EON’s Old Nuclear Money Spinners Are Now Just a Big Hassle, Bloomberg, By Weixin Zha and Tino Andresen, 4 July 2017,
Brokdorf reactor halt has cost more than 100 million euros
Utility awaiting regulatory approval after February outage
An EON SE nuclear plant that made billions for the German utility is now losing money.
Essen-based EON is battling repeated delays to production at its Brokdorf reactor that has cost the company more than 100 million euros ($114 million) since halting in February, the utility said by email. The unit is now scheduled to start July 19.
Brokdorf, a 1.4-gigawatt reactor capable of powering 2.8 million homes, is offline after regulators raised concerns about oxide layers on fuel rods discovered when the unit stopped for maintenance. EON has submitted its examination results to the regulator and is awaiting approval to restart.
EON, which last year separated its conventional power plant business into a new company called Uniper SE, still operates three atomic plants including the 31-year-old Brokdorf facility. EON had to keep the nuclear business after the government made plant operators permanently liable for decommissioning costs under the nation’s plan to exit atomic power.
“For the market, it will be an issue if Brokdorf still wasn’t available in the fall,” said Lueder Schumacher, an analyst at Societe Generale SA in London.
EON transferred on Monday its share of 24 billion euros that the government demanded from utilities into a fund that will pay for costs related to the final storage of radioactive waste.
Brokdorf’s outage contributed to a 20 percent drop in EON’s first quarteradjusted net income to 525 million euros, the utility said in May.
Paladin Energy enters administration, WNN, 03 July 2017Paladin Energy Ltd has today appointed administrators after it was unable to agree a delay to the repayment of $277 million it owes Electricité de France (EDF). The administrators will continue to operate the company on a business-as-usual basis until further
Western Australia-based Paladin in February announced plans for a balance sheet restructuring to enable it to meet debts due in April, after plans to sell a 24% stake in the Langer Heinrich uranium mine in Namibia to China’s CNNC Overseas Uranium Holdings failed to progress. The sale of a 30% stake in the Manyingee project in Western Australia to Avira Energy Ltd (formerly MGT Resources), announced at the same time as the CNNC sale in July 2016, also failed to complete.
CNNC, which already owns a 25% joint venture equity stake in the Namibian project, subsequently began a process that could lead to it exercising an option to acquire all of Paladin’s share of Langer Heinrich. This led to the proposal in May of an alternative restructuring plan by Paladin, as the original plan had assumed the company would retain an ongoing interest in its Namibian flagship project.
Paladin is due to pay EDF $277 million by 10 July under a long-term supply agreement signed in 2012. The company said it had approached EDF to grant a “standstill” agreement, which would allow time for the alternative restructure proposal to be implemented. Although terms had been negotiated they had not been signed.
Atomic Bellyflop: America’s 1st ’21st Century Nuclear Reactor’ Fails, Shuts Down After 5 Months bureauEnviroNews DC News Bureau ,byJulia Travers July 3, 2017
Energy Post 27th June 2017,The introduction of renewables auctions in Germany, replacing administratively set feed-in premiums, has led to considerably lower prices and very high realization rates. However, community participation was very low in the first solar PV auctions.
Now a new rule favouring community projects in onshore wind auctions turned out to be so attractive that most
bidders created community projects to profit from them. This is turning the
market upside down. Corinna Klessmann and Silvana Tiedemann of consultancy Ecofys, a Navigant company, look at the effects of auctions on the German renewables markets and make recommendations. http://energypost.eu/germanys-first-renewables-auctions-are-a-success-but-new-rules-are-upsetting-the-market/
“The Memorandum of understanding between Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation and the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on a plan of the implementation of a project for construction Nuclear Science and Technologies Center in Vietnam”, the document reads.
The announcement came following a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and President of Vietnam Tran Dai Quang.
United States 226 Financial Institutions made an estimated USD$ 344 billion available to 27 nuclear weapon producing companies since January 2013.
Introduction This document contains country specific information from the 2016 Don’t Bank on the Bomb update. Hall of Fame and Runners-up include financial institutions with headquarters in the country that have published policies banning or limiting investment in nuclear weapons producers. Hall of Shame are the financial institutions that have significant financing relationships with one or more of the nuclear weapons producers identified in the report. There is also a brief summary of the nuclear weapons related work of each of the identified producers. For more detail, see the full report or go to the www.DontBankOnTheBomb.com website.
This briefing paper includes:
Introduction..………………………………………………………………….
1 Hall of Shame, lists 266 organisations ………………………………………………….
Nuclear weapon producing Companies
The financial institutions identified include banks, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and asset managers. They have provided various types of financial services to nuclear weapon companies including loans, investment banking and asset management.
All sources of financing provided since 1 January 2013 to the companies listed were analysed from annual reports, financial databases and other sources. The financial institutions which are most significantly involved in the financing of one or more nuclear weapon companies are shown here. See the full report for both a summary and full description of all financial institutions which are found to have the most significant financing relationships with one or more of the selected nuclear weapon companies, by means of participating in bank loans, by underwriting share or bond issues and/or by share- or bondholdings (above a threshold of 0.5% of all outstanding shares or bonds).
