Price Anderson Act lets nuclear companies off the hook when big accidents occur
The Atomic Age and limited liability for nuclear accidents, The Hill, 20 Nov 15 By William F. Shughart II.……….Half a century ago, the United States was the only member of the global nuclear club. After detonating atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Washington’s attention turned to civilian uses of nuclear power. “Atoms for Peace” was a catchphrase of the day. The Cold War was well underway then and civilian reactors were seen as a key producer of nuclear materials destined for military use.
To jumpstart nuclear power in the United States, and to assuage fears that utilities would go bankrupt if radioactive materials were accidentally released into the atmosphere, Congress passed – and President Eisenhower signed – the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act in 1957.
-…………-the very large expected costs of a major nuclear event, unlikely as it may be, explain why private insurers are unwilling to underwrite fully any and all future accident claims.
Price-Anderson clearly is a form of corporate welfare that indemnifies the nuclear industry in a worst-case scenario. Although the law doesn’t allow the industry to get off scot-free for all injuries it may cause and it doesn’t prevent injured parties from seeking compensation, the industry’s support for its periodic reauthorization suggests that it highly values Price-Anderson protections.
From an economist’s perspective, the downside of Price-Anderson, as with insurance in general, is that it encourages behavior known as “moral hazard.” Because the nuclear industry itself will not bear the full costs of a devastating accident, such accidents are more likely to happen than otherwise. http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/260837-the-atomic-age-and-limited-liability-for-nuclear
Investment Bank Lazar finds wind and solar beat coal and nuclear on costs
Wind and solar beating conventional fuels on costs – Lazard, REneweconomy, By Giles Parkinson on 18 November 2015 The latest study by US investment bank Lazard has highlighted the extent to which wind and solar technologies are beating conventional fuels – coal, gas and nuclear – on costs of production, and also on abatement.
The study, the “Levellised Cost of Energy Analysis 9.0 notes that utility scale solar PV has fallen 25 per cent in the last year alone, since its most recent study. Since 2009, when it began the analysis, solar and wind energy have fallen by 80 per cent and 60 per cent respectively.
Lazard says that because of this, and despite big falls in the cost of natural gas in the US, wind and solar are beating conventional fuels in most situations, as revealed in their success in competitive capacity auctions.
And so, to its graphs [on original]
………It is interesting to note that compared to Lazard’s previous reports, wind, solar and gas costs have fallen, coal has remained static, while nuclear is the only technology to show a significant increase……http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/wind-and-solar-beating-conventional-fuels-on-costs-lazard-26273
Russia marketing nuclear reactors to Egypt, involving big debt for Egypt
Egypt, Russia sign deal to build a nuclear power plant Reuters, 19 Nov 15 CAIRO Moscow and Cairo signed an agreement on Thursday for Russia to build a nuclear power plant in Egypt, with Russia extending a loan to Egypt to cover the cost of construction.
A spokesman for Russia’s state-owned nuclear firm Rosatom said the plant, Egypt’s first, would be built at Dabaa in the north of the country and was expected to be completed by 2022.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, speaking on state TV, gave few details but said the project would involve the building of a ‘third-generation’ plant with four reactors.
It is not clear how much the deal is worth but Sisi said the loan from Russia would be paid off over 35 years……..http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/19/us-nuclear-russia-egypt-idUSKCN0T81YY20151119#BuK0P0P54h5xD8LD.97
China to finance and build two nuclear stations in Argentina
China to build two nuclear plants in Argentina in $15bn deal, Ft.com, Jamil Anderlini in Beijing and John-Paul Rathbone, Latin America Editor , 17 Nov 15
China will finance and build two nuclear power plants in Argentina in a deal worth up to $15bn underlining Beijing’s continued presence in Latin America despite its slowing economy.
The deal comes amid a push to export China’s homegrown atomic technology, often by offering cheap technology and generous financing. It follows China’s move last month to take a one-third stake in a French-led project to build the first in a new generation of UK nuclear plants.
Buenos Aires has been one of Beijing’s larger clients, with $19bn of lending for Chinese-led infrastructure projects since 2007, according to the Inter-American Dialogue’s China database.
Although China has started to scale back its exposure to more risky Latin American borrowers, such as Venezuela, it provided an $11bn currency swap arrangement last year to bolster Argentina’s sagging reserves.
