“Nuclear Power Is Already a Climate Casualty"

French Rivers Heat Up, Luck Is Not a Strategy for the Ukraine, The Germans Take the "Evidence-based" Path. We Chat with Nuclear Expert Dr. Paul Dorfman

Dr. Paul Dorfman, Chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group, former Secretary to the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Internal Radiation, and Visiting Fellow at the University of Sussex

“If something goes wrong, you can really start to write off a lot of people's lives.”

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HOT GLOBE:

Paul, thanks for joining us. Let's talk about nuclear and climate change.

PAUL DORFMAN:

 Thanks, Steve. It’s important to understand that nuclear is very likely to be a significant climate casualty. For cooling purposes nuclear reactors need to be situated by large bodies of water, which means either by the coast or inland by rivers or large water courses. Sea levels are rising much quicker than we had thought and inland the rivers are heating up, potentially drying up, and also subject to significant flooding and flash-flooding and inundation. The key issue for coastal nuclear is storm surge, which is basically where atmospheric conditions meet high tide, which is essentially what happens in Fukushima.

HOT GLOBE: The decommissioned nuclear plant in southern California at San Onofre is a case in point with the cans of nuclear waste still stored in a concrete containment box lapped by the rising tide--

DORFMAN: In France where I am right now [the government utility] just today put out once again warnings about their reactors having to power down because of low river flow, heated river flow. Now that's not simply for reactor cooling. It's about the water that the reactors are cooled by, which then need to be discharged back into the rivers. This super-heated water would basically kill the ecology. The reactors have to power down so as not to discharge heated waters back.

Nuclear has been touted as a potential ameliorated solution to climate. The problem, of course, is that nuclear will be, and relatively soon, a climate casualty, so coastal nuclear, unfortunately, is likely to flood via storm surge and inland nuclear will struggle more and more to get reactor cooling water and be able to discharge super-heated water to the receiving river waters.

“The notion that nuclear will will help us with climate is fortunately –unfortunately--simply not the case.”

HOT GLOBE: In America there's an awful lot of new money sloshing around for climate remediation. Do you have an opinion on Small Nuclear Reactors?

 DORFMAN: It's not been simply I, but the former head of the US nuclear regulatory commission, the NRC, who coauthored a key study which says quite clearly that small modular reactors produce significantly more radioactive waste than conventional reactors. The waste issue is absolutely key, but there are other issues as well. I remember being invited to give a talk at the Royal United Services Institute in the UK, basically the governmental intellectual arm of the military. The compact design of small nuclear reactors is not suited to defense in depth of the nuclear island and the military guys really seemed to get and understand this, similar problem to conventional reactors in terms of safety and security as we're finding out in Ukraine now.

The other issue is what's known as the “economies of scale.” The bigger the nuclear plant the cheaper. It's exactly the same with wind where the bigger the wind power the more the megawatts. Going small goes against this completely. The economics of small nuclear reactors are proving deeply problematic. The cost per MW hour is rising. Already conventional reactors are hugely, massively, 4 to 5 times more expensive than renewables-plus, and it's looking more and more that small nuclear reactors will have similar economic and finance problems, and of course small nuclear reactors are still in development. There are no functioning small nuclear reactors in the world producing conventional power, and they are many years from deployment.

So given the fact that we now know we have an existential climate crisis, small nuclear reactors and of course certainly conventional nuclear look to be far too costly and far too late to help the climate crisis.”

HOT GLOBE: Tell us a little bit about the situation in Zaporizhia. It comes and goes in the American media, but it seems pretty freaking scary to us over here in California! How do you estimate the dangers in the last month or so?

DORFMAN: We’ve been lucky so far but luck isn't a strategy. Zaporizhia --6 very large nuclear power plants, the largest station in Europe with a very significant radiological inventory and critically very significant spent fuel, spent high level radiological nuclear inventory--is in the middle of a shooting war. Now there's no way that any nuclear power plant can survive a concerted military attack. No nuclear power plant in the world is designed to do this. The International Atomic Energy agency has been very quiet about this for the last few decades which is kind of worrying given the fact that it seems obvious. Basically, people like me and many others haven't wanted to talk about this in the past for fear of putting ideas into people's heads, but the cat is really out of the bag now, and in an increasingly unstable world, it seems absolutely clear that nuclear risk for conventional civil nuclear plants is ramping up  both in Zaporizhia and elsewhere whether in Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India or any other potential conflict zone. There’s a very real risk that existing and any new nuclear power plants will be in the firing line.

In Zaporizhia the key concern is cooling-–the cooling ponds are open but the reactors themselves are basically open in all these plants, too. They are in cold shutdown but they also need power to keep the internal sort of governance working, so both the reactors in cold shut down, not in active use and certainly the high level radioactive waste, need cooling. If something God forbid goes wrong you'll see a worst case scenario. You'll see what happened at Fukushima. Within eight hours you'll see hydrogen buildup, hydrogen explosion. You'll then see significant loss of cooling. If the backup diesel generators don't run within a day or two, you could well see meltdown. The worst case prognosis is very grave.

HOT GLOBE: Oii. Explain the difference between Chernobyl and Fukushima in terms of Zaporizhia.

DORFMAN: Chernobyl was a graphite moderated reactor. Graphite is the kind of thing that you find on the inside of a pencil. When Chernobyl blew, this graphite was distributed high into the atmosphere and could blow far and wide. The kinds of reactors that you find in Zaporizhia are not, thank heavens, of that design. They are slightly newer Russian designed reactors which have gone through certain kinds of safety upgrades post Fukushima, not the spent fueling ponds but the reactors themselves, so if the worst were to happen, you wouldn't see a Chernobyl. You would more likely see a Fukushima because you wouldn't see this punch out of the graphite particles into the air, which would carry the radiation far and wide. What you would see, unfortunately, is very severe contamination of the immediate area and of the region, certainly of Ukraine, potentially Russia and certainly middle Europe. Now what's also critically important post-accident is what would happen to the land. Ukraine is a very significant grain producing nation and other populations including the African population absolutely depend on this grain. So

that's the thing about nuclear, if something goes wrong you can really start to write off a lot of people's lives.

