Public Opinion
The accident at Fukushima in Japan in March this year seems to have had little overall impact on the UK public’s confidence in nuclear power, according to a poll. The survey, carried out by Populus last month and commissioned by the British Science Association, found that 41% of respondents agreed the benefits of nuclear power outweighed the risks, up from 38% in 2010 and 32% in 2005. Those who said that the risks greatly or slightly outweighed the benefits of nuclear power in 2010 numbered 36%, and in 2011 this dropped to 28% of respondents.
Guardian 9th Sept 2011 more >>
A survey shows that Britons are less worried about nuclear power now than they were last year, before an earthquake and tsunami hit the Japanese plant. The poll was conducted in August, five months after reactors at the nuclear plant went into meltdown resulting in the release of radioactive material. It revealed that British attitudes towards nuclear power have softened over the past decade and the trend has continued since Fukushima.
Yorkshire Post 9th Sept 2011 more >>
The results revealed a striking gender split: 58 per cent of men believe the benefits of nuclear outweigh the risks, compared with only 25 per cent of women. When people were asked about Germanys decision after the Fukushima crisis to end its nuclear programme, 63 per cent of women said it was appropriate but a similar proportion of men 65 per cent said it was not. Prof Pidgeon suggested that one reason could be that Men tend to be more gung-ho about techy things. He said there could be a trust in technology factor that enabled them to believe any problem could be solved. There were also differences in nuclear support by age and socioeconomic group, with older people and the better-off more in favour. Although Fukushima has not dented the UKs attitudes to nuclear, Prof Pidgeon believes there is evidence that it prompted people to think about the problems. Before the disaster, polls listed nuclear waste and its disposal at the top of peoples worries. Now the possibility of a nuclear accident has risen to top the list.
FT 9th Sept 2011 more >>
A further finding was that support for nuclear power is now based much more on the contribution it could make to energy security than its importance as a tool for containing climate change.
Times 9th Sept 2011 more >>
Electricity Market Reform
Throwing today’s expensive renewables overboard or relegating them to a small symbolic part of the energy mix may actually be something politicians can’t resist. It’s like printing money to give it away, without the threat of inflation.
The Register 7th Sept 2011 more >>
Britain faces a very real chance that the lights could go out in the next five to 10 years, as its ailing energy infrastructure struggles to attract the massive investment needed to ensure a reliable electricity supply, according to a warning by the CBI. Companies named the potential absence of a secure, affordable energy supply as their biggest concern in a damning report published today by the employers’ organisation and KPMG. John Cridland urged the Government to think creatively about ways to unlock the billions of pounds held on companies’ balance sheets to kick start a much-needed infrastructure financing revolution. Particularly pressing is the need to invest an estimated £200bn in power stations and other energy infrastructure in the next 10 to 15 years, to satisfy growing demand for power while meeting ambitious targets for reducing CO2 emissions and increasing renewable generation. Some 89 per cent of the 447 UK businesses interviewed for the CBI report which covered companies of all sizes and sectors of the economy are concerned about energy supply over the next five years, while 95 per cent are worried about its cost.
Independent 9th Sept 2011 more >>
Letter: Electricity bills are predicted to rise by some 300 per household per year, mainly to meet the costs of green power. The costs of the switch to low-carbon industrial processes are clearly huge, but unquantifiable. From experience in other European countries, every new, subsidy-dependent green job costs several jobs elsewhere in the economy. The imported wind turbine hardware and the poverty and intermittency of its power generation and the damage to tourism compound the folly. Given the negligible output of greenhouse gases from Scotland and the typical proportion of total UK electricity generation by wind turbines, at under 1%, the yields of these green policies are derisory. Iain Macwhirter implies that the SNPs legislative programme is anodyne, but your editorial identifies the independence referendum question as the elephant in the chamber. But the real political risks will come from the green policies, once it is population realised how counter-productive they are and how they are spoiling our nations outlook. First Minister Alex Salmond is sitting on a powderkeg, liable to be ignited by burning electricity bills.
