One of the most recent tensions in the very sensitive and often-fragile relationship between Iran and Britain has been the nuclear issue. This has been to an extent that the issue now overshadows the overall ties between the two countries. The burden of proof has been laboured upon Iran by a number of Western governments including Britain. Other incidents have interrupted the process of further developing constructive relations and dialogue, however “the nuclear issue is infinitely more important” (Lord Temple Morris in his July Interview with British Persian Media).
Therefore, British Persian Media as a news organisation that deals exclusively with British-Iranian relations, is determined to play a role in clarifying the issues at hand for both countries through the provision of information and interaction between British and Iranian media. Hopefully the result could ease the current tension.
British Persian Media’s interview with World Nuclear Association in London is part of a series of interviews and reports on the nuclear issue.
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The full text of British Persian Media's interview with Ian Hore-Lacy, Head of Communications for the World Nuclear Association
Interviewer: We would like to enquire as to the state and development of nuclear energy in Britain and Iran as a whole. So if you could just give us a brief overview of the state of nuclear development and what themes and arguments there are surrounding the nuclear issue.
Ian Hore-Lacy: If I could just step back from that and say that the world picture is that nuclear power provides 16% of the worlds electricity, something like a third in Europe generally and it looks like growing again and taking a more major share because of Greenhouse concerns and because it's cost competitive. Britain and Iran have some particular features of their situation, which makes them slightly anomalous in that whole world picture.
Britain for a start, was a leader in developing nuclear power for electricity. It is now the only country in the world that has any first generation reactors still running. In other countries they have all been scrapped and that’s because these are very well built, and they are safe and durable, and functional, but they are not economic. Britain’s second generation reactors are mostly a peculiar type that was built only in Britain. There’s some very positive features and some others as well, and there is one reactor only that is typical of those e.g. operating in the United States and in most of Europe. So the nuclear power picture in Britain is unusual.
The other aspect of nuclear power in Britain, which supplies about a quarter of the electricity here, about 40% around London, is that it's really in the doldrums. Governments have not been able to take particular decisions needed to push it forward and to replace the capacity that is now ageing, and there are various reasons for that. One of them is British Energy, which was floated from the government. But it was floated with a number of handicaps (with a lot of lead in the saddle bags as one might say). One of them was a rather expensive contract to reprocess its spent fuel and that means that the cost of dealing with that spent fuel was a bout six times the cost of anybody else’s cost in dealing with it e.g. in North America where the fuel isn’t reprocessed and the spent fuel is not reprocessed and is treated as waste. So there is some peculiar features of the British picture.
Now Iran was building a German reactor at Bushehr and that contract was aborted in something like 1979 and subsequently the Russians - Atomstroyexport, I think, took over building that. Now they are building it to a rather different design and so not much of the original could be used. That is now approaching completion and that plant is a pressurised water reactor of conventional design, typical of those supplying about 80% of the worlds nuclear electricity. It’s a design that is not susceptible to being used for weapons programmes, for making plutonium for weapons for instance, or put it this way, if you did run it that way which would be very difficult and terribly uneconomic, it would also be extremely obvious to everybody around the world. So in other words you can virtually forget about that being a source of weapons material. In fact it’s the same kind of design that the Americans were helping to pay to have built in North Korea as a sort of trade off for them abandoning their weapons programme.
Interviewer: So following from that 16% figure you gave initially, how does nuclear energy stand in contrast to fossil fuels with regards to productivity, efficiency and cost?
Ian Hore-Lacy: In most parts of the world the cost is comparable. For a new plant there is a particular handicap, and that is that a lot of the cost is up at the front end in building the plant. The cost in running it is relatively low after that. The cost of electricity produced is comparable and there are a number of figures around that demonstrate that, and the Finns have obviously bought in on that, and the French have bought in on that. The other thing someone can say about cost is, the French produce nearly 80% of their electricity from nuclear power. That is the cheapest electricity in Europe and as a consequence they are the world's largest net exporters of electricity including to Great Britain. So that’s a comment on cost. Broadly its competitive, some places it's not competitive, for instance in Australia where I come from, nuclear power would not be competitive unless one puts a cost on carbon emissions. Now that is increasingly likely to happen in various parts of the world and that will mean that the competitiveness of nuclear power is much enhanced, because of the fossil fuels - particularly coal.
