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California law to protect workers, community and environment, as Diablo nuclear power plant to close

California Gov. Brown Signs Historic Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant Bill, https://www.powermag.com/press-releases/california-gov-brown-signs-historic-diablo-canyon-nuclear-plant-bill/Power Magazine,  09/20/2018 SACRAMENTO, CA  – California Gov. Jerry Brown today signed into law a bill to protect the environment, workers, and local communities during the closure of  California’s last nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo.Senate Bill 1090, which had wide bipartisan support, will help to ensure that the electricity generated by the giant plant is replaced with zero-carbon options led by energy efficiency and renewable energy. The new law also mandates full funding of a $350 million employee retention program and the $85 million community impact mitigation program, which are needed to ensure that the plant is adequately staffed and essential emergency services are provided through the end of the plant’s license period in 2025.

Plant owner Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), citizen and environmental groups including NRDC, and labor organizations in June 2016 announced an agreement to close the two reactors by August 2025 and replace their generation with lower-cost, zero-carbon alternatives. Their joint proposal asked the California Public Utilities Commission to authorize the replacement of the electricity being generated by the plant 250 miles south of San Francisco with emissions-free options led by energy efficiency, wind and solar power, and included protections for plant workers and surrounding communities during the transition. When the CPUC rejected much of the historic joint proposal in January, supporters turned to the Legislature.

Following is a statement from Ralph Cavanagh, energy program co-director at the Natural Resources Defense Council:

“Governor Brown made climate history again today when he signed this legislation to specifically authorize that Diablo Canyon’s electricity generation be replaced with carbon-free resources like energy efficiency and wind and solar power. This groundbreaking legislation also ensures that we account for the full impact of the plant’s closure on the workers and surrounding communities.”

September 21, 2018 Posted by | employment, USA | Leave a comment

US govt plan to improve worker safety at Hanford polluted nuclear site

US agrees to improve worker safety at polluted nuclear site https://www.fox13memphis.com/news/us-agrees-to-improve-worker-safety-at-polluted-nuclear-site/837630607, By: PHUONG LE, Associated Press, Sep 19, 2018 –  SEATTLE (AP) – The U.S. government will test and implement a new system to capture and destroy dangerous vapors released at the nation’s most polluted nuclear weapons production site as part of a settlement agreement reached Wednesday.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson told reporters that the agreement represents a major win for hundreds of workers who have been getting sick for years while cleaning up the nation’s nuclear waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington.

“Those workers deserve to be protected,” Ferguson said.

He added that the U.S. Department of Energy did not take the issue seriously and resisted putting protections in place.

“There’s no way to sugar coat this,” Ferguson said.

The Energy Department will for the first time test a new technology that Ferguson called “game-changing” that would protect workers from the vapor exposures.

Under the agreement, the agency will pay $925,000 in fees and costs to the state and Hanford Challenge, a watchdog group that has for decades been warning about worker safety. The agency will also install a new vapor monitoring and alarm system and maintain safety measures that are currently in place, including supplying air and respirators.

The Department of Energy said in an emailed statement that the agreement “acknowledges the extensive actions” that the agency, and its contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions LLC, have taken to protect workers from potential exposure to chemical vapors.

The agency said they continue to “take a very conservative approach to protecting workers from potential exposures to chemical vapors” and that agreement reinforces the ongoing effort.

The state, Hanford Challenge and the pipefitters union Local 598 sued the Energy Department in 2015 and its contractor for tank farms containing nuclear waste, seeking better protection for workers at risk of inhaling vapors or gases that leaked from underground storage tanks.

The agreement puts that federal lawsuit on hold while the Energy Department tests and implements a new system to capture and destroy vapors escaping waste tanks. Ferguson said if the federal agency doesn’t meet its obligations, legal action could resume.

“Hearing and documenting dozens of stories of sick workers was heartbreaking,” said Meredith Crafton, a lawyer representing Hanford Challenge, whose voice broke as she spoke to reporters.

The agreement protects workers in the interim but also creates incentives to find better technology to protect workers in the future, she said.