Figures presented are rounded up/down to the nearest dollar at the filing date. Commas (,) indicate thousands separators while periods (.) used as decimal points. For more information on loans, investment banking, and asset management, please refer to the website.
Hall of Shame
This section contains the results of our research into which financial institutions are financially involved with the nuclear weapon producing companies identified in the report. For the full methodology, see the website.
Each section provides the following information for each financial institution:
The types of financial relations which the financial institution has with one or more nuclear weapon companies (loans, investment banking and asset management).
Financial institution. Amount in USD millions ……… [ list covers 5 pages] …….
1.Academy Securities (United States) Academy Securities (United States) has made an estimated US$ 30 million available to the nuclear weapons companies selected for this research project since January 2013. Academy Securities (United States) underwrote bond issuances for an estimated amount of US$ 30 million to the nuclear weapon companies since January 2013 (see table below [on original] ). ..
Adage Capital Management (United States) Adage Capital Management (United States) has made an estimated US$ 482 million available to the nuclear weapons companies selected for this research project since January 2013. Adage Capital Management (United States) owns or manages shares of the nuclear weapon companies for an amount of US$ 482 million (see table below). Only holdings of 0.50% or more of the outstanding shares at the most recent available filing date are included. [table on original]
Affiliated Managers Group (United States) Affiliated Managers Group (United States) has made an estimated US$ 1,426 million available to the nuclear weapons companies selected for this research project since January 2013.
Affiliated Managers Group (United States) owns or manages shares of the nuclear weapon companies for an amount of US$ 1,426 million (see table below). Only holdings of 0.50% or more of the outstanding shares at the most recent available filing date are included. [table on original]
AJO (United States) AJO (United States) has made an estimated US$ 351 million available to the nuclear weapons companies selected for this research project since January 2013.
AJO (United States) owns or manages shares of the nuclear weapon companies for an amount of US$ 351 million (see table below). Only holdings of 0.50% or more of the outstanding shares at the most recent available filing date are included. [table]
6 Alyeska Investment Group (United States) Alyeska Investment Group (United States) has made an estimated US$ 143 million available to the nuclear weapons companies selected for this research project since January 2013.
Alyeska Investment Group (United States) owns or manages shares of the nuclear weapon companies for an amount of US$ 143 million (see table below, on original). Only holdings of 0.50% or more of the outstanding shares at the most recent available filing date are included.
Amalgamated Bank of Chicago (United States) Amalgamated Bank of Chicago (United States) has made an estimated US$ 29 million available to the nuclear weapons companies selected for this research project since January 2013. Amalgamated Bank of Chicago (United States) provided loans for an estimated amount of US$ 29 million to the nuclear weapon companies (see table below on original ). The table shows all loans closed since January 2013 or maturing after August 2016
American Automobile Association (United States) American Automobile Association (United States) has made an estimated US$ 4 million available to the nuclear weapons companies selected for this research project since January 2013. American Automobile Association (United States) owns or manages bonds of the nuclear weapon companies for an amount of US$ 4 million (see table below, on original). Only holdings of 0.50% or more of the outstanding bonds at the most recent available filing date are included.
American Century Investments (United States) ……
American Equity Investment Life Holding (United States) …….
American Family (United States) ……
American Financial Group (United States)……
American Financial Group (United States)………
American National Insurance (United States)
American United Mutual Insurance (United States)
Ameriprise Financial (United States)
Analytic Investors (United States)
Anchor Bolt Capital (United States)
Anthem (United States)
Apto Partners (United States)
AQR Capital Management (United States)
Aristotle Capital Management (United States)
Arrowstreet Capital (United States)
Artisan Partners (United States)
Associated Banc-Corp (United States)
Assurant (United States)
Auto-Owners Insurance (United States)
Baird (United States)
BancPlus (United States)
Bank of America (United States) – funds a staggering number of weapons makers……
Bank of New York Mellon (United States)
Banner Bank (United States)
BB&T (United States)
Beck, Mack & Oliver (United States)
Becker Capital Management (United States)
Bessemer Group (United States)
BlackRock (United States)
Blaylock Beal Van (United States)
Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (United States)
Blue Harbour Group (United States)
Boston Private (United States)
Cacti Asset Management (United States)
California First National Bancorp (United States)
Cantor Fitzgerald (United States)
Capital Group (United States)
Capital One Financial (United States)
Carlson Capital (United States)
Carlyle Group (United States)
Cascade Bancorp (United States)
CastleOak Securities (United States)
CAVU Securities (United States)
Central Mutual Insurance (United States)
Central Pacific Financial Corporation (United States)
Charles Schwab (United States)
Chesapeake Partners Management (United States)
Cigna (United States)
Citadel (United States)
Citigroup (United States) – huge no of weapons makers funded
Citizens Bank & Trust (United States)
Citizens Financial Group (United States)
City National Corporation (United States)
CL King & Associates (United States)
CNO Financial Group (United States
Comerica (United States)
Cooper Creek Partners Management (United States)
Corsair Capital Management (United States)
Cuna Mutual Group (United States)
D.E. Shaw & Co. (United States)
Dimensional Fund Advisors (United States)
and so on………… to No. 226. Zeo Capital Advisors (United States)
Nuclear weapon producing Companies This report identifies 27 companies operating in France, India, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States that are significantly involved in maintaining and modernising the nuclear arsenals of France, India, the United Kingdom and the United States. This is not an exhaustive list. These companies are providing necessary components and infrastructure to develop, test, maintain and modernise nuclear weapons. The contracts these companies have with nuclear armed countries are for materials and services to keep nuclear weapons in their arsenals. In other nuclear-armed countries –Russia, China, Pakistan and North Korea – the maintenance and modernization of nuclear forces is carried out primarily or exclusively by government agencies. – report goes on to list companies and their activities. …….
