Sellafield
27th March 2015 marks the 21st anniversary of THORP chopping up its first batch of spent nuclear fuel. Opened in 1994, the £2.85bn plant had been dubbed by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) as the Jewel in Sellafields’s Crown and a World Beating Flagship Plant that would reprocess 7000 tonnes of fuel in its first ten years, win more overseas business and make a profit of £500M in that first decade . Now scheduled to close in 2018, the Jewel has been tarnished beyond recovery by a catalogue of accidents, poor performance and business loss. This briefing by Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment looks at what THORP has achieved.
No2Nuclear Power 27th March 2015 read more »
Sizewell
Fresh calls have been made for EDF Energy to “substantially alter” its proposals for transport and workers’ accommodation should Sizewell C nuclear power station be built.
East Anglian Daily Times 26th March 2015 read more »
Wylfa
The power station on Anglesey should start generating power again on April 4 after being ‘off-line’ for nearly a month. Reactor 1 had been taken ‘off-line’ on March 7 after the operator was unable to remove a fuel element during re-fuelling. Operators Magnox launched an investigation and said the site on Anglesey would be shutdown for four weeks. There had been concerns the plant, which is due to de-commission later this year, may not have generated again although Magnox had always said it “expected (Wylfa) to return to service”.
Daily Post 26th March 2015 read more »
Dounreay
A trial of bespoke equipment to lift off the top plate of the Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR) in Scotland in order to remove trapped fuel elements has been completed successfully, the Nuclear Decommissioing Authority (NDA) said on 19 March. The authority said decommissioning the 50-year-old experimental reactor is one of the most technically challenging projects in its estate.
World Nuclear News 25th March 2015 read more »
Utilities
SSE will react to the changing UK energy landscape by reshaping its asset portfolio in favour of its cleaner, more flexible generation capacity while mulling the future of 3GW of coal-fired capacity. SSE will bring its 735MW gas-fired power station at Keadby out of deep mothball, so that it has the option of returning it to service, it said. Although generator profits have been squeezed in recent years gas-fired power plants have emerged as profitable options for generators looking to secure supply and balancing contracts with National Grid. SSE’s plans include further investment in its Peterhead gas-fired power plant, which recently clinched a contract with National Grid for voltage control services over Scottish Power’s Longannet plant. SSE said it will pursue further supplemental balance reserve (SBR) contracts with the system operator following its role on the SBR bench over the past winter. But as SSE drives investment towards its flexible gas-fired capacity it will carry out a longevity assessment of its remaining coal-fired generation capacity at the 1GW Ferrybridge and 2GW Fiddler’s Ferry plants, it said.
Utility Week 26th March 2015 read more »
NDA
PLANS for a £20million triangular-shaped archive centre in Caithness telling the story of the UK’s nuclear history have been approved by councillors.
Scotsman 26th March 2015 read more »
Urban Realm 26th March 2015 read more »
Radwaste
Cat litter used to absorb liquids in a barrel of nuclear waste was the wrong type, sparking a chemical reaction and a subsequent radioactive leak.
Guardian 27th March 2015 read more »
BBC 27th March 2015 read more »
Energy Supplies
Nuclear’s share of UK electricity generation decreased last year by 0.6 percentage points on 2013 to 19.0% – or 63.8 TWh – owing to outages in the second half of the year, new data released today by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed.
World Nuclear news 26th March 2015 read more »
UK carbon dioxide emissions fell by 9.7% in 2014 year-on-year, according to official figures from the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
Carbon Brief 26th March 2015 read more »
Green power from Norway will be powering hundreds of thousands of UK homes from 2021, National Grid has said. Energy will travel via the world’s longest sub-sea electricity interconnector. The £1.4bn project has been rubber stamped between National Grid and its Norwegian equivalent Statnett. The UK aims to import enough hydro-power from Norway to provide 14% of yearly household electricity needs.
BBC 26th March 2015 read more »
Guardian 26th March 2015 read more »
FT 26th March 2015 read more »
Scotland
Nearly half of Scotland’s energy consumption came from renewable sources last year, according to official data. Figures released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed 49.6% of gross electricity consumption came from renewable sources last year. The figure was up from a total of 44.4% in 2013.
