Finland ready to grasp a nuclear marketing opportunity in South Australia
Finland’s Onkalo nuclear waste disposal facility want to export the technology to South Australia, The Advertiser Daniel Wills, Helsinki, Finland, The Advertiser September 21, 2016 OPERATORS of the world’s most advanced nuclear disposal facility want to export the technology to South Australia and form an alliance to help the state develop its own commercial facility to take waste from around the world.
At a briefing with Premier Jay Weatherill at Finland’s Onkalo nuclear waste disposal facility, Posiva Solutions Oy managing director Mika Pohjonen said his company would be willing to licence intellectual property and engineering solutions to SA if it were to proceed with expanding the local nuclear industry.
Posiva is a joint venture owned by two of Finland’s biggest energy companies — Teollisuuden Voima Oyj and Fortum Power and Heat. It is set to become the first organisation in the world to bury a canister of spent nuclear fuel when they begin inserting them into the bedrock from 2020. Mr Pohjonen said SA could hope to move from site selection to burying canisters within about 15 years, less than half the time taken by Finland, because the Scandinavians had already undertaken the slow work of proving the technology………
The Onkalo disposal site is about 10 times smaller than that conceived by SA’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.……
Mr Weatherill will by the end of the year declare a formal State Government position to Parliament on expansion of the industry………
“The next major step is a threshold question about whether we maintain our prohibition against a facility for spent fuel or whether we take a step to explore it further.”- Mr Weatherill said ….
European Court of Auditors see nuclear decommissioning funds shortfall
EU auditor sees nuclear decommissioning funds shortfall, Reuters, By Alissa de Carbonnel, 20 Sept 16, | BRUSSELS European Union plans for financing the decommissioning of nuclear plants in Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia are inadequate and more resources need to be put aside, the European Court of Auditors said in a report.
The report criticizing costly delays and warning of technical hurdles ahead shines a spotlight on the challenges facing Germany and other nations within the bloc that are planning to retire their nuclear reactors.
The EU’s spending watchdog said the estimated cost of decommissioning the three Soviet-era plants closed more than a decade ago had risen 40 percent since 2010 to at least 5.7 billion euros ($6.4 billion) by 2015. That figure doubles if the cost of disposing spent fuel once and for all is included.
The EU auditors said while the bloc’s budget covered the vast majority of the costs of shutting down the reactors in the three member states, significant funding was still needed to take the plants offline completely.
They said the reactor buildings at Bulgaria’s Kozloduy, Lithuania’s Ignalina and Slovakia’s Bohunice had yet to be dismantled and no solution had been found for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel……..
The only repository for spent fuel being dug deep underground in Europe has been under construction in Finland for nearly 40 years and won’t be ready until after 2020…….
A working paper by the European Commission, seen by Reuters in February, showed the bloc was short of more than 118 billion euros needed to dismantle its nuclear plants. ($1 = 0.8945 euros)(Editing by David Clarke) http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-nuclearpower-idUSKCN11Q12A
China’s nuclear marketing plan gets a big boost from Theresa May’s decision to go ahead on Hinkley project
British Project May Clear Way for China’s Nuclear Exports to the West VOA, Saibal Dasgupta, 20 Sept 16 BEIJING —
There’s a whole lot more in British Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to allow a Chinese company to invest in the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant than mere business.
Chinese investment is limited to investing funds in the $24 billion project, which will use two French reactors supplied by Electricity de France. But the project could clear the way for Chinese involvement in a more crucial project at Bradwell, east England, which would allow China to export its nuclear technology to the Western world, analysts say.
China General Nuclear Corporation, the investor in Hinkley Point, already has signed a pre-feasibility agreement for the Bradwell project……..
Only a few developing countries like Pakistan are using Chinese reactors. These countries are not known to have the kind of strict regulatory control seen in the West.
The Bradwell B project could be a game changer. Getting regulatory approval in Britain for its reactors is crucial for China because it can open the doors for Chinese nuclear exports to the West……..
