Casks hold dangerous radioactive elements like Cesium-137, Strontium-90 and Plutonium-239, fuel bi-products created inside reactors, which remain dangerous for generations.
Here’s what they do to people.
Reduced U.S. nuclear safety oversight will save money for the industry
Nuclear Industry Looks to Save Money Under Reduced U.S. Safety Oversight, Insurance Journal , By Ellen Knickmeyer | July 19, 2019 Fewer mock commando raids to test nuclear power plants’ defenses against terrorist attacks. Fewer, smaller government inspections for plant safety issues. Less notice to the public and to state governors when problems arise.They’re part of the money-saving rollbacks sought by the country’s nuclear industry under President Donald Trump and already approved or pending approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, largely with little input from the general public.
The nuclear power industry says the safety culture at the U.S. nuclear industry — 40 years after partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island — is “exceptional” and merits the easing of government inspections. ,,,,,
Opponents say the changes are bringing the administration’s business-friendly, rule-cutting mission to an industry — nuclear reactors — where the stakes are too high to cut corners.
While many of the regulatory rollbacks happening at other agencies under the current administration may be concerning, “there aren’t many that come with the existential risks of a nuclear reactor having a malfunction,” said Geoff Fettus, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council on nuclear issues.
This week, the NRC released staff recommendations for rollbacks in safety inspections for the 90-plus U.S. nuclear power plants and for less flagging of plant problems for the public. Democratic lawmakers and one NRC commissioner expressed concern about the safety risks and urged the commission to seek broader public comment before proceeding.
The country’s nuclear regulators were looking at “far-reaching changes to the NRC’s regulatory regime without first actively conducting robust public outreach and engagement,” New Jersey Democrat Frank Pallone Jr., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a letter to NRC Chairwoman Kristine Svinicki..
Svinicki and two other NRC commissioners did not respond Wednesday to requests for comment made through the agency’s public affairs staff. NRC public affairs director David Castelveter said the NRC would respond directly to lawmakers on Pallone’s letter.
A fourth commissioner, Jeff Baran, spoke out Tuesday, saying he opposed cutting inspections and reducing oversight. Baran called for more public input on proposed rollbacks.
Nuclear regulators post notices of meetings on proposed rollbacks on oversight of nuclear power plants on the NRC website. Lawmakers complained there’s been scant notice to the public at large about the meetings or proposals.
In general, according to attendance logs, the rollbacks are being hashed out at meetings attended almost solely by NRC staff and nuclear industry representatives. Occasionally, a single reporter or representative for private groups monitoring or opposing nuclear power is shown as attending.
U.S. nuclear plant operators have seen their operating costs rise as the country’s nuclear fleet ages. Competition from cheaper natural gas and renewables is increasing marketplace pressure on nuclear power providers, making the financial costs of complying with NRC regulation ever more of an issue…….
Commissioners have been moving more assertively to cut regulation requirements for the nuclear industry under the Trump administration, which has now nominated or renominated all four current members of the five-member board.
Edwin Lyman, a nuclear safety expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists non-profit group, pointed to a board move last fall, when the NRC cut the frequency of commission-run mock commando raids at nuclear power plants.
The drills are meant to test whether attackers would be able to reach the heart of a nuclear reactor.
Lyman said the security changes “are jeopardizing public health and safety by restricting the NRC’s ability to ensure that nuclear plants are sufficiently protected against radiological sabotage attacks.”
In January, in one of the comparatively few widely reported changes, commissioners rejected staff recommendations for making nuclear power plants harden themselves against Fukushima-scale natural disasters.
New recommendations by staff made public Tuesday would cut the time and scope of annual plant inspections. They also would change how the NRC flags safety issues at plants for the public and for local state officials.
Some of the changes would require a vote by NRC commissioners…….
