PLUTONIUM, which the nuclear industry used to value like gold, is now worthless. The world鈥檚 most pro-nuclear power company, Electricit茅 de France (EDF), has decided to give it a zero value in this year鈥檚 annual accounts.
EDF鈥檚 decision brings it into line with British and German power companies, which have already given up assigning positive values to plutonium. Companies used to believe that plutonium, which is produced by burning uranium in a reactor, was itself a valuable reactor fuel. But now they have discovered that the costs of recycling it are much higher than they expected.
According to Frans Berkhout of the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, plutonium has proved uneconomic as a fuel for both fast breeder and conventional reactors. The fast breeder programme has collapsed, uranium fuel has remained cheap, and the costs of making fuel containing plutonium have rocketed. 鈥淧lutonium is a liability, not an asset,鈥� Berkhout says.
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Last year, the OECD鈥檚 Nuclear Energy Agency estimated that fissile plutonium was worth $5 a gram because of its potential as a fuel for conventional reactors. But Berkhout says that the NEA overestimates the cost of uranium fuel and underestimates the cost of plutonium fuel. Its valuation is 鈥渃ompletely unrealistic鈥�, he argues, and is privately dismissed by most European power companies.
EDF鈥檚 decision was revealed by its fuel chief, Bernard Esteve, at a meeting of the French Nuclear Energy Society at the end of last month. Because the price of uranium is likely to remain very low for a long time, Esteve thinks it is now 鈥渞ealistic鈥� to give plutonium a zero value. He accepts that the value could become negative in the future.
Half of France鈥檚 56 reactors are licensed, or scheduled to be licensed, to use mixed uranium and plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel, although only seven have so far used it. The country鈥檚 commercial-scale fast breeder reactor, Superph茅nix, is encountering technical and political problems (This Week, 4 November). Mycle Schneider, director of the World Information Service on Energy, in Paris, describes EDF鈥檚 decision as 鈥渁n admission that it is on the wrong track鈥�.
British Energy, the new company that incorporates Nuclear Electric and Scottish Nuclear, says its 70-tonne stockpile of plutonium is worth precisely nothing. One of its predecessors, the Central Electricity Generating Board, was convinced that plutonium would one day fuel a fast breeder reactor programme. That programme has evaporated and the prototype fast reactor at Dounreay in Scotland is being closed down.
German power companies regard their plutonium stocks as an economic liability but nevertheless intend burning MOX fuel in 17 nuclear stations. The country鈥檚 only fast breeder reactor, completed at Kalkar near the Dutch border for 拢3.2 billion but never started up, was abandoned by the government in 1991. Last week, a Dutch businessman, Henny van der Most, announced that he was going to invest 拢18 million to transform the site into an amusement park.