Hinkley
Electricite de France SA’s planned Hinkley Point C nuclear plant will cost British consumers as much as 21 billion pounds ($27 billion) in subsidies over the lifetime of the French utility’s contract with the U.K., according to an estimate from the government. The plant will receive 92.50 pounds a megawatt-hour of power it produces for 35 years under a contract signed on Thursday by the French and U.K. governments. The cost of subsidies levied on consumer bills will probably range from 12 billion pounds to 21 billion pounds, according to a document posted Thursday the U.K. government website.
Bloomberg 29th Sept 2016 read more »
Energy Live News 30th Sept 2016 read more »
Hinkley Point C Documents.
BEIS 29th Sept 2016 read more »
Contract for Difference for Hinkley Point C.
BEIS 29th Sept 2016 read more »
The French and Chinese companies that are to build the £18bn Hinkley Point C nuclear power station will have to pay up to £7.2bn to dismantle and clean it up.Documents published yesterday reveal for the first time how much the developers, EDF and China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), will have to pay to decommission the plant, beginning in 2083. The new reactors in Somerset will be unique in British nuclear history, as they are the first for which the operator will have to pay to make good the site afterwards. “Waste transfer contracts signed today mean that, for the first time in the UK, the full costs of decommissioning and waste management associated with the new power station are set aside during generation and are included in the price of the electricity,” EDF said in a statement. The Hinkley Point C decommissioning costs are estimated at £5.9bn to £7.2bn, with the dismantling of the plant expected to begin in 2083. The government, EDF and CGN anticipate the winding up of the new reactors will continue well into the 22nd century. The plant is expected to be fully decommissioned “from 2138” when the final spent fuel is disposed of. Experts said the cost estimate was likely to be on the low side. “The reality in terms of decommissioning is that it always costs more than people say,” said Dr Paul Dorfman, of the Energy Institute at University College London. He claimed that the precedent of the government taking ownership of the liabilities of British Nuclear Fuels Limited and British Energy more than a decade ago showed that the government would be forced to shoulder the costs if Hinkley’s developers had a shortfall. The business department also admitted that large scale solar power and onshore windfarms could produce electricity for less than the price agreed for Hinkley, as the National Audit Office said in the summer. But officials suggested there would be additional costs to the renewable alternatives. “There would be significant upgrades to the grid required (such as connection and planning costs) as well as increased costs to keep the system in balance,” said the ‘Value for money assessment’. Greenpeace UK executive director, John Sauven, said: “We now have it straight from the horse’s mouth. Increasingly cheaper renewable energy sources do indeed offer better value for money to British bill-payers than Hinkley.
Guardian 30th Sept 2016 read more »
The Hinkley Point C Funded Decommissioning Programme sets out EDF’s arrangements for managing and disposing of the plant’s waste and the decommissioning of the site.
BEIS 29th Sept 2016 read more »
Signing of a £18 billion contract for electricity off take from the Hinkely Point C nuclear project is burdening rate-payers with higher costs than new gas power stations would have done, the UK government had to admit. Analysts at Barclays Bank estimated EDF will generate a 7.2% rate of return – even if the project would come in 25% over budget and was completed four years late (by 2029).
Gas to Power Journal 30th Sept 2016 read more »
[Machine Translation] The General Court dismissed an application by German and Austrian electricity suppliers against subsidies for the British nuclear power plant Hinkley Point. The green electricity provider Greenpeace Energy said on Thursday in Hamburg, the court in Luxembourg has referred to the action as not allowed. The company is now considering an appeal against it. Meanwhile, the contract for the construction of new reactors was signed.
Euractiv 30th Sept 2016 read more »
Our district is ready for building work to begin says Sedgemoor leader.
Burnham-on-sea 30th Sept 2016 read more »
COMMUNITY projects in Burnham and Highbridge could benefit from part of a £13million fund announced in the wake of Hinkley C being given the green light. This week the Somerset Community Foundation (SCF), who will be managing the new Hinkley C Community Fund, said it is looking forward to playing an important role in supporting communities most affected by the construction over the next decade. As part of the Section 106 agreement for the construction of the project, £13million of funding will be available and the SCF said it will work with local communities, councils and other stakeholders in early 2017 to define priorities ready for the launch of the fund in the second half of next year.
