Hinkley
Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive of SSE: Last week, the European Commission gave the go-ahead for EDF’s Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant to receive legal subsidy, paid for through the bills of UK energy customers. This power station is a major moment for the Government’s energy policy and could power millions of homes. It is not cheap, however, and by some estimates could add around 3% to bills when it starts to produce electricity in the mid-2020s. It hasn’t been dubbed “the world’s most expensive power station” for nothing. I have nothing against nuclear power, indeed other technologies such as carbon capture and storage and renewables will require subsidy. Britain needs low-carbon sources of energy in order to decarbonise its electricity generation to meet targets and the challenge of climate change. However, my concern is that we can’t keep piling costs onto consumers at a time of rising energy prices: it is simply unfair. What’s more, although it may deliver long term cost-reductions, the costs of some Government policies for clean technologies and energy efficiency measures will increase considerably in the coming years and Parliamentary legislation means that all will be funded by consumers through their energy bills.
ITV 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Politics
Letter David Lowry: So Sadiq Khan MP, who has been charged by Labour’s election campaign manger Douglas Alexander to lead the fightback against Green gains in the opinion polls thinks that Labour has changed and it shares Green values and “will be a government [Green supporters] can be proud of”. Really? Mr Khan is either delusional or very ill-informed on Green party policies. The Greens oppose all UK nuclear weapons worldwide and oppose replacing the £100bn Trident nuclear weapons system of mass destruction; the Greens oppose arms sales; the Greens oppose the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership presently being cooked up by big business in their own interests; the Greens oppose fracking; and the Greens oppose nuclear energy, and particularly the building of the taxpayer-subsidised £34bn new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point C (HPC).
Guardian 15th Oct 2014 read more »
The Climate Change Committee’s response to Owen Patterson’s speech: In every case we assess serious comments in the light of the evidence and the actions being taken by the Government. We have therefore looked at the information presented by the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail and our scientific assessment strongly rejects the claims.
CCC 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Film stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio who campaign to reduce consumption of fossil fuels are consigning millions of Africans to a life of poverty and ill-health, according to the former environment secretary. Owen Paterson said the focus on climate change had obscured the real causes of deprivation in poor countries. His comments were made while delivering the annual lecture of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think-tank known for being sceptical of climate change. Mr Paterson said: “The sight of rich film stars effectively telling Africa’s poor that they should not have fossil fuels, but should continue to die at the rate of millions each year from the smoke of wood fires in their homes frankly disgusts me.” DiCaprio was among 300,000 protesters who took part in the People’s Climate March in New York last month.
Times 16th Oct 2014 read more »
Is there such a thing as a rightwing energy policy? If there is, you might think it would be based on the rigorous application of free market principles. However, that doesn’t accord with the right’s traditional support for nuclear power – a form of energy that is utterly dominated by the state. Nuclear politics has always been complicated. After all, it was Margaret Thatcher who, dismayed by the cost of Sizewell B, decided to stop the construction of further nuclear power stations in this country; and it was David Cameron who reversed that decision by pushing through the deal on Hinckley Point C. With both shale and solar, the tech is modular and adaptable, while the industry is characterised by multiple, private sector companies competing fiercely with one another on innovation and cost. Nuclear, on the other hand, requires enormous one-off construction projects of fearsome complexity; while the industry consists mainly of state-owned monoliths. That is why, decades after Margaret Thatcher pulled the plug, Britain’s first new power station is to be built by the French, with Chinese finance and the backing of an EU-approved contract that will lock-in British consumers until the year 2058.
Conservative Home 16th Oct 2014 read more »
Small Reactors
Dozens of small nuclear reactors should be installed throughout the country near towns and cities if the UK wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep the lights on, the former environment secretary, Owen Paterson, has said. “The bullies in the environmental movement and their subsidy-hungry allies” in the renewable energy industry were driving policies supporting “impractical and expensive technologies” such as wind farms, he claimed. The Climate Change Committee was lukewarm about Mr Paterson’s nuclear proposals. “Modular reactors would not be an option we could identify now as an option to rely on – there are large uncertainties over price and public acceptability, but they might have a role in future if those issues are positively resolved,” it said.