Safety problems at a Los Alamos laboratory delay U.S. nuclear warhead testing and production A facility that handles the cores of U.S. nuclear weapons has been mostly closed since 2013 over its inability to control worker safety risks, Science, By The Center for Public Integrity, R. Jeffrey Smith, Patrick Malon Jun. 30, 2017 “……..A unique task, unfulfilled for the past four years
Before the work was halted in 2013, those overseeing the U.S. nuclear arsenal typically pulled six or seven warheads from bombers or missiles every year for dismantlement and invasive diagnostic testing. One reason is that the unstable metals that act as spark plugs for the bombs — plutonium and highly-enriched uranium — bathe themselves and nearby electrical components in radiation, with sometimes unpredictable consequences; another is that all the bombs’ metallic components are subject to normal, sometimes fitful corrosion.
Plutonium also slowly decays, with some of its isotopes becoming uranium. And the special high explosives fabricated by nuclear scientists to compress the plutonium cores in a deliberate detonation also have an unstable molecular structure.
Invasive testing provides details vital to the computer modeling and scientifically simulated plutonium behavior that has replaced nuclear testing, said DOE consultant David Overskei. He compared the pit — so named because it is spherical and positioned near the center of a warhead — to the heart of a human being, explaining that destructive testing is like taking a blood sample capable of exposing harmful maladies.
The aim, as Vice President Joe Biden said in a 2010 National Defense University speech, has been to “anticipate potential problems and reduce their impact on our arsenal.” Weapons designers say it’s what anyone would do if they were storing a car for years while still expecting the engine to start and the vehicle to speed down the road at the sudden turn of a key.
Typically, warheads selected for testing are first sent to the Energy Department’s Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. Technicians there gently separate their components — such as the detonators — at that site; they also send the pits — used in a primary nuclear explosion — to Los Alamos, and the highly-enriched uranium — used in a secondary explosion — to Oak Ridge, Tenn. The arming, fusing, and firing mechanisms are tested by Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and other locations.
At Los Alamos, the pits are brought to Plutonium Facility-4 (PF-4), a boxy, two-story, concrete building with a footprint the size of two city blocks. Inside are hundreds of special “glove boxes” for working with plutonium, a series of individual laboratories, and a special vault, in which containers hold plutonium on racks meant to ensure that escaping neutrons don’t collide too often with other atoms, provoking them to fission uncontrollably. Only a small portion of the building is normally used for pit surveillance, while about a fifth is used for pit fabrication, and another seven percent for analytical chemistry and pit certification. Budget documents indicate that annual federal spending for the work centered there is nearly $200 million.
“The Los Alamos Plutonium Facility is a unique and essential national security capability,” McMillan, the lab’s director, said last September during a visit by then-Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who watched as technicians — attempting to restart their work after the lengthy hiatus — used pressing machines and other equipment to fabricate a mock pit, rather than a usable one.
The building lies in the middle of a 40-acre campus in the mountains above Santa Fe hastily built during World War II to coordinate the construction of the two nuclear bombs used in Japan. Los Alamos is still considered the foremost U.S. nuclear weapons facility — where six of the nine warheads currently in the U.S. arsenal were designed, and where plutonium-based power supplies for most of the nation’s deep-space probes are fabricated. Hundreds of nuclear physicists work there.
Unfortunately, it also has an active seismic zone beneath the PF-4 building, producing persistent worries among the staff and members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a congressionally-chartered oversight group, that if it experienced a rare, large earthquake, the roof could collapse and toss chunks of plutonium so closely together a chain reaction would ensue, spewing radioactive, cancer-causing plutonium particles throughout nearby residential communities.
Millions of dollars have already been spent to diminish this risk, which until recently exceeded federal guidelines, and the Trump administration last month proposed spending $14 million in 2018 alone to strengthen the building’s firewalls and sprinkler systems. The government has also sunk more than $450 million into preparations for construction of a modern and more seismically durable pit production facility at Los Alamos, projected to have a total price tag between $1.5 billion and $3 billion.
Making new pits involves melting, casting, and machining the plutonium, while assessing how well or poorly the pits are aging requires using various instruments to withdraw small pieces for detailed chemical and material analysis. These operations are typically done in the glove boxes, by specialists whose hands are inserted into gloves attached to the side of sealed containers meant to keep the plutonium particles from escaping. But the work is messy, requiring constant vigilance to be certain that too much of the metal doesn’t pile up in a compact space. The byproducts include “chunks, shards, and grains of plutonium metal,” all of it radioactive and unstable, according to a 2015 Congressional Research Service report.
