When "saving money" costs you two hundred fold more than you save.

I sometimes hear we can't afford to spend R&D money on MSRs. The best reply to that is we can't afford not to spend energy R&D.

85% of the world's reactors are PWRs, which operate with a thermodynamic efficiency of only 32% [only 32% of heat energy is converted to electricity]. MSRs can run at 750°C, giving a potential thermodynamic efficiency of up to 48%. Half as much again. Current power reactors make about 2370 TWh of electricity per year. The wholesale price of British electricity is about £40/MWh; making the world wholesale value of nuclear electricity about £95 billion/year. Compared to what MSRs could give we're throwing away £47 billion each year as heat which could've been made into extra electricity. All for the one time cost of £1 billion/£2 billion R&D we didn't spend to make MSRs real.

The US molten salt reactor experiment, MSRE, cost $5 million per year. Not the billions anti-nuclear power campaigners claim. Adjusted to today's money it works out at $30.52 pa., or £21.48 pa. Over 15 years that would cost Britain a total of $322 million.

Cost of R&D avoided: About half as much again as world electricity sells for, say: £47 billion (at wholesale prices)

Ref

• US Inflation Calculator says: US inflation was 511%, from 1970 to 2016

How much krypton-85 leaks into the atmosphere each year?

A recent paper estimated krypton-85 activity in a cubic metre of air at 1.31 Bq. See: Variability of atmospheric krypton-85 activity concentrations observed close to the ITCZ in the southern hemisphere.

Measurements between August 2007 and May 2010 covered three wet seasons. The mean activity concentration of krypton-85 measured during this period was 1.31±0.02Bqm^-3. A linear model fitted to the average monthly data, using month and monsoon as predictors, shows that krypton-85 activity concentration measured during the sampling period has declined by 0.01Bqm^-3 per year.

The measurement, done over 3 years found krypton-85 levels were stable. neither increasing nor decreasing by much. I'll assume that krypton-85 released in balanced by decay.

How much krypton-85 could there be in the atmosphere?

The surface density of air = 1.217 kg/m³
Total mass of the earth's atmosphere = 5.1 × 10¹⁸ kg
Let's assume 1.217 kg/m³ of surface air has a krypton-85 activity of 1.31 Bqm^-3
Let's next assume that krypton-85 activity is the same throughout the air. This will overestimate krypton-85 because its heavier than air. It's almost twice as heavy as carbon dioxide.
Proceeding with our over-estimation. Total activity of Kr-85 in all the atmosphere:
= (1.31 Bqm^-3) × (5.1 × 10¹⁸ kg) / 1.217 kg/m³
= 5.49 × 10¹⁸ Bq

The Specific Activity of krypton-85:
= 400 (Ci/g) [Ci = Curie]
= 1.48 × 10¹³ Bq/g

So our over-estimation for the amount Kr-85 in earth's atmosphere:
= (5.49 × 10¹⁸ Bq) / (1.48 × 10¹³ Bq/g)
= 3.71 × 10⁵ g
= 371 kg

How much krypton-85 is made each year

Krypton-85 is about 0.3% of fission products. Let's assume there is 400 GWe of nuclear reactor capacity on earth. That a 1GWe NPP operating over a year produces just less than 1 ton of fission products. Let's call that 400 tons fission products per year for all the world's reactors. That's works out at 1200 kg of krypton-85 made each year.

But all of krypton-85 does not leak into the atmosphere. Most of it is in sealed casks. The amount that leaks must be about the same as the amount that decays.

t_½(Kr-85) = 10.7 years
λ(Kr-85) = 0.693 / 10.7 years = 0.064766355 years^-1

How much Kr-85 is left after 1 year:

Fractional proportion at time t = N(t) / N(0) = e^{-λ t}
= e^{-0.064766355 years¯¹ × 1 years}
= e^-0.064766355
= 0.93728643

How much Kr-85 leaks?:

= 371 kg × (1 - 0.93728643)
= 23.27 kg

Note: Estimating the amount of fission products made/year

This depends upon the total capacity of all the world's nuclear reactors. There are:

• 435 commercial nuclear power reactors operable in 31 countries, with about 375 GWe of total capacity.
• 180 nuclear reactors power some 140 ships and submarines.
• 240 research reactors

I'll assume an average of 50Me per research and/or sea vessel reactor. So 420 × 50 = 21 GWe of small reactors. Let's round that to 400 GWe capacity for all reactors.