FT 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Dounreay
A £2.5m police firing range has been opened near the Dounreay nuclear power complex in Caithness. The eight-lane 164ft-long (50m) range is for Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) officers who guard Dounreay. Dounreay is in the process of being closed down and cleaned up in a £1.6bn project. When the firing range is no longer needed, it will be demolished and the land reinstated and made available for agricultural use.
BBC 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Fusion
Researchers at Lockheed Martin Corporation’s Skunk Works, announced on Oct. 15 their ongoing work on a new nuclear fusion technology that could bring about functional, operational nuclear reactors in the next 10 years. But most scientists and science communicators we talked to are skeptical of the claim. “The nuclear engineering clearly fails to be cost effective,” Tom Jarboe told Business Insider in an email. Jarboe is a professor of aeronautics and astronautics, an adjunct professor in physics, and a researcher with the University of Washington’s nuclear fusion experiment. The premise behind Lockheed’s 10-year-plan is the smaller size of their device. The scientists are designing an improved version of a compact fusion reactor (CFR). The CFR generates power from nuclear fusion by extracting energy through the extremely hot plasma contained inside it.
Business Insider 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade. Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed’s secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work.
Guardian 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Thorium
The UK is playing a key role in an international project to develop a radical new type of nuclear power station that is safer, more cost-effective, compact, quicker and less disruptive to build than any previously constructed. Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), as part of the RCUK Energy Programme, a team at the University of Cambridge is exploring whether the element thorium could help to meet the new design’s fuel needs. As well as being three to four times more abundant than uranium, thorium could potentially produce electricity more fuel efficiently and therefore more cheaply.
Process & Control Today 15th Oct 2014 read more »
The Manufacturer 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Nuclear Ships
Russia’s Rosatom and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have announced milestone dates for two projects in their so-called Nuclear Window program. The announcement followed a meeting in Moscow on 8 October between Rosatom officials and the bank’s joint secretariat. Nuclear Window is part of the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership (NDEP), which originates from the European Union’s Northern Dimension Initiative to promote cooperation between countries of the Baltic and Arctic Sea regions. The objective of Nuclear Window, which started in May 2003, is to provide funding for projects that will mitigate the legacy of the operation of nuclear-powered ships and submarines of the Northern fleet in Russia that are at different stages of decommissioning.
World Nuclear News 15th Oct 2014 read more »
EDF
President Francois Hollande ousted the pro-nuclear boss of France’s main power utility EDF on Wednesday, replacing him with the head of defence electronics firm Thales a day after a new pro-renewables policy became law.Outgoing Chairman and Chief Executive Henri Proglio had been seeking to renew a mandate that expires next month. But his pro-nuclear views and status as a 2009 appointee of conservative former president Nicolas Sarkozy sat uncomfortably with the policy of Hollande’s Socialist administration, which pushed through a new law on Wednesday that caps nuclear production at the current level.
Reuters 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Europe
Bryony Worthington: New analysis by the climate think tank Sandbag predicts that by 2020 the ETS could be so over-supplied with tradable permits that it will be almost completely irrelevant. It won’t die of natural causes, however, as the legislation will keep it going indefinitely, mildly annoying industry and dismally disappointing everyone else. Unloved and unpopular it could still persist like a lame cuckoo in the nest, crowding out any possible alternative policies that might be more effective. Throwing it, and the huge surplus, away right now would be beneficial for the environment, as it would remove the ‘hot air’ or spare allowances that have built up which weaken the effect of the 2030 target. Still, it is possible that the political signal sent by the council next week will be en ough to put wind in the sails of a legal proposal to fix the ETS that is already on the table. Sandbag certainly hopes so. It’s time to pass robust new laws within the next 12 months to fix the ETS or stop and do something different instead.
Guardian 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Poland and other eastern European countries are prepared to scupper the EU’s landmark climate change deal next week if they do not receive greater guarantees about their future energy costs. Spearheaded by Germany, Britain and France, the EU wants to seal an agreement at a summit on October 23-24 to ensure the 28-member bloc will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But coal-dependent Poland and some of its neighbours argue that the EU’s proposals to compensate them for modernising their heavy industry do not go far enough. The opponents to the deal, led by Poland and the Czech Republic, but also including Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, are ready to walk away from the summit if they are not offered improved terms.
