Moorside
Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom visited Cumbria today to holds talks about nuclear new build at Sellafield. She met representatives of businesses and the education and training sector in Carlisle, at a meeting organised by MP John Stevenson to address concerns around skills shortages. Then she went to Sellafield and was due to visit Moorside on Thursday where NuGen is planning to build a nuclear power plant. If the £10bn project goes ahead, it will be the largest private sector investment west Cumbria has ever seen. Up to 6,000 people will be working on the site at any one time. Mrs Leadsom said: “It was one of my key priorities to come here and see for myself Sellafield and the potential of Moorside. Nuclear is a key part of our clean energy agenda.” She said the Government wanted to work with partners in Cumbria to ensure that workers with the necessary skills were in place, and that the county’s infrastructure was ready to handle such a large project.
Carlisle News and Star 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Heysham
HEYSHAM 2’s new station director John Munro is taking over the nuclear site’s top job, seven years after joining the management team. John returned to the nuclear industry in 2009 after leaving Torness power station, near Edinburgh, in 2004 to start his own property business in Cyprus.
Westmorland Gazette 1st Sept 2015 read more »
Radwaste
UK National Report on compliance with European Council Directive (2011/70Euratom) on radioactive waste management.
DECC 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Nuclear Capacity
Anti-nuclear public opinion following the 2011 Fukushima disaster is leading to a decline in the capacity of nuclear power plants around the world, according to research consultants Globaldata. The total capacity of plants starting plant life extension (Plex) programs globally will decrease more than sixfold over the next decade it reported. Capacity is predicted to fall from from an estimated 18.1 Gigawatts in 2015 to 2.9GW by 2025. Globaldata’s latest report states that several plant operators started Plex for one or more of their reactors in 2010 and 2011, with 26 and 24 new programs implemented each year, respectively. However, these figures are expected to decline over the coming years because of anti-nuclear sentiment following the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima plant following the earthquake that rocked the country in 2011. As a result, a number of key nuclear countries, such as Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, will decommission and disinvest in this power source and use alternatives to replace the equivalent capacity, with a preference for renewables.
Energy Voice 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Nuclear vs Climate
A hundred and sixty thousand people made homeless, with limited compensation and the prospect for many tens of thousands of never returning to their former homes. That’s not the cost of a war, but of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan. The financial cost alone could well be more than half a trillion dollars. Broken lives and contaminated land. Is that the future we want in order to keep the lights on? The nuclear power industry wants to think so, especially with the world waking up to the climate-related dangers of fossil fuels. It’s trying to use climate change as an excuse to save and even expand its ailing business. Most of the reactors which are operating in Europe, the US, Russia and Japan are coming to the end of their lives. No precise cost is known – but decommissioning costs could well reach $ 200 billion over the next 25 years. Even the International Energy Agency, which promotes nuclear power, says there are lots of uncertainties about how much the final bill will be. New nuclear power stations routinely go way over budget and behind schedule during construction, locking consumers into higher energy bills.We should not be conned into accepting one environmental threat on the premise that it will avert another, when a future free of both nuclear and dangerous climate change is possible through the speedy deployment and development of renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency.
Greenpeace 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Utilities
Tens of thousands of families are deserting Britain’s “Big Six” energy providers to take up green tariffs at smaller, independent utilities in the biggest customer switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy seen in the UK. At least 42,000 households signed up in the first 48 hours of a campaign that will enable them to use their collective bargaining power to cut the cost of buying renewable energy – which is more expensive than electricity produced from established fossil fuel technology. The Clean Energy Switch, launched on Tuesday, is expected to attract thousands of households. The scheme is run by the campaign group 38 Degrees and the Big Deal, a consumer collective, which will use the large number of customers they have signed up as leverage to secure a good deal for them. The energy provider able to offer the lowest rate will win all of the customers – a model that has been used successfully with traditional, fossil-fuel dominated tariffs. Apart from encouraging households to use green electricity by offering better deals, the scheme will put pressure on the Big Six to cut their reliance on fossil fuel generation and spur further investment in renewable technologies. The scale of the campaign sign-up emerged a day after it came to light that all of the Big Six energy firms have quietly dropped their green electricity tariffs – prompting critics to question their commitment to tackling climate change.
