Wylfa
Exhibitions and public meetings are to be staged across North Wales as a consultation process into a proposed nuclear power station on Anglesey gets underway. The consultation is the first major step in the planning process for the development of Horizon Nuclear Power’s proposed new plant at Wylfa. The process will last 10 weeks and cover all aspects of Horizon’s proposals, taking in everything from construction to transport to how it might affect the Welsh language.
Daily Post 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Wylfa B consultation website launched.
Horizon 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Anti-nuclear campaigners are to fly to Japan to spell out their opposition to Hitachi’s plans to build a new £8bn atomic energy plant on Anglesey. Activists from Greenpeace, CND Cymru, Cymdeithas yr Iaith (Welsh Language Society) and PAWB (People Against Wylfa B), will meet Japanese politicians and visit the city of Tomioka where all 160,000 people were evacuated following the 2011 explosions in Fukushima. The delegation will meet evacuees and those involved in rehabilitation work. Supporters of the plan to replace the existing Wylfa plant, which is due to close at the end of 2015, say it will create thousands of jobs and provide a massive boost to the North Wales economy. But PAWB spokesman Dr Carl Clowes said the new station could be a target for terrorists and would see highly toxic waste kept on the site for 150 years.
Wales Online 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Sellafield
A deal to build Sellafield’s Box Encapsulation Plant worth up to £336m has gone to a joint venture of Amec, Balfour Beatty and Jacobs. The four-year reimbursable framework contract, awarded by Sellafield Limited, is valued between £240m and £336m and the joint venture partners will share the financial terms equally. Work is scheduled to begin immediately. The Sellafield BEP is designed to treat Magnox reactor waste currently stored at Sellafield by containing it in concrete and preparing it for long term storage.
Construction News 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Energy Live News 30th Sept 2014 read more »
Westmorland Gazette 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Plutonium
Britain is facing the dilemma of what to do with its huge stockpile of plutonium, with most of it stored at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria. Should it be turned into nuclear fuel or continue to be stored? I travelled to America to find if any lessons could be learned from how they are trying to deal with the same issue. My mission was to find out whether plans to turn the UK’s plutonium stockpile into energy was as obvious a choice as it sounds. The Savannah River Site, as with all things American, is huge. The nuclear research and development site covers some 310 sq miles (803 sq km). Sellafield by comparison is just over 2 sq miles (5 sq km). But we share a problem. In West Cumbria we have 100 tonnes of highly toxic plutonium. It is the largest civilian stockpile in the world and is a by-product of our nuclear energy programme. It costs a small fortune to keep it safe and out of the wrong hands. Yet the alternative is expensive too. The UK government is minded to combine it with uranium to produce mixed-oxide fuel (Mox) so it could be reused in the next generation of nuclear power stations. In the United States they are committed to turning 34 tonnes of military grade plutonium into Mox after signing a deal with Russia in 2000 to decommission some of their nuclear weapons. Even though their plant is two thirds complete President Barack Obama has halted construction as the project’s original price tag of $1bn (£613m) has risen to $7bn (£4.3bn). As one of the critics told me. It’s a “massive boondongle” – Tom Clements of Savannah River Site Watch explains it is an Americanism for anything that has gone spectacularly and expensively pear-shaped. He warns Britain should keep a close eye on what’s been going on Stateside and cites “overspend, mismanagement, and a lack of quality control and properly trained workers “as the hallmarks of a nuclear “debacle”.
BBC 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Hunterston
Balfour Beatty has been awarded a £34m nuclear waste deal for Magnox in Scotland. It has been appointed by Magnox to deliver the £34m Solid Intermediate Level Waste Encapsulation contract at Hunterston A former power station in North Ayrshire. Balfour Beatty will be responsible for the design of the encapsulation process and construction of the SILWE plant, including the complex mechanical, electrical control and instrumentation required. On completion of the new facility, solid intermediate level waste that has been stored in bunkers since 1989 will be retrieved and taken to the SILWE building for encapsulation, before being transported to the Intermediate Level Waste store for up to the next 100 years.