But there’s many a slip between May’s lip and China’s cup of hope. Britain already is in the midst of fierce debate with critics voicing concern about security issues. Critics question a provision in the contract that provides for a fixed electricity rate for 35 years at a time when energy prices are falling, and are expected to be much lower in the future……..
For Beijing, British approval for the Hinkley Point project is a major image booster, analysts say. Chinese business is seen in the West as an acquirer of property and trader of low-tech, unbranded goods, they point out…….http://www.voanews.com/a/british-project-china-nuclear-exports-west/3517485.html
Wisconsin nuclear plant: licensee wants license to be terminated
Decommissioning Debate Continues At Former Nuclear Power Plant Near La Crosse
New License-Holder Wants Some Land Released From License Requirements Wisconsin Public Radio, September 20, 2016, By Chuck Quirmbach. The next step in decommissioning the former nuclear power plant in Genoa, Wisconsin, will be the subject of a public meeting Tuesday night.
The session will focus on the La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor, which was shut down in 1987.
La Crosse Solutions, the decommissioning firm that took over the license from Dairyland Power Cooperative this year, is seeking federal approval of its plan to officially close the books on the nuclear facility. Known as a license termination plan, it includes radiological information, decommissioning steps that need to be taken and plans for future radiation surveys of the site……..http://www.wpr.org/decommissioning-debate-continues-former-nuclear-power-plant-near-la-crosse
Practically permanent plunge for the uranium market
Why Uranium Investments Will Remain Radioactive No commodity faces the unique pressure that uranium and nuclear fuel do and there is little prospect of a near-term recovery WSJ By SPENCER JAKAB Sept. 18, 2016
There is too much of nearly every commodity in the world today. Then there is uranium.
The outlook for the element that powers nuclear reactors may be worse than for any other, and there is almost no prospect for improvement soon. Unlike other commodities, low prices won’t stimulate demand.
There are several reasons for the weakness, some obvious, others surprising. The result has been the price of triuranium octoxide, which surged 1,400% in the five years through June 2007 to $136 a pound, is now about $25. And the price of fuel processing has dropped by nearly two-thirds since 2010.
The obvious reasons are the shutdown of nuclear power plants after the 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima, Japan. Plants also shut down in Germany, Sweden, and elsewhere, while Belgium and Taiwan may be next. Even China, the leading growth market for nukes, enacted a delay in plant approvals. Meanwhile, the fracking revolution made some planned and existing U.S. plants uneconomical……..
The end of a U.S.-Russia deal to convert old Soviet warheads in 2013 took the equivalent of 20 million tons of triuranium octoxide ore, or 10% of annual supply off the market. That should have been good news for prices. But in anticipation of the end of the deal, processors that turn their ore into fuel built arrays of expensive centrifuges.
Once built, these centrifuges must be run constantly. This has encouraged processors to engage in “underfeeding”—using less ore but enriching it more intensely to create extra fuel. It is the equivalent of mining about 15 million pounds a year of extra ore saysJonathan Hinze, executive vice president at Ux Consulting. U.S. stockpiles of all types of ore and fuel combined have risen by a third in four years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Miners are partially cushioned by fixed long-term contracts with many customers. Canadian miner Cameco reported a cash cost of mining of over $27 a pound in the first half of 2016 but expects to realize an average price above $40 this year. Its capacity isn’t all needed, but shutting down uranium mines is expensive and difficult to reverse…….
Cameco, which has seen its share price drop by 84% since its 2007 peak, is one of the few pieces of the supply chain reacting to the dismal outlook. The miner shut down its Rabbit Lake mine, the longest-operating uranium mine in North America, this summer.
