Sellafield
The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee is to visit West Cumbria on 26th November to hold its own inquiry into National Audit Offices findings on Sellafield. Overspends of hundreds of millions of pounds and significant risks to the public have been highlighted in a shock report about operations at Sellafield. MPs from a powerful Commons watchdog will now visit the site later this month to take evidence about its performance. The National Audit Office issued a report called Managing Risk Reduction At Sellafield on Wednesday in which it warns that massive over-spending on key projects – £244 million on Evaporator D alone – could delay work to reduce risks and hazards on site. And on safety the NAO report warns: “Some of the older facilities at Sellafield containing highly hazardous radioactive waste have deteriorated so much that their contents pose significant risks to people and the environment. “Any significant containment failure, particularly in legacy storage ponds and silos, could result in highly hazardous radioactive material causing enduring contamination affecting people and the environment.”
Whitehaven News 8th Nov 2012 more >>
The publication today of the National Audit Office’s (NAO) report on huge cost overruns of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s (NDA) operations at Sellafield is a salutary lesson of the issues around the cost of nuclear power in general in the view of the Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA).
NFLA 7th Nov 2012 more >>
New Nukes
Letter from Dave Toke, Paul Dorfman, Jonathan Porritt, Steve Thomas, Andy Blowers, Ian Fairlie and others: The Government is considering putting caps on onshore wind development and handing nuclear power larger subsidies in the forthcoming Energy Bill. Subsidies should be reserved for new technologies such as offshore wind, solar, wave and tidal stream – not for nuclear power, which has failed to become economical after 60 years of massive subsidies by both consumer and state. Renewable energy sources deserve support. Unlike nuclear power, they are at the beginning of their development, and do not leave future generations with the environmental legacy of nuclear waste and decommissioning. Renewable energy sources are more popular with consumers than nuclear power. It is a disgrace that special pleading from the nuclear industry should allow its interests to be put before those of renewable energy.
Telegraph 8th Nov 2012 more >>
Yesterday new Energy Minister John Hayes gave evidence to the Commons Energy & Climate Change Committee, which is holding an inquiry into the challenges for new nuclear. Committee chairman Tim Yeo noted the delays in the coalition Government publishing its long-awaited Energy Bill. He asked: "Do you fear the atmosphere of uncertainty this is creating may jeopardise decisions by potential participants in nuclear new build and we may therefore be putting at risk the prospect of Britain having new nuclear power stations?" But Mr Hayes replied: "That is clearly not the case because as you know Hitachi have just committed very significantly to the purchase of Horizon with a sale price which reflects a significant investment and plans to build half a dozen reactors. "The signs are not that investors are nervous but the evidence is in fact investors are prepared to commit to nuclear build in the current policy framework." He also said he hoped a deal would be struck with EDF by early December to build new nuclear at Hinkley Point in Somerset.
Penn Energy 7th Nov 2012 more >>
Nuclear power is an old technology – its fundamental principles have hardly evolved since the 1950s. It looks like much the same could be said for some of its supporter’s views about nuclear power’s potential “customers”.
Greenpeace 8th Nov 2012 more >>
Hinkley
The Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) publishes today its latest ‘New Nuclear Monitor’ which provides the core of its joint response to the Environment Agency’s draft decisions and draft permits for radioactive discharges from a proposed new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point.
NFLA 7th Nov 2012 more >>
Joint submission to Environment Agency’s draft decisions & draft radioactive waste
permits for the proposed Hinkley Point nuclear reactor, Somerset.
NFLA 7th Nov 2012 more >>
Consultation on the environmental permits which are critical to the proposed £2 billion nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point in Somerset closes tomorrow. EDF Energy and Centrica’s joint venture company, NNB Generation Company Limited, applied to the Environment Agency for the permits in July last year. Public views on the applications, which would allow the power station to discharge and dispose of radioactive wastes, discharge cooling water and liquid effluents into the Bristol Channel and operate standby power supply systems using diesel generators, have been sought by the agency over recent weeks.