Notably, a 2013 Los Alamos study depicted leaks of glove boxes at PF-4 as frequent — averaging nearly three a month — and said they were often caused by avoidable errors such as inattention, improper maintenance, collisions with rolling storage carts, complacency and degradation from the heat that plutonium constantly emits. It said that sometimes those operating or supervising the equipment “accepted risk” or took a chance, rushed to meet a deadline, or otherwise succumbed to workplace production pressures.
“Operations always wants it yesterday,” the lab’s current criticality safety chief and the lone NNSA expert assigned to that issue in the agency’s Los Alamos oversight office warned in a private briefing for their colleagues at Sandia labs last month. Managers “must shield analysts from demands” from production personnel, they said.
Besides posing a serious health risk to those in PF-4, glove box releases of radioactive material each cost the government $23,000 to clean up, on average, the Los Alamos study said.
An acute shortage of criticality experts
Calculating exactly “how much material can come together before there’s an explosion” — as the Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman once put it — is a complex task. While visiting the production site for highly-enriched uranium in
Oak Ridge, Tenn., during the 1940’s, for example, Feynman was surprised to see stocks of that fissionable material deliberately stored in separate rooms, but on an adjoining wall that posed no barrier to collisions involving atoms of uranium and escaping neutrons on both sides. “It was very dangerous and they had not paid any attention to the safety at all,” Feynman wrote years later.
Plutonium work is so fraught with risk that the total mass of that metal allowed to be present in PF-4 is strictly limited. A decade ago, the limit was increased without an appropriate understanding of the risks, according to an NNSA technical bulletin in February. But with pieces of it strewn and stored throughout the normally busy building, partly because the vault is typically full, its managers have labored for years to systematically track down and remove excess stocks. They had some success last year, when they got rid of nearly a quarter of the plutonium on the building’s “main floor,” according to recent budget documents.
Criticality specialists are employed not only to help set these overall mass limits but to guide technicians so they don’t inadvertently trigger chain reactions in their daily work; those specialists are also supposed to be the first-responders when too much dangerous material is found in one place.
“The weird thing about criticality safety is that it’s not intuitive,” Don Nichols, a former chief for defense nuclear safety at the NNSA, said in an interview. He cited an instance in which someone operating a stirring machine noticed that fissionable liquids were forming a “critical” mass, so the operator shut the stirrer off, not immediately realizing that doing so made the problem worse. In other instances, analysts had judged a plutonium operation was safe, but then more workers — whose bodies reflect and slow neutrons — wound up being present nearby, creating unanticipated risks.
Those doing the weapons disassemblies and invasive pit studies are typically under “a big level pressure” to complete a certain number every year, Nichols added. They are expected to do “so many of these in this amount of time,” to allow the labs to certify to the president that the stockpile is viable. Meanwhile, the calculations involved in avoiding criticality — which depend on the shape, size, form, quantity, and geometric configuration of material being used in more than a dozen different industrial operations — are so complex that it takes a year and a half of training for an engineer to become qualified and as many as five years to become proficient, experts say.
“It’s difficult to find people who want to do this job,” particularly at the remote Los Alamos site, said McConnell, the NNSA safety chief. With plutonium use mostly confined to creating the world’s most powerful explosives, “there are…very few public-sector opportunities for people to develop these skills,” he added. As a result, he said, many NNSA sites lack the desired number of experts, which slows down production.
At the time of the 2013 shutdown, after numerous internal warnings about the consequences of its mismanagement, Los Alamos had only “a single junior qualified criticality safety engineer” still in place, according to the February NNSA technical bulletin. Nichols, who was then the NNSA’s associate administrator for safety and health, said McMillan didn’t “realize how serious it was until we took notice and helped him take notice.”
Without having adequate staff on hand to guide their operations safely, technicians at PF-4 were unable to carry out a scheduled destructive surveillance in 2014 of a refurbished plutonium pit meant for a warhead to be fit atop American submarine-launched ballistic missiles. It’s been modernized at a cost of $946 million since 2014, with total expenses predicted to exceed $3.7 billion. Generally, up to 10 of the first pits produced for a new warhead type are set aside for surveillance to assure they’re safely constructed and potent before they’re deployed. But the planned disassembly was cancelled and the NNSA hasn’t scheduled another yet, because of the shutdown.
The lab also hasn’t been able to complete planned invasive studies of the aging of plutonium used in a warhead for an aircraft-delivered nuclear bomb, now being modernized at an estimated cost of $7.4 billion to $10 billion.
Former deputy NNSA director Madelyn Creedon told an industry conference in March that if new funds are given to the agency in President Trump’s new budget, she knows where she’d advise it be spent. “One of the things that doesn’t take a huge amount of money but it’s one that has been cut back over the last couple of years, is surveillance — enhanced surveillance” of existing warheads, Creedon said……..http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/safety-problems-los-alamos-laboratory-delay-us-nuclear-warhead-testing-and-production
In May 2017, Indonesia’s government announced that Russia’s Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation had offered to develop nuclear power plants in Indonesia. But the person making the announcement, Luhut Pandjaitan—the coordinating maritime affairs minister—said he had told them that Indonesia was not ready yet because “we need to raise public awareness, which takes time.”
