Polish supply chain gears up for country's first nuclear project

[NNadir]

Poland features, on most days, the dirtiest electricity in Europe. According to Electricity map, Poland, over the last 12 months has an carbon intensity of 637 grams CO₂/kWh, burning, like their German neighbors, coal whenever the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining, and even when it is. This compares to the 344 grams CO₂/kWh of their antinuke German neighbors, again over the last 12 months, and is of course, disastrously worse than France's 24 grams CO₂/kWh.

As I often point out, antinukes don't give a flying fuck about extreme global heating.

Poland is planning, unlike Germany, to do something about it.

Polish supply chain gears up for country's first nuclear project

Subtitle:

The Polish government expects a significant share of work on the country's first nuclear power plant to be awarded to local companies, but there are steps needing to be taken by the Polish supply chain, the World Nuclear Supply Chain conference in Warsaw heard.

Some excerpts:

In November 2022, the then Polish government selected Westinghouse AP1000 reactor technology for construction at the Lubiatowo-Kopalino site in the Choczewo municipality in Pomerania in northern Poland. An agreement setting a plan for the delivery of the plant was signed in May last year by Westinghouse, Bechtel and Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe (PEJ) - a special-purpose vehicle 100% owned by Poland's State Treasury. The Ministry of Climate and Environment in July issued a decision-in-principle for PEJ to construct the three-unit plant. The aim is for Poland's first AP1000 reactor to enter commercial operation in 2033. The total investment costs of the project are estimated to be about PLN192 billion (USD49 billion).

The government expects Polish companies to supply at least 40% of the components and services for the country's first nuclear power plant.

"We are starting our adventure [in nuclear power]," Andrzej Sidlo, counsellor at the Polish Ministry of Industry told the event, organised by World Nuclear Association. "However, we are not starting from scratch ... we don't yet have nuclear in our energy mix, however we have a lot of experienced nuclear companies because of export projects and because of international cooperation..."

..."It's very surprising that we have a very high score on the Polish political readiness because we are a pretty divided country when it comes to politics," said Agnieszka Skorupinska, Partner, Head of Sustainability and Energy Transition at Baker McKenzie. "But here we all agree we need to have nuclear, so this is a very important development and very important conclusion."

However, the Baker McKenzie report found that the preparedness of the country's supply chain was low, with local companies particularly needing guidance on norms and standards.

"We did rate it rather low, but not in the sense of companies being not fit or not prepared, but simply where the first nuclear project is ... the problem they have is that they really don't know 100% what is expected from them," Silva said. "I think when the information is clear - we need you to do this and that and this will be our requirements for that product - then it will be much easier for the Polish companies to show their real potential..."

It would appear that even though Ms Skorupinska describes her country as politically divided, Poles, unlike Americans, don't extend that divisiveness to the celebration of medieval ignorance, stupidity, and contempt for science and engineering.

The time may come when Poland is the major force in Europe. I certainly hope so. Despite much tragedy in their history, they strike me as highly civilized people. I have to say that I liked pretty much every Pole I have ever met.

[thucythucy]

1. Interesting development.

According to the producers of this video, the back story behind Poland entering NATO was that it threatened otherwise to develop its own nuclear deterrent against Russia. Apparently it's now seeking to have tactical nukes stationed there, given Russia's attack on Ukraine.

I found this video interesting, but I imagine most of this is old news to you.

This has me wondering if a side "benefit" of a home grown Polish nuclear energy industry might be an enhanced ability to produce its own nukes. Certainly, if North Korea could do it, I don't see why Poland would have any problem. It couldn't, of course, conduct actual test shots, but with today's technology I don't know if that would be necessary.

When the Polish government made its intentions known, back in the Clinton era, the rumor was that it was in talks with Israel and or South Africa for aid with any potential nukes program.

This all has me wondering if a part of Polish public support for the development of a domestic nuclear power industry isn't the potential for enhancing Polish military capability, especially given Trump's and MAGA's hedging on NATO and collective security.

