Hinkley
There is ‘no excuse’ now for French energy firm EDF to continue to delay giving the final go-ahead for the £18 billion Hinkely C nuclear power station to be built in Somerset. That was the call from union leaders in the West who are backing the proposal, following the summit meeting to discuss the delays between David Cameron and French president Francois Hollande.
Western Daily Press 5th March 2016 read more »
Paul Flynn MP: The issue I would like to raise is one that was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock). It is the sole point I want to make and it relates to the future of energy in Wales. If we look at our map and our potential, our North sea oil, which is Scotland’s great treasure, is the tide and hydroelectric power. We have allowed this immense source of energy to run to waste untapped. There is an extraordinary devotion to Hinkley Point, which I find inexplicable. It is based entirely on a stubborn view that will not accept the truth and the scientific reality. It will not accept that Hinkley Point is the final manifestation of a technological blind alley. It is an EPR reactor. The one in Finland is now seven years late and €6.7 billion over budget. It will probably never work. The one at Flammanville has had a terrible technological problem in the roof of the reactor’s vessel, and it will probably never finish.
Hansard 3rd March 2016 read more »
Waste Transport
Gavin Newlands, the MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, has condemned the transport of highly radioactive nuclear waste through Paisley Gilmour Street. The fuel cores from Hunterston B Nuclear Power Station passed through Paisley – one of Scotland’s largest towns – at 1.35pm on Wednesday 2nd February 2016. Each train carries 2-3 flasks of waste between Hunterston, Torness and Sellafield, criss-crossing the most highly populated parts of Scotland. The trains use the ordinary trail service, slotted in between other freight trains and passenger trains. Recent repairs to the west coast mainline meant that trains took some unusual routes, weaving between Scottish towns. The sealed flasks contain spent nuclear fuel rods and water to cool them. Members of Scottish CND filmed trains carrying flasks of radioactive fuel passing through Gilmour Street station as passengers waited on nearby platforms.
Renfrewshire24 4th March 2016 read more »
Anti-nuclear campaigners have called for an end of toxic waste being transported through the heart of Paisley. Members of Scottish CND filmed trains carrying flasks of radioactive fuel passing through Gilmour Street station as passengers waited on nearby platforms. Protestors believe as many as three trains each week pass through Renfrewshire carrying the highly hazardous waste between Hunterston B power station, in Ayrshire, and the Sellafield nuclear decommissioning site in Cumbria.
Daily Record 4th March 2016 read more »
Nuclear Futures
The nuclear industry is now at a fork in the road where we have a choice – to continue to be passengers in a changing world, or to proactively put ourselves in the best position to meet the world’s new priorities. We know that the industry is willing and capable of taking on these new challenges, be they addressing the impact of climate change or meeting the ever-growing demand for electricity.
World Nuclear News 29th Feb 2016 read more »
Electricity Markets
The competition watchdog will on Thursday announce remedies aimed at addressing the dominance and excessive profits of the big six energy suppliers in the UK retail market. But the Competition and Markets Authority is set to yield to lobbying by the big six and drop plans for a safeguard price cap and, probably, lift a ban on multiple confusing tariffs. It has already turned its back on demands to break up these large utilities. While it’s true that the big six have severely distorted the retail market, their biggest crime will not be mentioned anywhere: that they have been acting as a massive brake on work towards modernising and decarbonising Britain’s power sector. In Germany, politicians have seized the initiative on behalf of their citizens by introducing the Energiewende – energy change – to fast-track the country into a low-carbon era. They ignored the critical screams from their (and our) utility companies, including RWE and E.ON. In Britain these utilities have for decades used their financial and political muscle to keep their vested interests and fossil fuel assets in place. The CMA should have gone ahead with breaking up Centrica, SSE and the rest – not because it would have had a dramatic impact on immediate prices, although it would have helped, but because it would undermine their power base. And big six should really read big seven, because the National Grid, too, is stuck in the past and frightened of the future, just as the lights are in danger of going out because of a lack of new investment. The only new power stations energy secretary Amber Rudd seems determined to pursue are nuclear, but even the first proposed one – at Hinkley Point in Somerset – is much delayed and dependent on a yet-to-be agreed French financing package for EDF. But amid all that gloom there came a glimmer of hope at the end of last week, courtesy of the National Infrastructure Commission in a report for the Treasury. The report, entitled “Smart Power”, says what this newspaper, many energy experts and businesses without legacy fossil fuel interests have long been saying: you do not need to build that much new power capacity if you put more emphasis on reducing demand.