FT 14th Oct 2014 read more »
Australia
THE CASE FOR THE LUCAS HEIGHTS NUCLEAR REACTOR has always been couched in an argument for necessary medical radiopharmaceuticals being produced there. However, in fact, medical isotopes can be produced without the need for a nuclear reactor, by use of particle accelerators. That sounds expensive, but it’s not as expensive as a nuclear reactor when you look at its total costs. A case in point was shown in news from Scotland last week. On 7 October, an oil rig was evacuated after a ship caught fire and drifted into Moray Firth. The ship was seven miles from the Moray Firth oil platform, but still they chose to evacuate all the oil rig employees. Why? Because of the cargo on that ship. The ship, the Parida, was carrying radioactive wastes that were being returned to Belgium. The nuclear waste was sent to Dounreay reprocessing plant in the 1990s, but must now be returned.
Independent Australia 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Japan
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said there has been a sharp spike in the radioactivity of water samples taken from an observation well built by the sea at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The samples, collected from the well on Monday, contained a record 251,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per liter — 3.7 times the amount recorded in a sample collected last Thursday. The observation well, located to the east of the damaged No. 2 reactor, is one of several installed close to the seawall in the plant’s port. Monday’s reading was the highest recorded in water samples from any of the wells. The samples also contained 7.8 million becquerels per liter of radioactive beta particle-emitting substances, such as strontium-90, an almost fourfold increase from Thursday’s level.
Japan Times 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Nothing is as hotly debated in Japan right now as the restarting of the 48 inactive nuclear plants which closed one by one for scheduled maintenance after the Fukushima disaster four years ago. In Kyushu Electric Power’s plant, Sendai, in southwest Japan, communities are thwarting revival plans even as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged on after the plant was found to meet the new safety guidelines set by the country’s independent nuclear regulator. The Sendai plant, located about 600 miles from Tokyo, is the first to receive the clearances but with the consensus process involving communities and local governments, getting it online could be months away.
Forbes 16th Oct 2014 read more »
India
The Union Ministry for Environment and Forests (MoEF), which has fast-tracked other green clearances, has ripped apart the Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL)’s environment impact assessment report on the proposed atomic power plant near Gujarat’s South Saurashtra coast, citing lack of clarity on several issues. In what has come as a big relief to farmers protesting against the nuclear plant in Mithi Virdi in Bhavnagar district, the MoEF’s Experts Appraisal Committee (Nuclear) has asked the NPCIL to immediately “revise” and “re-submit” its environment impact assessment (EIA) report.
Daily Mail 9th Oct 2014 read more »
Iran
Iran nuclear talks in seven graphics. Iran and the US are spearheading efforts to seal a deal that would freeze large parts of the country’s nuclear programme in return for suspension of sanctions.
Telegraph 16th Oct 2014 read more »
South Africa
South Africa has signed a nuclear energy co-operation agreement with France. It covers areas including the development of skills and research and initiates the phase of possible deployment of French nuclear technologies in South Africa. The nation currently has only one nuclear power station, which provides around 5% of its installed generating capacity.
Energy Live News 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Turkey
The Japanese-French consortium is planning to commission the proposed new nuclear power plant by 2023, a consortium member said. Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHE), Itochu and France’s GDF Suez have signed an agreement in May 2013 for the development of a $22bn nuclear power plant in Turkey. Reuters cited MHE president and CEO Shunichi Miyanaga as saying on the sidelines of a trade show in Paris: “We are working very hard to start the plant in 2023, the year of the centenary.”
Energy Business Review 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Renewables
The first ever global life-cycle assessment of clean energy sources shows that a renewable system could supply the world’s entire electricity needs by mid-century, writes Tim Radford. A global low-carbon energy economy is not only feasible – it could actually double electricity supply by 2050, while also reducing air and water pollution, according to new research. Even though photovoltaic power requires up to 40 times more copper than conventional power plants, and wind power uses up to 14 times more iron, the world wins on a switch to low-carbon energy.
Ecologist 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Renewables – Geothermal
Heat is flowing from the UK’s first deep geothermal test well in 20 years, aimed at establishing the renewable energy source as a viable component of the country’s low-carbon economy. The well has been installed by Geothermal Engineering, which is being backed by £800,000 of funding from the Department of Energy and Climate Change and £100,000 by the company’s founders.
