percent backup ready and running to take over the load when the plants are shut down.   Sound familiar?  This is the constant whining from the nuclear advocates about "unreliable" wind and solar power.   Yet, with a nuclear plant, the grid experiences approximately 1000 MW of power loss instantly when the nuke stops.  

At the present, 50 percent of the nuclear plants in Belgium are off-line for maintenance.  The power must be provided from other plants - essentially 100 percent backup for those plants.  

The Truth About Nuclear Power series (30 articles in total) address many of the same issues in Part 10, 11, 15, and 16  (see links below)

Part Ten -- Nuclear Plants Require Costly Upgrades After 20 to 30 Years

Part Eleven - Following France in Nuclear Is Not The Way To Go

Part Fifteen - Nuclear Safety Compromised by Bending the Rules

Part Sixteen - Near Misses on Meltdowns Occur Every 3 Weeks

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. 

Marina del Rey, California

Copyright (c) 2014 by Roger Sowell.  All rights reserved.

The Truth About Nuclear Power - Part Eleven

Subtitle: Following France in Nuclear is Not the Way to Go

Update 4/15/14:  included comparison of France electricity prices to US prices; included another reference for the EU Commission investigation of low power prices in France. -- Roger

To summarize the first ten articles, it has been shown (one) that modern nuclear power plants are uneconomic to operate compared to natural gas and wind energy, (two) they produce preposterous pricing if they are the sole power source for a grid, (three) cost far too much to construct, (four) use far more water for cooling than better alternatives, (five) nuclear fuel makes them difficult to shut down and requires very costly safeguards, (six) are built to huge scale of

Nuclear Plants in France
source: Wikicommons

1,000 to 1,600 MWe or greater to attempt to reduce costs via economy of scale, (seven) an all-nuclear grid will lose customers to self-generation, (eight) smaller and modular nuclear plants have no benefits, (nine) large-scale plants have very long construction schedules even without lawsuits that delay construction, and (ten) nuclear plants require costly upgrades after 20 to 30 years that do not always perform as designed.

This article, number eleven in the series, discusses a favorite topic of the nuclear proponents, France and their nuclear power plants.  France, they say, has cheap electricity and obtains 80 percent of their electricity from nuclear power plants.  France, they say, actually exports power to other countries.   They say these as if those are good things.  The reality is quite different. 

Nationalized Electric Industry

Just after World War II, France nationalized the electric utility industry.  Until very recently, EDF, the French utility, was government-owned.  It is now a combination of private and government ownership.  see link to EDF website for the company history.   When a country nationalizes an industry, the government has no obligation to pay for the assets, or if it does pay, to pay fair market value.  The country also can, and often does, subsidize the construction of new assets such as nuclear power plants.  This leads to the second point.

Subsidized Power Pricing

France could, and did, set power prices at the point it chose, without any requirement to pay for assets, loans, bonds, or any other fixed costs.  French power pricing reflects the ongoing cost of operation such as fuel, labor, and maintenance.  In effect, the nationalized industry allowed France to subsidize the electric prices, which subsidizing did happen.  see link

There is also the matter of tarTAM,  a subsidized rate for large and medium-sized customers.  This is to be eliminated in 2015, but has been in effect for years.   

French subsidized prices were Investigated for anti-trust by the EU.  (see previous link) 

When one is not required to pay for the capital cost of assets, or can bury the costs within the labyrinth of government coffers, it is easy to charge below-market electricity prices. 

Update 4/15/14:  The EU Commission's report of 2007 of their investigation into power pricing in France concluded: "The Commission has assessed the aid element in the two regulated tariff systems as applied to non-household consumers. It found that these regulated tariffs were financed at least in part through state resources. It also concluded that, as far as the ‘yellow’ and ‘green’ options were concerned, the tariffs conferred a selective benefit on certain non-household consumers and that they affected trade between Member States."  (emphasis added)   source: see link.

In addition, The 2013 prices for electricity in France and the US were, per the IEA 2013 Key World Energy Statistics, slide 43  (see link) :  France industrial power price, 11.6 cents per kWh compared to US at 6.7 cents, and residential price at 17.5 cents per kWh compared to US at 11.9 cents per kWh.   This shows that France, with almost a full nuclear-powered grid, charges approximately double for industrial power (11.6 vs 6.7), and approximately 50 percent more for residential prices (17.5 vs 11.9).   French prices would surely be much higher, if France did not export power but had to throttle back each night, and if subsidies were fully forbidden.   -- End update --  Roger

Export Electricity 

France does indeed export electricity, but it is necessary to investigate to see why this is.  EDF exports power, mainly at night to neighboring countries, to increase production rate and avoid load reductions in the nuclear plants.  This is the problem as described in Part Two of the Series, that being nuclear plants are very difficult to operate and load changing is difficult and dangerous.  

