GDA
EDF Energy expects to receive interim design approval for Areva’s EPR nuclear reactor from Britain’s nuclear regulator on Wednesday, its chief executive said at a conference in London on Tuesday. “We expect the office for nuclear regulation to give interim approval for the reactor design tomorrow,” Vincent de Rivaz said. He said he expected a site licence approval for the utility’s first third-generation nuclear reactor in the UK to be issued in the second half of 2012. Mike Weightman, chief nuclear inspector and head of the Office of Nuclear Regulation, confirmed that interim generic design assessment acceptance will be issued this week. “We expect to issue GDA interim design acceptance this week,” he said at the same conference. EDF submitted plans to build a third nuclear plant at its Hinkley Point site in Somerset earlier this year.
Reuters 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Mike Weightman, chief inspector of nuclear installations, told a central London conference of nuclear industry suppliers: We expect to issue a generic design approval certificate this week. The approval for the EPR [European Pressurised Reactor] design takes energy firm EDF one step closer to being able to start work on its planned plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset. However, it does also need to pass local planning stipulations and further site specific assessments before getting the final go ahead.
Building 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Hinkley
EDF Energy has named Kier BAM as preferred bidder for the £100m+ contract for site preparation works at Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. The news will be confirmed today at EDF Energys third National Supply Chain event, where more than 350 companies will gather in London to hear plans billions of pounds of work.
Construction Index 14th Dec 2011 more >>
Building 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Construction Enquirer 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Efforts to create civil engineering and construction jobs in the power sector will be supported by several major new supply chain deals for the UK nuclear sector. EDF Energy has announced around £200 million of new contracts, including a £15 million national training centre in Somerset. The contracts are with construction firms Kier and Bam, among others, and were announced at EDF’s third National Supplier Day.
Career Structure 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Poor relations between construction unions and management could raise the costs of the UK’s new generation of nuclear plants, EDF Energy warned on Tuesday. The French-owned company plans to build the UK’s first new nuclear reactor in decades at Hinkley Point C in Somerset. Vincent de Rivaz, EDF Energy’s chief executive, said that there was a “productivity challenge” that must be overcome in the construction sector in order to deliver new nuclear plants affordably. He said: “One key element of affordability is productivity. “Productivity is a measurement of the effectiveness of management. The fact is, we have a productivity challenge.” Mr de Rivaz called for a rapprochement in relations with unions, warning that “too often in the construction industry there have been entrenched positions – management on one side and unions on the other.”
Telegraph 13th Dec 2011 more >>
EDF
EDF Energy will increase its current 300 million pounds a year investment on UK nuclear plants to adopt extra safety rules imposed by Britain’s nuclear regulator after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, its chief executive told Reuters on Tuesday. “We will now make over and above current investments to take into account the recommendations on backup systems, openness and transparency and so on. It’s something we can afford to do,” said Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of the British arm of France’s EDF. The utility, Britain’s largest nuclear operator, will up its nuclear plant spend from the current 300 million pounds yearly, but De Rivaz said a final sum had not been agreed. Britain’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) in September published a series of safety recommendations to the nuclear industry following lessons learned from Japan’s nuclear accident which plant operators have to follow or face station shutdowns.
Reuters 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Areva
For Luc Oursel, the newly promoted chief executive of Areva, it was a tricky moment to extol the ongoing strength of the nuclear sector. The head of the state-owned French atomic champion had just revealed that his company was going to take a 2.4bn ($3.1bn) writedown, lose up to 1.6bn on an operating basis this year and make at least 1,500 workers redundant. But speaking on Tuesday in Paris, he insisted that Areva was working in a market that is developing and growing. The bigger problem remains the nuclear market, which has been shaken by the decisions of Germany, Switzerland and Belgium to give up atomic power. Public opposition is also increasing in Japan. Mr Oursel attempted to brave it out by saying that he hoped to sell 10 of the companys third-generation reactors, known as the EPR, over the next five years. However, besides the Fukushima-related uncertainty the company has also struggled with large cost overruns and delays on the first EPR project in Finland and is locked in dispute with its Finnish partner. Mr Oursel says he is optimistic about bids in countries such as China, India, South Africa, the US and the UK. He points to estimates from the International Energy Agency that nuclear energy supply will increase by 2.1 per cent a year until 2035, driven in large part by Asia.
FT 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Areva has unveiled big cuts to jobs, investments and dividends as it forecast an operating loss of up to 1.6bn euros ($2.1bn, £1.4bn) this year.
BBC 13th Dec 2011 more >>
French nuclear energy giant Areva has warned its 2011 operating loss may top 1.6 billion after the Fukushima nuclear disaster hit the value of its uranium mining assets.
Utility Week 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Areva will cut investments and sell assets to shore up its balance sheet as the world’s biggest nuclear reactor builder tries to weather a plunge in demand in an industry still reeling from Japan’s Fukushima disaster.
Reuters 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Proliferation
Switzerland has charged a man and his two sons with involvement in the smuggling ring of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistans atom bomb, who sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya. The three Swiss men were engineers who worked with centrifuges used to enrich nuclear material and became friends with Khan. The office of Switzerlands attorney general (OAG) yesterday said the men had admitted to offences including forgery and money laundering, in the hope of a reduced sentence.
Scotsman 14th Dec 2011 more >>
Telegraph 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Guardian 13th Dec 2011 more >>
A GUILDFORD businessman who sold machine parts to Iran that could have been used to make nuclear weapons walked free from court on Monday (December 12). Dr Ramin Pouladian-Kari, 45, was sentenced at the Old Bailey for illegally exporting a total of 361 electrical switchgears to the regime in breach of strict regulations requiring an export licence.