FT 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Renewables – solar
The solar energy industry supports up to 14,000 jobs in the UK – according to the latest industry estimate from the National Solar Centre. And – according to Amber Rudd, the junior UK climate-change minister – the industry has a bright future ahead of it. Speaking at the Solar Energy conference recently, she said: “Solar PV is an important part of the UK’s energy mix and very much a renewables success story – overall deployment has surpassed expectations. “Since 2010, from a starting point of almost zero, the industry has now exceeded 4GW of capacity. This is a fantastic achievement.
Scottish Energy News 16th Oct 2014 read more »
Renewables – wind
Producing onshore wind energy is cheaper than coal, nuclear and gas, the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) has claimed.
Windpower Monthly 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Community Energy
Last week the European Commission gave the UK the green light to billions of pounds of subsidies for Hinkley nuclear power plant, and the European Parliament approved a Spanish oil baron, Miguel Arias Cañete, as the EU’s next climate and energy chief. This hardly bodes well when EU leaders are due to agree climate and energy targets for the year 2030 at a summit next week. But against this, Europe’s citizens energy movement is providing reasons for optimism. Community-owned wind turbines, sustainable biomass plants, small hydro-electric schemes and roof-top solar panels are providing more and more secure, renewable energy at a time when Europe is facing precarious energy dependency and the threat of climate change. At a conference on community energy in Brussels last week representatives of Europe’s burgeoning movement of communities and cooperatives who own and are actively involved in running renewable energy resources, said that, regardless of legislative and financial obstacles, they were on the move.
FoE 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Electricity Networks
A new IGov working paper on energy networks give a comprehensive account of the rules and incentives for network operators and network users (generators, shippers, suppliers and consumers), and how these facilitate, slow or block a shift to a more demand side focused energy system in Britain, along with a greater use of distributed energy resources. Most of these rules and incentives are created by economic regulation of networks or come under industry codes and standards, and the paper also gives an analysis of how this governance works, and why it has evolved the way it has since privatisation. The paper is the first of a series of IGov papers covering the energy value chain that will appear over the next few months.
IGov 15th Oct 2014 read more »
IGov 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Fossil Fuels
An unrestrained global fracking boom that unleashes plentiful and cheap gas will not tackle global warming by replacing coal and cutting carbon emissions, according to a comprehensive analysis that takes into account the impact on the rest of the energy supply. Burning natural gas produces half the carbon dioxide released by coal, and shale gas proponents argue that gas can therefore be a “bridge” fuel, curbing emissions while very low carbon sources such as renewable and nuclear energy are ramped up. But a new analysis published in the journal Nature shows that a gas boom would cut energy prices, squeezing out renewable energy, and is likely to actually increase overall carbon emissions. The researchers conclude that only new interventions, such as a long-sought international climate change deal or significant global price on carbon pollution, would be effective in tackling warming.
Guardian 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Climate News Network 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Times 16th Oct 2014 read more »
Scotsman 16th Oct 2014 read more »
Carbon Tracker study finds almost all oil, gas and coal companies acknowledge climate change as an issue but very few are integrating it into strategy.
Business Green 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Climate
Melting polar and glacial ice and thermally expanding ocean water have accelerated sea level rise to the highest rate in at least 6,000 years according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using data from ancient sediment samples from around Asia and Australia, researchers looked back at 35,000 years of sea level history, finding that over the last 6,000 years little changed — until 150 years ago.
Climate Progress 15th Oct 2014 read more »
Autobiography
Greenpeace UK co-founder Pete Wilkinson continues to campaign for change on environmental issues as director of Nuclear Information Service. Pete Wilkinson has not mellowed. A single question about the same issues that made him a thorn in the side of the nuclear industry and the Thatcher government of the 1980s will still set him off with a stream of well-articulated argument about ethics and economics. The co-founder of Greenpeace UK and its director for the organisation’s early pioneering campaigns is now 67, but his zeal to change the world for the better is still strong. His autobiography, which receives an official launch on Thursday, is partly the story of his life but includes unabridged diaries from his most successful campaign, the battle to save Antarctica from mineral exploitation and turn the continent into a world park. The book is disarmingly honest about his own failings and equally frank about the shortcomings of some of his colleagues and friends, as well as the organisation he once helped to run, Greenpeace.
Guardian 15th Oct 2014 read more »
