US EPA withdraws Obama administration uranium safety regulation Mining Technology, By JP Casey, 23 Oct 18
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has withdrawn a uranium safety proposal introduced in the last days of the Obama administration that would have introduced tighter regulation for uranium mill tailings to minimise the dangers of uranium extraction.
Uranium mill tailings are sandy materials produced as a by-product of uranium mining, which contain radioactive elements. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) states that only waste products produced by surface operations, such as in-situ recovery and ion exchanges, can be considered mill tailings, unlike waste materials left behind underground when ore bodies are depleted.
As a result, mill tailings can pose a threat to people, animals and the environment in the vicinity of a uranium mine, with water sources particularly vulnerable to surface waste.
Uranium operations in the US are governed by the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act, which places responsibility for the regulation and disposal of mining waste with individual states, rather than the NRC.
The Obama-era proposition sought to give the NRC greater authority over tailings regulation and removal, and would have addressed an imbalance in the number of states that regulate their own waste and those which rely on the NRC for guidance.
Currently, just 13 states defer to the NRC for tailing regulation……
October 23, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, health, Uranium, USA |
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Likening nuclear power to that of a living organism, however, Mycle Schneider, the lead author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, told World Finance the industry was like a “dying species” due to the obvious reduction in new nuclear project launches in recent years.
This is seen clearly in the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) annual World Energy Investment report, updated in July, which found that nuclear investment is falling fast.
Nuclear power continues its decline as renewable alternatives steam ahead, World Finance, Author: Courtney Goldsmith, October 15, 2018
Once thought of as the primary answer to the globe’s renewable energy requirements, nuclear energy is now viewed unfavourably in comparison to solar and wind alternatives.
Last year, the largest nuclear power builder in history went bankrupt. Japanese conglomerate Toshiba’s prolific subsidiary Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy after revealing billions of dollars of cost overruns on its US construction projects. At the start of 2018, Toshiba agreed to sell the business for $4.6bn
The high-profile sale followed the French Government’s €5.3bn ($6.2bn) bailout of state-owned nuclear company Areva, which went technically bankrupt after a cumulative six-year
loss of $12.3bn.
These distress signals were noted in the 2017 World Nuclear Industry Status Report, which claimed the debate on nuclear power is over. “Nuclear power has been eclipsed by the sun and the wind,” the report’s forward read. “These renewable, free-fuel sources are no longer a dream or a projection – they are a reality [and] are replacing nuclear as the preferred choice for new power plants worldwide.”
But even while confidence in the industry erodes, strident nuclear advocates still insist the technology is a fundamental ingredient in the global energy mix, providing vital zero-emission, base-load power.
Powering down
The nuclear industry has been shaped in many ways by its biggest disasters: the catastrophic Chernobyl tragedy in Ukraine is considered to be the worst nuclear accident in history, in terms of both cost and casualties. In 1986, four nuclear reactors at the power station exploded, spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere. Decades later, there is still no accurate measure of how many people have indirectly died from the exposure.
Then, in 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan triggered a 46-foot tsunami that hit the Fukushima nuclear plant. The event led to the leakage of radioactive materials, and the plant was shut down. Six years later, the total official cost estimate for the catastrophe has reached $200bn, though it could rise to as much as $630bn according to independent estimates.
These incidents have cast a shadow over the sector. In the years since, new nuclear designs have aimed to improve safety features while maintaining low costs. But despite this, the frequency with which cost overruns and delays occur means nuclear projects are still often deemed too risky for private investors.
Construction delays are a big factor behind rising costs. According to the 2017 World Nuclear Industry Status Report, 37 of the 53 reactors under construction in mid-2017 were behind schedule. Eight of those projects have been in progress for a decade or more, and three of those have been under construction for more than 30 years.
As recently as July, Électricité de France’s (EDF’s) flagship nuclear project in Flamanville, which is already seven years behind schedule, was set back by another year over piping weld issues. The ‘quality deviations’ found in 33 welds at the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) would also cause costs to swell by a further €400m ($465m). The cost of the project now sits at a grand total of €10.9bn ($12.7bn), more than three times the original budget.
Flamanville is one of three new EPRs currently being built in Western Europe. The region’s first new nuclear power station in 15 years, Finland’s Olkiluoto 3, was supposed to be completed in 2009. After numerous delays, it is now expected to be finished in May 2019. Meanwhile, the 3.2GW Hinkley Point C reactor in Somerset is expected to become the UK’s first new nuclear power plant in more than 20 years. It is already expected to be around £1.5bn ($2bn) over budget and more than a year behind schedule.