Get Surrey 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Terror
The UN atomic agency said Tuesday it was training authorities in Poland on how to detect and respond to potential acts of “nuclear terrorism” at the Euro 2012 football championship next June and July.
EU Business 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Radhealth
Tortured Science by Steve Wing et al: Community members that live downwind and downstream of Department of Energy weapons-production sites know firsthand that contamination doesnt stop at the fence line. They have been subjected to health studies that protect the agency and the federal government from a moral responsibility to fully disclose the entire environmental and health legacy of nuclear weapons production. Tortured Science raises important ethical issues about how health studies have gone awry and how citizens who served the United States during the Cold War have been abandoned by their government as acceptable collateral damage.
Labour.net 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Nuclear Investors
A couple of events on different sides of the globe suggest that, whilst the nuclear industry may still be at the crossroads, there are grounds for cautious optimism. Set against the sell-off since March, that presents opportunities for the contrarian investor.
Motley Fool 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Japan
Kevin Kamps on the Fukushima China Syndrome. Thom Hartmann talks with Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear: www.beyondnuclear.org about concerns of a major environmental catastrophe at Japan’s damaged nuclear power reactor.
You Tube 5th Dec 2011 more >>
Paul Gunter, Beyond Nuclear joins Thom Hartmann. The crisis at Fukushima continues. Over the weekend – the crippled Japanese nuclear plant spewed even more highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean – roughly 45,000 liters in all. According to a French nuclear research institute – since the Fukushima nuclear crisis began in March – the plant has leaked more radioactive material into the ocean than has ever happened before in the history of the planet. And he claims that after more than 8 months since an earthquake and tsunami triggered this crisis – it’s inevitable that nuclear fuel has leaked into the groundwater – meaning the “China Syndrome” is officially upon us. He also warned that if underground water gets overheated – it could trigger a hydrovolcanic explosion. So what does all this mean? Time to ditch nuclear power – the most expensive and dangerous form of energy on Earth.
You Tube 7th Dec 2011 more >>
Iran
Another mysterious explosion in Iran this week, the third in a month, has stirred speculation that a mysterious hand was once again striking at Iran’s nuclear programme.
NZ Herald 14th Dec 2011 more >>
Romania
In Cernavoda, a small town in southeast Romania, social housing projects stretch all along the left bank of the Danube. The now dilapidated buildings sprang up in the 1970s and 1980s, after the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu decided to build the country’s first nuclear power plant there. In his ambition for power and prosperity, he also ordered a canal to be built from Cernavoda to Constantza, a port on the Black Sea, to shorten the trade route by 400km. The excavations were done by thousands of political prisoners, many of whom died. Today, 21 years after the fall of communism, the threat to Cernavoda is not from dictatorship but the drought that has hit Romania since August. “Look at the water level,” said Vasile Mogos, who lives in a council flat by the river. “I would neve r have imagined that the Danube could fall so low.” The first reactor in the Romanian nuclear power plant, which uses Canadian CANDU reactor technology based on natural uranium and pressurised heavy water, came on stream in 1996. A second reactor was built in 2007, and three others are planned, since the Romanian government counts on nuclear power for energy self-sufficiency. The two reactors in the Cernavoda plant generate 20% of those needs and were built on the banks of the Danube to use its waters for cooling. Early this month, the Danube’s flow rate in Turnu-Severin, a town in southwest Romania, home to the country’s largest hydroelectric power plant, was 2,400 cubic metres per second, 63% of the usual average of 3,800 cubic metres per second. Hidroelectrica, the public corporation in charge of delivering the energy produced by the plant, is generating only 1,800MW instead of the usual 2,100 MW.
Guardian 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Test Veterans
Hundreds of Britains nuclear test veterans blame the experiments for decades of subsequent illness, pain and cancer among themselves and their families. But with the angst of unanswered questions also came an enduring friendship with the inhabitants of the tiny Pacific island rocked by the first H-bomb explosions in the late 1950s. Now, as a second generation steps forward to continue the legacy, Norfolk widow Barbara Penney has been inundated with donations for a toy collection guaranteed to bring smiles this festive season.
Norwich Advertiser 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Energy Efficiency
Zeta’s LED uses just 8W to produce the equivalent light output – 650 lumens – of a 60W incandescent, and should last 10 years. An equivalent CFL would use around 11-13W – a significant saving in energy and carbon emissions when scaled up. Around one-fifth of Europe’s electricity is used for lighting.
Guardian 13th Dec 2011 more >>
Renewables
HOUSEHOLDERS face a rise of more than £170 in annual electricity bills to cover the massive subsidies shelled out to power firms for shifting to green energy sources over the next decade, experts have claimed. Leading economists attacked the “excessive” £15 billion UK-wide pay-outs and warned they would lead to growing public anger, during a conference on the economics of renewables organised by The Scotsman. The cost of the subsidies would be split between domestic and business customers, with households likely to pick up about a third of the outlay, amounting to an extra £170 a year on their bills. The Scottish Government is committed to generating enough power to meet all of Scotland’s electricity needs from renewable sources, such as wind farms, by 2020. But energy minister Fergus Ewing told the conference yesterday Scotland’s power supplies would always come from a “balanced mix” of sources.
Scotsman 14th Dec 2011 more >>
Fracking
Britain’s fledgling shale gas industry could be stopped in its tracks after dramatic new evidence established a link for the first time between the “fracking” technology used to dislodge natural gas trapped in rocks and water pollution.
Independent 14th Dec 2011 more >>
