2013 July 08 « nuclear-news

The failure of the South Carolina Mixed Oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel plant

Nuclear waste: DC has ignored a cheaper way to dispose of plutonium — until now Sentinel.com, Douglas Birch & R. Jeffrey Smith The Center for Public Integrity, 7 July 13, “………..Unrealized ambitions
Although the White House has not allocated any additional funding for the South Carolina plant after 2014, the Energy Department claims it remains in contention as a solution to the plutonium disposal problem. But already it’s clear that the original U.S. goal for the program — reducing the world’s supply of nuclear explosive material by 68 tons – will not be realized.

Washington compromised repeatedly with Russia to pursue a program that even for some of its initial supporters has long since ceased to be a top nonproliferation priority. Meanwhile, the price of the MOX fuel factory soared far beyond the Energy department’s estimates, making it one of many, multi-billion dollar, Energy Department programs accused of being poorly run.

“MOX is just a sample of a larger problem,” says Gene Aloise, a senior federal auditor who tracked nonproliferation projects for the Government Accountability Office from 1994 to 2012.

The result is that Washington has spent at least $3.7 billion on a plant to manufacture reactor fuel no U.S. utility is eager to buy, after rejecting alternatives that likely would have been cheaper.

“The government’s plutonium plan is a pluperfect disaster,” Sen. Edward Markey, a newly-elected Massachusetts Democrat, told the Center for Public Integrity in a statement. “And all to produce $2 billion worth of reactor fuel at a cost of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and damage to our global non-proliferation efforts.” Markey was the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, has long been active on nuclear safety issues, and in 1986 chaired hearings on the Chernobyl disaster.

The factory’s fate might be decided next year, as the administration prefers, after another $320 million is spent on its construction. Or Congress might decide to take swifter and more decisive action in budget legislation this summer……..And after twenty years of negotiations, promises and plans, and billions in spending, the U.S. appears no closer — in its principal plutonium disposal efforts — to the goal of making the world safer from a nuclear disaster.http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/070513_nuclear_waste/nuclear-waste-dc-has-ignored-cheaper-way-dispose-plutonium-until-now/

July 8, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | - plutonium, reprocessing, USA | Leave a comment

California’s enthusiastic moves to renewable energy

California finds clean energy’s magic ingredient: Ambition REneweconomy, By Giles Parkinson on 8 July 2013 “……There is no talk of repealing or diluting the carbon price, and its renewable energy target is 33 per cent by 2020 …….. Some time in the next couple of years the California legislature in Sacramento is likely to move the bar even higher, to 40 or even 45 per cent (by 2025 or 2030).

Edward Randolph, the energy director from the California Public Utilities Commission, which oversees the investor-owned utilities in the state, says constantly raising that level of ambition has proved extremely successful.

“A lot of people argued against the 33 per cent target saying it was too difficult, but the legislature said ‘no, we’re going to set broad and ambitious goals and let the engineers figure out how to do it,” Randolph tells RenewEconomy in an interview in his San Francisco office last week.

“And quite frankly I think that has been the right way of doing it, saying ‘this is what we are going to do, you guys go figure it out’. That’s worked really well and that’s why I’m certain that in the next year or so the legislators will come back and say we ready to move to 40 per cent or 45 per cent. They don’t wait for us to get to the goal. Once they start seeing progress, they move the goals. And I honestly think it works.”

It’s not stopping there. The office of Democrat governor Jerry Brown, who apparently loves solar, has mandated 3,000MW of rooftop solar by 2017, has a program to encourage “self generation” in other technologies (such as fuel cells), and is looking at taking leadership in the electricity storage market, pushing for a mandated 1GW of storage to be installed by 2020. All these targets are over and above the renewable energy target, known here as Renewable Portfolio Standard. Continue reading →

July 8, 2013 Posted by Christina Macpherson | renewable, USA | Leave a comment