Nuclear Subsidies
Last Saturday Liberal Democrat energy Secretary Ed Davey told the Guardian “So many environmentalists have changed their views [on nuclear] because of the threat of climate change and the fact that nuclear is low-carbon….” and consolidated his conversion to nuclear power with his announcement that EDF Electricité de France SA (EDF.FR) would be given guarantees of up to£10bn to underwrite the loans to build the proposed plant at Hinkley Point C, so making the project more attractive to third-party investors and reducing the impact on EDF’s balance sheet. But in the past few months there have a been a series ofdisturbing and frankly bizarre stories about this technology the energy secretarynow wants to massively subsidise to ensure it is resurrected in the UK.
David Lowry 8th July 2013 read more »
Citigroup are not often listed in the pantheon of environmental campaigning organisations. Even among bankers they have a reputation for being hardnosed. So it was with some interest that I recently came across a report on the solar industry they published earlier this year. It should have received a lot more attention than it did, especially in DECC.Its central point was that subsidies for rooftop solar installations were becoming redundant. Citi forecast that this technology was on course to becoming cheaper than gas. This would be no surprise coming from Greenpeace or WWF. They would wouldn’t they. But Citigroup make their living by getting such forecasts right and there is a price for getting it wrong. Furthermore, no bank, however heroic, says things investors would consider totally off the wall. Citigroup point out that residential scale solar has already achieved grid parity in Germany, Spain, Australia and South West America. They forecast it will do so in Japan within three years and South Korea and Britain by around the end of the decade. Britain’s electricity consumers thus face the prospect of being compelled to pay more than a billion pounds a year to subsidise Hinkley at a time when Dixon’s will be offering them a far better deal on their rooftop.
Tom Burke 23rd June 2013 read more »
Heysham
A new visitor centre will open at Heysham Power Stations on Thursday (July 11) giving the public a sneak peek behind its doors. The state-of-the-art centre is full of hands-on displays for kids and information about nuclear power and how it is generated. Its opening coincides with Heysham 1’s 30th birthday and Heysham 2’s 25th.
The Visitor 9th July 2013 read more »
Supply Chain
The Nuclear AMRC (Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre) in Rotherham has launched a support programme to help manufacturing companies compete for work in the civil nuclear industry.
Machinery Marke 9th July 2013 read more »
Dalgety Bay
Like naturalists, we wait for sightings of the big beast Gordon Brown. Usually in vain, it must be said. But when he arrives to land that great clunking fist, it still has notable impact. Such a thing happened this week as Gord quizzed the MoD about its contamination of Dalgety Bay in Fife in the 1940s. Aircraft with instruments and equipment luminised with radium were scrapped there. Gordon has long been seeking to force the MoD to fund a clean-up. He set down two questions. Will the secretary of state “place in the library the paper written in September 1992 from his department to the committee on medical aspects of radiation in the environment which named the Dalgety Bay area as a site of contamination”? Sorry, came the reply. The MoD “has not been able to find any record of this paper”. OK, said Gordon. What about “the letter from HM Industrial Pollution Directorate to Lord James Douglas Hamilton in 1990”, full of more enlightening detail? Once again, the brush off. Once again no record. Which raised more questions in the mind of the former prime minister, because unlike the MoD, with its mighty bureaucracy, he had been able to turn up both incriminating documents in the Scottish Office. Either the MoD, with its mighty bureaucracy, really couldn’t find them – which doesn’t inspire confidence – or it didn’t fancy making them public, equally worrying. Either way, Gordon has them on the ropes and the future’s bleak. The bruisers’ bruiser is in for the kill.
Guardian 9th July 2013 read more »
Former prime minister Gordon Brown is demanding the Ministry of Defence “owns up” and takes responsibility for radioactive contamination at a beach. Brown will lead a Commons debate on Tuesday, highlighting a letter which he says proves the ministry had already accepted blame. The memo shows the MoD was willing to take action as early as 1990 for contamination at Dalgety Bay in Fife. Brown, who is the MP for the area, said: “This letter shows that the ministry must now own up, clean up, pay up and hurry up.”
Guardian 9th July 2013 read more »
Japan
Toxic radioactive substances in groundwater at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have rocketed over the past three days, its Japanese operator said Tuesday, admitting it did not know where the leak was coming from.
Global Post 9th July 2013 read more »
Common Dreams 9th July 2013 read more »
The former boss of the Fukushima nuclear plant, who stayed at his post to try to tame reactors after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami in 2011, has died of throat cancer.
