Share price falls as Paladin’s sale of Langer Heinrich uranium mine is delayed
Uranium producer Paladin’s shares slide after stake sale delay BY:BARRY FITZGERALD The Australian June 27, 2013 SHARES in African uranium producer Paladin have been pulled back to near 52-week lows because of a delay in a planned debt-reducing sale of a minority equity position in the group’s flagship Langer Heinrich operation in Namibia.
It had been hoped that Paladin would make inroads into its $US740 million debt pile by making the sale the news of which pushed the shares from an April low of 70c to more than $1 a share in late May. But recent concerns that the previously advised June 30 target date would not be met have sent the shares lower.
The concerns were well placed, with Paladin saying yesterday that the planned sale had been delayed until mid-to-late August. Paladin shares closed 6c, or 6.8 per cent, lower at 82c.
The fall came despite Paladin managing director John Borshoff remaining confident a sale will be achieved. The planned deal is with two unnamed nuclear groups……http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/uranium-producer-paladins-shares-slide-after-stake-sale-delay/story-e6frg9df-1226670445221
Big nuclear construction companies set to make $billions from nuclear deconstruction
How Your Grandchildren can Reap Profits with These Nuclear Power Stocks , The Market Oracle Jun 24, 2013 — A contract for decommissioning a nuclear plant can bring decades of business to many different companies, each specializing in a different aspect of the decommissioning process. The worldwide trend away from nuclear power means a generational payday for investors and corporations all over the world….
Global nuclear player Westinghouse Electric Company, a subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation (TYO:6502, LSE:TOS) is being courted by governments wishing to decommission their reactors. Westinghouse has been in the nuclear game for close to 80 years.
The Sellafield site in the UK has become a virtual corporation unto itself, and has contracted with huge providers to accomplish the 100-year task of shutting down the facility. Consultants AMEC plc (LSE:AMEC) operate in the UK and throughout Europe and North America. They contract with a variety of large energy businesses and are on the Sellafield decommissioning in a project management capacity.
Multibillion dollar URS Corporation (NYSE:URS) is one of the top hazardous waste disposal handlers in the world – that’s just part of their business. URS, too, has large operations at the Sellafield site. Both AMEC and URS are close to the end of five-year contracts inked in 2008, but they enjoy 17-year extension options – just a glimpse of the longevity of nuclear decommissioning contracts.
Areva SA (EPA:AREVA) rounds out the large trio of companies working at Sellafield. Areva is a veritable one-stop nuclear shop and is just as happy to build a nuclear reactor as it is to decommission one. Areva’s nuclear technology group, Areva NP, took over Siemens’ nuclear business and absorbed a great deal of technology and know-how along the way.
All of these companies and more will be working on the decommissioning problem for decades to come. The opportunities for profit, and for a safer world, are there for the taking. For ourselves and any who come after us…..http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article41058.html
USA scrambling to sell off nuclear technology to India
India assures U.S. a share of nuclear pie, THE HINDU, 24 June 13 SANDEEP DIKSHIT India and the U.S. on Monday agreed to set a timeline for operationalising the civil nuclear agreement. The Fourth Strategic Dialogue co-chaired by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid here reviewed several issues ranging from the status of civil nuclear ties between the two countries through defence trade to education and cultural exchanges — through some 30 bilateral panels.
The two ministers felt further high-level meetings should be held to achieve convergence and progress, especially in strategic issues. An example of such meetings will be the visit of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden scheduled for mid-July………. At the press conference, Mr. Kerry almost let slip America’s chagrin at not having tasted the fruits of the India-U.S. civil nuclear agreement by drawing attention to the enormous domestic political capital invested by Democrats and Republicans to ensure New Delhi was given a special exemption by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
The Kerry-Khurshid meeting set September as a possible timeline for resolving two issues that have thwarted Westinghouse from setting up six reactors in Gujarat. Another company GE will set up an equal number in Andhra Pradesh but its reactor design has not yet been cleared by the U.S. nuclear regulator. India had promised these multi-billion bonanzas in exchange for supporting its case at the NSG and the International Atomic Energy Agency……http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-assures-us-a-share-of-nuclear-pie/article4846708.ece
Japan nuclear restart is in no way a sure thing
Japan’s atomic regulator will take a tough stance when its new safety guidelines take effect on July 8, and amid fierce local opposition.