This week’s staff recommendations for rollbacks in government oversight are “just the tip of the iceberg,” Lyman said. https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2019/07/19/532838.htm
U.S. Bill: he Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments of 2019
RECA bill calls for congressional apology to victims of radiation exposure, http://www.mvariety.com/cnmi/cnmi-news/local/114180-reca-bill-calls-for-congressional-apology-to-victims-of-radiation-exposure18 Jul 2019, By Mar-Vic Cagurangan – For Variety
HAGÅTÑA — The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments of 2019, officially introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, includes a congressional apology to individuals exposed to radiation while either working in or living near uranium mines or downwind from nuclear weapon test sites.
The bill, introduced by New Mexico Congressman Ben Ray Lujan and cosponsored by Guam Delegate Michael San Nicolas, would expand the coverage of the RECA program to include Guam and the Northern Marianas.
The RECA program is set to expire in 2022. The bill, if enacted into law, would extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Trust Fund until 2045.
Other jurisdictions covered by the proposed RECA expansion are New Mexico, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, Texas, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, South Dakota, North Dakota and Nevada.
“Tens of thousands of individuals, including miners, transporters, and other employees who worked directly in uranium mines, along with communities located near test sites for nuclear weapons, were exposed during the mid-1900s to dangerous radiation that has left communities struggling from cancer, birth defects, and other illnesses,” states a press release from Lujan’s office.
The RECA amendment legislation provides health and monetary compensations for individuals who were exposed to high levels of radiation that caused sickness, cancer and deaths in identified jurisdictions.
A similar bill was introduced by Sen. Mike Crapo in the U.S. Senate.
The 35th Guam Legislature is scheduled today, Thursday, to hold a public hearing on Resolution 94-35, supporting the passage of Crapo’s S. 947.
The bill does not include the CNMI.
In August 2018, CNMI Delegate Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan said the Northern Marianas should also be considered “downwinders.”
“Perhaps, because the [Northern] Marianas was not represented in Congress in 2005, we were not included in a congressionally mandated study of how fallout from nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands may have harmed people on downwind islands,” Sablan said in an August 2018 letter to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. “I think that inequity needs to be addressed.”
UK’s Sizewell C nuclear project not likely to provide many local jobs
East Anglian Daily Times 14th July 2019 Anti-nuclear campaigners have disputed the number of jobs that a new power
station on the Suffolk coast will create – and say it will not provide
enough long-term opportunities. EDF Energy says the Sizewell C nuclear
plant is expected to provide 25,000 jobs over the 10-year construction
period with 5,600 workers on site at its peak, and says it is “absolutely
committed” to creating local jobs, skills and training opportunities. It
says the project will provide up to £200million a year to boost the
county’s economy, and create 900 full-time jobs once operational.
But Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) has cast doubt on the job numbers. EDF
has already said that £14billion Sizewell C will be 20% cheaper to build
because Hinkley construction techniques will be mirrored, grid connections
are already available and it will use different finance models. However,
TASC fears this could mean a transfer of skills, with possibly a large part
of Hinkley C’s experienced workforce moving to Sizewell.
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/sizewell-c-edf-energy-tasc-1-6159158
UK’s new nuclear funding model would leave taxpayers liable for rising costs or delays.
New UK nuclear funding model could leave 
taxpayers liable, Guardian, Jillian Ambrose, Energy correspondent 14 Jul 2019
Ministers are expected to announce plans to bolster nuclear industry this week, The government will set out plans to resuscitate the UK’s struggling nuclear ambitions with a new scheme which would leave taxpayers liable for rising costs or delays.The funding model, expected this week, could help bankroll the multibillion pound plans for a follow-on to EDF Energy’s Hinkley Point C project in Somerset, which ministers aim to build at the Sizewell site in Suffolk.
It could also resurrect the dormant plans for a £16bn new nuclear reactor at the Wylfa project in North Wales, which fell apart last year due to the high costs of nuclear construction.
Government officials are expected to reveal a new financial framework based on the model being used to finance the £4.2bn Thames Tideway tunnel.
Under those plans, the government has allowed the super-sewer’s developers to charge customers upfront for the project, and agreed to cover cost overruns above 30% of the budget and step in as a lender if funding dries up.
The nuclear plans are expected to be unveiled before parliament’s summer recess at the end of this week, alongside a long-awaited energy white paper.
