Radwaste
People in West Cumbria are being asked for their views on whether the area should be used to bury nuclear waste. The government needs a permanent home for much of the radioactive waste currently stored at Sellafield. Several local authorities in the county have already expressed an interest in hosting an underground repository. The West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely Partnership, which includes many Cumbrian councils, begins the four-month consultation on Monday.
BBC 20th Nov 2011 more >>
Sellafield
A brief reference to raised levels of radioactivity in some Seascale road drains in the recently published Radioactivity in Food and the Environmernt Report for 2010 (RIFE 16) will rightly be ruffling feathers at Sellafield and with the Regulators. For some road drains located on the main approach road to the village centre (Drigg Road) have shown a significant rise in levels of Caesium-137 (Cs-137) and Americium 241 (Am-241) in 2010 compared to previous years.
CORE 20th Nov 2011 more >>
Wylfa
Ofgem has received an application from Horizon Nuclear Power Wylfa for consent to exercise their exploratory rights under the Electricity Act 1989 and SLC 15. We are inviting interested parties to provide us with their views on this request for consent.
Ofgem 16th Nov 2011 more >>
Areva
France’s nuclear giant Areva will cut 1,300 jobs in Germany and close down two of its sites after Berlin’s decision to abandon nuclear energy, news weekly Der Spiegel reported on Sunday. The firm will slash its workforce by around 20 percent at its main site in Erlangen in central Germany, as well as making cuts at other sites across the country, Spiegel said, without citing its sources. The extent of the job cuts would be nearly twice as high as the 800 redundancies cited in the French press. The company is expected to announce the move on December 13 in Paris.
France24 20th Nov 2011 more >>
Japan
They have been deserted for eight months, and could stay that way for years, their former inhabitants now scattered around north-east Japan. But the towns of Okuma and Futaba, located in the shadow of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, have shown that civic life must go on, even in the wake of a major nuclear accident. In one of the more surreal episodes of world democracy, tens of thousands were eligible to vote on Sunday for regional assemblies and mayors in towns that have all but ceased to exist.
Guardian 20th Nov 2011 more >>
France
France’s opposition Green and Socialist parties sealed an electoral alliance over the weekend, saying they would reduce the country’s longstanding reliance on nuclear energy if they have an opportunity to form a coalition government after the spring 2012 presidential election.
Wall St Journal 20th Nov 2011 more >>
Uranium
The future of nuclear power is so bright that the industrys richest takeover offer may still not be enough to let Rio Tinto Group win a bidding contest for Hathor Exploration Ltd. Hathor, which owns a Canadian uranium deposit, climbed to C$5.06 last week after the worlds third-largest mining company raised its deal price to C$4.70 a share. While the 65 percent premium that Rio agreed to pay topped Cameco Corp.s hostile bid, arbitragers that pushed Hathor to an all-time high are now betting that Cameco will increase its offer for a second time, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Bloomberg 21st Nov 2011 more >>
Renewables
You have to hand it to the Duke of Edinburgh. At 90, he is still as incisive as ever. Once again, the Royal Family has articulated what ordinary people, without the ear of the media, have long felt. His son might have called the wind farms that are besmirching our mountains and waving their giant arms inanely out at sea a monstrous carbuncle. Prince Philip chose disgrace. So they are. The politicians who foisted them upon us should be put in the stocks.
Telegraph 21st Nov 2011 more >>
Britains first bank-financed biomass plant for 12 years is set to get the go-ahead after a three-year struggle to raise the cash. David Williams, chief executive of Eco2, the company behind the plant, which burns straw to make electricity, told The Times that the tortuous process underlined how scarce credit was for biomass developers. Royal Bank of Scotland, UniCredit, Siemens Financial Services and NIBC are expected to sign off in the next fortnight on £120 million of financing to build the Lincolnshire plant, although completion could be delayed again.
Times 21st Nov 2011 more >>
Caroline Lucas: The solar industry is still struggling to come to terms with the scale of the damage inflicted on them by the Governments sudden announcement last month that feed-in tariffs to support the installation of solar PV are to be more than halved.
Touchstone 19th Nov 2011 more >>
Energy Efficiency
Government ministers have heralded it as the biggest home improvement programme since the Second World War, but their own economists predict the number of homes insulated under the Green Deal will slump, not rise. The revelation could undermine confidence in the programme that Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, is banking on to deliver efficiency savings and slash bills to cushion households from the rising costs of fossil fuels and wind farms over the next decade. Mr Huhne declared that all the UKs 26 million households could benefit from the Green Deal by 2020. He also said it would inspire an insulation boom, supporting a quarter of a million jobs over the next 20 years. Yet government figures seen by The Times are forecasting that as few as 6.5 million insulation jobs in total could be carried out by 2020.
Times 21st Nov 2011 more >>
Climate
Governments of the world’s richest countries have given up on forging a new treaty on climate change to take effect this decade, with potentially disastrous consequences for the environment through global warming. Ahead of critical talks starting next week, most of the world’s leading economies now privately admit that no new global climate agreement will be reached before 2016 at the earliest, and that even if it were negotiated by then, they would stipulate it could not come into force until 2020.
Guardian 20th Nov 2011 more >>