Planning
It will be a busy week this week for the Department for Communities and Local Government now that the Localism Bill has been confirmed as coming out on Thursday 9 December, but it was a busy week last week for officials at the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). On Tuesday they were supporting their minister in front of a select committee in the House of Commons; on Wednesday they supported him in action again on the floor of the House, and they also attended a local consultation event in West Mersea in Essex on the proposed Bradwell nuclear power station. Finally, last week saw the three public consultation meetings on the six revised energy National Policy Statements (NPSs). Here is a report of the London event, which took place on Thursday. Friends of the Earth are as disappointed as the RSPB with the revised Appraisals of Sustainability that accompany the NPSs. They were also hoping that the IPC would never make any decisions, but Giles Scott said that unless the government used its ‘call in’ powers, it would make decisions between the time that the first NPSs were ratified (‘designated’), probably in spring 2011, until it was abolished in April 2012. Thus any applications made so far, until about April 2011 would probably get decided by the IPC (although there is only one in that category at the moment).
Bircham Dyson Bell 6th Dec 2010 more >>
Climate/Electricity Markets
The UK will cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2030 under world-leading proposals from the government’s advisers on climate change. Achieving the target proposed by the Committee on Climate Change requires a complete revamp of the nation’s electricity market, making it virtually zero-carbon, as well as an overhaul of heat-leaking homes and the replacement of petrol-driven cars with 11m electric or plug-in hybrid models. Kennedy accepts that the 2030 target proposed today is “highly ambitious”. It will require 90% cut in power sector emissions, to be delivered by 40GW of new nuclear, wind and clean coal and gas power – equivalent to 25 large power stations. Delivering the investment needed to build this needs “fundamental changes” to the electricity market. “We have had the most liberal electricity market in world – which had some benefits in a different era,” said Kennedy. The market must be more “planned” he said, with the government putting out tenders for 25- to 40-year contracts to supply low-carbon electricity to cut investor risk and so the cost of capital. The government’s proposals on electricity market reform are expected next week.
Guardian 7th Dec 2010 more >>
Nuclear Subsidy
New nuclear power plants should not receive government subsidies because they are financially viable without funding from taxpayers, says the government’s climate-change adviser. The proposed feed-in tariff for low-carbon energy, which would include both renewables and nuclear, would be acceptable because it would not represent a direct subsidy, said David Kennedy, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change.
FT 7th Dec 2010 more >>
Nuclear Waste
Proposals have been published on how to handle nuclear waste from abroad, which is held at Dounreay. In the 1980s and 1990s, the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) signed contracts to recycle fuel from Australia, Belgium, Germany and Italy. The countries were to take back the waste generated but some are not geared up to do so. It has been proposed returning an equivalent amount of material held at the Caithness site and at Sellafield. This waste would be in a form Dounreay and the countries involved could handle, according to government. The Scottish and UK governments have sought public views on the newly-published plans.
BBC 6th Dec more >>
Cumbria
Energy Coast: Powering the Nation. Poentially one of the most critical development of the Energy Coast would be out of sight – a £12bn underground nuclear waste repository.
NW Evening Mail (Supplement) December 2010 more >>
Sellafield Windscale site is being mothballed so that workers can move to work on reducing greater hazards.
NW Evening Mail (Supplement) November 2010 more >>
Trawsfynydd
The clean-up at the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station could be speeded up if Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) business plans are given the go-ahead. If approved the workforce would increase by 200 so that the current phase of the decommissioning is completed by 2016 instead of 2022. It would mean more than 800 are employed, up from the 620 currently working there. But work to lower the towers would not begin until around 2020.
BBC 6th Dec 2010 more >>
Research Reactors
A U.S. company has received the first batch of medical isotopes made from low-grade uranium instead of weapons-grade material, a shift that could help cut the threat of nuclear proliferation.
Reuters 6th Dec 2010 more >>
Global Fuel Bank
The board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has adopted a resolution establishing a global nuclear fuel bank aimed at providing an alternative to countries seeking producing their own nuclear fuel.
World Nuclear News 6th Dec 2010 more >>
Iran
Iran and key world powers are due to hold a second day of talks over Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme. The first day of talks in Geneva lasted nearly 10 hours and were described as “constructive” and “forward moving” by an Iranian official.
BBC 7th Dec 2010 more >>
The first talks for more than a year between Iran and seven world powers began on a pessimistic note over the West’s concern that Tehran is developing nuclear weapons.
Belfast Telegraph 7th Dec 2010 more >>
Independent 7th Dec 2010 more >>
Iran’s nuclear sites. The existence of a heavy water facility near the town of Arak first emerged with the publication of satellite images by the US-based Institute for Science and International Security in December 2002. Heavy water is used to moderate the nuclear fission chain reaction either in a certain type of reactor – albeit not the type that Iran is currently building – or produce plutonium for use in a nuclear bomb.
