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THE END IS NEAR for the PBMR the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor

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THE END IS NEAR for the PBMR the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor AUGUST 20, 2010 | No. 714 THE END IS NEAR FOR THE PBMR The Pebble Bed Modular Reactor. Remember? It was globally heralded as the perfect nuclear reactor: small, safe and cheap. Dozens would be built in South Africa alone and in 1999 the THE END IS NEAR FOR THE company expected to sell 30 reactors annually from 2004 on. PBMR 1 Sometimes in the public opinion about the nuclear renaissance HAUNTED BY HISTORY: and new reactor types the PBMR was used if it was already in NUCLEAR NEW BUILD IN operation in South Africa or at least under construction. BRITAIN 2 (714.6071) WISE Amsterdam - Now, the government s last funding allocation in EU AGREEMENT ON ITER South African government announced it 2007, nor has it been able to acquire an COST OVERRUNS 5 is expected to close operations at PBMR anchor customer despite revising its (Pty) Ltd. finally 'within a few weeks' business model in 2008/09." The PLUTONIUM IN BREATHABLE FORM FOUND NEAR ROCKY (that is August). The company once company is operating on funds that were FLATS 5 planned to build up to 24 165-MW high- left over from the 2007 allocation and has temperature gas-cooled reactor modules downsized from about 800 staff to about RUSSIAN GREENS FIGHT for state-owned utility Eskom and export 25. Although the PBMR website doesn't PUTIN'S PLAN FOR the modular HTR worldwide, but hasn't show anything about the current FLOATING NPPs 6 built even the demonstration model. situation, it says there are "no career ANALYSIS TRIPLES U.S. opportunities at the moment." PLUTONIUM WASTE FIGURES 7 The government has invested an estimated South Africa Rand 9 billion The company was set up in 1999 as U.S. NUCLEAR (US$1.23 billion at current rates) in Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (Pty) Ltd. to “RENAISSANCE” HITS A PBMR Ltd. over the 11 years since it was develop and deploy German technology STUMBLING BLOCK CALLED founded as an Eskom subsidiary. PBMR it had acquired for small HTRs with REALITY 8 Ltd. is formally owned by Eskom, the coated pebble-shaped fuel elements. IN BRIEF 9 Industrial Development Corp. and Besides British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL), Westinghouse, but they have put no Exelon, the largest nuclear fleet operator equity in the company for several years. in the US, also made an early equity investment, and the company was In a July statement, the Department of broadly touted as the herald of a new Public Enterprises, which has nuclear age for the developing world responsibility for the PBMR company, based on small reactors that could be set said PBMR "has not been able to acquire up quickly under various site conditions. additional investment in the project since BNFLs stake was transferred to Offi cial planning in 1998 3-2007 2009 Start construction demonstration-phase 1999 2008/9 2013 Demonstration-reactor ready 2003 2012 2018 First orders *1 2004 2017 ? First electricity by fi rst reactor 2008 2021 ? *1 In 1998 it was expected that from 2004 on, annually 30 reactors would be ordered 1 Westinghouse when the latter was sold We hope that this will also mark the end to Toshiba. But the PBMR partners One of the critics, Stephen Thomas, of the South African government's love never agreed on a new equity structure professor of energy policy at the affair with nuclear energy and that and the company remained the property University of Greenwich in the UK, told taxpayer funds can now be spent on of the South African government. the Cape Times that it was clear at least clean, proven and reliable forms of six years ago that the PBMR project renewable energy". The Department of Public Enterprises was "going badly wrong. Yet the believes the R9-billion spent on the government continued to pour public Sources: Nucleonics Week, 29 July PBMR project has not been lost, as the money into it, indeed about 80 percent 2010 / Cape Times, 10 August 2010 skills developed "will contribute of all the money spent on the pebble Contact: WISE Amsterdam significantly in any future nuclear bed was spent in the past six years" programs and save the country huge amounts of money in the process". Tristen Taylor, of Earthlife Africa, said " HAUNTED BY HISTORY: NUCLEAR NEW BUILD IN BRITAIN Part I: Shaping the Deal In January 2008, Gordon Brown’s cabinet formally decided to permit private businesses to build new nuclear power stations in England and Wales, the Scottish executive having already refused permission. Politically, there was nothing surprising about the news. Key decisions had been made well before 2008. Tony Blair, as Prime Minster, had declared for new nuclear as early as July 2004, trailing the Bush administration by two years. Brown himself had come out decisively in favor of new nuclear to the Confederation of British Industries in November 2007 and