Both reactors will be built by state-owned China National Nuclear Corp in co-operation with Argentina’s state-owned Nucleoeléctrica. When finished, they will roughly double the country’s nuclear power capacity provided by its existing three nuclear plants.
Chinese banks and companies will provide loans and investment to cover 85 per cent of the projects’ costs, with the loans to be paid back over 18 years with an annual interest rate below 6.5 per cent, according to Argentine media.
CNNC’s domestic state-owned rival, China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), will apply to UK regulators next year for approval of its similar nuclear power technology as it seeks to build more plants in Britain.
CGN has already agreed to take a one-third stake in the French group EDF’s £18bn Hinkley Point power station, and wants to build a series of new reactors in the UK.
Analysts say success in exporting its nuclear technology to Britain will help China sell more nuclear plants around the world because of the perceived rigour of the UK’s regulatory regime.
“We have our first foot in the UK,” Zheng Dongshan, senior vice-president at CGN, told the Financial Times during a visit to the UK last month. “This could have a good effect to kick the door of other countries.”
Chinese economic planners have identified more than 60 countries between China and Europe as potential customers. They hope to provide 30 of the 200 nuclear plants they estimate will be under construction in those countries by 2030……
In recent years Beijing has stepped in to provide financing and investment to several countries locked, like Argentina, out of international credit markets or shunned by global investors because of war, sanctions or corruption.
Latin America has been an area of particular interest to China because of the ruling Communist party’s desire to expand Chinese influence into America’s traditional “backyard”.
Argentina to buy nuclear technology from China
Argentina says signs nuclear plant construction deals with China, Reuters, BUENOS AIRES Nov 15 Argentina has signed two nuclear power plant construction deals with China for about $15 billion, the Argentine government said in a statement on Sunday, calling the deals “a fundamental step toward diversifying our energy matrix.”…...”Between both deals we are talking about financing of close to $15 billion” over 18 years, the Argentine statement said. (Reporting by Maximilian Heath; Editing by Leslie Adler)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/15/argentina-china-energy-idUSL1N13A0GF20151115#0Y2dUv0yhLfBpo7L.99
Employee-shareholders of EDF call for halt to too-costly British Hinkley Point nuclear project
Hinkley Point nuclear plan puts survival of EDF at risk, say employee shareholders http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/13/hinkley-point-nuclear-plan-puts-survival-edf-at-risk-say-employee-shareholders
French energy firm should halt expensive UK project in which it has has nothing to gain and everything to lose, says association of employee-shareholders EDF’s £18bn project to build two nuclear reactors in Hinkley Point, Britain, is so expensive and so risky that it puts the survival of the French utility at risk, an association of employee-shareholders said on Thursday.
EDF Actionnariat salarié (EAS) said in a statement that the interests of EDF are gravely threatened by the Hinkley Point project, which it calls “a financial catastrophy foretold” in which EDF has nothing to gain and everything to lose.
“EAS asks the management of EDF to stop this risky project, whose financial risks are to big for our company and which could put EDF’s very survival at risk,” the association said.
EDF staff own 1.72% of the utility’s capital, making employees the second-largest shareholder after the state, which hold 84.5%, according to ThomsonReuters data.
Last month, EDF announced a partnership with Chinese utility CGN to build Hinkley Point, but the two companies have not yet made the final investment decision to go ahead with the project, which EDF reluctantly agreed to finance on its already stretched balance sheet after other partners pulled out.
EDF, which already has to borrow money every year to pay its dividend, faces a €55bn (£39bn) upgrade of its nuclear fleet over the next decade, will spend some €5bn to install Linky smart meters in coming years and needs to invest billions in the reactor unit of Areva, which it plans to buy next year.
Standard & Poor’s last month warned that it might downgrade EDF’s debt if it goes ahead with Hinkley Point, because of the project’s high execution risks and substantial investment needs.
$493 billion invested in nuclearweapons by banks, insurance companies and pension funds
RBS slammed for investment in nuclear weapons http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/latestnews/entryid/1904/rbs-slammed-for-investment-in-nuclear-weapons.aspx 12/11/2015 New ‘Banking on the Bomb’ report
The report, Don’t Bank on the Bomb, published today by Dutch peace organization PAX, outlines how the institution has $6973million invested in the nuclear weapons industry. The company has investments in 21 out of the 26 nuclear weapons-producing companies outlined in the report, more than any other UK bank.