[NNadir]

2. The reactors being built in Poland, AP1000, are not suitable for nuclear weapons production.

It is relatively straight forward to minimize diversion risk by controlling the plutonium isotopic vector. You cannot, should not, and will not make weapons grade plutonium with a light water reactor without completely and totally destroying its economics.

Poland has no enrichment capacity and to my knowledge, no plans to build any. I oppose any plan to build more nuclear weapons by any country anywhere at any time, particularly as the stocks of these weapons are falling into hands of fascists, in the United States, to intellectually and morally challenged fascists.

This said, it's not actually amusing that every time someone talks about nuclear plant everyone starts wondering about nuclear weapons, but conversely, every time people build and operate a refinery or drill an oil field (or a palm oil plantation) they don't talk about napalm, which is manufactured using petroleum and a biofuel (palmitic acid).

Since nuclear energy saves lives, this unjust focus kills people, and is doing so as we speak.

Which has killed more people, nuclear war (one) or napalm? You can limit the answer to 1945 alone and the answer is illuminating, if considers the fire bombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, which are listed at this link: 67 Japanese Cities Firebombed in World War II

There has been one, and only one, nuclear war, and to the extent it involved the United States and Japan, it started as an oil war, since the attack on Pearl Harbor was designed to protect the flank of the Japanese Army and Navy for its drive on the oil fields of what is now Indonesia, but was then "The Dutch East Indies." This move was made because the United States, then the world's major oil exporter, cut off oil supplies to Japan over its war on China. To the extent it involved the German attack on the Soviet Union, access to oil was also a consideration. We are still fighting oil wars using oil diverted to weapons of mass destruction, some as a result of oil terrorism (9/11 in the US) that took place because of oil policy. I note that the oil wars in Kuwait and Iraq actually ended up killing more people than were killed by nuclear war. We don't really pay attention to these deaths, because most of the dead were Arabs. Estimated deaths in the Iraq wars.

People always engage in selective attention about nuclear issues without contemplating the observable reality. There's a reality evoked in the honest answer to the following question: Which has killed more people, oil wars using oil diverted to weapons of mass destruction, or nuclear war?

I covered, many years ago, the path toward the minimization of the risk of nuclear war - although nuclear war can never be made impossible, since uranium exists and we can never consume all of it - in a post as a guest author on another website:

On Plutonium, Nuclear War, and Nuclear Peace

If Poland builds nuclear weapons they will not be able to do so with AP1000 reactors. The only type of commercial thermal spectrum nuclear reactor suitable for production of nuclear weapons, is the heavy water (CANDU type) PHWR although its interesting that with the exception of India and Pakistan, (and possibly China) no nation has used them to develop nuclear weapons grade plutonium, not Canada, not South Korea, not Romania, not Argentina, not Sweden (although they considered making nuclear weapons, but ultimately rejected the idea.) Even in this case, the economics of using a heavy water reactor to make weapons grade plutonium is economically problematic. It takes far more than access to weapons grade plutonium (greater than 95% ²³⁹Pu) to make a nuclear weapon, and indeed to maintain these weapons, since they tend to degrade over time, a good thing.) I also note, as I did in the post I linked above, heavy water reactors are entirely suitable for denaturing plutonium (and indeed, uranium) to make it essentially useless for use in nuclear weapons. This, I think, would be a very good idea.

All objections to nuclear energy to my mind - objections that kill people and are in fact killing the entire planetary ecosystem via destruction of the atmosphere - are arbitrary, hypocritical, and frankly absurd.

[thucythucy]

3. Good to know about this particular project

and it's insuitabiliy for weapons development.

Thank you for that information.

Best wishes.

[John ONeill]

4. Nuclear weapon death toll.

About three times many people died in the Rwandan genocide as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, mostly killed with machetes. It's as plausible to call for banning the use of steel, as of uranium.