The policy roadmap will set out the government’s plans for the energy sector as the economy moves towards the UK’s target to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050.
The industry is expected to have three months to respond to an official consultation before ministers decide whether to move ahead with the scheme…..
The plans would hand developers an upfront regulated return on their investment at each new phase of the project. This could encourage more investment from infrastructure and pension funds and better borrowing terms for the developer.
Government officials are under pressure to find a new way to finance nuclear projects after the National Audit Office condemned the 35-year deal to support the Hinkley Point project through energy bills at a cost of £92.50 for every megawatt-hour of electricity it produces.
The average electricity price in the UK last year was between £55 and £65 per megawatt-hour.
The watchdog accused ministers of putting energy bill payers on the hook for a “risky and expensive” project which offers “uncertain strategic and economic benefits”.
The new financing plan has already raised concerns that applying the Tideway model to a nuclear project that costs £20bn and takes around a decade to build could leave taxpayers exposed to a far higher financial risk.
Nuclear projects have suffered high-profile delays and multibillion-pound cost overruns in recent years, making them almost impossible to finance without state intervention.
EDF said last month that its struggling French nuclear project at Flamanvillecould be delayed by another three years to repair eight faulty weldings discovered at the site.
The latest delay could push Flamanville’s start date, originally in 2012, to 2022. The project was expected to cost about €3bn when construction began but the latest estimates put its cost at almost €11bn……… https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/14/new-uk-nuclear-funding-model-could-leave-taxpayers-liable-edf-sizewell
Tax-payer funding absolutely critical to Russia’s nuclear industry
State support pivotal to Russia’s nuclear sector, says report, WNN 12 July 2019
Russia’s nuclear power industry consists of 89 enterprises that are owned by the state-run joint stock company Atomic Energy Power Corporation (AEPC), or Atomenergoprom, its Russian name.
Since commissioning its first, five-megawatt, nuclear power plant, in Obninsk in 1954, Russia has been one of the world’s leading countries in nuclear power generation, S&P says, and the country plays an important role in all parts of the nuclear cycle, from mining to construction.
The report – What Makes Russia’s Nuclear Sector Competitive – says state support includes capacity-supply agreements, ad hoc equity contributions from the government, and low nuclear liabilities that accrue only after 2011……….
“We expect domestic nuclear capacity to increase only moderately because electricity demand in Russia is stagnating, given only modest GDP growth, a significant potential for energy savings, and the government’s intention to avoid raising electricity prices through additional increases in capacity payments,” the report says.
The key risks, according to S&P, concern international projects: tighter requirements for new builds, which are likely to mean potential delays – “as seen with” the Hanhikivi project in Finland; and, nuclear phase-out policies in Western Europe that “could weigh on exports in the longer run”.
“That said, we believe exports of fuel and enrichment services should be resilient in the next several years because Russia mostly exports to nuclear-supportive countries under long-term contracts,” the report says.
“Meanwhile, treatment of nuclear waste or decommissioning services could increase in importance,” it adds.
AEPC has “solid” profitability and financial metrics compared with international and local peers, S&P says, which provides “financial capacity” for new nuclear power construction, domestically and abroad.
Although Russia is involved in a “record number” of international nuclear power construction projects, the prime contractor is AEPC’s unrated sister entity Atomstroyexport, and AEPC is only directly involved in two projects, Hanhikivi in Finland (34%) and Akkuyu in Turkey (96%), the report notes.
AEPC covers all stages of the civil nuclear cycle, from uranium extraction (about 13% of global production) through enrichment and fuel fabrication (about 36% and 17% global market shares) to electricity generation in Russia. It is the sole operator of nuclear plants with 29.1 GW, or 12% of Russia’s total installed capacity, and 18% of the country’s electricity production, at ten plants and 35 units in operation. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/S-P-report-on-Russia
The nuclear industry cries poor, wants bailouts, BUT LOOK WHAT THEY PAY THEIR EXECUTIVES!
Christine Layman . Three Mile Island Survivors (Facebook) 6 July 19, The PA nuclear industry claims it needs a $500 million dollar a year bailout because they are unable to be competitive in the market place and yet, First Energy paid their top 7 executives more than $25 million combined in 2018 alone. Sounds like they are making plenty of money to me!