Telegraph 9t July 2013 read more »
Guardian 10th July 2013 read more »
BBC 10th July 2013 read more »
Independent 10th July 2013 read more »
Daily Mail 9th July 2013 read more »
Fukushima Crisis Update 4th to 8th July. Four power operators submitted requests to restart a total of ten reactors at five plants: reactor #3 at Shikoku Electric’s Ikata plant in Ehime Prefecture; reactors #3 and #4 at Kansai Electric’s Takahama plant in Fukui Prefecture, as well as reactors #3 and #4 at the Oi plant there; reactors #1, #2, and #3 at Hokkaido Electric’s Tomari plant in Hokkaido Prefecture; and reactors #1 and #2 at Kyushu Electric’s Sendai plant in Kagoshima Prefecture. Kyushu Electric is expected to submit an application to restart two additional reactors by the end of the week.
Greenpeace 9th July 2013 read more »
Germany
Germany will stop subsidizing solar energy by 2018 at the latest, its environment minister said on Monday after last year initiating a scaling-back of generous state support for the faltering industry.
Local 9th July 2013 read more »
Russia
Russia to use first FLOATING nuclear power plant in just three years to provide energy for hard-to-reach regions.
Daily Mail 9th July 2013 read more »
Huffington Post 9th July 2013 read more »
France
The French government Tuesday authorized state-controlled Electricite de France SA (EDF.FR) to raise power prices, in a move that further squeezes French households while the euro zone’s No. 2 economy is in recession and unemployment is at record highs. The decision means electricity bills across France are set to rise 5% next month. The move is likely to test French taxpayers’ patience with President Francois Hollande, after his government also pledged to shave billions in spending from the state budget to close the country’s deficit and comply with European Union budget rules.
Nasdaq 9th July 2013 read more »
EDF sparked a second day of gains for European stocks as the French electricity producer surged on the back of state approval for household energy price rises.
Financial Times 9th July 2013 read more »
US
San Diego County in California is considering a major hydroelectric project at San Vicente Reservoir to increase the region’s energy supply after the shut down of the San Onofre nuclear power plant.
Reuters 9th July 2013 read more »
Switzerland
The operator of Switzerland’s 985MW Gosgen nuclear power plant and German manufacturer Siemens will assess over the next few days how long the reactor will be out of service after problems with the newly installed generator forced the unit off line on 2 July.
The reactor’s restart remains uncertain with plant operator Kernkraftwerk Gosgen-Daniken previously saying that the unit will not return until at least mid-July. The Gosgen plant ramped up on 2 July following scheduled maintenance but had to be halted again that day after the operator detected excessive vibrations on the rotor of the new generator, manufactured by Siemens.
Argus 9th July 2013 read more »
Submarine Dismantling
DEVONPORT Dockyard has not been ruled out as a storage site for nuclear waste under the controversial submarine dismantling project. Local residents were yesterday told at a Devonport Local Liaison Committee meeting that the dockyard could yet be used by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as an interim storage facility for the Intermediate-Level Waste (ILW). ILW can include resins, chemical sludge and metal reactor nuclear fuel cladding, as well as contaminated materials from reactor decommissioning, that must be disposed of in special repositories.
Plymouth Herald 10th July 2013 read more »
Trident
The next general election is looming. Despite being nearly two years away, its presence cannot be ignored – shaping the debates, affecting the postures and drawing new political lines in the sand. There can be no doubt that the economy will dominate, but there is another issue that will also be high-profile and highly contested. Should Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system be replaced? A decision on whether or not to spend in excess of £100 billion on buying a new system is due to be made in 2016, so where the parties go on this, policy-wise, is of crucial significance.
Morning Star 10th July 2013 read more »
Letter: BILL Brown takes issue with the earlier letter from Brian Quail regarding the UK’s nuclear deterrent, but there are two further points which should be made. The first is that Mr Quail claims that the case for unilateralism has been won in Scotland. In fact, at every UK General Election since Hiroshima, Scots have voted overwhelmingly for parties which have been committed to retention of nuclear weapons. Like the rest of the UK, on the only occasion when unilateralism and neutralism were offered to the electorate by Labour, Scots voters turned towards the SDP (including voting in Roy Jenkins as MP for Hillhead), which had been specifically set up to maintain nuclear weapons and to keep the UK in Nato. It remains the case that no party at Westminster has a mandate to remove the nuclear deterrent.