The 586-square-mile (943-square-kilometer) Hanford nuclear site located along the Columbia River in Eastern Washington state produced up to 70 percent of the plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal since it was established in World War II.

Hanford has 177 underground tanks made of steel that contain more that 54 million gallons (204 million liters) of radioactive and chemical wastes.

Ferguson said studies over the last 20 years, including by the Energy Department and other government agencies, have shown workers falling ill after being exposed to the vapors. They’ve experienced dizziness, nausea and other issues.

September 21, 2018 Posted by | employment, safety, USA | Leave a comment

Increasing concern among lawmakers over ballooning costs of Vogtle nuclear power plant project

Vogtle’s Escalating Costs Concern Lawmakers, Stakeholders, Power magazine, 09/20/2018 | Sonal Patel, The Vogtle nuclear expansion’s “ever-escalating” cost is concerning several members of Georgia’s General Assembly, according to a letter sent to partners building the much-delayed project.

Twenty lawmakers from both houses of state government—19 Republicans and one Democrat—sent a letter to the board of directors at Georgia Power Co., Oglethorpe Power Co. (OPC), and Municipal Electric Authoity of Georgia (MEAG Power), lamenting continuing cost increases, and their impact on local utility rates, despite a change in project management eight months ago.

The lawmakers urged the utilities to ensure a cost cap is established before the utilities vote in support of moving forward with the project, as required by the amended co-owners agreement, before September 24. Georgia Power holds a 45.7% stake in the two-unit Plant Vogtle expansion, while OPC (30%), MEAG Power (22.7%), and Dalton Utilities (1.6%) hold the remaining shares. MEAG Power could vote as early as today (September 20). A 90% vote for the project is required for the project to continue……….

Legal Complications

As the fate of project grows murky, a legal battle is also brewing that involves the City of Jacksonville, Florida, and JEA, the city’s municipal utility that serves about 458,000 electric customers. The entities on September 11 asked a federal appeals court for a declaratory judgment on a power purchase agreement (PPA) the utility entered into with MEAG in 2008 for power from Vogtle Units 3 and 4, which were originally scheduled for completion in April 2016 and April 2017.

Completion dates have since been extended by five years: Unit 3 is expected to come online in November 2021, and Unit 4 in November 2022. “A new unlimited cost-plus reimbursement agreement was implemented without JEA’s approval in June 2017 after the project’s initial general contractor, Westinghouse, declared bankruptcy. The amended agreement has increased JEA’s liability from $1.4 billion to more than $2.9 billion—an uncapped and rising amount,” the company noted.

MEAG Power on September 11 filed its own lawsuit in the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta, claiming that the Florida entity became “irreversibly obligated” when the company entered into the PPA to pay its share regardless of “whether or not the project is completed or is operating or operable.”………https://www.powermag.com/vogtles-escalating-costs-concern-lawmakers-stakeholders/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTnpFNFpXUmpZbVJqWWpCbCIsInQiOiJOTXhEekNRSSszWDdKcEd5eWFKWm5YN3JpUjVPQXRWNm9ZVkJLbXNjbzF4M1o0Z2hBOHFRc2pucjBLS29xTVV5QW

September 21, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

The second nuclear industry stillbirth – Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs)

