Hinkley
Kier’s £100m site preparation works are set to begin at Hinkley Point nuclear power station next year, the contractor has said.
Construction News 13th Nov 2013 read more »
Sellafield
The NDA has made available a report by KPMG that provides data and information on the performance of Sellafield Ltd since the appointment of Nuclear Management Partners to be its Parent Body. The report has been redacted in accordance with Freedom of Information (FOI) procedures for commercially sensitive material. The KPMG report provides an independent review of performance during the first five years on the contractual arrangements with Nuclear Management Partners. It was commissioned by the NDA to inform its decision on contract extension. The report does provide independently collated performance data but does not provide advice to the NDA.
NDA 13th Nov 2013 read more »
American bosses with the consortium managing the Sellafield nuclear plant have used a little-known law to claw back income tax worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Copeland MP Jamie Reed says staff with Nuclear Management Partners (NMP) who have benefited should hand over the tax they has been excused from paying to good causes in west Cumbria. NMP was accused earlier this week of scattering taxpayers’ cash “like confetti”. Now National Audit Office (NAO) figures reveal that nearly £800,000 of tax was also returned to the firm’s American workers at the plant.
Cumberland News 11th Nov 2013 read more »
PLANS to extend the emergency evacuation around the Sellafield site in Cumbria would have “major implications” for large parts of Copeland, it has been claimed. The Office for Nuclear Regulations (ONR) – which oversees the nuclear industry – is expected to recommend an increase in the surrounding evacuation zone in the event of an emergency incident. The current Detailed Emergency Planning Zones (DEPZ) are 2km for immediate evacuation, and 6km for a secondary evacuation. It is expected a recommendation to increase both areas will be made in a new ONR report, produced in light of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, which is due by the end of November.
Whitehaven News 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Aldermaston
THE ATOMIC Weapons Establishment (AWE) has hit back at critics of its recent safety record, despite a report published this week by a government nuclear safety watchdog which identified the facility as requiring “enhanced regulatory attention.” The Office for Nuclear Regulation’s (ONR), report published on Tuesday (Nov 5) lists several UK nuclear sites requiring ”an enhanced level of regulatory attention” including AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield, where the UK’s nuclear weapons are manufactured and maintained. Peter Burt, director of the Reading-based Nuclear Information Service, said the ONR had identified the AWE sites as priority 2 sites, expected to require enhanced regulatory attention for the next two years.
Newbury Today 13th Nov 2013 read more »
ANTI-NUCLEAR protesters picketed West Berkshire Council’s (WBC) offices yesterday (Wednesday), waving protest placards to highlight concerns about nuclear emergency planning arrangements at AWE Aldermaston. The protest, by members of the Nuclear Awareness Group (NAG), was timed to co-incide with a mock emergency exercise in relation to (AWE) Aldermaston, situated on the outskirts of the large town of Tadley and also close to Aldermaston village. AWE manufactures and maintains the warheads for Britain’s nuclear deterrent, Trident.
Newbury Today10th Nov 2013 read more »
Radwaste
Baroness Verma: I am writing in response to letters from the Cumbria Trust relating to the Government’s consultation on proposals to review the siting process for a geological disposal facility (GDF) for higher activity radioactive waste. After the previous GDF siting process ended in West Cumbria, we considered what lessons could be learned both from that experience and from other processes internationally. We launched a national consultation, running from September 12 to December 5, in order to improve the future process. Two points are fundamental: that this is an issue of huge strategic national importance; and that the solution will depend on local community support. Contrary to statements made by some others, the geology of Cumbria has not been shown to be unsuitable for hosting a GDF. Previous geological studies were never completed in Cumbria. Further detailed exploration would be needed to establish the suitability or otherwise of geology in any specific area. Continued storage would not (as has been suggested) provide an alternative solution, but would instead place a financial burden on future generations, as storage costs are recurrent. There would be no additional jobs associated with continued storage compared with the construction of a GDF.