Independent 3rd Sept 2015 read more »
Japan – Fukushima
Japan considered its nuclear power plants safe and was therefore not prepared for the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Yukiya Amano has said in a comprehensive report on the accident. At the IAEA General Conference in September 2012, Amano announced that the agency would prepare a report on the Fukushima Daiichi accident. He stated that this report would be “an authoritative, factual and balanced assessment, addressing the causes and consequences of the accident as well as the lessons learned.” The IAEA has now published that report, which it said is “the result of an extensive international collaborative effort involving five working groups with about 180 experts from 42 Member States with or without nuclear power programs and several international bodies.” The report – entitled IAEA Director General’s Report on the Fukushima Daiichi Accident – is accompanied by five technical volumes. These give a description and context of the accident; a safety assessment; examines emergency preparedness and response; radiological consequences; and, post-accident recovery. In the foreword to his report, Amano states: “A major factor that contributed to the accident was the widespread assumption in Japan that its nuclear power plants were so safe that an accident of this magnitude was simply unthinkable. This assumption was accepted by nuclear power plant operators and was not challenged by regulators or by the government. As a result, Japan was not sufficiently prepared for a severe nuclear accident in March 2011.”
World Nuclear News 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Japan – reactor restarts
Hundreds of thousands of people are standing by to evacuate their homes after scientists warned a huge volcanic eruption is likely nearby. Around 600,000 residents of the Japanese city of Kagoshima are on alert after seismologists voiced concerns that a rain of fire and stones could fall on the city if the volcano of Sakurajima erupts.
Pars Herald 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
The number of Japanese nuclear reactors likely to restart in the next few years has halved, hit by legal challenges and worries about meeting tougher safety standards imposed in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, a Reuters analysis shows. The country has been inching back to nuclear energy, turning on its first reactor in mid-August after a two-year blackout, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and many in industry looking to cut fuel bills despite widespread public opposition to atomic power. But the analysis shows that of the other 42 operable reactors remaining in the country, just seven are likely to be turned on in the next few years, down from the 14 predicted in a similar survey last year.
Japan Today 3rd Sept 2015 read more »
South Africa
South Africa’s government pledged to be financially responsible in purchasing as many as eight new nuclear reactors, toning down its enthusiasm for the project as concern mounts within the ruling African National Congress over their affordability. “There is no deal we have signed with anybody,” Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson told lawmakers in Cape Town on Tuesday. “We are committed to a thorough cost-benefit analysis of nuclear power,” she said, adding that it was part of the procurement process. “We are not going to compromise our country in any way.” President Jacob Zuma first announced plans in February 2014 to add 9,600 megawatts of nuclear power to the national grid to address energy shortages in Africa’s most industrialized economy. While the government has declined to reveal the expected cost because the contracts are still being negotiated, estimates range from $37 billion to $100 billion.
Bloomberg 1st Sept 2015 read more »
South Africa’s future energy mix could have an even higher share of nuclear power than the planned 9,600 megawatts (MW), as it aims to cut reliance on polluting coal-fired power stations, a government official said on Wednesday. Africa’s most advanced economy is facing a shortfall in electricity due to its creaking coal-fired plants, resulting in regular power cuts that are hurting the economy and denting investor confidence.
Reuters 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Germany
The German government has proposed changes to a law to prevent German utilities from evading the payment of billions of euros needed to fund the country’s nuclear exit, according to a copy of the draft law seen by Reuters. The document says that utilities will be liable for the costs of shutting down power plants and disposing of nuclear waste even if they give up control of subsidiary companies or spin-offs. A spokesperson for the economy ministry said the draft law was currently being discussed by government departments.
