Radwaste
Cumbria county council’s decision to “dump the dump” by voting against a nuclear waste repository close to the Lake District has drilled a nasty great hole in the middle of the government’s wider nuclear strategy. Ministers had made clear that part of the agreement with the public over a new generation of atomic power stations would involve finding a safe and permanent home for the high-level waste created by the old ones. Cumbria’s decision is a body blow for government because though it may not necessarily have been the most geologically suitable spot but it was certainly was the most politically suitable.
Guardian 31st Jan 2013
MP Jamie Reed still believes the geology of Copeland should be investigated and has started work to explore the options. Energy Secretary Ed Davey yesterday said the Government would look for somewhere else to build a nuclear store after Cumbria council vetoed plans for a repository in the county. Mr Reed added there would have to be a new process going forward and Copeland council, the Sellafield unions and the west Cumbrian community would be at the heart of it. “If the county council is opting out, that’s their business,” he added. Allerdale council leader Alan Smith said his authority would work with Copeland and Mr Reed.
Carlisle News & Star 31st Jan 2013
RADICAL repercussions are likely to follow in the wake of yesterday’s decision by Cumbria County Council’s cabinet to say “no” to a potential repository site search in the west of the county. It could well result in Copeland Borough Council – whose executive voted 6-1 in favour – going it alone. The county council has always held the key to the repository door – Stage 4 (the desktop feasibility study stage) could not take place without the county’s support. Now Copeland MP Jamie Reed says he will do everything in his power to make the process happen without the county council’s involvement by bringing in a Private Member’s Bill urging Parliament to recognise Copeland Council’s wish to proceed to the next stage without commitment. This would involve four or five years of desktop studies into the area’s geology.
Whitehaven News 31st Jan 2013
COPELAND might go it alone to see if there is anywhere in the area suitable for burying highly radioactive nuclear waste.
Whitehaven News 31st Jan 2013
Sellafield workers were today holding an emergency meeting to find a way forward in the wake of yesterday’s No vote.
Whitehaven News 31st Jan 2013
COPELAND MP Jamie Reed will lobby the government to continue to look for a solution to nuclear waste storage in West Cumbria – despite councillors voting to pull the county out of the search for a repository site.
NW Evening Mail 31st Jan 2013
THE leaders of Copeland and Allerdale Borough Councils have called for an ‘urgent’ meeting with the government following Cumbria’s decision to pull out of the nuclear repository site search. In a letter to Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change, Councillor Elaine Woodburn, leader of Copeland BC and Councillor Alan Smith, leader of Allerdale BC, say: “As Leaders of the two West Cumbrian Authorities who yesterday took the brave decision to enter into Stage 4 of the Managing Radioactive Waste Safely process we would like to request an urgent meeting with yourself to discuss future processes to resolve the issue of long term disposal of higher activity nuclear waste. “We have had a very clear and evidenced mandate from the communities we represent that entering Stage 4 was the right thing to do, the fact Cumbria County Council never heeded the majority of West Cumbrians’ views and voted ‘no’ does not resolve the question over what do we do with the nuclear waste in the long term. “For over 50 years we have hosted nuclear waste so the skills and knowledge lies within our communities and we suggest the Country cannot afford for the opportunity to at least consider options to pass us by.
Whitehaven News 31st Jan 2013
NW Evening Mail 31st Jan 2013
A day after Cumbria County councillors voted to stop the search for an underground nuclear waste store in the county there are claims that it could still be built. At the moment 70 per cent of Britain’s nuclear waste is stored above ground at Sellafield. The trade unions there and some local politicians are looking at ways of re-starting the process. Watch the full report from Tim Backshall below.
ITV 31st Jan 2013
NFLA welcomes decision of Cumbria County Council to say no to developing a deep underground radioactive waste repository; now is the time for a complete overhaul of UK nuclear policy.
Nuclear Free Local Authorities 30th Jan 2013
Cumbria County Council yesterday voted against building an underground nuclear waste dump in the Lake District. The site would have been the first of its kind in the UK but the move was rejected by seven votes to three after more than 32,000 people had signed numerous petitions against the £12bn underground storage facility.
Ethical Consumer 31st Jan 2013
Plans to continue investigations into the suitability of West Cumbria as a geological repository for Britain’s medium-and high-level nuclear waste have been halted. Further progress of the government’s Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS) process required the approval of Allerdale and Copeland Borough Councils and Cumbria County Council (CCC). Approval from the county council would have progressed to the next stage, allowing the government to conduct desk-top geological surveys.
Engineer 31st Jan 2013
Letter: The reprocessed nuclear waste currently held at Sellafield occupies a small portion of the site. It would seem reasonable for the NDA to find a more stable method of storing that existing waste within the Sellafield site.
Whitehaven News 31st Jan 2013
Letter: Mr McKirdy’s letter (The Whitehaven News, January 17) cannot be allowed to go unchallenged, raising, as it does, a most important matter of principle. In his letter Mr McKirdy provides us with two very important definitions, for a Community and for a Community Siting Partnership, and cites as his authority for his definitions “the report from the MRWS Partnership” (“The definition of those terms is given in the report from the MRWS Partnership”). Both definitions differ quite radically from definitions for these two terms which appear in the Government White Paper of June 2008. As the latter are statements of proposed Government policy, while the former are merely statements from a decision-making-body-controlled partnership, the principle involved is, of course, which takes precedence and which carries the most weight?
Whitehaven News 31st Jan 2013
Energy Bill
Former energy secretary Chris Huhne and former energy minister Charles Hendry are reportedly among those considering rebelling against the coalition and voting in favour of the inclusion of a decarbonisation target in the upcoming Energy Bill.
