Dounreay
The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has served the operators of the Dounreay nuclear power complex with an improvement notice following a fire. The incident, in part of the Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) facility, on 7 October led to an “unauthorised release” of radioactivity. The ONR said it had been concerned by poor compliance and “unacceptable behaviours of personnel”.
BBC 2nd Dec 2014 read more »
Times 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Press & Journal 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
A scathing improvement notice warning of the unacceptable risks that are being taken at Dounreay nuclear plant must see a change in behaviour at the site. An investigation by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) into a fire in October at the prototype fast reactor uncovered “a poor compliance culture and unacceptable behaviours of personnel on site.” It was previously reported that radioactivity was released as part of the fire, with trace amounts of tritium escaping from the site. SNP MSP Rob Gibson said: “This improvement notice must be a wakeup call to management at Dounreay and see safety at the site drastically improved. “The safety of staff at Dounreay, people living in the area and the local environment must always be the top priority and any lapses that have taken place are extremely concerning. “Safety procedures are there for a reason and it is completely unacceptable if they are not being followed – particularly when radioactive material is involved. I will be meeting with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority regarding this and seeking straight answers on behalf of people in the area.”
Scottish Energy News 4th Dec 2014 read more »
Moorside
NEWS the government is to guarantee funding for a new nuclear power plant in Cumbria has been welcomed by unions and business leaders. It has been announced money will be available to build three new reactors at Moorside, near Sellafield. The news came ahead of today’s autumn statement by chancellor George Osborne where he was expected to outline the deal which is part of the National Infrastructure Plan.
NW Evening Mail 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
News & Star 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Construction Enquirer 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Professional Engineer 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
BDaily 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Britain on Tuesday agreed to provide a financial guarantee to a Franco-Japanese joint venture that is seeking to build Europe’s largest new nuclear power development in the country. NuGeneration Ltd., a venture between France’s GDF Suez and Toshiba, has signed a cooperation agreement with the government to promote financing for the new nuclear plant project in Moorside, West Cumbria, it said in a statement.
Japan Times 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Plans to build Moorside nuclear power plant in West Cumbria have moved one step forward following an agreement by HM Treasury to provide financial security for private investors in the project.
DECC 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Energy Policy
Unlike last year’s statement, which was chock-full of changes to climate and energy funding, today’s announcement was a sparser affair. Here’s a summary of the key climate and energy policy announcements: £2.3 billion for flood defences; £15 billion for road upgrades; Tidal lagoon energy project included in national infrastructure plan; £430 million in tax cuts for the North Sea oil and gas industry; Sovereign wealth fund for shale gas proceeds in the north of England.
Carbon Brief 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
So how are we doing with that all important target of 15% of final energy use to be provided by renewables by 2020? It is a target agreed with our EU partners and I suppose some will say it doesn’t matter if we aren’t going to be in the EU come 2020. But even then there is the small issue of keeping the UK’s energy carbon output on a trajectory that makes a low carbon energy landscape possible by 2030, and we are of course in the EU right now. So for legal reasons and for reasons of keeping the planet in one piece answering the above question does currently matter. It is generally accepted that about 35 – 40 % of our electricity by then should be from renewable sources, which, so the REF tells us, equates to about 33 gigawatts of installed power at average renewable capacity values. Ed’s most recent go at projecting the mix of technologies which would generate the installed capacity we need to deliver the 2020 target line was contained in the December 2013 Electricity Market Delivery Plan. This report (p.40) lists the range of projected capacity of the various renewables that the Department expects to fill the bill – overall from a minimum of 27.2 installed GW to 40 GW at the most optimistic. And there it sits, in the middle, the ‘goldilocks’ figure of about 33.3 GW. Thank god for ‘the pipeline’. Well, except that is, if you turn to what DECC told the National Audit Office (NAO) this spring about what actually IS in that pipeline, and what its status is. You can check it out here on p.31 of their report ‘Early Contracts for Renewable Electricity’. At first sight this chart looks like case proven for the Renewable Energy Foundation. No less than 44GW of capacity in onshore wind, offshore wind and biomass listed, and that’s without the 4GW or so of large solar already installed or on its way. But the NAO have helpfully divided the overall figures into what is operational, being built, consented to and what awaits planning permission, and of all the plants in development, which have or don’t have an early investment contract agreed. If we apply this helpful division into the events of the past few months, then the reality starts to look substantially less rosy.
