Heatwave
The European heatwave has forced nuclear power plants to reduce or halt production. The weather, blamed for deaths and disruption across much of the continent, has caused dramatic rises in the temperature of rivers used to cool the reactors, raising fears of mass deaths for fish and other wildlife.
Observer 30th July 2006
Pakistan
PAKISTAN will soon be able to strike every city in India using a new arsenal of plutonium warheads developed with Chinese help, according to senior generals and defence analysts.
Sunday Times 30th July 2006
CoRWM
BRITAIN now has enough nuclear waste to fill the Albert Hall five times over. The stockpile of 470,000 cubic metres in surface tanks is growing at such a rate that government advisers will recommend this week that it is entombed underground beneath concrete layers thick enough to contain it for centuries. A report from the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (Corwm) will be published this week after three years of deliberations.
Sunday Times 30th July 2006
Drigg
THE race is hotting up to take over the running of the national low-level radioactive waste disposal site at Drigg with two American giants set to battle it out for a contract worth more than £100 million. Energy Solutions, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, is set to bid for the lucrative contract against Washington Group International, whose HQ is in South Carolina. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, who now own both Sellafield and Drigg, will award the contract next year, signalling the start of the NDA’s open competition in the £70 billion clean up and decommissioning market. Energy Solutions, who describes itself as the world’s leading and most experienced radioactive waste management contractor, will lead a consortium including Fluor Ltd and BNG, the operating arm of British Nuclear Fuels, who have run Drigg as well as Sellafield for more than 30 years, along with Jacobs Babtie, a major UK company specialising in engineering and safety with American connections.
Whitehaven News 27th July 2006
Nirex
MP JAMIE Reed has made a scathing attack on Nirex and called for the nuclear waste quango to be scrapped. Mr Reed, who briefly worked as a publicist for Nirex, told the House of Commons it “remains a byword for everything that was wrong with the old nuclear industry”.
Whitehaven News, 27th July 2006
Nuclear Skills
CAREER prospects for the area have taken a giant leap forward with news that Lillyhall is set to be the base for a new ‘nuclear academy’. The academy will be a dedicated centre of excellence and innovation. It will provide a wide range of education and training facilities, enabling the local workforce to make the most of the employment opportunities as the NDA spends an estimated £40 billion over the coming decade.
Whitehaven News 27th July 2006
Nuclear Testing
Sixteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, hundreds of thousands of inhabitants from this area south-east of Astana, Kazakhstan’s new capital, are still reeling from the deadly legacy of being a nuclear test site.
Sunday Telegraph 30th July 2006
Devonport
Clearing up Devonport Dockyard’s nuclear legacy will cost future taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds, according to new figures published by the Ministry of Defence. In a move that will intensify the debate about the cost of Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, Defence Secretary Des Browne reveals that the MoD has already run up nuclear liabilities totalling almost £10 billion.
Western Morning News 29th July 2006
British Energy
The hottest mandate in town right now is the one to advise on the sale of the Government’s stake in British Energy. Over the past week, some of the City’s leading investment bankers have been queuing up outside the plush Mayfair offices of Lazard, the blue-chip bank hired by the Government to sell its 65 per cent stake in the nuclear generator.
Sunday Telegraph 30th July 2006
Utilities
If Friday’s decision by the country’s highly politicised energy regulator is anything to go by, Spanish prime minister Jose Zapatero now wants to secure a face-saving deal. Spain’s National Energy Commission (CNE) on Friday approved Eon’s offer, after a scrutiny process that seems to have lasted an age. It imposed 19 conditions but ones less onerous than some feared. Eon will have to sell some 7,600MW of Endesa’s Spanish power generation, including the Asco nuclear power plant, 2,400MW of coal-fired plant, and all the businesses outside the Iberian peninsular – the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, and the North African outclaves of Melilla and Ceuta.
The Business 30th July 2006
