nuclear-news

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

CEO, staff suddenly depart New Brunswick reactor developer ARC Clean Technology

“reactor developers would not normally terminate staff after hitting a regulatory milestone.

“If they were going to move forward, basically, they would be hiring people,”

MATTHEW MCCLEARN 26 June 24,  https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ceo-staff-depart-new-brunswick-reactor-developer-arc-clean-technology/

ARC Clean Technology Canada, a developer of small modular reactors in New Brunswick, has revealed the sudden departure of its Canadian chief executive, raising questions about its future.

Alongside Tuesday’s announcement of CEO William Labbe’s exit, other ARC employees also received layoff notices, according to a report from the Telegraph Journal, a Saint John, N.B., newspaper. The company did not respond to questions from The Globe about those reported departures, or how many staffers remain with the company.

In a statement, ARC spokesperson Sandra Donnelly said the company had nearly completed a phase of a pre-licensing process with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and was “realigning personnel and resources to strengthen our strategic partnerships and rationalize operations to best prepare for the next phase of our deployment.”

Ms. Donnelly said ARC Canada will be led by Bob Braun, chief operating officer of its Washington-based parent ARC Clean Technology Inc., and two vice presidents, Lance Clarke and Jill Doucet.

The company’s staff changes follow the resignation of New Brunswick energy minister Mike Holland, announced June 20. Mr. Holland had been an advocate for the province’s SMR program, but had previously announced he would not stand for re-election.

ARC set up offices in Saint John several years ago, as part of an initiative to build SMRs at the province’s only nuclear power plant, Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station. The plant’s owner, NB Power, has promoted plans for demonstration units of two different reactors built there by 2030. The second reactor would be designed by another startup, Moltex Energy, which would include a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.

ARC is one of several vendors jockeying to sell SMRs to Canadian utilities. All existing commercial power reactors in Canada – including the existing one at Point Lepreau – are of the homegrown Candu design. (The newest, at Ontario’s Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, was completed in the early 1990s.)

The company is in the early stages of designing a reactor known as the ARC-100, a next-generation reactor that would use sodium as coolant – a striking departure from Candus and nearly all other commercial power reactors used today, which are water-cooled. The ARC-100 is also marketed as having the ability to consume reprocessed spent fuel, something that has not been done historically in Canada.

As ARC rationalizes its work force, some of its better-established competitors are staffing up. U.S.-based GE-Hitachi and Ontario Power Generation are preparing a site at Darlington for potential construction of a BWRX-300 small modular reactor. Westinghouse, which is marketing several reactors including its AP-1000 large reactor and eVinci microreactor, announced a new 13,000-square-foot office in Kitchener, Ont., this month along with plans to hire 100 engineers to staff it by next year.

Last year, Mr. Labbe said developing the ARC-100 would cost around $500-million. But so far, the company has raised only a small fraction of that. In 2022, it announced it had raised $30-million from the provincial government and the private sector. In October, the federal government awarded it another $7-million. Its partner, NB Power, has not contributed any funding.

ARC submitted an application to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in 2023 for a license to prepare a site at Point Lepreau for its demonstration unit. At an industry conference in April, Mr. Labbe said ARC was also preparing to apply for a license to construct the reactor, which it planned to issue within the next year.

“We’ve been at this for about seven years,” he told the audience. “And we really have another six, seven years until we get that commercial deployment.”

Mr. Labbe became ARC Canada’s CEO in May, 2021. His predecessor, Norm Sawyer, is now president of ION Nuclear Consulting Ltd., an adviser to investors, energy companies and First Nations. Mr. Sawyer said that, while he had no inside information on the company, reactor developers would not normally terminate staff after hitting a regulatory milestone.

“If they were going to move forward, basically, they would be hiring people,” he said.

“If you’re on hold and you’re thinking that you’re going to move forward in a short time period, you maintain your staffing levels.”

Susan O’Donnell, a researcher at St. Thomas University who studies energy technologies, said that, while ARC has managed to attract some private funding, it has remained almost wholly dependent on government money. She added that the federal government is unlikely to provide the billions of dollars required to build new reactors at Point Lepreau.