Saying it “takes time” is an understatement. The country’s National Nuclear Energy Agency, or BATAN as it is known from its acronym in the Indonesian language (Badan Tenaga Nuklir Nasional), was set up in the late 1950s and has been advocating nuclear power for Indonesia ever since. In 1972, BATAN started the process of selecting specific sites for nuclear plants when—in conjunction with the ministry in charge of public works and electricity—it established the Preparatory Commission for Development of a Nuclear Power Plant. That eventually led to various sites being chosen for nuclear plant construction on the Muria Peninsula on Indonesia’s most populated island, Java. But in each case, these efforts were stopped—primarily by local opposition, but partly also because of widespread skepticism about BATAN’s claims about the seismic safety of sites on the peninsula.
BATAN’s efforts at setting up a nuclear power plant in Indonesia have not gone unnoticed. Many reactor vendors have beaten a path to Jakarta’s doorstep, hoping to sell their wares. The list includes South Korea, France, China and, of course—given its status as the leading reactor vendor in this decade—Russia. In recent years, all these countries’ offers have focused on one specific kind of reactor that BATAN has expressed an interest in: Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
Why SMRs for Indonesia? Small Modular Reactors have electrical power outputs of less than 300 megawatts. They are being heavily promoted by many countries’ nuclear establishments as having several desirable characteristics when compared to traditional large reactors—in particular, cheaper construction costs per unit, higher safety levels, lower rates of radioactive waste generation, and less likelihood that these reactors and their fuel production facilities could be used to make fissile materials (plutonium or highly enriched uranium) for nuclear weapons. There are no operating SMRs, and it remains to be seen whether any real-world reactor would be built that features any, let alone all, of these characteristics. Indeed, of the different major SMR designs under development, none simultaneously fulfills the key requirements of lower cost, higher safety, less radioactive waste, and reduced opportunity for nuclear weapons proliferation. These are the key problems confronting nuclear power today and constraining its future. It is likely that addressing one or more of these four problems will involve design choices that make some of the other problems worse.
Among the target markets for such reactors are developing countries such as Indonesia. The International Atomic Energy Agency considers SMRs as a good option to electrify “remote regions with less developed infrastructures” because the low-capacity electricity grid that is typical of such areas makes it difficult to introduce a nuclear power plant with large power capacity—say 1,000 megawatts—without destabilizing the grid itself. Indeed, one of the reasons that BATAN claims to be interested in SMRs is that there are many islands in the Indonesian archipelago that require electricity or energy but do not have a high enough level of electrical demand to support the construction of a large nuclear reactor. One of the areas highlighted by BATAN officials as particularly suitable for SMRs is the province of West Kalimantan because its “grid capacity [is]… still limited.” BATAN also suggested that an attractive aspect of SMRs is the lower cost—due in large part to the fact that a small modular reactor will generate only a fraction of the power generated by a large reactor.
Among the SMR designs that have been offered by vendors, and explored by BATAN, are high temperature gas-cooled reactors, submarine-based reactors, floating power plants, and light water reactors.
Who’s in the competition? South Korea was the first to pitch the idea of SMRs to Indonesia: In October 2001, with IAEA approval, BATAN signed an agreement with the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute to undertake a joint study titled “A preliminary economic feasibility assessment of nuclear desalination in Madura Island.” The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute had been developing a small modular reactor called the System-Integrated Modular Advanced Reactor since 1996; it had the bonus feature of incorporating additional equipment that could desalinate water in addition to generating electricity.
In the case of China, BATAN signed an agreement with the China Nuclear Engineering Group Corporation in 2016 to jointly develop high temperature gas reactors and train Indonesian professionals to run them—an agreement that resulted from Chinese officials scouting around potential reactor markets.
With France, BATAN signed an agreement with DCNS, a company that has traditionally been involved in a range of naval defense systems but more recently has been developing a submarine-based electricity generating reactor project called Flexblue. (Link in Indonesian.) The idea is to park the submarine on the ocean floor and run a cable from it to land to supply electricity.
Russia, however, has been the most determined suitor. In the mid-2000s, Rosatom proposed a small Russian floating nuclear power plant to supply electricity to Gorontalo province on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Rosatom’s floating nuclear power plants are modeled after the reactors that have been used to power a small fleet of Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers for decades. The idea of a civilian floating nuclear power plant project has been around in Russia since the 1990s, but progress has been slow and erratic. China and the United States have also explored the idea of commercial floating nuclear power plants, but the United States abandoned the idea as uneconomical after spending millions of dollars in research and development.
In October 2006, the governor of Gorontalo announced that the province already had an agreement with Russia’s then state-owned Unified Energy System of Russia to buy a floating power plant.
But despite enthusiasm for the proposal from the provincial government, the Indonesian minister of Research and Technology rejected the idea of using a floating nuclear power plant. As Natio Lasman, then-deputy chairman of Indonesia’s nuclear agency and later chair of Indonesia’s Nuclear Regulatory Agency, told the Wall Street Journal: “I don’t want Indonesia to be used as an experiment.”
