Nuclear Subsidies
Shadow energy chief Caroline Flint rules out reworking controversial £16bn deal for building Hinkley Point C plant. Labour will not renegotiate the contract with the French-owned EDF Energy that will deliver Britain’s first new nuclear power station in a generation despite concerns over the price paid for the electricity it will produce, the shadow energy secretary, Caroline Flint, has said. Flint said a future Labour government would not revisit the contract to build the £16bn Hinkley Point C power station in Somerset despite criticism over the so-called “strike price” for electricity produced at the plant. Asked on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show if Labour would revisit the deal, Flint said: “No. We’re supporting the contract because we believe in the long run that actually it’s important, we hope that actually this is the first of many new nuclear builds and actually as we go forward the cost will come down.
Guardian 23rd Feb 2014 read more »
Belfast Telegraph 23rd Feb 2014 read more »
Western Daily Press 24th Feb 2014 read more »
Western Morning News 23rd Feb 2014 read more »
Yorkshire Post 24th Feb 2014 read more »
In a remarkable piece of double-think Caroline Flint, Labour’s energy spokesperson, has declared that nuclear power in the shape of Hinkley C is ‘cheaper than other forms of renewable energy’. This assertion flies in the face of the numbers. She rules out the possibility of a Labour Government renegotiating the Hinkley C contract. Hinkley C has a contract for 35 years, with loan guarantees for the bulk of the investment, at a strike price of £92.50. This price will be increased in line with the the CPI measure of inflation so that by the time Hinkley C starts generating (they say in 2023) the strike price will be well over £100 per MWh. Meanwhile onshore wind is actually being given a lower strike price than this from 2016 (£90 per MWh) with only a 15 year year contract and no loan guarantees. If Hinkley C didn’t receive the loan guarantees, the required strike price for nuclear would be guargantuan, and if wind power got the loan guarantees and a longer contract during which the strike price is payable for units of electricity generated then the amount of money required for the wind power would be a lot less than £90 per MWh. And in reality the cost of offshore wind would be competitive with nuclear as well if these other support measures are taken into account.
Dave Toke’s Blog 23rd Feb 2014 read more »
Nuclear Liability
The private consortium that will manage the decommissioning of the UK’s decaying Magnox nuclear reactors won’t be made to bear financial responsibility in the event of a radioactive incident. Taxpayers will have to pick up the tab instead. Private contractors will be indemnified by the government, despite concerns that exempting them from financial liability for nuclear incidents could prove a disaster for the taxpayer.
Russia Today 23rd Feb 2014 read more »
Energy Policy
Chancellor George Osborne, en route to a G20 finance ministers’ meeting in Australia, was outside his ‘knowledge comfort zone’ in advocating atomic energy as green, as he did in a speech in Hong Kong on 20 February. Nuclear energy is not green under any measure. To make its fuel, uranium – which does not exist in economically recoverable reserves in the UK – has to be mined, milled and enriched abroad, which is a highly energy-intensiveindustrial process, involving significant carbon emissions. (see: “Valuing the greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power: A critical survey,” Energy Policy, 36, 2008, by Professor Benjamin K. Sovacool, now Director of the Danish Centre for Energy Technology at Aarhus University, and Visiting Associate Professor at Vermont Law School, USA) Once the fuel has been irradiated in a reactor, it will have to be cooled, treated, conditioned, packaged and either long-term stored, or possibly emplaced in a deep repository. Each of these processes will involve not insignificant greenhouse gas emissions, not least the construction of giant underground vaults for any repository
Dr David Lowry 21st Feb 2014 read more »
Energy Costs
Vital industries will be forced to invest overseas unless George Osborne acts to check the UK’s spiralling energy costs, manufacturers have warned the chancellor. In its Budget submission, the EEF manufacturers’ organisation says energy prices and green taxes are worrying industry more than any other issue. The EEF wants the carbon price floor to be frozen and then reduced. It estimates the tax will account for almost 10 per cent of a large industrial user’s electricity bill by next May’s election. The tax, which was introduced last April and is passed through to consumer bills, is designed to push power generators to move from coal and gas to low-carbon energy sources such as nuclear and offshore wind. The EEF also calls for energy-intensive industries to be exempt from two other green levies, the renewables obligation and small-scale feed-in tariffs, which add 15 per cent to a steel company’s bill.
