Julian Assange
617 weeks of deprivation of liberty for telling the truth
617 weeks of deprivation of liberty for telling the truth
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The vessel of a nuclear reactor contains the uranium fuel assemblies and is the site of the nuclear fission reaction(1) It is subjected to high stresses with, in operation, a pressure of 155 atmospheres, a temperature of 320°C and an intense bombardment of neutrons from nuclear fission. The reactor vessel is an essential element in the safety of a nuclear power plant, because its rupture would inevitably lead to a rapid core meltdown and a « major » accident, with a release of large quantities of radioactive materials (level 7 accident on the INES scale(2)).
From 2012 to 2015, the Tihange 2 (T2) and Doel 3 (D3) reactors were shut down for nearly 3 years following the discovery of numerous cracks in their vessels, more than 13,000 for D3 and more than 3,000 for T2, with a length of nearly 18 centimeters for the largest and a density sometimes reaching 40 cracks(3) per dm3.
In order to justify the restart of the T2 and D3 reactors, the AFCN (Federal Agency for Nuclear Control) eliminated the disastrous results of some of the tests carried out on steel samples by calling them « aberrations ». But the reality is that the unavailability of representative steel samples(4) from the vessels makes an accurate assessment of steel embrittlement resulting from the presence of cracks and more than 30 years of mechanical and thermal stresses as well as neutron bombardment impossible.
These two reactors do not meet the fundamental nuclear safety principle of « defense in depth » applicable to the essential components of a nuclear power plant. Indeed, in such an approach, the first level of defense requires the highest quality of materials used for the tank, which is not the case when there are thousands of defects up to 18 cm. The principle of « defense in depth » figures prominently in the National Declaration on Nuclear Safety published in the Belgian Official Gazette on October 12, 2018, in application of Euratom Directive 2014/87, which follows the recommendations of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency).
This has been confirmed by several international experts, including Walter Bogaerts, professor of materials engineering and metal corrosion at the universities of Gent and Leuven(5). Even the director of the AFCN was forced to acknowledge that any new atomic reactor with these defects would be banned from approval and commissioning (on January 18, 2016, during a meeting with the Luxembourg Secretary of State, Camille Gira). This was also stated in a report by the NRC, the US nuclear control agency, as early as October 2013(6).
With almost 45 years of operation, the three reactors Tihange 1 (T1), Doel 1 (D1) and Doel 2 (D2) have far exceeded the 30 years initially planned(7). Like all industrial equipment, these reactors have become worn and fragile over time, and the number of untimely shutdowns has been steadily increasing for several years, indicating their growing unreliability. In April 2018, for the first time, it was a primary cooling water system that was affected with a highly radioactive leak in a pipe at the D1 reactor. These repeated incidents should be interpreted as warnings of the probable occurrence of a major accident and its immeasurable consequences. The older the reactor, the more dangerous it is.
Among all the concerns related to the wear of elements essential to the safe operation of these three reactors, the most serious is undoubtedly the embrittlement of the steel of the vessels resulting from more than 40 years of mechanical and thermal stress, and especially from intense neutron bombardment from the nuclear fission reaction of the uranium fuel. As for the T2 and D3 reactors, a spontaneous rupture of the vessel can no longer be excluded, given the excessive brittleness due to ageing (rather than to the presence of defects in the case of the T2 and D3 reactors), with the consequence of a total loss of cooling water, a rapid meltdown of the core, and extremely large radioactive releases.
We have entered a phase of experimentation without a net, because only tests of steel samples taken from the tanks could really objectify their condition. Indeed, as for the T2 and D3 reactors, Electrabel does not have any steel sample representative of the vessels. These five reactors undeniably have in common that they are among the « good » candidates in the world for an accident at the highest level of the INES scale, which places Belgium and the border areas of the neighboring countries(8) as the most densely populated region of the world threatened with destruction by deadly nuclear contamination.
Since 2012, untimely shutdowns of Belgian reactors have increased significantly due to their obsolescence: the number of incidents is growing at the expense of the reliability of this source of electricity production. The share of Belgian reactor production in the electricity consumed is falling: for example, in 2015, this production fell to 28% of consumption, whereas it accounted for 52% in 2011 (consumption, for its part, has changed only slightly). The year 2018, everyone knows, is in the same vein. And the same will be true in 2019, following the reactor shutdown forecasts issued by Electrabel — which should come as no surprise to anyone.
Closing these five reactors would mean doing without 4 GW(9) of nuclear power out of the 6 GW installed, not much more than the 3 GW that Belgium did without for five months at the end of 2014 (the T2, D3 and D4 reactors) or the 2.5 GW that was unavailable for most of 2015, following the shutdown of the T2, D1 and D3 reactors. From this perspective, the end of 2018 was remarkable, as only 1 GW of nuclear was available for an entire month.
In relation to the adequacy of electricity sources to needs, in the context of nuclear phase-out, two other positive factors are to be considered, namely interconnection and energy savings.
Belgium is a small country that is strongly interconnected with its neighbors. The commissioning in early 2019 of a 1 GW interconnection with England (« Nemo » project) and in 2020 of another of the same capacity with Germany (« Alegro ») will bring the total capacity to nearly 7 GW, which is significantly more than that of nuclear, which is theoretically 6 GW, but whose load factor(10) capacity of just over 4 GW (the current nuclear load factor is 70%)(11)The load factor of the Belgian nuclear reactors was initially 90–95%).
It is necessary to specify that the nuclear sector, contrary to a widespread idea, also generates greenhouse gases (GHG). For example, a 1 GW reactor requires 200,000 tons of uranium ore per year, which is mined and processed with fossil energy. In the end, this sector generates about 8 times more GHGs than wind power per unit of energy produced. This can be said even though for several stages of the nuclear life cycle, data are either not available or are uncertain and underestimated: uranium enrichment, decommissioning and waste management for hundreds of thousands of years. For uranium enrichment, the global nuclear industry consumes 150,000 tons of fluorine and chlorine in various forms annually, which can constitute GHGs with a much greater warming potential than carbon dioxide (CO2). What happens to them? How much is released into the atmosphere? There is no accessible data to answer these questions.
Despite the urgency of limiting our consumption of fossil and nuclear energy to meet the climate imperative and prepare for a near future where energy will no longer be as abundant as it is today, our successive regional and national governments are doing almost nothing to implement energy savings. On the contrary, they continue to promote activities and projects that are very expensive in terms of energy and greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet, even without touching our model of society, it would take only a few relatively simple measures to reduce our consumption of energy and electricity in particular. To do without these five reactors immediately is therefore not a gageüre and is a matter of the most elementary common sense.
At the initiative of the ASBL Fin du nucléaire, the signatories :
Francis Leboutte (Ir), Frédéric Blondiau (Ir), Pierre Eyben (Ir, Ph.D.), André Sterckx (Ir), Michel Wautelet (Professor e.r. UMons), Philippe Looze (Ir), Françoise d’Arripe (Ir), Jean H. Mangez (Ir), Emmanuel Ponnet (Ir), Sébastien Erpicum (Ir), Michel Jourdan (Ir), Rémy Deloge (Ir), François Lapy (Ir)
