Nuclear waste
Up to six new stores for more than 300,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste left behind by nuclear power and weapons are being planned for Scotland. Scottish ministers are considering building long term storage facilities at or near to existing nuclear sites. This means that Hunterston in North Ayrshire, Torness in East Lothian and Dounreay in Caithness could all end up with waste stores, along with possibly Chapelcross in Dumfries and Galloway, Rosyth in Fife and Faslane in Dunbartonshire. The plans have been criticised by the nuclear industry, which wants to carry on disposing of its waste at Drigg near Sellafield in Cumbria. But they have been welcomed by environmental groups as the “least-worst” way of dealing with nuclear waste.
Sunday Herald, 13 January 2008 more >>
RobEdwads.com more >>
Devon will not be the location of a nuclear waste dump, council chiefs have warned the Government.Ministers have announced they will publish proposals on storing radioactive waste underground later this year. The Government will invite local communities to volunteer to host the underground sites, with a benefits package in return. But responding to a consultation on the controversial disposal issue, this has been firmly ruled out in Devon by county bosses.
Exeter Express and Echo 12th Jan 2008 more >>
Plymouth Herald 12th Jan 2008 more >>
New nukes
The UK government’s new nuclear power programme could be delayed because of an acute shortage of nuclear safety inspectors. As many as a hundred new inspectors will have to be hired over the next four years in order to assess new reactor designs and to keep checking existing nuclear plants. But if the recruitment campaign fails, timetables would be prone to slippage, according to trade unions and the government’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which runs the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate.
Sunday Herald 13 January 2008 more >>
Jeremy Clarkson: You’d imagine then that last week, when Gordon Brown announced plans for a herd of new nuclear power stations, they’d have been delighted. Quiet power made by witchcraft, and no emissions at all. It’s enough, you might imagine, to make Jonathon Porritt priapic with pleasure. But no. It turns out the eco-mentalists don’t like nuclear power either for lots of reasons, all of them stupid.
Times 13th Jan 2008 more >>
It was 2003 and Prescott thought he and the other ministers overseeing a new energy white paper had finally reached agreement to rule out nuclear options and instead to recommend concentration on renewables and energy efficiency. “That was when I put my hand up,” King said last week, “and told him I still did not believe we could cut CO2 without nuclear power. Nor would I pretend I had changed my mind.”
Sunday Times 13th Jan 2008 more >>
The Sun 12th Jan 2008 more >>
When the history of modern Britain comes to be written, one of the most catastrophic failures of successive governments will be seen to have been their grotesque mishandling of our national energy policy. Ministers were so firmly under the spell of Green mythology that they were determined to avoid the nuclear hot potato at all costs, even though they offered no idea how to replace the 20 per cent of generating capacity due to be lost when all but one of our nuclear plants closed in the years after 2010. Only now, five wasted years later, has our Government belatedly begun to face up to grim reality, by announcing that it will allow the building of an unknown number of new nuclear power stations. It may already be too late to avoid massive power cuts, as some of our most productive coal-fired stations are forced to shut down by an EU emissions directive by 2014, and we must rely even more heavily on gas imports in a politically darkling world.
Telegraph 13th Jan 2008 more >>
The Government held at least nine secret meetings at Downing Street with the bosses of nuclear energy companies while it formulated controversial plans for a new generation of the power plants, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. No official records were kept of the discussions with the companies, which stand to profit from Gordon Brown’s announcement last Thursday that he was approving a new generation of nuclear power plants. The Government initially tried to block details of the meetings requested under the Freedom of Information Act. However, last week it revealed that Geoffrey Norris, Gordon Brown’s energy adviser, met bosses from EDF, British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), E.ON and British Energy at a crucial phase in the Government’s deliberations.
Independent on Sunday 13th Jan 2008 more >>
Emergency measures will be needed to protect nuclear power stations from the effect of tidal surges as extreme weather patterns increase, according to a wide-ranging body of experts. A study last year by the Met Office commissioned by nuclear firm British Energy said that ‘increases in future surge heights of potentially more than a metre could, when combined with wind speed increases, threaten some sites unless existing defences are enhanced.’
Observer 13th Jan 2008 more >>
The greatest scope for a backlash comes from hardline attitudes to energy. In successive weeks, Greenpeace has denounced proposals for new coal-fired power stations and a new generation of nuclear power plants. It may be true that clean-coal technology is a long way off, but whatever other complaints can be made about it, nuclear power is an alternative to fossil fuels and honest greens are hard-headed enough to admit it. James Lovelock, the greatest environmentalist of our time, describes it as ‘the one safe, available, energy source’ and despairs at the green movement’s ‘irrational’ objections.
Observer 13th Jan 2008 more >>
Hartlepool
THE owners of the region’s only nuclear power plant have revealed plans to build a replacement – a move that would safeguard 700 jobs. British Energy has confirmed its intentions to build a replacement reactor at its Hartlepool site.
Northern Echo 12th Jan 2008 more >>
Sizewell/Bradwell
Politics East Show on new reactors
BBC 11th Jan 2008 more >>
Scotland
Nuclear jam tomorrow: that is the Alice in Wonderland promise that the world’s reactor merchants have always made. What became apparent last week is that ministers in London have bought it. At the heart of the long-anticipated White Paper on nuclear power published on Thursday is the belief that however bad things have been, and however bad they now are, they can only get better. So England gets to embark on a new nuclear programme. Never mind the £70 billion bill for nuclear decommissioning, or the £20 billion cost of waste disposal or the £3.4 billion bail-out of British Energy, tomorrow it will all be cheaper. Forget the tens of thousands killed by the Chernobyl accident in 1986 or the unavoidable links to nuclear weapons in Iran, tomorrow it will all be safe.