Reuters 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Brazil
Brazilian state-run utility Eletrobras said on Wednesday it will suspend for 60 days a contract with a consortium building its $4 billion Angra 3 nuclear plant after contractors asked to pull out of a project facing rising scrutiny from a corruption probe. Construction firms Andrade Guitierrez and Techint Engenharia have asked Eletrobras to pull out of the ANGRAMON consortium building the power station west of Rio de Janeiro, Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras SA, as Eletrobras is formally known, said in a statement. They join fellow ANGRAMON members Odebrecht SA and Queiroz Galvão Engenharia, which informed Eletrobras and its nuclear power subsidiary Eletronuclear of their plan to pull out of the project earlier this month.
Reuters 3rd Sept 2015 read more »
US
Washington state is suing the federal government again over cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation – this time over the danger posed to workers by vapor releases from underground waste-storage tanks. In a federal lawsuit filed in Spokane on Wednesday, state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said the U.S. Department of Energy has known about vapors sickening workers at the site since at least the late 1980s, but hasn’t fixed it – even though agencies have issued 19 reports on the problem. Hanford, on the Columbia River in eastern Washington, produced plutonium for nuclear weapons from 1943 to 1987.
Washington Times 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Reuters 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Iran
U.S. President Barack Obama scored a major foreign policy victory on Wednesday by securing enough Senate votes to protect the Iran nuclear deal in Congress, but Republicans pledged to keep up their fight against the pact with new sanctions on Tehran. Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski said she would support the deal announced on July 14 between world powers and Iran, which exchanges relief on economic sanctions for Tehran’s agreeing to curtail its nuclear program. Mikulski brings the list of senators backing the deal to 34, 32 Democrats and two independents who typically vote with Democrats, enough to sustain Obama’s promised veto if the Republican-controlled Congress passes a disapproval resolution.
Reuters 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
North Korea
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a resumption of multilateral nuclear talks with North Korea on Wednesday and said he opposed any move to worsen tension. North and South Korea averted a full-on military confrontation last week and reached an agreement to improve ties following a rare exchange of artillery fire over their heavily fortified border. Xi made his call during a meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye in Beijing.
Reuters 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Denmark
Denmark’s widening budget deficit is forcing its policy makers to take some hard decisions in the very area where they are considered global role models: the fight against climate change. Denmark’s Liberal government is to reverse ambitious CO2 emission targets introduced by the previous administration. It will also drop plans to phase out coal-fired power plants and become fossil-fuel free by 2050, according to leaked documents first reported by newspaper Information.
Bloomberg 1st Sept 2015 read more »
Trident
If the UK Government wants to sell Trident renewal to Scots voters, I’m not sure George Osborne makes the ideal salesman. The Chancellor’s intervention in the referendum campaign was a near disaster. Almost from the moment he issued his diktat on the pound, support for the Union began to wilt. Yet, there he was again yesterday unveiling a £500 million investment in Faslane, which he said would be put at risk by “the unholy alliance of Labour’s left-wing insurgents and Scottish Nationalists”. He should have a care. This unholy alliance accounts for all but one of Scotland’s 59 MPs. Labour’s sole Scottish MP, Ian Murray, told voters in Edinburgh South before the election that he, like the SNP, opposes renewal. The Liberal Democrat MP, Alistair Carmichael, opposes like-for-like replacement. And the unholy alliance is growing day by day. The new leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Kezia Dugdale, has announced that her party conference is to have a free vote on Trident. This may not be unconnected to the fact that unilateralist Jeremy Corbyn could be about to become leader of the UK Labour Party. Even the UK Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, is increasingly sceptical about Trident, which possibly explains why Mr Osborne has jumped the gun this week: he wants to make Trident a done deal before the decision on renewal is taken by Parliament next year. Trident is arguably at greater risk today than at any time since its submarines became operational 20 years ago. The SNP has won the greatest landslide in electoral history on an unequivocal commitment to remove nuclear weapons from the Clyde.
