Hinkley
ANOTHER investigation into the controversial Hinkley C deal has begun. Just two weeks ago, the European Commission approved plans for the £16bn nuclear power plant. They had been investigating whether the subsidy deal between energy company EDF and the Government constituted as illegal State aid. While the project was approved, the National Audit Office has now begun investigating the deal to make sure the subsidy price of £92 a megawatt hour represented value for money. The Stop Hinkley Campaign welcomed the news about the investigation. Spokesperson Allan Jeffery said: “This is an extraordinarily bad deal, locking consumers into high prices until almost 2060. “Worse still, it will use up most of the money available to subsidise non-fossil fuel energy, leaving almost nothing available for renewables at a time when their costs are plummeting. “The European Commission’s ill-thought through decision has turned UK Energy Policy into even more of a dog’s breakfast than it was to begin with. “Let’s hope the National Audit Office can inject some sanity into the situation.”
Somerset County Gazette 24th Oct 2014 read more »
Somerset Larder, a group of more than 20 local food and drink businesses, has been awarded the interim catering contract for Hinkley Point C, EDF Energy’s controversial nuclear project. Somerset Larder will begin the delivering the contract immediately until spring 2016 when the full contract for catering services will be awarded.
Blackmore Vale Magazine 24th Oct 2014 read more »
Nuclear Reactors
The government is funding a new early warning system to stop swarms of jellyfish shutting down Britain’s nuclear power plants. The swarms, technically known as blooms, can block filters on pipes which suck water out of the sea to cool reactors, potentially forcing the whole plant to shut down. Even minor disruptions to water flow can cut electrical output. Jellyfish have already forced closures at Scotland’s Torness power plant and experts fear other UK installations could be affected. More jellyfish are now being seen around the UK due to changes in sea temperature and overfishing of predators.
Daily Mail 26th Oct 2014 read more »
BRITAIN’S resurgent atomic energy industry faces a deadly new threat: jellyfish. Scientists have warned that swarms — or blooms — of the marine animals are becoming increasingly common around Britain’s coasts — to the point where they are threatening to clog the cooling systems of nuclear power stations. Three years ago a massive swarm clogged the intakes of Torness nuclear power station in East Lothian, forcing both reactors to shut down to avoid a meltdown. Now with work starting on the first of a new generation of nuclear power stations at Hinkley Point in Somerset, Vince Cable, the business secretary, is funding the development of a “jellymonitor” early warning system, where sea-based detectors will spot blooms and alert power station staff.
Times 26th Oct 2014 read more »
Sellafield
AN ANTI-nuclear comic ‘novel’ sent to Cumbrian councillors as an ebook could now be studied by some of Britain’s top academics. HOT, written and illustrated by Radiation Free Lakeland campaigner Marianne Birkby, has been “claimed” for a number of university and national libraries under a long-established bibliographic law.
Westmorland Gazette 25th Oct 2014 read more »
Nuclear Safety
Letter Tor Justad: Two further incidents can be added to the concerns raised about safety within the nuclear industry (Nuclear incidents need to be taken more seriously, Letters, October 19). The first was the fire on board the vessel MV Parida carrying nuclear waste from Scrabster to Antwerp on October 7, 20 miles north-west of Wick. The vessel broke down and was drifting towards the Beatrice A Platform, from which 52 personnel had to be evacuated. The other incident involved a sodium fire at Dounreay, a reminder that risk exists as much in decommissioning work as in an operating nuclear plant. The safest way to deal with nuclear waste is to store it under close monitoring and security on the sites where it is produced, which is Scottish Government policy. This would also increase employment in Caithness as Dounreay is closed down.
Sunday Herald 26th Oct 2014 read more »
Energy Costs
The Mail on Sunday today exposes how a ‘Green Blob’ financed by a shadowy group of hugely wealthy foreign donors is driving Britain towards economically ruinous eco targets. The phrase the ‘Green Blob’ was coined by former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson after he was sacked from the Cabinet in July. He was referring to a network of pro-green lobbyists working at every level of the British Establishment, who have helped shape the eco policies sending household energy bills soaring. But investigations by this newspaper reveal the Blob is not just an abstract concept. We have found that innocuous-sounding bodies such as the Dutch National Postcode Lottery, the American William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Swiss Oak Foundation are channelling tens of millions of pounds each year to climate change lobbyists in Britain, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. According to leading energy analyst Peter Atherton of Liberum Capital, current UK energy policies shaped by the Blob will cost between £360 billion and £400 billion to implement by 2030. He said this will see bills rise by at least a third in real terms – on top of the increases already seen over the past ten years.
