Nukes vs Climate
Jonathon Porritt finds Mark Lynas’s latest pro-nuclear tome ‘gratifyingly short’ and reasonably open-minded. But Lynas falls into the trap of seeing nuclear technologies as fast developing, while renewables are stuck – when the reverse is the case! It was with something of a sinking heart that I picked up Nuclear 2.0, the latest piece of pro-nuclear advocacy from Mark Lynas. This stuff just makes me grumpy, particularly the banal repetition that one usually finds of half-truths about the history of nuclear power, and the crazed projections of how nuclear power is the answer to all our problems. It’s as if all the potential innovation on new nuclear design was available right now, whereas he writes about renewables as if they will be forever stuck right where they are today.
Ecologist 26th March 2014 read more »
Nuclear Security
David Lowry: At the biennial Global Nuclear Summit in The Hague this week ministers did not see their own policies as promoting nuclear proliferation. But proliferators they are, just as ministers in the predecessor Labour government were. It is part of the problem that underinformed ministers do not always recognise the impact of their policies. But they urgently need to.
Morning Star 26th March 2014 read more »
The problem with international nuclear non-proliferation efforts, and specifically efforts to persuade states to enhance the security of and to relinquish their stocks of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium, is that those likely to comply and to lead by example are most unlikely to include those about whom one might be most worried. So it may sound impressive to report that the number of countries with nuclear weapons-usable material has fallen from 39 to 25 since President Obama launched his nuclear security initiative in 2009. But the truth is that the leaders of 53 countries possessing such materials (Ireland does not) who gathered in The Hague over the past few days to strengthen controls will have had little reason to feel the world is a much safer place for their efforts.
Irish Times 27th March 2014 read more »
Prime Minister, David Cameron, made a statement in the House of Commons on Wednesday 26 March 2014 on the recent European Union Council meetings which took place on 20-21 March 2014 and the Nuclear Security Summit which took place on 24-25 March 2014.
UK Parliament 26th March 2014 read more »
Supply Chain
The UK Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, supported by the UK government, is helping develop potential suppliers for the next generation of UK nuclear power plants. The UK civil nuclear market may be too good, says Mike Tynan, Nuclear AMRC director: “There is certainly a challenge in the UK if three major projects move forward at around the same time. Between now and the mid-2020s, there could be schemes moving forward at Hinkley Point C, the vanguard project, and then there are potential projects at Anglesey (Horizon) and in West Cumbria (NuGen).”
Nuclear Engineering International 26th March 2014 read more »
Nuclear Subsidies – Wylfa
The Welsh Government has today announced the investment to ensure the region’s workforce is “up-skilled” to take on thousands of energy sector jobs on Anglesey. A £2.3m cash pot will pay to train the next generation of workers for Wylfa Newydd. The Welsh Government will today reveal the investment to ensure the region’s workforce is “up-skilled” to take on thousands of energy sector jobs on Anglesey, especially the planned nuclear power station at Wylfa.
Daily Post 27th March 2014 read more »
Chernobyl
It’s not just people, animals and trees that suffer from radiation at Chernobyl, writes Rachel Nuwer, but also decomposer fungi and microbes. And with the buildup of dead wood comes the risk of catastrophic fire – which could spread radiation far and wide.
Ecologist 24th March 2014 read more »
Thorium
Nuclear enthusiasts have been singing the praises of nuclear reactors that use thorium as their fuel instead of uranium. Jan Beránek analyses the claims – and finds that thorium is a mere distraction on the way to our renewable future.
Ecologist 26th March 2014 read more »
Nuclear History
Nuclear timeline. HCSS Nuclear Timeline. In preparation for the Nuclear Security Summit that will take place on 24-25 March 2014 in the Hague (the Netherlands), this timeline provides a comprehensive overview of key events in nuclear history. It traces the long legacy of nuclear security threats and policies and puts these developments in a broader context. Events covered span a wide range of fields, including scientific developments, nuclear power, (non-)proliferation efforts and safety and security issues.
