Bradwell
Almost 1,000 jobs are set to be lost as Bradwell Power Station enters its next stage of decommissioning. Some 930 agency workers, sub-contractors and Magnox on-site employees will face the axe at the end of next year as the nuclear power station prepares to enter its care and management phase in 2015. According to a socio-economic action plan report, released yesterday, less than 10 people will be employed in this phase between 2015 and 2085, when the final site clearance begins. Although 180 Magnox employees, including 95 people who live in the Maldon district, will be offered the chance to relocate to other Magnox or nuclear sites.
Essex County Standard 31st July 2013 read more »
Radioactive Contamination
AN area of sand dunes and surrounding land close to the former RAF Kinloss air base is to be probed for potential ¬radioactive and mustard gas contamination. Work will begin at the dunes in Findhorn on the Moray Firth Coast this month but it is understood the contamination is linked to “glow in the dark” paint used in aircraft from the Second World War. More than 1000 aircraft are thought to have been dismantled at the Moray base after the war and instruments coated in paint containing radium were burned and buried at the base. Staff from Moray Council will work with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) in digging test pits where it is believed large numbers of aircraft were broken up and buried. Surveys of the area have detected the presence of material experts believe is worthy of further investigation. It is believed chemical ordnance containing sulphur mustard or mustard gas may also have been buried.
Herald 2nd August 2013 read more »
Poltics
There will be a firmly committed anti-nuclear voice in the House of Lords from now on as Green Party member Jenny Jones (pictured) is to get a Working Peerage. Today new nominations for the Lords were announced The Queen approves new appointments to the Lords from a list put forward by political parties. It’s the first time the Green Party will have a member in the Lords since 2008. Jenny Jones was chosen as the Green Party nomination by a ballot two years ago of all members of the Green Party of England and Wales.
Energy Live News 1st Aug 2013 read more »
Chernobyl and Fukushima
Vast stretches of heavily forested mountains—up to 86 percent of the land in some districts near Fukushima —are proving a major obstacle in the government’s cleanup and resettlement plan. At Chernibyl abandoned forests and fields trapped cesium, plutonium, strontium, and other airborne radionuclides through their natural life cycle: Contamination-coated leaves and needles dropped to the ground, where they became part of the litter and gradually migrated into the soil. In 2006, scientists found that up to 96 percent of all radionuclides remaining in the forests were concentrated in the soil, mostly in the top 10 centimeters.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 1st Aug 2013 read more »
Energy Supplies
British Gas yesterday revealed it was trialling the “time of use” tariff in parts of the north-east of England as it prepares to launch a range of unprecedented smart meter packages early next year.
Telegraph 1st Aug 2013 read more »
Utilities
GDF Suez, the world’s biggest power producer by output, offered a gloomy prognosis of Europe’s “depressed market conditions” as it reported a 25 per cent fall in net income in the first half. Net profits fell to €1.73bn from €2.3bn in the same period last year as GDF, also Europe’s biggest natural gas distributor, continued to suffer from low demand and overcapacity in Europe, as well as a prolonged shutdown, now over, of two of its nuclear plants in Belgium.
FT 1st August 2013 read more »
US
As Friends of the Earth has long contended, the Department of Energy doesn’t really have a plan for disposing of surplus nuclear weapons plutonium. For over a decade the Department of Energy has been pursuing a plan to blend the plutonium, left over from Cold War nuclear stockpiles, into commercial nuclear reactor fuel. For over a decade this program, called the Mixed Oxide Plutonium Fuel Program or MOX, has faced cost overruns and schedule delays.
FoE USA 1st Aug 2013 read more »
Duke Energy Florida announced today it is terminating its EPC agreement for the proposed Levy County nuclear plant in Florida and putting the project on hold indefinitely. In its revised settlement agreement with the Florida Public Service Commission, Duke said it would write off $295 million associated with the botched Crystal River 3 project and $65 million related to investments in the Levy project. Duke will also accelerate the recovery of $135 million in cash flows related to Crystal River 3, the company said in a press release. Announced in 2008, the Levy nuclear project would have included two 1,100 MW nuclear reactors in Levy County, Fla. Duke said the “company still continues to regard the Levy site as a viable option for future nuclear generation and understands the importance of fuel diversity in creating a sustainable energy future.”
Power and Engineering 1st Aug 2013 read more »
Taiwan
A fight has broken out in Taiwan’s parliament ahead of a vote on a referendum on a nuclear plant. Several Taiwanese lawmakers exchanged punches and threw cups and bottles of water at each other on Friday. The parliament is set to vote on whether to hold a referendum on completing construction of the plant, which is located close to Taipei. Nuclear power is controversial in Taiwan, where safety fears remain in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster.
BBC 2nd August 2013 read more »
Belfast Telegraph 2nd Aug 2013 read more »
Nuclear War
33m British dead. Prince William missing. As a speech the Queen would have given at the outbreak of World War III is published… What if nuclear war had erupted in 1983?
Daily Mail 2nd Aug 2013 read more »
Telegraph 1st Aug 2013 read more »
As a speech from 1983, prepared for the Queen in case of nuclear war, is released – Channel 4 News looks at the size of atomic arsenals now.
Channel 4 News 1st Aug 2013 read more »
Renewables
The government has unveiled an industrial strategy designed to boost investment in the UK’s offshore wind power sector, as the Deputy Prime Minister cut the ribbon on a new wind farm that takes the UK’s total offshore wind capacity pass the 10GW mark. The much anticipated offshore wind industrial strategy, unveiled by Nick Clegg, aims to unlock £7bn of investment in the UK economy by 2020 and create 30,000 jobs across the country. Clegg launched the strategy as he cut the ribbon on the 270MW Lincs offshore wind farm in the Greater Wash, which is owned by Centrica, Dong Energy and Siemens. According to RenewableUK, the opening of Lincs means the UK now operates 10GW of wind power capacity, more than a third of which is located offshore.
