New nukes
New nuclear power station operators will be required by law to set aside money from day one of generating electricity for their eventual decommissioning and waste costs, Business Secretary John Hutton made clear today. Draft guidance published today sets out how clauses in the Energy Bill requiring operators of new nuclear power stations to meet the full cost of decommissioning and their full share of waste management costs would work.
GNN 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Builder & Engineer 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
ePolitix 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Forbes 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Platts 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Britain has started consulting on the best way for nuclear operators to handle costs from disposing of radioactive waste from a new generation of reactors and from breaking them up at the end of their lives.
Reuters 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Power companies who want to build new nuclear plants in the UK will have to pick up the bill for decommissioning and storage of any waste they produce, the Government has announced.
Telegraph 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Iran
Iran has supplied new data about its nuclear programme but not enough to prove it is not building a bomb, says the International Atomic Energy Agency.
BBC 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Iran expects a positive report on Friday from the U.N. nuclear watchdog showing its peaceful aims because of Tehran’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a senior Iranian official said
Daily Mirror 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Reuters 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Diplomatic pressure is again increasing on Iran, as a new report says the country has failed to explain documentation suggesting that it’s trying to ‘weaponise’ nuclear materials.
Sky News 23rd Feb 2008 more >>
Six major powers are to meet on Monday in Washington for fresh talks on how to make Iran give up its contested uranium enrichment activities, a senior State Department official said.
AFX 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Iran on Thursday hailed the latest UN nuclear watchdog report into its atomic programme as a “success,” saying it proved that Western accusations that it wanted nuclear weapons were baseless.
Middle East Online 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Solar China
Experts project that by 2010 the number of solar water heaters installed in China will equal the thermal equivalent of the electrical capacity of 40 large nuclear power plants. Globally, solar water heaters have the capacity to produce as much energy as more than 140 nukes.
Environmental Graffiti 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Companies
Germany’s second-largest utility, posted its first quarterly loss since at least 2000 after unplanned shutdowns at nuclear plants capped revenue and the company revalued its American Water unit.
Bloomberg 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
WAKEFIELD-based Redhall said today that it had pre-qualified for two projects totalling approximately £200m within the reprocessing and operations programme at the Sellafield nuclear power plant.
Yorkshire Evening Post 21st Feb 2008 more >>
Europe
Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs met with the first chairman of the European High Level Group (HLG) on Nuclear Safety and Waste Management, Mr Andrej Stritar, in Brussels today. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss nuclear safety and waste management issues, particularly the establishment of common European rules in the field, ahead of the HLG’s third meeting in April.
eGov Monitor 21st Feb 2008 more >>
Freiburg
The citizens of Freiburg were protesting a nuclear plant in their neighbourhood with “widespread civil disobedience, and in 1975 the plans were defeated.” Instead, Frieburg decided to go another direction, and the results have been nothing short of remarkable. Freiburg passed energy efficiency standards that result in new houses costing 3% more to build – and that use 30% less energy and CO2. There are solar photovoltaic panels everywhere, solar hot water heaters, and a solar module factory that produces zero net emissions. And the latest generation of houses uses only 15% of the energy used by the houses that were already 30% under the conventional building standards.
Environmental Graffiti 21st Feb 2008 more >>
NDA
The National Nuclear Archive will go to Dounreay rather than Sellafield
Whitehaven News 21st Feb 2008 more >>
Unions have rejected a zero per cent pay offer from Sellafield Ltd.
Whitehaven News 21st Feb 2008 more >>
Stephen Henwood has been named as the new NDA Chairman
Whitehaven News 21st Feb 2008 more >>
The NDA Business Plan is both unsatisfactory and misleading according to the Unions.
Whitehaven News 21st Feb 2008 more >>
Suspended de-fuelling at Sellafield’s Calder Hall nuclear plant is not likely to be resumed until 2012.
Site manager Phil Campbell revealed the “significant delay” at a meeting of the West Cumbria Sites Stakeholder Group’s Calder Hall Sub-Committee in the Ennerdale Country House Hotel, Cleator. He said there is still a lot of fuel in the reprocessing plant’s fuel pond as a result of problems encountered with the Magnox reprocessing process.
Pendle Today 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
South America
Brazil and Argentina on Friday agreed to develop a nuclear reactor jointly and enrich uranium together to address booming energy demand and looming shortages.
Guardian website 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
BBC 23rd Feb 2008 more >>
US
Would-be developers of the next round of nuclear power plants who want to build reactors in eight Southern U.S. states are ignoring a surplus of idle generation and the region’s history of nuclear cost overruns. This week, North Carolina-based Progress Energy became the fifth company since last fall to submit a license application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Progress wants to build two reactors at a site near Raleigh which is already home to one reactor.
Reuters 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
Spain
Spain’s opposition Popular Party, narrowly trailing the ruling Socialists before March elections, would prolong the working life of existing nuclear power stations but build no new ones, a spokesman said. Although nuclear power is back on the table in many countries after years of unpopularity, neither of Spain’s major parties is calling for new plants ahead of March 9 elections.
Guardian website 22nd Feb 2008 more >>