Public opposition: A major problem. Many problems may afflict nuclear proposals, regardless of whether the building plans are based on SMRs or large reactors. A key challenge has been public acceptance. Because of the potential for catastrophic accidents and the production of long-lived radioactive waste, nuclear power is perceived as a risky technology, and those living near areas selected to house a nuclear plant—such as the Muria Peninsula—often push back.
And apart from local opposition, the unpopularity of nuclear power among the general population nationwide is often a factor in whether a country develops nuclear power. A poll commissioned by the International Atomic Energy Agency in October 2005 found that only 33 percent of those Indonesians questioned felt that nuclear power was safe and that more plants should be built. In comparison, 28 percent felt that nuclear power was dangerous and all plants should be closed—while 31 percent agreed with the “middle opinion” that what was already in place should be used but that no new plants should be constructed. In the case of Indonesia, of course, that middle opinion is in practice the same as the 28 percent who wanted to close all reactors, because there was (and still is) no operating nuclear power plant in the country.
In 2011, an IPSOS poll conducted after the Fukushima nuclear reactor accident in Japan found that two-thirds of the Indonesian population expressed opposition: 33 percent of Indonesians strongly oppose nuclear power while 34 percent were somewhat opposed. About two-thirds of those polled said that their opinion was not influenced by Fukushima.
BATAN, not surprisingly, feels differently. And it has conducted a series of polls that show greater levels of support. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Nuclear power continues to be controversial in Indonesia, and there is widespread public opposition. Indeed, in December 2015, when then-Energy and Mineral Resources minister Sudirman Said publicly announced that the government had concluded that “this is not the time to build up nuclear power capacity,” one of his stated reasons for avoiding nuclear power was that he did not want “to raise any controversies.”
So, when people like Luhut Pandjaitan—Indonesia’s coordinating maritime affairs minister—talk about the “need to raise public awareness,” it’s reasonable to ask what they mean. Is raising public awareness really just code for coaxing or bribing the people in some areas to allow the construction of a nuclear power plant? The history of the many attempts to site nuclear reactors in Indonesia shows quite clearly that the public is already aware of the hazards involved in nuclear power. The Indonesian public’s longstanding opposition to nuclear power, especially in areas that have been earmarked for potential construction, include concerns about the security of reactor operations, the reliability of reactor designs, radioactive waste, the potential for nuclear proliferation, Indonesia’s geographical position within the seismically active Pacific Ring of Fire, and the proximity of nuclear sites to seismic faults or volcanoes. Many Indonesians are also concerned about nuclear power’s high economic costs and future dependence on foreign parties for nuclear technology or fuel, and they prefer local renewable energy resources.
Other problems with SMRs. My collaborators at the Indonesian Institute of Energy Economics and at the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability and I recently issued a report that detailed the many challenges that would have to be overcome before any small modular reactors are constructed in Indonesia. These challenges include a lack of support for nuclear power at the highest political levels, the absence of tested SMR designs, and the higher electricity-generation costs of SMR technology. We also identified legislative regulations that could become obstacles for specific SMR technologies such as floating power plants, and the political and regulatory problems with SMR construction plans that involve fabricating the bulk of the reactor at off-site factories.
The cost of electricity generated by SMRs is high compared to large conventional nuclear power plants, and high compared to the range of readily available alternatives in Indonesia. The rapidly declining cost of photovoltaic technology is particularly relevant. Studies testify to the large potential of solar energy in Indonesia, and the government has been adopting policies that promise to accelerate the construction of significant amounts of solar capacity.
The lower power level of SMRs also implies that more reactors would have to be built using this technology to produce the same amount of electricity as a few larger reactors—meaning that planners would have to deal with public resistance at many more sites. Public opposition has played a major role in stopping the construction of nuclear power plants so far; small modular reactors might face even more of controversy.
For small modular reactors, the potential benefits accruing from electricity generation come at a higher economic and social cost than other energy sources would require. As a result, it would seem that the construction of SMRs is unlikely, especially in large enough numbers to make a sizeable contribution to Indonesia’s electricity generation.
This report identifies 27 companies operating in France, India, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States that are significantly involved in maintaining and modernising the nuclear arsenals of France, India, the United Kingdom and the United States. This is not an exhaustive list. These companies are providing necessary components and infrastructure to develop, test, maintain and modernise nuclear weapons. The contracts these companies have with nuclear armed countries are for materials and services to keep nuclear weapons in their arsenals. In other nuclear-armed countries –Russia, China, Pakistan and North Korea – the maintenance and modernization of nuclear forces is carried out primarily or exclusively by government agencies.
Aecom (USA) Aecom provides professional technical and management support services and is part of joint ventures that manages the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), previously known as the Nevada Test Site, as well as Lawrence Livermore (LLNL) and Los Alamos National Laboratories (LANL), key fixtures in the US nuclear weapons infrastructure.
Aerojet Rocketdyne (USA) Aerojet Rocketdyne, formerly known as GenCorp is involved in the design, development and production of land- and sea-based nuclear ballistic missile systems for the United States. It is currently producing propulsion systems for Minuteman III and D5 Trident nuclear missiles.
