Hinkley
Despite numerous attempts by the pro nuclear politicians of the main parties to push the propaganda that building will start soon, Hinkley C will never be built, we have been here before! Does the following sound familiar? Even though Mrs Thatcher had been given permission to build Hinkley C by Mr Barnes the inspector after a year-long public inquiry, and with all the taxpayers’ money available, Hinkley C was never built. Why not? It was a combination of two key factors which meant that the government of the day did not continue to use its permission to complete the building of Hinkley C. The first factor was the rising costs of nuclear. During the extensive public enquiry the true escalating costs of nuclear compared with other forms of generation were exposed to the public and the government. (Read Crispin Aubery’s book on the Hinkley inquiry called Meltdown.) If Mrs Thatcher could not build Hinkley C then there is very little chance of David Cameron doing so! Exactly the same problems exist now as they did then, the escalating costs and another international nuclear disaster.
Western Morning News 31st July 2013 read more »
EDF may not decide whether to build its planned £14bn Hinkley Point nuclear power plant in Somerset until the end of this year – a full year later than it had hoped, its chief executive has said. The French energy giant said throughout last year that it wanted to take an investment decision by the end of 2012, but the deadline has repeatedly slipped as the company has failed to reach agreement with ministers over the levels of subsidies for the project. It will only proceed if ministers commit consumers to paying a guaranteed price for the electricity Hinkley will generate for decades to come. If agreement is reached, EDF will then need to find financial backers, following British Gas owner Centrica’s decision to abandon its 20pc stake in the project in February.
Telegraph 30th July 2013 read more »
EDF said on Tuesday that it expected talks with the Treasury over price to complete “by the end of the year” a comment widely interpreted as yet another delay.
FT 30th July 2013 read more »
Nuclear Subsidies
The British government offered to guarantee 65% of the debt related to this project. But the negotiations, which shall include the purchase price of electricity produced for 35 years, has not been completed. We will decide whether to launch the project by the end of the year, without the deadline.
Le Monde 30th July 2013 read more »
Wylfa
Lord Elis-Thomas, who is also a member of the National Assembly for Wales, spoke as peers discussed the challenge of keeping the lights on in years to come. This is his question: “My Lords, does the minister agree that this situation has been brought about by the failure of successive governments to invest adequately in alternative low-carbon forms of renewable energy, and also to invest in new nuclear? “Will she now agree that it is absolutely essential that projects such as the Horizon project at Wylfa B in Anglesey should go ahead as soon as possible?”
BBC 30th July 2013 read more »
Oldbury
OLDBURY Power Station’s defuelling deadline has been pushed back to 2016, as priority is given to decommissioning other plants. Spent fuel retrieved from nuclear reactors around the country is transported in flasks to Sellafield in Cumbria to be reprocessed. Restrictions on the amount of fuel which can be stored at the reprocessing facilities have meant that defuelling will take place in order of importance, delaying Oldbury by a year. As a result, the number of flasks shipped out of Oldbury will be reduced over the next year to two per week until Sizewell A, a plant also owned by Magnox and at a later stage in its decommissioning process, is fully defuelled.
South Cotswold Gazette 29th July 2013 read more »
EDF
France’s state controlled nuclear power giant EDF says its net profit rose 3.5 percent in the first half as a result of a cold winter and high electricity prices.The company, which runs all France’s 58 nuclear power plants and has a stake in one of the U.S.’s biggest nuclear power companies, made 2.88 billion euros ($3.8 billion) during the period, up from 2.78 billion euros a year earlier. Profits were driven mainly by its home market, though earnings were solid in Italy and Britain too. EDF owns British Energy, Britain’s largest electricity producer. In Italy it owns Edison, the country’s second largest electricity producer.
Fox News 30th July 2013 read more »
French utility EDF, the world’s biggest operator of nuclear plants, is pulling out of nuclear energy in the United States, bowing to the realities of a market that has been transformed by cheap shale gas.Several nuclear reactors in the U.S. have been closed or are being shuttered as utilities baulk at the big investments needed to extend their lifetimes now that nuclear power has been so decisively undercut by electricity generated from shale gas.
Reuters 30th July 2013 read more »
FT 30th July 2013 read more »
City AM 31st July 2013 read more »
French power group Electricité de France SA said Tuesday it has signed a deal with U.S. partner Exelon Corp., marking the start of the French firm’s gradual withdrawal from its multibillion-dollar foray into U.S. nuclear power and illustrating the shale-gas boom’s continued wide impact on energy companies’ strategies.
Wall St Journal 30th July 2013 read more »
The boss of EDF, the French energy giant, today said its decision to pull out of its nuclear joint venture in the US would not impact its decision on building new plants in the UK. Six years ago, EDF said it would build up to four nuclear reactors in the US but chief executive Henri Proglio said “the spectacular fall of the US gas price” made the exit inevitable. EDF’s first-half underlying earnings rose 6.9% to €9.7 billion.
Evening Standard 30th July 2013 read more »
SMRs
A boon to the economy? Or a boondoggle? That’s the debate raging over a new nuclear technology that — depending on your perspective — is either a game-changer in electrical generation, or a failure-in-the-making that will fleece taxpayers for a half-billion dollars. The technology, called “small modular reactors,” will be the centerpiece of an entirely new way of thinking about nuclear power. They are much smaller than what traditionally has been built in this country — producing about one-sixth the power. They’ll also cost less — about $1 billion-2 billion apiece, compared with $10 billion-$15 billion for a large plant.
