Heysham
RESIDENTS of the area around Heysham power stations are being offered the chance to hear first hand about plans to nominate land next to the site for a new nuclear plant. An exhibition and public meeting will be held at The Platform, Morecambe, on Tuesday March 10 – the exhibition opening at 3.30pm and the meeting starting at 7pm.
Morecambe Visitor 28th Feb 2009 more >>
Sellafield
Trains between Sellafield and Barrow have been suspended after an unexploded bomb was today found near the line.
Whitehaven News 27th Feb 2009 more >>
BUSINESS secretary Peter Mandelson has heralded the part Sellafield can play in Britain’s low-carbon energy future and prospects for the site’s own development.
Whitehaven News 25th Feb 2009 more >>
SELLAFIELD has a new man in charge of the nuclear site’s armed police force.
Whitehaven News 25th Feb 2009 more >>
Dounreay
THE Far North construction industry is set for a massive shot in the arm thanks to a run of new contracts coming on stream at Dounreay. The building of three major waste plants will create work for 500, with the first of them scheduled to start next year. The plants are needed to store the waste which will be created by the demolition of the remainder of the defunct fast reactor complex. Once they are up and running, the 2000-strong site workforce will start to dip sharply as the clean-up moves towards its scheduled closure date of 2025. The first of the schemes is a plant to treat and store intermediate-level (ILW) liquid waste created by the reprocessing of fast reactor fuel. Codenamed D3900, it will also deal with some of the solid intermediate-level waste currently in above-ground stores. Designed to last for 100 years, its three-year construction is expected to create 200 jobs. The proposed new dump for up to 170,000 cubic metres of low-level solid waste under ground adjoining the site is in line to provide work for a further 100. Subject to receiving full planning approval, a start on the cluster of concrete vaults is planned for 2011 with the dump ready for use by 2014. The third plant will treat the cocktail of intermediate-level radioactive debris recovered from the site’s underground shaft and nearby silo. It is likely to need a workforce of 200 over its scheduled four-year construction, starting in 2013.
John O Groat Journal 27th Feb 2009 more >>
Scotland
Rob Gibson MSP: I hope Jim Murphy and Labour leaders were listening to the chief scientific adviser’s remarks. Every penny wasted on new nuclear technology in Scotland would be a penny less for the development of clean, green energy. Scotland is well on course to be the clean, green energy capital of Europe – we already have a greater installed capacity of renewable energy than nuclear.
John O Groat Journal 27th Feb 2009 more >>
Yucca Mountain
Work on disposing of radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain has all but stopped after President Barack Obama’s budget blueprint yesterday. A new strategy for permanent storage is to be developed. America must now set a new course for long-term management of high-level radioactive waste, which could include reprocessing and recycling after a change in attitude towards the practices during recent years. A major factor could be Obama’s position on the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which would see a community of countries share nuclear power technology with leading nations storing all the high-level waste from the entire group after dramatic volume reduction from reprocessing.
World Nuclear News 27th Feb 2009 more >>
Iran
The Americans are in a state of near-hysteria over the possibility of an Iranian nuclear bomb, though no mention in this context is ever made of Israel’s nuclear bomb, the existence of which might explain why the Iranians would be keen to have one of their own, particularly now when the Israelis are about to install a right-wing government which will include a number of open racists and Zionist extremists.
Independent 28th Feb 2009 more >>
Renewables
Letter from Dr Gerry Wolff: In his article “The green movement must learn to love nuclear power” (23 February), Chris Goodall says: “Even concentrated solar power plants in the Sahara desert will need a lot of space – at least 15,000 sq kms.” Recent calculations from the German Aerospace Centre show (DLR) that an area of 16,129 sq kms in the Sahara, if covered with CSP plants, would produce as much electricity as is now being used by the whole of Europe. This is less than 0.2 per cent of the area of the Sahara. Of course, no one is suggesting that one should meet all of Europe’s electricity needs from the Sahara. In the scenarios described in the TRANS-CSP report from the DLR, CSP would be just one of a combination of renewable sources and nuclear power would be phased out. Compared with the situation now, there would be an overall reduction of imports of energy into Europe and there would be a greater diversity of sources of energy.
Independent 28th Feb 2009 more >>