Herald 1st Sept 2015 read more »
District Heating
The heat is on to develop capacity for low carbon heat and support the expansion of district heat networks across Scotland, with the support of the Scottish Government’s Heat Network Partnership, of which Zero Waste Scotland is a member. There are tangible opportunities for businesses with a strong track record in developing district heating systems to invest in a fast-growing area of energy policy in Scotland which will help secure local energy provision as well as contributing to meeting climate change targets – heat is estimated to be responsible for 47% of Scotland’s greenhouse gas emissions. Ministers are keen to make progress, with Scotland’s Heat Generation Policy Statement proposing new targets for district heating – an overall target of 1.5 TWh of heat a year to be delivered to homes, businesses and public sector buildings by 2020, including 40,000 homes to be supplied with affordable low carbon heat through heat networks.
Scottish Energy News 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Renewables – onshore wind
A report by leading think tank Policy Exchange, has demonstrated that onshore wind is on course to be cheaper than new gas generation in Scotland. Policy Exchange’s report Powering Up: The future of onshore wind in the UK estimates that the cost of onshore wind should fall to £60/MWh by 2020 as a result of using technology advances and a focus on sites in high wind speed areas of the country – predominantly Scotland. This continuing cost reduction make onshore wind cost competitive with new gas plant and significantly cheaper than other options, including nuclear.
Scottish Energy News 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Renewable Subsidies
Drax and Infinis Energy announced they had initiated judicial review proceedings against the Treasury over its decision to end a system of lucrative subsidy payments to renewable energy firms. The Chancellor announced in the Budget that renewable firms would no longer be exempt from the Climate Change Levy scheme. The exemption currently results in payments of about £5 million a month to Drax and an estimated almost £1m a month to Infinis. The companies are arguing that it was unreasonable to give only 24 days’ notice of the change. When an exemption was removed for another technology in 2011, two years’ notice was given.
Telegraph 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Renewable Heat Incentive
A subsidy for green heating systems worth more than £400m a year is set to be pruned in the autumn spending review as ministers seek to rein back spending at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Energy ministers have drawn up cuts to the Renewable Heat Incentive , a scheme designed to encourage a shift to low-carbon heating systems. The Decc submission to the Treasury for the autumn spending review will also feature heavy job cuts; the department’s headcount rose by 35 per cent under the coalition even as other ministries saw net staff cuts. Officials have also proposed earmarking some of the money Decc gives to the International Climate Fund – amounting to £335m in 2015 – and instead taking it from other areas, such as the ringfenced international development department. Meanwhile, Decc is playing down a rumour that it could be merged into anot her ministry, the business department, for example, to cut costs. “I’d strongly, strongly steer you away from that,” said one insider. Big cuts to the RHI would be disastrous for a sector supporting 32,000 jobs and which has installed thousands of green heating systems across the country, said the Renewable Energy Association, a trade group.
FT 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Demand Management – Scotland
PLUCKING Longannet from near the top of the grid changes the economics of electricity transmission. It’s going to get more expensive to consume electricity in Scotland. Holyrood be warned. But is Scotland really short of energy? Is this the age of tartan power cuts? No energy minister should say, as many have: “The lights will not go out.” But Scotland is not in worse shape than, say, south-east England. Margins have been tight across the UK for years. Yet we’ve only actually run out of electricity twice in the past decade – five times better than the standard set for National Grid by government. So how have we got away with it? Last winter, we were a bit lucky with the weather (unless you wanted to build a snowman). That doesn’t mean a cold snap would have knocked the grid over, because underlying consumption has fallen. It’s hard to unpick the destructive effects of the rec ession from the remarkable success of LED lighting; the two emerged at the same time and significantly slashed demand. We also have a more diverse and better-connected electricity system than ever. Coal-fired Longannet closed early because gas-fired Peterhead power station beat it in a tender. By this winter, the famous Beauly-Denny transmission upgrade – familiar to drivers on the A9 – will be complete. This will allow more wind power to flow out of north-west Scotland, and directly cut Peterhead’s gas bill – which we pay for. We can’t control the wind, but we don’t control world fuel markets either. If the lights are to stay on, we can’t rely on any one particular source. Enter Scotland’s most flexible and least obvious power station, tucked away in Edinburgh’s west end. This is Flexitricity, which has hooked up a network of industrial, commercial and public-sector electricity users across Scotland, England and Wales. Hospitals, banks, event venues, universiti es, greenhouses, supermarkets and datacentres are ready to cut consumption or turn up small generators when the National Grid runs short. This is demand response. It’s big enough to fill in when Peterhead fails, or Torness, or the cross-channel links. If things really do get tight, it could be a warehouse or hospital near you that’s keeping the lights on.