How green anti-nukes closed a power plant delivering 620 megawatts of non-carbon electricity

Vermont Yankee was an electricity generating nuclear power plant, located in the town of Vernon, Vermont, USA. It generated 620 megawatts (MWe) of non-carbon electricity at full power. In 2008, the plant provided 71.8% of all electricity generated within Vermont, amounting to 35% of Vermont's electricity consumption.

1. In May 2009, Vermont created the first statewide renewable energy feed-in law.
2. Entergy requested a new state "certificate of public good" (CPG), but the Vermont legislature voted in February 2010 against renewed permission to operate.
3. In 2011, the Vermont Electric Cooperative utility rejected a contract to buy Vermont Yankee power at below market rates:

   The board of directors at the Vermont Electric Cooperative, the third biggest power distribution company in the state, voted nine to one to reject a 20-year offer from Entergy to buy power from the 39-year old nuclear plant at below market prices.

   Their decision follows the lead previously set by Green Mountain Power and Central Vermont Public Service:

   "I really think today was a referendum on Entergy's relationship with the state of Vermont. In fact, we as a management team got a clear message not to speak with Entergy again"

   -- Dave Hallquist VEC CEO
4. On 29 December 2014, Vermont Yankee owner Entergy ceased the plant's operations.
5. Now the renewables advocates admit they can't provide renewable energy because the laws of physics just aren't right for the universe they live in.

   "Unless we get cost-effective storage, we can’t meet those goals — it’s a law of physics. The reason is because we’re trying to meet 100 percent of our annual energy needs with these projects that produce only 15 percent of the time. So you end up having to build six times the amount, and you end up having more generation than load, so there’s nothing you can do about it. We can’t meet our goals with the current physics."

   -- Dave Hallquist, CEO of VEC Vermont Electric Cooperative

The Hinkley Point deal is prohibitively expensive

So say the Guardian, again, today. It's not "prohibitively expensive" but it is "too expensive". Hinkley Point deal is too expensive is the common doxa, among both nukes, anti-nukes, and neutrals. The question of expense has interested me for sometime. Why so expensive, what can be done about that?

The AREVA EPR is the only modern reactor design currently approved by our regulator: Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR). If we want a reactor right now, this is the only one we can build. Had we more choice, we could build nuclear power plants for much less than this. Probably about half the price. [KEPCO build their APR1400 reactors in UAE for £3¼ billion each] So why don't we? Given the EPR design is the only one with a current UK GDA, the obvious question to ask is: what's holding up the UK GDA process? The obvious answer is often: lack of resources. But what resources?

Government framed the UK nuclear reactor regulatory process to discourage vendors from applying for reactor approval and spent no effort encouraging vendors to apply to get reactors approved. In effect, that's how current regulation works in the UK. There was no design nor malice in this, just the habit government have of copying what seems to work elsewhere. UK government, basically, copied the US model (how US funds their NRC : Nuclear Regulatory Commission). NRC funding works reasonably well in the USA because it's a big country. US electricity demand is 11 times UK's. Because US population is 5 times ours, and per capita electricity use just over twice ours. After a US reactor GDA application is approved, the reactor vendor has reasonable confidence that many will be built. That allows Americans to justify the up front costs of gaining NRC approval. Not so in the UK. A vendor trying to build reactors here can't expect many of their reactors to be built here at all. The market for new builds is just not that large.