Whitehaven News 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Eddie Martin: I rather think that being dismissive of, or sneering at, a “self-appointed pressure group”, as Tim Knowles did, is less than helpful. A pressure group (and is there any kind other than “self-appointed”?) may be an irritant to politicians, but it is quite simply an interest group that tries to influence public policy. Many people have major concerns about the wisdom of burying nuclear waste in less than satisfactory geology. So would Coun Knowles have us sit on our hands, do nothing and leave these desperately important decisions to the debatable wisdom of politicians at either local or national-government level? I suspect not. My colleagues and I are strongly of the opinion that if DECC, the government department responsible, attempts to focus, once again, on Cumbria, it is setting off on another futile search. Given that UK governments have spent more than 30 years looking for a suitable site and half a billion pounds on fruitless attempts to find it (including the failed Nirex process of 1997), we are anxious to ensure that no more time is lost in dealing with the “intolerable risk” at Sellafield and in finding a geologically-suitable and safe site in England.
Whitehaven News 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Roger Parker: Having read Tim Knowles’ comments about the Cumbria Trust, I think he has a bare-faced cheek. He accuses the Cumbria Trust of grandstanding, but what was the point of his letter, other than to raise his own profile? Most of his diatribe confirms that his own beliefs mirror those of the Cumbria Trust. So all he seems to be doing is to knock an organisation that is aiming to press for securing the safety of the population of West Cumbria, something he and his colleagues have patently failed at doing. To use the words of our MP Jamie Reed, it is “morally indefensible” to place our nuclear waste in a leaky sieve and place future generations at risk. We need adequate investment to deal with the existing waste until a SAFE disposal site is found and constructed. If our current politicians have failed us, why should Coun Knowles pour scorn on an organisation that seeks to make sure that they up their game and do what they are supposed to do? That’s democracy. Stop grandstanding and get on with the job!
Whitehaven News 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Arthur Millie: Tim Knowles was against low-level waste from just across the border but, incredibly, promoted high-level waste from further north which is being shipped in by rail over the next five years. As some of the existing waste has come via various routes from around Britain and the world safely, and will no doubt continue to do so for reprocessing, how come it is not dangerous to bring it to Cumbria but dangerous to transport it back in a more refined or in its original state? To admit that he was the one of the rotating MRWS Partnership “chairs” is to me his ultimate political folly as this was a three-year £3.25million catastrophic and biased attempt to act as both judge and jury on the GDF subject which can now only be resolved by holding democratically-guaranteed referendums in both Copeland and Allerdale, as the democratic principles of both borough councils and their MPs is irrefutably damaged by their past and present actions.
Whitehaven News 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Joe Sandwith: Having failed to achieve their expensively hard-fought aim to convince Cumbria County Council to agree to host the intended high level toxic nuclear waste repository in our county, the so-called democratic government of this country most shockingly changed the goalposts to exclude all county councils from the Governments renewed efforts to find a willing host. Scotland has thousands of acres of uninhabited land, which then begs the question why the Scots are not dealing with their own contaminated toxic nuclear waste? Is Cumbria heading towards becoming the nuclear dustbin for the whole world?
Whitehaven News 14th Nov 2013 read more »
We have today published the preferred options paper for the number and location of fuel element debris (FED) treatment plants and intermediate level waste (ILW) interim storage facilities for Magnox sites in England. This is a preliminary preferred options paper and comments are welcomed until 31 January 2014. Engagement with Local Authorities and local communities began almost a year ago and this latest step follows the publication of a credible options paper for comment in May this year.
NDA 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Sheffield University engineers have developed new techniques which could reduce by as much as 95 per cent the space taken up by dangerous nuclear waste. The new approach could be used in the eventual clean-up of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. It will also reduce the cost both of interim storage and final disposal. Researchers have mixed plutonium-contaminated waste with blast furnace slag, then turning it into glass. The process also effectively locks in the radioactive plutonium, creating a stable end product.
Sheffield Star 14th Nov 2013 read more »
New Reactors
The Babcock & Wilcox Co. plans to sell up to a 70 percent stake in its Generation mPower joint venture by mid-2014, reducing the Charlotte-based company’s share of the small modular reactor manufacturing project to 20 percent.
Business Journal 13th Nov 2013 read more »
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded a grant to Gen4 Energy-led team to conduct research and also develop natural circulation designs for advanced nuclear reactors that utilize a lead bismuth coolant. Gen4 Energy is collaborating with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of South Carolina, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Idaho National Laboratory, URS, and SRS USA, to work on the two-year grant. GEN4 Energy CEO Bob Prince said a comprehensive understanding of natural circulation flow is a critical R&D priority as multiple advanced reactor concepts, including the Gen4 reactor, use it as a key safety measure.