Scotsman 3rd Sept 2015 read more »
Fossil Fuels
The owners of Eggborough Power Station have said it will stop generating power in March 2016, subject to consultations with staff and “government bodies”. The 53-year-old coal-fired power station, near Selby, North Yorkshire, employs around 240 people. The company said it required additional funding of £200m over the next three years to continue generating power.
BBC 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Times 3rd Sept 2015 read more »
A coal-fired power plant that produces 4pc of the UK’s electricity is set to close in March, increasing the risk of blackouts in winter 2016-17 and threatening the loss of 240 jobs. As a result of the planned closures, for the “first time in living memory” Britain could go into winter in 2016-17 without enough controllable power plant capacity to meet peak demand, Peter Atherton, analyst at Jefferies said. He calculated that “dispatchable” capacity – power plants that can be switched on or off on demand, as opposed to wind or solar farms that rely on the weather – would fall to 53 GW, below the estimated peak demand of 56 GW.
Telegraph 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
CCS
The energy sheikhs of the next generation will not be those who control vast reserves of oil, gas or coal. Sweeping climate rules are about to turn the calculus upside-down. Greater riches will accrue to those best able to capture carbon as it is burned, and are then able transport it through a network of pipelines and store it cheaply a mile or more underground. As it happens, Britain is perfectly placed to win the jackpot of the 21st century. China and the US – the twin CO2 giants – have already reached a far-reaching deal to curb greenhouse gases. China has pledged to cap total emissions by 2030. Mexico has vowed to cut gases by 40pc within 15 years, and Gabon by even more. The poisonous North-South conflict that doomed the Copenhagen summit in 2009 has given way to a more subtle mosaic of interests. There is a high likelihood that 40,000 delegates from 200 countries will agree to legally-binding rules at the COP 21 climate talks in Paris in December. As a matter of pure economics, it makes no difference whether or not you accept the hypothesis of man-made global warming. The political argument has been settled by the world’s dominant powers. The messy compromise will fall far short of capping carbon emissions at 3,000 gigatonnes, the outer limit deemed necessary by scientists to stop temperatures rising by more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. (We have used up two-thirds) But it will probably usher in some sort of regime that puts a “non-trivial” price on burning carbon, the first of several escalating accords. Eventually it will be draconian. “I don’t think people have fully realised that there is a finite budget, and when it’s used up, that’s it,” said Professor Jon Gibbins from Edinburgh University. “We will have to go negative and capture carbon from the air, which will be very expensive.” A new report by Cititgroup – “Energy Darwinism” – says an ambitious COP 21 implies that a third of global oil reserves, half the gas and 80pc of coal reserves cannot be burned, unless carbon capture and storage (CCS) comes to the rescue. It is precisely this prospect of “fossil-dammerung” that is at last concentrating the mind. The fossil industry itself is embracing the CCS revolution because its own survival depends on it in a “two degree” political world.
Telegraph 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
Climate
Global plans to curb carbon dioxide are well below what’s needed to keep temperatures from rising above 2 degrees according to a new analysis. It is the work of researchers from the Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a consortium of research institutions. They examined the commitments already made by governments to limit warming. The CAT rated seven of the 15 submitted carbon plans as “inadequate” to keep temperatures below the accepted level of dangerous warming. The analysis was released at UN climate negotiation meet in Bonn aimed at advancing a new global treaty. As part of the attempts to tackle global warming, countries have agreed to submit their national plans to the UN before key talks in Paris in December. So far 56 governments have published their “intended nationally determined contributions,” or INDCs in the jargon of the UN.
BBC 2nd Sept 2015 read more »