Burnham and Highbridge Weekly News 30th Sept 2016 read more »
Caroline Lucas, the Green Party’s co-leader, has responded to Government ministers from the UK, France and China giving the final go-ahead for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built. Caroline Lucas MP said: “The Government has just signed a deal for the most outrageously overpriced white elephant project imaginable. Not only are bill payers going to be ripped off but this absurd project will also divert resources away from building the energy infrastructure we need, and threaten our climate change targets because of the snail’s pace at which it will be built. “This is not the end of the fight against Hinkley – and we will be joining campaigners in continuing to highlight the major shortcomings of this project. This is a crossroads for Britain – and the signing of this deal has seen us swerve down the wrong path. By reversing this decision we can put the resources needed into building an energy system where power is in the hands of the many, not the few – and where Britain puts to use its most abundant resources: the sun, sea and wind.”
Green Party 30th Sept 2016 read more »
The Stop Hinkley Campaign has branded this “an enormous error of judgement” on the part of both EDF Energy and the UK Government
Stop Hinkley Press Release 29th Sept 2016 read more »
Bradwell
China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) announced Thursday that it has signed all final agreements for the Hinkley Point C (HPC) project, and a suite of agreements relating to the projects of Sizewell C and Bradwell B, with French energy company EDF and the British government. This means that all the necessary government and commercial approvals have been completed for Hinkley Point C project and the flagship project of the “golden era” for China-Britain relations can now move forward after two months of delay. This follows the Britain’s decision to proceed with the project following a comprehensive review and revised agreement with EDF. At the same time, the agreements will also enable preparatory work to begin on Bradwell B, allowing CGN to put its HPR1000 technology through Britain’s generic design assessment (GDA) process.
New China 29th Sept 2016 read more »
Sizewell
Chinese backers yesterday signed important financial agreements connected to the construction of Suffolk’s yet-to-be-approved Sizewell C nuclear power station.
Ipswich Star 29th Sept 2016 read more »
In late 2014, AREVA notified Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN) of the results of material tests carried out on a component manufactured at the Creusot Forge. These tests were undertaken by AREVA as part of the much-delayed Qualification Technique (QT) of components for the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) presently under construction at the Flamanville 3 (FA3) nuclear power plant (NPP). The part tested was a supernumerary equivalent of each of the two components, the upper and lower head shells, that had already been incorporated into the FA3 reactor pressure vessel (RPV) now installed within the nuclear island at the NPP site. To much consternation the test results revealed that the material characteristics, particularly the impact or fracture toughness, did not conform to the design-basis specification and, moreover, it arose from a small but nevertheless significant increase in the carbon content across a large zone of macrosegregation present throughout most of the thickness of the equivalent head shell – this is the so-called ‘carbon anomaly’.
Greenpeace 26th Sept 2016 read more »
Companies
Three Japanese conglomerates are in talks to combine their loss-making domestic nuclear fuel operations, people with direct knowledge of the matter said, as the outlook for restarts of reactors following the Fukushima nuclear crisis remains bleak. Hitachi Ltd, Toshiba Corp and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd aim to merge the operations as early as spring 2017, one of the people said, declining to be identified as the discussions were confidential. The person added that the three companies may eventually consider merging their nuclear reactor businesses, although nothing specific has been discussed so far.
Daily Mail 29th Sept 2016 read more »
Radwaste
NDA sites have wastes which are not suitable for treatment in existing processing plants (or those currently planned at a detailed level). These wastes can be referred to as ‘problematic wastes’. Currently, all nuclear Site Licence Companies and non-NDA estate radioactive waste generating organisations manage their own problematic radioactive wastes to fit with their own Lifetime Plans and business plans. Collaboration between waste producers, on technical issues, has improved in recent years, but there may be a potential to introduce further efficiencies when considering waste management across the nuclear industry as a whole. If an estate wide strategy for problematic radioactive waste is developed in the near-term, there is a potential to not only save time and money on the treatment of these wastes, there is also a potential to remove these activities from the site critical path, bringing further significant savings and earlier solutions. To manage problematic radioactive waste efficiently at a UK level, a detailed inventory would be beneficial. To date, a UK inventory of problematic radioactive waste has been compiled using the best available information. However, it is known that current inventory information for problematic radioactive waste at waste producer sites is subject to uncertainty. Generally, the UK Radioactive Waste Inventory (UKRWI) provides some indicators of problematic radioactive waste, but does not provide detail. Although desirable and likely to be needed in the future, a more accurate inventory is not necessary for this stage of strategy development. For subsequent more detailed stages of strategy development, a greater understanding of the inventory including the timing of arising of the problematic radioactive waste will need to be known. For example, if problematic radioactive waste at one site only arises 50 years after arising at another site, a common management process is unlikely. At this stage of strategy development we will not screen out options which may later be screened out due to a big difference in time of arising.”