BBC 26th March 2015 read more »
Edie 26th March 2015 read more »
Japan
Civil society groups supporting Fukushima residents still struggling with the aftermath of the crisis launched a booklet at the Sendai conference containing 10 key lessons from the disaster, available in several languages including English. It provides information on the effects of exposure to radiation, and how at-risk people can better protect their health, homes and livelihoods in the event of a nuclear crisis. The booklet also describes how nuclear power was promoted through advertising and other methods by the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Co in the 1960s and beyond, as a safe, clean form of energy that would benefit local economies. Komino of CWS Japan said it should be up to countries and communities to decide whether they want nuclear power, but “we are against the creation of the safety myth”.
Reuters 27th March 2015 read more »
Finland – radwaste
As the overseers of the world’s most advanced final repository, Onkalo’s regulators are charting unknown territory… and their early experiences are worth following closely. The planners of the world’s most advanced final nuclear repository, in Finland, are treading carefully because what they do now has to stay good for at least the next 100,000 years. And this sense of responsibility is weighing more heavily than ever because the point at which construction will begin in earnest is inching closer. “Posiva, who is planning the disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel, submitted the construction license application to the Government in 2012,” says Jussi Heinonen, section head for nuclear waste facilities at Säteilyturvakeskus (STUK), the Finnnish radiation and nuclear safety authority. At the same time as the construction licence application (CLA), Posiva sent STUK “quite extensive and comprehensive documentation about spent fuel encapsulation and disposal facility design and safety,” Heinonen says. “We have now finalised our review and are finalising the statement and safety evaluation report that will be submitted to the Government.” Construction of the facility is theoretically due to commence this year. But the Finnish authorities are naturally cautious about rushing things at this stage. STUK in February 2015 gave its backing to Posiva’s application to construct a final repository and waste encapsulation plant.
Nuclear Energy Insider 16th March 2015 read more »
Finland – new nukes
The construction of Finland’s third nuclear power plant – a controversial Russian-backed project in Pyhäjoki – is nearing completion. Rusatom Overseas (a subsidiary of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom) holds a 34% stake in the Finnish-Russian consortium Fennovoima. Despite the growing tension between the European Union and Russia, Finland’s Development Manager Juha Miikkulainen told the Barents Observer new site that he doesn’t believe the current situation will affect his country’s plans for the Pyhäjoki nuclear power plant.
New Europe 26th March 2015 read more »
Israel
While the Washington press corps obsessed over Hillary Clinton’s e-mails at the State Department, reporters were missing a far more important story about government secrets. After five decades of pretending otherwise, the Pentagon has reluctantly confirmed that Israel does indeed possess nuclear bombs, as well as awesome weapons technology similar to America’s.
The Nation 20th March 2015 read more »
Iran
In Lausanne, with a few days to go before the deadline for a framework agreement, there are mixed messages how much substance will be in the deal and how much will be public.
Guardian 26th March 2015 read more »
Guardian view: relations between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu were never excellent. But recent weeks have demonstrated just how low the relationship between the United States and Israel has sunk.
Guardian 26th March 2015 read more »
UK and Iran confident of breaking deadlock on nuclear programme.
Guardian 27th March 2015 read more »
Myanmar
Russia and Myanmar have agreed to cooperate in nuclear energy, Rosatom said today, during the first of a two-day working visit to the Southeast Asian country by its deputy director general Nikolay Spassky.
World Nuclear News 26th March 2015 read more »
Renewables
“Over the past 15 years, a number of predictions—by the International Energy Agency, the US Energy Information Administration, and others—have been made about the future of renewable energy growth,” the Meister report noted. “Almost every one of these predictions has underestimated the scale of actual growth experienced by the wind and solar markets. Only the most aggressive growth projections, such as Greenpeace’s Energy [R]evolution scenarios, have been close to accurate.”
Motherboard 24th March 2015 read more »
Government figures show big rises in renewable energy – generating 19.2% of electricity last year.
Business Green 26th March 2015 read more »
Heat Pumps
UK waterways could help households slash carbon emissions by 50 per cent by tapping up to 6GW worth of low-carbon heat, according to the government.
Utility Week 26th March 2015 read more »
Microgeneration
This week’s Micro Power News: Civic energy could provide 50% of UK’s electricity by 2050; Business can install up to 1MW of rooftop solar without planning consent; A million properties across England could in future be heated by water source heat pumps; Solar power could provide up to 4% of the UK’s electricity (14GW) by 2020; Maidenhead and Ipswich councils go solar.
Microgen Scotland 27th March 2015 read more »
Carbon Emissions
The biggest fall in emissions since 1990 saw carbon dioxide output drop by almost a tenth while energy from renewable sources rose to a record high of almost 20% of electricity, government figures show.
Guardian 26th March 2015 read more »