Observer 6th March 2016 read more »
More than four million households could see their energy bills cut by regulators, under plans to cap prices for vulnerable customers expected to be announced this week. But the Competition and Markets Authority, which has been investigating allegations of rip-off energy prices for two years, is expected to confirm it has abandoned its original plan of a wide-ranging cap that could have resulted in price cuts for 70 per cent of UK households. A temporary “safeguard” price cap set by regulators should instead apply to the approximately 16 per cent of households that have pre-payment electricity and g as meters, the CMA is expected to conclude in a provisional decision due on Thursday. These households are disproportionately likely to be poor or vulnerable, with some having had a pre-payment meter forcibly installed after struggling with debt.
Telegraph 5th March 2016 read more »
Energy Policy
Christopher Booker: The slow-motion train crash of Britain’s energy policy gets nearer to the abyss with every week that passes. Consider a few facts. On the windless afternoon of February 25, the contribution being made to keeping our lights on by our 6,600 absurdly subsidised wind turbines was less than 0.4 per cent – four-thousandths of all the electricity we were using. Nine per cent was coming from abroad, 37 per cent from gas and 26 per cent from coal. But our 11 coal-fired power stations are now vanishing so fast by 2019 only one may survive. Due to the government’s drive to “decarbonise” our entire electricity supply by 2030 – to rely on “renewables” and (non-existent) nuclear – our remaining gas-fired plants may well follow, thanks not least to our crippling “carbon tax” on fossil fuels. So grotesquely is the government distorting the electricity market, that by 2020, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the cost of “environmental levies” will have more than quadrupled, from £3.1 billion in 2014/15 to £13.6 billion. But now things have got worse. Amber Rudd’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) realises that, to keep the lights on, we badly need new back-up for all those times when “renewables” (or “unreliables”, as I call them) can’t contribute a bean. But the industry is so aware that Decc wants to drive fossil fuels out of business that plans to build any new gas plants have dried up. So last week Decc was offering to bribe them into building new plants with yet another subsidy, which for a single 2 gigawatt power station might amount to £80 million a year. If the industry responds, this and other costs not included in the OBR’s figures would make its estimated quadrupling of “climate levies” by 2020 look seriously understated.
Telegraph 5th March 2016 read more »
Energy Policy – Scotland
Richard Dixon: There are several ways that you can judge how the Scottish Government is doing on climate change. Ministers say the right things about climate change and the need for a low carbon economy. Policy documents, like the plan that spells out how we will meet climate targets, include some good policies and appear to add up. But a key test is to look at where the money is going. In the coming year’s Scottish budget there is £820m going on major roads. Meanwhile less than 2% of the total transport budget is going towards walking and cycling. That imbalance clearly shows we haven’t got our priorities right yet. The 2009 Scottish Climate Act cleverly specified that every year the proposed budget should be scrutinised for its impact on climate emissions. But the civil servants even more cleverly made sure this doesn’t work properly. So Members of the Scottish Parliament do get a report about the carbon implications of proposed spending plans and parliamentary committees spend time discussing the issue. But the official report doesn’t actually tell them what they need to know. One of these reports seemed to show that the Borders Railway would be really bad for the climate while, in comparison, the new Forth Bridge would be two and half times better! That’s because the boundary of the assessment is drawn too narrowly. Railways need lots of concrete and steel – materials with a high carbon cost – so they appear bad for the climate. But no account at all is taken of the positive side – all the cars that will be taken off the road because there are lovely new trains on a brand new rail commuting route. The Bridge uses less concrete, steel and gravel so appears better, but there is no mention of all the extra traffic that will be generated by having a new bridge. So the current way of doing these carbon assessments fails to provide the full picture and can give exactly the wrong answers.
Scotsman 4th March 2016 read more »
Fukushima
The March 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant caused extensive human suffering—evacuations, emotional trauma and premature deaths, disrupted jobs and schooling. What they have not caused, so far, is radiation-related illness among the general public, and few specialists expect dramatic increases in cancers or other ailments. The reactors spewed just a tenth of the radiation emitted by the Chernobyl disaster, winds blew much of that out to sea, and evacuations were swift. Yet one wave of illness has been linked to the disaster—the ironic result of a well-intentioned screening program. Months after the disaster, Fukushima Prefecture set about examining the thyroids of hundreds of thousands of children and teens for signs of radiation-related cancers. The screening effort was unprecedented, and no one knew what to expect. So when the first round of exams started turning up thyroid abnormalities in nearly half of the kids, of whom more than 100 were later diagnosed with thyroid cancer, a firestorm erupted.
Science 4th March 2016 read more »
Five years since a tsunami led to disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, Andrew Gilligan explores the ghost towns left in its wake.
