Latest update: 16/11/2009 

- nuclear power


Nuclear energy rocked in a cloud of confusion and anger

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This week: Environment looks into the ‘dumping’ of toxic waste in Siberia and the safety of the third generation power stations, EPR’s.

ENVIRONMENT
By Eve IRVINE

 

Thousands of tonnes of depleted uranium, from France, are currently being stored in Siberia. Environmental groups like Greenpeace say that this is toxic waste and want action to be taken to prevent the transfer and ‘dumping’ of such hazardous materials. However, France's nuclear operator, EDF, says that the material being sent to Russia can still be recycled.
 
Following a recent report, the government has launched an inquiry into exactly how much can be reused.
 
"The problem is that they say that 96% of the radioactive material is recyclable, after our investigation we have realised that it's just 10%, and this 10% is used in just four reactors, out of 58 reactors," notes Laure Noualhat, one of the authors of the report.
 
And while the inquiry into that goes on –a new debate about nuclear is brewing in France: The third generation of power plants, EPRs are being built, but, already their safety is being called into question. French, Finnish and British regulators have called for "improvements" to be made in their designs.
 
They say the emergency controls are not sufficiently independent of the day-to-day operations, and there's a risk that both systems could fail at the same time. State-owned company Areva is already building EPRs in China and in Finland, and is under consideration for a UK government contract, it says it’s ready to make changes to its designs and will not compromise on safety.
 
France relies on nuclear power for almost 80% of its electricity needs and this winter it could be forced to increase its imports as a delay on the maintenance of older reactors has meant that they remain closed or not functioning at full capacity.
 
Finally, the Atlantic coast has one of the highest concentrations of wave power in the world and Ireland has decided to profit from it. Five years ago a test centre was set up off the southern coast of the island, it has yielded positive initial results and the aim now is to produce 500 megawatts of electricity from wave energy by 2020.

 

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