SAY NO TO ANY NUCLEAR BAILOUT IN PA!
7 First Energy executives were paid more than $25 million in 2018
£1.68bn pre-tax loss forHorizon Nuclear Power, builder for suspended Wylfa Newydd project
BBC 5th July 2019 The company behind plans to build a new nuclear power station on Anglesey has reported a £1.68bn pre-tax loss. Work at Wylfa Newydd was suspended in
January by Hitachi due to rising costs. The latest accounts filed by its
subsidiary Horizon Nuclear Power Ltd show it cut the value of the land and
equipment by £1.52bn as it does not intend to build a new power station.
The accounts also show that staff redundancies and winding up work also
cost £127m. Horizon will now be put into a “suspended state” following the
release of most of its workforce and termination of most of its commercial
contracts, according to its annual report.
A report by the Welsh Affairs Committee said the UK government should encourage Hitachi to sell the site if it is not prepared to resume work. Horizon previously said its main
planning permission was being considered, as it keeps its options open.
“They are going ahead with the application because they’ve done so much
work already, it’s worth spending the additional money to finish that
work,” said Dr Edward Jones, economics lecturer at Bangor University.
French government wants an independent audit of EDF’s Flamanville nuclear plant
Reuters 5th July 2019 The French government has requested an independent audit of EDF’s
(EDF.PA) Flamanville nuclear plant, which faces new cost overruns and
delays of up to three years after a regulator ordered repairs last month.
ASN, the French nuclear watchdog, said that state-owned EDF would have to
repair eight faulty weldings in the reactor’s containment building,
adding that it had rejected a request to delay repairs until 2024.
(EDF.PA) Flamanville nuclear plant, which faces new cost overruns and
delays of up to three years after a regulator ordered repairs last month.
ASN, the French nuclear watchdog, said that state-owned EDF would have to
repair eight faulty weldings in the reactor’s containment building,
adding that it had rejected a request to delay repairs until 2024.
France’s Economy minister Bruno Le Maire told BFM television on Friday
that “incidents” at Flamanville, northern France, were
“unacceptable”, adding that he had asked a former executive with car
maker PSA (PEUP.PA), Jean-Martin Folz, to conduct an independent inquiry.
that “incidents” at Flamanville, northern France, were
“unacceptable”, adding that he had asked a former executive with car
maker PSA (PEUP.PA), Jean-Martin Folz, to conduct an independent inquiry.
Britain’s nuclear power projects not economically viable, and adding to global warming
Nuclear power is helping to drive the climate crisis, Guardian, 3 July 19 Linda Rogers says the CBI has its head in the sand over nuclear reactors and Iain Climie wants politicians prepared to fund action to combat the climate emergency
Has the Confederation of British Industry got its head in the sand, or in the record levels of carbon-intensive concrete just poured at the Hinkley C nuclear site (Build more nuclear reactors to help climate crisis, says CBI, 28 June)? Nuclear power, apart from destroying biodiversity throughout its life cycle, produces up to 37 times the CO2 emissions of renewable energy sources, owing partly to the mining and refining of uranium. The impact of this process on people and the environment is not included in the rationale for nuclear power in the UK.
As the CBI looks for investment from abroad, UK taxpayers will pick up the bill for the likely time and cost overruns of new nuclear build under the regulated asset-based funding proposals so welcomed by the CBI. Nuclear has failed to achieve the investment needed so far because it is no longer seen as economically viable. Even Hitachi (one of the world’s largest multinationals) cannot magic Wylfa Newydd into a commercially viable business. In January this year, Hitachi announced it had failed to squeeze the UK government for the very high levels of subsidies desired by large investors upfront for Wylfa. Nobody can afford the costs or the many risks attached to building new nuclear power stations.
