Encore entente cordiale?

By John Busby

Mar/27/2008

The state visit of France's President Sarkozy will culminate in an agreement with Prime Minister Brown to jointly develop a new generation of nuclear power plants and to export the technology to the rest of the world. See Entente Cordiale Sanders Research, August 7th 2006. The state visit of France's President Sarkozy will culminate in an agreement with Prime Minister Brown to jointly develop a new generation of nuclear power plants and to export the technology to the rest of the world. Concurrently to the meeting in Arsenal's Emirates football stadium Sarkozy is offering to decommission some of his arsenal of nuclear warheads. The recent UK government consultation on nuclear power has ended with an invitation to the private sector to invest in a replacement fleet of reactors, while putting finance in place "up front" to avoid future decommissioning and waste management liabilities passing to the taxpayer. The designs of three out of four reactor candidates are to be examined by safety inspectors, culminating in the approvals for the new build in 2012. With an anticipated construction period of five years, new nuclear generation would commence at the earliest in 2017. It now appears that this is not big enough or fast enough for Gordon Brown. His industry minister John Hutton wants more than just replacement and is arguing for a "significantly higher proportion" of nuclear generation than at present. The competing designs submitted for scrutiny are those of Toshiba (Westinghouse in the US), GE (US), Candu (Canada) and Areva (France). The agency involved in the task has in the past has taken much time and has insisted on modifications for increased safety, which in the case of the Sizewell B station added to the cost and the delay. Cooperation with France for nuclear power means working with Areva, the station builder and fuel provider, which is 90% French state owned. Already electricity is generated and distributed in Britain by EdF, another French company, 85% state owned. Other potential nuclear generators in the UK include German E.On and RWE, Spanish Iberdrola and the UK's Centrica and would presumably be obliged to purchase an Areva reactor. There seems little point in studying the rival designs, but cutting them out risks infringing anti-competition laws. It seems that the Brownian "clunking fist" is impatient with the birth pangs of a nuclear "renaissance" unlikely to be financed by the private sector without subsidy and disincentivised by the need to meet waste management obligations "up front". He wants to lay the foundation stone of Sizewell C right now and that means building an Areva station (or two) there without scrutiny or waiting until the prototype being built in Finland has been satisfactorily commissioned. The Arsenal agreement represents a return to the corporate state – if we ever left it! If EdF is the keenest developer it is because, as a state company, it needs no subsidy and leads to a re-nationalisation of part of the UK electricity industry, albeit by the French state. The flaw is Areva's declining supply of uranium needed to make the nuclear fuel for its reactors in France, China, Belgium, Finland and others. Half of the US nuclear generation is fuelled from Russian ex-weapons highly enriched uranium diluted to a reactor grade by Rosatom. France supplies some enrichment tails for this program and it may be surmised that Sarkozy is planning to fill the looming gap in France's uranium supplies by sending some of its ex-weapons material to Russia for dilution. The Entente Cordiale in the football ground concludes the Blair-Chirac agreement in June 2006 (See RRR's "Entente Cordiale?"). The original Entente Cordiale was between Britain and France in 1904, worried about the German navy, but in 1907 it was to become the Triple Entente when Russia joined in to defend Serbia against Austro-Hungarian expansion. Maybe the Arsenal meeting is not just Encore Entente Cordiale but presages a Triple Entente to keep the lights on in France.

nuclear cooperation or nuclear WINDOW DRESSING?

U.S., Russia Agree On Plutonium Disposal U.S. and Russian officials announced agreement Monday on how to safely dispose of 34 metric tons of Russian weapons-grade plutonium, overcoming a major hurdle in a joint nuclear nonproliferation effort that at times has been close to falling apart. The two countries, in a joint statement, outlined a plan where Russia agrees to modify its fast-neutron reactors so that they can burn the plutonium, yet ensure that additional plutonium will not be produced. In turn, the United States, which also will dispose of 34 tons of excess plutonium from its weapons program, will continue to help Russia pay for construction of a plant in Russia to turn the plutonium into a mixed oxide fuel for the reactors and in research of a more advanced reactor that could speed up the disposal process. The two countries tentatively agreed to the plutonium disposal program seven years ago when it was hailed as a breakthrough in safeguarding some of Russia's nuclear material, but progress stalled because of a variety of disagreements, most recently over how Russia would destroy the plutonium.

Russia's ambivalence in turn caused Congress to balk at approving money for the U.S. portion of the plutonium disposal effort because of what lawmakers called the apparent inability to get Russia to agree on a disposal plan. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and Sergey Kiriyenko, director of Russia's Atomic Energy Agency, Rosatom, in a joint statement outlined a ''mutual understanding'' as to how Russia's plutonium would be disposed of and reiterated both countries' commitment to the program. The agreement ' 'reflects measurable progress towards disposing of a significant amount of weapons grade plutonium in Russia,'' said Bodman in a separate statement released by his office. William Tobey, deputy administrator at DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, said in an interview that the agreement should resolve some of the key concerns in Congress and keep the U.S. program on track. ''We nailed down some important details,'' said Tobey. Among them, he said, was assurance from the Russians that the reactors used to dispose of the plutonium will be modified to burn more than they produce, that the plutonium they produce will not be weapons grade, and that the U.S. contribution will be capped at $400 million. While viewed as major nonproliferation effort, the plutonium disposition is expected to take several decades and cover only a fraction of the weapons-grade plutonium both countries possess. The United States is believed to have about 100 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium and Russia about 140 metric tons. Nevertheless, former Sen. Sam Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonproliferation advocacy group, called the agreement a ''major advance toward achieving the elimination of enough plutonium to make more than 8,000 nuclear bombs.'' The agreement calls for 34 metric tons of Russia's excess plutonium to be turned into a mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel and then burned in its existing BN600 fast-neutron reactor and in a larger version, the BN800, once it is built. It also calls for continued U.S. help for Russian development of a more advanced gas-turbine reactor that could speed up the disposition. In recent years the nonproliferation effort has been stymied by Russia's insistence that the plutonium program mesh with the country's expanded civilian nuclear energy programs. Rosatom plans to implement the plutonium disposition ''within the framework of the strategy for developing Russian nuclear energy,'' says the joint statement. Disposal would begin in the BN600 reactor in 2012, three years before the United States is scheduled to begin processing plutonium into MOX for use in a commercial reactor. Construction of the $4 billion MOX processing facility is expected to begin next year at the Savannah River nuclear facility in South Carolina where design work already has begun. The announcement Monday anticipates 1.5 metric tons of Russian plutonium being burned a year once both of Russia's reactors are operating, meaning it will take more than 22 years to destroy the 34 metric tons, once both reactors are operating. Ed Lyman, nuclear weapons expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said use of the relatively small BN600 reactor ''will put Russian plutonium disposition on the slow track'' because the reactor can burn only about three-tenths of a ton of plutonium a year, and the larger reactor has yet to be built. Lyman said ''this is a total retreat from the original concept'' which would have disposed of the plutonium in larger light-water reactors, an option the Russian rejected.