Another floating offshore liquefied natural gas import terminal could be built, this time for a South African project, if a joint bid by ship owner Golar LNG and technology company Bluewater Offshore is approved by the Capetown.

Golar and and Bluewater Energy Services of the Netherlands hope to build a floating storage and re-gasification unit for national energy company PetroSA. The two companies will acquire the 1977 model Moss type LNG carrier, the 126,000-cubic-metre Hoegh Gandria for conversion to LNG installation.

The Bluewater group of companies has built the technology and specializes in the lease and operation of tanker-based production and storage. The company also makes Single Point Mooring systems for offshore unloading operations.

With French and German companies lining up to build new nuclear power stations in Britain, the die now seems cast for nuclear. Or is it?

The government's goal is certainly ambitious. Ten countries - primarily the UK, US, France and Canada, but also including Japan, Korea, Brasil, Argentina, South Africa and Switzerland - have set up the Generation IV International Forum. It will develop a successor nuclear energy system to the previous Generations I (Magnox) and II (advanced gas-cooled reactors and the Sizewell B light water reactor) and follow the Generation III systems now being built. The latter includes the French Areva evolutionary pressure reactor (EPR), the prototype of which is being constructed at Olkiluoto in Finland, with another being built in France.

Improved versions
It is intended that these Generation III models, plus (hopefully) improved versions in future, will lead reactor orders through to 2030, after which it is hoped that Generation IV will kick in, with the goal of nuclear sustainability.

However, the roadmap to get there is beset by practical problems that may prove insurmountable. Generation II and III nuclear plants operate in a "once-through" mode, which means that only half the 0.7% fissionable uranium 235 content of natural uranium goes into the fuel, while most of the heavy metal ends up in enrichment tails and in spent fuel as waste. This, therefore, requires a constant and increasing supply of natural uranium to meet the rising demand for electricity, while intensifying the already unresolved problem of what to do with vast accumulations of radioactive waste.

Even the International Atomic Energy Agency and the optimistic Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development put the total world uranium reserves at 4.7m tonnes, and that assumes a purchase price of at least $130/kg. In fact, prices are currently nearly twice as high, yet primary uranium production is falling. But even if the figures were roughly correct and not significantly inflated, the total of known uranium resources is expected to be exhausted by 2030. If fast reactors were to be introduced by then, which is the centrepiece of the strategy, a further 10m tonnes - twice the known resources - would have to be ready for production, and this could only come from "speculative and undiscovered resources".

The nuclear power industry answers this by referring to the universality of uranium in the Earth's crust and in sea water. But the enormous energy needed to extract it from these low-concentration sources would exceed the energy output of the fission of the fuel provided.

These pressures are already being felt. The USA gets half its nuclear fuel from diluted former nuclear weapons' highly-enriched uranium from Russia. And even Russia, with insufficient primary production, will be forced to rely on ex-weapons material to power its planned expansion. The UK's aim to secure energy supplies will not be aided by importing 100% of nuclear fuels, and that's on top of increased dependence on imported fossil fuels, notably gas.

Meanwhile, Japan has closed seven nuclear power stations built on an earthquake fault line. The Olkiluoto reactor is already two years behind schedule after just two years' building and has a £1bn cost overrun so far, and there can be no reliable evidence on the economics of nuclear power until the new designs of the Westinghouse AP1000 and European EPR water reactors have been fully tested over many years in service. Contrary to claims by the industry, unresolved questions of cost and the looming shortage of uranium are the biggest challenges to the nuclear revival.

To overcome the fragility of this recovery, the industry looks to Generation IV development of the fast reactor by 2030 as the key to ultimate nuclear sustainability. However, if for this purpose the fast reactor were adopted in "breeder" mode, an even greater quantity of highly radioactive actinoids (plutonium, neptunium, americium and curium) would be generated, exacerbating still further the waste management problem. If, on the other hand, the fast reactor were adopted in "burner" mode, as currently seems likely to prevail, the waste problem is alleviated, but there is no sustainability.

The Generation IV fuel systems offer at present six types, of which two are emerging as likely candidates. One is the very high temperature thermal reactor (VHTR), which can be used for coal gasification as well as thermo-chemical hydrogen production. The US government favours this because a hydrogen economy is seen as the solution to the exhaustion of oil reserves, and the petrol derived from it.

