Radwaste
British scientists are designing a revolutionary cement that could withstand the impact of intense radiation for thousands of years. The project could prove vital in dealing with the challenges of Britain’s proposed expansion of its nuclear industry. “To work out how materials – in this case cement – are going to behave for tens of thousands of years is quite mind-boggling, but that is exactly what we are now doing,” said the project’s leader, Claire Corkhill of Sheffield University. She is due to present details of the project at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington on Sunday. The key to her team’s project is the UK’s Diamond Light Source, near Oxford. The facility accelerates electrons almost to the speed of light, so that they give off a light 10 billion times brighter than the sun. These bright beams are then directed off into laboratories, where they are used to study the properties of many different types of material: ice, viruses, cancer drugs – and cement.
Observer 13th Feb 2016 read more »
BBC 13th Feb 2016 read more »
US
The Tennessee Valley Authority, which planned a decade ago to begin an American renaissance in nuclear power by building the first next-generation nuclear reactors in Alabama, is abandoning those plans because of shrinking power demand and rising nuclear construction costs. TVA told regulators Friday it will not pursue construction of two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at its Bellefonte Nuclear Power plant in Hollywood, Ala. The utility filed a motion Friday with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission indicating it will withdraw its application for a combined operating license for the reactors.
Times Free Press 13th Feb 2016 read more »
Times Free Press 12th Feb 2016 read more »
Nuclear Weapons
VLADIMIR Putin’s Prime Minister stepped up the war of words today accusing Britain and America of being to blame for a new Cold War which could lead to nuclear war.
Daily Star 13th Feb 2016 read more »
US defence secretary urges Britain to keep Trident nuclear defence system as Commons vote on renewal looms
Daily Record 13th Feb 2016 read more »
Independent 13th Feb 2016 read more »
Former head of Nato, Lord Robertson, confirmed that there was “a great deal of nervousness” among Britain’s traditional allies whose defence relies on the Nato nuclear deterrent supplied by Britain and the United States.
Independent 13th Feb 2016 read more »
Renewables
Divestment – the decision to voluntarily reduce one’s fossil fuel investments – has been a hot button topic of discussion since 2011, when university students began calling on their institutions to remove fossil fuels from their portfolios. Divestment arguments have often focused on the morality of investments, but the economic value of divestment has recently become hard to ignore. But profitable sustainability is coming of age, at least as far as renewable energy is concerned. With the value of fossil fuel holdings plummeting and the profitability of renewables growing, investors and companies are increasingly looking to sustainable investments for good long term bets. Renewable energy is becoming increasingly viable, a trend that could potentially be a game-changer for investors, particularly large scale, global investors like the ones attending the UN summit.
Guardian 13th Feb 2016 read more »
Ministers have been accused of planning a U-turn that would see consumers fund new onshore wind farms through green levies. The Government confirmed it was “looking carefully” at a wind industry proposal to continue public financial support for new turbines, despite a manifesto pledge to halt expansion. Critics described the proposal as a con, and said the Conservatives’ policy had been “crystal clear” that the subsidies would stop. Under the plan, households would still be forced to pay millions of pounds on their energy bills to fund new wind farms – but the payments would no longer be defined as subsidies. The wind industry’s plan hinges on the fact that no new power plants are commercially viable to build at the moment without extra financial support from bill-payers. If wind farms can be built at lower cost to consumers than alternatives, such as new gas plants, then payments to fund them should no longer be classed as “subsidy”, the industry argues.
Telegraph 13th Feb 2016 read more »
ANUPAM PATRA is the energy industry’s worst nightmare — and a glimpse of its future. The 41-year-old uses three smartphone apps to keep tabs on his household power consumption. He schedules energy-intensive activities for when his rooftop solar panels are pumping out maximum electricity, removing the need to draw expensive power from the grid. When the sun came out on Thursday, at 11am, he started a load of laundry from work with a tap of his touchscreen. The upshot? The annual energy bill for his four-bedroom detached house in Gloucester is £600 — about half the typical rate of £1,100. What’s more, he receives so much money from the government through a hugely generous solar subsidy scheme — which has been dramatically slashed for newcomers — that he does not expect to pay a penny for electricity until 2034, when his deal expires. “I actually got paid £80 last year,” he said. “Unless our consumption goes up, I don’t see that changing.” Patra’s is an extreme case, but he represents a future that has arrived much faster than executives of the big six British energy companies had expected. Keith Anderson, chief corporate officer of Scottish Power, admitted: “In its current form, the utility is dead. It’s a dinosaur.” “There is a transformation going on that may well be like the telecoms revolution of the past 20 years,” said Iain Conn, chief executive of British Gas owner Centrica. “One can envision a future where distributed generation is the main source and large fossil-fuel stations back them up.”