Night exporting to neighboring countries acts the same as wind energy in the US, it forces load-following plants in the neighbor countries to reduce load or go off-line.   Thus, France is benefiting while neighbors take the burden of part-load, unloaded plants, and increased maintenance from severe load swings.   It is little wonder that the EU investigated. 

Subsidized Exported Plant Technology

France is desperate to sell nuclear power plants, and subsidizes the plant costs to be built in other countries (e.g. India).    France wanted 16 cents per kWh for the power sales price, but India negotiated it down to 10 cents.  Per a recent article (see link), "The two sides (India and Areva) have agreed on Rs 6 per unit, down from Rs 9.18 per unit quoted by the French company Areva initially, which was not acceptable to India."

In addition, France agreed to a very low loan interest rate to sweeten the deal: "France has also decided to provide India a loan for the project at 4.8 per cent interest rate for 25 years"  (same source from just above).  

No Other Countries Follow France

World Electricity Production in 2011
source: IEA Outlook 2013, slide 24

If the French model on nuclear was any good, why has no other country in the world adopted 80 percent power from nuclear?   No country follows France, with Ukraine next at only 46 percent, and South Korea at 29 percent of domestic electricity produced by nuclear power. (slide 17 from IEA see link).   In fact, world-wide, nuclear power produces just 11.7 percent of all electricity (2011 IEA above, slide 24).   If nuclear power was truly a better technology, one would expect that the past 50 years would have observed country after country abandoning coal and natural gas and building nothing but nuclear power plants.  Clearly, with only 11 percent or a bit more in world electricity share after 50 years, nuclear power is not the best choice.  

Conclusion

After the worldwide increases in crude oil price in the 1970s, France chose nuclear power rather than high-priced imported oil or relying on other countries for natural gas.  France has, in the intervening years, subsidized its power prices, reluctantly privatized a portion of the electric industry, developed nuclear technology that it desperately subsidizes to sell to other countries, exports low-balled subsidized power to neighboring countries in an attempt to maintain high nuclear plant operating rates, and recently was the object of an investigation for anti-trust by the EU related to power prices.  Clearly, following France in nuclear is not the way to go.

Previous articles in the Truth About Nuclear Power series are found at the following links.  Additional articles will be linked as they are published. 

Part One – Nuclear Power Plants Cannot Compete

Part Two – Preposterous Power Pricing if Nuclear Power Proponents Prevail

Part Three – Nuclear Power Plants Cost Far Too Much to Construct

Part Four – Nuclear Power Plants Use Far More Fresh Water

Part Five – Cannot Simply Turn Off a Nuclear Power Plant

Part Six –  Nuclear Plants are Huge to Reduce Costs

Part Seven -- All Nuclear Grid Will Sell Less Power

Part Eight – No Benefits from Smaller Modular Nuclear Plants

Part Nine -- Nuclear Plants Require Long Construction Schedules

Part Ten -- Nuclear Plants Require Costly Upgrades After 20 to 30 Years

Part Eleven - this article

Part Twelve - Nuclear Plants Cannot Provide Cheap Power on Small Islands

Part Thirteen - Nuclear Plants Are Heavily Subsidized

Part Fourteen - A Few More Reasons Nuclear Cannot Compete

Part Fifteen - Nuclear Safety Compromised by Bending the Rules

Part Sixteen - Near Misses on Meltdowns Occur Every 3 Weeks

Part Seventeen - Storing Spent Fuel is Hazardous for Short or Long Term

Part Eighteen - Reprocessing Spent Fuel Is Not Safe

Part Nineteen - Nuclear Radiation Injures People and Other Living Things

Part Twenty - Chernobyl Meltdown and Explosion

Part Twenty One - Three Mile Island Unit 2 Meltdown 1979

Part Twenty Two - Fukushima The Disaster That Could Not Happen

Part Twenty Three - San Onofre Shutdown Saga

Part Twenty Four - St. Lucie Ominous Tube Wear

Part Twenty Five - Price-Anderson Act Protects Nuclear Plants Too Much

Part Twenty Six - Evacuation Plans Required at Nuclear Plants

Part Twenty Seven - Power From Nuclear Fusion

Part Twenty Eight - Thorium MSR No Better Than Uranium Process

Part Twenty Nine - High Temperature Gas Reactor Still A Dream

Part Thirty - Conclusion

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California