"Atom-Renaissance" - Realität oder Humbug?
17.01.2008
SN-Interview mit PLAGE-Obmann Heinz Stockinger am 15.01.2008 und drei aktuelle Nachrichten
"Vieles verhindert"
15.01.2008 | SN
Atomkraftgegner zieht nach 30 Jahren Bilanz
THOMAS HÖDLMOSER Interview.
Die Atomkraft erlebt in Europa eine Renaissance. Gerade in Salzburg
war der Widerstand gegen die Atomenergie seit jeher groß, wie sich etwa
im Fall Wackersdorf zeigte. Die SN sprachen darüber mit Heinz
Stockinger (60) von der Plattform gegen Atomgefahren (PLAGE). Er
engagiert sich seit 30 Jahren in der Antiatombewegung.
SN: Länder wie Frankreich, Finnland und Großbritannien wollen den
Ausbau der Atomenergie wieder forcieren. War die Arbeit der
Atomkraftgegner umsonst?
Stockinger: Nein. Die atomaren Bedrohungsquellen wären ohne
unsere Arbeit um ein Mehrfaches zahlreicher. Ohne den Widerstand der
Gegner gäbe es das AKW Zwentendorf und die Wiederaufbereitungsanlage
Wackersdorf. Es sind eine ganze Reihe von Gefahrenquellen verhindert
worden.
SN: Trotzdem: Mit Tschernobyl geriet die Atomenergie in Europa
schlagartig in Verruf. Heute gibt es eine Art Renaissance der
Atomkraft. Frustriert Sie das nicht?
Stockinger: Natürlich frustriert es mich. Aber man muss
sehen, dass durch den Widerstand von AKW-Kritikern der Entwicklung von
Alternativen Tür und Tor geöffnet wurde. Österreich ist heute ein
Weltmeister bei der Umwelttechnologie und Biomasseheizanlagen. Dänemark
und Deutschland sind an der Spitze beim Windkraftanlagenbau. Beim
Atomstaat Frankreich ist das nicht der Fall.
SN: Wovon gehen heute die größten Atomgefahren aus?
Stockinger: Das größte Problem ist das Heranzüchten weiterer
Atomwaffenstaaten in Nordafrika und im Nahen Osten durch eine
Atompolitik wie die des französischen Präsidenten Nicolas Sarkozy.
SN: Nach Tschernobyl hatte die Antiatombewegung in der Bevölkerung
deutlich mehr Rückhalt als derzeit. Liegt das daran, dass man sich
heute sicherer fühlen kann?
Stockinger: Die Pannen in deutschen Atomkraftwerken im
Sommer 2007, gepaart mit den Vertuschungen durch die Betreiber, würden
das nicht bestätigen. Es kann jederzeit überall wieder ein atomarer GAU
passieren.
Bericht aus Finnland
Nuclear power won't cure climate change: Finnish PM
Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:34pm GMT - WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Building more nuclear power plants to reduce global warming
emissions is not the way to fight global climate change, Finland's
prime minister said on Monday. Many
energy experts say one key to cutting back carbon dioxide emissions
that heat the Earth's atmosphere would be to rely more on nuclear power
to generate electricity instead of coal-fired plants.
But Finnish Prime Minister Matti
Vanhanen said reducing energy consumption, especially from automobiles,
would do more to fight climate change.
"I don't see that (more) nuclear
plants can be a global answer" to climate change, Vanhanen said in a
speech to the National Press Club in Washington. "It can not be the
only answer."
The Bush administration is pushing for the construction of more nuclear power plants to help fight global warming.
The 104 nuclear power reactors in the
United States provide about 19 percent of America's electricity supply
and prevent almost 700 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions
annually.
(Reporting by Tom Doggett; Editing by David Gregorio)
Bericht aus Großbritannien
Sellafield clean-up will cost £34bn
And so radioactive is the site, that making it 'safe' will take 100 years
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor - Independent on Sunday: 13 January 2008
British taxpayers will have to fork out more than £30bn to clean up
Sellafield, unpublicised official documents reveal. It is so
contaminated that the process will take well over a century and, even
then, the site will have to stay under "indefinite institutional
control".
These revelations follow confirmation – in a
little-noticed passage in last week's nuclear White Paper – that the
controversial nuclear complex is doomed. The Government took the
opportunity to make clear that the fuel from any new nuclear power
stations built in Britain would not be reprocessed, thus sounding
Sellafield's death knell.
For decades, the main business of the
4sq km site – which boasts that it is "the world's most complex and
compact nuclear facility" – has been to reprocess highly radioactive
used reactor fuel, separating plutonium and uranium from nuclear waste.
Nuclear enthusiasts have long hailed this as hi-tech recycling; the
two materials can be used again to power reactors. But it has also long
been the most dangerous, polluting operation in the industry and
justification for it has disappeared as the world has massive uranium
and plutonium supplies.
Now Sellafield's controversial Thorp
reprocessing plant – which has been out of action for three years
following a massive radioactive spill, disclosed by The Independent on
Sunday – will formally close soon after 2011, when its contracts run
out. A smaller, older plant for reprocessing fuel from Britain's
first-generation reactors will follow it by 2016.
The Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority and the British Nuclear Group, which own and
run the site, are embarking on a clean-up which will last until 2120.
If all goes well, they calculate, this will cost £41,607,803,000. They
hope the remainder of their business will earn £7.9bn, leaving the
taxpayer with a bill for some £34bn. If there are further accidents or
delays, or if the job proves more difficult than expected, this will go
even higher.
The plan envisages that high-level nuclear waste will be kept on the
site for most of this century, with a "final storage facility" only
becoming available in 2075, and that plutonium – a raw material for
nuclear bombs – will be stored there indefinitely.
