Dismantling: the nuts and bolts Nuclear power today Island nations threatened as global warming kills coral reefs	Nuclear decommissioning: a problem that won’t go away Nicholas Lenssen, Energy specialist and former Senior Researcher at Worldwatch Institute, Washington, D.C.-based policy research unit. Portions of this article are drawn from work done by Worldwatch.
Gundremmingen nuclear power plant in Bavaria, Germany, during dismantling. ‘It would be irresponsible for us to benefit from nuclear power and leave it to later generations to deal with the waste’ A technician wearing protective clothing slices through a wall with a cutting torch. With the aid of a claw arm, a worker stores nuclear waste containers behind a protective wall made of lead and concrete. Dismantling: the nuts and bolts The basic “deconstruction” of a nuclear plant takes place in a three-step process, the guidelines of which have been established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). These phases consist of removing the fuel and auxiliary structures; ensuring safe confinement of remaining radioactive structures and components; and finally taking the plant apart and removing it from the site. The first job is to empty the reactor core of its fuel and to remove it from the site. In the second phase, all remaining radioactive materials are confined and sealed; the result is sometimes referred to as “safe-store”. If left in place for 30 to 100 years, slightly contaminated materials such as metals and concrete will lose much of their radioactivity. The third phase involves removing all elements from the site and making it usable for other purposes. Because appropriate national infrastructures do not yet exist in many countries, operators have often opted to postpone final dismantling until approved solutions for waste disposal are available. Another reason to opt for deferred dismantling is the cost-benefit (see article). In the case of Britain’s Magnox Electric, for example, which has adopted a 135-year safe-storage strategy, the fact that decommissioning costs are discounted over 135 years lightens the company’s books today. Nuclear power today Commercial nuclear power has apparently reached its zenith—at least for the current generation. Globally, capacity of nuclear power has increased less than five per cent since 1990, and in 1998 the world’s capacity actually declined slightly. Even though global capacity is likely to rise in the next year or two, it will almost certainly decline precipitously in the years following as the construction pipeline dries up, and the closure of older, uneconomic, and politically unpopular reactors accelerates. By the end of 1998, 429 reactors were operating, one less than five years before. Construction is taking place at 33 new reactors. Of these, seven are likely to be connected to the grid by the year 2001, though another fourteen may never be completed. Western Europe accounts for 150 operating reactors, though only one new one remains under construction. In fact, West European governments have started addressing the closure of existing reactors, as indicated by the German and Swedish governments’ efforts to begin phasing out nuclear energy. Elsewhere, governments—including the French—have started debating reducing their countries’ dependence on the atom. In Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Russia and Ukraine, some 68 reactors are operational, with four being actively worked on. Although many of these countries plan to expand their nuclear industries, they face financial limitations, and public opposition in the face of the 1986 Chernobyl accident. The Americas account for 123 reactors, though only two—one each in Argentina and Brazil—are under construction. In Canada and the United States, the nuclear industry is under extraordinary economic pressure as reactors are unable to compete economically with other means of providing electricity services. Asia remains the last stronghold for the nuclear power industry, with 88 reactors operating and 26 under construction, though even here a slowdown is evident. Japan only has two reactors under construction, and South Korea has scaled back its intent due to the twin blows of political changes and economic crisis. Taiwan is building what is recognized by all as the country’s final two reactors, and efforts to create commercial nuclear power industries in countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Viet Nam have all failed in recent years. China currently has the world’s most ambitious programme, with a plan to go from the three reactors it operates today to more than 50 by the year 2020. It is probable, though, that China’s ambitious plans will fail as they have in every other country when economics, safety, and decommissioning and radioactive waste issues become debated by the public.	