BBC 6th Dec 2010 more >>
Here are details about the process of uranium enrichment as world powers began talks with Iran on Monday, hoping the meeting will lead to new negotiations over a nuclear program the West believes is for making atomic bombs.
Reuters 6th Dec 2010 more >>
Iran and six world powers haggled over the terms of negotiations that the West hopes will limit Iranian nuclear activities that could be used to make atomic weapons. Officials from the six powers at the meeting – the US, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union – said the Iranian delegation had reacted calmly when told the group was still seeking a commitment from Tehran to stop uranium enrichment. Iran has insisted previously that the topic of enrichment was not up for negotiation.
Daily Mail 7th Dec 2010 more >>
Yesterday Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations plus Germany met for the first time in 13 months in Geneva. As usual, the noises off the stage threatened to drown the proceedings out before they had begun. The first batch of WikiLeaks exposures revealed that Saudia Arabia had repeatedly urged the US to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. Last week an Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated and another wounded in a bomb attack, which Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, linked to UN security council resolutions against Iranian scientists. He said the resolutions provided cover to terrorist groups to carry out assassinations under the direction of foreign spy services. Then Iran announced it was using locally mined uranium in its fuel cycle. As it already has enough uranium to continue enrichment, and could not mine enough yellowcake feedstock to service an industrial reactor anyway, the announcement was symbolic. But the message was not – Iran will not be deterred from pursuing its civilian nuclear programme. Both sides are stuck in a rut of proving to the other that their policies are prevailing, and that they are in a stronger position than they were 13 months ago. But neither has seriously begun negotiating. It is time to learn from past mistakes. And, in this respect, it is interesting to hear what the Iranians who have a stake in regime change have to say about dealing with Iran’s government. The opposition Green movement says that sanctions are not only hitting the wrong people, but also stopping Iran’s development in a way that takes the heat off President Mahmoud Ahmadeinejad’s own economic incompetence. Bitter as they are about what happened to their candidates and voters before and after the election last year, they too say that Iran has to be engaged with. They distinguish, in other words, between a president they call illegitimate and a man who remains the de facto head of the government.
David Lowry: it never ceases to amaze me that the fact that the Iranian state-owned Atomic Energy Organisation has shareholding in a French-state owned uranium enrichment company never rates a mention. Yet, this is the very dual-use nuclear technology that has created such suspicion over Iran’s nuclear intentions.
Guardian 7th Dec 2010 more >>
A SMALL company based in West Drayton has found itself thrust into the international spotlight after a WikiLeak document alleged it was supplying Iran with nuclear weapons. The directors of Insultec, based at The Green, West Drayton, have branded the claims ludicrous and ‘without foundation’.
Uxbridge Gazette 6th Dec 2010 more >>
Gulf Arab leaders were set to kick off an annual summit Monday in the absence of Saudi Arabia’s ailing king and with their fears exposed over Iran’s nuclear drive, courtesy of WikiLeaks.
Middle East Online 6th Dec 2010 more >>
An interesting coincidence of assassination methods deepens the mystery surrounding last Monday’s attacks on two top nuclear scientists.
Guardian 6th Dec 2010 more >>
France
Why did the activists stop the nuclear waste train? We find it absurd to transport 123 tons of highly radioactive waste across France and Germany to get them to a storage place that doesn’t offer any more guarantees compared to where the waste was stored in the first place. We understand the demand for return of the waste in their country of origin, from associations which fought from the beginning to prevent the arrival of these radioactive materials.
Stop Oldbury 6th Dec 2010 more >>
India
France has taken a lead over rivals including the US and Russia for a €7bn ($9.3bn) deal to build two nuclear power plants in India. This comes amid concerns that new nuclear liability legislation heightens the risks of doing business in India and as France supplies similar reactors to neighbouring China.
FT 7th Dec 2010 more >>
As French president Nicholas Sarkozy visits India in his role as salesman for the nuclear industry, Greenpeace activists today visited the headquarters of France’s BNP Paribas bank to tell it to stop its radioactive investment in new nuclear reactors. The bank’s latest folly is to pump cash into the construction of two French-designed EPR nuclear reactors in the earthquake zone in India’s Jaitapur region. The area is crossed by three tectonic faults. Between 1990 and 2000 there were three earthquakes there, all with a magnitude above five on the Richter scale. The Indian earthquake risk scale ranks areas from one to five. Jaitapur is classified as a four, meaning earthquakes can reach seven on the Richter scale. In 1993, the region experienced one earthquake reaching 6.3 leaving 9,000 people dead. Nowhere else in the world has a nuclear reactor been built in an area with seismic hazards of this magnitude.
Greenpeace 6th Dec 2010 more >>
Nuclear Weapons
The alleged Russian spy Katia Zatuliveter vehemently denied working as an agent for Russian intelligence today, and said that she was fighting against the Home Office’s decision to deport her from Britain.
Guardian 7th Dec 2010 more >>
