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French Nuclear Industry In Turmoil As Manufacturer Buckles
mdsolar writes with bad news for France and its nuclear industry. "France's nuclear industry is in turmoil after the country's main reactor manufacturer, Areva, reported a loss for 2014 of 4.8 billion euros ($5.3 billion) — more than its entire market value. The government of France, the world's most nuclear dependent country, has a 29% stake in Areva, which is among the biggest global nuclear technology companies. The loss puts its future — and that of France as a leader in nuclear technology — at risk. Energy and Environment Minister Segolene Royal said Wednesday she asked Areva and utility giant Electricite de France to work together on finding solutions, amid reports of a possible merger or other link-up. The government said in a statement that it's working closely with Areva to restructure and secure financing, and would 'take its responsibility as a shareholder' in future decisions about its direction. Areva reported Wednesday 1 billion euros in losses on three major nuclear projects in Finland and France, among other hits. Areva has lost money for years, in part linked to delays on those projects and to a global pullback from nuclear energy since the 2011 Fukushima accident."
Olkiluoto 3 was originally supposed to be in commercial production in 2009. Then it was postponed to 2011. Then 2013. And now, at the earliest, perhaps 2015. The whole project schedule has been overly optimistic and there have been numerous quality issues in welding, components and such. Apparently Areva was surprised about the Finnish officials being so strict about the quality guidelines and also failed to deliver all the design documentation to them in time (because in here, you simply don't build shit like this without plans). In 2009 they also threatened to delay the start of the final construction phase until TVO made changes to the contract in favor of Areva.
In 2012 Areva estimated the building costs being around 8,5 billion euros, which is quite a bit more than the shipping price of 3 billion.
So yeah, don't buy nuclear reactors from the French. Or cars for that matter.
The contract includes fines for delays, and the Finns (no pun intended) have now charged Billions worth of 'late fees' to Areva. Areva promised the moon and can't deliver. It would be great if public projects in the US would include the same sort of strong rules as what the Finns did here. No more overtime and over budget as the norm when building roads and bridges. A project being late would mean that tax payer money would increase instead of dwindling.
And they're still lower than the costs of fossil fuel based technologies, which is global warming. And they're still lower than the costs of switching over to entirely "renewable" technologies which, in the immediate future, would leave a substantial gap between consumption and generation.
There is something particular with the EPR and Olkiluoto 3 that is worth pointing out.
For the building of a french nuclear plant, the usual workshare is the following: Areva delivers the reactor equipment, while the EDF utility acts as the prime contractor for the construction of the plant.
For Olkiluoto 3, Areva took the lead, and operated as a turnkey plant manufacturer. This was actually part of a power struggle between Areva and EDF. You can see it did not turn out well.
Newer EPR plants (Flamanville, Taishan) reverted to a more traditional workshare.
Also Finnish nuclear safety regulator has been careful. French kinda assumed that the regulations were basically just bunch of text on a page that could be ignored if they felt like it (and any regulatory hurdles could be cleared with backroom dealings and "trust us" hand waving).
Not so. In Finland nuclear plant safety is Serious Business (0 accidents and we'd like to keep it that way) and the people watching over the industry actually do their jobs. French were not pleased to find this out in practice - any shoddy bits they've built (often using cheap foreign labor that may or may not be competent...) that hasn't been up to approved plans & specs has been systematically busted by the inspectors and re-designs/refits haven't exactly been easy or cheap. ...and since everything is built under a fixed price contract with hefty late fees built in, Areva is in deep doo-doo. Especially since they cannot "make a deal" to get out of the situation. Finnish side will happily drive them to bankruptcy, if needed, and squeeze every penny as per the original contract while accepting nothing less than what was contracted for.
Granted, the end result may be an incomplete nuclear power plant that will need a new contract with someone else to finish it...
In case of the new British power plant there are not only upfront investments, there is also a guarantee for the power price that is twice the going rate and this guarantee is extended for the whole lifetime of the power plant and will be adjusted for inflation over that time.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Allow me to translate from this french: "take its responsibility as a shareholder" = shoulder losses.
We here in France have what we call "état-stratège", where the taxpayer is turned into this wunderkind shareholder who holds lots of major stock forever and gets none of the dividends.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
I looked at all the comments. There don't seem to be any that mention the underlying issue. Areva makes HUGE reactors. Management of large constructions causes expensive problems. Dealing with a disaster in a huge reactor is also far more difficult.
Quote: "Generally, modern small reactors for power generation are expected to have greater simplicity of design, economy of mass production, and reduced siting costs. Most are also designed for a high level of passive or inherent safety in the event of malfunction."
The Areva design does not have "passive or inherent safety".
...has all nuclear operations problems solved. No real accidents in US Navy nuclear reactor ops so far. And they operate as many reactors as france at one time in much more difficult circumstances.
