Sizewell
SUFFOLK residents are being invited to have their say on proposed changes to emergency planning arrangements relating to the Sizewell power station sites. The Sizewell off-site emergency plan is due for review this year and must take account of developments at the site and changes in national policy and guidance. Specifically, the plan needs to be updated to reflect the fact that the Sizewell A station is no longer generating electricity and implement lessons learned from the Fukushima accident in Japan. Suffolk is the first county to consider changes to civil nuclear off-site emergency plans since the release of the Fukushima report. This is being done as part of a routine three-yearly review of the plan for how emergency services, councils and other agencies would respond to an incident at the site. In the UK, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) is responsible for putting International Atomic Energy Agency standards into practice by setting minimum safety zones around nuclear power stations. From January 7, 2013, people who live within the immediate area and up to 15km from the site will have access to a detailed consultation booklet setting out the proposed changes to the precautionary safety arrangements, and inviting them to have their say.
Haverhill Echo 7th Jan 2013 more »
Suffolk County Council 7th Jan 2013 more »
New Sizewell nuclear emergency plan – how is a 2.3 mile evacuation zone an improvement on a 1.5 mile zone?
Nuclear Free Local Authorities Press Release 8th Jan 2013 more »
Radwaste
It is important to put in a request to Speak to Cabinet on the 30th Jan as soon as possible. The meetings of the Executives of Copeland and Allerdale Borough Council and the County Council Cabinet are taking place on 30th Jan at different places, the same time 10am. It is important that all of these meetings have representation from people opposed to the dump BUT the overarching authority is Cumbria County Council who represent the WHOLE of Cumbria and will have right of veto over this decision.
Radiation Free Lakeland 8th Jan 2013 more »
DECC
THE chief executive of Shareholder Executive, the organisation that oversees the government’s billons of pounds of shareholdings in companies including Royal Mail, is to quit after five years at the helm. Stephen Lovegrove, who has presided over key deals such as the government’s £4.4bn sale of British Energy to EDF, is to leave his role to become the new permanent secretary of the Department for Energy and Climate Change.
City AM 7th Jan 2013 more »
Scotland
SCOTTISH entrepreneurs should try to break into the shale gas and nuclear power markets as well as renewable energy, according to a professor from Harvard Business School. Joe Lassiter will tell 600 delegates at the Clean Energy Entrepreneurship & Investment conference that shale gas and the third and fourth generations of nuclear power stations will bring “big changes” to the world’s energy markets. Lassiter will tonight deliver the first “distinguished lecture” to Scotland’s 2020 Climate Group, the body set up by First Minister Alex Salmond and SSE chief executive Ian Marchant. He will then take part in a panel discussion with Marchant, finance secretary John Swinney, former Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander and Lloyds Banking Group Scotland managing director Lady Susan Rice. Lassiter told The Scotsman: “Scotland has the engineering expertise built up over two centuries to take part in or even lead the renaissance in nuclear power.
Scotsman 9th Jan 2013 more »
Companies
CUMBRIAN companies have been praised by a delegation of Japanese nuclear experts. REACT Engineering, based in Cleator Moor, and Createc, from Cockermouth, were described as “a masterpiece in the attic” by the nuclear decommissioning experts from Hitachi in Japan. Following the visit, Cumbrian engineering excellence could end up helping the decommissioning efforts in Japan.
NW Evening Mail 8th Jan 2013 more »
British industrial and engineering group Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc (LON:RR) on Tuesday said it had taken over US nuclear engineering services provider PKMJ Technical Services, in a move to grow its global civil nuclear business.
Financial News 8th Jan 2013 more »
Nuclear Engineering International 8th Jan 2013 more »
Germany
The latest energy statistics suggests that Germany is doing much better in restraining coal used to generate electricity compared to the UK. Yet, to read the British press you would automatically assume that the exact opposite was true and that coal use was increasing dramatically in Germany compared to the UK – All, allegedly, because of the German policy of switching away from nuclear power and towards renewable energy and energy efficiency. According to this week’s Economist magazine ‘In Germany, RWE, the biggest user of coal in Europe, generated 72% of its electricity from coal and lignite (a dirtier, low-grade form of coal) in the first nine months of 2012, compared with 66% over the same period in 2011’. The article also comments ‘By displacing conventional forms of energy this way renewables have undermined utilities’ finances. Moody’s, a ratings agency, recently said the whole sector’s creditworthiness is under threat. In response, companies are switching from gas to coal as fast as they can, so renewables are in fact displacing gas but not coal.’ What the Economist does not mention is that the shift from coal to gas is independent of whether, like Germany, the country has a policy of phasing out nuclear power. This has to do with relative energy prices. Indeed, in the the UK, despite the fact that its pro-nuclear establishment has ordered the extension of the life of existing nukes and wants (wishfully!) to build more nuclear power, the shift from gas to coal is even bigger than the figures quoted in the Economist!
Dave Toke’s Green Energy Blog 4th Jan 2013 more »
Japan
More than a year and a half since the nuclear crisis, much of Japan’s post-Fukushima cleanup remains primitive, slapdash and bereft of the cleanup methods lauded by government scientists as effective in removing harmful radioactive cesium from the environment.
New York Times 7th Jan 2013 more »
Fukushima Crisis Update 4th to 7th Jan.
Greenpeace 8th Jan 2013 more »
Iran
Iran says it is ready to help allay the West’s concerns over Tehran’s nuclear energy program provided that the country’s nuclear rights are fully recognized.
RINF 8th Jan 2013 more »
Syria
Nuclear experts in the US and Middle East have raised concerns about the security of up to 50 tonnes of unenriched uranium in Syria amid fears that civil war could put the stockpile at risk. “There are real worries about what has happened to the uranium that Syria was planning to put into the Al-Kibar reactor shortly before the reactor was destroyed in 2007,” he said. “There’s no question that, as Syria gets engulfed in civil war, the whereabouts of this uranium is worrying governments. There is evidence to suggest this issue has been raised by one government directly with the IAEA.”
FT 8th Jan 2013 more »
Nuclear Weapons
The most remarkable feature of nuclear weapons is not their technology — now readily, if expensively replicable — but how the psychological aura around them enabled nuclear club members to dissuade others from joining. It required a stunning audacity of hypocrisy and a suspension of logic to achieve this.
Oil Price 8th Jan 2013 more »