Herald 9th Sept 2011 more >>
EDF
Letter John Busby: THE nuclear power Sir Bernard advocates is equally cripplingly expensive, so that the French nuclear industry is suffering financial meltdown. EdFs revenue in France is unable to cover its operating costs, let alone fund its needed reactor replacement or upgrading of its ageing fleet (or its decommissioning and waste management costs). Last year it was forced to sell prime assets to reduce its mounting net indebtedness, while reducing its needed annual revenue by around Eur 5 billion. Meanwhile Arevas EPR – Evolutionary Pressure-Water Reactor – has evolved into a delayed and overspent embarrassment in Finland and in France, so embarrassing that further French new build is likely to be the smaller ATMEA-1, a joint venture of Areva and MHI., so that these and the two under construction in China are probably the last ever to be built.
Hebden Bridge Times 8th Sept 2011 more >>
Wylfa
The proposed development of a new nuclear power plant in Wales could create further jobs in construction through plans to accommodate workers employed on the site. Horizon, a joint venture of E.ON and RWE npower, is currently readying proposals for the Wylfa B nuclear plant in Anglesey, which if given the go-ahead would generate an estimated 6,000 construction jobs by the height of the development in 2017.
Career Structure 8th Sept 2011 more >>
PLANS of how the island would cater to the influx of 6,000 Wylfa B construction workers, should the nuclear power station be given the go ahead, have been released.
Holyhead Mail 7th Sept 2011 more >>
Hunterston
EDF Energy restarted its 460-megawatt (MW) Hunterston B-8 nuclear reactor on Friday. The reactor shut for a planned maintenance outage on July 8.
Reuters 9th Sept 2011 more >>
Sellafield (New Reactors)
MAJOR investigations will start soon to pave the way for a new nuclear power station at Sellafield. Energy giants NuGen want to drill several boreholes over nearly 500 acres of agricultural land to confirm the earmarked site is suitable for building up to three electricity-producing nuclear reactors. A planning application for the drilling is likely to be submitted to Copeland Council later this month. Over the next 18 months, the Spanish-led consortiums focus will be on assessing the site conditions. The aim is to resolve all major planning issues before NuGen makes a final investment decision around 2015. The projected start date is sometime in 2016 with a new power station becoming fully operational by 2023. Planning and technical advisors have been taken on by NuGen to smooth the way.
Whitehaven News 8th Sept 2011 more >>
Sellafield
SELLAFIELDS warehouse and logistics team has saved £110,000 in energy bills at its receipt and distribution centre at Lillyhall after switching to more efficient methods. Manager, Brad Steel, said: I am delighted with the savings that we have made, and would encourage others across the company to look at their energy and water consumption.
Whitehaven News 8th Sept 2011 more >>
Companies
AMEC the UK strand of the consortium that runs Sellafield has reported a nine per cent rise in half-year profits to £122m.
Whitehaven News 8th Sept 2011 more >>
Radwaste
Bacteria that can clean up nuclear waste and other toxic chemicals do so by generating their own electricity, according to US researchers.
Edie 8th Sept 2011 more >>
DEPRIVED areas stand to benefit from hosting an underground nuclear waste repository. And if it came to Copeland, a councillor predicts it might be worth billions of pounds. But it was also stressed that money would come a good second best to safety if a site is eventually earmarked. Councillor David Moore, chairman of the West Cumbria (nuclear sites) Stakeholders Group, told The Whitehaven News: To me, any site has to be demonstrated to be both suitable and safe that is paramount. The social economic benefits would follow. Whatever the benefits package looks like, it has to enhance the lifestyle of everybody in our community. And in terms of financial incentives the number has to run into billions. A public consultation over the way potential candidate sites for the repository should be approached is due to finish at the end of this month. Radiation Free Lakeland on Monday delivered a 1,500-signature petition to Cumbria County Council opposing repository plans.
Whitehaven News 8th Sept 2011 more >>
Japan
Japan’s prime minister at the height of the nuclear crisis has said he feared the country would collapse, and revealed that Tepco had considered abandoning the Fukushima Daiichi power plant after it was hit by the 11 March tsunami. In candid interviews with Japanese newspapers, Naoto Kan, who resigned this month, said that at one point he believed the disaster could become many times worse than Chernobyl.
Guardian 8th Sept 2011 more >>
Jarno Trulli has admitted he does not know what to believe about Octobers Japanese grand prix. On the one hand, leading MotoGP riders are refusing to travel to the country in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. But the Suzuka circuit insists there is no health risk in the region, prompting Bernie Ecclestone to agree that the race will go on as usual. Many F1 drivers have already stated that they are not concerned about the Japanese Grand Prix and will happily be travelling there for the race weekend.
