Sellafield MoX Plant
SELLAFIELD could be in line for a new Mox plutonium recycling plant, creating up to 5,000 construction jobs as well as securing more than a thousand on the permanent payroll. Those 1,000 jobs could be under threat if the site’s existing but troubled Mox plant (SMP) is closed due to poor performance. Eight hundred people work in the failing plant and a few hundred more Sellafield jobs are linked to it. MP Jamie Reed is pressing the case for a new plant with the Prime Minister. Mr Reed said yesterday: “If SMP had to close, then in the present economic climate I will insist that all the highly-skilled people in that plant are redeployed on the site – we can’t afford to lose these skills.
Whitehaven News 18th Feb 2009 more >>
Scotland (PIME 2009)
Why is SNP opposition to nuclear power so viscerally held? Are there any circumstances in which the party’s mindset might change? Clearly, the SNP believes it has public opinion on its side. But public opinion is rarely immutable. Swedish professor Soren Holmberg, pointed out, opinion there has moved a long way. In 1986, some 75% of a nationwide survey wanted nuclear as an energy source abolished. Only 12% wanted to keep it. Today, in that same survey, abolition is demanded by just 31%, while 49% now say use it. New plant is being built there. Here in the UK, Ipsos MORI has been polling on this issue for more than a decade. In 2001, after the scandal of the falsification of MOX records at Sellafield and the return of faulty fuel rods from Japan, those expressing unfavourable opinions about nuclear energy peaked at 50%. Support fell into the teens. Now, after record energy prices and the French acquiring British Energy to rebuild its ageing nuclear capacity, support has recovered to 35%, while those holding unfavourable views has hit a fresh low of 19%. On support for nuclear as part of a balanced energy mix, 65% now say yes, while just 10% disagree. Those overall patterns vary from one part of the UK to the next. Scotland is still the least enthusiastic. But even here the balance of opinion is now marginally favourable.
Herald 20th Feb 2009 more >>
Nuclear Waste
RADIOACTIVE rubbish buried on the nation’s licensed site on the outskirts of Drigg will not be disturbed or dug up unless absolutely necessary. The assurance was given to The Whitehaven News after the site’s American owners appealed to former workers to help identify exactly what material lies in the once open but now capped-off trenches. Last week’s “We Need Your Help” advert on the front page of The Whitehaven News sparked interest as well as concern both nationally and internationally.
Whitehaven News 18th Feb 2009 more >>
Letter from Hugh Richards: A consequence of concentrating all our past efforts on reprocessing is that the UK has undertaken no research into the feasibility of the direct disposal of spent fuel. ‘High burn-up’ spent fuel is hotter and more radioactive than ‘legacy’ spent fuel and there are great doubts that it can be safely stored over long periods, then retrieved, encapsulated, placed underground and subsequently abandoned. Even after 60 years of cooling, disposing of high burn-up spent fuel would be the neutron radiation equivalent of deep underground emplacement of ‘normal’ spent fuel within one year of discharge from the reactor. It would require extensive radiation shielding during encapsulation and no designs for the safe encapsulation and emplacement of high burn-up spent fuel exist. Because of its heat output, it cannot be accommodated in the same ‘deep geological repository’ as that intended for legacy spent fuel and high level waste.
Whitehaven News 18th Feb 2009 more >>
Sellafield
COPELAND mayor Keith Hitchen welcomed a number of new Sellafield directors and managers to the council offices. Some of the directors have recently moved to this area from America, following the transfer of Sellafield Ltd’s shares to the consortium Nuclear Management Partners.
Whitehaven News 18th Feb 2009 more >>
THREE Sellafield workers may have received abnormal exposure to radiation after an incident in the Magnox reprocessing plant.
Whitehaven News 18th Feb 2009 more >>
New Nukes
TOP Tories visiting Sellafield demanded that barriers are knocked down so that nuclear expansion can move ahead faster. Shadow secretary of state for energy Greg Clark and shadow energy minister Charles Hendry made the call during last Friday’s fact-finding tour of the site. Only a fortnight earlier Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised, on his own visit, that West Cumbria could get 10,000 new jobs if Sellafield was chosen for a new nuclear power station.
Whitehaven News 18th Feb 2009 more >>
Nuclear Skills
JOBS are now being advertised at West Cumbria’s new skills academy in Lillyhall. The £20 million Nuclear Skills Academy Energus is expected to be officially opened this summer. The academy is aiming to train local school-leavers in the skills required by the nuclear industry, initially for decommissioning but also for the operation of nuclear reactors.
Whitehaven News 18th Feb 2009 more >>
A LANDMARK £5m is being invested in Westlakes, part of the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan).
Whitehaven News 18th Feb 2009 more >>
Britain’s neglected manufacturing base may now be too small and wobbly to take the weight. In particular, they fear that the skills base is simply not strong enough. The issue of skills is particularly worrying because, in addition to manufacturing exports, economic recovery will also depend on spending on big infrastructure projects – construction of new rail links, gas and nuclear power stations as well as renewable energy schemes.
