fusion, fission & fukushima
In 1954, Lewis Strauss, the chair of the US Atomic Energy Commission, predicted that nuclear energy would make electricity “too cheap to meter”. Needless to say, that forecast has aged poorly and a misunderstood, oft-hidden and little-commented upon process, the disposal of nuclear waste, contributes heavily to the overall cost. The nuclear facility at Sellafield (nee Windscale) no longer produces power, but making safe what is left behind is an almost unimaginably expensive and complex task.
The main reason power companies and governments remain sceptical and uncommitted wrt nuclear power is not that climate activists are holding them back or that uranium is difficult to find, but that nuclear reactors are inordinately expensive to build, maintain and decommission. In the UK, this is evidenced by the proportion of electricity generated by such plants reducing from the 1990s high of 25% to 16%, and, of the five nuclear stations still producing power, only one will run beyond 2028.
Since it began operating in 1950, Sellafield, on the Cumbrian coast, has had several different duties. Firstly, in the days of Raymond Brigg’s When The Wind Blows, it generated plutonium for nuclear weapons. Then, until 2003, it generated electricity for the National Grid before finally reprocessing nuclear fuel by extracting uranium and plutonium. Sellafield’s waste – spent fuel rods, radioactive liquids and a host of other contaminated debris – is parked in a variety of concrete silos, artificial ponds and sealed buildings, and represents a process that over its predicted lifespan will cost upwards of £121bn. Yep, north of one hundred and twenty billion pounds.
And even this is only a transitional arrangement until it can be consigned to the ultimate strong-room: a Geographical Disposal Facility (GDF), bored hundreds of metres into the earth’s rock at a predicted cost of £53bn. Finland are putting the finishing touches to theirs. Sweden, Switzerland and France are about to start digging. We’re lagging behind and still gassing about it.
Whilst Chernobyl and Fukushima live long in the memory, very few can recall our very own 1957 incident when exposed Windscale workers were officially informed they’d “walk it (radiation poisoning) off on the way home”. This accounted for the subsequent name-change. Fire or flood could destroy Sellafield’s relatively solid infrastructure. Terrorists could try to get at the nuclear reactor and cause mayhem. Governments change. Companies disappear. Money runs out. The ground sinks and rises. Sea becomes land and vice versa. Hence the need for a GDF, a terrestrial cavity to securely hold the waste until it becomes no more malign than the surrounding rock.
I remain convinced that our future power predictions necessitate a nuclear option but we should underestimate neither the total cost nor the long-term security provisions necessary. There’s no free lunch and no free energy to heat-up that lunch.