Hague Centre for Strategic Studies 22nd March 2014 read more »
Utilities
The energy regulator has asked the competition watchdog to investigate Britain’s energy companies in an effort to restore trust in the industry after public uproar over rising fuel bills. Ofgem said it wanted the Competition and Markets Authority to decide “once and for all” about where the big six suppliers’ rises in prices and profits were due to lack of competition.
Guardian 27th March 2014 read more »
The big six energy suppliers face the prospect of being broken up when the regulator announces a shake-up of the industry today. A day after Britain’s second biggest gas and electricity supplier, SSE, announced an unconditional two-year price freeze, Ofgem will kick off a process that is likely to involve a full-scale competition investigation into the energy sector. This will probe whether British Gas, Scottish Power and the other four big-six providers should be broken up into completely separate retail and energy generation businesses. This would address persistent allegations that they are attempting to disguise the profit they make from supplying cash-strapped households by hiding some of it in the accounts of their generation operations. The big six have always strenuously denied any such activity.
Independent 27th March 2014 read more »
Ofgem has ordered an investigation into the UK energy market, in a bid to restore trust in an industry that critics say has lost the confidence of its customers. The regulator’s call on the competition authority for a probe comes with the big six energy suppliers being routinely accused of ripping off customers, earning excessive profits and squeezing out competition – claims that they reject.
FT 27th March 2014 read more »
Ever since Ed Miliband, the UK opposition leader, promised to freeze energy bills for 20 months at last autumn’s Labour conference, the government has veered between denouncing him as a conman and peddling quack remedies of its own. Several entertaining exchanges in the House of Commons have followed. But if Britain is to keep the lights on without incurring crippling costs, the country’s energy policy needs rather more substantial fuel. Most will therefore welcome the competition review that Ofgem, the energy regulator, is expected to announce today. This should be an opportunity for a detached assessment of the charges laid by politicians. Mr Miliband and others have after all failed to produce compelling evidence to back their claims of profiteering. The UK’s energy prices may have risen, but they remain among the lowest in Europe. Two revolutions are unfolding in the energy market. First, to meet its environmental obligations, the UK is seeking to build expensive renewable installations and nuclear plants, paid for out of higher bills. These commitments were popular when they were announced in the good times before the financial crisis. But in straitened times the cost has begun to chafe. Alongside this revolution in the means of production is one of economic planning. Since privatisation in 1990 the industry has been run on market principles. Price controls were abolished and politicians placed their faith in competition to keep prices low and the grid adequately supplied. Now the government is becoming the industry’s Gosplan. Whitehall decides which power stations are built, sets their prices and guarantees financing for their construction.
FT 26th March 2014 read more »
Energy companies may be making excess profits and ripping off loyal customers, regulator Ofgem said on Thursday as it called for a full Competition and Markets Authority investigation that could result in the break-up of the Big Six. Ofgem said that energy retail profits of Britain’s six largest energy suppliers had soared from £233m in 2009 to £1.1bn in 2012 “with no clear evidence of suppliers becoming more efficient in reducing their own costs”.
Telegraph 27th March 2014 read more »
Millions of households may be paying too much for their energy, regulator Ofgem is expected to say on Thursday. The energy sector is likely to be referred to the top competition watchdog to face an investigation into allegations of profiteering. The Big Six companies have a case to answer over the prices they charge, in particular for customers they inherited from before privatisation, the regulator is likely to say in a “state of the market” report.
Telegraph 26th March 2014 read more »
The Big Six energy suppliers face a full-scale competition investigation after three regulators decided it was time, “once and for all”, to determine whether consumers were being ripped off.
Times 26th March 2014 read more »
Energy Supplies
The boss of Britain’s biggest energy company has warned households they face an “increasing risk” of blackouts because of an investigation into whether the industry is ripping off consumers. Sam Laidlaw, Centrica chief executive, said it would now have less “enthusiasm” for investing in new power plants as an “inevitable consequence” of regulator Ofgem’s decision to call for a full Competition and Markets Authority probe into the sector.
