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The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

USA Congress move to widen nuclear tax credit access, and remove the 2020 deadline for the credits

House advances legislation to provide nuclear production tax credit access to non-profits, Daily Energy Insider, June 22, 2017  The U.S. House of Representatives advanced legislation Tuesday that would expand access to the nuclear production tax credit (PTC) to nonprofits and eliminate the 2020 deadline for the credits.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC), would amend the Energy Policy Act of 2005, through which the PTC was established.

Under current law, ratepayers to for-profit partners can receive savings from the credit, while ratepayers to nonprofit partners do not. The bill would allow non-profit partners to utilize the credit. The current law also requires that nuclear facilities must enter service by the end of 2020 in order to qualify for the credit, a stipulation the bill would eliminate……..

Four new nuclear power units are currently under construction in South Carolina and Georgia. For each project, one partner is a non-profit entity.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) introduced companion legislation in the Senate. https://dailyenergyinsider.com/news/6025-house-advances-legislation-provide-nuclear-production-tax-credit-access-non-profits/

June 23, 2017 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

India gives up on importing Western nuclear reactors, to save face, will build its own.

India’s inward nuclear turn, ECONOMIC TIMES,  JUN 22, 2017, By Brahma Chellaney Just as Japan’s Diet has ratified the civil nuclear agreement with New Delhi, India has decided to build 10 nuclear power reactors of indigenous design in what is the largest such construction decision in the world since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. India’s turn to a “fully home-grown initiative“ reflects the continuing problems in implementing the 2005 Indo-US nuclear deal.

India, duped by its own hype over the nuclear deal, had announced plans to import Western reactors costing tens of billions of dollars. The Indian plans helped to motivate Toshiba to acquire Westinghouse ­ a takeover that ultimately proved a huge blunder, plunging Toshiba into a grave financial crisis.
Japan, a top nuclear-equipment supplier, signed a separate nuclear agreement with India only last year after other supplier-nations had already concluded such accords. The recent Japanese parliamentary approval removes a critical missing link in commercialising the IndoUS deal. It, however, has come when Westinghouse, GE Hitachi and Areva ­ which dominate the international reactor export business ­ are in a dire financial state, with their futures hanging in balance.

Having invested considerable political capital in the vaunted Indo-US deal, India today confronts an embarrassing situation: the nuclear power promise is fading globally before New Delhi has signed a single reactor contract as part of that deal.To save face, India, with one of the world’s oldest nuclear energy programmes, has embarked on a major expansion of domestically designed power reactors.

That the decision to construct 10 reactors of 700 megawatts capacity each is monumental is underscored by the fact that the total size of these units surpasses the current installed nucleargenerating capacity in the country . India has 22 nuclear power reactors in operation, with capacity of 6,780 MWe but producing 6,219 MWe. To be clear, the 10 reactors will be in addition to seven others already under construction, with a combined capacity of 5,300 MWe.
……..It has taken 12 years for Indian hype over the nuclear deal to give way to sober realism. A cost-benefit analysis has helped to lower India’s expectations from the deal.India may still buy some Western reactors, but the latest decision clearly signals that its focus will be on building its own reactors.  http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/59270683.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

June 23, 2017 Posted by | India, politics | Leave a comment

Los Alamos National Laboratory safety problems endanger U.S. arsenal

Report says LANL safety problems endanger U.S. arsenal https://www.abqjournal.com/1021327/reports-slam-lanl-for-criticality-violations.html, By Associated Press, June 21st, 2017 SANTA FE, N.M. — A new report by the Center for Public Integrity highlights a history of safety and reliability problems involving plutonium work at Los Alamos National Laboratory – particularly in the area of “criticality,” the prevention of spontaneous nuclear chain reactions – as the lab is under orders to ramp up production of the plutonium “pits” that serve as triggers for nuclear bombs.

The CPI, a nonprofit investigative news group, reported that Los Alamos last year violated nuclear industry rules for guarding against criticality accidents three times more often than the U.S. Energy Department’s 23 other nuclear installations combined.

CPI’s article, which has gained national attention this week, highlights a previously unreported 2011 incident in which LANL technicians placed eight rods of plutonium side by side for a photograph to celebrate the crafting of the rods. But placing the rods so close together could have led to a criticality accident and violates “Physics 101 for nuclear scientists,” the report says.

Between 2005 and 2016, the lab’s lapses in criticality safety have been criticized in more than 40 reports by government oversight agencies, teams of nuclear safety experts and the lab’s own staff, the CPI found……

LANL is currently the only place in the country that plutonium pits can be made, and new pits are part of a hugely expensive plan to improve the nation’s nuclear weapons in coming years.

Los Alamos is under orders to make as many as 80 pits a year by 2027. The United States hasn’t made any new ones since 2011, when LANL completed the last of 29 plutonium cores for Navy submarine missiles. The most ever made at Los Alamos in a year is 11.

As the Journal first reported last week, an NNSA official said at a recent public hearing in Santa Fe that moving plutonium work away from LANL to some other site within the nation’s nuclear weapons complex is among the options now under consideration in an ongoing study.

June 23, 2017 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Philippines government needing to set up a pro nuclear ‘massive information campaign’

Energy dept seeks to calm nuclear power fears, Joel Guinto, ABS-CBN News Jun 20 2017 MOSCOW – The Department of Energy on Monday stressed the need to calm the public’s fears over nuclear power, as it studied the feasibility of adding it to the country’s energy mix. The department aims to provide President Rodrigo Duterte with a menu of nuclear energy sources, including using the three-decade-old Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, Energy Undersecretary Donato Marcos told ABS-CBN News.