Daily Mail 26th Oct 2014 read more »
Politics
These three all live in the urban constituency of Bristol West – currently held by the Liberal Democrats and coveted by Labour, but now talked up by the Greens as a possible win next May. In this year’s local elections, the Greens got the most votes within the seat, finishing two percentage points ahead of Labour, and suggesting that Bristol West could now be a three-way marginal. Now, five out of six of Bristol’s Green city councillors represent wards in the constituency, and its educated, student-heavy demographics suggest that if another Green candidate for Westminster is to match the success of Caroline Lucas in Brighton – where the Greens also run the city council – it may well happen here. The party already has other pockets of support and activism in a diverse array of places, from Liverpool and Lancaster to Solihull and Oxford. But it now claims to be in the midst of what its PR blurb calls “the Green surge”. Membership is up 57% since January to 22,000. In polling released this week by the Tory grandee Michael Ashcroft, the Greens were on 8%, overtaking the Lib Dems for the first time in a decade; in September, an Ipsos/Mori survey suggested that 43% of people “might vote” for the party. When the news broke of the Greens’ exclusion from plans for next year’s TV debates, the next 36 hours saw 150,000 people put their names to a protest petition on change.org.
Guardian 25th Oct 2014 read more »
Energy Supply
ED DAVEY, the energy secretary, has commissioned a “blackout Britain” report, to assess the growing risk of significant power cuts and how they might undermine the economy. The study, by the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE), was prompted by growing concern in the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) that the nation could face serious cuts from this winter because of power station closures and fears over the reliability of energy from wind turbines. Professor John Loughhead, who oversaw the report as chairman of the RAE’s engineering policy committee, said any such blackouts could have a “catastrophic effect”, far greater than those experienced 40 years ago when the miners’ strikes led to rolling nationwide power cuts. Speaking on Tuesday, the day before he took office as the new chief scientist at the department, Loughhead said: “Since then we have become much more dependent on reliable power supplies.
Times 26th Oct 2014 read more »
Faslane
There has been a sharp rise in the number of “chilling” safety blunders at the nuclear bomb and submarine bases on the Clyde, according to internal reports from the Ministry of Defence (MoD). In the last five years there have been 316 “nuclear safety events”, 2044 fire alarm incidents and 71 fires at the Royal Navy’s controversial facilities at Faslane and Coulport near Helensburgh. There have also been more than 3000 “near miss” industrial accidents, a positive test for illegal drugs and a series of difficulties with wild animals. The revelations have been described as “chilling” by Angus Robertson MP, the Scottish National Party’s leader at Westminster and its defence spokesman. He is planning to raise them urgently in the House of Commons, and is demanding action from the MoD. The new figures showed that nuclear safety breaches at the Clyde bases were “widespread”, he said. “Wherever nuclear weapons are concerned, safety must be paramount. We need to know exactly what is being done to address these breaches and tighten procedures.”
Sunday Herald 25th Oct 2014 read more »
The Ministry of Defence has been reprimanded by Government safety regulators for exposing workers to radiation at the Faslane nuclear submarine base near Helensburgh. The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and the MoD’s internal Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator (DNSR) took enforcement action in April 2013 over the incident, which happened in August 2012. A group of workers carried out maintenance in a tank next to a live submarine reactor at Faslane without the proper radiation controls in place. They were irradiated, though the doses were said to be low. “ONR raised a concern due to the failure to adequately control the work and prevent it taking place when the reactor was operational,” said an ONR report on safety at Faslane. “This resulted in a failure to properly designate the area and to properly assess the risks to workers … This resulted in lack of ability to demonstrate that any doses received by the workers were as low as reasonably practicable.”