Yves Desbazeille, Director General of FORATOM, the trade organisation for Europe’s nuclear power producers, told World Finance that delays in major construction projects “are relatively common and difficult to predict”, whether in the nuclear sector or elsewhere.
“Nevertheless, we believe that lessons learned from the projects which are currently being developed in Europe will allow us to avoid these risks in the future,” Desbazeille added.
Likening nuclear power to that of a living organism, however, Mycle Schneider, the lead author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, told World Finance the industry was like a “dying species” due to the obvious reduction in new nuclear project launches in recent years.
This is seen clearly in the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) annual World Energy Investment report, updated in July, which found that nuclear investment is falling fast. The amount of money funnelled into nuclear power nearly halved in 2017, dropping by 45 percent as fewer new plants came online. New nuclear capacity was hit particularly hard, falling by around 70 percent to the lowest in five years as a growing slice of investment was put towards upgrades for existing reactors. Moreover, the growing popularity of renewable energy must be considered, according to Schneider: “To nuclear power, it’s like an invading species to the living organism.”
Renewables charge ahead
The economics of renewable power generation has transformed in the past five years, with costs plummeting to record lows due to the technology’s exceptional ‘learning rate’. A learning rate is the drop in the initial cost of construction as technology improves over time. The quick decline in the cost of renewables took the industry by “total surprise”, Schneider said.
For power generated by a solar photovoltaic (PV) system, that means real prices have plunged by 90 percent between 2009 and 2016. The real price of wind power, meanwhile, fell by 50 percent.
At the same time, nuclear power has presented a negative learning rate: despite technological advances and years of study, the cost of nuclear power tends to increase due to the high price of taking care of ageing reactors.
Politicians can’t pretend new nuclear projects are a viable economic option, Schneider said: “There is no market anymore in the world where new-build [nuclear reactors are] economic under market economy terms.
Renewable energy is not only threatening new nuclear projects; even existing nuclear power, which costs an average of $35.50 per MWh, was higher than recent renewable energy auctions in a number of countries, where prices have fallen to all-time lows of below $30 per MWh.
But Desbazeille said the issue of comparing costs was more complex. Citing a recent report by the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency titled The Full Costs of Electricity Provision, he said the price of electricity in today’s market does not include all the costs that must be taken into account when comparing different energy sources, such as grid-level costs, land-use charges, security of energy and electricity supply, or employment generated in the electricity sector.
Whatever the cost comparison, it appears adding solar and wind power to the grid is more common at the moment. In 2016, global nuclear capacity increased by just 9GW, while solar capacity jumped by 75GW and wind notched a 55GW increase.
Comparing the data since 2000 presents an even starker image. In the 16 years measured by the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, countries around the world added 451GW of wind energy and 301GW of solar energy to power grids, dwarfing an increase of just 36GW for nuclear.
The emissions race
Although the 126 nuclear reactors operating in 14 EU member states generate more than a quarter of all electricity in the EU, and nuclear sources still accounted for close to 30 percent of all electricity production in the eurozone as recently as 2015 (see Fig 1), many governments are beginning to turn their backs on nuclear power.
In March, Belgium agreed to shut down the country’s seven nuclear reactors by 2025, and Germany has been working since 2011 to phase out its nuclear reactors by 2022. In a referendum in 2017, Switzerland also voted to gradually eliminate its nuclear reactors.
The change is even occurring in France, which is the second-biggest user of nuclear power after the US. President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign in 2017 included a promise to cut nuclear power generation from more than 70 percent of the country’s energy mix to 50 percent………
October 15, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
2 WORLD, business and costs |
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Trump’s Latest China Salvo Could Hurt U.S. Nuke Industry, Administration says Beijing is diverting U.S. nuclear technology for military use. BY KEITH JOHNSON, FP.COM OCTOBER 12, 2018, The Trump administration is increasing its economic pressure on China by restricting U.S. nuclear power exports, a move that could end up hurting an American industry desperate to compete in the world’s fastest-growing market for nuclear energy.
Senior administration officials say Beijing is stealing U.S. nuclear technology to gain a competitive edge and is also diverting U.S. nuclear technology toward military uses, such as propulsion systems for submarines and aircraft carriers. In response, after almost a year of review, the administration decided Thursday to restrict the export of some U.S. nuclear technology and components to China.
“The United States cannot ignore the national security implications of China’s efforts to obtain nuclear technology outside of established processes of U.S.-China civil nuclear cooperation,” U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said in a statement.