Critics of current waste disposal and power plant dismantling schemes believe that the legacy of nuclear power generation may impoverish and endanger future generations for millennia to come Imagine traveling a thousand years hence in a landscape with rising concrete domes, shrouded with mystery, forbiddenness, and slowly decaying defences of barbed wire and other barriers. The ruins are guarded by a priesthood that wards off all those who may feel inclined to trespass, warning people of the dangers that lurk within the centre of their shrine. Such may be the future fate of the more than 500 civilian nuclear power reactors built in the second half of the twentieth century. In nearly all industries, the disposal of antiquated plants and equipment is a straightforward and relatively low-cost operation. But the high levels of radiation present in retired facilities make it extremely complex and costly for nuclear power. Upon final closure, a nuclear power plant is converted from an asset generating electricity that can be sold to energy users, to a concrete and steel mass of radioactive waste awaiting eventual dismantling and isolation from humans and the biosphere. Although it is unlikely that a scenario such as that envisioned above will occur, the fact remains that human societies have yet to determine just what will happen with retired nuclear power plants. François Chenevier, the director of the French nuclear waste agency, admonished in 1990 that “it would be irresponsible for us to benefit from nuclear power and leave it to later generations to deal with the waste.” Yet that situation had already occurred, and will likely continue into the next three or so decades. Although nuclear reactors are expected to operate for between 30 and 40 years, their radioactive legacy—including the physical structure of retired reactors—will remain for thousands of years. The problem of what to do with shuttered reactors is growing steadily. As of the beginning of 1999, 94 nuclear reactors had been retired. At the same time, only 429 reactors were in operation, meaning that one out of every 5.5 reactors that has ever been built has already been permanently closed. Yet only a handful of these have actually been taken apart. This lack of progress in decommissioning reactors is partly planned. Some countries, such as Japan and the United States, have announced policies that would have them dismantle closed reactors within a decade or two of closure. Other countries, such as Canada and France, intend to wait several decades. At the extreme, the United Kingdom has decided to wait more than 100 years before finally tearing down any reactors at all. Thus, old reactors could become a near permanent fixture in some countries. The irony in tearing down nuclear power plants is that the longer they run, the more radioactive their interiors get from neutron bombardment. And the higher the radioactivity, the more difficult, dangerous, and expensive it is to dismantle the plants, and store or bury the residual radioactive waste. Thus, waiting decades or longer between closing reactors and actually tearing them down makes the task that much easier and safer to undertake. Still, the radioactivity of the actual buildings—particularly the reactor’s core vessel in which the nuclear reaction takes place—will last for hundreds of thousands of years. The radioactive substance nickel 59, for example, is found in the reactor’s core, an area that has experienced the heavy bombardment of neutrons from fission’s chain reactions. Nickel 59 has a radioactive half-life of 80,000 years, meaning that it takes roughly a million years before it is safe. Current plans are to bury the waste, isolating it from humans and the biosphere until it becomes harmless. However, no country has yet taken political action on just where it will bury these materials. Some scientists assure the public that the problem of radioactive waste can be solved through such burial, although others debate whether it can be “solved” in the normal fashion at all. Waste cannot be destroyed, nor can scientists prove that it will stay out of the biosphere if buried. Proof of a hypothesis, via the scientific method, requires demonstration. Yet with radioactive waste, such proof would require hundreds of human generations and entail extensive risks. Critics, from aboriginal people to scientists, have often noted the presumptuousness of our civilization’s willingness to reach forward in time, borrowing from the future that which we can never repay. To leave a legacy that does not merely impoverish future life but may endanger it for millennia to come, constitutes an act of unprecedented irresponsibility. Ignoring early warnings Politicians traditionally have been reluctant to tackle an issue that will not come to the forefront until after their political careers have ended. Indeed, both government and industry have long ignored warnings about radioactive wastes, including the problem of decommissioning nuclear power facilities. In 1951, Harvard University president James B. Conant, former administrator of the wartime Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear bomb, spoke publicly of wastes that would last for generations. In 1957, a U.S. National Academy of Sciences panel cautioned that “unlike the disposal of any other type of waste, the hazard related to radioactive wastes is so great that no element of doubt should be allowed to exist regarding safety.” In 1960, another Academy committee urged that the waste issue be resolved before licensing new nuclear facilities. Such recommendations fell on deaf ears, and one country after another plunged ahead with building nuclear power plants. Government bureaucrats and industry spokespeople assured the public that decommissioning and nuclear waste could be dealt with, yet few resources were dedicated to these issues. Working with radioactive waste was “not glamorous . . . nobody got brownie points for caring about nuclear waste,” according to Carroll Wilson, first general manager of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. So the issue was figuratively, and almost literally, swept under the rug until the late 1970s when safety problems and accidents, questions about health effects, soaring costs, and eroding public confidence