ABU DHABI'S NUCLEAR POWER PLANT FOLLY

In December 2009, five months after becoming IRENA’s secretariat headquarter city, Abu Dhabi announced its four-reactor nuclear power plant. The emirate’s decision to build not one, two, or three, but a four-reactor power plant was the antithesis of the Masdar project’s ideals and a betrayal of IRENA’s principles, as appears in its mission statement: “To promote the widespread and increased adoption and sustainable use of all forms of renewable energy. IRENA’s Member States pledge to advance renewables in their own national policies and programs, and to promote, both domestically and through international cooperation, the transition to a sustainable and secure energy supply.”[7] 

Below is a brief review of the two nuclear disasters at Three Mile Island in the United States and at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. This will be followed by a discussion on why alternative energy resources to nuclear electricity generation should be pursued. Last, the motives for Abu Dhabi’s contradictory decisions regarding Masdar City and its nuclear energy project are explored. 

Cleanup of the accident took 14 years (from August 1979 to December 1993) and cost around $975 million. Initially, efforts focused on the cleanup and decontamination of the site. Starting in 1985, radioactive fuel was removed. The defueling process was completed in 1990. The damaged fuel was removed and disposed of in 1993. The contaminated cooling water that leaked into the containment building had seeped into the building’s concrete, leaving the radioactive residue impossible to remove. The accident dented the popularity of nuclear energy--from 1980 to 1984, 51 American nuclear reactors were cancelled.

The nuclear power industry claims that reactor design since the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents has improved and that nuclear energy is now safe and environmentally friendly. The industry’s lobbyists are working to convince world leaders that nuclear energy should be part of the solution to the world’s future energy needs.

Yet opponents of nuclear energy contend that such claims ignore the carbon footprint created by the processes that turn uranium ore to nuclear fuel. Such claims also ignore the millennia-long damage to the environment resulting from the toxic waste left by the operations of nuclear reactors. Opponents of nuclear power plants believe that all things mechanical are likely to break down at some point due to design defect or human error. They believe that regardless of how infinitesimal the probability might be of a major reactor accident materializing, discounting the monumental losses that would result from such an accident by the infinitesimally tiny probability of the accident occurring would still leave a prohibitively high potential loss to accept.

In the case of a major nuclear accident, the UAE and its neighbors would suffer horribly. They do not possess--indeed, no country possesses--enough hospitals, surgeons, or scientists to cope with a sudden and unexpected flood of tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of casualties. Further, in Abu Dhabi’s case, there is the added danger of radioactivity contaminating regional seawaters and disabling the desalination plants that provide millions of people with clean drinking and household water. This issue will be discussed next, followed by the challenge of dealing with nuclear waste. 

Radioactive Accidents Might Disable Desalination Plants

The possibility must not be ruled out that a major radiation leak might force the closure of some--possibly all--of the desalination plants that dot the shores of the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. These plants supply drinking and household water to the entire populations of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, and the cities and towns of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia such as Dammam and al-Khobar, as well as the cities and towns of the Qasim region and the capital, Riyadh. If such an accident were ever to occur, the scale of the resulting human calamity would be unimaginable. Twenty-five million people could be affected. They use some 2.5 billion cubic meters per annum of desalinated water, or seven million cubic meters per day for drinking and household purposes. To put such a daily volume in perspective, it is equivalent to the combined cargos of 14 super-tankers of 500,000 tons each. No emergency preparedness could deliver even a quarter of such a massive volume of clean water on a daily basis for extended periods of time. Indeed, not only would the existing water supplies be radioactive, but the rescue tanker deliveries would become contaminated once they reached the affected areas. Evacuation of millions of people might become necessary, a nightmare of epic proportions in an area bordered by the forbidding Empty Quarter Desert and the sea. As to where these millions might go, that is a whole different challenge to deal with.