Telegraph 27th March 2014 read more »
France
Despite the EPR setbacks (the construction of two European Pressurised Reactors behind schedule), France’s experience in the nuclear sector remains an important asset as the electricity needs of developing countries soar. According to the main actors of the French nuclear sector, this experience will only matter if France continues to invest in its domestic nuclear sector. “France is the number one exporter of nuclear equipment, with almost €6 billion per year. Two thirds of Areva’s turnover is thanks to exports and two thirds of our employers are in France, which shows the importance of exports for the future of the French nuclear industry. For us the Flamanville nuclear plant is a showcase for exports,” explains David Pauvert, Avreva’s commercial director for Europe, the Middle-East and Africa.
Euractiv 27th March 2014 read more »
US – Radwaste
Bob Alvarez: “It’s a surprise when there are no surprises,” a cleanup worker told me a few years ago at the Hanford site in Washington state, once the world’s largest producer of plutonium for nuclear weapons and now home to a massive effort to stop leaking nuclear waste tanks from poisoning the Columbia River. This maxim can hold painfully true for a variety of events assigned an extremely small chance of happening. On February 4, 2014, assumptions of very low probability crumbled at the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico, when a fire in a large salt truck raged for hours, deep underground.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 23rd March 2014 read more »
When a radioactive waste truck caught on fire inside the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant on February 5, it seemed like it was probably an isolated incident, not the beginning of a saga that could affect U.S. radioactive waste policy permanently and even radwaste policy internationally. But the truck fire was followed by a still-unexplained Valentine’s Day offsite radiation release–including plutonium. That was then followed by a second, for a time unrevealed, and also still-unexplained, radiation release on March 11, the third anniversary of the onset of the Fukushima disaster. And it became clear that the WIPP saga will have long-term ramifications, not only for the nuclear weapons radwaste WIPP was built to handle, but also for the far larger and much more radioactive inventory of commercial high-level nuclear waste.
Green World 26th March 2014 read more »
Belgium
The Doel-3 and Tihange-2 nuclear reactor units in Belgium were shut down today after tests related to the reactor pressure vessels (RPVs) showed “unexpected results”, Electrabel, a subsidiary of French energy company GDF Suez and operator of the stations, said. Tests carried out at Belgium’s nuclear research reactor BR-2 in Mol consisted of accelerated irradiation of a test block with the same composition and properties as the Doel-3 and Tihange-2 RPVs. According to Electrabel, the tests produced “unexpected results” regarding the mechanical resistance of the material. Electrabel said it decided to stop operations at both units today as a precaution and to run further tests. The results of the tests are expected on 15 June 2014 and the reactors will not be restarted before that, Electrabel said.
NucNet 26th March 2014 read more »
Japan – Fukushima
A former worker at Fukushima’s stricken nuclear power plant is to publish a manga comic book offering vivid insight into everyday life inside its walls. A former Fukushima power plant worker who left his job due to radiation contamination has written a comic book detailing life behind the scenes at the controversial nuclear plant. The Japanese manga-style book offers a rare glimpse into the day-to-day life of the legions of nuclear power plant workers who work around the clock at one of the world’s most dangerous plants.
Telegraph 26th March 2014 read more »
Saudi Arabia
The stand-off between the Sunni kingdom and Shia Iran has intensified over the past three years, as the two regional heavyweights backed opposite sides in the Syrian war. To Saudi Arabia’s chagrin, moreover, Iran’s image in the world has improved with the election of Hassan Rouhani. The centrist president favours engagement with the west and has embarked on negotiations with world powers that are designed to curb Iran’s nuclear programme and ensure it remains peaceful. The prospect of a resolution of the nuclear dispute – bolstered by the Rouhani government’s signing of an interim nuclear agreement in November – has sparked a profound rift in Saudi-US relations. The growing production of shale gas in the US, along with its reduced dependence on Gulf oil, has deepened Saudi fear that the era of a special relationship with the US – one based on an exchange of oil for security – was nearing an end.
FT 26th March 2014 read more »
Nuclear Weapons
UK could be left unable to combat minor threats, when nuclear response would be unrealistic, says cross-party committee. Cuts in the armed forces are in danger of reaching a point where Britain could only threaten a potential aggressor with nuclear weapons and that would simply not be credible, a cross-party committee of senior MPs has warned.
Guardian 27th March 2014 read more »
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has welcomed a report by the House of Commons Defence Committee which highlights the decreasing salience of nuclear weapons in UK defence policy. The report, Deterrence in the twenty-first century, states: ‘It is possible to foresee an environment in which the core role of nuclear deterrence – to protect a state from attack – is achieved by the deployment of advanced conventional weapons… This will be a matter which our successor Committee may wish to examine further.’
CND 27th March 2014 read more »
Nuclear Convoy
An armed convoy carrying deadly nuclear warheads has been travelling through Cumbernauld via the M80, in a move that has sparked a bitter protest at North Lanarkshire Council which is supposed to be a nuclear-free authority. In what is being seen as a throwback to times past, the missiles were conveyed through the town as part of a test exercise by the Ministry of Defence. They were being taken from Aldermaston to Coulport. Although the test passed without incident, Cumbernauld Councillor Paddy Hogg has flagged up safety fears about their carriage through the town, after it’s claimed that this happens several times a year, mainly to replenish stocks at the Clydeside base.
Cumbernauld News 26th March 2014 read more »
Microgeneration
The official launch of the Sustainable Energy Association took place at the House of Commons last night, with Secretary of State Ed Davey in attendance. The change from its former Micropower Council identity was announced at a reception in late 2013, the result of a year-long process of discussions between council officers and members. SEA chief executive Dave Sowden explained the association’s change of name as more accurately reflecting its work and its aims for the future. The organisation has worked closely with government and the Department of Energy and Climate Change in particular. Mr Sowden told Mr Davey that while the two sides did not always agree, there had been a number of positive developments from their meetings and he complimented DECC on its successes, including gaining Treasury support for the Renewable Heat Incentive. The Department of Communities and Local Government was criticised by Mr Sowden for a number of decisions it had made, particularly relating to the Building Regulations and lack of commitment to delivering zero carbon homes.
H&V News 25th March 2014 read more »
Renewables – offshore wind
Major energy firm SSE is pulling back plans, and “significantly narrowing” its focus, on offshore wind development. The decision is part of the company’s plan to streamline its operations to offset the cost of freezing its domestic gas and electricity prices for two years, which it also announced today. As part of its streamlining programme, SSE will scale back plans for four offshore wind developments and cut 500 jobs. At present, the projects represent potentially up to 4,970MW of offshore wind farm capacity for SSE.
Edie 26th March 2014 read more »
SSE said that following a strategic review of its offshore wind development portfolio it had decided to proceed with the planned 750MW Beatrice offshore wind project, in which it holds a 75 per cent stake alongside Repsol Nuevas Energias UK. The company said that as the project was still in the running for early financial support through the government’s Final Investment Decision (FID) mechanism, it would “continue to invest in the Beatrice offshore wind farm… during the rest of this calendar year, delivering the engineering and procurement activities required to ensure the project’s continued progress towards a Final Investment Decision”. However, the three remaining projects in SSE’s portfolio have not proven so lucky, with the company announcing it plans to offload its stakes or halt investment in the developments. The company said it was now looking to offload its 50 per cent stake in the 340MW Galloper project, which it holds alongside RWE Innogy. Similarly, the company said that while it would continue to support development work for the two Round 3 offshore wind projects it holds stakes in – the 3.5GW Sea Green zone and 7.2GW Forewind zone – it would not extend its commitments to the projects “until it has achieved sufficient confidence in the viability of the wider offshore wind sector”. The same decision has been taken with regards to the 690MW Islay project off the coast of Islay, with SSE committing to continuing to work on development alongside its partners while warning that it will not be investing further in the project “in the foreseeable future”.