The report also identifies 382 banks, insurance companies and pension funds which have made USD 493 billion available to nuclear weapons producers since January 2012.
The top 10 investors alone provided more than USD 209 billion to the identified nuclear weapon producers. All of the top 10 are based in the USA.
The top 3: Capital Group, State Street, and Blackrock, have more than 95 billion USD combined invested in the producers named in this report.
In Europe, the most heavily invested are BNP Paribas (France), Royal Bank of Scotland(United Kingdom) and Crédit Agricole (France).
In the Asia-Pacific region, the biggest investors are Mitsubishi UFJ Financial (Japan), Life Insurance Corporation of India, and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial (Japan).
How the other UK banks faired:
- HSBC $4,469m
- Barclays $5,881m
- Lloyds Banking Group $1,921m
However it is not all bad news.
The research shows that 53 financial institutions prohibit or limit investments in nuclear weapon producers. This is a 150% increase compared to last year’s report.
The authors say that this overall increase illustrates the growing stigmatization of nuclear weapons because of the renewed focus on their humanitarian consequences.
Wilbert van der Zeijden, co-author of the report:
“No bank, pension fund or insurance company should have financial relations with companies involved in weapons of mass destruction. In the case of a nuclear detonation, the humanitarian consequences will last for decades and effective aid will not be possible. The only way to prevent this from happening is to outlaw and eliminate nuclear weapons. Stigmatizing these inhumane and indiscriminate weapons, and excluding them from investments, will help.”
Hall of Fame
There are 13 financial institutions listed in the report’s Hall of Fame who do not invest in any nuclear weapon producers.
These institutions have outstanding policies preventing any type of investment in any company with association to nuclear weapons.
The Co-op Bank was the only UK bank to make it into the Hall of Fame.
This comes on the back of the company re-establishing and strengthening their ethical policy after pressure from Ethical Consumer’s Save Our Bank campaign.
The researchers are now calling on all financial institutions to stop any investments into weapons of mass destruction, and on governments to ban nuclear weapons once and for all.
Ethical Consumer gave a presentation on Divestment to campaigners and Members of Parliament. Read the blog here.
The ever increasing costs of new nuclear energy – Australia, USA, S Africa, China
You’ll never guess how much this Australian nuclear power plant will cost, http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/blog/energy/2015/11/youll-never-guess-how-much-this-australian-nuclear.html Matt Stroud, energy reporter for the Pittsburgh Business Times. Nov 6, 2015 A nuclear power plant has never been built in Australia before, but Westinghouse is putting a price tag on a new one they’re hoping to build there.
The price? About $12.3 billion.
In testimony to Australia’s Nuclear Royal Commission — a body that’s investigating whether theAustralian state of South Australia should build the nation’s first nuclear power plant — Westinghouse executive Rita Bowser said that price was all inclusive, according to The Advertiser in Adelaide, South Australia. It would include land, environmental safeguards and construction.
Australia has zero nuclear power plants — and is known for being extremely averse to nuclear energy; it won’t even allow nuclear ships into its ports.
The historical aversion won’t affect the price much, apparently; the company’s guesstimate is in line with its current Vogtle project in Georgia, which has been plagued by cost overruns. It’s less than a comparable Chinese project, set to cost $24 billion. And it’s cheap in comparison to a project proposed in Johannesburg that could cost $100 billion.
The South Australia project’s future is fluid at the moment: the Nuclear Royal Commission hasn’t even decided whether it wants to recommend a nuclear facility.
That decision is set to come in May 2016. Tokyo-based Toshiba Corp. (TYO: 6502) owns 87 percent of the Cranberry-based Westinghouse Electric Co.
Time to anandon the fairy tale that nuclear power is affordable
It is past time for utility executives and their regulators to take a step back and reassess. An honest look at the real costs of nuclear power will show that the economics don’t add up. It is time to stop believing in impossible things
Nuclear Power Economics Requires Believing In ‘Impossible Things‘, Energy Collective, Dennis Wamsted, 6 Nov 15 It is increasingly clear that the economics of nuclear power don’t add up. Just in the past two and a half years, for example, seven plants at six sites have been shut down due to uneconomic performance or massive equipment repair costs—and other plants are on the chopping block.