 SMR – The Second Make-Believe Renaissance – Gordon Edwards, 18 Sept 18 SMR stands for “Small Modular Reactor(s)”. It is the latest effort by an increasingly desperate nuclear industry to create a “Nuclear Renaissance”. Nuclear Renaissance I
……. The originally planned renaissance depended on plants that were larger-than-ever and safer-than-ever. The French company Areva proudly announced the EDF reactor. “The first two EPR projects, in Olkiluoto, Finland, and Flammanville, France, were meant to lead a nuclear renaissance but both projects ran into costly construction delays” and so many billions of euros over budget that Areva was virtually bankrupted, but was bailed out by the French government. “Construction commenced on two Chinese EPR units in 2009 and 2010. The Chinese units were to start operation in 2014 and 2015,[11] but the Chinese government halted construction because of safety concerns.”…….
  The Canadian “Advanced CANDU Reactor” (ACR) never saw the light of day either, and led to the sale of the AECL CANDU division to SNL-Lavalin for a paltry $15 million in 2011. ACR was supposed to be another cornerstone of the Nuclear Renaissance, originally planned for either 1000 MW or 700 MW. It did not make it out of the womb.
  Nuclear Renaissance II So now the nuclear industry, imagining itself rising from the ashes of its own calamitous failure, is launching a NEW nuclear renaissance based on “Small Modular Reactors” (SMRs). There is no precise definition of an SMR except that it should be no more than 300 MW in power output, and could be as little as 10 MW or less.
…… There is a bewildering variety of SMR designs, using uranium, plutonium, or thorium in the fuel, using molten salt, liquid metal, or ordinary water as coolant, but all intended to run for a long time with a replaceable core.
The Catch-22 in all of this is that Small Reactors are NOT cheaper than large reactors, quite the contrary! Because of the safety features that must be included in order to be licensed needed to contain the enormous inventory of intensely radioactive fission products and extremely radiotoxic actinides and prevent them from escaping, these SMR’s can only begin to break even if they are purchased in the THOUSANDS of units. The economies of scale only kick in when they are mass-produced. So mass-marketing is absolutely essential
  Already the Canadian government (which has, at least tentatively, bought into this SMR scheme through its adherence to “NICE: Nuclear Innovation = Clean Energy”) is scouring the country for possibilities. In Alberta dozens of SMRs might be employed to “cook” the oil sands in order to extract the bitumen. In the northern regions SMRs might be used to replace diesel generators, especially in arctic and subarctic conditions. In New Brunswick SMRs could be sold to appease those who have over the years clamoured for a second Lepreau.
 But it is pretty certain that none of these plans could be realized without very hefty federal subsidies, because these SMRs will be initially sold at a loss just to “prime the pump” in hopes that a profitable market will eventually materialize. And of course the SMRs themselves are purely conjectural at this point, none have them have been built or licensed or operated. It will take at least a decade or two to get them up and running, if ever that happens. Meanwhile the economic prospects for nuclear, especially in the west, are dismal. As the senior vice-president of Exelon said recently:
Due to their high cost relative to other generating options, no new nuclear power units will be built in the US, an Exelon official said Thursday.
“The fact is — and I don’t want my message to be misconstrued in this part — 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,” William Von Hoene, senior vice president and chief strategy officer at Exelon, told the US Energy Association’s annual meeting in Washington. With 23 operational reactors, Exelon is the US’ largest nuclear operator.
 “I’m not arguing for the construction of new nuclear plants,” Von Hoene said. “They are too expensive to construct, relative to the world in which we now live.”
Von Hoene’s stance includes so-called small modular reactors, or SMRs, and advanced designs, he said.
 “Right now, the costs on the SMRs, in part because of the size and in part because of the security that’s associated with any nuclear plant, are prohibitive,” Von Hoene said.
“It’s possible that that would evolve over time, and we’re involved in looking at that technology,” Von Hoene said. “Right now they’re prohibitively expensive.”
 In a later article I will address the particular kind of SMR intended for NB. It is a kind of mini-breeder in the sense that it uses plutonium in the fuel and liquid sodium as coolant. Bad news! …. http://www.ccnr.org/SMR_Second_Make-Believe_Renaissance_2018.pdf1 

September 18, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, spinbuster | Leave a comment

French nuclear industry in turmoil, – inadequate welds at Flamanville nuclear reactor

Le Monde 16th Sept 2018 [Machine Translation] Nuclear: In Flamanville, the welds of the discord.
The manufacturing difficulties of the French EPR have cruelly recalled the pitfalls that threaten the tricolor nuclear industry: an extremely ambitious initial vision and implementation difficulties with heavy consequences.
At the beginning of the year, problems with essential welds at the Flamanville reactor will lead EDF to re-evaluate the costs and delays of the project. While the group’s management hoped to start in early 2019, it will be necessary to wait until 2020 to see the EPR be connected to the network.
The welding business illustrates bitterly the difficulties of the French nuclear industry, faced with its loss of skills and know-how. EDF has defined this new quality standard for the construction of the EPR and has not been able to enforce it to its own subcontractors In February, EDF discovered problems on thirty-eight welds, on sixty-six of the secondary circuit. This water circuit is the one used to evacuate steam to the turbine. It consists of four loops, associated with four steam
generators.
As a first step, 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 than the regulations in force. Specifically, EDF had defined this new quality standard for the construction of the EPR and was unable to enforce it to its own subcontractors. “Why did we need to create this new standard?”
But 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.
As a result, the group has to take back fifty-eight welds, knowing that a single weld represents eight weeks of extra work.
https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2018/09/16/nucleaire-a-flamanville-les-soudures-de-la-discorde_5355892_3234.html