But such painful cuts alone won’t bring the market into balance for what feels to investors like a lifetime—or at least a half-life.http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-uranium-investments-will-remain-radioactive-1474225882
Gloom pervades The World Nuclear Association (WNA) Symposium 2016
In the news: The Nuclear Industry, Proactive Investors 16 Sep 2016 FROM THE BROKING DESK The World Nuclear Association (WNA) Symposium 2016 was held in London this week. Naturally, I took the opportunity to hop on the bus to the Park Plaza Hotel in Waterloo to gauge the mood. It was pretty sombre……….
Sadly, for the last five years this inflection point has always been ‘next year’. Utilities have not bought into the long-term contract market and will need to catch up quickly to rebuild their stockpiles. Large chunks of marginal production from majors such as Cameco have been shut down over the last two years, and the talk is that Cameco could cut supply further by closing its US operations. Kazakh production is surely peaking, potential new supply from Africa is not high enough grade and the possible new supply from the Athabasca Basin is too far off. The list of reasons why the uranium price will turn ‘next year’ goes on, and all of them make sense. But it hasn’t, has it?
Uranium executives radiate sunny optimism at the start of each year when pitching their new project. This then disappears by the summer after it becomes clear that it’s not in fact next year, but the year after that. This time even that optimism has gone. All the executives I spoke to looked about as miserable as England football fans in the second week of a major tournament. …..
Let’s just have a quick look at the Hinkley C announcement. …..the decision to go ahead is probably a mistake, but not one the new prime minister could get out of without starting a war with France and China. The problems with Hinkley C are multiple. Yes, it is probably too expensive, yes, we should be looking at new technologies that create decentralised power generation, yes, the Chinese are probably spying on us and could turn the lights off at any time, and, yes, it just props up an ailing French nuclear industry and stops EDF from going bankrupt. Also, the, ahem, elephant in the room is that there is no actual evidence that European Pressurised Reactors even work. Bonne chance. http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/columns/the-rfc-ambrian-metals-mining-and-oil-gas-overview/26047/in-the-news-the-nuclear-industry-26047.html
South Africa’s economy will be destroyed by this unnecessary nuclear power build
Watch: How South Africa’s nuclear plans will destroy the economy http://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/136935/watch-how-south-africas-nuclear-plans-will-destroy-the-economy/ By Staff Writer September 16, 2016
According to Outa, it is estimated that South Africa will have to borrow as much as R1.2 trillion to fund the plans, which would cripple the economy with R100 billion a year repayments needed.
The debt would be added to the over R1.89 trillion in debt the country already has, pushing the total to R3 trillion – a ‘nuclear bombing’ of the economy.
Outa argued further, saying that the nuclear build is unnecessary (echoing sentiments from energy expert Chris Yelland), with various renewable energy projects set to contribute more than enough power to the grid to meet needs over the next 15 years.
South Africa’s ‘s Nuclear Bomb – Why Government’s #Nuclear Deal Will Destroy SA
The miserable and ongoing history of EDF’s unfinished nuclear reactors in Flamanville and Olkiluoto
The £18bn Hinkley gamble: Nuclear deal will cost every UK family an extra £1,000 as May signs off on the plans to protect Britain’s national security
- Prime Minister approved plans after restricting influence of Chinese state
- Britain will guarantee EDF £92.50 per megawatt hour, up on current market price of £38.91
- Tory MP Zac Goldsmith said the plant would generate ‘most expensive energy in the history of energy generation’
By JASON GROVES DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR FOR THE DAILY MAIL, 16 Sept 16 “……..Construction at the site near Cherbourg began in 2007, with a scheduled completion date of 2012. But within a year, cracks were found in the concrete base and a quarter of the welds in the reactor’s secondary steel lining were found to be defective.
Inspections also revealed holes in concrete pillars and faults in buildings where nuclear fuel is to be stored.
A report by France’s nuclear safety authority in 2011 recorded 13 incidents of sub-standard safety measures. In 2013, a welder fell to his death. Then last year defects were discovered in safety valves in the cooling system.