Similarly, the two ballyhooed active construction projects, in Georgia and South Carolina, are seriously behind schedule and way over budget. Nonetheless, utility executives and regulators in a number of states still have not gotten the message, notably in Florida and Virginia where executives at Juno Beach-based Florida Power & Light and Richmond-based Dominion soldier on, pushing new reactor proposals whose economics, simply put, just don’t add up and could leave ratepayers holding the bag for billions of dollars in nuclear construction costs. Continue reading
France’s effort to market nuclear technology to South Africa
France seeks to win over SA on nuclear energy, Business Day, BY SISEKO NJOBENI, NOVEMBER 06 2015 AMID speculation about SA’s nuclear build programme, the French special envoy for the French-South African nuclear partnership Pascal Colombani is in the country punting his country for the highly anticipated programme.
During his two-day visit to the country, Mr Colombani is scheduled to have meetings “at the political level” as well with relevant public enterprises such as Eskom and the South African Nuclear Energy Co-operation (Necsa). However, he would not say who he was scheduled to meet in government.
“This is my first visit since I have been appointed by President (François) Hollande as his special envoy for the nuclear partnership with SA. Therefore, the overall purpose of my visit is to scale up our co-operation into a long-term strategic partnership in nuclear energy with SA,” Mr Colombani told Fin24.
He said France and SA shared ambitious goals for the development of nuclear energy, “which should become one key component of our strategic partnership”.
Mr Colombani said France was ready to scale up the co-operation between the two countries into a strategic long-term partnership, by supporting the development of SA’s new nuclear programme. Technology, training and safety were at the core of this partnership, he said……http://www.bdlive.co.za/business/energy/2015/11/06/france-seeks-to-win-over-sa-on-nuclear-energy
Pitfalls and huge costs make South Africa’s nuclear programme untenable
The nuclear build is a very risky exercise with numerous potential pitfalls. And there are alternatives. The shortfall in the projected nuclear capacity can be covered by a 50% larger than planned renewable energy investment. Wind and solar energy plants have been operationalised on schedule, and solar panel prices continue falling. The intermittence of renewable energy availability is considered manageable. Finally, energy saving strategies have yet to be fully explored.
Why SA must abandon nuclear ambitions, The nuclear build is a very risky exercise with numerous potential pitfalls. And there are alternatives. Tech Central, By Hartmut Winkler, 6 Nov 15 It has been an eventful year in South Africa, characterised by power cuts, parliamentary confrontations about wasteful expenditure and student fee protests. There has, however, been an elephant in the room that has impacted all these issues but enjoyed surprisingly scarce attention. The idea, vigorously driven by government, is for the country to build nuclear plants with an expected price tag of R1 trillion.
This equates to 4 000 times the controversial costs to upgrade President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla residence and 400 times the shortfall the tertiary education sector will experience in 2016 because of the freeze in university fee increases. Continue reading
USA- India nuclear sales quietly fading, as nuclear financially unviable
Solar power developers have offered to sell electricity in India at less than Rs 5/unit. This makes solar competitive with traditional forms of energy, and makes new nuclear power plants financially unviable. India must register the changed reality, and discard the idea of expensive Western reactors. Time to scrap the India-U.S. nuclear deal?
Hard on the heels of falling oil prices and affordable shale, comes another dramatic energy changes for the energy industry: The falling cost of solar energy. This has many implications, but the most immediate impact the nuclear power industry, large parts of which may have just become obsolete. This means that the new nuclear power plants being planned by India, especially those with foreign collaboration, must be reconsidered and scrapped if they are financially unviable.
“Nuclear can’t compete today”
Asked about Duke Power Florida’s August decision to cancel new reactor plans, Peter Bradford, a former NRC 
commissioner, told theTampa Bay Times that a nuclear construction boom “was just this artificial gold rush. And yes, it does show the renaissance is dead.”
Nuclear Power: Dead in the Water it Poisoned, CounterPunch, by JOHN LAFORGE NOVEMBER 5, 2015 “……..Well before Fukushima’s triple meltdowns staggered nuclear’s future, Congress and the industry were struggling to ignore its abandonment by important players around the world and public condemnations made by former supporters, and since March 2011 major figures the world over are saying “No nukes.”