slowed reactor construction. Still, most people probably believe to this day that the problem of dismantling retired reactors and disposing of their wastes is not an issue to be concerned with. That may be true, but even if an engineering or social solution, such as a nuclear priesthood that will protect the biosphere, is found, there remains a huge, unpaid bill for achieving it. Despite some early real experience with the cost of decommissioning plants, it still remains uncertain just what those costs will be—and who will pay. Estimates of the dismantling cost have ranged from 10 per cent of the initial capital investment to 40 per cent, and even 100 per cent. This translates into costs ranging from $50 million to more than $3 billion for a large reactor. Who’s going to pay, and how much? In fact, one smaller reactor, the 167-megawatt Yankee Rowe of Massachusetts, which cost $186 million (1993$) to build in 1960 ended up having a dismantling bill of more than $350 million three decades later. Indeed, if governments and utilities have had a difficult time justifying the cost of building and operating reactors, closing them could be an even harder sell. In the United Kingdom, the government-owned utility insisted for years that the cost of tearing down redundant plants would be relatively small. Then, in 1989, when the government was in the process of a failed attempt to privatize the country’s nuclear industry, the utility admitted that the decommissioning cost was roughly four times that it had previously stated. Similarly, though most countries require their operators to collect funds for decommissioning during a reactor’s operation, most of these funds consist of only “bookkeeping” funds. That is, the utility credits a decommissioning fund with money, but the actual cash is spent on other activities. Thus, there is no guarantee that when the utility actually needs the money for decommissioning, it will have it. Yet even with systems that require actual cash reserves to be created shortages can easily mount, if reactors are shut down before the end of their original expected lifespan, as has been more the rule than the exception with the nearly 100 reactors now permanently closed. In fact, the early retirement costs of reactors in the United States’ electricity markets could run to more than $15 billion. In recent years, Sweden’s government raised the amount of money utilities need to collect for decommissioning. No one can say for sure just how much it will cost to handle the waste legacy from nuclear power, though so far the estimates continue to climb upward. In other countries, including France and most developing countries, governments intend to provide public funds to dismantle reactors when the time comes, ensuring that the current generation that uses the power from nuclear plants will pass on to future generations the cost of disposing of them. In the end, decommissioning could become the largest remaining expense facing the nuclear industry and the governments who have supported it, particularly if efforts to confine radioactive waste fail. Even if no more nuclear waste is created, dealing with existing waste will require attention and investments for a period that defies our usual notion of time. The challenge before human societies is to keep nuclear waste including the actual remnants of shuttered plants in isolation for the many millennia that make up the hazardous life of these materials. In this light, no matter what becomes of nuclear power, the nuclear age will continue for a very long time. Island nations threatened as global warming kills coral reefs Global warming is killing coral reefs and posing a threat to many of the world’s island nations, especially in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. A recent study by the U.S-based Global Coral Reef Alliance (GCRA) says that last year’s rise in global temperature destroyed most of the coral reefs surrounding the Seychelles archipelago in the Indian Ocean. The colourful reefs, which are part animal and part plant, protect coastlands from erosion, provide a home for many marine fish species and attract tourism. As havens of biodiversity they have been called the rainforests of the ocean. “There is no replacement for dead corals,” says Dr Thomas Goreau, President of the GCRA, who headed the study. Coral reefs may also be destroyed by events like pollution and hurricanes but such damage is minimal compared to that of global warming. Scientists say additional heat in the atmosphere, due to an increase in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, is going into the oceans. When the water temperature goes beyond a certain point, the corals respond by bleaching themselves, expelling the algae that give them colour and provide nutrition. If the warm condition persists for too long, it weakens the coral, sometimes fatally. Wide-scale bleaching began to be observed in the 1980s but dramatically increased last year, the hottest year of the century. Researchers say abnormally warm conditions persisted in sea water for more than five months in 1998, causing extensive damage to corals around island nations including Seychelles, Mauritius, Maldives and Sri Lanka. “Ninety per cent of corals in Seychelles and in some islands of Indonesia are already dead. We will witness the consequences in the next ten years,” says Goreau. The dead coral barriers have not disintegrated so far, but if and when they do low-lying islands in the Indian Ocean region would witness severe beach erosion, besides experiencing huge losses in fisheries.