Chillingly, this was similar to a problem that led to the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident in Pennsylvania in 1979, which before Chernobyl was the world’s worst nuclear accident, and resulted in $1billion (£750million) of clean-up costs.
It was also in 2015 that Flamanville suffered a potentially killer-blow.
Tests on the steel used to construct the base and lid of the nuclear reactor vessel showed that too much carbon had been used, leading to weaknesses in the structure.
Professor Steve Thomas, of the University of Greenwich, said that if this led to the reactor failing, there would be no warning. ‘It will fail catastrophically and allow its radioactive contents into the environment,’ he said.
For their part, EDF and its project partner – the majority French state-owned company Areva, which makes nuclear reactors – have been forced to make more tests on the steel.
At the time the faults were found, the Financial Times said: ‘The scale of the risks to EDF if those tests identify a serious problem is hard to exaggerate.’
Whatever the findings of these new tests, Flamanville’s opening date – which has already been put back six years – is still nowhere in sight.
Professor Thomas warns that if it has to be rebuilt, the process could take up to five years, adding: ‘That might be prohibitively expensive and the whole plant could be abandoned.’
All this assumes that government-owned EDF doesn’t go bust in the meantime – which is a possibility.
In March, the company’s finance director Thomas Piquemal resigned, saying that taking on Hinkley as a project risked driving the firm to bankruptcy. Problems were compounded by the fact that Areva has had to be bailed out by the French government, with an injection of £3.4billion of public money in April. Inevitably, the European Commission has launched an investigation into this rescue package to check it did not ‘unduly distort competition’.
For some time, Areva – which is 87 per cent owned by the state – had been struggling with a downturn in the nuclear industry and has suffered big financial losses on its projects.
Once the pride of France, the reactor designer saw its credit rating downgraded last year, and in February it reported a €2billion (£1.7billion) net loss for 2015.
The project been subject to lawsuits, technology failure, construction errors and a bitter row between participant companies that has been described as ‘one of the biggest conflicts in the history of the construction sector’.
Work began on the EPR in 2005 and was scheduled to be completed in 2009. But from early on, problems emerged.
The concrete base on which the plant was to be built proved to be faulty, and had to be taken up and relaid. Then there was a problem with the electronic control systems.
Because it is absolutely vital that engineers can manage the temperature inside the reactor, a new nuclear plant must have two parallel control systems in case one fails.
The problem at Olkiluoto was that the two systems were too similar – meaning that if something caused the first one to shut down, there was a big risk that the second one would also close down.
The issue took five years to resolve – with the result that the power station is not expected to open until 2018 at the earliest.
Not surprisingly, the Finnish government has cancelled an option to buy a second reactor.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3791895/The-18bn-Hinkley-gamble-nuclear-deal-cost-UK-family-extra-1-000-signs-plans-protect-Britain-s-national-security.html
Hinkley nuclear plant vulnerable to becoming a “stranded asset”
A Nuclear Lesson For Big Oil (And Vice Versa), Bloombeg Gadfly, 16 Sept 16 By Liam Denning It is a reasonable bet that the $24 billion Hinkley Point C nuclear power project in the U.K., due online in 2025, will neither be ready by 2025 nor cost just $24 billion. Indeed, it’s so reasonable that, as fellow Gadfly Chris Bryant lays out here, the stock market appears to be making that very same bet.
Leave aside the also reasonable conspiracy theories about London buttering up Paris and Beijing by approving the project and focus on the ostensible reason for doing it: maintaining security of energy supply……….
The oil and gas industry’s experience reveals one more insidious risk facing the nuclear project.
There’s a reason EDF demanded the U.K. government guarantee an electricity price for Hinkley Point’s output atdouble the current wholesale price. Financing a $24 billion project that won’t produce a cent of revenue for a decade is really tough — especially in an industry carrying as muchhistorical baggage on busted budgets and timescales as nuclear power does. Subsidies and guarantees help bridge the risk gap………
mega-projects can prove vulnerable not despite their scale but because of it. They might extract savings on, say, procurement, but their inherent complexity makes it hard to apply lessons from previous examples to gain efficiency. ……..