Western Morning News 8th Nov 2012 more >>
Sizewell
Plans for a third nuclear power station in Suffolk have come a step closer today. EDF Energy has announced it’s to display proposals for the twin reactor later this month. But the campaign against a new reactor has also been making its views known.
ITV Anglia 8th Nov 2012 more >>
Radwaste
Dear West Cumbria Tourism: As a wildlife artist I agree wholeheartedly with your marketing team that the Western Lake District is a magical place. It is of desperate concern that Cumbria Tourism is therefore going along with the Government plan to push for a geological nuclear dump in this area of complex and wonderfully diverse geology.
Radiation Free Lakeland 8th Nov 2012 more >>
Wylfa
PLANS for hundreds of homes for Wylfa B construction workers and later holidaymakers will be sent to a council tomorrow. Tourism company Land and Lakes Ltd’s planning application for a “high quality leisure village” near Holyhead to Anglesey County Council comes days after Hitachi’s agreed purchase of Horizon Nuclear Power sparked high hopes that the Japanese would build Wylfa B.
Daily Post 8th Nov 2012 more >>
Europe
Average annual funding for nuclear research is expected to grow almost 15% under the European Union’s (EU’s) planned Horizon 2020 program. Fusion programs account for nine-tenths of the budget. Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 initiative aimed at securing Europe’s global competitiveness. Running from 2014 to 2020 with an €80 billion ($104 billion) budget, the EU’s new program for research and innovation is part of the drive to create new growth and jobs in Europe.
World Nuclear News 1st Nov 2012 more >>
Germany
Decommissioned German nuclear power plants will be dismantled over the long term. Though no incidents have occurred in Germany, some citizen initiatives say legal safety measures are too lax. "Whether low amounts of radiation also pose a major health risk is medically disputed," Becker said. "Limits should only suggest what is safe". But, he suspects that an increasing amount of contaminated steel is appearing and, he says, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is also looking into such cases. Many residents of a high-rise apartment in Taiwan were found to have cancer several years ago because radioactively contaminated steel was using in the building. Despite the steel having low levels of radiation, over 60 people died, according to a study by researchers at the National Yang Ming University.
Deutsche Welle 8th Nov 2012 more >>
Germany is not just bolstering its energy arsenal with a hodgepodge of stylish renewables—which just about everybody is doing these days. Rather it is in the process of kicking the nuclear habit and abandoning fossil fuels altogether, while at the same time meeting ambitious EU climate targets. In the next decade, the country aims to supply Germany’s homes, offices and factories with an energy mix of which 40% comes from renewables. By 2050 Germany plans to have greened over 80% of its energy supply; environmental groups like Greenpeace think that with a little more chutzpah (in the form of proactive policies) Germany could even run on clean energy alone by then. What makes Germany so unique is not just the epic mission it has set, but that the country is among the world’s foremost industrial heavyweights: its powerful, export-driven economy relies on energy-intensive industry such as automobiles, machinery and chemicals. Indeed, if Germany can make this revolution happen then so can China, the U.S. and the rest of the world.
The Environmental Magazine Sept/Oct 2012 more >>
Iran
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that any country still stockpiling nuclear weapons was "mentally retarded" and that the age of nuclear deterrence was over.
ITV 8th Nov 2012 more >>
Georgianna Vaughan: Iran and the bomb. It’s not on the nuclear threshold and sanctions are working.
Conservative Home 8th Nov 2012 more >>
India
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, together with Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, have finished negotiations for the Administrative Arrangement between Canada and India that will allow the implementation of the Nuclear Cooperation Agreement (NCA), signed between the two countries in June 2010.
Nuclear Engineering International 8th Nov 2012 more >>
Nuclear Weapons
China’s plans to develop a new submarine with nuclear-weapon capability within two years have led to a U.S commission, mandated by the United States House of Congress, to suggest arms-reductions talks.
Engineering & Technology 8th Nov 2012 more >>
China appears to be within two years of deploying submarine-launched nuclear weapons, adding a new leg to its nuclear arsenal, a draft US report claims.
Telgraph 8th Nov 2012 more >>