Construction News 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Radhealth
When nuclear reactors are refueled, a 12-hour spike in radioactive emissions exposes local people to radiation levels up to 500 times greater than during normal operation, writes Ian Fairlie. The spikes may explain infant leukemia increases near nuclear plants – but operators provide no warnings and take no measures to reduce exposures. Operating nuclear power plants (NPPs) contain large volumes of radioactive gases at high pressures and temperatures. When their reactors are depressurised and opened to refuel every 12-18 months, these gases escape creating a spiked emission and a large radioactive plume downwind of the station lasting for 12 hours or so. However the emissions and plumes are invisible, and no advance warning is ever given of these spikes. The public is effectively kept in the dark about them, despite their possible health dangers. For years, I had tried to obtain data on these spikes, but ever since the start of the nuclear era back in 1956, governments and nuclear power operators have been extremely loath to divulge this data. Only annual emissions are made public and these effectively disguise the spikes. No data is ever given on daily or hourly emissions. Is this important? Yes: these spikes could help answer a question which has puzzled the public and radiation protection agencies for decades – the reason for the large increases in childhood leukemias near NPPs all over the world. Governments have insisted that these increased leukemias could not be caused by radioactive emissions from NPPs as their estimated radiation doses were ~1,000 times too low. But these don’t take the time patterns of radioactive emissions into account, and so are riddled with uncertainties.
Ecologist 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Nuclear Safety
In the nuclear energy industry more than most, safety is paramount and the design and specification used for equipment involved in nuclear generating plants are governed by a series of stringent regulations. The maintenance programs follow strict timetables with only certified contractors permitted to provide products and services, so when it comes to high voltage motors and generators, it is important to ensure that any repairs are going to make the grade.
Connecting Industry 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Politics
Chancellor George Osborne has today again underlined his commitment to delivering a shale gas revolution in the UK, in a conference speech that ignored climate change threats highlighted by his colleagues and promised urgent action to deliver new roads and runways. Osborne told the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham that the country needed to fast-track infrastructure decisions if it was to deliver on his vision of becoming the most prosperous and creative nation in the industrialised world. He acknowledged that building new infrastructure was always controversial, but argued that the engineers and industrialists that invented the steam engine would not have waited 40 years to make a decision on a new runway in the south east or “leave these extraordinary shale gas reserves under our feet untouched”. He also claimed they would not have delayed decisions to build new nuclear power plants, nor ignored the opportunities presented by GM foods. “We must choose the future,” Osborne said. “We will tap the shale gas, commission nuclear power and renewables, and guarantee our energy for the future. We will build the high-speed rail, decide where to put a runway and support the next generation with starter homes in a permanent Help to Buy. We must learn from the past, not be the past.”
Business Green 29th Sept 2014 read more »
It is no surprise that politicians bury bad news from time to time. On Thursday evening, while media attention was gripped by parliament’s vote on going back to war in Iraq, the energy department slipped out the news that it was going to scrap people’s right to block fracking under their homes, despite overwhelming opposition. You might think that burying good news, on the other hand, was bonkers. Yet that is exactly what the George Osborne has done with the UK’s booming green economy, exemplified once again in his speech to the Conservative Party conference on Monday. But not content with just putting the green economy in the shade, I can reveal that the coalition has even decided to stop collecting its statistics on the fast-growing sector. What is Osborne afraid of? That renewables and energy efficiency will be shown to be better better for the economy than the shale gas he once again lavished with hyperbole?
Guardian 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Nuclear Archive
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has begun a hunt to find a contractor to deliver a £17m National Nuclear Archive at Wick, Caithness. Commissioned to provide a long-term storage solution for records of Britain’s civil nuclear programme the project has been designed to accommodate up to 30m digital, paper and photographic records.
Urban Realm 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Construction Enquirer 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Nuclear Skills
Cumbria needs to train its ‘middle ground’ workers in order to halt the nuclear skills shortage. That’s according to an industry expert who says that not enough thought and effort is being put into allowing 30-40-year-old workers to advance to senior positions. Emma-Jayne Gooch, director of NuExec Consulting, was the latest person to weigh into the debate over nuclear skills in Cumbria.
NW Evening Mail 26th Sept 2014 read more »
Uranium
With Australian uranium in the reactors at Fukushima during the meltdown, is it moral to sell the asbestos of the 21st Century to India?