September 18, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, France, safety | Leave a comment

Financiers desert France’s EPR nuclear power plan for UK’s Hinkley Point C project

Le Monde 16th Sept 2018 [Machine Translation] Can EDF’s finances support such a trajectory? The company’s chief financial officer, Thomas Piquemal, slammed the door in 2015, worried that the UK’s Hinkley Point EPR would weigh heavily on the company. According to him, the need for the nuclear company  to finance alone two thirds of the project creates a situation too risky. ”

Who would bet 60% to 70% of its heritage on a technology that we still do not know if it works, while it’s been ten years that we try to build it? “, He launches in front of the deputies in 2016. This is the heart of the problem for EDF: how to finance new reactors? For Hinkley Point, it took considerable resources, even though EDF won a gold contract with the British state: for thirty years, the French group will sell its electricity at a guaranteed rate, twice the current price electricity!

In other words, British consumers will see their bill increase. In fact, most countries that continue to build nuclear power can only do so with a strong commitment from the state and a guaranteed income for private investors.

But the France of 2018 is no longer that of Pierre Messmer and the Commissariat au plan in 1974, when the French nuclear plan was launched. The impossible equation But the atom requires long time. “When we talk about the EPR, we
are talking about an investment over a century. We are in a period in which people want shorter-term returns, even in infrastructure, “says Emmanuel Autier of Bearing Point.

“We are not going to scramble to finance a project that has not yet proved its worth while it is much more profitable and less risky to finance renewable energy,” notes an investment fund manager. Especially since EDF’s current structure, subject to stock market fluctuations, does not encourage long-term commitment. “Finance costs are a
very important part of construction. A listed company can not wear that on its balance sheet in a massive way, “agrees Valérie Faudon, SFEN.

“It will be necessary for the state to play its full role by creating a new regulatory framework,” admits Xavier Ursat. In other words: to sustain the EPR – and make survive EDF – it will be up to the state to guarantee the investments and consumers to bear the burden on their electricity bill.

This is the impossible equation in which EDF is: to survive in its current form, it must.
https://abonnes.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2018/09/16/l-epr-le-cauchemar-d-edf_5355883_3234.html

Les Echos 17th Sept 2018 Nuclear: the amazing schedule for the extension of reactors. The first reactor of the Tricastin plant will stop in June 2019 to start the extension work after 40 years. But ASN will not give its generic opinion on
the subject until the end of 2020.
https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/energie-environnement/0302222113379-nucleaire-letonnant-calendrier-de-la-prolongation-des-reacteurs-2205709.php

September 18, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, France | Leave a comment

The EPR, France and EDF’s nuclear nightmare


Le Monde 16th Sept 2018 , Le Monde 16th Sept 2018 [Machine Translation] The EPR, EDF’s nightmare. The European pressurized
reactor was to be the flagship of the French nuclear industry. For the
company it is now its survival and that of a whole sector that is at
stake, while the group is heavily indebted and its income is dwindling. 74
billion of debt … and with nuclear,that  is not finished!

At the headquarters of EDF, avenue de Wagram, in Paris, the gigantic banner of
Greenpeace shows the color: we see the CEO of EDF, Jean-Bernard Lévy,
making two fingers of honor to passersby, under the mention “Thank you
Jean-Bernard”. This action of December 2016 marked a new stage in the
argument of nuclear opponents: it is not only to explain the risk of
accidents, but also the financial risk that would weigh on EDF.

