Hinkley
The chancellor George Osborne will sign a deal in China next week allowing a state-owned Chinese company to build nuclear power stations in the UK and have its reactor design approved by British regulators. Under the deal, the government will give its backing to Chinese General Nuclear Power Group entering EDF Energy’s planned new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset as a co-investor. The memorandum of understanding will also see Britain backing CGN’s plans to build a nuclear reactor in the UK and play a “supporting role” in operating it, according to people familiar with the matter. That could ring alarm bells with some MPs, unions and regulators, amid concerns about the robustness of China’s nuclear safeguards. The government will also express its support for China getting its nuclear technology through the UK regulatory approval process, known as the generic design assessment. It is unclear at this stage whether the reactor design will be CGN’s, or that of another Chinese nuclear group. A person close to the talks said UK officials have asked Beijing to select just one company’s technology for a UK rollout. The deal, to be signed in China, will involve not only CGN but also China National Nuclear Corporation, a rival state-owned nuclear group, according to people familiar with the matter.Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of EDF Energy, will be part of a delegation of business leaders accompanying Mr Osborne on his trip to China. EDF also has plans to build a new nuclear plant at Sizewell in Suffolk. Once it has planning permission to build reactors there, it will be required to release another site it owns, Bradwell in Essex. A person familiar with the matter said EDF could sell the Bradwell site to CGN, for the construction of its own reactor.
FT 12th Oct 2013 read more »
Hitachi
Hitachi, the Japanese technology group, has warned the UK against leaving the European Union, saying the future of its large-scale investments in the country’s nuclear and transport sectors would be thrown into doubt. Hitachi is one of the largest overseas investors in the UK and as recently as a year ago pledged a “100-year commitment” to the country after unveiling a £700m deal to build nuclear plants – a decision that removed much of the uncertainty that had threatened Britain’s nuclear revival.
FT 11th Oct 2013 read more »
NuGen
The Treasury is blocking an attempt by Toshiba to build three reactors at Sellafield in an inter-departmental row over money that threatens to hold back Britain’s nuclear programme. A consortium led by the Japanese nuclear group wants to buy the Nugen project in Cumbria from its developers Iberdrola, ScottishPower’s parent company, and GDF Suez, of France. However, the option to build the reactors will expire in October next year because so little work on the project has been completed. The Department of Energy and Climate Change wants to extend the option to allow the deal with Toshiba to go ahead. The Treasury is blocking the move because the Government could auction the site if the option lapsed. E.ON and RWE, the German energy companies, raised almost £700 million when they sold their Horizon nuclear joint venture last year. The Treasury believes that the sale of the smaller Sellafield site could raise a similar sum. Energy Department officials fear that if the Treasury has its way, the construction will be delayed by two years.
Times 12th Oct 2013 read more »
GDA
Office for Nuclear Regulation says it can shave six months from timetable for assessing design of reactor. Hitachi’s planned nuclear power station at Wylfa has received a boost after the nuclear regulator said it would be able to speed up its process for assessing the reactor design. The Office for Nuclear Regulation said it would conduct the assessment of the safety of Hitachi’s planned nuclear power reactor at Wylfa six months faster than it assessed EDF’s Hinkley Point C reactor. “We are estimating that [Hitachi’s nuclear reactor] the UK ABWR GDA could be complete in four years from the start of our assessment (ie, by the end of 2017).“This timescale is of course subject to the timely delivery of high quality submissions from Hitachi-GE. “For comparison, our planned assessment of the UK EPR [GDA assessment] took four and a half years.”However, it warned that it would still need to go through the process of resolving any design issues with Hitachi. It took EDF and Areva a year to go through this process.
Building 10th Oct 2013 read more »
Emergency Planning
A revised plan has been published today on how towns and villages surrounding Sizewell power station, will be protected in the event of an emergency. Suffolk County Council has made the changes following the disaster at Fukushima in Japan. The draft plan has been updated following comments from local people and community groups and the Suffolk Resilience Forum are now asking for interested parties to comment on the draft proposals before 14 November. Changes detailed in the plan include: Widening the availability of prior information of what to do in an emergency beyond the current 2.4km Detailed Emergency Planning Zone. Updating the evacuation arrangements to include all of Leiston. Placing additional radiation detectors around the Sizewell site.
ITV 11th Oct 2013 read more »
Energy Costs
From this morning’s front page headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking energy company SSE put up its bills yesterday entirely as a result of subsidies for green energy. Analysis by one thinktank indicates that they only account for a small portion of the rise, however.
Carbon Brief 11th Oct 2013 read more »
Reg Platt: bill payers would be forgiven for thinking this rise is all due to government policies that are funded from bills. This isn’t the case.