Electricity requirement of UK / US

	Average demand (GW)	Per capita use (kWh)	Population
US	463	13,010	320 million
UK	42	5,958	64 million

UK Government framed legislation such that a large fee, probably about £40 million, is charged up front for reactor approval. This is large enough to discourage vendors putting their designs forward for GDA validation. That, and the 5-year approval period. The UK GDA process began in 2007 with 4 competing designs: the AREVA EPR (PWR), the Toshiba-Westinghouse AP1000 (PWR), the GE-Hitachi ESBWR (BWR) and the AECL ACR1000 (Candu). The ESBWR and the Candu designs were withdrawn, leaving only 2. The AP1000 application was later suspended because the submission was not in S.I. units. That left only 1 reactor: EPR. Our system of taxing vendors beforehand led directly to GE-Hitachi pulling their ESBWR design out of the approval process despite spending £20 million on British approval. It partly led to AECL (Candu) not really trying. That might not be so bad in a world with lots of vendor competition. There are only about 7 such vendors in the world: AREVA (France), KEPCO (South Korea), Westinghouse (USA-Japan), GE-Hitachi (Japan), Rosatom (Russia), CANDU (Canada), Various Chinese. Some argue we should not consider Russian and Chinese designs due to security issues. CANDU reactors have positive voids, so many will not want them due to safety issues. That narrows the field down to 4 nuclear reactor vendors! So what other reactors could reasonably have been submitted for UK GDA? KEPCO have perfectly good designs they build at low cost (e.g. the APR1400 in UAE), but they've never been encouraged to apply for a GDA. That despite Britain and South Korea signing a special free trade deal in 2012. AREVA understood that their EPR design was too expensive at a very early stage: nearly 20 years ago. That's why they increased it's capacity from an initial 1100 MWe to 1650 MWe - to mitigate the expense by trying to gain an advantage in scale: in theory the cost of building and running 2 giant reactors being lower than 3 large reactors. It never panned out that way. Yet AREVA always had other designs it could've submitted for UK GDA. They had the KERENA and ATMEA1 designs too (since 2009 and 2007 respectively).

A better system would've seen the approval fee mostly paid for by a tiny tax on nuclear power, with an up front fee of, say 10% of approval costs. That would force immediate costs on the vendor of ~ £4 million. I think that would've encouraged KEPCO to apply for a GDA on a purely speculative basis. Imagine that it costs £40 million to approve a reactor for UK use. 10 different reactor approvals would cost £0.4 billion. A lot of money. The argument goes: the tax payer shouldn't have to cough up this money. Yet over a 35 year period, during which the Hinkley C contract for difference (CfD) applies, the electricity bill payer will cough up about £35 billion more than they would otherwise pay had their electricity been sourced at the current electricity wholesale price. We pay a tax anyhow. It's just that we're paying a tax at least 50 times larger than need be. Not quite: nearly all new nuclear power plants will need some kind of CfD but we could reasonably expect the difference in CfD and wholesale price to be half what it is for the EPR. So, instead of paying £35 billion more over 35 years, we'd pay £20 billion more over 35 years for a different reactor design.

1. Guardian Live: should we say yes to nuclear power?
2. KEPCO are building their APR1400 reactors in UAE for £3¼ billion each
3. The costs of UK GDA for the AREVA EPR were said to be £35 million in 2012
4. In 2007, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy Submitted ESBWR to UK Regulators for Generic Design Assessment (GDA)
5. CfD: contract for difference. A CfD means that the customer pays more for electricity than they would were they paying the market price. It allows new electricity capacity suppliers to recoup their capital costs. Think of it like a mortgage. You buy the house now, live there but it takes you 25+ years to repay the cost.
6. The saga of Hinkley Point C: Europe’s key nuclear decision
7. vendor: I'm using the term vendor here to mean `nuclear power plant design and construction company`
8. GDA = Generic Design Approval. This is like a licence and safety certificate allowing one to build several nuclear reactors in one country.

Helen Caldicott exaggerates Fukushima Daiichi radiation by 7.5 billion times

In September 2014 Helen Caldicott used a hoax radiation dose map.