Speaking in New York City Nov. 27, World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim said, “The World Bank Group does not engage in providing support for nuclear power. … [O]ur focus is on finding ways of working in hydroelectric power, in geo-thermal, in solar, in wind. … and we don’t do nuclear energy.” A week earlier, Kim said governments weren’t doing enough to confront climate change, revealing that the WBG well knows that nuclear power is no answer.[33]
World Bank directors may have adopted the recommendation of the US Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, which concluded in 2009 that governments can and should help stop nuclear weapons proliferation by “… discouraging … the use of financial incentives in the promotion of civil nuclear power.”[34]
More pointedly, Gregory Jaczko, who was Chairman of the NRC when Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi catastrophe started in 2011, warned in 2012 that “All 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the US have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology…”[35] When he left the NRC, theTimes editorialized that “the country is losing a strong advocate for public safety who was always willing to challenge the nuclear industry and its political backers in Congress.” Continue reading
The financial folly of South Africa’s nuclear power plan
Why South Africa should not build eight new nuclear power stations, Mail &Guardian, 05 NOV 2015 HARTMUT WINKLER South Africa has plans to build new power stations despite many calling for no nuclear energy in the country. t has been an eventful year in South Africa, characterised by power cuts, parliamentary confrontations about wasteful expenditure and student fee protests. There has, however, been a massive elephant in the room that has impacted all these issues but enjoyed surprisingly scarce attention. The idea, vigorously driven by government, is for the country to build nuclear plants with an expected price tag of one trillion rand.
This equates to 4 000 times the controversial costs to upgrade President Jacob Zuma’s Nkandla residence and 400 times the shortfall the tertiary education sector will experience in 2016 because of the freeze in university fee increases………
In South Africa too the need for the continued inclusion of nuclear power in the energy mix was being reexamined. Continue reading
Drastic risks to UK’s security, jobs, in the Hinkley Point C boondoggle
It is clear that this unprecedented handover of power and money to Chinese hands will prompt a justified reaction from those thousands of UK steel workers whose jobs are about to disappear due in part to the global dumping of steel by China.
Will the remnants of the steel industry and its workers see a fraction of the £76 billion to be spent by the Chancellor on his nuclear boondoggle? Not likely.
The nuclear option can and has been criticised in so many ways that the UK Government should think long and hard before proceeding with what many UK citizens will rightly consider an unpatriotic and unethical waste of money. It may even constitute a real and potent danger to our current lifestyle in Britain.
The Hinkley Point C boondoggle: a dangerous waste of money http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/the-hinkley-point-c-boondoggle-a-dangerous-waste-of-money-57108 By Alex Russell and Peter Strachan on 2 November 2015 The UK Government’s pursuit of a new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point C represents not just a colossal waste of money, but could also be real danger to the UK’s national security, write Professors Alex Russell and Peter Strachan of Robert Gordon University. “Let us hope that the Prime Minister and Chancellor’s actions do not lead to the radicalisation of unemployed steel workers who are now being joined by unemployed renewable industry personnel.”
The Conservative government, arguably, has completely lost the plot in continuing to pursue its so called energy policy that depends so heavily on building a new fleet of nuclear power stations to keep the lights on in Britain. The government want to have 16 GW of new nuclear power stations built in the UK all using EDF’s troubled Generation-III design, of which Hinkley Point C (3.2 GW) is only the first installment.
With this project is George Osborne seeking an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the first Chancellor of the Exchequer to commission the world’s most expensive nuclear power station? The Chancellor says the project represents good value for money. But the facts suggest otherwise. Further, and with the recent signing of a new nuclear accord as part of the State Visit of the President of China, not enough attention appears to have been given to national security issues.
Economic madness All in all, Hinkley Point C will cost an estimated £76 billion, for up to 3.2 GW of new generation capacity. Building costs are now estimated by EDF, the owner, at £24.5 billion. As a sobering thought, even offshore wind looks cheap when compared to the full commercial costs of this project.
This apparent blank cheque for new nuclear build is all the more surprising coming at a time when the Treasury has slashed support for onshore wind and solar power and other low carbon projects. Continue reading
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of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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