Hinkley
Britain’s new nuclear programme is poised to take a major step forward next week with tenders due in for the earthworks contract for the first new plant planned at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Five contractors are believed to be in the running for the £30M deal. They include a Balfour Beatty/Vinci joint venture, a Bam Nuttall/Kier/URS joint venture, a Laing O’Rourke/Ferrovial joint venture. Carillion and Sir Robert McAlpine are also bidding independently.
New Civil Engineer 25th Feb 2010 more >>
NATIONAL Grid has been warned it has not provided enough information about proposals for a huge power line planned for North Somerset and Somerset. Representatives of the energy giant have been advised by the Government’s Infrastructure Planning Committee (IPC) that ‘substantially more work needs to be done to increase the level of understanding in the respective local communities’. This includes providing more nformation on the environmental, cost and technical implications of undergrounding the line or putting it under the sea. The IPC has advised that National Grid should resolve this issue before beginning a second stage of consultation.
Weston and Somerset Mercury 25th Feb 2010 more >>
Bradwell
A NEW nuclear power station at Bradwell would be a mistake, Colchester Council has told the Government. Councillors have spent months looking at the question of Bradwell’s suitability for another nuclear plant at a series of public hearings. Their report, sent to Whitehall as part of a national consultation which ended on Monday, says ministers should look elsewhere.
Chelmsford Weekly News 24th Feb 2010 more >>
Dungeness
Two local councils in Kent are angry that a new nuclear station at Dungeness has been ruled out. Meanwhile, the Law Society warns the government legal action over its new national policy statements is likely.
ENDS February 2010 more >>
Sizewell
Plans for a store to house spent fuel at Sizewell B nuclear power station have gone to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) for consent. The application follows a six-week public consultation last year. Spent fuel from the reactor is currently stored in a fuel storage pond which will provide capacity until 2015. If the application is approved, the new dry fuel store, which British Energy says is tried and tested technology, will provide capacity from 2015.
BBC 25th Feb 2010 more >>
New Nukes
Unit4 Collaboration Software has said that its project collaboration system BC 5.3 is being implemented by EDF Energy across its nuclear new build program. The system, which is being used for both internal and external collaboration, is providing a central hub for information management, tracking company processes in order to meet regulatory requirements. EDF Energy’s nuclear new build program will spearhead the development of four new EPR pressurised water reactors in the UK, providing reliable low-carbon electricity. This infrastructure project is expected to generate considerable commercial opportunities for the UK construction sector.
Energy Business Review 25th Feb 2010 more >>
Consultations
Greenpeace submissions to NPS and Justification Consultations available.
Greenpeace 25th February 2010 more >>
Radioactive Waste
BURYING highly radioactive waste underground in Copeland to solve one of the nation’s biggest problems is not a done deal. Copeland Borough Council leader, councillor Elaine Woodburn, told a meeting there had been no discussion with the government for the borough to accept a repository.
NW Evening Mail 25th Feb 2010 more >>
Proliferation
BETWEEN 1992 and 2007, according to Ian Hutcheon of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California, 17kg of highly enriched uranium was seized from smugglers around the world, along with 400 grams of plutonium. In neither case is that enough for a proper atom bomb, but it is still worrying. Presumably, more is out there. Even if it is not, the material that has been found could have been used to make a “radiological” weapon, by blowing it up and scattering it around a city using conventional explosives. Dr Hutcheon is one of those charged with analysing this captured material, to discover how dangerous it really is and where it came from and thus whether it has been stolen from legitimate nuclear projects or made on the sly.
Economist 25th Feb 2010 more >>
Energy Prices
Roger Carr, Centrica chairman and until recently head of Cadbury, cautioned that a combination of higher wholesale energy prices this year and the huge investment needed to ensure security of supply and meet environmental targets meant the group was in a “very different commodity price environment.”
Telegraph 26th Feb 2010 more >>
Japan
The Monju prototype fast reactor (FBR) in Japan has completed a government-mandated procedure to ensure the reactor is safe to restart following a sodium coolant leak which forced it out of action almost 15 years ago. It could restart as early as next month.
Nuclear N Former 23rd Feb 2010 more >>
US
US SENATORS have voted against renewing operations at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant – the first such move in 20 years. The Vermont Senate voted 26-4 against allowing the Public Service Board to consider granting the plant another 20 years of operation beyond 2012. The 38 year-old 620 MW plant has been mired in controversy after a cooling tower collapsed in 2007 and more recently radioactive tritium was found leaking from the plant. The cause was further damaged when officials from the operating company Entergy testified, inaccurately, that there were no buried pipes from which tritium could leak.