Interviewer: In your opinion does nuclear energy represent, at this moment, the best way forward with regard to being a practical source of energy or would you say that the current set up is sufficient for that or how much effort should be made to increase our sustainable energy productivity?
Ian Hore-Lacy: Well nuclear energy is very much a sustainable technology. But let's just back track a bit. Your asking your questions about energy, nuclear power is really only concerned with electricity and in particular with base-load electricity. That means really it's concerned with large-scale continuous reliable supply and all those other characteristics of base load. Base load is that generating plant you tend to have running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That is where nuclear competitiveness is good. Nuclear reactors are not good for running in short bursts, whereas say a gas fired plant is very good for that, and also hydro is good for that. You can probably forget about oil powered generation although probably in Iran I imagine some of the electricity is that way. I am guessing, but I would say that Iran’s rationale for building nuclear power plants is that they can replace some of their oil fired plants and they can then export the oil and make far more money out of it than they can by burning it wastefully. This is the basic rationale for instance for the Russian nuclear programme – to replace gas fired plants. They have got heaps of gas but they think its rather silly to burn it for their own electricity when they can use nuclear and export the gas very profitably to the West. I would guess that that’s Iran’s rationale for proceeding with Bushehr.
So nuclear power is in a good position, it is a sustainable technology in the sense that the wastes do not pollute the environment, the wastes are all contained and managed, it does not emit C02, there is plenty of uranium to run it - uranium is not an uncommon metal in the earths crust - and in one sense it is the only way to go. If one is really concerned about greenhouse gas emissions. That will drive, I think, the balance between uranium and coal over the next few decades.
Interviewer: One final question, I would just like to establish the problems entwined with nuclear energy being misused and how perhaps, whether it’s the IAEA or organisations such as yourself can help prevent that misuse from occurring?
Ian Hore-Lacy: Well I don’t think civil nuclear power for electricity generation has ever been misused. I don’t think you could point to anywhere where that has happened. I certainly don’t know of anywhere, where it has happened. The whole technology of course has grown out of weapons programmes in the Second World War and subsequently there was some dual use early on e.g. the first British reactors were for the first couple of years run for both plutonium production and power but we are talking 40 years ago. Certainly since about 1970, any traded uranium is under what is called safeguards, which are accounting and auditing surveillance which ensures that none of that traded uranium is used for weapons programmes, and none has been.
Interviewer: It's a case of so far so good
Ian Hore-Lacy: Well that means directly with regard to it being enriched to higher levels, I mean enrichment for a power reactor is generally 3-5%, enrichment for weapons needs to be 93%. So there is concern about enrichment plants being built in various places in the world and how they will be used, but at this stage all the internationally traded uranium is under safeguards and therefore if that is diverted it becomes obvious very quickly and the IAEA can blow the whistle and sanctions can then be applied through the UN mechanisms. That’s the threat, its detection and deterral I guess you would say.
There is a question also of plutonium being recovered from spent fuel. In fact that which could be recovered, and in France and in Japan and the UK is recovered from spent fuel, which has been used for power production is very unsuitable for weapons. If anybody wants to make a bomb from plutonium they in fact use a different kind of reactor such as a number that exist still in various parts of the world such as Russia, UK and formerly the US use a special kind of reactor. You run it on a very short cycle and you then recover the plutonium from that – a different kind of plutonium. So from the civil power programme – yes there are concerns, yes there have been concerns from the outset and that is why the IAEA is there and a major part of its function is in fact to grapple with those perceived threats. Today the main concern is not what goes into or through nuclear power reactors, it is with enrichment plants which don’t seem to serve any very obvious commercial purpose.
The World Nuclear Association
General info on nuclear energy
Safeguards to prevent nuclear proliferation
Iraq, North Korea & Iran - Implications for Safeguards, also South Africa, Israel and Libya
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