The high risk of this form of technology when we have other forms of technology that will lead us to net zero—there really isn't any significantly good reason to go down the new nuclear route for whole sets of reasons and one of those reasons is we're living in an increasingly unstable world and nuclear is increasingly, civil nuclear, is increasingly risky.

HOT GLOBE: It's always bothered me that Saudi Arabia because of the Trump administration has now got access to the beginnings of nuclear power, and to a future nuclear bomb. The idea of selling small nuclear reactors around the world raises a pretty problematic point.

DORFMAN: That's absolutely true. Saudi has made no bones about its nuclear ambitions and I mean its military nuclear ambitions. Saudi diplomats have said quite clearly that they're looking towards Iran and that they're seriously thinking about both civil and military nuclear. So there's a potential for an arms race, a military nuclear arms race in the Middle East region. It’s actually even more bad news for the Middle East because in a proxy war if say, for example, Russian and America wanted to have a bit of a go and they didn't want to absolutely destroy each other's country where would they be fighting their proxy nuclear war? The first region that comes to mind is the Middle East and Saudi and Iran.

The economies of small nuclear reactors depend absolutely on production to scale.  It's been proven time and time again that in order to make any money at all, to break even on small nuclear production, you need to sell them abroad. Now, selling them abroad to whom, for what reasons? You'd be selling them to developing nations who may or may not have the capacity to regulate, to protect, to defend in depth, and so therefore you would be significantly expanding the potential for military nuclear risk whether that means a dirty bomb or further nuclear development.

 HOT GLOBE: A slightly different question here, but Germany had ongoing nuclear plants and even though they were still producing electricity, they've shut those down. That may be a little puzzling to some Americans. Can you explain that?

DORFMAN: First of all, what Germany does is evidence-based policy. Germany puts out its scientific, technological questions, its energy questions, to well-funded high level research units. They go away and do their research. They come back with their research. They give it to the government departments and then the government makes a decision. So it’s evidence-based policy making. Over the years Germany has said well, we want to get to net-zero and we're kind of worried about nuclear. Now around 2011 when Fukushima happened--remember Chancellor Merkel is a PhD chemist. She realized like many of us that even in an advanced society things could go badly wrong since accidents are by definition accidental.

HOT GLOBE: Good line

DORFMAN: Yeah, who knew? [laughs] So when Fukushima happened, Merkel and many others in Germany said well, look, we can't stand the pain of this.  I was having supper with Naoto Kan, the premier of Japan at the time of Fukushima after we both spoke in Westminster. Even then I was shocked when he turned to me and said that if the wind had been in the wrong direction, they would have lost Tokyo. The majority of the pollution went out into the Pacific Ocean. Now to the point about Germany. It's landlocked so the Germans looked at the possibility of an accident and they came up with the numbers. It would cost trillions and trillions and trillions of Euros if they had a nuclear accident and they said look, we really can't be doing this. This is just crazy, basically, and so we're going to do “the German energy transition.” We're going to try to lead the world on this and we're going to move stepwise into renewables-plus, that's renewables solar wind energy storage, interconnection, demand site management, energy management, distributed grids and a significant centralized upgrade of grids, too.

Steam rises from the cooling towers of the Grohnde nuclear plant in Germany, December 29, 2021, as Germany shut down its remaining nuclear power plants. AP photo by Julian Stratenschulte.

Now clearly Germany has a core problem, a fossil fuel problem, but they didn't want to go down the fissile fuel route so Germany has said well OK for the time being we're going to rely on gas but then we're going to move to a full renewable economy. Well, the war has speeded that up. Since the war Germany has burnt less coal and Germany has shuttered all its nuclear power plants. It's done this because what Germany says it will do, it does, unlike many other states. It set upon a route to go renewables. Now there is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything costs and there's no perfect solution to the energy crisis, but what Germany is trying to do is to lead the world in this so-called energy transition, and I won't spout numbers but basically what has happened is you've just seen significant renewable deployment, significant storage and a water storage as it were deployment which is sort of integrated into the power system and also integrated into the democratic system whereby by local communities also own the local renewable aspects of the local renewable power generation. It’s basically saying well look yes we can do this rather like Americans, you know, we have a dream, we will try to do this, it will be difficult but we will do our best to get there since the costs and the risks of nuclear are far too great. Let's find a realistic, sustainable, positive, constructive way through.

HOT GLOBE: Paul, we are coming to the end of a great podcast here. We’ve talked about nuclear and war and the future of humanity but what do you do for fun? I mean, are you kayaking in Corsica, swimming the Seine?

DORFMAN: We're on a family holiday here and the weather is absolutely fantastic. I can see the blue Mediterranean from where I'm sitting.   

HOT GLOBE: It’s a beautiful planet—

DORFMAN: Yes, well, it is a beautiful planet and that's the point. We need to preserve it. I remember after I did my first degree and I went on to my PhD I had to think. I was going towards plant biology, actually, and I was thinking, well, how do we try to save the planet and what is the best way to do that? Although I would have loved to have gone into plant biology, I thought the pollution control and specifically nuclear pollution controls was a productive way of preserving our green planet. #

(This post has been edited and condensed for clarity and length. For the full podcast and transcription please upgrade to Paid, available soon. Thanks.)