NGOs are no longer alone in this field. In June, the then minister responsible for EDF
Nicolas Hulot, took up the argument. “One of the reasons why EDF finds itself
in difficulty is that the nuclear industry, sorry to say, leads us into a
drift. In a clear allusion to the expensive shipyard Flamanville (Channel),
he said: “It is clear that economically, there is a kind of golden rule
that is being established in this sector, it’s that in reality, we never
keep our promises. The minister is picking up a criticism that is becoming
more and more common: not only has nuclear become too expensive, but it
would also be a major strategic mistake for EDF.

https://abonnes.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2018/09/16/l-epr-le-cauchemar-d-edf_5355883_3234.html

September 18, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, France | Leave a comment

Canada’s Brookfield in talks with Toshiba, about buying British new nuclear init NuGen

Toshiba in talks with Brookfield for U.K. nuclear unit sale: sources, Globe and Mail , REUTER, SEPTEMBER 18, 2018 Toshiba Corp is in talks with Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management Inc for the potential sale of its UK nuclear unit NuGen, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Brookfield has emerged as one of several new candidates since Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO) lost its preferred bidder status in July, said the source, who declined to be identified as the talks are private.

The talks, first reported by the  Financial Times, are at an early stage, the source said.  ………

The NuGen project in Moorside, northwest England, was expected to provide around 7 per cent of Britain’s electricity, but faced setbacks after Toshiba’s nuclear arm Westinghouse went bankrupt last year.

NuGen said last week it has cut the team working on its project, to fewer than 40 people from more than 100 as a sale of the project is taking longer than expected. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-toshiba-in-talks-with-brookfield-for-sale-of-uk-nuclear-unit-report/

September 18, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, Canada | Leave a comment

Global energy demand could peak in 2030s, meanwhile renrewables grid costs offset by other cost reductions

Energy Post 10th Sept 2018 , The global energy transition will lead to a massive expansion of power
lines at all voltage levels as well as a steep growth in the number of
transformers and substations in the electricity system. This is one of the
major new findings of the second edition of the Energy Transition Outlook,
the annual flagship publication of global technical consultancy DNV GL.

As a result, grid costs will triple, yet this cost explosion is offset by cost
reductions in other areas, such as lower costs in the fossil fuels sector.
“The world can afford the transition”, say project leader Sverre Alvik
and lead author Paul Gardner of DNV GL in an interview with Energy Post.

“That’s the good news. But it’s not clear yet how we will make the
necessary investments. How fast we go may depend more on political will
than technology or economics.” Last year, when DNV GL for the first time
presented its Energy Transition Outlook (ETO), it had a surprising story to
tell.

The report came to the unique conclusion that somewhere in the
mid-2030s, for the first time in recorded history, global energy demand
would reach a peak and even decline thereafter. What is important about
this projection is that it comes from an independent source: DNV GL is a
global, “technology-neutral” consultancy who are active across the
entire energy value chain, both in electricity and renewables and in oil
and gas. http://energypost.eu/dnv-gls-energy-transition-outlook-shows-massive-shift-of-investment-from-oil-and-gas-into-power-lines/

September 17, 2018 Posted by | 2 WORLD, business and costs, ENERGY | Leave a comment

Hundreds of world’s leading investors back initiatives to combat climate change

Independent 14th Sept 2018 A group of almost 400 of the world’s leading investors, controlling over $30tn (£23tn) in assets, have agreed to work together to back initiatives to combat climate change and help meet the objectives of the Paris agreement. The group aims to lobby and put pressure on governments around the world to accelerate action to tackle global greenhouse gas emissions.

Investors including the BBC Pensions Trust, Transport for London pensions fund, Aviva, the Environment Agency pension fund, Legal and General, and
the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust are calling on the companies in their portfolios to reduce their carbon footprint, support clean energy, and
strengthen climate-related financial disclosures. The list of organisations who are part of the newly launched “Investor Agenda” includes 279
investors controlling $31tn who had already signed up to the aims of the Climate Action 100+ in agreement with this statement:

“We, the institutional investors that are signatories to this statement, are aware of the risks climate change presents to our portfolios and asset values in
the short, medium and long term. We therefore support the Paris Agreement and the need for the world to transition to a lower carbon economy
consistent with a goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-funding-global-warming-investment-company-investor-agenda-a8536286.html

