Welcome to bertrandbarre.com! It’s happening now January 2012:
The Year of the Tsunami
The year 2011 will have been hectic in many ways. On the international scene, it shall be remembered as « the Year of the Arab Spring », with the end of dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Ivory Coast and perhaps Yemen. What will be the issue ? Inch Allah ! In the field of nuclear power, 2011 shall long remain the year when the Tohuku earthquake and tsunami triggered the Fukushima accident with all its local and international consequences. Last, but not least and with a much rosier perspective, this year saw the birth of Gabriel Barré, our eigth grandchild.
But here, I will speak mostly about nuclear power.
Without covering once more the accident itself, let’s have a look at the recovery operations on the Fukushima site. On December 21st 2011, the Japanese government officialy declared the completion of « steps 1 & 2 » of the calendar published in May: Stable conditions equivalent to cold shutdown achieved on units 1 to 3, and residual emissions reduced to insignificance (added dose equivalent to 0.1 millisievert per year at the site boundaries). « Phase 1 » shall follow over the next two years: Commence the removal of (intact) spent fuel assemblies from the spent fuel pools ; reduce the radiation impact due to the additional emissions from the whole site and waste generated after the accident, maintaining an effective radiation dose of less than 1 mSv/y at the site boundaries ; maintain stable reactor cooling and the processing of accumulated contaminated water; commence R&D and decontamination toward the removal of core debris and prepare the developments needed for the following phases. For those, the Japanese government gives a very (overly ?) prudent timetable.. It is a long term effort which we shall follow regularly.
What about international consequences ? In France, we seem to be fascinated by the German example, no realizing how atypical is this example and how little it weighs on the world nuclear scene. One can venture an evaluation of the consequences of Fukushima as two years of delay in the world nuclear programmes with respects to evaluations made at the end of 2010. It is not inconsistent with the recent IAEA projections (see below). For the French industry, the loss of both the German and the Japanese market is a hard blow, but the world impact should remain limited. The Japanese tsunami did not change overnight the fundamentals behind the second souffle experienced by nuclear power since 2005 : volatility of hydrocarbon prices, approaching peak oil and, above all, the threat of climate change.
But we must also realize the positive consequences of Fukushima: already, stress tests carried out throughout the world have allowed us to draw first lessons from the accident. Site by site, risks of aggressions on nuclear plants from extreme climatic events, or risks from a combination of such, have been re-evaluated and means of Defense-in-depth have been prepared to prevent tose aggressions from triggering a severe accident. Nuclear power will probably more exoensive as a result, but it shall be safer.
Allow me, dear readers, to express my best wishes for 2012
Memory from Global 2011 in Tokyo : Mount Fuji from the plane (Photo B. Barré)