Linda Rogers
PAWB (Pobl Atal Wylfa B/People Against Wylfa B) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/02/nuclear-power-is-helping-to-drive-the-climate-crisis
Oyster Creek Generating Station is now in the hands of Holtec
Oyster Creek nuclear plant sale to Holtec is complete, App.com, LACEY Oyster Creek Generating Station is now in the hands of Holtec – International, which completed the purchase of the now-defunct nuclear facility on Monday.Oyster Creek, before it shut down in September, was one of the nation’s oldest nuclear power plants. Camden-based Holtec plans to decommission this half-century-old facility and profit off the reactor’s nearly $1 billion decommissioning trust fund, money set aside for dismantling the reactor.
Under the agreement, Holtec subsidiaries Oyster Creek Environmental Protection International LLC will serve as owner and Holtec Decommissioning International will oversee decommissioning.
Holtec purchased the power plant for an undisclosed amount from Exelon Generation of Chicago.
Exelon had originally planned to take the plant down slowly over the course of 60 years in a process that would have allowed some of the facility’s dangerous radioactivity to degrade to safer levels. But Holtec’s proposal seeks to complete the decommissioning within a mere 10 years. The company says its new spent fuel storage systems enable hot, radioactive fuel to be removed from the plant’s cooling pool and placed into storage casks years earlier than originally planned.
Holtec is also applying to build an fuel storage facility in New Mexico, but is waiting on approvals. In the meantime, the spent fuel will be stored in steel and concrete canisters on the plant’s property in Lacey…….
Holtec has also applied to purchase other nuclear plants at Indian Point in New York, Palisades in Michigan, and Pilgrim in Massachusetts from Entergy Nuclear. Each has massive decommissioning trust funds that would be transferred to Holtecupon completion of the sales. …..this is Holtec’s first major expansion into the business of decommissioning.
Currently, Holtec is also developing small modular nuclear reactors….
Inside the cask
Cesium 137
Can burn skin, cause radiation sickness and damage tissue. In high doses, it can cause cancer.
Strontium-90
Is absorbed like calcium within the body and can lead to bone cancer, bone marrow cancer, and cancer in the tissues near bones.
Plutonium 239 and 240
Both remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. If inhaled, plutonium particles can scar the lungs, damage bones, liver and spleen and cause cancer.
A local residents group, the Concerned Citizens for Lacey Coalition, is demanding more answers from the company about its plans to quickly demolish Oyster Creek. Coalition member Paul Dressler worries about Lacey being a “guinea pig” for the relatively new and evolving process.
“We want to see transparency,” he said during a meeting with Press staff last week.
Dressler and coalition Chairman Ron Martyn, who live about five miles from the plant, want assurances that Holtec won’t abandon the project if money runs out before completion. They also want to see the regulatory agency that oversees plant decommissioning, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, come up with more stringent rules and best practices for this emerging practice.
“There are too many unanswered questions to go forward, and no one is stepping up to answer the basic business questions,” said Martyn. “It’s not fair to the community, it’s not fair to the state, to operate in such a vacuum.”……… https://www.app.com/story/money/business/2019/07/02/oyster-creek-nuclear-plant-sale-to-holtec-is-complete/1622164001/
Huge expenses of the project to cover the destroyed Chernobyl nuclear reactor
Inside new £1,300,000,000 structure built over destroyed Chernobyl nuclear reactor https://metro.co.uk/2019/07/03/inside-new-1300000000-structure-built-destroyed-chernobyl-nuclear-reactor-10106545/ Georgia Diebelius [excellent photos] 3 Jul 2019 Anew structure built to confine the Chernobyl reactor at the centre of the world’s worst nuclear disaster was previewed for the media yesterday. Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded and burned April 26, 1986. The complex construction effort to secure the molten reactor’s core and 200 tons of highly radioactive material has taken nine years to complete under the control of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The structure itself cost £1.5 billion and the entire shelter project cost £2.2 billion. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development managed a fund with contributions from 45 countries, the European Union and £715 million in the bank’s own resources.‘
This was a very long project,’ said Balthasar Lindauer, director of the bank’s Nuclear Safety Department
He said Ukraine was a big contributor, contributing €100 million in cash along with expertise and personnel. Journalists were invited to view the new safe confinement shelter ahead of the handover to Ukrainian authorities.
