GLOBAL NUCLEAR RETREAT? ARMENIA, OTHERS, AIM TO KEEP PLANTS ALIVE
Josie Garthwaite
11:05, May 14, 2012
While Japan is now trying to run its economy without nuclear energy
for the first time since 1970, the post-Fukushima world’s continued
dependence on atomic power is probably best illustrated on the other
side of Asia.
Armenia is vowing to keep its one nuclear reactor running, despite
international pressure to close the 32-year-old Soviet-designed plant,
which sits in a broad seismiczone that stretches from Turkey to
the Arabian Sea. One of the world’s last remaining nuclear reactors
without a primary containment structure, Metsamor is now slated to
continue operating for as long as four years beyond its original 2016
retirement date. Armenia has postponed shutdown until a delayed new
reactor comes online, no earlier than 2019 or 2020.
The April decision comes at a pivotal time for nuclear energy. Some
nations are backing away from nuclear power in the wake of last year’s
earthquake-and-tsunami-triggered Fukushima Daiichi accident. Nowhere
is that more apparent than in Japan itself, where a series of local
decisions led to the shutdown, as of this past weekend, of all 54
reactors, once the source of one-third of the nation’s power. Germany
and Switzerland have set timetables for phasing out their nuclear
plants. And France, which derives 80 percent of its electricity
from nuclear power, has elected a new president, Socialist Francois
Hollande, who favors reduced nuclear dependence and closure of the
nation’s oldest reactor, Fessenheim, located in a seismic zone on
the Rhine River.
But nuclear energy provided 13 percent of the world’s electricity in
2010, and that amount of power cannot be replaced quickly or cheaply.
In Bulgaria, where licenses for two Soviet-designed reactors at
the Kozloduy plant are set to expire in 2017 and 2019, 20-year
extensions are under review. The United States, world leader in
nuclear generation, also leads the world in coaxing more life out
of nuclear reactors, having approved 20-year extensions for as many
as 71 licenses. In Armenia, there is strong political will to build
a new nuclear reactor, but the financing and construction of new
state-of-the-art facilities here and elsewhere is slow. The obvious
choice, in many nations, is to keep the old plants running.
Chris Earls, director of safety-focused regulation for the Nuclear
Energy Institute, which represents the U.S. nuclear industry, sums
up the advantages succinctly:
“Once plants are built and operating, they’re a very cheap source of
reliable power.”
Unique Reliance
Perhaps no country relies more heavily on a single reactor, in a more
tenuous situation, than the former Soviet state of Armenia in West
Asia. Supplying more than 40 percent of the country’s electricity,
the Metsamor reactor stands in a region prone to earthquakes,
close to farmland and population centers. The landlocked nation’s
energy alternatives are limited by blockades and tense relations on
its borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey. Metsamor is just 20 miles
(36 kilometers) from the Armenian capital, Yerevan, and 10 miles
(16 kilometers) from the Turkish border.
Metsamor is one of just 16 nuclear plants still operating in the
world that were built without a primary containment structure, all
of them Soviet-designed. The pressurized-water reactor has undergone
hundreds of safety upgrades since the devastating 6.8-magnitude Spitak
earthquake in 1988 killed 25,000 Armenians and left 500,000 homeless.
Some 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the epicenter, Metsamor’s two
reactors were undamaged. But one reactor was closed for 6.5 years,
while a slightly older sister reactor was never restarted and is now
being decommissioned.
Safety improvements have not quelled all concern about Metsamor,
however, and Armenia has faced international pressure – and collected
aid from the United States and Europe – to close the Metsamor plant
by 2016. After Armenia reneged on a deal to close the plant in 2004,
an EU representative called the plant “a danger to the entire region,”
not only because of the high seismic risk but also because nuclear
fuel was flown to the landlocked country’s civilian airport, rather
than being delivered by sea or rail. In 2006, Armenia adopted an
action plan with the European Union in which it agreed to set an early
closure date and “deal with the consequences of an early closure,”
in part by developing hydropower, energy efficiency, and renewable
energy resources.
Pressure to retire the Metsamor reactor before 2016 has only
intensified in the year since the earthquake and tsunami that triggered
the crisis at Fukushima in Japan. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan
has insisted that the Metsamor reactor is safe, and that it must
continue operating until a new reactor starts up.
The estimated $5 billion construction project, a joint venture with
Russia, was supposed to begin this year, but it has taken longer than
anticipated to raise financing. It wasn’t until early this year that
Russia agreed to finance 50 percent of the project.
The decisions that Armenia and other nations now face on nuclear power
are a simple function of the age of most of the 436 nuclear power
reactors now operating in the world. In the United States, which only
this year licensed construction of its first new nuclear power plant
in 30 years, nuclear plants were typically licensed (and designed)
for 40 years. The Soviet plants were generally designed for 30 years.
Aging plants are not inherently dangerous, Earls said. “It’s good
practice to make things better over time. But it doesn’t make sense
to retire an older plant before its time just because there’s a new
widget out there that might make things better,” he said. In general,
he added, “We should not assume that just because a plant is older,
it’s not safe. It is, if it’s maintained properly.”
The United States, which generates more nuclear energy than any
other country and relies on it for 20 percent of its power, has never
rejected a nuclear license renewal application outright. According
to Earls, as many as 15 more applications are under review, and
17 additional plants intend to submit applications. “Over the next
two to three years, there’s going to be a huge bow wave of plants
entering this extended period of operation,” he said. And the industry
is already looking ahead to a second extension of those licenses to
keep the reactors operating past 2029.
Stress Tests
Proper maintenance and monitoring, with a view to the long term,
is key. The decision to tack a few years onto the Metsamor reactor’s
lifetime at this late stage could itself be cause for concern. “I would
be interested to know the mindset of the people who are operating the
plant,” Earls said. If operators think, “We’re going to be shut down
next year. We can safely maintain to that point,” he said, some of
the maintenance and improvements that would be necessary to extend
the life of the plant may fall by the wayside.
In an effort to ensure safety and security, Armenia agreed last June
(along with six other countries that neighbor the EU) to conduct
“stress tests” at the Metsamor plant and submit to a transparent
peer-review process similar to those planned for nuclear reactors
throughout Europe.
Documented in public reports with a common structure for
apples-to-apples comparison, the tests are meant to help regulators
reassess risk and safety margins in extreme (and, pre-Fukushima,
largely unexpected) scenarios caused by natural disasters or human
action.
Switzerland and Ukraine are the only non-EU countries that have been
fully integrated into the stress test and peer-review process.
According to a European Commission spokesperson, Armenia is currently
receiving assistance from the EU to carry out stress tests at
Metsamor, and a national report could be ready by the end of this
year or early 2013.
As with many nuclear projects, the stress tests have taken longer
than anticipated. Last week, EU Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger
told reporters the European Commission will issue a final report
on the results no earlier than the fall, rather than next month,
as previously scheduled. Multinational inspection teams had visited
only 38 of 147 reactors in the EU as of March 2012. But in this case,
Oettinger said in a statement, it is not time that is of the essence.
“EU citizens have the right to know and understand how safe the
nuclear power plants are they live close to. Soundness is more
important than timing.”
For National Geographic News Published May 8, 2012
Photograph by Justyna Mielnikiewicz, Getty Images. Operators check
functions inside the control room of Armenia’s Metsamor Nuclear Power
Plant in this 2005 photograph.
From: Baghdasarian
http://hetq.am/eng/articles/14365/global-nuclear-retreat?-armenia-others-aim-to-keep-plants-alive.html