The main problem with VHTR, which has a coolant system outlet temperature of about 1,000C, is likely to arise from irradiation characterised by the Wigner effect - the displacement of atoms in a solid caused by neutron radiation - and from progressive disintegration by neutron bombardment. Indeed, a similar problem with the Wigner energy in Pile 1 at Windscale (now Sellafield) caused the fire in 1957 and melted the fuel elements. Given the very high temperatures needed for this complex and quite likely unstable process, its viability would need rigorous and exhaustive testing before such a problematic reactor were ever adopted.

Repetitive cycle
The second favoured Generation IV candidate is the sodium-cooled fast reactor system (SFR). The idea here is that as the supply of natural uranium declines, it is replaced by a plutonium-based fuel that is incrementally augmented by fresh plutonium in a repetitive cycle, providing claims of sustainability. It is envisaged that there is a gain in the plutonium in a surrounding "blanket" of uranium 238 over and above the plutonium consumed in the reaction, with a doubling time of 15 to 20 years.

Again there are two key problems. It is a burner reactor, not a breeder, so that while reducing waste management problems, it does not provide for sustainability. Second, even if fast reactors of this kind could be successfully deployed - a big if - the doubling time of 15 to 20 years would require supplies of natural uranium to be maintained for decades, if not centuries, until the fleet of "once-through" reactors can be progressively replaced. And the uranium simply is not available for that timespan.

So, a nuclear renaissance? Forget it.

Areva SA., the world's biggest nuclear-reactor manufacturer, is investing more than $7 billion in uranium mines and an ore enrichment plant to satisfy rising demand for non-polluting atomic energy.

The Paris-based company is deepening its investment in atomic fuel as it expects more than 300 gigawatts of nuclear capacity to be added globally by 2030, Areva SA Board Member Luc Oursel said at a nuclear energy conference in Tokyo.

Demand for atomic energy is spurring orders for reactors and boosting contracts to prolong the lifespan of existing plants while manufacturers intensify efforts to extract, enrich and recycle ore. Areva and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. said they are expanding their alliance to include nuclear fuel sales.

``The world wants more energy for less carbon dioxide,'' Oursel said at the annual Japan Atomic Industrial Forum today.

Areva will invest more than $2.3 billion in uranium mines and at least 3 billion euros ($4.7 billion) in an enrichment plant. ``Areva is preparing to contribute to the nuclear renaissance,'' Oursel said. ``Our ambition is to make the renaissance certain.''

He forecast installed nuclear capacity to rise to 635 gigawatts in 2030 from 372 gigawatts in 2006. The estimate is moderate compared with other forecasts, some of which are as high as 800 gigawatts, said Oursel, who is also the chief executive officer of the company's reactor-building unit Areva NP.

Nuclear Renaissance
Orders for reactors and atomic fuel are rising at the fastest pace since the 1990s as demand for cleaner-burning fuels grows, crude oil prices surge and nuclear plant builders reassure the public that atomic energy is safe. An explosion at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 and a reactor meltdown in Chernobyl in 1986 had sparked safety concerns.

Areva, the world's third-biggest uranium producer, on April 11 said it will team up with Mitsubishi Heavy to sell nuclear fuel, mainly to Japan. Separately, it won 2 billion euros of fuel supply contracts from Japanese utilities, Chief Executive Officer Anne Lauvergeon said.

The deals with Japan's utilities came almost a year after the French company said it would be getting more than 1 billion euros for an order from Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Ltd., a unit of Korea Electric Power Corp., to enrich uranium. Ore must be enriched before it can be used to fuel light-water reactors.

Enrichment Plant
Areva, which accounts for 25 percent of the world's enrichment capacity, is currently building the Georges Besse II plant in South France to enrich ores. Commercial operation is slated for the middle of 2009.

The atomic reactor builder has stakes in uranium mines in countries such as Niger, Australia and Canada. It bought UraMin Inc., a South Africa-based mining company, for about $2.5 billion last year, when uranium prices touched a record $138 a pound.

Currently, 439 reactors are in operation worldwide, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

A consortium led by French nuclear giant Areva is preparing to bid for two third-generation atomic reactors to be built in South Africa, a spokesman for the group said Tuesday. Areva, construction and communication conglomerate Bouygues and electricity giant EDF have teamed up with South African engineering firm Aveng for the project, with a formal offer to be made to Pretoria at the end of January.

South Africa wants to build new nuclear reactors to meet growing demand for electricity and has also asked US-Japonese Westinghouse to made a bid.

Areva is building two second-generation nuclear reactions near the Koeberg power station near Cape Town.