Radwaste
A DATE has been set for the vote on whether to press ahead with a process that could see the UK’s high-level nuclear waste buried deep beneath Cumbria. Copeland Borough Council, Cumbria County Council and Allerdale Borough Council will all vote on January 30 whether to progress to the next phase of the Managing Radioactive Waste Safely Partnership’s consultation. The vote was originally due to take place in October but the councils put the vote on hold due to uncertainties about the legality of withdrawing at a later stage.
NW Evening Mail 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Energy Bill
The Government has reached a landmark agreement on energy policy that will deliver a clear, durable signal to investors, Edward Davey announced today. The Energy and Climate Change Secretary said: “This is a durable agreement across the Coalition against which companies can invest and support jobs and our economic recovery. “The decisions we’ve reached are true to the Coalition Agreement, they mean we can introduce the Energy Bill next week and have essential electricity market reforms up and running by 2014 as planned. The Bill will include the creation of a Government-owned company to act as a single counterparty to give investors confidence to enter into new long term Contracts for Difference for low carbon electricity projects.
DECC 23rd Nov 2012 more »
Government ditches Energy Bill decarbonisation target until 2016. The government today stands accused of surrendering to a “blatant assault on the greening of the UK economy”, after it confirmed it would delay a decision on whether to include a decarbonisation target in the upcoming Energy Bill until after the next election. In a statement released at midnight, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey confirmed a deal had been brokered with the Treasury after long-running negotiations that will allow the Energy Bill to be published next week.
Business Green 23rd Nov 2012 more »
Ed Miliband has today launched a blistering attack on the government’s green record, accusing the chancellor of “pandering to climate sceptics” and calling on the prime minister to take urgent action to ensure the upcoming Energy Bill includes a decarbonisation target for the power sector.
Business Green 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Matthew Spencer, director of Green Alliance, said: “Ed Miliband has demonstrated a good understanding of the UK’s energy infrastructure challenge.. Government has to provide certainty beyond 2020 so that companies can invest in British factories to supply the next generation of low-carbon power stations. There are already around 10,000 British jobs promised in new offshore wind turbine assembly alone, but they will be at risk if the coalition delay the decision on decarbonisation until after the election.”
Guardian 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Legally binding commitments to cut the amount of carbon that power stations can emit will not be included in the new Energy Bill following a bitter row within the Coalition. Green groups accused David Cameron of bowing to pressure from a “militant tendency” in Tory ranks by postponing a decision on whether to introduce the binding targets. However, the much-delayed Energy Bill will announce moves to triple subsidies for “clean” energy sources such as renewables over the next eight years.
Independent 23rd Nov 2012 more »
The Tories and Liberal Democrats have ended months of infighting over energy policy, finally agreeing a deal designed to reassure an industry rocked by political instability. An agreement to be set out on Friday will pave the way for an energy bill next week and comes after one of the most vicious coalition rows of this parliament. The compromise means Ed Davey, Lib Dem energy secretary, dropping a demand for a 2030 electricity sector decarbonisation target, which would have pleased environmentalists but angered owners of gas-fired power stations.
FT 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Energy bills are poised to rise by up to £178 a year under a deal struck between George Osborne and the Liberal Democrats to pay for a series of wind farms and nuclear power stations. Under the biggest reforms to the energy market in decades, households and businesses will have to pay £7.6billion a year towards the cost of building “greener” power stations by 2020. This is three times the current level of £2.35 billion per year, as bill-payers are forced to remunerate companies for several new nuclear plants, thousands of wind turbines and potentially “green” fossil fuel stations.
Telegraph 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Householders will have to pay up to £100 more a year for their electricity under Government plans to treble the levy on consumers to help to pay for nuclear power stations and windfarms.
Times 23rd Nov 2012 more »
Carbon Briefing: What will the UK energy bill contain?
The Carbon Brief 21st Nov 2012 more »
Investment in Energy Infrastructure and the Energy Bill. House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee 20th Nov 2012. Rt Hon Edward Davey MP, Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, Simon Virley, Director General, Energy Markets and Infrastructure, Department of Energy and Climate Change, Patrick Erwin, Head, EMI Strategy and Programme Office, Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Parliament 20th Nov 2012 more »
Energy firms will be allowed to triple the amount of money they add to customers’ bills to pay for renewable power, nuclear and other environmental measures, under plans to be announced by the government next week. Davey appeared to have lost his battle for a target to totally decarbonise the electricity supply sector by 2030: instead the bill will say that a decision on that will be made by the next government in 2016. Friends of the Earth executive director Andy Atkins said: “The coalition has caved in to Osborne’s reckless dash for gas and banged the final nail in the coffin of Cameron’s pledge to lead the greenest government ever.”
Guardian 23rd Nov 2012 more »
Electricity bills could rise by £75 a year by 2020 to fund a new generation of wind farms and nuclear reactors, it emerged last night. And by 2030 annual bills will go up by an estimated £178 under all the Government’s green and fuel poverty policies. A green energy strategy to be unveiled next week will treble the costs levied on bills from £2.35billion a year to £7.6billion.
Daily Mail 23rd Nov 2012 more »
Hinkley
Glastonbury is deserving of a new relief road should a nuclear plant be built. That’s the view of the town council, who fear the tourist trade will be bruised and battered by heavy construction vehicles to and from Hinkley Point C. Alarmed that 400 lorries could thunder through the town every day if Hinkley C gets the go-ahead, members of the council are preparing to lobby Somerset County Council and plant owner EDF to build a new relief road.