Fox News 30th July 2013 read more »
Politics
Andy Stirling: “The Greens are finished” chants Tim Montgomery – his Times editorial joining heavily orchestrated wishful thinking last week. But an opposite concern is ironically more serious. If judged by its roots, the greatest danger for the green movement lies more in the trappings of success, than in Montgomery’s asserted “failure”. And there also emerge here some important implications for Enlightenment traditions of science. Among the greatest green achievements is that once-marginal aspirations are now deeply and explicitly embedded at the loftiest levels of international governance.
Guardian 30th July 2013 read more »
Energy Policy
The UK’s biggest coal-fired power station has said it will consider investing in gas-powered sites, as it predicted that a dash for gas will be needed in order to head off the threat of power cuts. The chief executive of Drax, Dorothy Thompson, said she would consider the revolutionary move, depending on the detail of the government’s reforms to the electricity market. George Osborne has paved the way for up to 30 new gas-powered stations being built by 2030, which has brought warnings from the government’s own climate change advisor that such a strategy would break its commitment to curb carbon emissions.
Guardian 30th July 2013 read more »
Coal plants are needed to prevent blackouts by backing up wind farms when the wind does not blow, according to the chief executive of Britain’s largest power station. Dorothy Thompson, who runs Drax, the coal and biomass plant, said that people were only now starting to appreciate the problem that wind farms pose. The Government will soon offer subsidies, funded by levies on consumer bills, to power stations to switch on quickly when wind farms are not generating sufficient electricity, under so-called capacity auctions. Environmentalists are opposed to subsidies going to coal plants, which emit twice as much carbon as gas plants and are supposed to be phased out by environmental legislation and taxes.
Times 31st July 2013 read more »
Utilities
British Gas household energy supply profits rose 3pc to £356m in the first half of the year as customers turned up their heating in the freezing winter months and a cold spring. Centrica said much of this extra income was canceled out by “substantially higher costs for environmental obligations and network charges”. It promised in May to use any “extra benefit” from the colder weather to freeze prices for “as long as possible” but refused to quantify the pledge.
Telegraph 31st July 2013 read more »
Times 31st July 2013 read more »
Utility Week 31st July 2013 read more »
Centrica’s North American subsidiary is buying the Energy Marketing unit of Hess, the US oil company where Centrica chief executive Sam Laidlaw spent 20 years. The company says the deal, which will cost it $731m (£477m) in cash, will make it the “leading business-to-business gas supplier in the eastern US” and the second largest supplier of energy to business in America.
Telegraph 30th July 2013 read more »
Times 31st July 2013 read more »
Japan
Fukushima Crisis Update 26th July to 29th July. TEPCO admitted this week that it should have released information about water leaking into the ocean earlier, but “didn’t want to worry the public” in making a “major announcement” until it had confirmed that there was a problem.
Greenpeace 30th July 2013 read more »
Iran
Iran may achieve the “critical capability” to process low-enriched uranium into fuel for a nuclear weapon without detection by international inspectors by mid-2014, according to a report by a research group.
Bloomberg 30th July 2013 read more »
Australia
This week, federal resource minister Gary Gray is talking radioactive waste with Aboriginal people in remote central Australia. Six years ago an Aboriginal clan group, the Northern Land Council (NLC) and the then Howard government signed a secret deal to develop Australia’s first purpose-built national radioactive waste dump at Muckaty, north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory. The commercial-in-confidence plan saw the clan group “volunteer” an area of the shared Muckaty Land Trust for the burial and above ground storage of radioactive waste in return for federal payments, promises and a “package of benefits” worth around $12m.
Guardian 30th July 2013 read more »
US
U.S. power company Entergy Corp is mulling the future of its wholesale nuclear operation and plans to cut 800 jobs to save up to $250 million by 2016, Chief Executive Officer Leo Denault told investors on Tuesday. As part of his reorganization plan to simplify Entergy’s corporate structure, Denault said the company is studying options for its non-utility owned power plants, mainly its aging nuclear plants operating in the U.S. Northeast which face falling wholesale prices and a difficult regulatory environment.
Reuters 30th July 2013 read more »
Belarus
Belarusian Deputy Energy Minister Mikhail Mikhadyuk and Russian state corporation Rosatom International Activities deputy director general Nikolai Spassky held discussions on various issues of cooperation as part of the project to develop a nuclear power project in Belarus. Belarus, with assistance of Russia, plans to construct a two unit nuclear power plant with total capacity of 2,400MW at the Ostrovets site in Grodno Oblast.
Energy Business Review 30th July 2013 read more »
Green Investment Bank
The Green Investment Bank (GIB) has been open for business in the Capital for a year. In that time the bank has committed £635 million to green projects. In the Saughton Mains area of the city is a scheme which the bank could help to extend across the city. Over the last six months a pilot programme has taken place in Saughton Mains with new low energy light bulbs.
Edinburgh Evening News 30th July 2013 read more »
Fossil Fuels
Fracking should be carried out in the “desolate” north-east of England, a former Conservative energy adviser has said, prompting criticism and claims the remarks highlighted the party’s “problem with the north”. Lord Howell, who advised William Hague on energy policy until April and is the father-in-law of the chancellor, George Osborne, drew gasps of astonishment in the House of Lords on Tuesday for suggesting that the controversial form of gas production could take place in the north-east without any impact on the surrounding environment. Howell later apologised for “any offence caused” by his comments and said he didn’t believe the north-east was desolate.
Guardian 31st July 2013 read more »
Independent 30th July 2013 read more »
Telegraph 30th July 2013 read more »