September 17, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, climate change | Leave a comment

Massive flow of money into Japanese coal and nuclear power

Why Can’t Japan Kick Coal And Nuclear? Oil Price, By Haley Zaremba – Sep 15, 2018 Earlier this year we reported on a startling anomaly in the global energy market that even the experts couldn’t have predicted. Just one nation, alone against the greening tides, was turning back to coal–Japan. Now, half a year later, a newly released report shows that Japanese financial institutions have funneled US$92 billion into coal and nuclear development—a sum bigger than the gross domestic product of Sri Lanka – in the months between January 2013 and July 2018 alone.Energy Finance in Japan 2018: Funding Climate Change and Nuclear Risk was commissioned by a climate change-focused non-government organization (NGO) called 350.org based in the United States. The study found that the Japanese finance industry gave US$80 billion in loans and underwriting services, the majority (50 percent) of which went straight to coal development, with the other half split between nuclear and other fossil fuel resource companies. The other US$12 billion went to bonds and shares in the same industries.

Among the 151 Japanese financial institutions analyzed in the Energy Finance in Japan 2018study, only 38 of them were not involved with coal or nuclear energy projects. A similar 350.org study from last year shows that Japanese insurance companies represent a large proportion of investors in domestic and international coal industries. Japan’s single biggest investor in coal for the five-year period studied was Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), followed by Nippon Life Insurance (NLI) and Nomura Holdings………..

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the government responded swiftly and strongly to public outcry and shut down all 54 of Japan’s nuclear reactors as they awaited new, significantly more rigorous safety standards. Now, more than 7 years later, just a fraction of these nuclear power plants have reopened for business. It was at this point that Japanese officials started looking for new avenues to power the country, and they found what they were looking for in coal.

It’s difficult to say, however, how long-lived the Japanese coal renaissance will be. There is a large amount of opposition to the extremely dirty fossil fuel, with critics urging Japan to reverse its course and return to “greener” pastures. Encapsulating the nation’s ambivalence, at the same time that Japanese financial institutions were still funneling money into coal power development and bonds earlier this year, Japanese banks were also creating stricter financing guidelines to include advanced air-pollution technologies.

In fact even MUFG, mentioned above as Japan’s single biggest investor in coal, has significantly tightened their coal-financing policies this year, along with  Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. At the same time NLI, Japan’s biggest insurer in terms of revenue, announced in July that it would no longer grant loans to new coal projects or invest in coal-fired plants, citing environmental reasons, and Dai-Ichi Life Insurance Company announced that it would stop financing overseas coal plants in May.

Some critics, including 350.org, say that these changes, while meaningful, are not nearly significant enough to stem the massive flow of Japanese money into coal, and thereby Japanese pollutants into our atmosphere. It’s still unclear whether these first steps away from coal will have any impact on the many coal projects already underway, and while investment may be now limited to some extent, it’s a far cry from divestment. https://oilprice.com/Energy/Coal/Why-Cant-Japan-Kick-Coal-And-Nuclear.html

September 17, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, Japan | Leave a comment

Frazer-Nash, engineering consultants, going for new nuclear power in a big way

World Nuclear News 14th Sept 2018 , Consultants Frazer-Nash, in collaboration with Rolls-Royce, the National
Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), EDF Energy, Jacobsen Analytics, Lancaster
University, University of Bristol and University of York are set to deliver
a nuclear safety and security research contract. Frazer-Nash said yesterday
that, working on behalf of the Department of Business, Energy and
Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the GBP3.6 million (USD4.7 million), two-year
project, aims to deliver a “step change in the UK’s capability as the
country moves toward an era of new nuclear build and new technologies”.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/UK-companies-to-deliver-safety-and-security-resear

September 17, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Hinkley nuclear deal with union – work will continue in the event of a worker death accident

Construction Enquirer 13th Sept 2018 , Construction union Unite has agreed a deal to carry on working if anyone is
killed during construction of the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant. The
Enquirer understands that construction workers were encouraged to agree to
the deal last month to protect payouts to the family of any worker who dies
on the project. It goes against standard practice to down tools on site in
the event of a fatality.
http://www.constructionenquirer.com/2018/09/13/hinkley-workers-sign-no-death-stoppage-deal/