Formula1 8th Sept 2011 more >>
A group of Japanese researchers say that a total of 15,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances is estimated to have been released from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea. Researchers at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Kyoto University and other institutes made the calculation of radioactivity released from late March through April. The combined amount of iodine-131 and cesium-137 is more than triple the figure of 4,720 terabecquerels earlier estimated by Tokyo Electric Power Company, the plant operator. The utility only calculated the radioactivity from substances released from the plant into the sea in April and May.
Vision Green 8th Sept 2011 more >>
80,000 people living within a 12-mile (20km) radius of the nuclear plant who were told to evacuate by the government in the hours after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake launched a tsunami that crashed through its protective seawall and triggered meltdown in three of its six reactors. Kowata and more than 200 of his neighbours have been allowed to make a brief visit home to collect as many belongings as they can carry. It is a homecoming that many accept is likely to be their last. Dressed in protective suits, masks and goggles, they have been given just two hours to survey the damage to the houses they have been barred from entering since the triple disaster struck north-east Japan on the afternoon of 11 March. Months of radiation leaks from Fukushima Daiichi have rendered Okuma and the nearby town of Futaba uninhabitable for years, perhaps decades.
Guardian 8th Sept 2011 more >>
Germany
Germany has decided to close all of its nuclear power plants by 2022 and embark on an energy turnaround that focuses on large increases in sustainable energy production. Such a turnaround is technically possible but will require an investment of about 200 billion ($290 billion) from private and public sources over the next decade. Even if that investment is made, short-term electricity prices will probably rise slightly, but over time hundreds of thousands of jobs are likely to be created in the sustainability sector.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 7th Sept 2011 more >>
Switzerland
A Senate committee in Switzerland has drafted three new texts on nuclear power policy, all of them explicitly keeping the technology available and banning only ‘current generation’ designs. The texts are the latest versions of cabinet proposals that originally sought to ban construction of any new nuclear power reactors. Three texts to this effect were approved by the National Council in June. Those moved on to the Senate, where a committee yesterday produced new versions which, crucially, would only ban construction of reactors like those currently in use – and not the latest models.
World Nuclear News 8th Sept 2011 more >>
Lithuania
Lithuania is following a two-track nuclear energy policy: it is decommissioning the closed-down Ignalina nuclear power plant and wants to build a new nuclear plant at Visaginas. Despite having recently selected GE-Hitachi as “strategic investor” for Visaginas, it is still far from certain whether this project will ever be realised. But the decommissioning project has also run into major problems. The Lithuanian government has come into sharp conflict with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which administers the decommissioning fund, about how to dismantle the plant. In addition, the project is facing a financing gap of 1.5 billion after 2014.
European Energy News 8th Sept 2011 more >>
Iran
“Regime change in Tehran would immediately make me significantly more optimistic about the whole of the region, Mr Blair, who is international peace envoy for the Middle East, said. If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons capability it would destabilise the region very, very badly.
Times 9th Sept 2011 more >>
Fusion
The UK has formally joined forces with a US laser lab in a bid to develop clean energy from nuclear fusion. Unlike fission plants, the process uses lasers to compress atomic nuclei until they join, releasing energy. The National Ignition Facility (Nif) in the US is drawing closer to producing a surplus of energy from the idea. The UK company AWE and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have now joined with Nif to help make laser fusion a viable commercial energy source.
BBC 9th Sept 2011 more >>
Thorium
A new NGO will launch at an event at the House of Lords this evening, with the goal of re-igniting interest in thorium-based nuclear technologies, which advocates claim will offer a cleaner, safer and more cost-effective alternative to conventional nuclear power plants. The Weinberg Foundation, named after nuclear physicist Alvin Martin Weinberg, who led research into thorium reactors in the 1950s and 1960s, aims to promote the technology among policymakers and the public, with a view to building support for a full-scale demonstration project.
Business Green 8th Sept 2011 more >>
Renewables
Unilever is to start using the waste from the production of Marmite to power the factory that makes the divisive yeast extract. Marmite, itself a byproduct of the brewing industry, is made at the Anglo-Dutch groups site in Burton where inevitably some sticks to the sides of manufacturing equipment. This residue, of which there is 18,000 tonnes a year, needs to be cleaned out of pipes to prevent them clogging and to maintain hygiene. The waste is put into an anaerobic digester, where it is eaten by bugs who give off methane that is burnt-off to create energy.
Times 9th Sept 2011 more >>
