Magnox
MAGNOX, the company responsible for 10 UK nuclear power facilities including Sizewell A and Bradwell, has agreed an £80million outsourcing contract. Interserve, the international support services and construction group, has been awarded a three-year integrated facilities management contract, including an option to extend the deal for a further three years. It is the first time that Magnox has chosen to outsource all facilities management requirements across its entire estate to a single supplier under one contract agreement – a move it says will ensure the highest standards of safety and quality control as well as reducing costs. Interserve will deliver services including mechanical and engineering maintenance, catering, cleaning, office services, grounds maintenance and civil works. The sites, which employ more than 5,000 Magnox staff and contractors are at various stages of their lifecycles, ranging from Wylfa on Anglesey which is still generating electricity to Bradwell in Essex and Trawsfynydd in Gwynedd which are at an advanced stage in the decommissioning process.
East Anglian Daily Times 3rd April 2013 read more »
Politics
The Green Book: New Directions for Liberals in Government was published in March and we recently got our hands on a copy to see the direction Lib Dem policy is headed toward the 2015 general election, a party buoyed by their victory in the Eastleigh by-election.Putting forward the economic case in favour of development in renewables might be a persuasive vote winner in the next election. A campaign in which the Lib Dems are likely to present themselves as a responsible party of government capable of working with either Labour or the Conservatives in a future coalition. If the party decides to make the kind of issues it talks about in the Green Book central to their demands as part of future Coalition negotiations, then that will hopefully be a good thing.
Good Energy 3rd April 2013 read more »
Nuclear vs Fossil Fuels
A landmark study has put the figure of 1.84 million on the number of lives saved by the worldwide use of nuclear power instead of fossil fuels. The report co-authored by former NASA scientist James Hansen presents a dramatic new case for nuclear energy.
World Nuclear News 3rd April 2013 read more »
Companies
Paris-based private equity firm Astorg Partners has agreed to buy the nuclear radiation measurement unit of French nuclear reactor maker Areva.
Alt Assets 3rd April 2013 read more »
Financial News 3rd April 2013 read more »
SMRs
Recent developments have focused attention on small modular reactor activity in the US. But Russia is pressing ahead with developments of its own.
Nuclear Energy Insider 2nd April 2013 read more »
Taiwan
On March 9th, 2013, over 200,000 anti nuclear activists took to the streets around Taiwan as the debate over nuclear power is once again heating up. A proposed referendum in July or August is now touted as the ultimate arbiter of the fate of nuclear plant Number 4 at Longmen. These particular reactors have been contentious since their inception, officially in production for over two decades, with plans dating back even further to the pre-democracy days. Most recently though, Fukushima has been causing increasing concern among many Taiwanese citizens and the recent second anniversary has further galvanized activists and average citizens alike.
Counterpunch 24th March 2013 read more »
North Korea
North Korea’s army said last night that it had received “final approval” from its government to mount a nuclear attack on the United States. In a statement published by the official KCNA news agency, the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army said it was formally informing Washington that US threats would be “smashed by … cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means”.
Times 4th April 2013 read more »
Express 4th April 2013 read more »
Daily Mail 4th April 2013 read more »
ITV News 3rd April 2013 read more »
Mirror 3rd April 2013 read more »
The Pentagon ordered an advanced missile defence system to the western Pacific on Wednesday, as the US defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, declared that North Korea posed “a real and clear danger” to South Korea, Japan and America itself.
Guardian 4th April 2013 read more »
City AM 4th April 2013 read more »
Guardian 4th April 2013 read more »
Telegraph 4th April 2013 read more »
Turkey
Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and France’s Areva have won an order to build Turkey’s second nuclear power plant – a project that is expected to cost some $22bn, the Nikkei business daily said on Thursday, citing Japanese and Turkish sources. Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Ministry has informed the Japanese government and corporate officials of the decision to award the deal to build four pressurized water nuclear reactors with a combined capacity of about 4.5GW at Sinop on the Black Sea, the report said. Construction is set to start in 2017, with the first reactor slated to come online by 2023, and France’s GDF Suez SA will operate the plant, it added. Russia’s Rosatom will build Turkey’s first nuclear power station and start construction in mid-2015. It expects the facility to start producing electricity in 2019, its deputy general manager told Reuters in February. That $20bn plant at Mersin Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast will also have four power units with installed capacity of 4.8GW.
FT 4th April 2013 read more »
Iran
Progress in this week’s nuclear talks between Iran and six major powers in Almaty, Kazakhstan, depends on how Tehran responds to a proposal put forward by the six, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.
Reuters 3rd April 2013 read more »
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Wednesday she was cautiously optimistic over the outcome of talks this week between Iran and world powers on Tehran’s nuclear drive.
Middle East Online 3rd April 2013 read more »
Iran’s drive to enrich uranium in the teeth of international sanctions has cost the country about $100 billion (£66 billion) in lost oil revenue and investment, a new study has found.
Telegraph 3rd April 2013 read more »
US
YOU could be forgiven for thinking a new era of nuclear energy is under way in the US. On 11 March, crews at the Virgil C Summer power plant in South Carolina completed a 51-hour marathon of pouring concrete. Three days later, in Burke County, Georgia, another concrete base was completed. The two reactors that will sit on these bases will be Westinghouse AP1000s. Like older models, they will use uranium fission to heat water and drive a turbine, but these reactors will be smaller, simpler to build, and each will add more than 1100 megawatts of capacity to the region’s power grid when they come online in 2016 or 2017 – without emitting carbon dioxide. They will be the first new reactors on US soil in over three decades. Besides the two reactors in progress, two more are planned – one at each plant. And work has resumed on a half-built reactor, Watts Bar 2 in Tennessee. It could be connected to the grid by 2015.