September 14, 2018 Posted by | employment, UK | Leave a comment

New Jersey’s nuclear subsidy means a loss to electricity consumers

 Consumers lose in nuclear subsidy plan, North Jersey Record Sept. 12, 2018 New Jersey’s nuclear subsidy idea was a loser from the start. Legislators earlier this year bowed to Public Service Enterprise Group’s insistence on financial help from consumers to keep South Jersey nuclear plants afloat — meaning to make them more profitable — and signed off on a $300 million plan.

Of course, lawmakers told us that the money merely represented a maximum, and that a Board of Public Utilities review would determine how much assistance — if any — the plants would receive. That process began last week, and officials have been tossing around a lot of political-sounding comments about extensive scrutiny of the nuclear applications — as if awards weren’t already essentially a done deal.

In a press release, BPU President Joseph Fiordaliso said the board and its staff take their responsibilities seriously, and will determine whether subsidies are warranted. Yet legislators and the governor have already decided they are; that was the whole argument in favor of the subsidies bill, that the plants wouldn’t stay open without help, that New Jersey needs nuclear power, and that the $300 million figure was an appropriate number to put in place. The final subsidies may not hit that number on the nose, but we can certainly assume they won’t be far off.

It’s also no secret New Jersey consumers will be forced to foot the profitability bill not only for PSEG’s South Jersey plants, but also for nuclear plants in other states that contribute to the PJM Interconnection regional energy grid.

What will those states be doing to benefit us? Nothing, basically…………https://www.northjersey.com/story/opinion/editorials/2018/09/12/editorial-nj-consumers-lose-nuclear-subsidy-plan/1270890002/

environmentalists have maintained that the subsidy bill will prop up an outdated source of power at the expense of wind and solar energy, one more part of the governor’s often confusing, hopscotch approach to satisfying the state’s energy needs. Rival power companies have called the nuclear subsidy unfair to a company that reported $558 million in net income for the first three months of this year. And large power users said the subsidy would drive up costs and discourage innovation.

All of this, however, begs the question: Why couldn’t the amount of the subsidies have been determined before legislators created the pot of cash from which they will be taken? The plants aren’t losing money; they’re just not generating enough profit. PSEG won’t open its books to the public. Yet lawmakers felt compelled to announce to one and all upfront that as much as $300 million might be needed to get the job done. That taints everything moving forward………https://www.northjersey.com/story/opinion/editorials/2018/09/12/editorial-nj-consumers-lose-nuclear-subsidy-plan/1270890002/

September 14, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Cumbria business chief in a stew over possible abandonment of £15bn Moorside nuclear project

Carlisle News & Star 12th Sept 2018 , Business chief blames Government policy for “frightening off” Moorside
investors. Cumbria Chamber of Commerce boss urges ministers to change tack
to save £15bn project. Rob Johnston, chief executive of Cumbria Chamber of
Commerce, told in-Cumbria that the Government’s use of a regulated asset
base (RAB) model to finance Moorside was a risk of killing the
transformation project. Repeating previous calls for the Government to
invest directly in Moorside to ensure it happens, he placed the blame for
the delays squarely at the door of its Nuclear Sector Deal published back
in June.
http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/business/Business-chief-blames-Government-policy-for-frightening-off-Moorside-investors-47c201f1-f162-4f96-b702-629bb2ff41a3-ds

Building 12th Sept 2018 , The company behind the £10bn Moorside nuclear power station in Cumbria is
cutting more than 60 of its 100 staff as its parent Toshiba continues its
struggle to sell the company. NuGen was originally a joint venture between
Toshiba and French multinational Engie but ran into trouble last year when
Toshiba’s US subsidiary Westinghouse – which had been due to supply the
nuclear reactor for Moorside – filed for bankruptcy.

https://www.building.co.uk/news/firm-behind-moorside-nuclear-plant-cuts-more-than-half-its-staff/5095510.article

September 14, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

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