Last week, Cumbria County Council voted against allowing further development of plans to construct an underground storage facility for nuclear waste in the county (Cumbria nuclear project rejected by councillors). This may well not be the end of the line, as one local District Council still wants to proceed with the next, exploratory, stage. However, for matters such as this, the County Council’s decision would normally trump that of other local authorities, so this is a serious blow to the project.
Although some councillors may have been swayed by vocal anti-nuclear protestors, there does seem to be a real problem with the geological suitability of the area. Long-term storage of highly radioactive nuclear material is not a trivial problem. Quite large volumes of material have to be handled remotely and stored deep underground in rock formations which are reasonably certain to be stable for many thousands of years.
Nevertheless, much of that nuclear material already exists and is currently stored above ground on the Sellafield site, itself in Cumbria. There is a legacy from both the earlier days of nuclear power generation as well as from the atomic weapons programme. It is not going to go away. Something has to be done with it, whether it is to be buried or held on the surface.
Finland, currently constructing its fifth nuclear reactor and planning for three more, had apparently fallen out of love with the technology after its initial investment (rather in the same way as the UK). However, the government of the day turned the tide by approving a fifth reactor (the third at Olkiluoto) in 2002 for a mixture of economic, energy security and environmental reasons.
An important prerequisite for that was an acceptable plan for storage of high level waste. Originally shipped to the Soviet Union for reprocessing, it became a legal requirement in 1994 for all waste produced in Finland to be kept in the country. In 2000, a deep underground storage facility was approved at Olkiluoto, the world’s first. There seem to be no problems with geology in this part of Finland.
Nuclear power is safe and clean. Even Chernobyl, by far the worst nuclear accident ever to happen, and pretty well impossible to repeat with current reactors, caused far fewer health problems than many believe. Fewer than 50 people died from the effects of direct radiation exposure, although increased levels of thyroid cancer (fortunately easily treatable) occurred after the event. Meanwhile, coal mining continues to claim many more lives around the world. Even in the USA, 29 miners died in a single accident in 2010, and deaths in China are believed still to run into thousands each year (with over 6,000 in 2004 according to official statistics).
But radiation presents a hazard which is both undetectable to normal senses and extremely long-lasting, both of which intensify concerns. The unfortunate association of nuclear electricity generation with thermonuclear weapons only magnifies them. Nevertheless, it is sufficient to keep concentrated sources of radiation shielded from the biological environment for safety to be assured.
And we should not forget that one man’s waste is another’s raw material: the reactors currently in operation make use of only a small fraction of the energy potential of the enriched uranium fuel. Rather than think of a waste repository as a means of disposal, it is better to consider it a safe place to store a valuable resource, a vault in which energy is banked and stored for the future.
It is not possible to generate useful amounts of electricity without having some impact on the environment. Coal mining is dirty and leaves spoil tips and underground workings which can cause subsidence. Drilling for gas or oil also makes its mark, albeit often rather temporarily. One of the objections to fracking to extract shale gas is the number of drilling rigs which would need to be erected over a wide area. While this is true to some extent, once the drilling has finished the well-head infrastructure is comparatively modest and can be dismantled after production has finished.
Wind farms, presently the preferred option of supporters of renewable energy, also have an impact. They are visually intrusive, cause noise problems for neighbours and are distinctly unfriendly to birds and bats. Even solar panels take up land which could be used for other productive purposes. And in both cases the energy being harvested is in a diffuse form, requiring very large areas to produce an output comparable to a single gas or nuclear generating station. This is compounded by the need to build transmission lines from windy rural areas to towns and cities.
But there is no direct trade-off: it is not a case of replacing conventional power stations by wind or solar farms. Since they are intrinsically incapable of producing electricity on demand, nuclear, coal and gas stations are still needed to provide the base load, with additional (mainly gas) plant on standby to service peaks of demand and compensate for the variable output of renewables.
Comparing the overall environmental impact of different generation methods is not a simple matter. Wind farms are justified on the basis of their capacity to reduce carbon dioxide emissions but, as has become clear, this has distinct limitations. If emissions reduction is the primary focus, nuclear power makes a much more convincing alternative to fossil fuels. Long term, high-level waste storage is still a significant stumbling block, but cannot simply be ignored. We should focus on how to derive the maximum benefit from it in the long term rather than simply disposing of it.
The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge CB4 0WS
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