Airbus Group (The Netherlands) Airbus is a Dutch company that produces and maintains the M51.2 submarine-launched nuclear missiles for the French navy, it is also developing the M51.3. Through joint venture MBDA-Systems, Airbus is also providing medium-range air-to-surface missiles to the French air force.
BAE Systems (United Kingdom) BAE Systems is involved in the US and UK Trident II (D5) strategic weapons system programmes. It is also the prime contractor for the US Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) system. BAE Systems is also part of the joint venture providing medium-range air-to-surface missiles for France.
Bechtel (USA) Bechtel manages the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories in the US, which play an important role in the research, design, development and production of nuclear weapons. It also leads the joint venture for management and operation of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee and the Pantex Plant in Texas.
Boeing (USA) Boeing is involved in the Minuteman III nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles in the US arsenal. It also provides the US and UK Trident II (D5) with maintenance, repair, and rebuilding and technical services.
BWX Technologies (USA) BWX Technologies (“BWXT”) formerly known as Babcock & Wilcox Company Babcock & Wilcox manages and through joint ventures operates several US nuclear weapons facilities including the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), previously known as the Nevada Test Site, each of which are engaged in various aspects of nuclear warhead modernisation.
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory (USA) Charles Stark Draper Laboratory (“Draper”) is the prime contractor for the Trident Life Extension (LE) boost guidance and is manufacturing the guidance system for the Trident missile system in use by the UK and the US.
CH2M Hill (USA) CH2M Hill is one of the joint venture partners in National Security Technologies (NSTec) that manages the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), previously known as the Nevada Test Site, a key fixture in the US nuclear weapons infrastructure.
Engility Holdings (USA) In February 2015, Engility acquired US-based TASC. It is involved in the research and development for the Solid Rocket Motor Modernization Study of the Minuteman III system for the US arsenal.
Fluor (USA) Fluor is the lead partner responsible for the management and operation of the US Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site and Savannah River National Laboratory, the only source of new tritium for the US nuclear arsenal.
General Dynamics (USA) General Dynamics provides a range of engineering, development, and production activities to support to US and UK Trident II Strategic Weapons Systems. It is also involved in the guidance systems of the Trident II (D5) nuclear missiles of the US Navy
When the market recovers, the uranium industry won’t need a tax break. But it does now, industry representatives say.
Citing low prices and employment, the Wyoming Mining Association will make the case for a state tax cut on uranium when lawmakers meet Thursday in Casper…..
prices for yellowcake, the powdery ore processed after mining, tumbled as low as $18 per pound last year due to a worldwide glut, from record highs of more than $120 in 2007. Production is down, and employment in the industry has fallen to its lowest level since 2004, according to the Wyoming Mining Association.
Uranium companies need an incentive to invest in new mines and production while the market is suffering…..
Otherwise, production is going to continue to decline as companies dig out the ore available at their existing mines and shy away from the cost of new operations or expansion.
…..But the idea has already sparked pushback by those unimpressed with the association’s argument.
“’When the market recovers’ has been the theme song of the uranium industry since the 1980s, and they always want some kind of deal,” said Wilma Tope, a board member with the Powder River Basin Resource Council, which opposes a tax cut. “Unfortunately, the history of this industry is one of leaving behind un-reclaimed uranium mines and polluted landscapes for other taxpayers to clean up.”
In a statement released before the committee meeting, the council pointed out that current reclamation sites in Fremont County still need to be addressed, including groundwater concerns at the both the former Split Rock facility near Jeffrey City and the Umetco Minerals Corp. outside Riverton. Cleanup at the American Nuclear Corporation site in Fremont County is on hold due to lack of funds, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The company went under in 1994. Cleanup responsibilities were transferred to the state of Wyoming, according to the commission.
The South Korean state-backed utility is one of the world’s strongest nuclear developers and has harboured an interest in Moorside since 2013. Its appetite for a UK nuclear project was revived following the collapse of Toshiba’s US nuclear business, Westinghouse,which was supposed to provide the reactor design for the project.
A deal with Toshiba, the last remaining group behind the NuGeneration venture, could rescue the £10bn project. But a change in reactor design would also derail the 2025 start date by at least two years in a further blow to the UK’s new nuclear ambitions.
Earlier this week a French newspaper reported that EDF’s internal review of the Hinkley Point C new nuclear plant is expected to show a €3bn (£2.6bn)overspend and a two year delay, which would also push the start-date back to 2027.
The slow progress in securing new investment in baseload power generation raises questions over the UK’s energy supplies in the middle of the next decade. More than two thirds of the country’s power generation capacity will have retired between 2010 and 2030.
Moorside was plunged into doubt in recent months due to the Japanese conglomerate’s financial woes which threatened to derail the use of the Westinghouse 1000 reactor and cost the project its junior partner Engie. ….
Kepco’s renewed interest in Moorside emerged the same day that South Korean president Moon Jae-in suspended construction of two of Kepco’s partially built nuclear reactors to consult on whether they should move forward.