Bericht aus Florida
Nuclear Costs Explode
By RUSSELL RAY, The Tampa Tribune - Published: January 15, 2008
Progress
Energy Florida is going to have to spend more than originally planned
to build two nuclear reactors in Levy County, the utility's top
executive said.
The
St. Petersburg-based utility won't disclose how much more expensive the
project will be until it's presented to state regulators within 90
days. Based on new industry estimates, the revised cost could be two to
three times more expensive than the projection Progress issued more
than a year ago.
That's
because the cost of concrete, steel, copper, labor and reactor
technology has soared as energy companies move forward with plans to
build more than 30 new reactors nationwide. Also, Progress Energy's
initial estimate excluded the cost of land, inflation, interest
payments and new transmission lines.
"Yes,
it will be higher," Jeff Lyash, president and CEO of Progress Energy
Florida, said of the project's cost. "The price of any construction
project you undertake today is going to escalate based on commodity
prices. That's not a nuclear issue."
Lyash wouldn't provide a specific estimate because of ongoing negotiations with vendor Westinghouse Electric. But
based on new industry estimates, the tab for Progress Energy's project
could surpass $10 billion, well above the company's initial estimate of
$5 billion to $7 billion. Information
from Florida Power & Light, the state's largest electric utility,
has shed new light on the potential expense of Progress Energy's
project and others like it.
FPL,
based in Juno Beach, said recently that the "overnight cost" of its
two-reactor project would range from $12 billion to $18 billion, more
than twice as high as Progress Energy's December 2006 estimate.
Overnight estimates exclude the interest paid on the loan and are based
on commodity prices when the estimate is made.
The
FPL project may be the best measuring stick, because FPL is considering
the same Westinghouse technology Progress Energy has selected, and the
capacity of each two- reactor project is about the same: 2,200
megawatts, enough energy for 1.3 million homes.
"We
made a very comprehensive estimate range based on the latest studies in
the marketplace," said FPL spokesman Mayco Villafana.
What's
more, Moody's Investors Service, one of three major rating agencies,
said in October that new reactors would cost up to $6,000 per kilowatt
of capacity to build. At that price, Progress Energy's two-reactor
proposal would cost $13.2 billion. FPL's recent estimate was $3,100 to
$4,500 a kilowatt.
"Moody's
is closer to the reality we're seeing," said Michael Mariotte,
executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a
nonprofit group opposed to nuclear power. "Even before they start
building, the costs are going up. Meanwhile, the cost for solar, wind
and energy efficiency are on a downward trend."
No one knows for sure how much America's nuclear renaissance will end up costing, Mariotte said. "Nobody
knows because this new generation of reactors hasn't been built yet,"
he said. "Most of these designs are designs on paper. It's one of the
reasons Moody's has pushed the cost up so high. It's because we're
looking at a lot of first-of-a-kind designs."
A
September 2007 report commissioned by the Edison Electric Institute, a
nonprofit trade group for the nation's electric utilities, showed that
steel prices have risen 60 percent since 2003. Copper prices nearly
quadrupled between 2003 and 2006 and cement prices rose 30 percent
during the same period, the report said. The
higher prices for raw materials and labor have led to sharp increases
in the cost of new power plants, said Ed Legge, a spokesman for Edison
Electric.
"It's costing more to build a coal plant, too," Legge said.
The
higher cost of Progress Energy's two-reactor project will be reflected
in the electric bills of the utility's 1.7 million customers. Normally,
construction costs are passed on to customers once the plant begins
generating power. Under a new Florida law, utilities can begin
recovering the cost of building a nuclear plant years before the first
watt of power is produced.
Nuclear
plants are the most expensive to build, Lyash said, but customers will
pay less in the long run because the cost of generating electricity
from a nuke is far below the cost of making it from coal, natural gas,
wind or solar.
According
to industry estimates, the cost of generating electricity from a
nuclear plant is about 0.4 cents a kilowatt-hour, 4.2 cents from a coal
plant and 7 cents from a natural gas plant. "Over its lifetime, it will have the lowest fuel cost and it will have the lowest environmental impact," Lyash said.
Another
benefit is that unlike coal- and gas-fired power plants, nuclear
reactors don't emit greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, which
scientists have linked to global warming. Also,
the government is expected to begin regulating carbon emissions from
power plants, a move that will make coal plants substantially more
expensive to build and operate. Natural gas-fired power plants are
cleaner, but gas is increasingly expensive and Florida already
generates more than a third of its power from natural gas.
"It's on a trajectory to increase, not decrease," Lyash said of natural gas prices. "Even coal prices have risen." As a result, nuclear power is a more cost-effective option for utilities and their customers, Lyash said.
"Nuclear
energy reduces our dependence on foreign fuels, it provides long-term
cost stability for customers in that we're not as dependent on volatile
and expensive natural gas and oil, and it doesn't produce any
greenhouse gases," he said. Meanwhile,
the Nuclear Energy Institute has stopped offering cost estimates
because many of its member companies, including Progress Energy, are in
contract negotiations. Any projection from NEI could affect the outcome
of those discussions, said Adrian Heymer, NEI's senior director of new
plant deployment.
"It's best for us, at this point and time, to remain silent," Heymer said.
More
than 30 new nuclear reactors are being considered nationwide. So far,
three companies have filed applications with the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission to build and operate reactors in Texas, Alabama and
Virginia. If the first few plants can be built on time and within budget, nuclear capacity in the United States will soar, Heymer said.
"If we do that, I think you could see 20 new plants by 2020," he said.