FT 23rd Feb 2014 read more »
Hinkley
AN earthquake which struck off the coast of Devon was not detected by seismic monitors at a nuclear power station around 50 miles away. The 4.1 quake occurred in the Bristol Channel around halfway between the North Devon Coast and South Wales at 1.21pm on Thursday, the British Geological Survey said.
North Devon Journal 23rd Feb 2014 read more »
Heysham
David Morris MP: Over the last few days there have been press reports that EDF are to extend the lives of its existing power stations which includes Heysham 1 and Heysham 2. I do welcome this news because it means that plans are in place for an exciting future of nuclear power here in Morecambe and Lunesdale which ultimately is good for our local economy and for those employed at Heysham. As I have said before, the land next to Heysham 1 and 2 can only be used for a new nuclear build and the Government has approved that land for a new nuclear build, this means Heysham 1 and 2 will continue to generate nuclear power and there is land available for a new nuclear build.
Lancaster Guardian 22nd Feb 2014 read more »
Plutonium
Following a review the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) decided that contrary to its previous statements a plan to convert the plutonium stockpile into electricity is among three “credible” approaches. That places GE Hitachi, the company pushing the so-called PRISM technology, alongside the government’s “preferred option” of building a plant to reuse plutonium as MOX fuel or in a CANDU MOX reactor – a significant U-turn from the NDA’s previous backing for the MOX plan and one the consortium is keen to capitalise on. The UK’s 140 tonne plutonium stockpile is one of the largest in the world and Powell argues it makes sense to view that plutonium as an energy asset. GE Hitachi wants to build a PRISM plant at Sellafield, home to around 100 tonnes of plutonium, which would turn the plutonium into a metal fuel and produce 622MW of clean electricity. According to GE-Hitachi, there are several advantages to this approach that go beyond the promise of low carbon energy generation. For example, no UK plants can currently use MOX fuel and with the PRISM technology a smaller amount of spent fuel will have to be stored in the ground and for a significantly shorter time – it will take 300 years to become less radioactive than a uranium mine, rather than the 300,000 years required for current nuclear waste. Over the next two years GE Hitachi will work with the NDA to try and convince the government that PRISM offers a good deal for the UK taxpayers who will be footing the bill. Powell says GE Hitachi is so convinced by its technology that it would have no qualms in entering a competition similar to that staged by the UK government to encourage commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects, which is assessing two project proposals in parallel to see which is the most economic.
Business Green 24th Feb 2014 read more »
Scotland
Colin McInnes: While the focus of the UK nuclear sector is on the new-build programme, recent results from EDF remind us that existing nuclear capacity is still a major player in the UK energy scene. Their nuclear fleet is now delivering more electrical energy than at any time during the past eight years, resulting in a boost for operating profits. And with a 10-year life-extension for Dungeness B due to be finalised later this year, nuclear investments from the 1970s and 80s will still be paying dividends for many years to come. Nowhere is the contribution of the UK nuclear fleet more apparent than in Scotland, with two reactors at Hunterson and Torness. Though a little-known fact, through these two compact plants, nuclear is the largest generator of electrical energy in Scotland by some margin, as it has been for many years. Indeed, the output from the single nuclear plant at Torness alone (9 TWh) comfortably exceeds the combined output of every wind, wave and solar generator in Scotland (8.3 TWh). This clearly illustrates the benefit of energy-dense fuels used in compact and efficient thermal plants, which can provide continuous output over a plant life of many decades.
Herald 24th Feb 2014 read more »
Germany
Nuclear industry experts say the estimated $46bn in reserves being set aside to assist in the decommissioning of German nuclear power plants will not be enough for the purpose. All Germany’s nuclear power plants are intended to be offline by 2022 but dismantling the plants and safely taking care of the radioactive waste involved is expected to cost far more than originally thought.
Power Engineering 18th Feb 2014 read more »
Iran
Iran and world powers will hold technical talks “next week” in Vienna ahead of a political meeting to negotiate a comprehensive nuclear deal, a top Iranian negotiator said Sunday.
Middle East Online 23rd Feb 2014 read more »
Renewables – Jobs
Letter: Repeated and ever-escalating claims are made by politicians and Scottish Renewables about the benefit to the Scottish economy including the thousands of Scottish jobs to come from renewables development. However, in a recent announce¬ment relating to the Neart Na Gaoithe offshore wind facility in the outer Firth of Forth, the Dublin-based developer, Mainstream Renewable Power, stated that it had appointed Siemens (Germany) as the turbine supplier and a consortium of Technip (France) and Marubeni (Japan) as suppliers of engineering, procurement, construction and installation. This announcement surely belies these claims – where are the local jobs and the benefit to the economy?