Business Green 26th March 2014 read more »
Renewable Heat
Using renewable heat in our homes means cheaper fuel bills, less CO2 and a boost for the economy – it’s a ‘win, win, win’. So will the Renewable Heat Incentive kickstart the market? The technology already exists and is widely used in Europe. Biomass boilers, for instance, use wood-based fuels, such as pellets made from compressed sawdust, to provide heat for homes in much the same way as conventional gas-powered boilers. This fuel is sourced from sustainably managed forests and its use is offset by the planting of more trees. Ground-source heat pumps are also an option – they absorb heat from the ground into a fluid-filled pipe buried underground, which is then used to heat water in the home. Another technology, air pumps, uses a similar system to extract heat from the air, much like a fridge working in reverse. Both pumps require a small amount of power to operate, but the heat they extract from the environment is constantly being renewed naturally. Local authorities could play a key role in creating a mass market, suggested Andrew Cooper, a Green party councillor for Kirklees. As councils have large amounts of housing stock, they could move the renewable heat market forward quickly if they invested in the technology. Social housing could “get the market moving for the private sector”, he said, but political leadership was required to overcome the risk-averse nature of local authorities. Alan Simpson, adviser to Friends of the Earth and a former MP, said the UK had to look at emulating the German model for financing and installing these technologies. “Success in Germany is driven around prompt delivery, de-complicating the process and de-risking it,” he said. The Germans are driving a growing economy on reduced energy consumption, but the delivery vehicles are de-centralised, he said.
Guardian 27th March 2014 read more »
Renewable Costs
Investment banking giant Citigroup has hailed the start of the “age of renewables” in the United States, the world’s biggest electricity market, saying that solar and wind energy are getting competitive with natural gas peaking and baseload plants – even in the US where gas prices are said to be low. In a major new analysis released this week, Citi says the big decision makers within the US power industry are focused on securing low cost power, fuel diversity and stable cash flows, and this is drawing them increasingly to the “economics” of solar and wind, and how they compare with other technologies.
Renew Economy 27th March 2014 read more »
Fossil Fuels
Commenting on EU-U.S. trade negotiations, Magda Stoczkiewicz, director of Friends of the Earth Europe said: “EU and U.S. leaders may be trading away environmental and health safeguards for the sake of big business and short-sighted interests. The trade talks could even hamper the ability of governments to protect their citizens against the risks of shale gas, GM crops and dangerous food and chemicals.”Energy Energy will also be one of today’s topics. The two groups are calling on President Obama to block Keystone XL, and for President Barroso to implement the EU’s Fuel Quality Directive with a specific value for tar sands — to prevent tar sands from flooding the U.S. and European markets. Tar sands, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels in commercial production, would undermine European climate policies on transport fuels. Concerns remain that the FQD is being weakened by the trade talks — its implementation has already been delayed and it has disappeared from the EU’s future climate plans. “The fossil fuel industry and its shills are willing to exploit any crisis and go to any lengths in their effort to extract more dirty fuels and dismantle critical climate policies,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth U.S. “Rather than promoting dirty fossil fuels like tar sands and fracked natural gas, Obama and Barroso should be doing everything they can to keep these fuels in the ground and help avert climate catastrophe.”
Friends of the Earth 26th March 2014 read more »
The crisis in Ukraine has highlighted the importance of energy independence and shows new technologies like shale gas fracking should be top of Europe’s agenda, Prime Minister David Cameron has said. Speaking at a nuclear security summit yesterday, Cameron called the escalating tensions in Crimea a “wake-up call” for countries reliant on Russian oil and gas, which meets up a third of EU demand.
Business Green 26th March 2014 read more »