Business Green 31st Jan 2013
SSE put pressure on the Government over its progress on energy reform, warning that “uncertainty” over policy was “continuing to have an impact on investment decision making”. Ministers are legislating for the biggest shake-up of the energy sector since privatisation, bringing in new systems of incentives to help encourage £110bn of investment in new power plants needed to keep the lights on over the next decade. However, SSE said “important aspects” of the reform remained unclear. It highlighted its plans for a new gas power plant at Abernedd, for which it issued a construction tender in 2011 but on which it now did not expect to take an investment decision “until the second half of 2013 at the earliest”. It said it was attempting to encourage MPs to make systems for administering new subsidies “workable” and to make sure they did not “have adverse financial consequences for electricity suppliers and their customers”.
Telegraph 31st Jan 2013
Dungeness
Storing Britain’s nuclear waste at Dungeness could be raised again after Cumbria threw out plans for a £12 billion underground dump. It had been the only candidate for a deep underground bunker which would store nuclear waste for the next 100,000 years. The nuclear power station site at Dungeness had been mooted as a possible alternative site but a council-organised survey of 10,000 residents of Romney `Marsh came out against the plan.
This is Kent 31st Jan 2013
Hinkley
Southwest campaigners are calling for the planned nuclear development at Hinkley Point to be axed, following Cumbria County councils decision not to accept a future underground waste dump in the Lake District . Anti-nuclear activists say that without a long term destination for it’s radioactive waste, EDF’s Hinkley C project can only mean a permanent nuclear dump staying in West Somerset – for many thousands of years.
Stop Hinkley 31st Jan 2013
Sizewell
In June 2012, defects were found in the reactor pressure vessel of the pressurised water reactor at Doel 3 Nuclear Plant in Belgium. Sizewell B is the only operating reactor in the UK with a steel reactor pressure vessel and so ONR requested that EDF NGL undertake a review of manufacturing and inspection records to establish the likelihood of similar issues at Sizewell B.
ONR Quarterly Report 31st Jan 2013
A NEW question mark was raised over proposals for Sizewell C after councillors at the other end of the country rejected an application for a nuclear waste storage facility.
East Anglian Daily Times 31st Jan 2013
NUCLEAR bosses did their best to weather a storm under questioning on the impact a third power station might have on the coastline. A packed Britten-Pears building at Snape heard from marine environment manager for EDF Energy’s proposal Colin Taylor, who admitted there had been “very little” historical research into the frontage at Sizewell. But he said the coast had eroded an average of 1.5metres per year over the last two centuries and the sea banks had moved 30m closer to the shore in the last 70 years.
East Anglian Daily Times 31st Jan 2013
The company behind plans to build a new multi-million pound nuclear power station in Suffolk says it wants to maximise its engagement with local suppliers.
East Anglian Daily Times 31st Jan 2013
New Nukes
Observing the UK nuclear debate can leave feeling a little green, not particularly healthy and impotent as far as the debate is concerned. Name calling, accusations of bullying and favouritism, people not doing their homework and sinister best friends conspiring in the corridors.
Responding to Climate Change 31st Jan 2013
Europe
The European Commission has launched a thinly veiled attack on feed-in tariffs and the latest Energy Communication from the Commission threatens to change state-aid rules that currently favour renewable energy. Meanwhile the UK debate is distracted by the arguments surrounding the Government’s fantasy new nuclear power construction programme. The EU Commissioner for Energy, Günther Oettinger has criticised the feed-in tariff used in his own country (Germany) for distorting the market – Apparently he believes that system of renewable energy subsidies in Germany is unfair in the context of wholesale power prices being pushed down not only in Germany but also in The Netherlands. One may wonder just what is probelmmatic about wholsesale poweer prices being reduced, especially given the EU Renewables Directive requiring that 20 per cent of EU energy should come from renewables by 2020.
Dave Toke’s Blog 31st Jan 2013
Slovakia
The construction of two new reactors at Mochovce nuclear plant by Enel’’s Slovak unit will cost more than planned and will be delayed by two years. The project is set to be completed by 2015, compared with the original deadline of 2013, while costs are expected to rise to 3.7 billion euros ($5 billion) from the originally estimated 2.8 billion euros, the newspaper quoted Malatinsky as saying.
Bloomberg 31st Jan 2013
US
While the rest of America spent January debating new gun control laws, one government agency announced its plans to expand the use of high-capacity magazines, assault weapons, and even fully automatic machine guns. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the nation’s nuclear plants, is seeking the firepower not for securing the plants themselves, but to defend their nuclear waste.
Slate 30th Jan 2013
Iran
Iran has declared it will install faster and more efficient equipment at its Natanz nuclear facility in defiance of UN sanctions imposed to force the country to abandon uranium enrichment.
Telegraph 31st Jan 2013
Iran’s plans to upgrade its uranium enrichment centrifuges would be a “further escalation” in the nuclear stand-off, the US has warned.
BBC 31st Jan 2013
Nuclear Weapons
Contents of this month’s NIS Update newsletter from Nuclear Information Service: Fears over structural safety of buildings halts work at Atomic Weapons Establishment; Alternatives to Trident take centre stage as senior politicians question need for new nuclear weapons; AWE construction programme continues to make headway; UK government outlines position on Trident and Scottish independence vote; Nuclear risks rule Devonport out as an option if Trident quits Scotland; Audit Office: ‘More to do’ in improving Ministry of Defence equipment project performance; Police investigating fatal shooting shocked by binge drinking on nuclear submarine HMS Astute; US nuclear powered submarine involved in collision in Gulf; Radioactivity In Food and the Environment Report 2011 published.
NIS 31st Jan 2013