New Scientist 3rd April 2013 read more »
THE phrase “nuclear renaissance” is greatly overused, but the US decision to resume building nuclear power plants after a 30-year hiatus might yet prove worthy of it. That’s not because it will alter the energy landscape in the short term. The US government expects that nuclear power will continue to provide about 20 per cent of the US electricity supply between now and 2035. The new plants will simply replace the output of ageing reactors being shut down by utility companies.
New Scientist 4th April 2013 read more »
Japan
Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) has announced that it will not be able to restart the reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant soon. Tepco president Naomi Hirose was quoted by The Wall Street Journal as saying, “If we don’t get back in the black, we would no longer exist as we are.We will use all possible means to achieve that.” The owner of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tepco, in summer 2012 proposed a plan to streamline operations in exchange for government approval of a rate increase and public cash to remain afloat. As part of the plan, one of Tepco’s seven reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in northwestern Niigata prefecture was supposed to restart in April 2013, after which the other six reactors were to restart over 17 months.
Energy Business Review 3rd April 2013 read more »
Trident
Treating Trident as an employment scheme will leave Britain ill equipped for the real threat: terrorism.
Guardian 3rd April 2013 read more »
In an article for The Daily Telegraph today, the Prime Minister says that the nuclear threat facing Britain has “increased” since the end of the Cold War and that the country still requires the “ultimate weapon of defence”.
Telegraph 3rd April 2013 read more »
David Cameron: we need our nuclear deterrent as much today as we did when a previous British Government embarked on it over six decades ago. Of course, the world has changed dramatically. The Soviet Union no longer exists. But the nuclear threat has not gone away. In terms of uncertainty and potential risk it has, if anything, increased. The significant new factor we have to consider is this: the number of nuclear states has not diminished in recent years – and there is a real risk of new nuclear-armed states emerging. Iran continues to defy the will of the international community in its attempts to develop its nuclear capabilities, while the highly unpredictable and aggressive regime in North Korea recently conducted its third nuclear test and could already have enough fissile material to produce more than a dozen nuclear weapons.
Telegraph 3rd April 2013 read more »
David Cameron has issued a stark warning against any move to abandon Britain’s Trident deterrent in the face of the growing nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran.
Lennox Herald 3rd April 2013 read more »
ITV News 4th April 2013 read more »
The cost and commitment of replacing Trident with a like-for-like system means the Government should consider “what is the most necessary element of our deterrent”, believes Hugh Chalmers from the Royal United Services Institute. The Government ought to consider the range of possible options for the UK’s nuclear deterrent given the country’s financial situation and the committment that renewing the Trident weapons system represents, says a nuclear analyst at the Royal United Services Institute.
Telegraph 3rd April 2013 read more »
David Cameron says scrapping nuclear deterrent would be foolish in face of ‘evolving threats’ from North Korea and Iran.
Guardian 4th April 2013 read more »
Renewables
One of the leading voices on the environment said the only way to address global climate change and the growing demand for energy was to invest in renewables. Author, journalist and campaigner Oliver Tickell spoke recently at Ecobuild, a sustainable building conference. He said while the price of solar energy continued to fall, other options including nuclear energy were unreliable and expensive. “Solar is absolutely falling in price year on year,” said Tickell. “In Australia solar is now cheaper than coal so if someone was to go into power generation they would pay less to use solar than coal. For a farmer in Bangladesh solar panels are cheaper than using a diesel pump.” Mr Tickell cast aside claims nuclear was a valid option, saying the cost would be cripplingly expensive. He used the proposed Hinkley nuclear plant as an example, citing the huge cost of its construction, insurance risk, research grants as well as long-term decommissioning costs. “We would need 10,000 nuclear plants to provide the majority of global energy need,” explains Tickell. “The cost to the tax payer for one single reactor would be $100 billion. To build 10,000, it would cost 1 quadrillion dollars. The nuclear industry is in state of desperation.”
Renewable Energy World 1st April 2013 read more »
Marubeni Corp., the biggest investor in electricity generation among Japan’s trading houses, is working on how to revive the geothermal industry and tap heat that powers volcanos as an alternative to nuclear reactors. The effort would draw pools of underground heat with a potential of double the current capacity of geothermal projects operating worldwide. That would help Japan shift away from atomic reactors that provided 30 percent of the nation’s power before the accident in Fukushima two years ago.
Renewable Energy World 1st April 2013 read more »
Biomass
Controversial £325 million plans to build a biomass plant at Dundee harbour are back on track following a detailed air pollution report. A new environmental statement has been submitted to the Scottish Government and the plans will go out to public consultation. Forth Energy says up to 300 people would be employed during construction works. The facility, which would feature a 100 metre stack visible from much of the city, would provide 70 long-term operational jobs. Despite previous concerns, a report by the developer claims the plant would produce a negligible amount of air pollution. A Dundee City Council spokesman said: “We are aware that this was coming and have been working with Forth Energy on the air quality assessment figures to make sure that they are up to date, accurate and valid.
Dundee Courier 4th April 2013 read more »
Fracking
Letter: Jonathan Brown’s article reveals that future energy security depends on fracking, which according to the CEO of the energy firm Cuadrilla is behind schedule and progressing slowly, and may provide 0-40 per cent gas return, and that is a guess. A more scientific, data-based article in the science journal Nature reveals that the productivity of 65,000 wells in the US declined rapidly, producing 80-95 per cent less gas than in the previous three years. So far from “fuelling homes [after] three years”. there may simply be insufficient gas to fuel anything. Gas fracking companies need urgently to solve why gas wells run dry so quickly. Without that, fracking is simply unsustainable.
Independent 4th April 2013 read more »