The Chemical Engineer 25th Feb 2010 more >>
Amid the rural homes and thick greenery of Long Island’s North Shore is the biggest testament to the difficulties of building nuclear power plants in the US. It is the Shoreham nuclear power plant – a building from which no steam rises and no hum is heard. Completed in 1984, the $5.3bn ( 3.7bn, £3.3bn) plant could not overcome public resistance and obtain an operating licence. It has lain idle ever since. That resistance was echoed in the Vermont Senate on Wednesday when it voted to close an Entergy Corp nuclear power plant 140 miles from Boston when its licence expires in 2012, citing a radioactive leak. If that vote is not overturned, Vermont will be the first state in more than 20 years to shut down a nuclear plant; California took such action in 1989.
FT 26th Feb 2010 more >>
Iran
SURELY it is clear by now, many people feel, that Iran would rather go on enriching uranium than talk to America or anyone else about its suspect nuclear activities. If efforts to tempt it round have failed, could a tight economic squeeze lead the regime to think again about the costs of its defiance?
Economist 25th Feb 2010 more >>
Nuclear Weapons
Letter from Kate Hudson: Your editorial supporting the withdrawal of obsolete US nuclear weapons from Europe is spot on. They are the remnants of an illegal cold war policy of “nuclear weapons sharing” which should have been swept away a generation ago.
Guardian 26th Feb 2010 more >>
Submarines
Letter: At last a national newspaper has pointed out the reality that the nuclear submarine base “is in the middle of Plymouth” not “Devonport near Plymouth”. Devonport dockyard, with the nuclear submarine base, is 25 metres from residential areas of Plymouth, a city with a population of over 250,000, an expanding university, commercial shipping, a continental ferry port and numerous yachting marinas. As you report, there are eight redundant nuclear submarines at the base, with a proposal to send another 27 to Devonport naval base on the River Tamar. The River Tamar is designated an area of outstanding natural beauty.
Guardian 26th Feb 2010 more >>
Renewables
Local councils will be allowed to start generating and selling electricity back to the grid, in legislation being planned to bring about a “local energy revolution”. Ed Miliband, the climate change secretary, intends to help councils to become energy providers, individually or jointly, by setting up renewable energy companies. The plan is the latest attempt to shake up the energy provision and encourage sustainable sources. Councils are responsible for some 10% of UK carbon emissions and Miliband thinks they need incentives to move to lower carbon energy.
Guardian 26th Feb 2010 more >>
Moves to create a green manufacturing hub in Britain were given a major boost today when one of the world’s leading wind turbine manufacturers unveiled plans to spend £100m building a new factory in the north-east. The proposal by Japan’s Mitsubishi, which will create hundreds of clean-tech jobs, came as Siemens of Germany bought a stake in Marine Current Turbines, a UK-based tidal energy firm. And a Spanish-owned group, FCC, said it planned to spend another £100m building wind turbines on some of the dozens of waste recycling plants it controlled in Britain through a local subsidiary. Lord Mandelson said the Mitsubishi investment, coming on top of a similar recent investment by Clipper Windpower of the US, gave the UK a real opportunity to become a world leader in the sector.
Guardian 26th Feb 2010 more >>
Independent 26th Feb 2010 more >>
Telegraph 26th Feb 2010 more >>
Government plans to generate one third of Britain’s electricity from giant offshore wind parks by 2020 could be scrapped because of the vast costs involved, according to the head of Britain’s biggest utility company, as well as a key investor. Sam Laidlaw, chief executive of Centrica, the owner of British Gas, said it was unclear whether the scheme to build an estimated 10,000 wind turbines across swaths of the North and Irish seas would ever go ahead. He said that Centrica, which was awarded one of the nine so-called Round Three development zones last month, would proceed only “if the economic conditions are right”, citing high costs for turbines and other equipment as well as limited government financial support.
Times 26th Feb 2010 more >>
Climate
A new report says that the projected population increase of nine million by 2031 and an increase in the number of single-person households would result in unprecedented demand for land for development and put pressure on natural resources such as water. By 2050, hotter, drier summers could reduce river flows by 80 per cent. The report, compiled by 300 scientists, economists and planners, includes three scenarios to “stimulate thought” and “highlight difficult policy dilemmas that government and other actors may need to consider in the future”.
Times 26th Feb 2010 more >>