“I just don’t see how this is going to work, where the money’s going to come from,” she said. “And I think this is why we’re seeing this with ARC today.

“They can’t afford to have that number of staff.”

As recently as November, NB Power chief executive officer Lori Clark had said SMRs were “a key part” of the utility’s plans to phase out coal by 2030. On Tuesday, NB Power said it will continue to provide technical expertise to ARC and Moltex, and that it regards SMRs as a “potential option” to achieve net zero emissions electricity production by 2035.

“We continue to work toward the goal of having an SMR on the grid by the early 2030s,” spokesperson Dominique Couture wrote in an e-mail.

With a report from Emma Graney

June 27, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Canada | Leave a comment

 Greenpeace activist climbs on top of Conservative election campaign bus

Earlier this afternoon, a Greenpeace UK activist climbed onto the top of the Conservative party election campaign ‘battle bus’ using a telescopic ladder as it was parked in an industrial estate near Ollerton, in Nottinghamshire, during the Conservative’s election campaign trail. The activist unfurled a handheld banner reading ‘Clean Power Not Paddy Power’, in reference to the Conservative election date betting scandal.

Greenpeace is protesting against the Conservative party’s persistent failure to tackle the climate and nature crises while in government [1], which was repeated in their election manifesto.

An analysis of political party election manifestos, published this week by Greenpeace UK and Friends of the Earth, put the Conservatives rock bottom, scoring just 5 points out of a possible 40 for its plans for climate and nature – four times worse than Labour’s plans.

The Conservatives’ divisive manifesto doubles down on trying to make climate and nature a wedge issue by committing to licence new fossil fuels on an annual basis, ban measures to clean up toxic air, and spark a bonfire of ‘red tape’ when it comes to protecting the environment.

The campaigners are urging the British public to use the upcoming general election to vote for a government that will bring in policies that would deliver clean energy, lower bills, more energy security, and economic prosperity.

Amy Rugg-Easey, the Greenpeace activist who climbed onto the roof of the bus, said:

“We’ve had enough of this government lurching from one scandal to the next, while gambling with our future. We need clean power, not Paddy Power.

“Fourteen years of Conservative governments has left this country broken. Sunak has gone backwards on climate action, ditching key pledges and promising to ‘max out’ the climate-wrecking oil and gas that are the cause of the cost of living crisis and our unaffordable bills. Our rivers are awash with sewage, and our economy, NHS and public services are on their knees.

“Enough is enough. We’ve climbed onto Sunak’s battle bus today to remind the British public that it is the Conservative government’s consistent failure to deliver greener, fairer policies that has created the mess we’re in. Don’t back the wrong horse – a vote for the climate is a vote for a better future.”………………………………………more https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/breaking-greenpeace-activist-climbs-on-top-of-conservative-election-campaign-bus/

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Post Election: A Different Kind of Nuclear Bomb

The Nuclear Legacy

The Government has accidentally left behind an unexploded bomb for an incoming Labour Government. Should it go off, it will be early evidence for the argument that Starmer can’t be trusted. The bomb in question is whether or not to go ahead with building another large French nuclear power station at Sizewell in Suffolk.

Our current experience with building large French nuclear power stations is no

Tom Burke on how an incoming Labour Government will have to deal with the unexploded political bomb of nuclear left behind by the Conservatives

BYLINE SUPPLEMENT, JUN 26, 2024,  https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/post-election-a-different-kind-of
You know something is changing in British politics when our better-known political commentators start turning up at Green Party events. They have not found it easy to make much sense of what such a heterodox coalition offers voters. But there is no doubting that their presence signals an old order in transition.

The Financial Times publishes a general election poll tracker. The picture it shows has not changed significantly for eighteen months. A consistent  20 point gap between Labour and the Conservatives is now barely worth a comment. Much less noticed, however, has been another equally consistent pattern.

Adding together support for the insurgent parties – Reform at 11.5%, Lib-Dems at 9.2% and the Greens at 6.3% – may not tell you much about the balance of power in the next Parliament but it does tell you something significant about Britain’s electorate. Voter support for the three minor parties totals 27%, almost 4% higher than that for the ruling Conservatives.