Herald 24th Feb 2014 read more »
Energy Efficiency
The Energy Saving Trust said customers were being duped into buying fridges, dishwashers and other household appliances that claim to be more energy efficient than they actually are. Even devices created solely to cut energy or water consumption – such as solar battery chargers, water-saving shower heads and plug-in adaptors that claim to cut appliances’ electricity consumption – have been criticised as expensive gimmicks that deliver negligible savings.
Telegraph 23rd Feb 2014 read more »
Fuel Poverty
Global warming will not reduce the number of winter deaths in Britain, according to research that challenges the claim frequently made by climate sceptics. Death rates peak every winter due to seasonal illnesses such as flu, but the latest findings suggest we are far less vulnerable to cold weather than in the past. The authors of the work claim that this undermines one of the arguments made by those opposed to climate change mitigation — that warmer temperatures will have health benefits in this country.
Times 24th Feb 2014 read more »
CCS
Plans to capture carbon dioxide emissions from a gas-fired power station in Aberdeenshire and bury them beneath the North Sea have won tens of millions of pounds in government funding. Ed Davey, the energy secretary, on Monday announces the funding for Royal Dutch Shell and SSE’s Peterhead carbon capture and storage (CCS) project, which would be the first commercial-scale gas-fired CCS plant.
Telegraph 24th Feb 2014 read more »
Sir Ian Wood publishes his report outlining what government and the industry can do to make the most of the North Sea’s significant remaining resources; on the other, the Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change are visiting Peterhead gas power station in Aberdeenshire to announce the next phase in a landmark project seeking to demonstrate the commercial viability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. CCS is the process of capturing carbon dioxide from man-made sources such as power stations and safely storing it deep underground to prevent it entering the atmosphere. If successful, the project – operated by Shell in collaboration with SSE – would be the world’s first full-scale CCS facility on a gas-fired power station, with the potential to capture 10m tonnes of CO2 over 10 years. Such a breakthrough would reinforce the UK’s leadership on responding to climate change and could act as a major boost to the CCS industry.
Telegraph 24th Feb 2014 read more »
Fossil Fuels
Ed Davey: In 1965, an exploration rig called Sea Gem made the first discovery of gas in the freezing cold waters of the British North Sea. Since then 42 billion barrels of oil and gas have been extracted from the UK continental shelf. Over the last decade production has declined as the oil and gas fields have been exploited. But it is estimated that around 20 billion barrels of oil and gas could yet be recovered, which could increase our production by one third. It is crucial that we, as a country, maximise recovery of North Sea reserves, just as we should explore the potential of onshore resources such as shale gas. Government’s Carbon Plan shows that over the next few decades, we will continue to need substantial quantities of oil and gas even as we decarbonise our economy, and this is consistent with meeting climate targets.
Telegraph 24th Feb 2014 read more »
DAVID Cameron is to promise a £200 billion oil boom over the next two decades if Scotland votes to remain part of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister, who will chair a meeting of the Cabinet in Aberdeen today, has accepted the main recommendations in an expert review of the industry commissioned by Westminster that could result in an extra four billion barrels of oil being recovered from the North Sea.
Scotsman 24th Feb 2014 read more »
HUNDREDS of billions of pounds worth of North Sea oil and gas revenues will be at risk if Scotland votes for independence, David Cameron will warn today as he brings the UK Cabinet north of the Border for only the third time in its history. At a meeting in Aberdeen, ministers will agree to fast-track proposals experts say could unlock up to £200 billion in reserves over the next 20 years. The Coalition Government will insist the windfall – which could see household energy bills drop – is only possible with the resources of a united UK. The plans will also help safeguard the 450,000 jobs in the oil and gas industry in Britain, Downing Street believes.
Herald 24th Feb 2014 read more »
An explosion at a fracking well in rural Pennsylvania is thought to have killed one oil worker and sparked an inferno that roared on for five days before it was extinguished. Yet as fire fighters sought to remove a charred crane over the weekend, the oil company Chevron was facing ridicule for its attempts to make amends to neighbouring residents in Bobtown by offering them a free pizza. The oil company, which reported profits of $21 billion (£13 billion) last year, distributed vouchers for a local pizza parlour to residents, entitling them to a free pizza and a two-litre bottle of fizzy drink.
Times 24th Feb 2014 read more »
