NDA
The taxpayers bill to clean up Britains old nuclear plants has jumped by a quarter to top £100 billion for the first time, The Times has learnt. The official, unpublished estimate rocketed this year because the complex work to make safe highly toxic waste storage ponds and silos at Sellafield will cost much more and take longer than thought. This will result in clean-up work at other sites around the UK being delayed, pushing out costs and increasing the liability for taxpayers. According to recent figures from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Britains decommissioning liabilities will total £103.9 billion over the next 120 years. The NDA has made this estimate on an undiscounted basis, which is how much the work would cost if it was done tomorrow.
Times 4th Dec 2011 more >>
New Nukes
Construction of a new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK will need 17,000 construction workers and add £1.5bn a year to construction output.
The Construction Index 5th Dec 2011 more >>
Dalgety Bay
THE Ministry of Defence is facing a barrage of ferocious criticism, accusing it of botching its monitoring of the so-called atomic beach at Dalgety Bay. The MoD has been accused of handling the situation so badly that it missed more than 400 radioactive hotspots, including some of the most lethal ever found on public beaches. Former Government experts, current advisers and senior politicians have condemned the MoDs monitoring of the Fife site as inadequate, ineffectual and incompetent. According to one of the MoDs own former radiation scientists, the ministry can no longer be trusted to do the job though it must pay for it. Radiation expert Dr Ian Fairlie, a former senior civil servant at the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs in London, thought the MoDs indifference to the risks at Dalgety Bay was characteristic. He compared it with the MoDs heartless denial of cancers suffered by nuclear test veterans, its refusal to recognise the hazards of depleted uranium weapons and its poor radiation safety in nuclear submarines and at MoD sites. The common factor is that defence ministers have received ill-informed advice about the real risks of radiation, said Fairlie. In my view, senior MoD officials responsible for giving this consistent misinformation to ministers should be reprimanded.
Sunday Herald 4th Dec 2011 more >>
Robedwards 4th Dec 2011 more >>
There are, it seems, few tricks, evasions and deceits that it wont deploy to try to avoid responsibility for cleaning up the radioactive mess it has made at Dalgety Bay in Fife. As we reveal today, its monitoring of the contaminated foreshore in September missed more than 400 radioactive hotspots. Like Admiral Nelson back in 1801, the MoDs modern-day commanders turned a blind eye in the hope that the problem would disappear.
Sunday Herald 4th Dec 2011 more >>
Robedwards 4th Dec 2011 more >>
France
Environmentalist group Greenpeace Monday said some of its activists managed to break into France’s Nogen-sur-Seine nuclear plant, near Paris, around 0500 GMT, to show security and safety remain issues despite reassurances from the government and EDF.
Wall Street Journal 5th Dec 2011 more >>
Japan
At least 45 tons of highly radioactive water have leaked from a purification facility at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, and some of it may have reached the Pacific Ocean, the plants operator said Sunday. The new radioactive water leak called into question the progress that the plants operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, appeared to have made in bringing its reactors under control.
New York Times 5th Dec 2011 more >>
Senior officials at Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) held a top secret discussion in 2002 about abandoning the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant project, the Mainichi has learned. The revelation that TEPCO and METI officials were already suggesting abandonment of a nuclear reprocessing project — a major pillar of the nuclear fuel cycle vision — nine years ago is likely to affect the new national nuclear policy that the Japan Atomic Energy Commission of the Cabinet Office is slated to draw up by the summer of 2012.
Mainichi 2nd Dec 2011 more >>
Israel
Nearly two-thirds of Israeli Jews, 64 percent, favor establishing a nuclear free zone in the Middle East – even when it was spelled out that this would mean both Israel and Iran would have to forego nuclear weapons – finds a new University of Maryland poll.
Medical News Today 4th Dec 2011 more >>
Romania
Bucharest feared it would have to shut one unit of its sole nuclear power plant at Cernavoda if levels dropped further, as the reactor uses water from a Danube-Black Sea canal for cooling. Such a shutdown already occurred in 2003 when the river level hit an all-time low, a record now less than half a metre away. Meanwhile, Romania’s state-owned Hidroelectrica company, 40 percent of whose production depends on the Danube, has said it is cutting electricity supplies.
AFP 4th Dec 2011 more >>
Dash for Gas
The construction of new renewable energy generation capacity has fallen dramatically, as the big six energy suppliers pursue a “dash for gas” policy that could put the UK’s climate change targets out of reach and leave households with higher bills. The number of new wind turbines built this year is down by half on last year. To date, 540MW worth of new turbines, on land and offshore, have been built this year – the equivalent of about 400 onshore turbines. Across the UK last year, 1,192MW of wind capacity was added. The pipeline of new projects has also stagnated – this year, 2,058MW of wind farms were submitted for planning permission, compared with 2,080MW in 2010, and the number approved dropped markedly, from 1, 366MW in 2010 to 920MW. This contrasts with the 30GW of new gas-fired power stations that are at planning stage. These will require tens of billions of pounds of investment, coming mostly from the big six energy suppliers. Although gas is cheaper than renewables at present, the cost of renewables is steadily coming down, and over-reliance on gas is one of the key factors behind high energy bills, according to the government. About 60% of rises in the past year have been the result of the higher cost of fuel imports.
Guardian 4th Dec 2011 more >>
Green Investment Bank
The government’s Green Investment Bank (GIB) has had its actions so limited that it will not be able to support the coalition’s much-vaunted Green Deal to refurbish millions of homes to save energy. The details have emerged in a draft document drawn up by the Treasury and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), and presented to the advisory board at their most recent meeting. The proposals, seen by the Guardian, have also caused consternation because the government is proposing to help set strategic priorities, a move one critic said opened up the risk of “pork-barrel politics” if ministers insisted on pushing ahead with certain schemes to curry favour with voters ahead of an election. At worst, some people close to the talks fear the gov ernment could fail to get state aid approval from the European commission to provide funding for the bank because it will be seen as too close to ministers. There is also concern about the increasingly “negative” language, including a downgrading of the funds being offered by the Treasury from £3bn to “up to £3bn”.
Guardian 4th Dec 2011 more >>
Climate
The Lib Dem minister, who is responsible for climate change, will arrive at UN talks in Durban, South Africa, today to lead the charge for an international deal to stop global temperatures rising above 35.6F (2C). This means halving emissions in Britain over the next 15 years and spending £2.9 billion of taxpayers money helping other countries to also reduce carbon and adapt to climate change. The EU is already committed to cutting emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, but Mr Huhne wants to increase the target cut to 30 per cent even though many countries are uncomfortable with the impact on industry. Mr Huhnes intervention comes after Mr Osborne, the Tory Chancellor, insisted Britain would not cut emissions faster than the rest of Europe.
Telegraph 5th Dec 2011 more >>
Politics
The leaders of the countrys best-known environmental groups have combined to challenge David Cameron to slap down what they see as George Osbornes anti-green agenda. The heads of Friends of the Earth, the RSPB, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, Greenpeace and the Wildlife Trusts wrote to the Prime Minister yesterday demanding he show leadership. The organisations will meet next week to co-ordinate a campaign to challenge what they see as the Treasurys new hardline view that green initiatives prevent growth.
Their biggest shock came when Mr Osborne, in his Autumn Statement, seemed to deride ecological safeguards when announcing a review of how Habitats Regulations are interpreted and implemented.
The Times 5th Dec 2011 more >>
Renewables
For every 1 percent increase in the number of installations in a single ZIP code, theres a commensurate 1 percent decrease in the amount of time until the next solar installation. solar is contagious!
Climate Progress 4th Dec 2011 more >>