Central Somerset Gazette 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Sellafield
NUCLEAR chiefs will be held to account in public on Monday for massive over-spending of taxpayers’ money at Sellafield – and potential risks from old plants. At a hearing held at Energus (Lillyhall), they face a grilling from the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee over serious concerns highlighted in the National Audit Office Managing Risk Reduction at Sellafield report. Under scrutiny will be George Beveridge (Sellafield Ltd deputy managing director), John Clarke (Nuclear Decommissioning Authority chief executive), Mark Higson (of the Office for Nuclear Development at the Department of Energy and Climate Change) and Phil Wynn Owen (acting permanent secretary at DECC).
Whitehaven News 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Letter: Margaret Hodge MP is quoted as saying: “Hazardous radioactive waste is housed in buildings which pose intolerable risks to people and the environment”. I cannot recall either Coun Moore or Coun Woodburn suggesting that we are at risk as a result of inappropriate/deteriorating storage facilities for hazardous nuclear waste. After years of membership of the WCSSG, and many thousands of pounds of remuneration, surely we might expect them to have recognised and broadcast such a risk? I think people might also question the wisdom of members being beholden to the nuclear industry as a result of the allowances they are paid from the nuclear industries purse.
Whitehaven News 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Cumbria
The only way Copeland can survive the brutal budget cuts it faces is by hosting a new underground nuclear waste repository, says MP Jamie Reed.
Whitehaven News 19th Nov 2012 more »
Letter: “The only way Copeland can survive the brutal budget cuts it faces is by hosting a new underground nuclear waste repository.” Wot? Are we building it next year along with Mox2, Thorp2, Prism and a power station? Why not move Faslane to Sellahaven and Coulport to a dredged Ravensglass for good measure?
Whitehaven News 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Decommissioning
With highly lucrative contracts on offer, and superior levels of technical expertise being demanded, multinational consortia dominate the bidding for this kind of work. The Babcock Dounreay Partnership (BDP), a joint venture between Babcock, CH2M Hill and URS, was appointed PBO for the decommissioning of the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness in April 2012. BDP’s contract is the first in the UK to take a decommissioning site through to completion. It will run until Dounrey reaches interim end state, sometime between 2022 and 2025. This is the point at which all buildings have been cleaned out or demolished and the radioactive waste is made safe for long-term storage or disposal. To meet this milestone, 180 structures have to be dismantled, 50 of which have had radioactive activity. BDP says that its plan, executed through site licence company Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd (DSRL) will reduce costs by more than £1bn to £1.6bn, and cut more than 10 years from the decommissioning plan. Sellafield in Cumbria has arguably the most complex nuclear legacy in the world, a mixture of military and civilian nuclear facilities packed into 6km2. Here around £500m is spent on decommissioning projects annually, and this figure is projected to rise to £700m. At Sellafield some 200 structures are contaminated by nuclear activity. But even though 100 decommissioning projects are already under way, timescales for full remediation of the site run to 2120 – more than 100 years away.
Construction Index 22nd Nov 2012 more »
France
An ageing fleet of nuclear power plants and retirement of half of EDF’s nuclear staff in the next 5 years are the main challenges the French nuclear safety watchdog is facing and will have to deal with, its new head said on Thursday.France, the most nuclear-reliant nation in the world, will have to decide in the next few years whether to extend the lifespan of its 58 nuclear reactors to over 40 years, at a time it is trying to cut its reliance on the atom and an amendment during passage of the Bill to take powers to set a decarbonisation target range for 2030 in secondary legislation.
Reuters 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Turkey
Can the new Turkish-Russian nuclear plant be a model for safe energy, or will it be an environmental and proliferation risk?
Foreign Policy 21st Nov 2012 more »
Iran
Iran appears to be just days away from starting feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into four new cascades of centrifuges at its underground enrichment site at Fordow. Those cascades, of 174 centrifuges each, are being vacuum tested which is usually the last step before piping in the uranium gas. The impression given at the technical briefing was that these new cascades would almost certainly be producing 20%-enriched uranium, which is the main proliferation concern and the leading source of international tension over the Iranian programme.
Guardian 23rd Nov 2012 more »
Russia
Russian leaders have affirmed the strategic and economic importance of nuclear technology to the country, announcing that spending will rise and a major development program will be accelerated.
World Nuclear News 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Trident
Ministers are neglecting the threat to Britain’s nuclear deterrent of an independent Scotland by refusing to make contingency plans for a “yes” vote, MPs and peers have warned.
Telegraph 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Renewables
Today the Faroe Islands will demonstrate how the remote outpost may hold the answers to the challenges presented by intermittent energy renewable sources, with the unveiling of trailblazing smart grid technology. The country is to inaugurate a new “virtual power station”, which uses an advanced IT system to balance the grid by shifting supply and demand across the islands in matter of seconds.
Business Green 22nd Nov 2012 more »
Reports of turmoil in a futuristic plan to generate 15% of Europe’s energy from Saharan solar power have been stoutly denied by the chief executive of the Desertec initiative, Paul van Son. The Desertec alliance of companies intends to begin transmitting energy by underwater ‘interconnector’ cables from countries such as Morocco and Tunisia to Europe by 2015. But it has been hit by the withdrawal of two major investors, Siemens and Bosch in recent weeks, while the Spanish government has reportedly backed away from a deal to build solar plants in Morocco, citing the initiative’s complexity. Even so, van Son was upbeat when asked if the €400-billion project was in crisis.
Guardian 20th Nov 2012 more »
The rush to complete 10-MW+ solar photovoltaic projects before removal of feed-in tariff availability saw 981-MW added in September, according to data from federal grid regulator Bundesnetzagentur (BNA). Year-to-date German PV installations now stand at 6.2 GW, bringing the grand total to 31 GW. The country has a target of 52 GW, beyond which all new subsidies are to cease.
Platts 21st Nov 2012 more »