Compare that to the uniformed fuckers of Britain and Russia. They manage to leak from their reactors all the time. Because they have a relaxed attitude to engineering. Rickover booted the politicos and social engineers out of the USN reactor business. He was much hated for this.
But - Results matter.
Does that also count all the land from which the fissionables were mined? Several people here are pointing to coal mines, but they make no mention of mining operations that support the nuclear industries.
Not sure, but given the difference in energy density (6 orders of magnitude IIRC), the stats are not in coal's favour.
You claim that Chernobyl is "managed"?
It is now, yes.
In the weeks after the accident, all the management that was possible was performed.
Yes, and that is a form of management. The GP claimed that it was unmanaged, which is patently false.
. Hundreds of workers sacrificed themselves to dump the concrete on top of the site. Wikipedia isn't the go-to place for information, but you've already used it. Wikipedia will suffice to make my own point.
Uh... for someone quoting wikipedia, you need to actually read it. The "hundreds" you refer to is actually 60.
Today, the only "management" being done, is to man the gates that block access to the exclusion zone.
Apparently they're building a new cover. But so? What extra management needs to be done? Again the GP claimed that it is/was unmanaged. If you need to keep people out, and that's all you need to do and you are doing it then you are managing it.
About sixty dead, huh? I don't accept that, any more than I accept the inflated figures of a million dead.
OK, so a few hundred dead then? What do you accept? Either way, it's still safer than the alternatives by a long way. The UN originally predicted about 4000 deaths due to cancer, but that used a linear no-threshold model of radiation exposure which is looking less and less likely to be correct and seriously overesimates the effect of radiation.
Nonetheless, the numbers are small, very small. And this is the worst ever disaster from a powerplant of a sort never built in the west (strongly positive feedback coefficient) and that no longer exists (all remaining RBMKs have been modified to a much lower void coefficient).
By comparison, the coal industry pollution in the US shortens about 24,000 lives per year of which 2,800 apparently are due to cancer. So, even accepting the enlarged numbers, the total worldwide deaths from the worst ever nuclear accident are around 1/10 of the deaths *per year* in the US alone from coal pollution. And that's ignoring the minors.
So, either way, nuclear is vastly safer than coal. You have to bump the number of deaths quite high before it reaches the safety levels of the next-most-safe which IIRC is either solar or wind.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Those dangers pale to uncertainty and mismanagement caused by political instead of scientific evidence and method based environments.
Other energy sources would be vastly more costly if their waste products weren't already grandfathered in to the public mindset and their true impacts to safety and environmental impact (which is far more spread out than the catastrophic results failures induced by idiocy and insanity cause newer power sources) were actually measured and factored in to the comparison.
Bingo, we have winner there. So if governments internalized externalities by charging polluters to pollute, making the price of coal reflect its true cost, then the price of nuclear energy would be more favorable in comparison than now. Without those conditions, we are now all subsidizing the most polluting forms of energy generation, such as coal, by making polluting free.
I know the free market libertarian types will scream bloody murder about the proposal that pollution be taxed, just because it is a tax and they reflexively hate all taxes. But hold on you free market libertarian type people! If the government returned payments from polluters directly to the public in the form of checks, instead of letting the crooks who run our government squander it, then the net tax rate would be zero because the total tax dollars collected from polluters would equal the total tax dollars returned to the public. There is a redistributionary aspect to this tax, and those are typically regarded as a bad because they create price distortions. But in this case it is a good because it corrects, not creates, a price distortion by redistributing dollars away from polluters in proportion to the cost of their polluting.
There is a noteworthy point there: taxation is not a burden. The burden of Government is not taxation but instead spending inefficiency. Consider the following: You can go to the grocery store and pay $2.00 to buy a bag of onions. Alternatively, the government can tax you $2.00 and provide you bag the same bag of onions. The tax payer is rationally indifferent to those alternatives, therefore the tax is not a burden to the tax payer. What makes government a burden is spending inefficiency: In actuality, the government taxes you $2.00 and instead of giving you $2.00 worth onions it buys a tobacco farmer subsidy, anti-marijuana law enforcement, spyware to read your e-mail, and corporate welfare in the form of bad loans to Solyndra or some other boondoggle. What fraction does go to anything which is of value to the public, such as perhaps housing, is filtered through government contractors who capture most of the dollars for themselves and creates unemployment by offering an incentive to not work.
Because the public would pay money for the government not to do some of those things government spending efficiency can be negative. For example, with low government spending efficiency the cost to the tax payer of a $2.00 tax could be $3.00 if the government uses its $2.00 to purchase $1.00 worth of harm to the taxpayer. With high government spending efficiency, the cost to the tax payer of a $2.00 tax could be $-1.00, that is, the tax payer gives up two dollars but gains $3.00. In practice that does not happen. If it did then Wall Street investors would all have been replaced by government bureaucrats, if they can earn that rate of return.
So if the government both taxes pollution and returns the tax revenues to the public as dollars then taxation is not a net social burden. And the reduction in pollution is a net social benefit.
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