Dr. Helen Caldicott vs Fukushima Radiation

• The hoax map was created and debunked in March 2011
• This hoax was supposed to be a 'prediction'
• Caldicott claimed 3½ years later that the hoax was true, and the predicted fallout happened.
• Had it happened it would've been enough to kill about ½ the people on the US West coast. [The radiation dose in yellow is = 750 REM = 7500 mSv]

It goes without saying, that the amount of radiation released in the hoax was physically impossible. Back in the real world, suppose each person in the landed yellow area got 1 square metre worth of radiation :- it would've been equivalent to, at most, 11 seconds extra worth of natural radiation.[ref 1-3]

The ratio between Helen Caldicott's exaggeration and any possible Fukushima Daiichi radiation dose is at least 7.5 billion to 1.[ref 1-9]

Notes

1. As of 2014, a peer reviewed estimate of the total radiation released at Fukushima Daiichi was 340 to 800 PBq, with 80% falling into the Pacific ocean.[ref 10]
2. The yellow area on the map, covering land, is at least 3 million km², or 3 × 10¹² m². Dividing that area into 20% of 800 × 10¹⁵ Bq
   = 0.2 × 800 × 10¹⁵ / (3 × 10¹²) Bq/m²
   = 53,000 Bq/m²
3. Our bodies experience 5000 radioactive decays per second. (5000 Bq)
4. 1 PBq (petabecquerel) = 10¹⁵ Bq
5. 1 Bq = 1 radioactive decay per second
6. Natural background radiation dose ~ 3 mSv per year, ~ 0.0000000095 REM per second
7. Extra Fukushima Daiichi radiation dose (maximum) ~ 0.0000001 REM
8. Extra Fukushima Daiichi radiation dose claimed by Caldicott ~ 750 REM
9. Disparity between maximum possible and Caldicott's claim ~ 7.5 billion.
10. "Comparison of the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents: A review of the environmental impacts Science of The Total Environment Volumes 470–471, 1 February 2014, Pages 800–817".

Does nuclear power cause climate change?

Krypton-85 is a fission product produced in nuclear reactors. A small amount leaks, mostly from spent fuel, into the atmosphere, where it decays, with a half-life of 10.7 years, to rubidium-85, via beta decay. This decay produces two ionized particles: Rb-85(+) and an electron(-). Various environmentalists/climate campaigners [refs 2-6] claim this atmospheric ionization causes climate change. In 2005, the amount of Kr-85 in that atmosphere was 1.3 Bq/m³ [ref 1]

When I compare the rate of production of ions (from Kr-85) decay to the rate of neutralization (from lightning), I find neutralization overwhelms the effect of Kr-85 decay by 2 million to 1.

So is Krypton-85 a real climate risk or not. If it's a risk why isn't solar radiation also a massive risk. Why does mainstream climate science tar denier on solar radiation proponents, at the same time ignore those posing nuclear power as a major cause?

Calculations

• On average, about 4 Mega amps of lightning is discharged from atmosphere to earth each second.[refs 7,8]
• Number of Kr-85 decays per second (in 2005)[refs 9-10]:
  = Number of decays per m³s^-1 × total weight of air (kg) / weight 1m³ air
  = 1.3 × 5.15 . 10¹⁸ / 1.225 = 5.47 . 10¹⁸
• Number of Kr-85 decay ionizations per second (in 2005) = 2 × 5.47 . 10¹⁸ = 1.094 . 10¹⁹
• Global lightning discharges, per second:
  = number of amps discharged per second × number of elementary charges in one coulomb
  = 4 × 10⁶ × 6.241 × 10¹⁸ = 2.4964 × 10²⁵ [measured in elementary charges!]
• Ratio of lightning discharge to Kr-85 ionizations = 2.284 × 10⁶ = 2.3 million to 1 (in 2005)

So I'm baffled how a trace amount of krypton-85, decaying with a half-life of 10.7 years, can make such a great change to atmospheric ionization effects, given that the discharges due to lightning were 2,284,000 times greater in 2005.

Is Krypton-85 actually increasing? Not according to measurements taken below here: Variability of atmospheric krypton-85 activity concentrations observed close to the ITCZ in the southern hemisphere.

