Don’t use French example to justify BNPP, says nuke expert

A French nuclear expert says that the Philippines should not use the French experience to justify the reactivation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. Yves Marignac, a consultant on nuclear and energy issues and Executive Director of the energy-information agency, WISE-Paris. wrote his remarks in a July opinion piece for Cleantech Asia Online, an opinion site for cleantech in Asia.

In his oped, Marignac said that the French experience is a pretend success story.

“While there is no clear benefit from rehabilitating the Philippine Bataan plant, the risks of doing so are real,” said Marignac.

Marignac said that as early as 1995, the French nuclear safety authority said that none of their existing 58 French reactors could be licensed to current standards, most especially the old ones, built at the same time as the Bataan plant and using a similar Westinghouse design, even if safety upgrades following the Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986) accidents were taken into account. He added that thirty years of ageing of all the reactor’s components make the upgrading effectiveness highly uncertain. Marignac says “it will be impossible to check all possible defects in concrete walls, metallic containments, electric wires, etc.”

He also cited concerns with nuclear waste disposal. Marignac said that waste fuel reprocessing results in a complex set of radioactive waste and nuclear materials like uranium and plutonium. “Should the Bataan spent fuel be reprocessed in France, the highly radioactive part, at least, of the waste would come back, needing the same kind of management scheme that is needed for spent fuel in the first place,” he said. According to Marignac, no country, including France, has yet implemented a final geological disposal for these highly active and long-lived materials.

“Moreover, it is unlikely that the recovered plutonium could be reused in the old-designed Bataan reactor, leaving the operator with the onlyoption of paying another company to take it, like the Dutch company EPZ is doing in the same situation,” he said. He also cited concerns with cost escalation from original estimates. “The new French reactor being built in Flamanville, for instance, was decided four years ago on the basis of a complete cost calculation by the Ministry of Industry of 28.4 €/MWh, giving it a narrow competitive margin. The operator, EDF, recently raised its estimate to 55 €/MWh, an increase of around 92% from the original estimate,” Marignac said.

Marignac has a wealth of experience in nuclear issues. He worked at the Paris-XI University, the French Energy Commission (Commissariat àl’Energie Atomique) and the nuclear company Société des Techniques en Milieu Ionisant (STMI). Marignac has authored many publications on energy, nuclear and global environmental issues, and has acted as an expert for France’s Prime Minister’s services and the European Parliament. He is currently a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IFPM).