Hinkley
The defence secretary has urged the government to put a stop to plans for overhead pylons in his constituency. The National Grid wants to put up 37 miles of pylons between Hinkley Point in Somerset and Avonmouth. Liam Fox has written to Energy Secretary Chris Huhne about the plans. Meanwhile, Wells MP Tessa Munt said the power lines should go underground.
BBC 29th Aug 2011 more >>
Telegraph 29th Aug 2011 more >>
Hartlepool
EDF Energy said it restarted its 620-megawatt (MW) UK Hartlepool 1 nuclear reactor on Monday afternoon following a planned outage.
Reuters 30th Aug 2011 more >>
Radwaste
If nuclear waste management is not thought out from the beginning, the public in many countries will reject nuclear power as an energy choice, according to research published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Allison Macfarlane of George Mason University in the US believes coming up with storage solutions for nuclear waste continues to be a last-minute decision in a number of countries. It is surprisingly common for reactor sites to be overburdened with spent fuel with no clear disposal plan. In South Korea, for example, storage at the nation’s four nuclear plants is filling up, leading to a potential storage crisis within the next decade.
Environmental Research Web 29th Aug 2011 more >>
Japan
The ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) today picked current finance minister Yoshihiko Noda as the new party head and imminent Japanese premier, who is likely to seek a prompt restart of safe nuclear reactors to revitalize the country’s economic activity. Noda, a fiscal hawk, is expected to prioritise fiscal and debt reforms but also support Japanese utilities to restart reactors where their safety is confirmed to aid the country’s rehabilitation efforts in the wake of March’s devastating earthquake and tsunami. Noda is yet to make clear his plan on the phasing out of nuclear power in the country but has said that Japan should not build any new reactors. Without any new capacity, Japan will be effectively phasing out nuclear within 40 years a conventional reactor’s lifespan.
Argus Media 29th Aug 2011 more >>
Greenpeace said on Monday that schools and surrounding areas located 60 km (38 miles) from Japan’s tsunami-hit nuclear power plant were unsafe for children, showing radiation readings as much as 70 times internationally accepted levels. The environmental group took samples at and near three schools in Fukushima city, well outside the 20 km exclusion zone from Tokyo Electric Power’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in Japan’s northeast.
Reuters 29th Aug 2011 more >>
Greenpeace 29th Aug 2011 more >>
Mr Noda has not backed Naoto Kans call for a rethink of nuclear power and says the nations reactors must be restarted. Yesterday Greenpeace called on the new leader to delay the opening of schools in Fukushima City this week after testing found high radiation levels from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in a pre-school, secondary school and child care centre.
Independent 30th Aug 2011 more >>
Guardian 30th Aug 2011 more >>
US
The historic earthquake that shut Dominion Resources Inc’s North Anna nuclear plant in Virginia last week may have shaken the facility more than it was designed to withstand, the U.S. nuclear regulator said on Monday.
Reuters 29th Aug 2011 more >>
Uranium
Under terms of the U.S.-Russian two-decade old megatons-to-megawatts agreement, the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC) has reimbursed the Russian Federation more than $7.2 billion for its work in separating fissile uranium for use in civilian nuclear power plants from Soviet-era nuclear warheads.
Oil Price 30th Aug 2011 more >>
Namibian authorities have arrested four people they suspect of stealing drums of radioactive material from a mine in the country that is a major exporter of uranium, officials said on Monday.
Reuters 29th Aug 2011 more >>
Renewables
Since the late 1990s, wind and solar installations have grown faster than any other power technology across the world. But it’s still too early to claim the end of fossil-based power generation. The bright future for renewable energy that has long been predicted is already under way. Analysis of the global power plant market shows that since the late 1990s, capacities of wind and solar installations have grown faster than any other power plant technology across the world – with about 430,000 MW total installed capacity between 2000 and 2010.
Renewable Energy World 26th Aug 2011 more >>
Solar generators may produce the majority of the worlds power within 50 years, slashing the emissions of greenhouse gases that harm the environment, according to a projection by the International Energy Agency.
Bloomberg 29th Aug 2011 more >>
Economic uncertainty amid the ongoing slowdown in the global recovery and the eurozone sovereign debt crisis is likely to threaten investment in renewable energy projects, an Ernst & Young report warned today. The consultant said that investors in renewableenergy installations were seeing the cost of financing such projects rise, especially in countries most exposed to uncertainties. In some cases, that might mean projects are cancelled or delayed. E&Y said investors in the UK were less worried about financing issues but warned planning complexities and regulation continued to hinder large-scale renewables developments.
Independent 30th Aug 2011 more >>
A green electricity initiative that promised big returns for energy producers has led to hundreds of acres of countryside disappearing beneath solar panels in the past few months. Developers have been busy installing the panels on dozens of greenfield sites across the south of England in a rush to meet a government deadline and reap the rewards of vastly inflated prices for the electricity they produce. The Feed-In Tariff scheme, launched in April last year, promised to pay four times the going rate for electricity generated by solar power for 25 years.
The Times 30th Aug 2011 more >>
A surprising aerodynamic innovation in wind turbine design called the ‘wind lens’ could triple the output of a typical wind turbine, making it less costly than nuclear power.
Mother Nature Network 29th Aug 2011 more >>
More than one third of farmers want to install renewable energy projects on their farmland, most of them within the next year, and hope to generate average returns of 25,000 pounds per year, UK bank Barclays said.
Reuters 30th Aug 2011 more >>
Space
Engineers in the US are working on a nuclear reactor that can be deployed on other planets. A team made up of NASA and the US Department of Energy (DOE) is scheduled to build a technology demonstration unit in 2012.
Engineer 30th Aug 2011 more >>
