New Nukes
From Beijing and London to Tokyo and Washington, energy bureaucracies have for decades been pervaded by nuclear enthusiasm. The past few years, for the first time in history, also saw most major governments led by advocates of nuclear energy. The media are saturated with a skilled, intensive, and effective advocacy campaign by the nuclear energy industry and its powerful allies. With disinformation increasingly prevalent and wholly counterfactual accounts of nuclear powers status and competitive landscape widely believed by otherwise sensible people, this reports objective assessment is vital to informed discourse and prudent choice. Mycle Schneider, Antony Froggatt, and Steve Thomas have again performed a vital public service by preparing this uniquely independent, thorough, and timely assessment of the global status of nuclear power, both before and after the Fukushima disaster began to unfold on March 11, 2011.
REVE 3rd May 2011 more >>
The problem for the low carbon economy is that, rightly or wrongly, many of the world’s largest and most polluting economies have made nuclear a central component of their low carbon development plans. The US, China, the UK, India, France, and Japan are all at various stages with energy policies that would result in hundreds of new nuclear reactors. Meanwhile, clean tech investors and energy companies are ploughing millions into plans for new plants and research on cleaner and safer reactors. It is also worth noting that wider green economic plans rest on the foundations provided by a low carbon energy mix. For example, without reliable sources of low carbon energy the green credentials of proposed electric car fleets or high-speed rail networks become highly questionable. If Fukushima does result in an early end to the nuclear renaissance or even just a delay to current plans for new reactors, then governments and businesses will have to rapidly develop new low carbon energy strategies that deliver clean and reliable energy supplies without recourse to nuclear.
Business Green 3rd May 2011 more >>
Cumbria
Cumbria County Council’s Cabinet has urged the government to press ahead with the preparations needed for a new nuclear reprocessing plant that would create 5,000 construction jobs at Sellafield.
Construction Index 3rd May 2011 more >>
Terror
Five men are being held under the Terrorism Act after being arrested close to the Sellafield nuclear site. The men, who are all from London and aged in their 20s, were arrested on Monday shortly after 1630 BST. The arrests were made after Civil Nuclear Constabulary officers conducted a stop check on a vehicle close to the Sellafield site, in Cumbria. The BBC understands the men were taking photographs and are all believed to be Bangladeshi.
BBC 3rd May 2011 more >>
Express 4th May 2011 more >>
London Evening Standard 3rd May 2011 more >>
Telegraph 3rd May 2011 more >>
Counter-terror detectives have carried out a string of raids as part of investigations into arrests at the Sellafield nuclear site. Four houses in east London were swooped on by Scotland Yard after information was passed on to them by Greater Manchester Police.
ITN 3rd May 2011 more >>
Morning Star 3rd May 2011 more >>
Channel 4 News 3rd May 2011 more >>
Daily Mail 3rd May 2011 more >>
Guardian 3rd May 2011 more >>
One of the biggest concentrations of hazardous nuclear waste in Europe is crammed inside Sellafields 2.3 square miles. This relatively small facility in Cumbria holds almost all the UKs remaining stock of plutonium, along with the waste produced over 50 years of civil nuclear power generation. As such, Sellafield is probably one of the most hazardous nuclear sites in Europe, said Roger Clayson, a nuclear specialist at Addleshaw Goddard, a law firm. As for the material it contains, youd be in a far worse situation if that got into the wrong hands than you were at Fukushima, he added
FT 3rd May 2011 more >>
Scotland
Alex Salmond first minister and leader of the Scottish National party paid a visit to Nigg last week, bigging up his promise to produce 100% of Scotland’s electricity from renewables by 2020, and talking about nothing less than “the reindustrialisation of Scotland on a huge scale”. It was a characteristic performance; over the last few weeks, as Labour’s woeful campaign has resorted to shrill warnings about the perils of independence, and the Scottish Lib Dems have shrivelled in the spotlight, Salmond alone has shone and looks set to win a second term, by as many as 62 to seats to Labour’s 51. His secret? A mixture of charisma, chutzpah and a showman’s sense of Scotland’s promise, despite the chill winds of austerity.