Energy Business Review 14th Nov 2013 read more »
New Nukes
Earlier this month several highly respected climate scientists sent a letter to environmental groups urging them to support nuclear power as a solution to climate change. The letter predictably set off a debate about the importance of nuclear power, and CNN fanned the flames on November 7 when it screened “Pandora’s Promise,” a recently released documentary that depicts nuclear power in a favorable light. The showing was preceded by a debate on Crossfire between consumer advocate Ralph Nader and Michael Shellenberger, President of The Breakthrough Institute, an unabashedly pro-nuclear think tank. The nuclear boosters charge that traditional environmental groups have stood in the way of nuclear power for decades, cutting off the lone viable source of baseload carbon-free power. While nuclear power may indeed be critical for bringing down carbon emissions in the coming decades, blaming environmental groups for the industry’s troubles is an oversimplification. Whatever supporters of nuclear power may say, the industry is facing enormous challenges due mostly to economics.
Oil Price 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Pandora’s Promise is a very disconcerting environmental documentary. The director, Robert Stone, enlists a number of earnest, articulate and even charismatic talking heads who tell us that it’s time we learned to stop worrying and love nuclear energy.
Independent 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Energy Costs
While the blame game plays out, what is clear is that over the coming years it will be vital to secure reliable and clean energy sources to match growing demand, as well as ensuring affordability for increasingly stretched customers. So what does the future look like for the UK energy market?
Guardian 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Network charges, identified by energy suppliers as a reason for inflation-busting price rises, are not going up as much as companies say, according to the UK’s energy regulator. Energy suppliers have blamed higher bills on rising costs in three areas: the wholesale energy they buy on international markets; government green policies; and network charges from the companies that own and operate Britain’s electricity and gas networks. Ofgem, the regulator, says its modelling shows that from now to October 2014, rising network charges will add £15 to the average dual fuel bill. That is much lower than the figures cited by energy companies. RWE Npower says the increase in charges will add £31 to household bills next year. British Gas put the figure at £20, Scottish Power at £26, and EDF Energy at £24.
FT 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Utilities
The German owner of British power giant Npower is slashing one in 10 jobs across Europe by 2016 as part of a fresh wave of “efficiency measures”, although it refused to be drawn on how many UK employees could be pushed out of work. In a shareholder letter sent yesterday, RWE’s chief executive Peter Terium announced that 6,750 jobs out of the total workforce of around 67,000 will go. Meanwhile, British Gas owner Centrica warned profits will be lower than expected this year even though the firm is hitting 15 million customers with an average 9.2 per cent bills hike next week. Centrica claimed it had not seen a mass exodus of households leaving British Gas after its price hike announcement, reporting the number of residential energy customers was 15.7 million at the end of October, “broadly unchanged since the half year”. But many would-be switchers have been waiting until all Big Six energy suppliers announce their price rises. Centrica conceded it was facing “unprecedented times”, with public debate over rising bills clashing with increasing green costs.
Independent 15th Nov 2013 read more »
RWE will cut about one in 10 jobs as the utility, battered by Germany’s renewables boom, forecast that profit next year will almost halve.
FT 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Centrica has defended price increases at its British Gas business – the biggest of the UK’s big six energy suppliers – and warned that full-year profits will fall short of expectations by as much as 4 per cent.
FT 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Centrica delivered a slew of bad news on Thursday as it issued a profits warning and said the political row over energy prices meant it was now less likely to invest in new UK power plants to keep the lights on.
Telegraph 14th Nov 2013 read more »
The owner of npower has pleaded poverty in the face of the backlash against record household bills after announcing a 51 per cent slump in profits in Britain. Germany’s RWE npower blamed the huge decline on its power generation division, which suffered a £59 million loss in the first nine months of the year. However, profits at its supply division, which operates under the npower brand, rose £13.million, or 8 per cent, compared with last year, to £175 million.