“The biggest challenge is social acceptability,” said Marcos on the sidelines of a summit hosted by the Russian State Atomic Energy Corp.

 “We need to come up with a massive information campaign so that the people will know. They need to be educated on nuclear power,” he said.

The $2-billion Bataan Nuclear Power Plant was never used due to worries over its safety……

The energy department last month signed a memorandum of understanding with ROSATOM on nuclear energy cooperation, including winning public support.

Russian companies have also offered nuclear power barges to the Philippines to help meet growing demand in one of the world’s fastest growing economies. http://news.abs-cbn.com/business/06/19/17/energy-dept-seeks-to-calm-nuclear-power-fears

June 23, 2017 Posted by | Philippines, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Brexit brings Britain’s nuclear industry to a “cliff edge”

The Engineer 20th June 2017, Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, argues
that any gap in the arrangements by which the UK nuclear industry
co-operates with the world could cause considerable disruption There’s a
common phrase popping up across many articles and interviews about Brexit
– ‘cliff edge’. Whether that’s the Institute of Directors, which
said the two-year timeframe is unlikely to be enough to sever ties and form
new trade deals; or EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation, calling for a
five-year transition period to ease the uncertainty for businesses,
they’ve all had this word in common.

The nuclear industry has also talked of an approaching cliff edge, a scenario backed by the both the Business,
Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee and the House of Lords
Science and Technology Committee.

That cliff edge was hidden in the smallprint of the supporting notes to the EU Withdrawal Bill, as it detailed how
the UK will also leave the European Atomic Energy Community – commonly
known as Euratom – at the same time as leaving the EU. Readers might say:
‘So what?’ All industries are under pressure.’ But, Euratom is a fairly unique proposition for the government to contend with and the cliff edge in our scenario could bring nuclear trade to a halt. https://www.theengineer.co.uk/brexit-towards-the-nuclear-cliff-edge/

June 23, 2017 Posted by | politics international, UK | Leave a comment

UK’s National Audit Office considers Hinkley Point C nuclear power plan ‘risky and expensive’

Hinkley Point deal ‘risky and expensive’, 23 June 2017

UK government plans for a new £18bn nuclear power station have come under fire from public auditors, who call it “a risky and expensive project”.BBC News 23 June

The case for the Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset was “marginal” and the deal was “not value for money”, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).

The NAO said the government had not sufficiently considered the costs and risks for consumers.

The government said building the plant was an “important strategic decision”.

The report comes nine months after the government granted final approval for the project, which is being financed by the French and Chinese governments.

State-controlled French energy firm EDF is funding two-thirds of the project, which will create more than 25,000 jobs, with China investing the remaining £6bn.

Critics of the deal have warned of escalating costs and the implications of allowing nuclear power plants to be built in the UK by foreign governments.

Case ‘uncertain’

The NAO’s report centred on the role of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in finalising the deal in 2016.

At the time, said the NAO, the department’s own value-for-money tests showed “the economic case for Hinkley Point C was marginal and subject to significant ……http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40372613

June 23, 2017 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Too bad that America’s Energy Secretary doesn’t understand science (or anything much)

 

Rick Perry doesn’t seem to “get it”does he?   The nuke lobby these days loves climate change – and promote it (falsely) as a reason for their industry

 

Rick Perry Is in Charge of Nuclear Safety—Too Bad He Doesn’t Understand Science, Trump’s energy secretary embraces climate denial.Mother Jones, JAMES WEST, JUN. 19, 2017, Energy Secretary Rick Perry told CNBC Monday morning that he doesn’t believe carbon dioxide is primarily responsible for global warming, contradicting the overwhelming scientific consensus on the causes of climate change……Perry’s climate denial is well established. “I don’t believe that we have the settled science by any sense of the imagination to stop that kind of economic opportunity…Calling CO2 a pollutant is doing a disservice the country, and I believe a disservice to the world,” he said in 2014.

Perry’s comments on Monday follow similar statements made by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt…….

Pruitt and Perry are contradicting the scientific consensus on global warming, including the work produced by US government agencies. Up until recently, the EPA’s own website stated that “carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change,” but the agency has since taken down that section of the website, pending a “review.”

NASA says that among the greenhouse gases contributing to manmade warming of the Earth, CO2 “is the most important long-lived ‘forcing’ of climate change.”…..http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/06/rick-perry-is-in-charge-of-nuclear-safety-too-bad-he-doesnt-understand-basic-science/

June 23, 2017 Posted by | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

Spent radioactive fuel likely to be kept at nuke plants

VERNON, Vt., 22 June 17,  — Vermont and three other states that host Entergy Nuclear power plants scheduled for shutdown can expect to keep spent radioactive fuel for the foreseeable future, a top Nuclear Regulatory Commission official said Tuesday.

John Lamb, project manager from the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, told a gathering of officials from Vermont, Massachusetts, New York and Michigan there appears to be little interest in Congress to pay for additional studies into Yucca Mountain, the proposed national depository for highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel in the Nevada desert.

“Yucca Mountain is basically in a stall,” Lamb said in response to a series of questions from Massachusetts antinuclear activists during a conference call. He said legislation to breathe new financial life into the Yucca Mountain site, which is about 100 miles north of Las Vegas, had gone nowhere so far.

“Dry cask (storage) is going to stay until some solution,” Lamb said……http://www.recorder.com/NRC-Vermont-Yankee-waste-remaining-in-Vernon-10850130

June 23, 2017 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

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