19 December 2014

Moorside

As reported in the Whitehaven News today, Copeland Borough Council’s planning panel, acting against planning officials’ advice, have rejected an application for one 30m high wind turbine for Peterburgh Farm near the village of Beckermet. Whilst regular readers of the newspaper will be familiar with the frequent rejection of wind turbine applications by Copeland Council – whose history of rubber-stamping nuclear plans is well documented – this latest rejection stands apart from all others. For Peterburgh Farm lies towards the northern border of the 200 acres of greenfield land that is currently being investigated by new-build developer NuGen who plan to build three nuclear reactors on the site. The pantomime element of rejecting a wind turbine on the extremities of the site is provided by the cast of individuals and local parishes that objected to the turbine plan, and their reasons for objecting. These include concerns that ‘the turbine would devastate views, affect wildlife especially local barn owls, bats and starling, devalue property and undermine the enjoyment of walkers in the area’. One local councillor went so far as to question why the beautiful area should be ruined with all these turbines? CORE’s spokesman Martin Forwood said today, We wait with interest to see how the villains of this pantomime – the wicked West Cumbrian Godmothers who object to an inoffensive and renewable energy source – react to a future application by NuGen to smother the area with three nuclear reactors and all the paraphernalia that goes with them. If they object to the beauty of a single turbine on this site then they must certainly reject outright the beast of nuclear new-build and its long-term damage …. Oh No they won’t !

CORE 18th Dec 2014 read more »

Hunterston

Nuclear police have been increased for the second time at Hunterston in recent times, as security is stepped up in line with national guidelines. During the recent Hunterston Site Stakeholders meeting, Civil Constabulary Unit Commander, Mr Alan McCree, confirmed that there would be a higher police presence at the sites. With increased industry at Hunterston recently due to the Hunterson HDVC converter station and cable, linking up under the sea to North Wales, on top of the construction of wind turbines, questions were asked at the meeting concerning the amount of extra road usage in the area. Fairlie community councillor Rita Holmes, who chairs the stakeholders group, said that there had been a massive influx of workers due to the interconnector site at Hunterston, and asked what impact there was in terms of traffic.

Largs and Millport News 19th Dec 2014 read more »

Springfields

Westinghouse Electric has received a long-term contract by Electricité de France (EDF) for the supply of several thousand tons of fuel for use in nuclear reactors in France. Under the contract, which is the extension of the current contract which expires at the end of 2014, Westinghouse will manufacture the fuel at its facilities in Västerås, Sweden; Springfields, UK and at the Enusa plant in Juzbado, Spain, through the European Fuel Group. The company will provide related field and operation services through existing Westinghouse French infrastructures.

Energy Business Review 19th Dec 2014 read more »

Hinkley

TRUCKLOADS of rocks heading for a nuclear power station could be rumbling through Wells if Glastonbury campaigners have their way. They want to cut heavy goods traffic trundling through Glastonbury and have proposed that instead they should come down Bristol Hill into Wells.

Wells Journal 18th Dec 2014 read more »

Proliferation

Nuclear energy is essential to preserve the world’s biodiversity, according to 69 conservation scientists. But there’s a mysterious omission in their analysis, writes Jim Green: nuclear weapons proliferation. And after a major exchange of nuclear bombs, and the ‘nuclear winter’ that would follow, exactly how much biodiversity would survive?

Ecologist 18th Dec 2014 read more »

Emergency Planning

The construction of four dwellings within a possible radiation emergency zone surrounding the Aldermaston atomic weapons establishment (AWE) in Berkshire has been prohibited because it would increase the burden on emergency services in the event of a major emergency.

Planning Resource 19th Dec 2014 read more »

Energy Supplies

Dave Elliott: As flagship nuclear projects run into long delays and huge cost overruns, solar and wind power are falling in price. Renewables already supply twice as much power as nuclear. It’s just too bad the nuclear-fixated UK government hasn’t noticed. With many of the UK’s old nuclear power plants off-line due to faults and prospects for their ultimate replacement looking decidedly shaky, it is good that the renewable energy alternatives are moving ahead rapidly. In 2013 nuclear supplied around 18% of UK electricity but in the third quarter of 2014, nuclear output fell 16.2% due to outages, while renewable output, which had reached 16.8% of electricity in the second quarter of 2014, was up 26%, over the previous year. Indeed, there were periods in 2014 when wind alone met up to 15% of UK power demand, over-taking nuclear, and it even briefly achieved 24%. What next? The financial woes of French developers Areva and EDF may mean that their £24 billion 3.4 GW Hinkley nuclear project, despite being heavily subsidised by British taxpayers and consumers, will get delayed or even halted, unless China or the Saudis bail it out.

Ecologist 18th Dec 2014 read more »

The price of fossil fuels remains the main driver determining the UK’s energy mix, new government statistics show, despite renewables increasingly covering large power station outages. We take a look at the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s latest quarterly energy trends statistics. The UK’s gas generation increased significantly from July through September compared to the three months before, as gas prices continued to fall. At the same time, a slight increase in renewable generation helped to cover a power gap left by the unexpected closure of two nuclear power plants in August. Both factors significantly altered the face of the UK’s electricity generation in the third quarter of 2014. Gas accounted for 38 per cent of the UK’s electricity generation in the third quarter, eight per cent more than in the previous three months, and 12 per cent more than at the same point a year ago. That meant companies burned a lot more gas than in the previous quarter – about another million tonnes of oil equivalent.