Telegraph 5th March 2016 read more »
The sea wall failure was most striking at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), has argued since the crisis that the 13-metre tsunami that overwhelmed the plant’s cooling system following the earthquake was “beyond all normal expectations”. An internal Tepco report in 2008, however, predicted the potential for a maximum tsunami of 15.7 metres.
Independent 5th March 2016 read more »
France
An incident at the Fessenheim nuclear facility in France in 2014 was more serious than previously known. German media reports claim the authorities withheld information detailing the gravity of the situation.
Deutsche Welle 4th March 2016 read more »
France is coming under increasing pressure to close its oldest nuclear plant after a water leak in 2014 has been revealed to be much more serious than first thought. The Fessenheim plant is one of three power stations that France’s neighbours have expressed concerns about. Almost two years ago, in April 2014, a minor water leak at the 1970s-built plant led to the flooding of an electrical control system. But according to reports from Germany operators then lost full control over one of the facilities two reactors.
IB Times 5th March 2016 read more »
China
China, the world’s largest consumer of energy, may fail to meet the nuclear power target laid out in its latest five-year plan, according to the chairman of one of the country’s biggest reactor builders. The nation may miss its goal of getting 58 gigawatts of capacity online by 2020 because not enough reactors are being built, He Yu, chairman of China General Nuclear Power Corp., said in an interview in Beijing Saturday. The country may start seven new reactors this year and Hualong One, its domestically designed model, will be ready for export in three years, He said. “China has 28 gigawatts of capacity in operation and has less than 30 gigawatts under construction,” He said. “It takes at least five years to construct nuclear power plants. So we won’t be able to reach that target.”
Bloomberg 5th March 2016 read more »
US
Workers have started removing nuclear waste from a leaking tank at the Hanford Site just one day before a state of Washington deadline. The Tri-City Herald reports that Hanford workers began pumping waste from the nuclear reservation’s oldest double-shell tank Thursday afternoon. The tank is leaking radioactive waste into the space between its inner and outer shells. The tank contains about 150,000 gallons of radioactive sludge covered by about 650,000 gallons of liquid waste. The liquid could be removed by early next week if things go smoothly, but removing the sludge is more complicated.
Seattle Times 4th March 2016 read more »
Trident
TRIDENT submariners were guilty of a “prolonged and repeated failure” which resulted in 20 workers being exposed to radiation at the Faslane nuclear base, according to an internal investigation by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The damning indictment is published in MoD documents seen by the Sunday Herald that also expose a series of radiation blunders on Trident submarines docked at the Clyde naval port. They reveal how safety procedures were flouted when visitors were not given radiation badges, a contaminated sponge was taken from a submarine, and another worker was irradiated. The documents, just released a full two years after a Freedom of Information request, conclude that submariners showed a “lack of understanding of the magnitude of the hazards”.
Sunday Herald 6th March 2016 read more »
Nuclear Testing
Map of every nuclear explosion in history.
Independent 5th March 2016 read more »
British scientists exploded nuclear bombs in the South Pacific in the 1950s. Today, 153,000 of the servicemen’s descendants cursed by birth defects, miscarriages and cancer are still battling for compensation. Illness finally caught up with one veteran after more than four decades.
Mirror 5th March 2016 read more »
Fossil Fuels
Startling increases in one of the main pollutants that cause global warming have been unexpectedly discovered over the United States – and the main suspect is the country’s booming fracking industry. New Harvard University research, drawing on satellite measurements, concludes that US emissions of methane – a much more powerful warming gas than carbon dioxide – have “increased by more than 30 per cent over the past decade”. The researchers say they “cannot readily attribute” the rise to any particular source but point out that US production of shale gas increased nine times during the same period, while other studies show that many fracking operations are emitting much more methane than has been officially recognised.
Independent 5th March 2016 read more »
THE company which attracted fierce opposition to its plans to extract coal gas from under the sea around Scotland has collapsed. Five Quarter, which was based in Newcastle and backed by the UK’s biggest private landowner, the Duke of Buccleuch, went out of business last week, blaming lack of government support. The news was welcomed by environmental groups as “another nail in the coffin” for underground coal gasification (UCG), an unconventional gas technology like fracking that has been stalled by a Scottish government moratorium on development. Five Quarter had been granted exploratory UCG licences for two areas in the Firth of Forth, one off Musselburgh and one in the centre of the firth. It also had a UCG licence in the Solway Firth. Another company led by the multi-millionaire oil tycoon, Algy Cluff, has UCG licences for three other areas around the Firth of Forth. But it has recently pulled back from its plans because of the moratorium.
Sunday Herald 6th March 2016 read more »
