Nuclear Investment
Britain’s nuclear programme faces a new threat after the revelation that ratings agencies could downgrade French energy giant EDF and British Gas owner Centrica if they decide to build four reactors. A credit downgrade would be highly likely to spark a confrontation with shareholders because it would make it more expensive for the companies to borrow and could undermine the share price. US-based Moodys says building nuclear plants is risky because of the huge costs and uncertainties over future power prices. Britains nuclear programme is likely to cost EDF and Centrica £24 billion together. The latest threat comes as senior executives at Centrica are having growing doubts about whether to give the go-ahead to a £5 billion nuclear investment. Their anxiety stems from the fact that the Government and Centrica are far apart in their estimates of the level of price guarantees for providing nuclear-generated energy. Sources say that if Centrica pulls out because it cannot make the project finances work, then it would be clear that French taxpayers would be subsidising British energy users were the largely State-owned EDF to go ahead.
This is Money 7th April 2012 more >>
Horizon
German energy giants RWE and E.on have kicked off plans to sell their UK nuclear power plant joint venture. It is understood that they have asked a select number of corporate advisers, accountants and investment banks to come up with ideas of how they would sell Horizon Nuclear Power. Requests for proposals were sent out just before the Easter break, a week after the German duo rocked government plans for a new wave of nuclear power plants by announcing they could no longer afford to participate in the programme. Because of the complicated nature of the business, which still has to choose the reactor designs it will use as well as the prospect of heated planning application battles, the sale process could stretch into 2013. Unless the eventual winning venture can make up the time in improved programme management, this would mean that the first of Horizon’s proposed stations, Wylfa on the Isle of Anglesey, will start generating electricity in 2022 rather than 2021. Any delay will worry the Government because of the prospect of a widening gap between energy demand and supply.
Independent 8th April 2012 more >>
Sizewell
Saturday 21ST April – Coach from London TO NUCLEAR POWER DEMO AT SIZEWELL, SUFFOLK Coach leaves at 8.15am prompt from the Embankment (opposite side to the river to the left of the riverside entrance from Embankment tube) and will also pick up at 9am prompt from outside Redbridge tube station (Central line.). It will arrive outside the main gate of Sizewell Nuclear Power Station in Suffolk by the start of the planned demo there at noon
Rising Tide 7th April 2012 more >>
Dounreay
A PROMINENT Scots estate owner faces bankruptcy following a long-running legal battle over radioactive contamination of his land by the operators of the Dounreay nuclear plant. Geoffrey Minter, the laird of Sandside in Caithness, faces losing his 10,000-acre estate after a panel set up by the government to assess financial compensation only awarded him a fraction of the amount he believed he was due. Minter made a claim for millions of pounds after a series of radioactive particles attributed to an underground explosion in a storage pit in the 1970s were discovered on the foreshore of his estate, leading to a decline in the value of the land close to the former nuclear power station on the Pentland Firth coast. He has also spent tens of thousands of pounds on legal fees fighting his case over the last 14 years.
Scotland on Sunday 8th April 2012 more >>
GDF Suez
International Powers board is right to squeeze as much as it can out of GDF. Its mix of plants in more than 30 countries, many of them in rapidly growing markets of the developing world, is unique and a good counterbalance to its moribund home markets in Europe. GDF threatened to walk away after the company said no. Few in the market believed it.
Sunday Times 8th April 2012 more >>
Iran
A prominent Iranian politician has for the first time publicly declared that Iran has the ability to produce nuclear weapons, but will never do so.
Independent 8th April 2012 more >>
South Asia
President Asif Ali Zardari will sit down to lunch with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Sunday in the highest-level meeting on each other’s soil in seven years as the nuclear-armed foes seek to normalise relations.
Reuters 8th April 2012 more >>
Trident
AN INDEPENDENT Scotland would not be able to clear nuclear weapons from its military bases and remain in Nato, one of Britains leading defence experts has warned. As the SNP debates a U-turn that could see Alex Salmonds party dropping its long-standing opposition to being a member of the international defence pact, Professor Malcolm Chalmers has claimed that signing up to the organisation would mean the Trident submarine fleet and its nuclear warheads being kept in Scotland for possibly decades to come. In a paper commissioned by Scotland on Sunday, Chalmers, the defence policy director of the Royal United Services Institute, stated that the SNPs anti-nuclear stance would be hard to square with an independent Scotland accepting Natos commitment to a nuclear alliance. A separate Scottish government might have to allow the UKs nuclear deterrent to remain based in Scotland if it wanted to remain within the military group.
Scotland on Sunday 8th Apr 2012 more >>
Renewables
David Cameron has been accused of hypocrisy for hosting a major green energy summit at the same time as slashing subsidies for solar power generation. The third Clean Energy Ministerial conference, featuring more than 20 ministers from the world’s leading and emerging economies, will take place in London later this month in what No 10 hopes will position the UK as a global leader in renewable power and build on the Prime Minister’s claim to lead the “greenest government ever”. Yet The Independent on Sunday understands that one of the UK’s largest solar energy companies has been invited to the conference not by the Government but by the US Department of Energy.
Independent 8th April 2012 more >>
Ice cream maker to use methane from its herd to power factory and move towards green energy vision. MACKIES of Scotland, the ice cream maker, is developing a new way of powering its factory using dung produced by its 400-strong herd of cows. It is estimated that turning poop into power will help the firm to save up to £300,000 in fuel costs as well as creating one job and safeguarding two others. The company has teamed up with scientists at Edinburgh Napier Universitys Biofuel Business Programme (BBP) to devise plans for a plant that will use thousands of tonnes of slurry to generate methane biogas, which can then be transformed into electricity. The development of a 250kW anaerobic digestion system at Mackies dairy farm in Westertown, Rothienorman, near Inverurie, would be the final element in making the firm entirely reliant on renewable energy.
Scotland on Sunday 8th April 2012 more >>
