Energy System

Holger Rogner:



Development for China is an issue of need and nuclear is one among many options the country is exploring.

But it and all other countries interested in nuclear as an energy source must consider a host of issues.

First among these is overall grid capacity.

“We have a rule of thumb that the largest unit should not exceed more than 10% of grid capacity,” said Rogner. “So in case a plant has to come off the grid, the whole system isn’t negatively affected. When you limit the scope to the countries that this applies to, the list shrinks quite fast.

“You also need to look at the financial capacity. Nuclear energy has high up front costs but is cheap to operate. To get to the benefits of cheap operation you have to overcome the hurdle of initial investment.

“There are not too many countries that can fund that out of petty cash. What we have seen is countries like the United Arab Emirates, which has the cash and the history of involving outside help, being in a unique position to move faster than countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia or Malaysia, where the cash and cultural aspects are quite different.”

When it comes to other resources, specifically uranium, there is not much of an issue to answer. Resource availability is an interplay between demand, prices, technological development and knowledge. While these are rarely in synch, uranium is plentiful. However, that fact hasn’t stopped the uranium market being out of balance since the collapse of the Soviet Union. For several years, Rogner says, production was at 40% – 60% of the reactor requirement globally. This was because of all the fuel that was stockpiled in the cold war. This reduced the need for exploration and mines closed because they weren’t viable. As nuclear plants in the US were given lifecycle extensions the market began to panic and uranium prices shot through the roof.

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“Companies then began pulling 80-year-olds out of retirement – uranium geologists, experts in the field – and now things are returning to normal,” said Rogner.

“Time and again we see these cycles in any resource based industry. You can draw lots of parallels with oil, where the industry starts looking in lower-concentration environments, deploying newer, more expensive technology.

“There are enormous amounts of uranium resources locked in unconventional forms. The ultimate back-stop technology would be extracting uranium from sea water. Through recycling and re-use you can automatically convert and extend the fuel’s life for several hundreds or thousands of years, so scarcity is not really an issue.”

While current economic issues have created problems of all sorts, not just for power, few countries are ready to move ahead with their programmes, though planning for nuclear development is continuing.

“It’s a 15 year process and they know that if they recover from the current economic crisis, they will be faced with capacity problems,” he said.

“We have a 19 point plan which we share with what we call the newcomers. Countries need a nuclear law, they must adhere to all the international agreements and treaties and conventions, otherwise nobody will sell you the technology. You need a regulator, you need a safety culture, you need an educational framework.”

Rogner says it is not unusual for countries to want a high localisation factor, to keep most of the value in the country. Key to achieving that is a home-grown quality workforce.

“These things cannot be done overnight and so a timely plan is necessary. That’s what we try to convey to countries; the scale of what’s necessary to achieve a safe nuclear industry,” said Rogner.

“A domestic support structure is extremely important, but other considerations such as where do I get my fuels from, how do I deal with my waste etc. These do not all have to be in place 10 years before, but they must be on the radar, and be worked towards.”

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