Guardian 4th May 2011 more >>
Companies
French nuclear engineer Areva SA says it made euro2 billion ($3 billion) in sales in the first quarter, up 2.2 percent from a year earlier as rising uranium prices boosted the firm’s mining and enrichment business. Areva said in a statement Monday its front end division, which includes uranium mining and enrichment, made sales of euro802 million in the first quarter, up 19 percent from euro674 million a year earlier. Areva’s other divisions, including its reactor building and nuclear waste treatment operations, saw sales slip during the first quarter.
Business Week 2nd May 2011 more >>
Europe
Europes nuclear power plants would not have to prove their ability to withstand the force of an aircraft crash under stress tests being drafted by regulators. The possibility of an aeroplane collision was the most glaring omission among scenarios laid out in a proposal for the stress tests, the centrepiece of the European Unions plan to ensure the safety of its 143 nuclear plants after Japans Fukushima crisis. In spite of pleas from the Austrian government, environmental groups and some members of the European Parliament, the authors steered clear of aircraft crashes because of the insistence of some member states that the tests be limited to natural disasters and not man-made ones, such as terrorist attacks.
FT 3rd May 2011 more >>
Wall Street Journal 3rd May 2011 more >>
Japans Fukushima nuclear disaster has triggered a sharp increase in worry across the European Union about the safety of nuclear power, according to a new Harris poll commissioned by the Financial Times. Nonetheless, the Harris poll found that with the exception of Germany citizens were broadly confident about the management of nuclear plants in their own country.
FT 3rd May 2011 more >>
Japan
Some of the shareholders of a Japanese electric power company say they want the utility to close its nuclear power plants. On Monday, a group of 232 individual stockholders of Tohoku Electric Power Company submitted the documents needed for their proposal to scrap its nuclear power plants. The proposal is expected to be put to a vote in an annual shareholders’ meeting at the end of next month.
NHK 3rd May 2011 more >>
Japanese officials say radiation readings are 100 to 1,000 times the normal level on the Pacific seabed near the Fukushima nuclear power plant
Chosunilbo 4th May 2011 more >>
TEPCO, the owners of the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, just announced that they found contamination levels 100 to 1,000 times higher than normal in sediment from the Fukushima coast. TEPCO did the sediment testing late last weekin areas Greenpeace identified for testing in our research planafter we were denied permission to research inside Japan’s 12 mile territorial waters. The buzz around Japanese Twitter has been saying that Greenpeace is the reason why the authorities have actually done this research.
Greenpeace 3rd May 2011 more >>
The government is planning to seek contributions from the electric power industry for an envisaged entity to help Tokyo Electric Power Co pay compensation over radiation leaks at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, government sources said Tuesday. Under the plan, TEPCO will be required in principle to shoulder all the compensation, but if it faces a fund shortage, the envisaged entity will make up for the remainder using contributions from electric power companies operating nuclear power plants, the sources said.
Japan Today 4th May 2011 more >>
Workers at Japan’s crippled nuclear plant began putting up equipment on Tuesday to allow the start of repairs to its cooling systems, key to bringing reactors under control after they were badly damaged in the March 11 quake and tsunami.
IB Times 3rd May 2011 more >>
Angry Japanese farmers working and living up to 60 kilometres away from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have protested in the country’s capital Tokyo that their businesses are in jeopardy. More than 200 farmers including cereal, vegetable and livestock growers demanded redress for farm products contaminated by radiation spewing from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.
Agra Europe 3rd May 2011 more >>
Germany
According to German business newspaper Handelsblatt, Chancellor Angela Merkel is hoping to speed up an end to nuclear power in the country, which is now targeted for 2022. The paper says Merkel is in talks with German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen and Chief of Staff Ronald Pofalla. A target year of 2022 had been set by the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
RTT News 3rd May 2011 more >>
Microgeneration
This week’s Micropower News is now available. Up to 15,000 homes could benefit from solar costing as little as £99 as part of a scheme being run by E.ON; the first full year of the feed-in tariff scheme has seen over 28,000 solar PV installations; the Co-operative Group and Co-operatives UK are joining forces to work on a new piece of research to support the development of community renewable energy in the UK; Staffordshire County Council is planning to power itself with green energy.
Microgen Scotland 29th April 2011 more >>