Herald 10th July 2013 read more »
Renewables
Sewage heat recovery systems may not sound sexy, but one day they could mean your dirty bathwater helps provide you with more efficient and lower-carbon central heating. Every day the potential energy contained in vast quantities of warm wastewater disappears down countless drains in the UK and across the world, but thanks to a pioneering new system, grey water – from baths, showers, washing machines, dishwashers and sinks – can now be exploited to help create a more sustainable future.
Positive News 9th July 2013 read more »
The world’s best site for tidal power, the Pentland firth, could provide half of Scotland’s electricity, according to the first robust estimate of its potential. The tidal streams, which surge through the firth at five metres per second, could bring large amounts of renewable energy in reach within a decade if enough government support is available, said the Oxford University engineer behind the new study. From Anglesey to the Severn estuary to Portland Bill, the UK has the greatest potential for generating predictable, clean energy from tidal channels. Turbines are already operating at Strangford Loch in Northern Ireland and prototypes are being tested in the Menai Straits off Anglesey. But the Pentland firth is the greatest resource. “It is almost certainly the best site for tidal stream power in the world,” said Thomas Adcock, at Oxford University, who led the new work published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A. The water flow is rapid there because the tide shifting from the Atlantic into the North Sea is forced through a narrow eight-mile channel.
Guardian 10th July 2013 read more »
Scotsman 10th July 2013 read more »
Scotland has seriously overestimated the amount of electricity that might be generated from tidal energy in the Pentland Firth, the stretch of shallow water separating the mainland and the Orkneys, according to the first detailed study into what has been dubbed the “Scottish Saudi Arabia”. Scientists have estimated that the maximum average amount of electricity that can be generated from tidal turbines placed in the Pentland Firth is 1.9 gigawatts, with a more realistic output being nearer to 1GW. However, the Scottish Government states on its website, “Energy in Scotland: get the facts”, that Scotland has 25 per cent of Europe’s tidal energy potential, which it says amounts to 14GW.
Independent 10th July 2013 read more »
BRITAIN is failing to make the most of the opportunity to become a world leader in offshore wind energy, a new report from an influential think tank has warned. The Westminster Government is also accused of sending weak and unclear signals on renewables which could leave the industry with high costs but few jobs. In particular there has been a failure to attract turbine manufacturers, the left-leaning Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) found in its report. Environmentalists say it underlines the need for the Scottish Government to do what it can to get firms to locate north of the Border.
Herald 10th July 2013 read more »
Scotsman 10th July 2013 read more »
Fuel Poverty
Following an independent review and a consultation a new definition of fuel poverty has been set out today to ensure support is targeted at those who need it most. A household will be defined as ‘fuel poor’ if its: Total income is below the poverty line (taking into account energy costs); and Energy costs are higher than typical. The decision to adopt a new definition follows positive responses to a consultation launched in September last year and an independent review of the current definition by Professor John Hills of the London School of Economics (LSE), published in March 2012. The current definition of a ‘fuel poor household’ is that a household would need to spend 10% of their income on energy a year.
DECC 9th July 2013 read more »
The Department for Energy and Climate Change said a new definition that cut the official number of “fuel poor” families from 3.5m to 2.5m was being introduced to ensure help is “targeted at those who need it most”. But critics at the Fuel Poverty Action Group said the Government had “masked an escalating cold homes crisis” by simply redefining the problem. Under the old measure, any family spending more than 10pc of their income on gas and electricity was judged as being “fuel poor”. Last year energy secretary Ed Davey said this meant that technically, even the Queen may be considered to be in fuel poverty, because of the cost of heating Buckingham Palace and other estates.
Telegraph 9th July 2013 read more »
E.ON has been ordered to pay a £3m financial settlement, including a payment of £2.5m to households hit by fuel poverty, after energy efficient lightbulbs that were supposed to have been given away free in the UK under a government initiative were found for sale in Ireland.
Guardian 9th July 2013 read more »
Telegraph 9th July 2013 read more »
Times 10th July 2013 read more »
Carbon Capture
The backers of a proposed carbon capture and storage project in Peterhead have admitted defeat in their efforts to secure European funding. Shell and Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) hoped the NER300 scheme would help part-finance plans to transform the Buchan town’s power station. Developers are now relying on securing money from the UK government. Peterhead and Drax were earlier named as the preferred bidders in the £1bn project.
BBC 9th July 2013 read more »
