Dounreay
The finishing date for work to decommission and close the Dounreay nuclear power site in Caithness has been pushed back from 2025 to 2029. Changes in the way radioactive fuel should be handled and a requirement for additional security at nuclear sites has created more work at Dounreay. The changes are required by the UK government.
BBC 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Sellafield
Plans to extend the emergency evacuation zone around the Sellafield atomic site are set to be published next month. It is expected that the Office for Nuclear Regulations (ONR) – which oversees the nuclear industry – will recommend in January an increase in the surrounding evacuation zone in the event of a radiation emergency. The current Detailed Emergency Planning Zones (DEPZ) are 2km for immediate evacuation, and 6km for a secondary. David Moore, chairman of the West Cumbria Sites Stakeholders Group, says that it is an “open secret” that the ONR will recommend a 6km zone for all evacuations.
Carlisle News and Star 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Utilities
Britain’s biggest energy companies will be forced for the first time to reveal how much profit they make by overcharging their most loyal customers who have never switched supplier. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has ordered British Gas, EDF Energy, SSE, ScottishPower, E.ON and npower to provide the information as part of its investigation into the energy market. The findings are expected to show that the Big Six suppliers make far more profit from their long-term customers compared with those who have changed to a cheaper deal. Some 60 per cent of customers, or 15 million households, have never switched supplier. As a result, these customers, whom the Big Six inherited at privatisation, remain on the most expensive standard variable tariff.
Times 16th Dec 2014 read more »
Energy Supplies
The UK imported over 60 per cent of fuel used to generate electricity in 2013, with the average distance travelled reaching 3,900 miles, according to a new analysis by Good Energy. The figures demonstrate the UK’s dependence on fuel imports is growing year on year. When Good Energy looked at government figures showing where the UK’s electricity came from in 2012, it found just 35 per cent of the fuel was from the country’s own resources, down from 43 per cent in previous years.
Business Green 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Sixty-six heavyweight boffins active in the field of biodiversity conservation have pleaded with the world’s greens to get over their objections to nuclear power, pointing out that renewable energy means terrible losses of endangered animals and plants. “Biodiversity is not only threatened by climate disruption arising largely from fossil-fuel derived emissions,” says Professor Corey Bradshaw from the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute. “It is also threatened by land transformation resulting from renewable energy sources, such as flooded areas for hydro-electricity, agricultural areas needed for biofuels and large spaces needed for wind and solar farms.”
The Register 16th Dec 2014 read more »
World Nuclear News 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Companies
EDF Energy’s renewable arm today sold a majority stake of three UK onshore wind farms to a Chinese nuclear energy company, China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN). It did not reveal how much money changed hands in the deal, citing commercial confidentiality. The UK energy firm’s French parent company, EDF, has worked with CGN for three decades and may also work with it on the new nuclear power plant Hinkley Point C in Somerset.
Energy Live News 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Windpower Monthly 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Energy Business Review 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Capacity Market
Catherine Mitchell: Tomorrow, the government will begin spending up to £4bn per year on power stations some of which we do not need. In doing so, it risks compromising all three of the objectives that energy policy is supposed to deliver: security of supply, affordability and low-carbon energy. The capacity market auction will pay companies to keep existing nuclear, coal and gas-fired power stations running and to build new gas-fired units. Just over 50GW of capacity will be funded, at a maximum price of £75 per kW. The power stations will receive this money simply for existing; when they generate, they will also be paid for the electricity they sell.
Business Green 15th Dec 2014 read more »
IAEA
A mix of solar and wind energy, carbon capture storage technology and nuclear power could provide a viable solution to countries seeking to decrease their carbon footprint by lowering the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of their energy sector. This was the message from the IAEA at this year’s annual United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference — COP20 — held last week in Lima, Peru. The aim of the conference was to identify viable climate change mitigation strategies and pave the way towards a successful global climate agreement by 2015.
IAEA 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Trident
The UK would need to abandon its independent nuclear deterrent if Labour wants to form a coalition after the general election with the Scottish National party, Plaid Cymru or the Greens, the leaders of all three parties have warned. While all three parties have long backed the abolition of the nuclear deterrent, opinion polls suggest they will win additional seats in May and could hold the balance of power at Westminster.