The restrictions essentially prohibit any new technology transfers, as well as the export of advanced reactor technologies, including small, modular reactors that are seen by many as the industry’s future. Additionally, the U.S. government is essentially banning any and all U.S. exports to China General Nuclear Power Group, one of the country’s two big nuclear energy developers. China General Nuclear was indicted in 2016 for organizing an espionage campaign to acquire U.S. nuclear know-how.
But the new restrictions won’t apparently affect some of the highest-profile U.S. projects in China, such as the construction of new nuclear power plants using the state-of-the-art Westinghouse AP1000 reactor. Chinese utilities are currently building four Westinghouse reactors at two locations; the first just became operational.
For the U.S. nuclear power industry, further restrictions on its ability to compete overseas come as a blow. For a year, export licenses to China have been held up by the government’s review, and nuclear industry advocates have repeatedly warned U.S. officials of the economic harms of being locked out of the world’s one real growth market, potentially worth tens of billions of dollars in future sales……..https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/12/trumps-latest-china-salvo-could-hurt-u-s-nuke-industry/
October 15, 2018
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business and costs, China, politics international, USA |
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Le Monde 11th Oct 2018 Flamanville** [Machine Translation] New delay in sight for Flamanville EPR. According to
the Nuclear Safety Authority, “important technical work” remains to be done
to correct the anomalies identified on certain welds. The “battle of the
welds” probably did not finish to delay the construction of the EPR of
Flamanville (Channel). In a note sent to EDF and made public on 3 October, the president of the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) has severely reframed the public electrician, worrying about a “monitoring failure” on the Normandy nuclear site .
“It’s the whole chain of surveillance that has
malfunctioned,” says ASN. Pierre-Franck Chevet also indicated that
“important technical work remains to be done” to correct anomalies
identified on certain welds. To understand the vivacity of the reaction of
the nuclear policeman, we must return to the origin of the case. In
February, EDF discovered problems on 38 secondary circuit welds. This water
circuit serves to evacuate the steam towards the turbine. It consists of
four loops, associated with four steam generators. At first, the group
explains that these pipes comply with the regulations but that they should
have corresponded to the “high quality” standard, which is more demanding.
Specifically, EDF had defined this new standard for the construction of the
EPR and was unable to enforce it by its own subcontractors. And things got
complicated a few weeks later. The extensive examination of the welds
reveals that a large part of them do not comply with the standard required
by EDF, or even the regulations required for pressurized nuclear equipment.
Result: the group has to take back fifty-three welds, knowing that a single
weld represents at least eight additional weeks of work.
https://www.lemonde.fr/energies/article/2018/10/11/nouveau-retard-en-vue-pour-l-epr-de-flamanville_5367969_1653054.html
October 13, 2018
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Opinions mixed during hearing about failed nuclear power project, Aiken Standard, By Dede Biles dbiles@aikenstandard.com, Oct 11, 2018 Not many people had something they wanted to say about an abandoned nuclear construction project in Fairfield County during the S.C. Public Service Commission’s hearing Monday.
More than 80 people showed up at the Aiken County Government Center, but only 12 testified before the panel, which is considering whether to approve a pending merger between Virginia-based Dominion Energy and SCANA, which is the parent company of SCE&G.
The commission also is trying to decide how much, if anything, SCE&G customers can be charged in the future to help pay for the failed venture’s billions of dollars in cost.
SCE&G and state-owned Santee Cooper were building a new generation of nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer facility.
Monday’s hearing lasted less than an hour, and the opinions expressed were mixed about the merger.
“I’m kind of against the merger,” said Eric Savage of Aiken. “We hear all the things that Dominion says about how they are going to provide (an average refund of) $1,000 to customers and better things for our community, but what about the money that people have already lost (because of rate increases)? We want to know who is standing behind the South Carolina residents who have already paid out so much? Some of them are on fixed incomes.”……..
Chris Hall of Aiken described the situation with the abandoned nuclear project as “a fiscal nightmare.” He also complained that “rate payers have been asked to bear the burden (through rate hikes)” while SCE&G’s “senior-level executives have gone on with their highly-compensated bonuses and salaries.”……..
The Public Service Commission also held a hearing about the abandoned nuclear power project Monday in Columbia and another is scheduled for North Charleston on Oct. 15 https://www.aikenstandard.com/news/opinions-mixed-during-hearing-about-failed-nuclear-power-project/article_18d0e472-ca79-11e8-8482-0b530859c42f.html
October 13, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, USA |
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