28 May 2008

British Energy

British Energy Group this morning reported a slump in full year EBITDA from £1.2bn last year to £882m, the result of lower full year nuclear output as well as lower achieved power prices. The results were slightly ahead of analysts’ expectations. The realised power price for the year was £40.70 per megawatt hour (MWh), down from £44.20 per MWh last year, with operating margins thinning to £10.70 per MWh from £17.10 per MWh last time.

Money AM 28th May 2008 more >>

Guardian website 28th May 2008 more >>

Sizewell B

British Energy’s 1,180 -megawatt Sizewell B nuclear power reactor was shut down around midday on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the company said. “It was unplanned,”

Reuters 27th May 2008 more >>

Hundreds of thousands of people were hit by electricity blackouts yesterday when seven power stations shut down. The unscheduled stoppages were regarded as an unprecedented sign of the fragility of Britain’s power infrastructure. At midday the Sizewell B nuclear power station, run by British Energy in Suffolk, and the Longanett coal-fired power station, run by Scottish Energy in Fife, went offline within two minutes of each other. Later, “generating units” in power stations in Grain, Kent, and Ratcliffe, Nottinghamshire, and at EDF in Cottam, Nottinghamshire, Centrica in South Humber and International Power in Deeside each suffered cuts.

Times 28th May 2008 more >>

NDA

The cost of cleaning up Britain’s ageing nuclear power sites is likely to rise by “billions of pounds”, it has been reported. In January an official report put the cost at £73 billion, a figure up £12 billion on the previous estimate made in 2003. But a senior official at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said the cost would continue to escalate.

Newcastle Chronicle 28th May 2008 more >>

Ananova 28th May 2008 more >>

BBC 27th May 2008 more >>

Terror

Al Qaeda has issued a video calling on terrorists to use biological, chemical and nuclear weapons to attack the West.

Sky News 28th May 2008 more >>

Iran

Iran’s new parliament has elected former nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani as its speaker. He resigned as Iran’s nuclear envoy in 2007, citing policy differences with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mr Larijani belongs to a group of Iranian MPs who have been critical of Mr Ahmadinejad’s handling of the Iranian economy.

BBC 28th May 2008 more >>

Germany said on Tuesday the international community must push for a faster response from Iran over its nuclear programme, while Washington said a new U.N. report suggested Tehran wanted to acquire nuclear weapons.

Christian Today 28th May 2008 more >>

The Iranian nuclear confrontation will just not go away. The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran is not cooperating fully in the investigation of its nuclear activities leaves this potentially serious crisis open.

BBC 27th May 2008 more >>

Companies

Electrabel says it will not contribute 250 million euros to the Belgian budget in 2008 in return for the government’s decision to keep five out of seven of the country’s nuclear plants open, De Standaard and De Tijd reported. The Suez subsidiary said it never signed a deal with energy minister Paul Magnette and underlined that a potential agreement would only be considered in a broader context “which takes into account the conditions imposed on Suez for the merger with GDF”.

Interactive Investor 28th May 2008 more >>

Test Veterans

A CANCER sufferer and former pub doorman who was exposed to nuclear explosions has succumbed to the disease after a two-year fight for life.

York Press 28th May 2008 more >>

France

A long-term project by nuclear power equipment company Areva to dismantle an obsolete unit at a French site to treat spent nuclear fuel will cost an estimated 50 million to 100 million euros per year, the daily Les Echos said, without citing sources. The project could take up to 25 years. The site, in La Hague, is run by the company’s Areva NC unit, and handles nuclear waste from EDF and other utilities.

AFX 28th May 2008 more >>

France’s nuclear safety agency today took the commendable step of ordering construction work to be halted on the concrete base slab of the new European Pressurised Reactor, Flamanville 3, in northern France. Over recent months, the agency’s inspectors have uncovered a string of chronic faults in construction — which only began in December 2007.

Greenpeace International 27th May 2008 more >>

Greenpeace UK 27th May 2008 more >>

Concrete pouring at the site of the future EPR nuclear reactor in Flamanville was stopped May 21 after an inspection found ‘anomalies’, France’s nuclear safety authority said. ‘The anomalies pose no safety problem, but they demonstrate an unacceptable lack of rigour at the construction site,’ said Thomas Houdre, head of the authority’s Caen office, said at a press conference. The authority, the ASN, requested that EDF stop new concrete work until internal controls are improved.

Money AM 27th May 2008 more >>

AFX 27th May 2008 more >>

FT 28th May 2008 more >>

Central Europe

Central European countries are fuelling a nuclear revival as they face closure of old soviet reactor, the need to meet European climate targets and rising energy costs.

EU Business 27th May 2008 more >>

USA

South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., a unit of Scana Corp., and Santee Cooper have signed a contract for Westinghouse Electric Co. and Shaw Group Inc. to design and construct two nuclear units in South Carolina, the companies said late Tuesday.

AFX 28th May 2008 more >>

Gulf

Nuclear power rather than renewable sources like the wind or sun are the best option for oil-rich Gulf Arab states to meet growing energy demands, especially if produced collectively, according to regional experts.

“Renewable energies are (playing) only a very small part in supplying even those who started (developing them) a long time ago,” Saudi Electricity Company President Ali Saleh al-Barrack told a conference in the United Arab Emirates on Monday.

AFX 27th May 2008 more >>

China

China’s nuclear power firms aim to join its auto and electronic companies as export powerhouses, analysts say, but massive domestic expansion plans may not leave them the capacity to make an overseas push for over a decade.

Reuters 27th May 2008 more >>

Submarines

A stricken British nuclear submarine was adrift in the Red Sea last night with 112 crewmen trapped aboard.

Daily Mirror 28th May 2008 more >>

Channel 4 News 28th May 2008 more >>

Sky News 28th May 2008 more >>

Daily Record 28th May 2008 more >>

Scotsman 28th May 2008 more >>

Guardian 28th May 2008 more >>

Times 28th May 2008 more >>

Telegraph 28th May 2008 more >>

Disarmament

John McCain yesterday vowed to make big cuts in the US nuclear arsenal if elected president and called for Russia and China to join a global effort to tackle nuclear proliferation. The Republican candidate called for the strengthening of existing non-proliferation deals and the negotiation of new ones, warning that the world faced no greater threat than the spread of nuclear weapons. “The cold war ended almost 20 years ago, and the time has come to take further measures to reduce dramatically the number of nuclear weapons in the world’s arsenals,” he said in a speech at the University