FT 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Scotsman 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Nuclear Weapons
THE RECENT sabre rattling by Vladimir Putin may have unwittingly done what the United States Congress has failed to do for decades: refocus attention—and billions of additional dollars—on overhauling America’s nuclear arsenal. The $585 billion defence bill for the next fiscal year sailed through the House of Representatives last week with broad bipartisan support, and then did the same in the Senate on December 12th, despite all the fractious squabbling over the $1.1 trillion government funding measure.
Economist 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Mark these days. A long-dreaded transformation from hope to doom is taking place as the United States of America ushers the world onto the no-turning-back road of nuclear perdition. Once, we could believe there was another way to go. Indeed, we were invited to take that path by the man who is, even today, overseeing the blocking of it, probably forever.
Mother Jones 15th Dec 2014 read more »
A U.S. plan to designate three sites related to the Manhattan Project — a secret World War II program that developed the atomic bomb — as a national park has raised concerns that it will lead to a justification of nuclear weapons.
Mainichi 15th Dec 2014 read more »
The Third International Conference on the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons (HINW), closed last week with a compelling “Austrian Pledge” to “identify and pursue effective measures to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons”.
Open Democracy 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Russia
Russia is going on a huge military shopping spree for warplanes, tanks, missiles and submarines as tensions with Nato and the U.S. continue to escalate. Kremlin demand boosted Russian arms companies’ sales by more than a fifth last year compared to the year before, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Russia’s top 10 weapons makers had combined sales of £31billion in 2013, SIPRI’s research revealed, placing the country behind the U.S. and the UK in the list of biggest arms-selling nations
Daily Mail 16th Dec 2014 read more »
Germany
Wind power production in Germany peaked at 29.49 GW at around 1 PM on Friday, December 12. The old record was around 26 GW from 5 December 2013, but the record of combined wind and PV (37.8 GW on 14 April 2014) remains untouched because there was so little sunshine on that December day. The country had around 35 GW installed at the end of Q2, meaning that these wind turbines were running at around 80 percent capacity for several days.
Renew Economy 16th Dec 2014 read more »
Kazakhstan
Kazatomprom and China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGNPC) yesterday signed an agreement on “extensive and more intensive mutual cooperation” in nuclear power. The agreement was signed during a meeting of the Kazakh-Chinese Business Council by Kazatomprom CEO Nurlan Kapparov and CGNPC general manager Zhang Shanming.
World Nuclear News 15th Dec 2014 read more »
US
Developing new nuclear technologies requires overcoming considerable financial and regulatory hurdles, as the promise of clean, efficient electricity remains essential to US energy policy, the Nuclear Energy Institute said, following a meeting on 11 December of a House Science Committee. Department of Energy assistant secretary for nuclear energy Pete Lyons reiterated President Barack Obama administration’s policy that nuclear energy must be a part of any energy plan whose goals include lower carbon dioxide emissions, NEI said. Nuclear power plants already supply more than 60% of the USA’s zero-carbon electricity, and closing them would result in a “significant loss of low-carbon energy,” Lyons said, according to the Washington-based industry body. He also called for government cost-sharing programs to support the development of small and advanced reactors. He pointed to the Nuclear Power 2010 program, which brought next-generation reactors like the Westinghouse AP1000 to the construction phase, and the Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Licensing Technical Support Program that has partnered the federal government with Babcock & Wilcox and NuScale Power to accelerate the licensing of small reactor technologies.
World Nuclear News 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Iran
After failing to reach agreement in Vienna by a November 24 deadline after nine months of negotiations, diplomats are sitting down in Geneva today to try to keep the momentum for a nuclear deal going. The deadline was extended until the beginning of July 2015, with the aim of agreeing a framework deal by March 1. The race is on to meet those looming deadlines under the added pressure of a new hawkish, Republican-run US Congress preparing to convene in the first week of January.
Guardian 15th Dec 2014 read more »
China
When a unit of North Carolina’s Curtiss-Wright Corp. won a roughly $300 million deal in 2007 to supply components for new reactors in China, industry officials trumpeted China’s nuclear boom as good for U.S. business. Today, Chinese companies are competing for that business—and foreign companies risk getting left out. Meanwhile, Curtiss-Wright’s contract is caught up in a legal dispute, while Chinese authorities blame the company in part for the delay of a landmark nuclear project. U.S. and other foreign companies are now struggling to keep their hold in China, the industry’s biggest growth market and a rare bright spot more than three years after the Fukushima disaster in Japan put many of the world’s nuclear projects on hold. Yet China is increasingly turning to local companies to build crucial parts for multibillion-dollar nuclear projects, a result of Chinese industrial nationalism and frustration over U.S. supplier problems. With the global nuclear industry focused on China, the Chinese government has used the heft of its huge market to secure transfers of key technology and gradually localize production. In the process, China is achieving a political aim to source sensitive manufacturing at home and satisfying a practical need to avoid complications posed by faraway suppliers.
Wall St Journal 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Renewables vs Fossil Fuels
Letter: Your downbeat front-page article is entitled, “New era of cheap oil ‘will destroy green revolution” (13 December). On the contrary, the green revolution is an unstoppable process. Here are two business reasons why. The barrier to entry for new business people is low compared to starting a fossil-fuel energy business. It is so low that a one-man band could get one off the ground, installing solar panels or electric car charging points for example. No micro-business could decide to build a coal power station. Second, long-term business security. Who, starting life as a new business person, in their right mind, would go for selling risky, limited fossil-fuel energy over predictable, unlimited renewable energy? The fact is, there is an incredible amount of money to be made in renewables. The end of fossil-fuelled energy is a problem for the old generation of business owners. A better title would have been “New era of cheap oil will temporarily slow the green revolution”.
Independent 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Renewables – wave
Dr Richard Yemm, founder of Pelamis – the Edinburgh-based wave power company that went into administration last month – has now spoken publicly about the potential of Scotland’s wave power sector. He has highlighted the difficulties that that industry currently faces but remained positive on the prospects of the industry – calling it potentially a ‘billion-pound global opportunity’. Yemm said: “It’s a challenging time in the whole industry. Those like us at the riskier end of the renewable portfolio are hit hardest, while the most mature technologies at the lowest costs will still proceed. That background pervades the whole industry, not just in the UK.
Scottish Energy News 16th Dec 2014 read more »
Energy Storage
The largest battery storage project in Europe has been officially unveiled today in the U.K. town of Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, near London. The fully automated Smarter Network Storage (SNS) project is a 6MW/10MWh battery substation that has been officially unveiled by the U.K. government’s Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Climate Change, Amber Rudd. The SNS is the result of a collaboration between Berlin-based software architects Younicos, Samsung SDI, U.K. Power Networks (UKPN) and utility S&C Electric Europe, which acted as lead supplier on the £18.7 million ($29.3 million) project having accrued extensive energy storage experience on a number of other U.K. and global projects.
Renew Economy 16th Dec 2014 read more »
Today energy storage appears to be where solar power was a decade ago: on the verge of rapid cost decreases that will make it feasible for both utility-scale power plants and smaller-scale–even household level–distributed energy systems. Ultimately, an even bigger threat to the traditional utilities may be posed by rooftop solar supplemented with battery storage. With adequate solar and storage installed, homeowners and businesses wouldn’t need the utilities or the grid anymore. While some studies have shown that homeowners with such systems would tend to stay on the grid anyway, just as an extra backup source, the utilities wouldn’t be selling much, if any power to them. Indeed, they might be buying more electricity from them than they would be selling. To date, such battery systems are still pretty expensive for most homeowners. But that is changing rapidly, in the same way that solar prices plummeted over the past decade to where it is now just as cheap in most states to install rooftop solar as it is to buy power from the local utility. Already, in Germany, prices are dropping–by about 25% in just the past six months. In Japan, Panasonic is developing a 1,000 household “smart town,” centered on solar power and storage–the first residents moved in this past Spring.
Green World 15th Dec 2014 read more »
Climate
No doubt we should have expected it. The latest round of climate change negotiations in Lima, Peru – which opened with high hopes – have ended up failing to fulfil them. Supposed to clear away most of the blocks in the road to reaching a formal agreement to combat climate change in Paris next December, it merely – like similar sessions over the last two years – kicked the can down it instead. So the big issues will have to be resolved over the next 12 months, or in Paris itself, making success much less likely.
Telegraph 15th Dec 2014 read more »