NDA 30th Sept 2016 read more »
Radhealth
COMARE’s 17th report: review of childhood cancer incidence near Sellafield and Dounreay from 1963 to 2006
Dept Health 30th Sept 2016 read more »
Calder Hall
A new exhibition marking 60 years since the Queen opened Calder Hall – the world’s first nuclear power station – opens tomorrow.
Whitehaven News 30th Sept 2016 read more »
Microgeneration
This week’s Micro Power News. Includes news of Scottish Water’s plan to spend £9 million in solar projects at assets around the country over the next three years
Microgen Scotland 30th Sept 2016 read more »
Energy Storage
Powering your home from sunlight is a dream shared by many, but cost-prohibitive for most. Solar energy might be free, but only after you pay for the panels, inverters, and storage systems, andpay someone to install it all. But what if you could subsidize some of the upfront cost by agreeing to sell back a fraction of your power to the grid? That’s the idea behind CrowdNett, a new energy service announced today by Eneco in The Netherlands. An estimated 400,000 homes in The Netherlands already have solar panels installed. Eneco is offering those homes discounted Tesla Powerwalls — €4,500 euro installed, instead of €7,000 — in an effort to build a “virtual power plant” of 400 networked batteries. The power can then be tapped as reserve capacity to help national grid providers cope with constant fluctuations on grid load, reserves usually provided by environmentally unfriendly sources like gas- or coal-fired power plants. CrowdNett participants will receive a payment of €450 a year for a guaranteed period of five years in return for 30 percent of each Powerwall’s capacity — an amount “you will barely notice in everyday practice,” according to Eneco. Ampard will provide the software that redirects CrowdNett power reserves back to the grid, as the company has already done in its home country of Switzerland.
The Verge 30th Sept 2016 read more »
Climate
James Lovelock’s parting words last time we met were: “Enjoy life while you can. Because if you’re lucky, it’s going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.” It was early 2008, and the distinguished scientist was predicting imminent and irreversible global warming, which would soon make large parts of the planet uninhabitably hot or put them underwater. The fashionable hope that windfarms or recycling could prevent global famine and mass migration was, he assured me, a fantasy; it was too late for ethical consumption to save us. Before the end of this century, 80% of the world’s population would be wiped out. Lovelock now believes that “CO2 is going up, but nowhere near as fast as they thought it would. The computer models just weren’t reliable. In fact,” he goes on breezily, “I’m not sure the whole thing isn’t crazy, this climate change. You’ve only got to look at Singapore. It’s two-and-a-half times higher than the worst-case scenario for climate change, and it’s one of the most desirable cities in the world to live in.” Even more heretical than his enthusiasm for fracking is Lovelock’s passionate support for nuclear power. But, like fracking, he says, it offers only “a stopgap” solution. “Because in the long term, they’ll use up all the uranium.” How long would that take? He pauses to do some quick mental arithmetic, as casually as I might tot up how many pints of milk to grab from Sainsburys. “Let’s see … I think uranium that is affordable to extract would last about 50 years, something in that range. It might be 100. When you’ve used all that up, you go to thorium, and that would last you three times as long as uranium – so, shall we say, about 200 years?” The most sensible energy solution would be to cover 100 sq miles of the Sahara in solar panels. “It would supply the whole of Europe with all the energy they needed,” but it won’t happen “because it would be so easy for terrorists to go and bugger it up”. So for now, nuclear energy is the only viable option.
Guardian 30th Sept 2016 read more »