FT 28th June 2017, South Korea’s nuclear shares took a hit from the new government’s
anti-nuclear policy, a day after president Moon Jae-in decided to suspend
construction of two partially built nuclear reactors. Mr Moon said on
Tuesday the construction of Shin Kori No 5 and Shin Kori No 6 in Busan, the
country’s second-largest port city, would be halted for three months,
during which the government would seek views from the public on their
future.
Shares of Kepco, the state-run utility at the forefront of the
country’s efforts to export nuclear reactors, fell 1.8 per cent while those
of Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction, which is leading a consortium to
build the two nuclear reactors, dropped 4.4 per cent. The suspension of the
construction of the two reactors – wi th about one-third of construction
already finished – came after Mr Moon pledged to stop building nuclear
reactors, with the goal of making the county nuclear free by 2060.
Kepco had been seen by industry experts as the only potential acquirer of the
bankrupt US nuclear power plant builder Westinghouse because of security
reasons. But experts caution the political shift on nuclear energy will
probably discourage the state-run company from pursuing any attempt to buy
Westinghouse. Kepco has not ruled out buying Westinghouse but said on
Wednesday it was mulling how the government’s changed nuclear stance may
affect its bid. Kepco is in talks to join a UK consortium called NuGen that
is using Westinghouse’s technology to build a new nuclear power station in
Cumbria, England. “It would be difficult for the state-run company to even
raise the possibility of bidding for Westinghouse, when the government sees
nuclear energy as a doomed industry,” said Suh Kyun-ryul, professor of
atomic engineering at Seoul National University. https://www.ft.com/content/a5d7ab48-5bd6-11e7-9bc8-8055f264aa8b
Le Monde 26th June 2017,[Machine Translation], EPR of Flamanville: a report warns EDF on the
reliability of the lid of the tank. The operator may have to quickly
replace this reactor masterpiece after commissioning, which is still
scheduled for the end of 2018.EDF executives have been overly optimistic,
obviously convinced that the future reactor tank of the Flamanville
(Manche) EPR reactor would pass without difficulty before the “judges” of
the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) and its armed wing, the Institute of
Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN).
The situation is ultimately more complex: it is not excluded that the plant operator must at least
change the lid of this tank, only a few years after the EPR has been put
into service. Meeting on Monday 26th and Tuesday 27th June, the 31 members
of the permanent group of experts for nuclear pressure equipment
(industrialists, associations …) took note of a long report (193 pages)
of the IRSN and the Direction des Equipment under ASN’s nuclear pressure,
which is very critical in some respects. If it does not question the future
of the powerful third generation reactor (1,650 MW), designed by Areva in
the 1990s, it puts an additional mortgage on a project that will already
cost 10.5 billion d ‘ Three times more than expected. http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2017/06/26/un-feu-vert-sous-condition-attendu-pour-l-epr-de-flamanville_5151256_3234.html
FT 28th June 2017, The White House has not ruled out providing government support for
Westinghouse, the bankrupt US nuclear group, as the Trump administration
works to ensure that the US remains a force in the nuclear industry. A
senior White House official said the administration is holding regular
discussions about Westinghouse since the company entered Chapter 11
bankruptcy proceedings in March.
Officials are trying to find a buyer for
Westinghouse to ensure it does not fall into Chinese or Russian hands, but
the White House is aware that without an acceptable private-sector solution
the group may need government help to remain under US control. https://www.ft.com/content/f1937a88-5c0f-11e7-9bc8-8055f264aa8b
Contract to manage LANL is up for bid, Albuqueque Journal SANTA FE, N.M. — The competition for a multibillion-dollar contract to manage the U.S. laboratory that created the atomic bomb is beginning as criticism intensifies over the troubled safety record of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The National Nuclear Security Administration on Tuesday posted online its intent to conduct a competition for the lab’s management and operation contract.
The agency said the process will provide the best opportunity to improve the terms and conditions of the lucrative contract to provide performance incentives at the northern New Mexico nuclear weapons research center.
The current contract with Los Alamos National Security LLC – a private consortium that includes Bechtel and the University of California – expires in September 2018. The NNSA decided against extending the contract, which has a $2.2 billion annual budget, after a series of subpar performance reviews……https://www.abqjournal.com/1024832/up-for-bid.html
Russia, however, has been the most determined suitor. In the mid-2000s, Rosatom proposed a small Russian floating nuclear power plant to supply electricity to Gorontalo province on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Rosatom’s floating nuclear power plants are modeled after the reactors that have been used to power a small fleet of Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers for decades. The idea of a civilian floating nuclear power plant project has been around in Russia since the 1990s, but progress has been slow and erratic. China and the United States have also explored the idea of commercial floating nuclear power plants, but the United States abandoned the idea as uneconomical after spending millions of dollars in research and development.
Other problems with SMRs. My collaborators at the Indonesian Institute of Energy Economics and at the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability and I recently issued a report that detailed the many challenges that would have to be overcome before any small modular reactors are constructed in Indonesia. These challenges include a lack of support for nuclear power at the highest political levels, the absence of tested SMR designs, and the higher electricity-generation costs of SMR technology. We also identified legislative regulations that could become obstacles for specific SMR technologies such as floating power plants, and the political and regulatory problems with SMR construction plans that involve fabricating the bulk of the reactor at off-site factories.
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