And once a company is several years into building a new power plant or LNG terminal, the compulsion to complete it is enormous, due to the already huge sunk costs (and need to save face), even if budgets and schedules have been blown through or — as was the case with fracking — another technology has disrupted the market……..
With energy technology in such flux right now, ranging from renewable power to batteries to energy efficiency, is there a high risk that a giant plant a decade or more away from completion becomes stranded? You bet…..……
In Hinkley Point’s case, of course, any future U.K. government wouldn’t dare try to wriggle out of those high, guaranteed power prices for fear of enraging the French. Because that’s never happened. https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-09-16/hinkley-point-nuclear-power-project-s-lesson-for-big-oil
Huge workforce maintains Japan’s shuttered nuclear power stations
Nuclear plant can’t sell power but thousands still work there Japan’s utilities keep plants open, hoping to restart them, Straits Times, 16 Sept 16 TOKYO • More than 6,000 workers cycle through the world’s biggest nuclear plant every day to operate and maintain a facility that has not sold a kilowatt of electricity in more than four years.
The buzz at Tokyo Electric Power’s (Tepco’s) Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant plays out daily across Japan, where utilities employ thousands of workers and spend billions of dollars awaiting the green light to restart commercial operations.
With only three of the country’s 42 operable reactors running, they are betting a national government committed to nuclear power will win over local officials and a wary public who do not believe enough has been done to guarantee safety after the worst meltdown since Chernobyl.
“Even though operating expenses of non-generating reactors remain high, utilities would prefer to keep them open while there is any chance they can restart,” said Mr James Taverner, a Tokyo-based analyst at IHS Markit.
“Utilities have already committed significant expenditure for plants to meet new safety standards, and decommissioning costs are considerable.”
The plant, the world’s biggest with generating capacity of about 8.2 gigawatts, has seven reactors at a facility spread across more than 400ha and located about 217km north-west of Tokyo in the prefecture of Niigata…….
o boost confidence in its facility’s safety, Tepco has spent 470 billion yen on flood barriers, a 15m seawall and a reservoir the size of 30 Olympic-sized swimming pools to supply water in the event a reactor pump fails.
KK’s restart is far from assured. The plant was forced to shut for 21 months following an earthquake in July 2007. Though some units eventually restarted, all were shuttered again after the March 2011 Fukushima accident for safety checks.
The restart of nuclear reactors is opposed by 53 per cent of Japanese and supported by just 30 per cent, according to a nationwide poll conducted earlier this year by the Mainichi newspaper.
Should KK clear the necessary regulatory, legal and political hurdles and resume operations, Tepco plans to maintain the facility’s workforce at current levels, a reflection of how many workers are needed even during a period called cold shutdown. http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/nuclear-plant-cant-sell-power-but-thousands-still-work-there
Nuclear industry will grind to a halt, if no waste disposal solution
Progress on waste issue key to support for nuclear: US senator Washington (Platts)–15 Sep 2016 US Senator Dianne Feinstein of California said at an appropriations subcommittee hearing Wednesday that she cannot continue to support nuclear power if there is “no strategy for the long-term storage of the waste.”
Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, criticized the nuclear power industry in her opening statement on what she called its failure to speak with “one voice” on the need for interim storage of utility spent fuel. The country, she said, “should be working to establish interim [spent fuel] storage far away from reactors and population centers.” The hearing was scheduled to look at the future of nuclear power.
The lesson of the Yucca Mountain repository project is “any solution to nuclear waste needs to be voluntary,” Feinstein said. She and subcommittee chairman Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, and Senators Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican and chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Maria Cantwell of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the energy committee, have introduced legislation that would, among other things, establish a consent-based siting process. The bill has not moved out of committee, however.
Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz told the subcommittee that a voluntary siting process is needed and that DOE will discuss during at a public meeting Thursday in Washington input the department received during eight public meetings held across the US on what a consent-based siting process should involve this year.
Support for a nuclear waste facility has to be aligned on the community, state and federal levels to avoid “bad surprises later on,” Moniz said.
In response to a question from Feinstein, Moniz said DOE’s general counsel has said the department has the authority, although not specifically stated, to use a private-sector facility to store utility spent fuel. He said DOE could move forward on setting up contracts with such facilities.
Currently, private-sector efforts are underway in Texas and New Mexico to site consolidated interim storage facilities that would have DOE as its only customer. http://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/washington/progress-on-waste-issue-key-to-support-for-nuclear-21519625
US COULD LOSE NEARLY HALF ITS NUCLEAR POWER FLEET
US COULD LOSE NEARLY HALF ITS FLEET, ALEXANDER SAYSBy 2038, 48 US reactors will be at least 60 years old, Alexander said, adding that the country would lose about half of its reactor fleet if their NRC operating licenses are not extended beyond 60 years. NRC’s initial operating licenses for power reactors are for 40 years. Most units have received, or are seeking, a 20-year license renewal, putting their total operating time at 60 years.
Exelon Generation said June 7 it will seek a second 20-year renewal, also known as a subsequent license renewal, of its NRC operating license for the Peach Bottom units 2 and 3 boiling water reactors in Delta, Pennsylvania. If NRC approves the renewal, the Peach Bottom units would be licensed to operate for a total of up to 80 years.
Exelon’s announcement came after Dominion said in November that it plans to seek subsequent license renewal for the two pressurized water reactors at its Surry station in Virginia.
–Elaine Hiruo, elaine.hiruo@spglobal.com
–Edited by Valarie Jackson, valarie.jackson@spglobal.com http://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/washington/progress-on-waste-issue-key-to-support-for-nuclear-21519625
Hinkley nuclear deal to be followed by an Essex nuclear deal with China?
China to build nuclear reactor in Essex after Hinkley deal approved, Telegraph UK, Emily Gosden, energy editor 15 SEPTEMBER 2016
China is to begin developing a new nuclear power station in Essex after the Government heralded a new wave of UK reactors by approving the £18bn Hinkley Point plant in Somerset.
Chinese state nuclear firm CGN will fund one-third of Hinkley, which is led by French state energy giant EDF, in return for the chance to build its own design of reactor at Bradwell with EDF’s support………
The only change to the Hinkley deal is that the Government has taken powers to veto EDF selling its controlling stake in the project, leading critics to call Mrs May’s review “a lot of hot air”……..Both CGN and EDF made clear they did not regard the new safeguards as any obstacle to proceeding with the plans for a Chinese reactor at Bradwell.
Although ministers made no mention of Bradwell in their announcement, sources told the Telegraph that CGN had privately received Government assurance its plans, which were endorsed by the previous administration, were still welcome.
CGN said it was “delighted” by the Hinkley decision which would allow it to “move forward and deliver” Bradwell.
It is understood the firm hopes to begin the process of seeking UK safety approval for its Hualong One reactor design in the autumn. EDF has previously said such a plant could begin construction as early as 2022, subject to approval by UK regulators.
Mrs May’s joint chief of staff, Nick Timothy, has previously raised concerns that China could use its role in UK nuclear plants to “build weaknesses into computer systems which will allow them to shut down Britain’s energy production at will”………http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/09/15/china-to-build-nuclear-reactor-in-essex-after-hinkley-deal-appro/
Major USA utility sees Renewables and Efficiency as a Better Deal Than Nuclear
How a Major Utility Came to See Renewables and Efficiency as a Better Deal Than Nuclear Greeen Tech Media by Tam Hunt September 14, 2016 Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s biggest utility, made a historic proposal to shut down California’s last nuclear power plant, called Diablo Canyon. PG&E is arguing that replacing Diablo’s output with a mix of energy efficiency and renewables will not only cost less than relicensing Diablo, but will also lead to a more reliable and flexible grid. ……..
