Nuclear Sites
Successful sites auction brings major new player into new nuclear programme. Total declared plans for new nuclear now exceed current capacity, enough to meet a quarter of UK electricity demand. The UK’s new nuclear power sector gained a serious new player today with the news that a joint venture between RWE npower and EON UK has been successful in purchasing potential sites for new nuclear power stations at Wylfa in Wales and Oldbury in South Gloucestershire. Following the auction run by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the RWE and E.ON joint venture today set out plans to develop both sites and the aim of delivering at least 6 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the UK, with the first station coming online at around the end of the next decade. Added to EDF Energy’s firm plans to build 6.4 gigawatts, this takes the total declared plans for the first phase of new build to 12.4 gigawatts. This would be enough to meet a quarter of UK electricity demand, and would exceed the UK’s existing nuclear fleet, all but one of which will have closed by 2023.
DECC Press Release 29th Apr 2009 more >>
Times 29th Apr 2009 more >>
Utility Week 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Liverpool Daily News 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Telegraph 30th Apr 2009 more >>
FT 30th Apr 2009 more >>
FT 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Guardian 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Reuters 29th Apr 2009 more >>
BBC 29th Apr 2009 more >>
Scottish & Southern Energy and ScottishPower’s Spanish owner, Iberdrola, found competition for the sites so intense it withdrew before the endgame. That grouping, which also includes French utility GDF Suez, claims it remains committed to developing a fleet of new nuclear power stations in the UK. It thinks it can pick up other potential sites from the list of 11 identified by the Department of Energy and Climate Change on April 15. Some have to be sold by their existing owners. But similar restrictions applied to the now-completed auction.
Herald 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Herald 30th Apr 2009 more >>
The NDA will start the process to auction another site, at Sellafield, within weeks. And despite its successes yesterday with Bradwell, EDF may yet put the land back on the market. The French giant is planning to build two nuclear stations by 2025, one at Hinkley Point in Somerset, and one at Sizewell in Suffolk. Bradwell was an insurance policy against hold-ups in the planning process and, if developments progress as planned, it is likely to be sold. EDF is also to put land at either Heysham or Dungeness up for sale.
Independent 30th Apr 2009 more >>
New Nukes
The government has identified 11 potential sites for its new nuclear power stations, which will provide around 20GW of electrical power. This new-build programme will of course create many construction jobs. More importantly, though, the majority of new jobs up to 60 per cent will require skills generic to high value-added manufacturing, such as electro-mechanical design and engineering, systems integration, robotics, materials science and process control. A new round of nuclear power stations is therefore an opportunity to build up this country’s manufacturing skills base
Prospect May 2009 more >>
Companies
Toshiba Corp has agreed to buy a majority stake in a Japanese nuclear fuel producer for about $103 million, as it gears up to tap demand for nuclear power generation worldwide. Toshiba has said it aimed to provide services covering the nuclear power generation cycle from fuel procurement to design, production and maintenance of plant equipment.
Interactive Investor 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Nuclear Waste
Some ten billion dollars and two decades into the project, the proposed US nuclear waste dump at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain has hit a major and possibly decisive stumbling block: President Barack Obama has proposed eliminating all funding for scientific research on the deep-rock repository, 140 kilometres northwest of Las Vegas. As Yucca Mountain has been the United States’ only potential long-term repository since 1987, the decision once again raises the issue of what to do with the country’s high-level nuclear waste.
Nature 29th Apr 2009 more >>
Scotland
Scottish UK Minister Ann McKechin left often the possibility that planning powers could be returned to Westminster in a House of Commons debate. She said the issue was being looked at by the Calman Commission.
Aberdeen Press and Journal 29th Apr 2009 more >>
North Korea
North Korea vowed yesterday to test a nuclear device unless the United Nations Security Council apologised for imposing sanctions, its strongest threat yet in an increasingly tense game of diplomatic brinkmanship. The provocative statement elicited a muted response from the US and its allies in the region, and diplomatic sources suggested they had decided to adopt a strategy of “malign neglect” in the face of North Korean brinkmanship.