Measurements between August 2007 and May 2010 covered three wet seasons. The mean activity concentration of krypton-85 measured during this period was 1.31±0.02Bqm^-3. A linear model fitted to the average monthly data, using month and monsoon as predictors, shows that krypton-85 activity concentration measured during the sampling period has declined by 0.01Bqm^-3 per year.

Why do I never see climate scientists refuting anti-nuclear power claims such as: "nuclear power causes climate change"? I think many climate scientists seem happy to go along with any old garbage the anti-nuclear power movement come out with. No, I don't really thing that. I think they're totally focussed on the issues of GHG and denier narratives (such as the sun is the main cause of climate change). So much so they just don't care to refute this krypton-85 story.

Refs

krypton-85:

1. because Kr-85 is a trace, its quantity is measured by its decay, which, in 2005, was about 1.3 per second per cubic metre.

Environmentalists

2. "Majia's Blog" : Majia Holmer Nadesan (academic): Strangely Missing: Radionuclides' Effects on Climate
3. "The Seneca Effect" : (Dutch academic blogger): Krypton-85: How nuclear power plants cause climate change
4. "Climate Risks from Nuclear Power. Radioactive Krypton 85: Atmospheric-Electrical and Air-Chemical Effects of Ionizing Radiation in the Atmosphere"
5. "After Cancún: Climate Governance or Climate Conflicts", edited by Elmar Altvater, Achim Brunnengräber, pp178-179 "In addition, nuclear power plants are emitting other gases, which also contribute to climate change. Of all the radioactive materials, the ionization of the air with radioactive noble gas, krypton-85, a product of nuclear fission, is the most intense ..."
6. "The Global Casino, Fifth Edition: An Introduction to Environmental Issues", By Nick Middleton"

lightning:

7. According to: V Rakov, M Uman "Lightning: Physics and Effects", CUP 2003 : An average bolt of lightning carries a negative electric current of 40 kiloamperes (kA) (although some bolts can be up to 120 kA), and transfers a charge of five coulombs and energy of 500 MJ, or enough energy to power a 100-watt lightbulb for just under two months.
8. National Geographic say: "about 100 [lightning bolts] strike Earth's surface every single second"

atmosphere

9. Density of the atmosphere = 1.225 kg/m³
10. The atmosphere has a mass of about 5.15 × 10¹⁸ kg
11. Ampere is equivalent to one coulomb (roughly 6.241 × 10¹⁸ times the elementary charge) per second.

Climate science

12. W.L. Boeck "Environmental consequences of atmospheric krypton-85". Final report, January 1, 1977-September 30, 1979
13. Climate risks by radioactive krypton-85 from nuclear fission Atmospheric-electrical and air-chemical effects of ionizing radiation in the atmosphere

What Paul Langley gets wrong

Paul Langley is an Australian anti-nuclear activist. A radiophobe.

Paul Langley: But the lingering danger from residual fuel and fission fallout particles -those which emit Alpha and Beta radiation – exist long after the explosion. Alpha is are not detected very accurately by film badges or dosimeters. For this, specialised Alpha detectors are needed. Although the scientists conducting the atomic tests in Australia at the time knew of these dangers, they chose to concentrate upon the dangers of exposure to Gamma radiation. That is, they were more interested in the immediate effects of the Gamma radiation burst at the time of atomic detonations.

My comment: An atomic blast instantaneously produces a large quantity of gamma, neutron and fission products (radiation). The gamma, neutron are gone after the initial damage they do. Fission products decay producing alpha, beta and gamma radiation. Most fission products have very short half-lives so are quickly gone. After 3 months, radiation from fission product decay is 0.1% of its initial value. Even after 12 hours it's well down. Living tissue is damaged by a large amount of radiation all at once (gamma from the bomb blast). That explains the scientists concerns (above). We're not harmed much at all, by small amounts over a long time. This is what Paul Langley misses. Back in the 1970s we believed that any amount of radiation is harmful. Today we know differently. Our bodies have several repair mechanisms to correct major and minor harm from radiation or anything else which damages DNA.

PS: A Nobel prize was just awarded to the scientists who studied these DNA repair mechanisms.