Times 20th Feb 2009 more >>
Dounreay
A ROBOTIC “worm” is providing information from underground to experts cleaning up the Dounreay nuclear plant. The robot crawled along a pipeline used to discharge radioactive effluent from the Caithness site between 1957 and 1992. The £100,000 machine sent back video and radiation readings from 45 metres underground.
Scotsman 20th Feb 2009 more >>
Bradwell
Nuclear power station operator Magnox has received the biggest environmental fine in the UK for almost a decade following years of leaks from one of its plants in Essex.
Edie 19th Feb 2009 more >>
Companies
SUPPORT services group Cape has won a £140 million contract to supply East Kilbride-based British Energy’s eight nuclear power stations with scaffolding, insulation and other maintenance services.
Scotsman 20th Feb 2009 more >>
The specialised armed police service responsible for protecting civil nuclear sites has chosen Pennine Telecom to upgrade communications in its command and control rooms at the Sellafield site in Cumbria.
Comms Business 20th Feb 2009 more >>
Japan-based Mitsubishi Nuclear Fuel Co will be restructured in April to become a comprehensive nuclear fuel fabrication company.
Nuclear Engineering International 19th Feb 2009 more >>
Syria
The UN’s nuclear watchdog has said traces of uranium taken from the site of an alleged nuclear reactor in Syria were manmade and rejected the Syrian government’s claim that it came from an Israeli air strike that destroyed the site in 2007. The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the Dair Alzour site puts strong pressure on Damascus as it rejects the Syrian explanation for the presence of uranium and denounces the government for its lack of cooperation with the agency’s inquiry.
Guardian 20th Feb 2009 more >>
Korea
As for the State Department, its East Asia agenda was consumed by North Korea, which exploded a nuclear device in October 2006. Mr Bush’s assistant secretary of state for the region, Christopher Hill (who accompanied Mrs Clinton), focused on little else. This irked Japan. Not only did the United States appear to be neglecting its biggest Asian ally. Japanese and South Korean warnings against over-hasty deals with North Korea were also ignored. America took the North off its blacklist of state sponsors of terror last autumn, in return for an oral promise about verification procedures for disabling facilities at its nuclear reactor. The North has since all but disowned the promise at the six-party talks aimed at getting it to disarm. Meanwhile, progress on tackling suspected uranium enrichment, nuclear proliferation and the North’s existing handful of plutonium weapons remains as elusive as ever.
Economist 19th Feb 2009 more >>
The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, today demanded that North Korea end preparations to launch a ballistic missile and warned that a rumoured succession struggle in Pyongyang could have an unpredictable effect on the regime. Clinton repeated her demand that the North return to stalled multiparty negotiations aimed at ending its nuclear weapons programme in return for aid and normalised diplomatic ties.
Guardian 20th Feb 2009 more >>
If North Korea were hoping to open bilateral diplomacy with the US through its latest round of brinkmanship, Hillary Clinton dashed those hopes on Friday. Many analysts have interpreted North Korea’s talk of impending war and its threat to defy the UN with some kind of ballistics test as a bid to push Pyongyang further up the foreign policy agenda of Barack Obama, the US president.
FT 20th Feb 2009 more >>
Iran
Iran has enough enriched uranium to build one nuclear bomb, the United Nations has confirmed for the first time.
Telegraph 20th Feb 2009 more >>
Daily Mail 20th Feb 2009 more >>
Independent 20th Feb 2009 more >>
US
How many of the planned new US reactors, for which licence applications are now being submitted, will be generating power by 2030? The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) holds 17 applications for combined construction and operating licences (COLs) for 26 new nuclear reactors. Four more applications for seven reactors are expected. For a country that has all but abandoned nuclear power over the past three decades the last construction licence submitted to the NRC was in 1978 and no new reactors have come online in the USA since 1996 – how realistic are such scenarios?
Nuclear Engineering International 20th Feb 2009 more >>
Russia
Russia hopes better ties with the new U.S. administration could help to revive a bilateral civilian nuclear pact potentially worth billions of dollars in trade. The deal would open the U.S. nuclear fuel market and Russia’s vast uranium fields to companies from both countries by removing Cold War restrictions in the sector.
Yahoo 19th Feb 2009 more >>
Submarines
Letter: Two armed British and French nuclear submarines collided – said to be a one-in-a-million incident. Of course, if we keep rolling the dice long enough, accidents should be expected. In addition to the estimated 26,000 nuclear weapons still operational, we may soon find these weapons also deployed in space, where American and Russian satellites also recently smashed together.
Scotsman 20th Feb 2009 more >>
STAFF at Faslane have been ordered to stay silent over a collision involving one of their nuclear submarines. On Tuesday, workers were asked to sign a form stating they would not speak out about the incident in which HMS Vanguard crashed with a French submarine in the Atlantic. Notices also appeared in staff rooms, warning that anyone talking about the issue could face dismissal.
Lennox Herald 19th Feb 2009 more >>