Alan Whitehead 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Capacity Market
Interconnectors linking the UK to other EU states will for the first time be able to participate in the second four-year-ahead Capacity Market auction in 2015, designed to secure energy supply in the winter of 2019/2020. The government believes that this move could save consumers up to £9 billion by 2040 by providing cheaper energy.
Scottish Energy News 4th Dec 2014 read more »
Utilities
British Gas has been hit with an £11.1m penalty for failing to provide thousands of poor households with free insulation under a Government scheme, Ofgem has announced. The regulator said 6,750 households missed out on energy-saving measures such as loft or wall insulation “that would have helped keep their homes warm and lower bills in the winter of 2012/13” due to British Gas’s failings. British Gas had been required to take part in the so-called Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP) along with its fellow Big Six suppliers and two power plant owners. SSE and ScottishPower are also under investigation and could face penalties for failing to hit their targets. Power companies Drax and InterGen were fined £28m and £11m respectively last week in relation to the same investigation.
Telegraph 4th Dec 2014 read more »
A survey conducted in January by consumer campaigners Which? revealed the best and worst energy companies for customer satisfaction, and the results were unfamiliar to a number of British energy customers. The top five energy companies for customer satisfaction were all little known, smaller suppliers, while the “big six” – E. ON, British Gas, EDF Energy, npower, Scottish Power and SSE – were all at the bottom of the table, with scores of less than 50 per cent. Which? surveyed more than 10,000 people in October and November last year, with Good Energy – a green independent supplier – topping the tables with 82pc for customer satisfaction. It was the third time in a row the energy company ranked top in the annual survey. Ecotricity, another green supplier, also scored 82pc, putting it in joint first place.
Telegraph 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Ukraine
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said on Wednesday an accident had occurred at the Zaporizhye nuclear power plant (NPP) in south-east Ukraine and called on the energy minister to hold a news conference.”I know that an accident has occurred at the Zaporizhye NPP,” Yatseniuk said, asking new energy minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn to make clear when the problem would be resolved and what steps would be taken to restore normal power supply across Ukraine. News agency Interfax Ukraine said the problem had occurred at bloc No 3 – a 1,000-megawatt reactor – and the resulting lack of output had worsened the power crisis in the country. Interfax added that the bloc was expected to come back on stream on Dec. 5.
Reuters 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Ukraine’s energy minister has said that a “technical fault” in Europe’s largest nuclear power plant has cut production but poses no danger. Volodymyr Demchyshyn said on Wednesday that one of the reactors at the Zaporizhzhya plant in the south of Ukraine had automatically shut down. There was no problem with the reactor itself and the problem would be fixed by the weekend, he added.
BBC 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Telegraph 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Daily Mail 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
City AM 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
A short circuit at a nuclear plant in Ukraine posed no threat but had added to electricity shortages at a time when the country is struggling to keep the lights on, an official has said. The electrical fault at the Zaporizhya plant in the south-east of the country last Friday is due to be fixed in the coming days but comes as coal shortages are forcing partial blackouts across Ukraine.
Guardian 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Belgium
There was a fire at the French owned Belgian Tihange 3 nuclear reactor. The real news, however, is that three others are offline – two due to serious safety concerns.