“The problem for the banks is that it is very hard to give additional loans to the utilities in the current situation because from a private business perspective they are bankrupt,”
Japan nuclear safety upgrades dazzle, mask industry woes Reuters By Aaron Sheldrick and Kentaro Hamada (Additional reporting by Risa Maeda; Editing by Michael Urquhart) TOKYO Jun 23, 2013– Japan’s nuclear utilities face shareholders this week promising restarts of idled plants as soon as next month after costly safety upgrades, plans that look wildly optimistic given they are yet to secure either regulatory or local approval.
A glaring example is the Hamaoka nuclear plant, once dubbed the world’s most dangerous for its location near a major earthquake fault zone. Continue reading
Shareholders will propose shutdown of japan’s nuclear power
All of the proposals being submitted are expected to be rejected because large stakes are held by financial institutions, which are expected to vote along the lines of company management. Approval of two-thirds of shareholders with voting rights who attend the meetings is needed in order to pass any proposal.
Utilities face shareholders’ proposals to get rid of nuclear power,http://ajw.asahi.com/article/economy/business/AJ201306220057 Asahi Shimbun, By TAKASHI EBUCHI/ Staff Writer June 22, 2013
Shareholders of eight of the nine utilities that operate nuclear power plants will present proposals at shareholders’ meetings next week urging the companies to abandon nuclear power.
But with the Abe administration clearly in favor of nuclear power, the utilities are all expected to reject the proposals and press ahead with plans to restart reactors currently offline.
All of Japan’s electric power companies will hold their annual shareholders’ meetings on June 26.
Similar proposals were made at last year’s meetings for seven of the utilities, which all rejected the proposals. Continue reading
USA’s nuclear power industry in its economic death throes
These are the facts: Renewables have taken the lead in new power generation in America, comprising nearly half of all new generating capacity installed in the United States in 2012. In the first quarter of this year, nearly half the new capacity installed was solar. With its poor economics, enormous complexity, overly-large capital requirements, too-long lead times, and overall risk, US nuclear power is headed for contraction, not resurgence. Ultimately, I think the same will be true globally
The real reason to fight nuclear power has nothing to do with health risks, Quartz, By Chris Nelder, 17 June 13“……Nuclear’s long goodbye The simple fact is that, at least in the US, the nuclear industry is dying a slow death. The announced closure of four major facilities in 2013 alone amount to 4,246 megawatts of nuclear capacity—enough to power 2.7 million homes for a year—that are being retired.
Even while the nuclear industry is able to externalize its costs for insurance (which are federally limited), loan guarantees (which are federally backstopped), decommissioning (which is pushed onto ratepayers) and waste handling (which is pushed onto taxpayers), it still lost. If it had to stand on its own and pay its full insurance costs like every other energy source, we could never build another nuclear plant in America, because no private investors would be willing to take that kind of risk. It’s hard to imagine how the economics could be more tilted in nuclear’s favor (although I’m sure its proponents have ideas on that).
The reason nuclear is dying is economics, not tribalism, as Shellenberger and Nordhaus claim. Continue reading
UK’s new nuclear plan will dramatically increase electricity costs
Electricity From New UK Nuclear Plant To Be Linked to Inflation WSJ, By SELINA WILLIAMS AND GERALDINE AMIEL, 18 June 13, The U.K. government has agreed that the guaranteed fixed price for electricity from a new nuclear power plant that Electricite de France SA EDF.FR +0.30% (EDF.FR) wants to build would be fully linked to inflation, said people familiar with the matter, a move that would add tens of billions of pounds to the total cost of electricity from the reactors.
The agreement to inflation-link the electricity price EDF would receive–known as the strike price–for 35 years substantially eases the financial risks for the French utility for constructing two nuclear reactors, but there is still no deal on the actual price, the people said.
The whole nuclear plant is estimated to cost around 14 billion pounds ($22 billion) to build.
EDF, the world’s largest nuclear operator, seeks a strike price between GBP95 to GBP100 per megawatt hour of electricity while the government would rather settle around GBP80 to GBP85 per megawatt hour, one of the people said. The current wholesale electricity price is around GBP48/MWh. The talks are expected to continue for several weeks, the person said.
Whether EDF and the U.K. can reach an agreement is seen as a litmus test for nuclear energy and its economic viability in Europe……
The agreement links the strike price, which amounts to an indirect subsidy for nuclear power, to an inflation measure called the consumer price index, one of the people said. This would dramatically increase the costs to taxpayers, said Roland Vetter, head of research at CF Partners, an environment and energy advisory, trading and investment
firm.