Left Foot Forward 11th Oct 2013 read more »
The row over soaring fuel bills escalated on Thursday when Ed Miliband accused SSE, one of the country’s big six energy providers, of “ripping off” 7 million customers with an 8.2% price increase.
Guardian 10th Oct 2013 read more »
The row over domestic energy prices has intensified as the head of one of the big six companies accused Ed Miliband of risking investment in Britain and laying the ground for blackouts by proposing a fuel price freeze.
Guardian 11th Oct 2013 read more »
SSE said annual gas and electricity prices would fall by £110 per household overnight if the Government opted to pay for green energy subsidies and other environmental costs, such as free loft insulation, through the tax system. Alistair Phillips-Davies on Thursday told The Telegraph that green levies imposed by the Government were responsible for a third of the increase being imposed by SSE.
Telegraph 10th Oct 2013 read more »
Radwaste
Cumbrians have said No repeatedly to a geological dump under this land from Morecambe Bay to the Solway. The new consultation announced by DECC is a narrowly focused set of questions with the aim of achieving a Yes response to a ‘geological disposal facility’ as quickly as possible by scrapping the rights of host communities to say NO. The consultation aims to give the few people on the Allerdale and Copeland Borough Council Executive the sole right to make the decision. Cumbrians have already said no repeatedly to becoming the nuclear dumping ground for existing and future radioactive wastes taken out of reactor cores and buried under Cumbria’s leaky geology. I am not a willing volunteer for the geological dumping of nuclear waste in Cumbria and my representative County council has already said NO.
Radiation Free Lakeland 11th Oct 2013 read more »
Waste Transport
A NUCLEAR cargo boat has left Caithness with its latest consignment of nuclear waste destined for Belgium. The Atlantic Osprey left Scrabster on Thursday evening to pick up the radioactive payload to deliver it to Antwerp where it will then be taken by road to the BR2 reactor at Mol. The deep-water Queen Elizabeth Pier was cordoned off on Thursday while the drums of intermediate-level waste were loaded on to the vessel. The movements, which began last August, involve 21 shipments of 153 tonnes of waste being delivered to the Belgian reactor by the end of 2016.
John O Groat Journal 11th Oct 2013 read more »
Winfrith
Millions of pounds of work is required to decommission a former nuclear test plant in Dorset. Research Sites Restoration Ltd is looking for local companies to join the contractors who are demolishing the Winfrith site and returning the land to its natural state. Elaine Atkinson, leader of Borough of Poole, called the project “exciting”. The site began operating in 1957, and shut down in the 1990s. Decommissioning should be complete by 2021.
BBC 11th Oct 2013 read more »
Nuclear Weapons
The two-star general in charge of US intercontinental nuclear missiles has been fired for “personal misbehaviour” after an air force investigation into an unspecified incident during a “temporary duty assignment”.
Guardian 11th Oct 2013 read more »
Daily Mail 11th Oct 2013 read more »
Telegraph 11th Oct 2013 read more »
BBC 11th Oct 2013 read more »
Campaigners, politicians, and trade unionists are to meet in Liverpool this weekend (12-13 October) for a conference on nuclear disarmament. With an opening address by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, the annual conference of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) will take place at Liverpool John Moores University.
CND 11th Oct 2013 read more »
Japan
Fukushima Crisis Update 8th Oct to 10th Oct. For the third time in a week, human error caused a serious incident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, this time resulting in a leak that splashed highly radioactive water over six workers. TEPCO reports that the workers were trying to disconnect an unused pipe from desalination equipment, but accidentally removed the wrong one. Approximately seven tons of water poured out before they were able to get the pipe reconnected more than an hour later.
Greenpeace 11th Oct 2013 read more »
Photo Essay: The residents of the Tamura City region of Fukushima Prefecture in Japan are facing a dilemma. They could move back once the government lifts the evacuation order following the Fukushima nuclear disaster. However, this means moving back even though radiation levels are too high — higher than the levels promised by the government. Or, they could try to rebuild their lives somewhere else and abandon almost everything from their old homes, without proper compensation.
Greenpeace 10th Oct 2013 read more »
I came here with16 Greenpeace radiation experts to check radiation in the Tamura City region last week. The government says it has decontaminated some of this area and plans to lift the evacuation order for a part of Tamura; it would be the first community re-opened since the disaster.
Greenpeace 10th Oct 2013 read more »
Germany
Alan Simpson: First grasp how things we take for granted change. That we use the red phone box to make a phone call was once a given. Now think what we use. We nearly all used to have fires for heat and relied on electricity from the power station. With solar panels, better insulation, micro combined heat and power supply and the ability to distribute energy, the homes of the future will be different in Britain.