Mining Awareness 1st Dec 2014 read more »
Belgium’s nuclear crisis continued this week with a fire and explosion at the Tihange nuclear power plant. The fire began in the electrical substation transformer building at approximately 10.30am on Sunday, December 1 and led to an emergency shutdown of reactor unit 3. The 29 year old Tihange nuclear reactor is located near Liege and is 70 kilometers west of the city of Aachen. The fire was put out by the local fire service. The reactor restarted at 5.00am on December 2. Fires at nuclear power plants pose significant risks to reactor safety due to the potential disruption of the electrical supply to vital reactor safety functions. (In 2008, Jack Grobe, Associate Director for Engineering and Safety Systems, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulatory, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said: “Approximately one-half of the core damage risk at operating reactors results from accident sequences that initiate with fire events.”
Greenpeace 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Israel
THE United Nations general assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Tuesday calling on Israel to renounce possession of nuclear weapons and put its nuclear facilities under international oversight. The resolution, which was adopted in a 161-5 vote, noted that Israel was the only Middle Eastern country that is not party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Morning Star 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Faslane
A new fire and rescue training facility has been proposed for Faslane nuclear submarine base. Defence contractor Babcock, operators at Faslane Naval Base, submitted the plans to Argyll and Bute Council last week. The planning application proposes the construction of a new fire and rescue training facility at the site.
STV 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Renewables – solar
Solar power will prosper without subsidies in Britain as early as 2020, says a report which used the experience of Germany to project the outlook for solar costs in Britain and impacts on utilities. It was published today (Thursday 4th December). Solar is leading new changes in the power market. In 2015, solar photovoltaic (PV) power globally will overtake both gas and coal to become the number one power generation technology in terms of annual installations. Solar hardware costs have fallen relentlessly over the last decade, recalling the semiconductor industry, and the British market will also benefit from a maturing supply chain which will see full system costs converge with Germany.
Scottish Energy News 4th Dec 2014 read more »
The amount of electricity generated by U.S. utility-scale solar photovoltaic power plants is up more than 100 percent in 2014 over the same period in 2013, thanks to big projects, many of them highly productive, that have been coming online. Four major factors have made the solar surge possible: The eight-year extension of the Investment Tax Credit for renewable energy that was part of the 2008 Bush economic bailout package; state renewable portfolio standards; the Obama administration’s pro-solar policies, including friendly environmental reviews, cash grants in lieu of tax credits and guaranteed loans; and the steep decline in the price of PV.
CNBC 2nd Dec 2014 read more »
Renewables – wave
SCOTLAND’S fledgling renewables industry has been hit with a fresh crisis after energy firm Aquamarine Power announced it is to significantly downsize its business, laying off all but its core staff. The Edinburgh-based company said it had launched a consultation process with employees as part of a major restructuring amid reports its workforce could be cut from more than 50 to less than 20. Aquamarine??s move came less than two weeks after the collapse of rival wave energy pioneer Pelamis into administration. The world-leading renewables firm that had received more than £15 million of funding from the Scottish Government went into administration with directors claiming they had been unable to secure much-needed additional finance.
Herald 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Local Authorities
ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) launches the world’s most widely-endorsed GHG accounting and reporting standard for cities on December 8th 2014 in conjunction with the UN Climate Summit in Lima, Peru. The World Resources Institute (WRI), ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) and C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) have partnered to create the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) — the world’s most widely-endorsed GHG accounting and reporting standard for cities.
Scottish Energy News 4th Dec 2014 read more »
Climate
Lang’s Blog: “2014 is likely to be the hottest year on record and emissions continue to rise. We must act with urgency,” she says with passion. Before concluding, Figueres called on those present to “make history” by crafting the basis of a deal that will deliver a climate deal that both people and nature need.
WWF 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
2014 is expected to be the among the hottest years since records began for the UK and the world, and may well prove to be the hottest, according to data from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the UK Met Office.
Carbon Brief 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
BBC 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Guardian 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Climate Progress 3rd Dec 2014 read more »
Times 4th Dec 2014 read more »