“Indexation is important because it will increase the subsidies every year in line with inflation and the public therefore will carry thelong-term inflation risk in their electricity bills,…… http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323566804578553030018924570.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
5.7 million people employed in renewable energy
2012 was the second highest year ever for renewable energy investments – but being “second” doesn’t reflect installed capacity as prices for renewable energy equipment, particularly related to solar power, have plummeted.
Last year was another record year in terms of installed capacity; with 115 GW of new renewables put in place globally. However, 2012 saw the most significant change so far in the balance of renewable energy investment activity between developed and developing economies. Continue reading
Collapse of nuclear industry due to financial realities
In short: Cost estimates for new nuclear plants are not credible. I have yet to find a single one that stood up to close scrutiny. And as far as I am aware, no nuclear plant has ever been built for close to its original cost estimate.
The real reason to fight nuclear power has nothing to do with health risks, Quartz, By Chris Nelder, 17 June 13 Chris Nelder is an energy analyst, consultant and speaker who has written about energy and investing for more than a decade.
Nuclear proponents are launching a full-court press for fresh investment in the technologyThe release of the new film Pandora’s Promise, another editorial from ardent nuclear champions Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute, and Paul Blustein’s recent piece in Quartz, “Everything you thought you knew about the risks of nuclear energy is wrong,” are part of an effort to put a new shine on a technology that once offered, but failed to deliver, electricity “too cheap to meter.”
Missing from the entire debate about nuclear is the most important fact of all: Nuclear is dying due to poor economics, and the debate is already over as far as the market is concerned.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus have backed up their arguments with junk accounting on nuclear energy’s costs. This is where the discussion must depart from mere boosterism and descend into the deep, dark world of energy economics—a subject that Blustein did not even address. Continue reading
Poland likely to delay nuclear power program
Poland may delay launch of nuclear plants Phys Org, 18 June 13 Poland could delay building its first nuclear power plants as natural gas, including shale gas, becomes less costly, the prime minister of the central European heavyweight said Tuesday. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-06-poland-nuclear.html#jCp
Anxiety in the uranium industry
Uranium One cutting 26 staffhttp://www.mining.com/uranium-one-cutting-26-staff-43352/Michael Allan McCrae | June 15, 2013 Bowing to miserable prices for its product, Uranium One (TSE:UUU) is letting go of 26 employees.
The company’s Willow Creek Mine will see 16 people cut. The Casper operation will lose the other 10.
Donna Wicher, the company’s senior vice president of Americas, told the Wyoming Staff Tribune that the company is adjusting to the market.
“The price is so low that we have to sell our uranium at these low prices, and that’s not good,” said Wichers.
“We need higher prices in order to make a profit that we need to develop new well fields.”
Uranium One operates in situ recovery at its Willow Creek Mine in Wyoming. It also has additional exploration projects in Arizona, Colorado, and Utah.
Uranium is in the dog house after the spot price hit a seven-year low last week. In January Uranium One’s board approved a deal to be taken private by the the Russian firmJSC Atomredmetzoloto (ARMZ) for C$1.3 billion, a move that was oppos
USA nuclear industry getting too old and too expensive
Nuclear Plants, Old and Uncompetitive, Are Closing Earlier Than Expected , NYT By MATTHEW L. WALD June 14, 2013 Washington — When does a nuclear plant become too old? The nuclear industry is wrestling with that question as it tries to determine whether problems at reactors, all designed in the 1960s and 1970s, are middle-aged aches and pains or end-of-life crises.
This year, utilities have announced the retirement of four reactors, bringing the number remaining in the United States to 100. Three had expensive mechanical problems but one,Kewaunee in Wisconsin, was running well, and its owner, Dominion, had secured permission to run it an additional 20 years. But it was losing money, because of the low wholesale price of electricity.
“That’s the one that’s probably most ominous,” said Peter A. Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a former head of the Public Service Commission in New York. “It’s as much a function of the cost of the alternatives as it is the reactor itself.”
While the other three, San Onofre 2 and 3 near San Diego and Crystal River 3 in Florida, faced expensive repair bills because of botched maintenance projects, “Kewaunee not only didn’t have a major screw-up in repair work, it didn’t even seem to be confronting a major capital investment,” he said.
This is a turnaround because until recently, the life expectancy of reactors was growing. When the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began routinely authorizing reactors to run 20 years beyond their initial 40-year licenses, people in the electricity business began thinking that 60 was the new 40. But after the last few weeks, 40 is looking old again, at least in reactor years, with implications for the power plants still running, and for several new ones being built…….
Two to watch are Vermont Yankee, in Vernon, just north of the Massachusetts border, and Indian Point, in Buchanan, N.Y., 30 miles up the Hudson River from New York City. The states of Vermont and New York are seeking to close them. If they remain profitable, the owner of all three units, Entergy, seems likely to fight tooth and nail to keep them open, but Vermont Yankee’s profitability does not seem certain. It could join plants like Maine Yankee, or Zion, near Chicago, in retirement and decommissioning…While utilities in the last few years have announced plans for more than a dozen new reactors, beyond the five now under construction only another four or so seem possible in the next few years.
And all the others are getting older…..http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/15/business/energy-environment/aging-nuclear-plants-are-closing-but-for-economic-reasons.html?ref=business&_r=0
Japanese PM in Europe to market Japan’s nuclear reactors
Japan PM promotes nuclear exports at central Europe summit Global Post, 16 June 13 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a push on Sunday for his country’s nuclear technologies at a summit in Warsaw with leaders of four ex-Communist European Union countries, as part of his bid to boost the Asian powerhouse’s exports.
Abe recently unveiled plans to treble Japan’s infrastructure exports to 30 trillion yen ($300 billion, 225 billion euros) a year, a target that could not be reached without nuclear reactors.
At Japan’s first summit with the so-called Visegrad Group — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — Abe sought to interest the four in Japanese nuclear technology.
“We stressed the necessity of strengthening cooperation, especially in the area of energy policy,” Abe told reporters.
A joint statement issued after the talks said “Japan welcomed the fact that private sectors of both sides demonstrated keen interest in concrete forms of cooperation in nuclear energy and safety”……
In his first visit to Europe since taking office in December, promoting his country’s nuclear technologies was high on his agenda for boosting overall Japanese exports….http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130616/japan-pm-promotes-nuclear-exports-at-central-europe-summit-0
They don’t now how much it costs to bury all those dead nuclear reactors
Nuclear Decommissioning Surge Is Investor Guessing Game, Bloomberg by Stefan Nicola in Berlin at snicola2@bloomberg.net; Julie Johnsson in Chicago at jjohnsson@bloomberg.net editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net 16 June 13
Nuclear utilities thrust into the spotlight after the Fukushima meltdowns have ordered 20 reactors shut, the most in a three-year span since Chernobyl’s aftermath, saddling the industry with a possible $26 billion in costs.
EON SE and RWE AG (RWE) are leading the biggest decommissioning project by European utilities ever, an effort to tear down 12 reactors in Germany over two decades. Edison International (EIX) said June 7 it will never restart its idled two-unit San Onofre Generating Station outside Los Angeles, bringing the number of U.S. reactors permanently closed in a year to a record four.
The global utility industry faces its biggest test to prove enough money was saved for shutdowns, having undergone numerous cost-overruns building atomic plants. A cautionary tale can be seen with government-owned facilities. In Britain, where taxpayers are on the hook to retire the Sellafield complex’s seven reactors and fuel-reprocessing stations on the Irish Seaduring the next 100 years, the U.K. government this year doubled its estimate for the work to 67.5 billion pounds ($106 billion).
“There’s a lot of speculation how much these projects cost, but an exact estimate can only be given by utilities,” said Sascha Gentes, a Karlsruhe Institute for Technology professor specializing in atomic shutdowns. “The longer a nuclear decommissioning project takes, the more expensive it becomes.” Continue reading
Nukenomics: shifting nuclear costs from nuclear suppliers to taxpayers
Nuclear Power, Part 2: Nukenomics , By Ned Madden, 14 June 13 TechNewsWorld Can the nuclear industry stand on its own two feet financially? It all depends on whom you ask. “There are plenty of cost estimates out there regarding what a new nuclear power plant will cost — unfortunately, those estimates are speculative. It has been decades since anyone has tried to build a nuclear plant in the United States,” said the Cato Institute’s Jerry Taylor.
There’s no denying that safety and effectiveness are both critical concerns when it comes to nuclear power, and that’s just as true for investors in the technology as it is for those who rely on the energy it generates.
Part 1 of this three-part series describes a new generation of small modular reactor designs whose promise is 
undeniably compelling. What’s less certain, however, is whether they are feasible as a free-market business proposition without current levels of government-backed investment.
That’s the question at the heart of what’s sometimes called “nukenomics,” and it’s a complicated one.
Even giant corporations in the nuclear energy industry are cautious about the fiscal viability of the nuke space. Construction cost estimates for new nuclear power plants are highly uncertain.
Risky Business Continue reading
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- May 2026 (116)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 