A call for Australia to get nuclear weapons
Nuclear arsenal must be on Australia’s agenda, argues defence expert, SMH, By Harriet Alexander, July 1, 2019 Australia can no longer rely on the United States to protect it in Asia and should consider developing its own nuclear weapons for the event that China becomes hostile, former defence strategist and security analyst Hugh White argues in a controversial new book.
Professor White argues in How to Defend Australia the assumption that the United States would protect the nation against any attack by a major power, which has underpinned Australian defence policy since the Cold War, is no longer true as China emerges as the dominant power in Asia.
For Australia to be self-reliant, it would need to boost defence spending from 2 per cent to 3.5 per cent of GDP – or $30 billion – and consider the “difficult and uncomfortable” question of developing its own nuclear capability, said Professor White, a professor in strategic studies at the Australian National University……..
Although most think tanks and strategic policy institutes in the United States continued to assert that dominance in Asia was a strategic priority, America’s global leadership has not figured as a priority for President Donald Trump nor for the contenders to the Democrat nomination, Professor White said. ……
Professor White said Australia should only consider defensive weapons such as submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
“We need to be extremely careful about how we talk about this and very conscious of the extraordinary cost to us of acquiring nuclear weapons,” Professor White said.
“It would make us less secure in some ways, that’s why in some ways I think it’s appalling.”
The last prime minister to canvass the development of nuclear weapons in Australia was Robert Menzies in the 1960s.
Professor White, a former deputy secretary for strategy and intelligence with the Department of Defence, was dismissed as alarmist when he first foreshadowed in 2010 the demise of American influence in Asia. But the Lowy Institute’s international security program director Sam Roggeveen said he had since been proved correct.
Mr Roggeveen said the regional complications of Australia developing nuclear weapons would be huge, with Indonesia probably having to follow suit, but the logic was inescapable.
“If we ever completely decouple from the [US] alliance then it’s hard to see how we could essentially maintain our independence against China’s coercion if we didn’t have nuclear weapons,” Mr Roggeveen said.
The bipartisan political consensus on Australian defence policy is opposed to the development of nuclear weapons, and the domestic shipbuilding program would leave Australia “hopelessly vulnerable” if it ever came to a fight with China, Mr Roggeveen said.
“According to White, we are locking in a defence force for a generation that will be totally unsuited to the world we are entering,” he wrote in a book review for The Interpreter. “That’s the scandal.”
The Minister for Defence, Linda Reynolds, said: “Australia stands by its Non-Proliferation Treaty pledge, as a non-nuclear weapon state, not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons.”
La Trobe Asia executive director Euan Graham said the US alliance was more resilient than Professor White described and China had shown no signs of aggression, but he agreed Australia should think about developing its nuclear capability.
“We’re talking about 15 to 20 years acquisition timeframe and the security environment that we’re facing will almost certainly be more severe then that it is now,” Dr Graham said.
“I think Australia has to be thinking about what will be be required to move to a nuclear weapon posture because that can’t happen overnight.” https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/nuclear-arsenal-must-be-on-australia-s-agenda-argues-defence-expert-20190701-p52306.html
Some noteworthy comments on the diseconomics of nuclear power
Nuclear Power’s Economic Crisis, Friends of the Earth, Australia, 29 June 19
- Letter to Australian Politicians (FoE has sent this to all federal MPs and Senators)
- Nuclear Power’s Economic Crisis
‒ An Escalating Crisis
‒ Recent Experience in North America and Western Europe: New Reactors Cost A$14‒24 Billion Each
‒ Small Modular Reactors and ‘Generation IV’ Nuclear Power Concepts
———————-
Here are some fun quotes from the paper:
- “I don’t think we’re building any more nuclear plants in the United States. I don’t think it’s ever going to happen. They are too expensive to construct.” ‒ William Von Hoene, Senior Vice-President of Exelon, 2018.
- Nuclear power “just isn’t economic, and it’s not economic within a foreseeable time frame.” ‒ John Rowe, recently-retired CEO of Exelon, 2012.
