Amid the climate change discussion, power companies are increasingly promoting nuclear energy as a clean and secure energy source and several countries have stated their intentions to build new plants.

Nuclear power produces large amounts of electricity with considerably less air pollutant emissions than other traditional forms of non-renewable energy.

Furthermore, it is claimed that nuclear energy is one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and is needed to secure energy supplies.

British Energy, who generates more than 80 percent of electricity from nuclear sources, states that in 2007 its nuclear generation avoided the emission of almost 35 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, when compared to the prevailing fossil mix, equivalent to half the emissions from the UK’s total passenger cars.

According to a recently up-dated report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on “The Future of Nuclear Power”, today there are about 44 plants under construction principally in China, India, Korea, and Russia.

 While the motivation to make more use of nuclear power is great, surprisingly, progress is slow.

The MIT report argues that “Even if all the announced plans for new nuclear power plant construction are realized, the total will be well behind that needed for reaching a thousand gigawatts of new capacity worldwide by 2050".

The report warns that “if more is not done, nuclear power will diminish as a practical and timely option for deployment at a scale that would constitute a material contribution to climate change risk mitigation”.

The slow pace of deployment can be attributed to a few key issues which are still challenging the nuclear power industry more than forty years after the first commercial nuclear power plant entered service.

The MIT report found that while nuclear power in general has a good safety record there are still challenges related to unfavourable economics, proliferation concerns and the long-term management of nuclear wastes.

The management and final disposal of high-level radioactive waste continues to be one of the most intractable problems facing the nuclear power industry and one of the primary obstacles to its extensive development.

Nuclear waste might not be quite the right word. Technically, the term for the bulk of the material to be dealt with is “spent nuclear fuel” (SNF). SNF is the fuel that has been used to power nuclear reactors.

It is not classified as waste in many countries as it contains large amounts of uranium and some amounts of plutonium which can potentially be extracted through reprocessing and reused as fuel.

The general approach, once spent fuel has been removed from a nuclear reactor, is to place it in interim storage at the reactor site. Following this, SNF is then managed differently by different countries and, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it is either:

• Placed in storage facilities away from the reactor for 5 to 100 years, conditioned after an appropriate decay period, then stored before final disposal in a geologic repository; or
• Reprocessed after away-from-reactor storage. The resulting liquid high-level waste is then immobilized in a stable matrix (i.e. borosilicate glass) and stored until final disposal in a geologic repository.

Deep geologic disposal is considered as the best method for final isolation where packaged waste is placed in a stable formation several hundred meters below the surface with engineered barriers around and/or between the waste packages and the surrounding rock.

However, to date, no country has a geological repository for SNF storage or disposal and furthermore most countries have not decided on its final destination. As a result, long-term storage such as dry-cask storage on-site (steel-lined concrete silos) is becoming a growing reality.

Such storage facilities have been operated with no major problems so far, but many experts argue that it is becoming increasingly important to have disposal arrangements available due to technical, safety, and security concerns.

Deciding on the approach for SNF management will need the extensive participation of all stakeholders, and without a pressing timescale, it seems governments and power companies are taking their time to deliberate alternatives.

Since SNF stays highly radioactive for a few thousands of years the fundamental safety goal is to ensure that the health risks of exposure to radiation from this material are reduced to an acceptably low level for as long as it poses a significant hazard.

According to the MIT report the only adequate proxy for measuring the performance and suitability of waste management systems is this safety goal.

While this makes perfect sense, it was interesting to note that this is actually not a widely used proxy. Sustainability reports of many power companies limit their nuclear waste reporting to the volume and mass of waste material generated, the amount of heat its emits, its radioactivity and the management and storage strategy.

Taiwan Power Company, which generates 13 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, explains that it applies a three-stage strategy for the management of spent nuclear fuel, i.e. pool storage, dry cask storage, and final disposal.

Taiwan Power states the storage capacity of the first two stages in numbers of operating years of the power plant, e.g. the storage pool can accommodate the spent nuclear fuel produced in the 30 year operation of each reactor.

With regards to final disposal, Taiwan Power only explains that the company engages in the geological investigation and technology development for the final disposal of spent fuel but no further information is provided.

It seems no solution has been found yet for the final disposal of spent fuel. The company states that it has generated 111 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel in 2008.

CLP Group, which generates around 30 percent of its energy from nuclear power, states that its spent nuclear fuel is being transferred to a licensed contractor after storage on-site in a dedicated storage pool for a number of years.

Following reprocessing, some 96% of spent nuclear fuel will be re-usable while the remaining 4% will be treated and disposed as high-level waste. In 2008, the operation of Guangdong Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station, which CLP owns to 25 % through its subsidiary HKNIC and from which it takes 70 % of the electricity, produced 37.7 tonnes of SNF. Radiation safety performance of the power station is disclosed through HKNIC.

British Energy, which generates around 85 percent of its energy from nuclear fuel, states that for each kilowatt hour of electricity generated from nuclear sources it produces 0.012 g of spent fuel.

The spent fuel partly stays in storage on-site and partly is being reprocessed by a contractor (Sellafield Ltd.).

The company states that since April 2008 British Energy’s spent fuel contracts with Sellafield Ltd. have been transferred to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority which is now responsible for determining whether spent fuel is reprocessed to separate uranium for possible future use or stored for the longer term.

British Energy is one of the few companies reporting on radioactivity levels in the environment. The company’s CSR Report 2007/2008 states that the results of a monitoring exercise conducted by a number of public agencies and departments has shown that the maximum dose reported for discharges to air from a British Energy site was 0.085 millisieverts (mSv) “about the dose obtained during a single flight from London to Tokyo (a radiation dose is received when flying at altitude from cosmic radiation)”.

For comparison, UK’s public dose limit is 1 mSv per annum for the controlled release of radioactivity from artificial sources, and the average UK annual dose of 2.2 mSv received by the general public due to natural radiation.

The Electric Utility Sector Supplement of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) requests companies to report on

• Management strategy and storage methods for different types of radioactive nuclear waste including temporary and permanent storage
• Environmental, health and safety impacts of radioactive nuclear waste
• Security measures according to the applicable management standards/legislative framework
• Mass and activity of spent nuclear fuel sent for processing and reprocessing per year
• Radioactive waste produced per net MWh nuclear generation per year.

Disclosure on the level of exposure risks is not mentioned in the GRI guideline and many power companies are not yet reporting on this particular metric or the environmental, health and safety impacts of radioactive nuclear waste in general.

This is to no surprise given the great challenges faced in the industry and by governments in dealing with spent nuclear fuel.

In China eleven nuclear power reactors are commercially operated, fourteen are under construction, at least ten more are about to start construction in 2009 and additional reactors are planned with the aim to increase nuclear capacity to at least 40 GW of electricity by 2020 (at the end of 2008 the nuclear capacity was at around 9 GW).

This will result in a cumulative spent fuel amount of 12,300 tonnes. China envisages a closed fuel cycle strategy which involves at-reactor storage, away from-reactor storage, and eventually reprocessing.

As the basis for a long-term government program the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) has drafted a state regulation on civil spent fuel treatment. To date, spent high-level nuclear fuel is stored in storage pools on-site and then transferred to the reprocessing center at the Lanzhou Nuclear Fuel Complex, where a large interim spent fuel storage pool has been constructed.

Recycling and reprocessing is not operational yet, but feasibility studies are ongoing. The residual high-level waste coming from the reprocessing plants is planned to be isolated in a geological repository some 500 metres deep.

Site selection is ongoing and will be completed by 2020. An underground research laboratory will then operate for 20 years and actual disposal is anticipated to start in 2050.

Obviously, no long-term solution has been implemented yet to dispose of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. To date, the amount of SNF to be dealt with is handled safely through on-site storage and in some countries reprocessing.

This and the long decay period required before SNF can be safely isolated, in for example geological repositories, leaves a window of opportunity to deliberate various management and disposal strategies based on an adequate stakeholder engagement.

  Governments and power companies that are generating energy from nuclear fuel and promote it as an important option in mitigating climate change are advised to report more transparently on nuclear waste management and disposal strategies and to initiate the engagement of relevant stakeholders.

Nuclear waste reporting can learn a lot from climate change reporting which also started as a highly complex issue to report on with lots of uncertain science. But companies have found ways to break down the complex science and report in an engaging and easy-to-understand way while meeting expectations of various stakeholders.

Highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel has a very long toxic lifetime and can represent a long-term risk to human health. With an increasing amount of this material being stored on-site public concern is increasing and companies and governments can expect to come under increasing pressure to disclose how they are dealing with this risk.

This article was originally posted on the CSR Asia website.

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