Energy efficiency and renewables come with none of the downsides of nuclear power. There is no radioactive waste that must be stored for literally thousands of years, there is no terrorist target, there is no ticking time bomb waiting for an earthquake to trigger it. There is a much larger footprint for renewables like solar and wind, but many countries around the world are demonstrating now that these resources can reach high penetration levels without spoiling views, impacting wildlife overly much, or taking up too much land.
Another benefit of shutting down Diablo that PG&E highlights in the joint application is the ability to better absorb increasing amounts of renewable energy. Diablo is a very large non-flexible “baseload” resource. It can’t be turned up or down to accommodate variable renewable resources — it’s either on or off. And as we push toward the current goal of 50 percent renewables by 2030, which is now mandated by law (SB 350), we need more flexible resources to accommodate an ever-increasing share of renewables.
Moreover, having such large, inflexible resources on the grid requires its own share of backup power, because if Diablo experiences a scheduled or unscheduled outage, such an outage will generally require replacement resources to make up for this loss. Renewables like wind and solar get a lot of negative attention for being variable and needing some grid backup, but this problem is actually far worse with very large inflexible generation assets like Diablo. By shutting down Diablo at the end of its current license, system-reserve requirements will actually be reduced.
How to avoid further nuclear boondoggles
The recent shutdown of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in Southern California turned into an extremely contentious battle over a number of issues, but primarily over who should bear the cost of this extremely expensive power plant.
PG&E’s joint application may entail some similar issues, as it requests a full reimbursement of all costs for the plant to date, without specifying exactly what those costs will be. As described above, the net cost of replacing Diablo with preferred resources will be about one-third less than the equivalent cost of relicensing Diablo.
That said, PG&E will need to present more information about the full costs of the shutdown, including the costs of decommissioning. With respect to SONGS, the total shutdown and decommissioning costs became a major issue. To avoid a similar fate, PG&E should be as transparent as possible as early as possible……http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-a-major-utility-came-to-see-renewables-as-a-better-deal-than-nuclear
Subsidising NewYork’s nuclear power stations – not agood plan
Nuclear power vs. other carbon-free fuels While power markets do indeed undervalue low-carbon fuels, all of the other premises underlying the nuclear industry approach are flawed. In California and in Nebraska, utilities plan to replace nuclear plants that are closing early for economic reasons almost entirely with electricity from carbon-free sources. Such transitions are achievable in most systems as long as the shutdowns are planned in advance to be carbon-free.
In California these replacement resources, which include renewables, storage, transmission enhancements and energy efficiency measures, will for the most part be procured through competitive processes. Indeed, any state where a utility 
threatens to close a plant can run an auction to ascertain whether there are sufficient low-carbon resources available to replace the unit within a particular time frame. Only then will regulators know whether, how much and for how long they should support the nuclear units.
Closing the noncompetitive plants would be a clear benefit to the New York economy. This is why a large coalition of big customers, alternative energy providers and environmental groups opposed the long-term subsidy plan.
Compete or Suckle: Should Troubled Nuclear Reactors Be Subsidized? http://www.theenergycollective.com/energy-post/2387838/compete-or-suckle-should-troubled-nuclear-reactors-be-subsidized September 13, 2016 by Energy Post, by Peter Bradford, Adjunct Professor Vermont Law School. Courtesy The Conversation. Since the 1950s, U.S. nuclear power has commanded immense taxpayer and customer subsidy based on promises of economic and environmental benefits. Many of these promises are unfulfilled, but new ones take their place. More subsidies follow.
Today the nuclear industry claims that keeping all operating reactors running for many years, no matter how uneconomic they become, is essential in order to reach U.S. climate change targets. Continue reading
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