Put another way, more than 70% of British voters want anyone  other than the current Conservative Government to run the country. Apart from being a clear demonstration of the wisdom of crowds, this is another dagger at the heart of our archaic and increasingly dysfunctional first past the post voting system. The political complexities of the 21st Century cannot easily be tackled as a tidy battle between labour and capital. Voters have already recognised this. It is time that our political leaders did too.

No issue makes this more apparent than that of climate change. The Conservatives’ choice of this issue as a key battleground on which to fight an electoral culture war was entirely voluntary. There was no great grassroots pressure from within the Party itself. Nor was there any groundswell of public opinion although there was a noisy, if evidence-free, torrent of editorial ink from the Rothermere, Murdoch, Barclay press.

The Uxbridge by-election last July paused a string of Conservative losses. Victory was put down to a voter rebellion against too-expensive climate change policies. The Government then seized on climate as a wedge issue for the forthcoming election and began a systematic winding back of climate action.

In doing so it was copying an election strategy first adopted by the Australian National Party. Since our Prime Minister’s election strategist is the Australian Isaac Levido – a protégé of another, better known, Australian political strategist, Lynton Crosby, this should not have surprised anyone.

What is less explicable is why anyone should have thought that a strategy that failed in Australia would work here. Labour’s victory in the 2022 Australian election was aided by a break-away group of candidates standing as ‘Teals’ – blue-green Conservatives. Exactly the constituency David Cameron had wooed for the Tories here in 2010.

As things currently stand, Labour looks like being helped into Downing Street by an ill-chosen culture war that climate change won. This will have its own challenges for Labour. No-one doubts their good intentions on the climate. But their clumsy handling of, and subsequent back pedalling on, their £28 billion a year green prosperity pledge has left a legacy of doubt in voters’ minds. It risks being punished by increasingly volatile voters if it cannot quickly resolve those doubts.

The Nuclear Legacy

The Government has accidentally left behind an unexploded bomb for an incoming Labour Government. Should it go off, it will be early evidence for the argument that Starmer can’t be trusted. The bomb in question is whether or not to go ahead with building another large French nuclear power station at Sizewell in Suffolk.

Our current experience with building large French nuclear power stations is not encouraging. Although, unusually, we are not alone in this respect. No-one else, including the French themselves, has been able to do so either. Indeed, France has now decided not to even try to build any more of the type of reactors intended for Sizewell as they are too expensive and difficult to build. They will build a different design instead.

The French reactor we are currently building at Hinkley Point was promised to cost £5.6 billion in 2008 and be producing the electricity to cook turkeys on by 2017. In today’s money it will cost nearer to £46 billion and not be producing electricity before 2030. To get EDF to invest, the then Labour Government promised EDF an index linked price for its electricity.

This means that, were it available now, electricity from Hinkley Point would cost £130/MWh. Since National Grid will sell you electricity today for about £80/MWh why would anyone buy more expensive nuclear electricity? To get EDF to build Hinkley Point a Conservative Government bought 35 years’ worth of electricity in advance at a fixed price. To pay for the difference between what EDF can get from the wholesale market  there will be tax on everyone’s electricity bill.

It is beyond my understanding why any sane person would want to repeat this experience. Yet that is just what the Conservative Government, with Labour support, was planning to do. It is often argued that building a second station using the same reactors will be cheaper. If that were so, someone needs to explain why the French have already decided not to build any more. Is there something they know that we don’t?

Labour now face a particular difficulty on Sizewell. Since their wind-back of the green prosperity plan, they have doubled down on their promise to deliver carbon-free electricity by 2030. So let us, for argument’s sake, put aside any reservation about whether this is practical. We, and our children, will all certainly be better off if they can deliver carbon-free, secure and affordable electricity to consumers by 2030.

But construction of Sizewell cannot start until after 2030. What then, is the case for forcing homeowners and businesses to pay a tax on their energy bills to finance an unnecessary nuclear power station? And what would this do to the scale and speed of investment in the energy efficiency and renewables which are cheaper and faster ways to get both bills and carbon emissions down?

June 27, 2024 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment