business and costs « nuclear-news

Nuclear industry’s survival hangs on tax-payer funding – World Nuclear News

Banking on nuclear, World Nuclear News, 18 August 2014The nuclear industry needs to satisfy the multi-criteria approach to risk that banks take when they decide whether to invest in a large infrastructure project. Only then, can it expect to attract this form of financing to nuclear new build projects, writes Ron Cameron.

Specifically, banks look for long-term certainty on price, stable government policy, industry reputation, regulatory certainty, the process for addressing planning and environmental issues and public acceptance, in addition to the economics of the project.

European wholesale electricity markets are currently not favourable to nuclear power,……..

there is a real difficulty in seeing where nuclear new build is going to come from in Europe, without government action. ……the UK is trying to do something about the market disadvantage which is keeping investors away from nuclear. ……

Other countries, too, are making clear that the State is behind nuclear new build. For example, in the US, new nuclear power plants are being built with loan guarantees and tax credits. …….http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/E-Banking-on-nuclear-1808201401.html

August 20, 2014 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, business and costs | Leave a comment

Banks won’t lend for new nuclear projects. Industry wants tax-payers to fund them

Banking on nuclear, World Nuclear News, 18 August 2014 “……..Banks are reluctant to become involved with first-of-a-kind projects, whether that concerns a new reactor technology or a country embarking on nuclear power for the first time.

Our focus then should perhaps be on trying to get banks into new projects at existing sites, such as plant life extensions. The latter is a lower risk process because the banks would be funding the cost of upgrades needed for plants whose construction costs have been essentially amortized and yet which could run for another 20 years.

And there are usually no great public concerns attached to life extensions, since the plant has already operated for some time. If the banks got involved with those and became familiar with nuclear industry issues, then they could one day be willing to join a consortium in new build projects. Banks look particularly at the track record of the industries that they are working with. And of course there is always the concern of delays for them. So some certainty that the government is behind these projects and prepared to support them with some form of guarantee is important………

Banks also monitor public opinion, but even more importantly, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the European Investment Bank are driven by the appetite from their member countries for financing nuclear power projects. It is up to the consortia of countries that are in favour of nuclear power to have more of a say on the banks’ boards. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/E-Banking-on-nuclear-1808201401.html

August 20, 2014 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, business and costs | Leave a comment

Europe’s aging reactors: increasing safety and cost problems

With exposure to radiation, high temperatures and pressure, the components of nuclear plants take a battering over time. “They can, for example, become more brittle, susceptible to cracking or less able to cope with temperature extremes,” said Anthony Froggatt, senior research fellow at London-based thinktank Chatham House.

Insight: The cost of caring for Europe’s elderly nuclear plants LONDON (Reuters)
18 Aug 14, – Europe’s ageing nuclear fleet will undergo more prolonged outages over the next few years, reducing the reliability of power supply and costing plant operators many millions of dollars.

Nuclear power provides about a third of the European Union’s electricity generation, but the 28-nation bloc’s 131 reactors are well past their prime, with an average age of 30 years.

And the energy companies, already feeling the pinch from falling energy prices and weak demand, want to extend the life of their plants into the 2020s, to put off the drain of funding new builds…….

as nuclear plants age, performance can suffer, and outages – both scheduled and unplanned – rise.

With nuclear safety in the spotlight since the 2011 reactor meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima plant – which in turn prompted Germany to call time on its entire nuclear fleet – operators can take no chances with their elderly plants, but the outages get longer and more difficult.

“These reactors were designed over 30 years ago. The people involved are either retired or dead, and most of the companies involved no longer exist,” said John Large, an independent nuclear engineer and analyst who has carried out work for Britain’s Atomic Energy Authority.

Jean Tandonnet, EDF Group’s nuclear safety inspector, said in January that its French fleet last year had a series of “problematic unit outages”, and scheduled outages were extended by an average of more than 26 days. Regular maintenance and major equipment replacement jobs had increased by 60 percent in the last six years, he said. France is the EU’s nuclear leader, its 58 reactors producing nearly three quarters of the country’s electricity. France’s nuclear watchdog will make a final decision on whether to extend the life of the French fleet to 50 years in 2018 or 2019. EDF has estimated the extension would cost 55 billion euros.

“The average age of the (French) reactors is now about 30 years, which raises questions about the investment needed to enable them to continue operating, as ageing reactors increasingly need parts to be replaced,” according to the World Nuclear Industry Status report 2014.

SAFETY FIRST

Though the EU has conducted risk and safety tests on the bloc’s nuclear plants, environmental campaigners say the tests failed to address risks associated with ageing technology, among other things.

“While this can be monitored, it can be problematic if ageing occurs at a greater rate than anticipated or it occurs in areas which are difficult to access or monitor,” he added.

As reactors age, there is also a risk of finding a generic design flaw that could affect all the reactors in a country if they are of the same design. ………..Additional reporting by Barbara Lewis in Brussels and Geert de Clercq in Paris; Editing by Will Waterman) http://www.firstpost.com/world/insight-the-cost-of-caring-for-europes-elderly-nuclear-plants-1668443.html

August 18, 2014 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, EUROPE, safety | Leave a comment

Expensive delays pile up for USA’s new nuclear plants in Georgia andSouth Carolina

Delays for SC nuclear plant further pressure industry; questions over potential delays in Ga. ATLANTA -Nanaimo daily news, 17 Aug 14, Expensive delays are piling up for the companies building new nuclear power plants, raising fresh questions about whether they can control the construction costs that crippled the industry years ago.

The latest announcement came this week from executives at SCANA Corp., which has been warned by its builders the startup of the first of two new reactors in South Carolina could be delayed two years or more. SCANA Corp. and plant co-owner Santee Cooper have not accepted that timeline from the companies designing and building the reactors, nor have they accepted responsibility for additional costs.

That announcement may well foreshadow more delays for a sister project in eastern Georgia, and they have caught the attention of regulators and Wall Street.

“Delays generally cause cost increases, and the question becomes who’s going to bear the costs?” said C. Dukes Scott, executive director of the South Carolina Office of Regulatory Staff, a watchdog agency that monitors SCANA Corp.’s spending.

None of this is helpful for the nuclear power industry, which had hoped its newest generation of plants in Georgia and South Carolina would prove it could build without the delays and cost overruns so endemic years ago. When construction slows down, it costs more money to employ the thousands of workers needed to build a nuclear plant. Meanwhile, interest charges add up on the money borrowed to finance construction.

A single day of delay in Georgia could cost $2 million, according to an analysis by utility regulators. Utility consumers often end up paying for these extra charges in the form of pricier electricity bills, unless the government intervenes and forces shareholders to absorb all or some of the losses………

Additional delays could prove unwelcome news for two pro-nuclear Republicans seeking re-election in November to Georgia’s Public Service Commission, H. Doug Everett and Lauren “Bubba” McDonald. -……….http://www.nanaimodailynews.com/business/delays-for-sc-nuclear-plant-further-pressure-industry-questions-over-potential-delays-in-ga-1.1316089#sthash.Yp8aLYvT.dpuf

August 18, 2014 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Geriatric disorders in old nuclear reactors – Britain, France and Belgium

Insight: The cost of caring for Europe’s elderly nuclear plants LONDON (Reuters) 18 Aug 14

“…………...GERIATRIC DISORDERS Britain has 16 reactors in operation that came online from the 1970s to 1990s, and all but one will be retired by 2023 unless they get extensions.

At the Wylfa plant in Wales – Britain’s oldest, at 43 years – the one remaining operational reactor was out of service for seven months this year. It was first taken down for maintenance, but the restart was delayed as new problems were discovered.

The reactor is scheduled to be taken out of service for good in September, but operator Magnox is seeking an extension to December 2015.

This week, EDF Energy took offline three of its nuclear reactors at its Heysham 1 and Hartlepool plants in Britain for inspection which are both 31 years old, after a crack was discovered on a boiler spine of another Heysham 1 reactor with a similar boiler design, which had already been taken offline in June. [POWER/GB]

The boilers will be checked for defects with thermal imagery done using robotics, and the firm will know more about what caused the fault after the inspections, which should take around eight weeks, the EDF Energy spokeswoman said. EDF Energy has been incorporating extra checks into its strategy for its ageing nuclear plants since it inherited them from previous operator British Energy, she said.

British Energy was delisted in 2009 following financial collapse. Several unplanned outages had reduced its power output, and its load factor – the ratio of actual output to its maximum capacity – fell to its lowest level of 56 percent in 2009, Britain’s National Archives show.

This compares with EDF’s average load factor for its French nuclear fleet of 73 percent in 2013, which is also down from its highest level of 77.6 percent in 2005, the company’s 2013 results show.

The fleet’s net output of electricity has declined from 429 terawatt hours in 2005 to 404 TWh last year, though this could be for a range of reasons, including weak energy demand.

Apart from reducing the reliability of Europe’s electricity supply, operators stand to lose many millions of euros from a single outage from lost electricity sales alone. Reuters calculations, based on industry estimates of lost daily electricity sales, show the outages at two EDF Energy plants could cost the firm some 155 million pounds during the outages from when they began in June or August to October, not including the costs of inspection and maintenance work.

Industry sources say the lost revenue from the loss of output at a 1 gigawatt plant could reach 1 million pounds a day.

British utility Centrica, which owns 20 percent of EDF Energy’s nuclear fleet, said on Monday the reduction in output would reduce its earnings per share by around 0.3 pence this year.

More than half of Belgium’s nuclear capacity is offline for maintenance. The three closed reactors are 29, 31 and 32 years old.

Though it doesn’t break out the nuclear data separately, statistics from Europe’s electricity industry association Eurelectric show both planned and unplanned outages mostly increased at thermal power plants in eight European countries examined, and periods of energy unavailability increased from around 12.8 percent in 2002 to 18.3 percent in 2011.

As the plants age, that can only increase. Additional reporting by Barbara Lewis in Brussels and Geert de Clercq in Paris; Editing by Will Waterman) http://www.firstpost.com/world/insight-the-cost-of-caring-for-europes-elderly-nuclear-plants-1668443.html

August 18, 2014 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, France, safety, UK | Leave a comment

Japan’s nuclear power restart is just not really happening

After the Fukushima meltdown, Japan’s nuclear restart is stalled, WP By Daniel Aldrich and James Platte August 15 “……Last month, the two reactors at the Kyushu Electric Power Company’s Sendai nuclear power plant were the first to pass new, stricter safety tests, but the actual restart date has been pushed back into the winter of 2015. Residents within 5 km of the plant now have potassium-iodide pills in the event of another accident, and some nine towns within 30 km of the plant have finally designed evacuation plans in case of a meltdown. These changes were a direct result of the Fukushima accident, which also spurred the creation of a new, independent nuclear industry regulator.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) replaced a patchwork of bureaucrats who controlled the industry before the disaster — many of whom were simultaneously tasked with promoting the field through incentives and grants to local communities. ……..

Beyond changing the regulatory environment in Japan, the Fukushima meltdowns caused a sea change in public opinion on nuclear power. Before the accidents, some two-thirds of respondents regularly supported increasing the number of nuclear power plants. Now, the same percentage of residents oppose the use of nuclear power in Japan, and a national poll at the end of July found nearly 60 percent of respondents opposed the restart of the Sendai nuclear plant.

Communities that directly host the facilities continue to — with some exceptions — support the restart of these facilities. Their support derives primarily from financial reasons: the central government provides up to $10 million a year to the small, rural, coastal towns that have these projects in their back yards. Research published by one economist showed that even for these communities the actual benefits to individuals vary widely.

But towns more than 5 km from the plant receive few, if any, financial benefits and have been vocal in their opposition to restarts. Further, because of a longstanding gentlemen’s agreement between utilities and local communities, mayors and governors hold unofficial veto power over the process. Without their support, power utilities will be unable to restart their plants…….

all of Japan’s power utilities that operate nuclear power plants are struggling financially, consistently posting large losses since 2011. TEPCO was effectively nationalized to prevent it from failing, and in April, the state-owned Development Bank of Japan announced a total of nearly$1.5 billion in preferred stock investments into Kyushu Electric Power Company and Hokkaido Electric Power Company. Kyushu and Kansai Electric Power Company both recorded losses of over $900 million last year.

The ultimate question is how many reactors will restart and by when……..

While restarting some reactors will help generate revenue for Japan’s struggling power utilities, the cost of decommissioning about half of Japan’s pre-Fukushima reactor fleet will be significant. Despite the nuclear revival ambitions of the LDP and industrial leaders, Japan’s nuclear sector appears to have a long, difficult road ahead of it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/08/15/after-the-fukushima-meltdown-japans-nuclear-restart-is-stalled/

August 16, 2014 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Japan | Leave a comment

Thorium lobby’s misinformation is hampering rare earths industry

It’s anybody’s guess how long Thorium, with its “peacenik” aura, will take to get traction in corridors well-trodden by the US nuclear energy lobby, who have singularly shown zero interest in the blandishments of Thorium.

Thorium lobby thunder intent on hijacking rare earths’ coattails Investor Intel August 12, 2014 by Christopher Ecclestone Anyone in the Rare Earths space knows that Thorium frequently appears as an unwanted guest at the party. Explorers have worked on various ways to get around the issue. However there is a small group out there who we would call the “deniers”. They absolutely love Thorium. They are like Swedes liberated from the sauna in the dead of winter and would roll around in the stuff naked, if they could, to prove their commitment. While greater love hath no man to a chemical element than the Thorium crowd to their object of desire, the more measured amongst us realize that the mineral has been stuck for decades like a racehorse suffering a starting-gate malfunction.

What are we talking of here Continue reading →

August 14, 2014 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Reference, technology | Leave a comment

More delays, more cost overruns for South Carolina nuclear power plants

SCE&G nuclear plants facing more delays, cost overruns, The State, South Carolina, BY RODDIE BURRIS rburris@thestate.com August 12, 2014 Two nuclear reactors under construction in Fairfield County are facing another significant delay, utility provider S.C. Electric & Gas confirmed.

The delay will put the $10 billion project at V.C. Summer Nuclear Power plant outside the 18-month contingency allowed by state regulators and likely will drive up the costs, but utility officials said they would not know how much until later this year…….. Continue reading →

August 14, 2014 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA | 1 Comment

The Future for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors s does not look promising

NuClear News August 14 “………The Future for SMRs does not look promising

The trouble is that there isn’t a market for SMRs in the US, so it is difficult to find business for a technology that hasn’t been developed, licensed or proven.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn’t even have requirements or guidelines in place to license SMRs. For the nuclear industry it costs a lot of money to be innovative. Building a supply chain from scratch, with few investors willing to bank on an unknown technology or customers willing to buy is virtually impossible. (11)

Of the four companies looking at SMR designs in the US, the Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W) with their 180MW mPower reactor was the first company to receive cost-sharing funds from the U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE), but has now cut 200 from its workforce, and slashed spending from $60 to $80 million per year to less than $15 million, and restructured its management. It is currently trying to sell up to 70% of the business (B&W plans to keep a 20 percent share and Bechtel will still own 10 percent), but it doesn’t seem that anyone is taking the bait. As of November 2013, B&W had already invested more than $360 million in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Clinch River site in Tennessee, which was to be home to two mPower SMRs.

Westinghouse, which was once considered a shoo-in to win the second round of USDOE funding,

was not only passed over for consideration, but eventually decided to pass up the opportunity

to develop its 225-MW SMR in exchange for focusing on its booming global AP1000 market.

The Holtech SMR 160MW reactor lost out in the battle for USDOE funding to NuScale Power LLC

which appears to be the only company staying in the race. NuScale just completed negotiations

with the USDOE for its cost-sharing program, and is opening a regional operations centre in

Charlotte. The company has signed an agreement with the USDOE to build a NuScale Power SMR

demonstration unit at the Savannah River Site. The USDOE said it would provide $217 million in

matching funds over five years to NuScale. But NuScale only gets the federal funds if it can

match them with money from private investors, who so far have been wary of the technology.

The company hopes to submit its design certification in the latter half of 2016. And it plans to

have its first plant operating commercially by 2023. (12)

The Executive Director of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Kennette Benedict, concluded

that:

“Without a clear-cut case for their advantages, it seems that small nuclear modular reactors

are a solution looking for a problem. Of course in the world of digital innovation, this kind of

upside-down relationship between solution and problem is pretty normal. Smart phones,

Twitter, and high-definition television all began as solutions looking for problems. In the realm

of nuclear technology, however, the enormous expense required to launch a new model as well

as the built-in dangers of nuclear fission require a more straightforward relationship between

problem and solution. Small modular nuclear reactors may be attractive, but they will not, in

themselves, offer satisfactory solutions to the most pressing problems of nuclear energy: high

cost, safety, and weapons proliferation.” (13)