FT 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Daily Mail 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Pakistan
Pakistan’s senior civil and military officials are sharing tightly held information about the country’s nuclear arms programme with western countries in an effort to allay fears about the security of weapons in the face of a Taliban advance. The decision highlights global concerns about the safety of up to 100 atom bombs in Pakistan’s possession, as the country tries to repel Taliban militants who advanced last week to within 100km of Islamabad. Pakistan is secretive about its nuclear programme, developed outside the non-proliferation treaty in an arms race with India.
FT 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Bulgaria
Funding for Bulgaria’s planned nuclear power plant at Belene must be secured soon, or the multi-billion euro project will be delayed, a consultant to the scheme said on Wednesday.
Yahoo 29th Apr 2009 more >>
Nuclear Weapons
Hirofumi Nakasone, the foreign minister, condemned the most recent action-packed Steven Spielberg movie for its “lack of awareness” of the effects of a nuclear bomb attack.
Telegraph 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Renewables
The American wind energy industry installed over 2,800 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity in the first quarter of 2009, with new projects completed in 15 states and powering the equivalent of 816,000 homes.
Climate Progress 29th Apr 2009 more >>
It is a dazzling vision of a clean energy future. An entire continent powered by solar panels, wind and wave turbines, geothermal and hydroelectric power stations and all stitched together by a European “supergrid” stretching from the sunbaked deserts of the south to the windswept North Sea, from the volcanoes of Iceland to the lakes of Finland. It may sound like the stuff of science fiction but this is a vision that the European Union wants to make a reality. The concept is gaining ground among policymakers, including leaders such as President Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, who are concerned about Europe’s carbon emissions and its steadily growing dependence on Russian gas. Adam Bruce, chairman of the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA), is convinced that a European supergrid that could eventually banish polluting fossil fuels altogether, is only a matter of time.
Times 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Government plans to generate more than a third of Britain’s electricity from green energy sources, such as wind and solar power, by 2020 are doomed to failure without a dramatic increase in state support, according to a leading energy research group. Jim Skea, director of the UK Energy Research Centre says “In none of the scenarios we looked at were renewables picked up nearly fast enough [in the UK] to meet the 2020 targets,” said Professor Skea. “It will be a big struggle. We are not spending nearly enough.”
Times 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Climate
The world has already burned half the fossil fuels necessary to bring about a 2C rise in average global temperature, scientists reveal today. The experts say about half a trillion tonnes of carbon have been consumed since the industrial revolution. To prevent a 2C rise, they say, the total burned must be kept to below a trillion tonnes. On current rates, that figure will be reached in 40 years. The new research is released as a leading adviser to the government on climate policy said that Britain would “struggle” to meet its 2020 target to source 15% of its electricity from renewable sources. Jim Skea, research director of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) and a member of the government’s Advisory Committee on Climate Change, was speaking at the launch of a UKERC report that presents scenarios for how lifestyles and energy generation in Britain would have to change reach the 2050 climate targets.
Guardian 30th Apr 2009 more >>
Times 30th Apr 2009 more >>
At the current rate at which CO2 is emitted globally – which is increasing by 3 per cent a year – countries will have exceeded their total limit of 1,000 billion tons within 20 years, which would be about 20 years earlier than planned under international obligations. “If we continue burning fossil fuels as we do, we will have exhausted the carbon budget in merely 20 years, and global warming will go well beyond 2C,” said Malte Meinshausen of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who led the study, published in Nature.
Independent 30th Apr 2009 more >>
The UK Energy Research Centre suggests that a carbon price signal of £200 a tonne, 15 times the present level, is needed if we are to reach the Government’s target of an 80 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. Small wonder, then, that the centre is dismissive of the Government’s aspiration of generating a third of electricity from renewables by 2020. That we have barely started wind accounted for about 1 per cent of power generation last year is reason enough to be sceptical. What is more important, however, is not whether we match some politically inspired timeline (always just beyond a minister’s career horizon) but whether the practical steps that must be taken to get even halfway towards the desired goal are affordable.
Times 30th Apr 2009 more >>