RobEdwards.com 13 January 2007 more >>
IT’S A pity Gordon Brown and Alex Salmond haven’t spoken since August, because if they had, they might have been able to avoid last week’s demeaning spat over the new generation of nuclear power stations. There is a perfectly rational and adult solution to this issue: while England reinvents the atom, why not let Scotland power ahead developing renewable energy? Let’s see which works out in the long run?
Sunday Herald 13th Jan 2008 more >>
ONE of Scotland’s leading scientists has attacked SNP plans to block any new nuclear power stations north of the border, warning that the country could face a crippling “energy gap”. Professor Wilson Sibbett, who was Scotland’s first chief adviser on science, spoke out after First Minister Alex Salmond declared last week that the country could cope without its two current nuclear stations. The decorated scientist warned that the SNP had now left itself open to “horrendous” political flak if, within a few years, it was no longer able to produce enough electricity to sustain itself.
Scotland on Sunday 13th Jan 2008 more >>
Gulf
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has confirmed that he will sign a nuclear co-operation deal with the United Arab Emirates during his regional tour.
BBC 13th Jan 2008 more >>
Tehran has warned the United States not to try and use the dispute over the Iranian nuclear programme to bring Iran to its knees. The warning came from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a meeting with the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei. Ayatollah Khamenei insisted that Iran was not building a nuclear bomb.
BBC 12th Jan 2008 more >>
Proliferation
A FOUR-YEAR investigation into a British businessman alleged to be a key player in a network selling nuclear weapons components appears to have been quietly dropped. Peter Griffin, an engineer who ran a lucrative export business from Dubai, was suspected of helping to supply Libya’s atomic weapons programme. He was a close friend and business associate of Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan’s “father” of the bomb, who has admitted helping North Korea, Iran and Libya to develop nuclear weapons.
Sunday Times 13th Jan 2008 more >>
Older News
New nukes
Companies operating new nuclear power stations will have their costs for decommissioning and waste disposal capped, the government said on Thursday as it gave the long-awaited go-ahead for a fresh wave of investment in nuclear energy. The commitment will reassure investors in new reactors that they will not face an unlimited liability if those costs soar far beyond levels currently expected.
FT 11th Jan 2008 more >>
One key question remains unanswered despite the go-ahead for further nuclear power plants: what to do with the waste they will generate. UK policy is to build a long-term underground storage facility – so-called geological disposal – for future waste as well as that already produced from past and current nuclear sites. Most of this is stored “temporarily” at Sellafield in Cumbria, the country’s biggest and dirtiest nuclear site, now devoted to reprocessing rather than power. It has been assumed that a site at or near Sellafield could be favoured for long-term waste burial, not least to avoid moving waste across the country again. However, the government is proceeding cautiously towards an inevitably controversial decision, determined that the choice of a burial site should be arrived at with as much consensus as possible.
FT 11th Jan 2008 more >>
The task the government faces if it is to persuade the public, and even some of its own backbenchers, to support a new generation of nuclear power stations was underlined in the Commons on Thursday when John Hutton acknowledged “real concerns about nuclear” had surfaced during last year’s official consultation exercise. “It is a subject of great emotion for people,” the business secretary admitted. And as he fended off criticism from long-standing Labour critics of nuclear energy, it was clear he has no intention of using the ministerial bully pulpit to make the industry’s case.
FT 11th Jan 2008 more >>
Greenpeace, the environmental campaign group, is considering a fresh legal challenge to the government’s strategy of building nuclear power plants. Ben Ayliffe, the group’s senior nuclear campaigner, said it was reviewing the evidence carefully and felt it could make a “very good case” that the latest consultation was a “sham” to disguise settled policy. The government’s first attempt to replace Britain’s ageing nuclear capacity was torpedoed almost a year ago by the High Court. Mr Ayliffe said Greenpeace lawyers were going through the nuclear energy white paper and other evidence before making a decision.
FT 11th Jan 2008 more >>
The new year has hardly begun and already the first salvoes over the future of the world’s biggest nuclear group, Areva, have been fired. Last week it emerged that Areva had held preliminary talks with French construction group Vinci about a partnership to build nuclear power stations in the UK and elsewhere. On the face of it, nothing could be more logical. As a company that provides nuclear services from reactors to fuel supply, recycling and waste treatment, Areva is seeking the expertise it lacks in big infrastructure projects as the nuclear sector takes off. But look deeper, and nothing is quite that simple in the highly political tug of war over the future of France’s most promising industrial flagship. For the shrewdest observers, the discussions are the latest tactic by Anne Lauvergeon, Areva’s formidable chief executive, to stymie any attempt to combine the state-owned company with Bouygues – Vinci’s rival – and its 30 per cent subsidiary, turbine maker, Alstom.
FT 11th Jan 2008 more >>
Scotland
Westminster has denounced Holyrood as irresponsible after it conceded no new nuclear power stations would be built in Scotland. As the UK Government yesterday announced it was inviting energy companies to tender to build a new generation of nuclear plants, ministers from either side of the border clashed. Given that Holyrood is the planning authority north of the border, none of the estimated 10 plants the Prime Minister wants to see providing a significant part of Britain’s energy beyond 2020 will be built in Scotland. John Swinney, the Scottish Finance Secretary, hailed Scotland’s exclusion as a “great success for the Scottish Government” while John Hutton, Westminster’s Business Secretary, branded the SNP’s anti-nuclear stance a “political stunt”.
Herald 11th Jan 2008 more >>