Times 15th Nov 2013 read more »
Rosatom
An ambitious export drive by Russia’s nuclear reactor corporation is being hamstrung by dated Soviet-style secrecy rules, foreign executives at the company say.Rosatom has hired a former Finnish nuclear regulator, Jukka Laaksonen, to be the face of Russian nuclear energy abroad and a guarantor of safety. But in a throwback to Soviet secrecy rules, Laaksonen and two other new foreign vice presidents are barred from working out of its Moscow headquarters, a hulking colonnaded building that housed the Soviet Union’s atomic ministry in the 1950s. Before Rosatom’s export branch, Rusatom Overseas, moved to its own offices, its Czech vice president, Leos Tomicek, often worked out a cafe across the street, a company spokesman said.
Reuters 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Germany
German parties negotiating the formation of a coalition government want to make utilities pay more to dismantle their nuclear power plants and protect taxpayers from billions of euros in related costs, documents obtained by Reuters show.Such a move, if adopted by a coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD), would be a blow to E.ON, RWE, Vattenfall and EnBW who have already put aside 30 billion euros in provisions.
Reuters 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Canada
Canadian plans for a large nuclear waste facility on the US border are triggering a cross-border public outcry and a looming diplomatic backlash. Canada is planning to build the nuclear waste facility in the town of Kincardine, on the Canadian side of Lake Huron and directly opposite the thumb of the US state of Michigan.
Oil Price 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Japan
Akie Abe, wife of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has repeatedly urged her husband to stop exporting nuclear technology, following Japan’s own nuclear disaster, a news report said on Wednesday. “I told my husband not to sell nuclear plants overseas now. But he won’t listen,” Akie was quoted by the Hokkaido daily as saying. She questioned why Japan was trying to sell nuclear technology and services abroad when it was still struggling to contain the situation at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.
Daily Post (Nigeria) 13th Nov 2013 read more »
Engineers at Fukushima Daiichi have done final checks before they begin removing fuel from unit 4’s storage pond, the highest priority safety-related task in the site’s decommissioning.
World Nuclear News 13th Nov 2013 read more »
Japan has warned that it will fall short of an ambitious greenhouse-gas reduction target it set for itself four years ago, saying that under the most extreme scenario – involving an immediate and permanent shutdown of its nuclear industry – emissions would rise slightly rather than fall by 25 per cent as promised. Yoshihide Suga, the chief cabinet secretary, said on Friday that the government had committed to a new target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 3.8 per cent over the 15 years ending in 2020. That would represent a rise of 3 per cent over the longer span covered by its previous commitment, which used 1990 as its base year.
FT 15th Nov 2013 read more »
Three of the spent fuel assemblies due to be carefully plucked from the crippled Japanese nuclear plant at Fukushima in a hazardous year-long operation were damaged even before the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that knocked out the facility.The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co, or Tepco, said the damaged assemblies – 4.5 metre high racks containing 50-70 thin rods of highly irradiated used fuel – can’t be removed from Fukushima’s Reactor No. 4 using the large cask assigned to taking out more than 1,500 of the assemblies.
Reuters 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Egypt
Egypt will launch an international tender in January to build its first nuclear power station, an Electricity Ministry spokesman has said. Egypt froze its nuclear programme after the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, but announced in 2006 it planned to revive it. Plans for a tender were being prepared when President Hosni Mubarak was deposed in 2011.
Herald 15th Nov 2013 read more »
France
French energy utility Areva has secured a major services and solutions contract to support EDF in the maintenance and operation of eight nuclear reactors. Covering provision of comprehensive site support services at the Chinon, Nogent, and Belleville nuclear power plants (NPP), the contract includes a five year performance period, and an option for two additional years.
Energy Business Review 15th Nov 2013 read more »
Iran
Iran will meet next week in Geneva with the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany to discuss a proposed deal under which Tehran would suspend parts of its nuclear program in exchange for limited sanctions relief.
Reuters 15th Nov 2013 read more »
Iran has sharply slowed down the expansion of its nuclear programme over the past three months, the international nuclear watchdog said on Thursday, providing a potential boost to
ongoing nuclear talks with Tehran. The International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran was continuing to enrich uranium which could potentially be used to build a nuclear bomb, in contravention of a series of UN resolutions.
FT 14th Nov 2013 read more »
Guardian 14th Nov 2013 read more »