Guardian 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Finland
Finland’s government has come under renewed pressure over its decision to approve a Russian-built nuclear reactor after legal experts questioned the independence of the economy minister responsible for the plan. There were also claims that technical plans for the plant were based on a flawed and outdated design by Rosatom, the Russian state-owned company that holds a 34 per cent stake in the project.
FT 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Japan
The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) will shut its reprocessing plant in Tokai, reportedly due to the costs of modifications required under post-Fukushima safety regulations. Following a meeting today of JAEA’s reform commission, the agency announced that it will permanently shut down the Tokai facility in Ibaraki prefecture.
World Nuclear News 29th Sept 2014 read more »
US
On June 8, 2012, a federal court threw out the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s “waste confidence” policy, setting into motion a chain of events that still hasn’t stopped rattling the commission and the entire nuclear power industry. The court ruled that with the shutdown of the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada, radioactive waste repository and no new repository on the horizon, the NRC had no basis to say that it had confidence that radioactive waste would always be managed safely. Since the Atomic Energy Act requires that the NRC have such confidence in order to issue reactor licenses (and license renewals), the NRC was forced to institute a moratorium on issuance of all reactor licenses. At the time, the NRC staff said a thorough job on a new policy to replace the “waste confidence” policy would take seven years of work. But the NRC Commissioners decided to rush the job and this summer issued a Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) that it said functions as a substitute for the policy.
Green World 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Weapons watchdog says government’s position ‘increasingly hypocritical’ as US prepares to increase production of warheads in spite of safety and environmental concerns. This month, the Department of Energy released its initial findings into one of the worst American nuclear accidents since the end of the cold war. On February 14, a 52-gallon drum containing radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production exploded at a storage facility near Carlsbad, New Mexico, exposing 22 workers to radioactivity and leading to the closure of the facility. In its preliminary briefing, the DOE recommended a 7,000-point checklist that must be met in order to reopen the facility and indicated that congressional support for the plan was strong, despite a price tag that would likely run into the billions of dollars. The closing of the facility, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the nation’s only such repository, has caused a storage backup of radioactive materials at a time when Congress and the Department of Defense, together with New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), are gearing up to dramatically increase production of nuclear weapons cores to numbers not seen since the cold war. In a report to Congress last month, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) outlined specific recommendations for a nuclear production plan under which as many as 80 explosive plutonium cores – 3.5in spheres that trigger an atomic bomb – would be created per year by 2030.
Guardian 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Renewables – solar
They have become a familiar sight on rooftops and fields across Britain. Now, solar panels are set to start appearing in a new and surprising location: floating on reservoirs. Britain’s first ever floating solar panel project has just been built in Berkshire, in a scheme its developer claims will act as a blueprint for the technology to be installed at hundreds of sites across the country. The 800-panel green energy project was installed earlier this month on a reservoir at Sheeplands Farm, a 300-acre soft fruit farm near Wargrave.
Telegraph 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Guardian 29th Sept 2014 read more »
The Indian government continues to push proliferation of solar power through publicly owned companies, this time through the world’s largest coal mining company – Coal India Limited.
Clean Technica 24th Sept 2014 read more »
From the observation tower in the Thar desert and as far as the eye can see, the dark blue arrays of a million solar panels can be seen sitting silently on the red dust. The Charanka solar park in Gujarat is an “ultra-mega” power project – the Indian government’s phrase – and the biggest in Asia. But unlike the hundreds of coal plants and their noxious smokestacks being built in the country, the only danger linked to the solar panels are the snakes and scorpions that slink and scuttle between the sparse shrubs, posing a minor hazard to those who dust off the panels after dusk. The project was the brainchild of Narendra Modi. As chief minister of Gujarat, Modi spurred companies to build more than 900MW of solar plant across the state in just a couple of years. Now, as prime minister, the question is whether he can repeat the feat across India, which receives more sunlight than any other country in the G20.
Guardian 30th Sept 2014 read more »
Solar energy could be the top source of electricity by 2050, aided by plummeting costs of the equipment to generate it, a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the West’s energy watchdog, said on Monday. IEA Reports said solar photovoltaic (PV) systems could generate up to 16% of the world’s electricity by 2050, while solar thermal electricity (STE) – from “concentrating” solar power plants – could provide a further 11%. “The rapid cost decrease of photovoltaic modules and systems in the last few years has opened new perspectives for using solar energy as a major source of electricity in the coming years and decades,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven. Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels constitute the fastest-growing renewable energy technology in the world since 2000, although solar is still less than 1% of energy capacity worldwide. The IEA said PV expansion would be led by China, followed by the United States, while STE could also grow in the United States along with Africa, India and the Middle East.