Sunday Times 14th Feb 2016 read more »
Energy Efficiency
We need to take a radically new approach to improving the energy performance of Scotland’s homes by making energy efficiency a National Infrastructure Priority. This would give a project to improve our housing stock the same political focus, and the same kind of multi-year, multi-billion-pound budgets that we give to spanning the Forth with a new bridge or dualling our major roads. All the parties currently represented in the Scottish Parliament have already committed to making energy efficiency an infrastructure priority in last year’s Climate Change Leaders’ Agreement, something that Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS) has been advocating strongly in its manifesto for the 2016 elections and elsewhere. And the Scottish Government announced that this approach would be the centrepiece of its response to Scotland’s fourth missed climate change target last year. But the challenge is to move from commitments to reality, by setting out a clear goal for the project, a clear plan for how it would be delivered, and a clear budget and financing strategy. Civic organisations across Scotland, including SCCS and WWF, and other groups campaigning around health, poverty, business, and children, recently set out their vision for what this approach should look like. We believe all homes need to be upgraded to a C energy rating by 2025, backed by funding of upwards of £10 billion over the next decade, split between the public and private sectors. Those who can’t pay must be supported with grants to improve their houses; those who are able to pay should have access to low or zero interest loans. A project of this scale means upgrading around 130,000 homes a year over the next decade. But if we succeed we will help to slash fuel bills, address fuel poverty, reduce climate emissions, tackle excess winter deaths and ease pressure on NHS budgets, and stimulate up to 9,000 net jobs a year, spread across Scotland.
Scotland on Sunday 14th Feb 2016 read more »
Grid Connections
An ambitious project to link the UK’s National Grid to Norway via a cable under the North Sea, in a bid to access that country’s vast supply of green energy, is being considered by ministers. It would involve laying a multibillion-pound “interconnector” between the energy-rich Scandinavian country and Britain – passing through a vast offshore wind farm being developed at Dogger Bank, the shallow area about 100 miles off the Yorkshire coast. The scheme has the potential to generate more than three times the energy produced by the new £24bn nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset. It is being considered alongside a proposal to link the UK to Iceland to access th at country’s volcanic geothermal energy and is part of a wider move to diversify Britain’s power sources. The Dogger Bank project, creating one of the world’s biggest offshore wind farms, is already under way but because of the intermittent nature of wind it cannot be relied on to generate consistent supplies of electricity.
Independent 13th Feb 2016 read more »
Fossil Fuels
SCOTTISH Ministers have announced three controversial pieces of research into fracking, fuelling fears the Government will back the disputed energy extraction method after the election. The work was unveiled on Friday and covers the decommissioning of fracking facilities and estimating the “seismic activity” associated with the technique.
Sunday Herald 14th Feb 2016 read more »
A DOZEN SNP MPs have backed a Green motion urging the Westminster Parliament to withdraw its multi-million pound pension funds from fossil fuel companies to help tackle climate pollution. This is despite a recent statement by SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon suggesting that she is opposed to the growing global movement to pull investments worth some £2.3 trillion from coal, oil and gas companies. More than 50 protests are being staged across the UK this weekend aimed at persuading more universities, councils and banks to withdraw money from climate polluters. In Scotland, the University of Glasgow and the United Reform Church are among those who have already decided to divest.
Sunday Herald 14th Feb 2016 read more »
Investors in fossil fuels are being warned that they may risk losing their money, because the markets for coal and liquefied natural gas are disappearing. In both cases it is competition from renewables, principally wind and solar power, that is being blamed for the threat. The cost of electricity from renewables continues to fall in Europe and Asia as the numbers of wind and solar installations grow in both continents, cutting demand for imported gas and coal.
Climate News Network 14th Feb 2016 read more »
