Torness
When things go wrong at a nuclear power station, it can be a total disaster. This has led to the perception with some that even popping into one is a risky endeavour. However, MailOnline was given exclusive access to EDF’s Torness nuclear power station on the east coast of Scotland – and didn’t come out glowing. One of the lead engineers there pointed out that in fact flying exposes you to more radiation than standing on top of one of its two reactors.
Daily Mail 31st Jan 2015 read more »
Oldbury
HORIZON Nuclear Power has welcomed the successful clearance of a major regulatory hurdle towards permission for the use of a type of reactor at a new atomic plant in South Gloucestershire. The Government has awarded what is known as a regulatory justification for use of the Hitachi-GE ABWR – advanced boiling water reactor – in the UK. Horizon said the approval marked the first of the major permissions to be put in place as the company progresses its plans to build a new Oldbury B nuclear power station at Shepperdine. It also wants to build a station at Wylfa in North Wales.
Gloucestershire Gazette 31st Jan 2015 read more »
Radwaste
Findings released Thursday by analysts in the federal agency with the power to give the go-ahead for a proposed national nuclear waste dump in Nevada appear to provide wiggle room for adopting rules to open the repository, if decision-makers want to go forward. “Conditions (to open the repository) could be included,” Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff said, “if there is a commission decision to authorize construction.” But the federal Department of Energy still needs to acquire crucial land and water rights, it said. Opponents and proponents of the Yucca Mountain project each found support for their positions in the release of the final two volumes of a five-volume report by commission staff. Both acknowledged it will be up to Congress to pay for a licensing process and secure land and water rights before construction could resume on a site to entomb the nation’s most radioactive waste in a desert area 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
WSVN 31st Jan 2015 read more »
Japan – Fukushima
Nearly four years on from the tsunami that crippled Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactor, a bus route through the contaminated area is finally open again. Julian Ryall took a ride.
Telegraph 31st Jan 2015 read more »
Nuclear weapons
A RUSSIAN bomber intercepted over the Channel last week was carrying a nuclear missile designed to destroy Trident submarines, it emerged last night.
Express 1st Feb 2015 read more »
NORTH Ayrshire & Arran MP Katy Clark has once again rebelled against her party – by voting in favour of scrapping Trident.
Ardrossan Herald 31st Jan 2015 read more »
India successfully test-fires Agni-V, a nuclear-capable missile, that could reach Beijing and Eastern Europe.
Reuters 31st Jan 2015 read more »
Nuclear testing
Fijian victims of Britain’s nuclear bomb tests will finally get the compensation denied to our veterans. The country will offer £3,000 each to 24 servicemen stationed on Christmas Island in 1957/8.
Mirror 31st Jan 2015 read more »
Community Energy
Community energy schemes popular with ethical investors have been thrown into chaos, with many of the projects now engaged in a race against time to beat the withdrawal of generous tax reliefs from April. Locally run green energy schemes have been one of the ethical investment success stories of recent years, allowing people to put money into projects and earn returns that can sometimes be as high as 10%-plus a year. But many may now struggle to get off the ground as a result of tax changes announced by the government – and even if they do succeed in starting up, investors may find that the headline rates on offer are a lot less attractive.
Guardian 31st Jan 2015 read more »
Energy Efficiency
Spain will be home to the first public street lighting system powered exclusively by solar and wind energy. Researcher Ramon Bargalló is the man behind the development, and he worked alongside the company Eolgreen to design his autonomous street light system. Although there have been other wind/solar-powered street lights, these will be the first to be installed as public fixtures.
Inhabitat 28th Jan 2015 read more »
Fossil Fuels
Ministers are facing mounting pressure to close what is seen as a “gaping loophole” in the temporary ban imposed on fracking last week to include highly controversial plans to exploit coal gas under the seabed near Scotland’s coast. The ban covers fracking for shale gas in the central belt and mining for coalbed methane at Falkirk and Canonbie, but it excludes the related and equally disputed technology known as underground coal gasification (UCG). Two private companies have advanced plans to gasify the coal that underlies large parts of the Firth of Forth and the Solway Firth. Between them they have five exploratory licences for the seabed off Musselburgh, Kincardine, Largo Bay, and in the middle of the two firths, plus an application pending for an area off Kirkcaldy.One company, Cluff Natural Resources, founded by the multi-millionaire oil tycoon, Algy Cluff, is sending a consultant to have talks with Fife Council planners this week. The other, Five Quarter, is based in Newcastle and backed by an eight per cent investment from the UK’s largest private landowner, the Duke of Buccleuch. When the Energy Minister, Fergus Ewing MSP, announced the moratorium in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday, he said that the Scottish government only had powers over onshore activities. “They do not apply to offshore activities such as those that I believe would be covered by UCG,” he told MSPs.
Sunday Herald 1st Feb 2015 read more »
A leading figure in the coal gas industry has lambasted environmental campaigners for being against fossil fuels, against manufacturing and against employment. Dr Harry Bradbury, chief executive of Five Quarter, one of the companies that wants to gasify coal under the seabed around Scotland, launched an angry attack on green activists. He also criticised the Scottish government for ignoring the advice of its own experts when it announced a moratorium on onshore gas developments last week.
Sunday Herald 1st Feb 2015 read more »
Struan Stevenson: IT USED to be trendy to join protests against new motorway extensions. So-called environmentalists climbed trees and set up camps to block the bulldozers. Remember “Swampy” and the tree huggers? Now, the latest focus for the green protesters and their celebrity backers is shale gas. Anti-fracking groups are mobilising across the UK, feverishly protesting that shale gas extraction will pollute our watercourses, cause massive earthquakes and disfigure the landscape. For the most part these protesters are Luddites, happy to vandalise our hills and glens with ugly industrial wind-turbines while arguing against relatively modest shale gas installations. At the insistence of the Greens, the Smith Commission has agreed that control of fracking will become the responsibility of the Scottish Government. Jim Murphy has leapt on to the bandwagon, promising a total ban on fracking in Scotlan d if Labour wins the next Holyrood election. Now, in a desperate bid to outflank Labour and grasp the populist initiative, the SNP government has ordered an indefinite moratorium on planning consent for shale gas extraction in Scotland. It seems that only Conservative MSPs and MPs now back shale gas production. We need a reality check. Ofgem, the energy regulator, has warned that the closure and mothballing of UK coal-fired power stations to meet EU 2020 CO2 emission targets is going to leave us perilously short of electricity within the next 18 months. Right now we have a 10 per cent surplus generating capacity, but by 2016 that will have fallen to only 3 per cent. Britain will be on a knife edge, teetÂering on the brink of blackouts. Instead of properly dealing with this looming problem, policy-makers’ continuing obsession with renewable energy has seen more than 5,000 giant, industrial wind turbines installed from one end of the UK to the other – half of them i n Scotland. Another 3,000 are in the planning pipeline. Sadly, due to their unreliability and the fact that they don’t work when there is no wind and have to be switched off when the wind is too high, they often produce only a trickle of the power we need.
Scotsman 1st Feb 2015 read more »