Michael Edwards 10thOct 2013 read more »
Energy Efficiency
Energy efficiency funds for poor households may be cut, No 10 confirms. Downing Street says government is looking at cutting financial support as adviser attacks plan as ‘completely inequitable’ and ‘perverse’. Downing Street has confirmed that the government is looking at cutting financial support for energy efficiency in poorer households as part of a drive to bring down the overall cost of fuel bills. As the government’s own adviser on fuel poverty warned that it would be “completely inequitable” to target the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), No 10 confirmed that ministers were “looking across the range” to help consumers with their fuel bills. George Osborne is understood to be keen to reduce the obligation, which costs billpayers £1.3bn a year and makes up 4% – or £47 – of an average annual bill, according to government figures.
Guardian 11th Oct 2013 read more »
George Osborne’s plan to cut financial support for energy efficiency in poorer households is an “unforgivable” attack, according to the government’s own adviser on fuel poverty. With a political row raging over soaring energy bills, inflamed further by an 8% rise from the “big six” energy company SSE on Thursday, Osborne and No 10 sources have repeatedly indicated that the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) is being targeted for cuts or delays to reduce the government levies imposed on consumer energy bills. But Derek Lickorish, chair of the government’s Fuel Poverty Advisory Group, said: “It is completely inequitable to attack the only measure that is doing something for the fuel poor in England. It is unforgivable when we have energy prices that are going only in one direction.”
Guardian 11th Oct 2013 read more »
David Cameron has ordered a review of green energy taxes as a way of easing the pressure on “squeezed” families amid claims the levies add more than £100 to an average annual bill. But his move has triggered fresh Coalition tensions, with Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, warning it would be “very short-sighted and foolish” to scrap environmentally-friendly policies. The Independent disclosed that senior Tories were sympathetic to scrapping or diluting the Energy Companies Obligation under which the “Big Six” suppliers are required to pay for energy efficiency measures for lower-income homes.
Independent 11th Oct 2013 read more »
David Cameron has put the government’s green energy subsidies under review, setting the coalition parties on a collision course as the prime minister scrambles to find ways of cutting energy bills in the face of Labour’s promised price freeze. The prime minister’s spokesman confirmed on Friday that the government’s £1.3bn Energy Companies Obligation subsidy was among a series of policies under review as the coalition looks to ease pressure on family budgets.
FT 11th Oct 2013 read more »
Energy companies have suggested that annual gas and electricity prices could fall by £110 per household overnight if the government opted to pay for green subsidies and environmental taxes itself.
Telegraph 11th Oct 2013 read more »
The chief executive of Scottish & Southern Energy has warned that unless there is an immediate review of Britain’s entire green energy strategy householders face a decade of rising gas and electricity prices. The company, which yesterday announced an 8.2 per cent rise in prices, said that annual gas and electricity prices would fall by £110 per household overnight if the Government opted to pay for green subsidies and other environmental taxes itself. George Osborne, the Chancellor, has signalled that he could ease green taxes amid growing concerns about people struggling to cope with the rising cost of living. Mr Cable, the Liberal Democrat business secretary, said that removing green taxes would be “short sighted and foolish”.
Telegraph 11th Oct 2013 read more »
Grid Connections
Britain could get access to Denmark’s big reserves of wind power after grid operators in both countries agreed on Thursday to co-operate on building a power link that could supply up to 1,400 MW of electricity.An interconnector would be part of wider plan by Britain’s National Grid to diversify energy supplies by hooking up its electricity network with low carbon sources of power from Belgium, Iceland and Norway.
Reuters 10th Oct 2013 read more »
Microgeneration
This week’s Micro Power News. Council houses being solarised in Sunderland and Bristol. Hartlepool converting street lighting to LED. Barker launches solar road map. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers calls for Geothermal Plan. Bristol launches Council’s Climate Change & Energy Security Framework, which aims to reduce Bristol’s carbon emissions by 40% by 2020 from a 2005 baseline.
Microgen Scotland 11th Oct 2013 read more »
This morning, residents of one of the toughest and most deprived places in Britain are getting their first taste of what it is like to be energy barons. Cheques are dropping through doors on the Loughborough Estate in Brixton, south London, as the first dividends are paid out on profits from solar energy generated above their heads. The new inner-city capitalists are among the owners of Britain’s first renewable energy company grounded on social housing. They are held up as exemplars by ministers, who see a proliferation of similar schemes as a way of encouraging enterprise, decentralising energy production and breaking the power of the price-ramping “Big Six” corporations that provide more than 90 per cent of our power. But the government incentives to the solar industry disadvantage such initiatives and risk spreading large solar farms across the countryside – as if nothing had been learnt from the experience with onshore wind.
Telegraph 11th Oct 2013 read more »