Sunday Herald 25th Oct 2014 read more »
Trident
The UK is poised to quietly ratify a defence treaty that critics say will see it become more dependent on US expertise for its multi-billion pound Trident nuclear weapons programme, without the agreement being scrutinised by MPs. Nuclear proliferation experts have expressed concern that the US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement, laid before parliament earlier this month and due to be extended for a further 10 years, may be adopted without debate. Under revised terms, existing cooperation on the design of the UK’s nuclear warheads will be extended to allow similar collaboration on the nuclear reactors that power the new fleet of submarines carrying the UK’s Trident ballistic missiles. The future of Trident is due to be decided in 2016. All three main political parties back the programme. Dr Nick Ritchie, a lecturer in international security at the University of York, said the sharing of nuclear weapons technology between the UK and the US was a form of “legalised proliferation” that raised questions about the relationship between the allies.
Observer 25th Oct 2014 read more »
CHP
Christoper Booker: more than half of the energy we use to make electricity is wasted. When the BBC website last week reported the EU’s latest wholly unrealisable plan to achieve a 40 per cent cut in our CO₂ emissions within 16 years – Ed Davey, who is interviewed in today’s paper, actually wanted 50 per cent – it was inevitably illustrated with one of those pictures of cooling towers. They were belching what readers might imagine were clouds of smoke and nasty, “polluting” CO₂. But in reality, what emerges from those cooling towers is steam, given off by heat from the gas that drives the turbines – and all that colossal amount of heat literally goes up the chimney. I heard no more startling fact last week than the finding of a new study, to be published next month, showing that the heat we waste in this way is “very significantly” more than all the heat we get from the gas used to warm Britain’s 25 million homes. So why don’t we save billions of pounds a year by following the example of the countries that use that heat to warm buildings? In Denmark nearly half of its buildings are kept warm by “combined heat and power”, or CHP, piping heat from power stations to whole districts of towns and cities.
Telegraph 25th Oct 2014 read more »
Renewables – offshore wind
A FACTORY for wind-turbine parts opened to great fanfare by the former energy secretary Chris Huhne has gone bust through lack of orders. TAG Energy Solutions, a £20m plant at Billingham on Teesside, last week appointed Duff & Phelps as administrator after obtaining just one big contract in three years. TAG laid off its last 74 workers last month. Duff & Phelps has launched a search for a buyer. The company’s demise is the latest sign of trouble in the offshore wind industry, a central plank of the government’s £120bn low-carbon energy overhaul. The TAG plant, which made foundations for offshore turbines, was held up as an example of the potential for new technologies to replace “smokestack” industries such as steel and coal mining, especially in northern England. At its opening in September 2011, Huhne said: “The creation of this facility demonstrates TAG Energy’s foresight in planning an effective UK supply chain for offshore renewables.”
Times 26th Oct 2014 read more »
Climate
The world is on the brink of enlisting market forces in the fight against climate change on a truly global scale for the first time, United Nations officials have claimed.
Independent 26th Oct 2014 read more »
The race to stabilise the Earth’s climate was always going to be long, slow one. So slow and so difficult that there will always be a temptation to think that it is all too complicated, that immediate problems are more pressing or that China, the United States and multinational corporations will never agree to the radical changes needed. Perhaps we should just give up and resign ourselves to trying to adapt as best we can to climate change once it starts to get serious. That is the sort of fatalism that lies behind the backlash against the environmental ambitions set out by the Government in its early days. David Cameron seemed sincere in his determination to lead a greener Conservative Party when he became Prime Minister but he has been on the defensive since. From the “greenest government eve r” to George Osborne’s “slowest ship in the convoy” moment – his promise that Britain would cut carbon emissions “no slower but also no faster” than other EU countries – the Conservatives now seem to be in headlong retreat. As we reported last week, Eric Pickles, the Local Government Secretary, has blocked 19 planning applications for onshore wind farms in the past year, prompting Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat Energy and Climate Change Secretary, to warn him against “abusing ministerial power”. Mr Pickles has gone against not just the Government’s green promises but also its promise to liberalise planning law and its promise to respect local decision-making, which in many of these cases was in favour of wind farms. By chance, wind generation briefly provided 20 per cent of the UK’s electricity at one point last week. Which is one answer to the kind of fatalism that says it would all be too difficult to make the changes needed to move to a low-carbon economy.
Independent 26th Oct 2014 read more »
Fossil Fuels
Colombian campaigners travel to Scotland to urge investors and politicians to boycott fuel for nations’ power stations ‘stained by blood’.
Herald 26th Oct 2014 read more »