also to the G8. (714.6072) East Midlands Campaign non-departmental body was created – for Nuclear Disarmament - the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency It seems likely that by January 2008, Institutionally a key turning point was the (NDA). The NDA took temporary charge after a particularly intense period of Energy Review, initiated by Blair in 2005 of 19 nuclear sites, including Sellafield, industry lobbying, a more specific and issued by the Department of Trade the first generation Magnox power agreement was reached with leading and Industry in 2006. The Review stations and Dounreay a failed energy companies. This included the revised the findings of the Department experimental fast-breeder reactor in the possible underpinning of the price of of the Environment’s Energy White north of Scotland. In 2003, the carbon, financially supporting Paper of 2003, which had been critical government also set up a Committee on decommissioning and waste storage, of nuclear economics and concerned Radioactive Waste Management and minimizing company liability in case about the waste issue. The 2006 (CoRWM) to make recommendations on of accidents. Also included was a plan Review argued that new nuclear had a the best way to manage high-level to offer local communities public role to play in the future ‘energy mix’ in waste. Its interim recommendations had compensation, bribing them that is, for the light of the imperatives of climate already argued for ‘deep geological hosting waste storage facilities - and change and energy security. It must, disposal’. also perhaps for accepting new nuclear however, be run by the private sector, power stations. The actual work of without subsidy, and with companies This review set the guidelines of decommissioning, managing the bearing the cost of decommissioning government policy right up to the Sellafield complex and existing waste and ‘their full share of long-term waste present: sites was to be undertaken by private management costs’. Government, * private enterprise (implying further consortia, who would bid to the NDA for however, would provide a framework: privatization) limited term contracts, three years in the planning procedures would be simplified * dependence on corporate decision- first instance. In some versions it would and speeded up and regulative and making and financial markets for be the NDA that would run the waste other issues extensively consulted upon. commencing nuclear new build (and facilities where companies could then even deciding its extent) lease space, a device that may The Review also noted ‘solutions’ to the * eagerness to ease the way of the eventually be used for the long- problems of inherited nuclear waste. In industry by changing planning laws and promised storage facility for high level April 2005 after a series of scandals at by other forms of support as long as wastes. the reprocessing and storage complex they could evade the label - ‘subsidy’ at Sellafield in West Cumbria and the Within this framework corporations and Although its supporters complained of near bankruptcy of the main nuclear government could negotiate the details, delays, around January 2008 events generator British Electric, a new public which, of course, were critical. were moving quickly. In May 2007 the 2 NUCLEAR MONITOR 714 government had issued its Planning enrichment plant in Cheshire. In May haunted by the ill-success of past civil White Paper, which after a rapid Electricité de France (EDF) made its nuclear enterprises and by their consultation, led to a new Planning Act first bid for British Energy’s power material, economic and ideological in November 2008. The Act created a stations and, importantly, its existing legacies. ‘Haunted’ is appropriate here, new procedure for major infrastructural sites. A deal was finally signed in for there is a constant effort to keep projects - like nuclear power stations September for £12.5 billion (US$ 19.5 these negative stories out of public and waste depositories – that billion or 15.1 billion euro), with EDF hearing and perhaps out of pro-nuclear centralized decision-making and limited planning four new reactors and selling consciousness. There is therefore a the scope of local planning objections. A off some sites and a 25% stake to persistent misfit between the optimistic parallel Act required providers of new Centrica, the parent company of British rhetoric and grand designs on one side nuclear plants to submit a definite Gas. This Anglo-French deal, with the and persistent ‘bad news’ on the other. technical and financial plan for French state-owned company clearly in Except in critical media, these stories decommissioning. In December 2007, dominance, was foreshadowed by the are often split off and labelled ‘legacy’ the Conservative Party had withdrawn signing of a grand ‘nuclear alliance’ (e.g. ‘legacy waste’) as though they its ‘only in the last resort’ qualifications between Gordon Brown and President have nothing to do with the present.
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