Guardian 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Herald 30th Sept 2014 read more »
The IEA now expects solar to become the biggest single source of energy by 2050 and has now doubled its forecast capacity for solar PV. Rooftop solar, it says, will now account for one half of the world’s solar PV installations, because as a distributed energy source the technology is “unbeatable”.
Renew Economy 30th Sept 2014 read more »
The International Energy Agency has challenged the claim by the global thermal coal industry that centralised coal-fired generation is the best solution to energy poverty – where more than 1 billion people in Asia and Africa still go without power. Over the last year, the coal industry has tried desperately to revive its flagging fortunes by saying coal was the only technology that could deliver cheap electricity for the 1.3 billion without electricity.
Renew Economy 30th Sept 2014 read more »
Four charts that show what a solar future might look like.
Carbon Brief 29th Sept 2014 read more »
Renewable Heat
Scotland’s 2020 renewable heat target remains “worryingly out of reach” despite new figures showing progress in the sector, according to Scotland’s renewables industry. The latest figures from the UK Department of Energy (DECC) show that 3% of the country’s warmth came from biomass, solar thermal panels, energy from waste and heat pumps in 2012. That figure in 2011 was 2.6%. But with a target of 11% by 2020, the sector has been “left behind”, according to the Scottish Renewables trade association. A spokesman said: “While Scotland has made great strides towards its 100% 2020 renewable electricity target, our objective of generating 11% of heat from renewables remains worryingly out of reach.
Scottish Energy News 30th Sept 2014 read more »
Energy Efficiency
David Cameron’s plans for 100,000 new homes for first time buyers have been criticised by green builders after it emerged the houses will not be subject to energy efficient building standards. The Prime Minister announced the plan to provide houses on brownfield land at 20 per cent below the market rate for under 40s ahead of the Conservative Party Conference this week.
Business Green 29th Sept 2014 read more »
The Conservatives are already rolling out a national energy efficiency programme like the one Labour has promised, according to the parliamentary under secretary of state for climate change. Speaking last night at a ResPublica fringe event at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, Amber Rudd said: “We are doing what [shadow energy secretary] Caroline Flint was talking about in terms of a commitment to an energy infrastructure policy.” Rudd stated: “We’ve committed to upgrading our electricity infrastructure and energy efficiency improvements to homes. “We will improve the energy efficiency of one million homes by the end of next year and then we will become more ambitious scaling it up from there; so we think she is flattering us by building upon our policy.” The comment comes a week after Labour unveiled a five point plan to make five million homes more energy efficient within ten years without additional government spending or adding to consumer energy bills.
Utility Week 29th Sept 2014 read more »
In July this year the European Commission published its vision for the future of energy efficiency in the EU. The document entitled Communication on Energy Efficiency and its Contribution to Energy Security and the 2030 Framework for Climate and Energy Policy states Europe is broadly on track to meet its 20% energy savings 2020 target – missing it by ‘only’ 1-2%. The Commission advises a 30% energy savings target should be adopted by the EU for 2030; this would complement the 40% greenhouse gas (GHG) and at least 27% renewable targets already proposed. These headlines mask a complex story of what is actually happening with energy savings – a story that is made difficult in part because of the shifting baselines on which progress is measured; jumping between discussions of primary and final energy use; and the bundling of data across sectors and countries that make it challenging to see what is really going on.
E3G 29th Sept 2014 read more »
More than 1,600 homes in the social rented sector will be fitted with measures to make them warmer and cheaper to heat, Housing Minister Margaret Burgess will confirm later this morning (30 September 2014). Speaking ahead of today’s debate in Holyrood – which will highlight the Scottish Government’s commitment to delivering affordable housing – Mrs Burgess revealed the allocation of the £4.5 million Green Homes Cashback Scheme. The scheme will provide funding to 24 registered social landlords and local authorities towards the cost of fitting energy efficiency measures in their properties across Scotland.
Scottish Energy News 30th Sept 2014 read more »
