2 July 2015

New Nukes

Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom has reaffirmed the UK’s support for nuclear power. At the Nuclear Industry Association conference yesterday, she said nuclear energy plays a “critical role” in the government’s security of supply and decarbonisation goals. She added nuclear power stations are a “vital part of the infrastructure investment needed in our electricity sector to ensure our future energy supply”. She went on to say the government is “committed to a significant expansion in new nuclear in the UK”.

Energy Live News 1st July 2015 read more »

Hinkley

A LAWSUIT that could impact on the Hinkley Point C nuclear power project has been delayed. On Monday the Austrian government was set to file the complaint on Monday against the European Commission decision to give the nuclear power project the green light, however it has now been put back until later this week.

Burnham & Highbridge News 1st July 2015 read more »

Radwaste

A consultation on working with communities in siting a nuclear waste facility in the UK has been launched. The government is inviting views from a range of sources including academia, the nuclear sector and other industries from experience of major infrastructure projects as well as community sectors. They do not need to be limited to the nuclear industry or radioactive waste projects. The Call for Evidence on the Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) will focus on the issues of community representation, community investment and the test of public support.

Energy Live News 1st July 2015 read more »

Call for Evidence: Implementing Geological Disposal – Working with Communities. The Call for Evidence asks questions on the following four areas: How to define a community; How to provide effective representation, governance and decision making; How to manage and disburse Community Investment; How to deliver a test of public support.

DECC 1st July 2015 read more »

Old Nukes

A group of councils have requested a meeting with communities secretary Greg Clark as they come to terms with major losses in business rates income as a result of a decision by the Valuation Office Agency. Energy giant EDF has successfully negotiated a reduction in the rateable value of four of its nuclear power stations worth almost £35m to the company. EDF’s saving will result in less money passed to authorities in areas where its power stations are based. Hartlepool BC, where the plant accounts for about 20% of its business rates, saw a £16.1m reduction in rateable value, the largest of any of the affected authorities. The council’s chief finance officer Chris Little told LGC once inflation and top-up grants are taken into account, he was forecasting a cumulative loss of about £11m between now and the end of the decade. Lancaster City Council’s chief officer for resources Nadine Muschamp told LGC she was also seeking a meeting with Mr Clark after the amount EDF has to pay on its Heysham 2 site was halved. West Somerset DC also experienced a loss in business rates income as a result of a VOA decision to reduce the rateable value of the Hinkley Point B power station. The reduction equates to about £313,000 per year, more than treble the £100,000 per year the council had been planning for.

Local Government Chronicle 1st July 2015 read more »

Levy Control Framework

Largely because of the very success of the renewables deployment programme and the insistence by the Treasury of a cap on levies on electricity bills needed to pay for renewable energy, the UK’s renewable energy programme is likely to be brought to an effective end by 2018, if not sooner. Calculations suggest that the budget within the Treasury’s ‘Levy Control Framework’ (LCF) set by the Treasury will soon be spent as onshore wind and solar pv farms are installed faster than expected. Indeed Nigel Cornwall reckons it could have been spent already. Of course this spending crisis is one that is manufactured by the Treasury itself. The Treasury decided not to increase the ‘carbon levy’ on fossil fuel prices last year, thus meaning that its own budget for renewable energy incentives would not support so much renewable energy. In addition to this wholesale power prices have fallen, again meaning that a given amount of incentives will develop less renewable energy. It seems that not only will funding for onshore wind and solar farms be ended, but it is likely also we will hear announcements soon about the tailing off of support for small renewables in the feed-in tariff including domestic solar pv, and one or two token offshore windfarms may be left in the offing if they can achieve much reduced prices. You would think that the Treasury, cognisant of the fact that energy prices will be much lower anyway, would increase the amount budgeted in the LCF. But no. Rather the Treasury appear to be using the situation to cut back on renewable energy. The Department of Energy and Climate Change is reduced to being little more than a public relations cover for all this in the process. The UK will fall a long short of its EU target of supplying 15 per cent of its energy through renewables by 2020.

Dave Toke’s Blog 30th June 2015 read more »

Subsidies earmarked for solar could be cut as the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) battles to keep Levy Control Framework (LCF) spending under control, a new report issued by market intelligence firm Cornwall Energy has claimed. The ‘Counting the cost’ report, issued today, estimates that DECC could have spent the entire LCF budget and actually record an overspend of £1 billion by 2020, a figure which would require urgent action.

Solar Power Portal 30th June 2015 read more »

Energy Costs

The nuclear power industry certainly rues the day the concept that atomic electricity would be “too cheap to meter” entered the public’s mind. The phrase has become inextricably linked with nuclear power, but not in the way its creators envisioned: instead of as a success story, it has become a symbol of nuclear power’s economic failure. “Too cheap to meter” too quickly became “too expensive to use” and “too costly to build.” The city of Austin, Texas recently put out bids for 600 Megawatts of new solar power. They received bids for nearly 8,000 MW–a clear indication that we have barely begun to touch the capability of solar to power our nation. Of those bids, nearly 1300 MW, or double what Austin intends to buy, came in under 4 cents per kilowatt/hour. Those kinds of prices haven’t been seen since the 1960s–and that’s without adjusting for inflation. It’s cheaper than just about any other electricity generation source we know of, certainly cheaper than any new other new generation source.

