Publication Laka-library:
Operational Anomalies of Nuclear Energy
| Author | Munkácsy, Egres, Energiaklub |
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2-28-9-90-02.pdf |
| Date | June 2021 |
| Classification | 2.28.9.90/02 (HUNGARY - FACILITIES) |
| Remarks | Ten years after the Fukushima and thirty-five years after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accidents, the Energiaklub has reviewed the past 70 years of nuclear energy and its current state. Their experts have produced two new studies on the subject: one on the operational anomalies of nuclear power and one on the environmental impact of radioactive waste. |
| Front |
From the publication:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Nuclear power accounts for barely 2% of global final energy consumption and it is not part of the energy mix in 84% of the world’s countries. Its importance in developed economies is rapidly declining, and the capacities that are still operating are being liquidated. Capacity expansion is typically observed in developing countries where the political system is not functioning democratically. The 70-year journey of nuclear power has been lined with 17 particularly serious accidents. The security expectations that can be traced back to these are constantly getting more and more rigorous, which has resulted in dramatic price increases over the last three decades. This fact and the fall in the price of the competing renewable energy technologies mean that new nuclear power plants can no longer be built on a market basis. The costs of the planned investment in Paks in Hungary will also be paid by the taxpayers, while they will not be able to form an opinion in a referendum on the project which has a final cost of HUF 10,000-20,000 billion (i.e. HUF 1-2 million for each Hungarian citizen). Because of the enormous costs, nuclear energy is a hotbed of corruption, of which there are deterrent examples around the world. Not only do nuclear power plants operate with poor energy efficiency of around 33%, but - according to international life-cycle research, taking into account the energy needs of mining and waste management for hundreds of thousands of years - it is possible that the operation will have a negative result, i.e. energy loss. More and more system operators are reporting that the power generated by nuclear power plants (and coal-fuelled power plants) is causing them operational difficulties. These “obsolete” facilities, due to their inflexible production, pose an increasing threat to the security of energy supply to consumers year after year due to their inability to support fast- growing and very low-cost wind turbines and solar systems. Based on the operating experience so far, nuclear energy is therefore not cheap, not safe and not in the least clean. Furthermore, the expansion of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant cannot be called transparent, as there has been no proper expert debate or social dialogue. In contrast, the last decade has been marked by data request lawsuits, data request denials and data encryptions, thus depriving the wider scientific community and society of the opportunity to form well-founded opinions and excluding them from decision-making processes.