The Challenge of Nuclear Waste

Meanwhile, during the long sweep of the millennia, an earthquake, a volcano, or some other natural disaster might force the decaying waste to the Earth’s surface. Disturbing nuclear waste accidents have already occurred. For example, in the former Soviet Union, waste stored in Lake Karachay was blown over the area in the spring of 1968 as the lake began to dry up, and the wind carried away a substantial volume of radioactive dust, irradiating half a million people.[17] At Maxey Flat, a low-level radioactive waste facility located in Kentucky, containment trenches collapsed under heavy rainfall and became radioactive.[18] In France, at the Areva plant in Tricastin, liquid containing untreated uranium overflowed out of a faulty tank and about 75 kg of the radioactive material seeped into the ground and, from there, into two nearby rivers.[19]

Safe and environmentally friendly solar and wind power are available on a commercial scale and should replace the potentially disastrous 5,600 MW of Abu Dhabi’s four reactors. Even if the cost of nuclear electricity is a fraction of the cost of alternative technologies, it is a matter of safety and environmental protection, not economics or finance.

A number of alternative renewable power resources to generate electricity are available today on a commercial scale; such as, geothermal, sea waves, solar, and wind, among others. Following is a brief description of two renewable resources: solar power and wind power, both resources in great abundance in the Middle East in general, and the Arabian Peninsula and the UAE in particular. 

As of October 2009, the largest PV power plant was the Olmedilla Photovoltaic Park in Spain, a 60 MW facility (meeting the electricity needs of more than 40,000 homes).[24] Larger PV power plants are currently under construction. These include the 550 MW Topaz Solar Farm in California, expected to begin power delivery in 2011 and be fully operational by 2013[25] as well as the 600 MW Ranch Cielo Solar Farm in New Mexico expected to open in 2010 and estimated at $840 million.[26] To put 600 MW-capacity in perspective, two of the Rancho Cielo safe and environmentally friendly plants could produce 86 percent of the capacity of one 1,400 MW of Abu Dhabi’s potentially dangerous four nuclear reactors.

While cost is not the focus here, it is compelling, to note that the capacity of Abu Dhabi’s 5,600 MW nuclear power plant could possibly be produced using solar power plants of the Rancho Cielo type for around $8 billion, as compared to between $20 and $40 billion (see above). On the individual dwelling level, solar heated water in Germany marked record growth in 2008, with over 200,000 systems installed.[27] 

Wind Power

Wind power is the conversion of wind energy using wind turbines to make electricity. A 2005 study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research found that wind power could satisfy up to seven times the world’s electricity needs.[28] World wind generation capacity has been growing rapidly in recent years. Existing wind power capacity grew by 29 percent in 2008 to reach 121 GW, or more than double the 59 GW of capacity in place at the end of 2005.[29] Wind power accounted for 42 percent of new capacity additions in the United States and for 36 percent of new installations in Europe. As of May 2009, 80 countries around the world were using wind power on a commercial basis.[30]

The EU climate and energy strategy released on January 23, 2008, commits the community as a whole to source 20 per cent of its total energy demand from renewable sources by 2020.[31] In the United Kingdom, over 40,000 MW of offshore wind projects are at various stages of development. When completed, by around 2020, a third of the UK’s electricity will be generated by wind power.[32] Such capacity is equivalent to more than seven times the capacity of Abu Dhabi’s four nuclear driven generators, which will go on line about the same time in 2020.

In 2008, China installed approximately 6,300 megawatts, doubling the nation’s cumulative wind capacity for the fourth year in a row. The Chinese Renewable Energy Industry Association projects wind capacity to reach 50,000 MW by 2015.[33]

That Abu Dhabi plans to meet its growing demand for electricity is admirable, indeed. However, Abu Dhabi’s decision to purchase a huge nuclear power plant at a time when safe alternatives are readily available is inexplicable. How and what kind of decision making processes would produce such potentially disastrous decisions? In response to this question, Abu Dhabi’s style of national governance should be considered.

It may also be said that Abu Dhabi’s Masdar project, its gigantic nuclear power plant, IRENA’s headquarters, and the failed attempt to host the GCC’s Central Bank are all expressions of the same mind-set that built the Emirates Palace Hotel, is cloning the Louvre, and building the indoor Yas Island theme park.