Green World 1st July 2015 read more »

Utilities

The Competitions & Markets Authority will publish its initial findings from its investigation into the energy market next week. But ahead of this report, Juliet Davenport, Chief Executive of Good Energy, the entirely-green independent provider, today calls for ‘fresh thinking’ from the CMA in terms of meeting customer needs on both prices and customer-service, as well as fostering innovation in supply and consumption. Calling on the CMA act to shift the energy market from the ‘old fashioned approach of the big players’ to something more innovative and exciting, she said: “Over 90% of householders are still supplied by the Big Six legacy energy companies who still treat energy just as a commodity while all the evidence suggests that customers want good customer service, with energy that doesn’t pollute the environment and affect our health, at a reasonable price.”

Scottish Energy News 2nd July 2015 read more »

France

The amount of nuclear waste stored in France will triple once all its nuclear installations have been decommissioned, which will boost the need for storage facilities, French nuclear waste agency Andra said. In a report released on Wednesday, Andra estimated that final nuclear waste volumes will eventually reach 4.3 million cubic meters, up from 1.46 million at the end of 2013 and an estimated 2.5 million in 2030. That is based on an average lifespan of 50 years for utility EDF’s 58 nuclear reactors and including a new reactor under construction in Flamanville. Most of that waste will be only slightly radioactive, such as building rubble and clothing used during decommissioning, but because of its bulk, it requires increasing amounts of space.

Reuters 1st July 2015 read more »

China

A number of agreements were signed yesterday between Chinese and French nuclear energy companies aimed at strengthening their cooperation in the nuclear fuel cycle and power reactors. The first is a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Areva and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) “marking a new step forward in the Chinese project for a used fuel processing and recycling facility.” Areva said the MOU “formalizes the end of technical discussions, defines the schedule for commercial negotiations and confirms the willingness of both groups to finalize the negotiations in the shortest possible timeframe.” Areva also signed an agreement with CNNC for cooperation in the nuclear fuel cycle. This agreement, it said, “enlarges and deepens existing areas of cooperation”. It covers the extraction and conversion of uranium, fabrication of zirconium fuel assemblies, decommissioning, transportation and recycling. Another agreement was signed between Areva, EDF and CNNC on cooperation in nuclear power reactors. This calls for the partners “to study, in particular, the possibility of closer cooperation in medium- and high-power reactors, particularly in the area of industrial procurement”. The agreement also covers greater cooperation in research and development

World Nuclear News 1st July 2015 read more »

Ukraine

Kiev forces are concerned over the possibility of radioactive waste materials leaking from a storage site in the Donetsk area in Ukraine’s southeast.

Sputnik News 22nd June 2015 read more »

Iran

Nuclear negotiations have been making progress and will continue to do so, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says, as the IAEA chief plans a meeting in Tehran.

Reuters 1st July 2015 read more »

Make-or-break nuclear negotiations ramped up a gear Wednesday with the head of the UN nuclear watchdog set to fly to Iran for talks after the deadline to reach a deal was extended.

Middle East Online 1st July 2015 read more »

Iranian negotiators want sanctions to be lifted at the same time as the country dismantles nuclear hardware. The US insists the sequence was agreed three months ago.

Guardian 1st July 2015 read more »

Japan

Japan’s Toshiba has developed a new robot to evaluate the primary containment vessel (PCV) of Unit 2 of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in Japan. Developed in partnership with the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID), the 54cm-long robot is designed to operate remotely by a wired cable, and features two cameras, LED lights, a radiation dosimeter and a thermometer.

Energy Business Review 1st July 2015 read more »

Finland

Finnish consortium Fennovoima is seeking approval from the Ministry of Employment and the Economy for the construction of the 1,200MW Hanhikivi 1 nuclear power plant in Pyhäjoki in northern Finland. The construction license application submitted for the project involved details of the plant location, the reactor type, the main safety systems, nuclear waste management, financing of the project and Fennovoima’s organization. Located in the coastal municipality of Pyhäjoki on the shore of the Baltic Sea in Northern Ostrobothnia, the project is scheduled to be commissioned in 2024.

Energy Business Review 1st July 2015 read more »

Community Energy

Marks and Spencer (M&S) Energy will offer up to £400,000 for community energy projects with the launch of the M&S Community Energy Fund. The energy arm of the UK retailer also announced it is now supplying 100% of its electricity from renewable sources, generated from 46 hydro power stations in Scotland. The M&S Community Energy Fund will offer funding to not-for-profit organisations that want to use renewable energy for the benefit of their local community.

Edie 1st July 2015 read more »

Renewables – solar

Today’s solar subsidy cuts will cause problems for large rooftop solar projects and some solar farms, the industry has warned. From the start of July tariffs for solar farms below 5MW of capacity will drop 28 per cent from 6.16p per kWh to 4.44p/kWh, a situation the Solar Trade Association (STA) described as “hyperdegression” that could see smaller solar farms, including those where ownership is shared with the local community, struggle to get built.

Business Green 1st July 2015 read more »

A large solar farm could be built on a disused airfield in Dumfries and Galloway. Green Hedge Renewables has drawn up initial plans for the development of Baldoon Airfield near Wigtown. They claim it could generate up to 20MW of renewable energy annually. The developer outlined its proposal for the 53.8 hectare (133 acres) site in a “pre-application” submission to Dumfries and Galloway Council. Rows of solar panels would be built on former runways and on farmland south-east of the airfield, under the plans.

BBC 2nd July 2015 read more »

Renewables – tidal

German industrial conglomerate Siemens is now the second-largest shareholder in Atlantis Resources, which is building the world’s largest marine/ tidal power turbine farm in the Pentland Firth. Atlantis took over Siemens’ subsidiary – the Bristol-based tidal business Marine Current Turbines – earlier this year in return for a near-10% stake in its enlarged business. The value of the deal was not disclosed but according to industry sources it was valued at about £10 million. The deal was greeted with admiration, awe – and some envy – by the marine renewables industry at the time.