- “It’s just hard to justify nuclear, really hard.” ‒ Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric’s CEO, 2012.
- “I don’t think anybody’s pretending you can take forward a new nuclear power station without some form of government underwriting or support.” ‒ Sir John Armitt, chair of the UK National Infrastructure Commission, 2018.
- France’s nuclear industry is in its “worst situation ever”, a former EDF director said in November 2016 ‒ and the situation has worsened since then.
- Nuclear power is “ridiculously expensive” and “uncompetitive” with solar. ‒ Nobuo Tanaka, former executive director of the International Energy Agency, and former executive board member of the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, 2018.
- Compounding problems facing nuclear developers “add up to something of a crisis for the UK’s nuclear new-build programme.” ‒ Tim Yeo, former Conservative parliamentarian and now a nuclear industry lobbyist, 2017.
- “It sometimes seems like U.S. and European nuclear companies are in competition to see which can heap greater embarrassment on their industry.” ‒Financial Times, 2017, ‘Red faces become the norm at nuclear power groups’.
- “I don’t think a CEO of a utility could in good conscience propose a nuclear-power reactor to his or her board of directors.” ‒ Alan Schriesheim, director emeritus of Argonne National Laboratory, 2014.
- “New-build nuclear in the West is dead” due to “enormous costs, political and popular opposition, and regulatory uncertainty” ‒ Morningstar market analysts Mark Barnett and Travis Miller, 2013
- “Nuclear construction on-time and on-budget? It’s essentially never happened.” ‒ Andrew J. Wittmann, financial analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co., 2017.
- “The mooted nuclear renaissance has clearly stalled.” ‒ Steve Kidd, former World Nuclear Association executive, 2014.
- “Nuclear power and solar photovoltaics both had their first recorded prices in 1956. Since then, the cost of nuclear power has gone up by a factor of three, and the cost of PV has dropped by a factor of 2,500.” ‒ J. Doyne Farmer, Oxford University economics professor, 2016. more https://nuclear.foe.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Nuclear-power-economic-crisis-June-2019-FoE-Aust.pdf
U.S. Dept of Energy accepts reimbursement claims for clean-up of thorium and uranium pollution
DOE Accepts Reimbursement Claims for Uranium, Thorium Processing Remediation
The Department of Energy is accepting claims through Sept. 13 for reimbursement of expenses for cleanup of certain uranium and thorium processing sites in the current 2019 federal fiscal year. The agency said in a Federal Register notice Tuesday that its Office…(subscribers only) https://www.exchangemonitor.com/doe-accepts-reimbursement-claims-uranium-thorium-processing-remediation/
Russia’s nuclear company Rosatom on a drive to sell nuclear technology overseas
Russia’s Rosatom Sees Foreign Revenues, New Products Fuelling Rapid Growth, The state nuclear company aims to triple its revenues through new projects. Moscow Times, 24 June 19, Russian state nuclear company Rosatom aims to triple its revenues in U.S. dollar terms by 2030, driven by foreign projects from Belarus to Bangladesh and new product areas such as carbon fibre, its chief executive told Reuters.
Rosatom is the world’s only integrated nuclear firm, providing a one stop shop from uranium enrichment to handling nuclear waste, after its two biggest rivals Areva and Westinghouse hit financial troubles.
Alexey Likhachyov, 58, has led Rosatom since 2016, with goals to increase competitiveness, add new markets and products, and boost its share of global nuclear technology exports.
By 2030, he expects up to 70 percent of Rosatom’s revenue to come from outside Russia and up to 40 percent from new products, including non-nuclear ones.
“The first step is to implement our entire order book portfolio — this is around $190 billion overall, of which $133 billion is for this decade. Out of these, around $90 billion are (started) plants abroad. This is 12 countries,” he said.
Rosatom is the world’s biggest nuclear company by foreign orders, with a total of 36 nuclear blocks on order outside Russia, including in Belarus, Bangladesh, China, India, Turkey, Finland, Hungary and Egypt. …….. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/06/24/russias-rosatom-sees-foreign-revenues-new-products-fuelling-rapid-growth-a66135
1 This Month
26 September – International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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