Business Green 1st Aug 2013 read more »
Vince Cable says 70 per cent of offshore wind farms should come from UK supply chain, but can his vision be achieved without 2030 targets? While the UK could remain the leader in terms of installed capacity for years to come, fears are mounting that British companies are failing to secure the contracts that will allow them to reap the economic benefits of offshore wind power. A number of developers, including DONG Energy and RWE, admit they face a challenge finding local firms to complete certain specialist tasks when constructing new wind farms and are instead forced to hire specialist engineers from Denmark or the Netherlands.
Business Green 1st Aug 2013 read more »
Ministers are launching plans for the offshore wind power industry which they claim will help make Britain “the cutting-edge green economy in the world”. The strategy is being set out by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Energy Secretary Ed Davey in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, as they formally open Centrica Energy’s £1 billion Lincs offshore wind farm. The Lincs wind farm is able to produce enough electricity to meet the needs of 200,000 homes, equivalent to two-thirds of the homes in Lincolnshire. Ahead of the strategy launch, Mr Clegg said Britain must “put the foot down on the accelerator” in developing renewable energy, arguing the sector has the potential to create 30,000 jobs and add £7 billion to the UK economy by 2020.
MSM 1st Aug 2013 read more »
£1 billion wind farm that’s snubbed British workers: Jobs row erupts as Clegg opens offshore complex built and maintained by foreigners.
Daily Mail 2nd August 2013 read more »
Residential PV storage capacity could hit 2.5GW by 2017 as domestic solar generators increasingly look to consume the power they produce, a report claims. Research by analyst firm IHS predicts a boom in domestic solar storage in the coming years as self-consumption replaces feed-in tariff maximisation as the main motivation for installing residential PV systems. This shift is already underway in Germany, where in May a government-backed subsidy was introduced to cover the upfront cost of installing a small-scale PV storage system. Storage systems allow PV energy to be stored at times of peak production and consumed at times of peak demand when grid electricity costs are highest.
PV Tech 1st Aug 2013 read more »
The world installed 31,100 megawatts of solar photovoltaics (PV) in 2012—an all-time annual high that pushed global PV capacity above 100,000 megawatts. There is now enough PV operating to meet the household electricity needs of nearly 70 million people at the European level of use. While PV production has become increasingly concentrated in one country—China—the number of countries installing PV is growing rapidly. In 2006, only a handful of countries could boast solar capacity of 100 megawatts or more. Now 30 countries are on that list, which the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects will more than double by 2018.
Earth Policy Institute 31st July 2013 read more »
Scottish wind farm developers will have their costs slashed by £1.3m a year under an overhaul of network charging that will see power plants in the south face increased costs.
Telegraph 1st Aug 2013 read more »
Times 2nd Aug 2013 read more »
David King: The project would need a clear aim – like the atomic bomb or a man on the moon. We suggest the following: to enable bulk electricity to be produced more cheaply by solar energy than by any fossil fuel. The scientific challenges involved in achieving this goal are great. They involve the collection of the energy, its storage and its distribution – often at considerable distances. For the endeavour to succeed, a timetable is essential. We would suggest 2025 as a target date for the plan. By then we should expect to see bulk solar electricity supplied commercially at an unsubsidised price on a 24-hour basis. A good target for then would be at least 1 gigawatt supplied to cities in America, Europe and Asia.
FT 1st Aug 2013 read more »
Biofuels
The UK will play host to one of the first large scale demonstration of plants for advanced biofuels — liquid replacements for petrol made from waste materials — under plans to be unveiled by the coalition today. The government is to offer £25m as the prize for a competition to come up with the most viable demonstration plants for liquid fuels made from waste organic material, such as straw or wood waste. Advanced biofuels — which avoid the controversial problems of existing biofuels, which are made from products such as wheat or maize that could also be used as food crops — are an important goal for environmentalists who want to reduce the carbon emissions from the transport industry. Attempts to manufacture liquid fuels from waste have been going on since the late 1960s, but while experiments and lab bench tests have met with limited success, none has yet borne fruit at the level needed to be commercially viable.
Guardian 1st Aug 2013 read more »
Fossil Fuels
A Tory peer who provoked uproar for saying that fracking should be carried out in the “desolate” north-east of England has prompted further derision after he corrected himself, saying that he meant the north-west. Lord Howell, who advised William Hague on energy policy until April and is the father-in-law of the chancellor, George Osborne, drew gasps of astonishment in the House of Lords on Tuesday for suggesting that the controversial form of gas extraction could take place in the north-east without any impact on the surrounding environment.
Guardian 1st Aug 2013 read more »
A landmark public inquiry is to be held into proposals for unconventional gas extraction after more than 2500 people objected to an energy firm’s plan to intensify drilling operations in Scotland. Dart Energy wants to expand work on extracting coal-bed methane at Airth near Falkirk and connect to the energy network for the first time. Dart extracts gas by pumping water into the coal bed. The Scottish Government has confirmed a public inquiry will be held into the firm’s proposals to bore 22 new coal-bed methane wells after both Stirling and Falkirk councils failed to make a decision on the plans
Herald 2nd August 2013 read more »
Andrew Simms: The future belongs to clean energy, but the UK is embracing shale gas and fracking instead of renewables – appalling policy.
Guardian 2nd Aug 2013 read more »