Carbon Brief 18th Dec 2014 read more »

Capacity Market

A raft of proposed new gas-fired power plants will be shelved for at least a year after failing to win Government subsidies, experts have predicted. Some old power plants could also be at risk of closure after missing out on the payments, potentially worsening the capacity crunch in coming years, they warned. Under a new “capacity market” policy, designed to keep the lights on, ministers are offering retainer-style subsidy contracts to existing or proposed plants to guarantee they will be available when needed from 2018. At least eight big new gas plant projects were vying for the contracts but are thought to have missed out in favour of existing old plants that are cheaper to keep running.

Telegraph 18th Dec 2014 read more »

Politics

It seems a long time since David Cameron – on a visit to the Department of Energy and Climate Change just three days after the Coalition was formed – said he was “absolutely committed” to leading the “greenest government ever”. He added: “There is a fourth minister in this department who cares passionately about your agenda, and that is me, the Prime Minister. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.” Since that promising May day, back in 2010, what he then described as his “ambition” has at times seemed to have dimmed so much as to have been virtually extinguished. His government has, for example, heavily cut back on energy efficiency measures, promoted a virtual free-for all for development in the countryside, resisted measures to combat deadly air pollution, initially cut spending on flood defences and promised to “go all out for shale” while declaring apparent war on onshore wind farms – and the Prime Minister himself has reportedly sworn to cut the “green crap”. You might think that Mr Cameron would want to forget that he ever made that speech. But not a bit of it. This week he went before the House of Commons Liaison Committee, made up of select committee chairs, and made a cogent defence of what he has done to fulfil that original promise. It was narrowly defined and will not go anywhere near winning over his environmental critics, but it was an impressive performance which showed the “fourth minister” perhaps surprisingly in command of his brief. And he has a case to make. Some will vigorously dispute that nuclear power stations are green – and anyway the first one is very far indeed from actually coming on-stream. But, put in those terms, it is hard to argue with his claim. No previous government has ever done anything like so much.

Telegraph 18th Dec 2014 read more »

Japan

Simultaneous accidents at multiple nuclear reactors could jeopardize the survival of the nation. This is a grim reality we faced during the harrowing nuclear crisis that broke out in 2011 at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. But both electric utilities and the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) appear reluctant to face up to the risk of multiple nuclear accidents occurring simultaneously. In a draft report on its safety reviews of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Takahama nuclear plant in Fukui Prefecture, the NRA said the two reactors had cleared the new safety standards.

Asahi Shimbun 19th Dec 2014 read more »

US – Radwaste

Sen. Harry Reid claimed another victory Thursday in his never-ending fight to kill the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project — and ensure it stays dead. The Nevada Democrat touted a new Nuclear Regulatory Commission report. “The latest study released by the NRC acknowledges one of the major weaknesses of the effort to resurrect Yucca Mountain: the federal government does not have the water it needs nor control of the land necessary to build a nuclear waste dump in Nevada,” Reid said in a release. The NRC report, released Thursday, also noted “the land is not free of significant encumbrances such as mining rights, deeds, rights-of-way or other legal rights.” “This is just one reason why the Yucca Mountain project will never be built and Congress should instead focus on consent-based solutions that don’t shove nuclear waste down a community’s throat over the objections of its people,” Reid said.

Roll Call 18th Dec 2014 read more »

Sweden – Radwaste

Sweden’s government has decided to almost double a fee nuclear power plant operators pay to the nuclear waste fund, in order to help it cover the rising costs of decommissioning, the environment ministry said on Thursday.Sweden’s state-owned utility Vattenfall operates Forsmark and Ringhals power plants, and Germany’s E.ON operates Oskarshamn plant. Finnish utility Fortum , which operates Loviisa power plant, also has stakes in Forsmark and Oskarshamn.The nuclear industry will have to pay 0.04 Swedish crowns per kilowatt-hour from 2015-2017, up from 0.022 crowns today, the government decided. In 2013 the fees to the waste fund, a government authority, amounted to 2.5 billion Swedish crowns ($324.41 million).

Reuters 18th Dec 2014 read more »

Germany

Scientists have developed a comprehensive computer model that simulates German energy supply and demand, in a bid to establish whether it is feasible for Germany to rely on renewable energy sources to power its economy and meet its carbon dioxide emission reduction targets. Developed by Hans-Martin Henning and Andreas Palzer, two physicists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, in Freiburg, the Renewable Energy Model-Deutschland, or REMod-D, is a computer simulation that models an all-sector future energy system for Germany, matching supply and demand on an hourly basis over a full year. Using real data from 2011 and 2012, the researchers have run millions of simulations to optimize the model. They say they have demonstrated that there are several economically viable ways to achieve a low-carbon future, using existing technologies. “We wanted to answer the question: Is it possible for Germany to meet its ambitious CO2 reduction target using predominantly renewable energies?” Mr. Henning said in an interview. “And, if yes, what is the composition of this system, and what is its cost?” The answer to the first question is an unequivocal “yes,” according to Eicke Weber, the institute’s director and a professor of physics at Freiburg University.

New York Times 30th Nov 2014 read more »

Iran

Iran has not demonstrated sufficient flexibility in nuclear talks with six world powers aimed at ending a 12-year standoff with the Islamic Republic over its atomic ambitions, France and Britain said on Thursday. The remarks at the United Nations came just after the completion of another inconclusive round of negotiations in Geneva this week between Iranian officials and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.