Nuclear energy nonsense – Salt Lake Tribune
Nuclear energy nonsense
The Salt Lake Tribune Public Forum Letter 11/14/2008 The Tribune reported that Utah’s School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration is finalizing a lease agreement with Emery County that could pave the way for a nuclear power plant in Utah…………..South Carolina’s Charlotte Observer recently reported that Duke Energy now says its new nuclear power plant will cost $11 billion, double its estimates of two years ago.
Nuclear energy nonsense – Salt Lake Tribune
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Business Feed Article | Business | guardian.co.uk
Britain sets up nuclear funding watchdog
The GuardianLONDON, Nov 3 (Reuters) – Britain has set up a watchdog to ensure that decommissioning the nuclear power plants that the government wants to be built, and disposing of the waste, does not cost the taxpayer anything.The Nuclear Liabilities Financing Assurance Board (NLFAB) will scrutinise how the companies planning to build the new power plants will pay to shut them at the end of their useful lives and clean up the radioactive waste they produce.“We’ve always said the taxpayer should be protected from the costs of decommissioning and waste disposal arising from new nuclear power stations,” Energy and Climate Change Minister Mike O’Brien said.“The NLFAB will be another piece of armour to help ensure they get that protection.”
Business Feed Article | Business | guardian.co.uk
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Actualité de la bourse sur Rio Tinto – RTZ : interviews, rumeurs de marchés, analyses, dossiersEasyBourse
BHP Details Olympic Dam Growth, Questions Remain
easybourse.com October 31st, 2008 By Alex Wilson Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES MELBOURNE -(Dow Jones)- BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) gave an update Friday on its planned expansion of the giant Olympic Dam mine in South Australia state but analysts said questions still remain about the timing and cost of the key growth project.
BHP plans a five stage expansion that will transform the copper, uranium and gold mine from an underground operation into one of the world’s biggest open pit mines with annual output of 730,000 tons of copper and 19,000 tons of uranium.
Olympic Dam is a key growth project for BHP and the update on its expansion plans has been keenly awaited, but didn’t include timing for the later stages of the expansion or an updated capital expenditure figure of the project.
The company said it plans to issue its environmental impact statement for the massive project to the South Australian state government before the end of 2008 with approval to take between 12 months and 18 months…………………………..Ord Minnett analyst Peter Arden, who was not on the site visit, said it was disappointing the presentation did not give a range for the cost of the project or a more definite timeline for its later stages.
“It may not be that expensive or onerous, but it is just the uncertainty of it that is never ending and I don’t know why they can’t at least give some sort of ballpark figure,” he said………………..
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
BHP delays opening of world’s biggest pit | The Australian
BHP delays opening of world’s biggest pit
THE AUSTRALIAN Matt Chambers | November 01, 2008BHP Billiton has pushed back the start date for its giant Olympic Dam copper and uranium expansion until at least 2015.
This was to include digging the world’s biggest open-pit mine.
In a long-awaited presentation, the mining giant was tight-lipped on development costs, which have been tipped by analysts to be $15 billion, and indicated it would not reveal them until the project was approved, in 2010 at the earliest.
BHP’s ambitious plans for the deposit will see it ramp up in three major stages over 10 or 11 years, with the planned, huge pit eventually eating into the existing underground mine and mill around 2025.
The end result would be a pit 7km long, 5km wide and 1km deep…………………BHP said government approval was not expected until 2010, back from an earlier target of 2008…………………..BHP is looking at a 10 to 12 year operation and said it would upgrade the feasibility study on the resource of about 35,000 tonnes of uranium oxide to determine the best way to develop it.
BHP delays opening of world’s biggest pit | The Australian
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Power Engineering – Areva team wins Yucca Mountain nuclear waste contract
Areva team wins Yucca Mountain nuclear waste contract
Power Engineering 31 October 2008 — Areva said the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a contract to USA Repository Services LLC, a unit of URS Corp. that includes Areva and the Shaw Group, to manage the used nuclear fuel repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The five-year contract, which has an optional five-year renewal, is valued at $2.5 billion.
Power Engineering – Areva team wins Yucca Mountain nuclear waste contract
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
The Associated Press: Gates: Long-term outlook for nuke safety is bleak
Gates: Long-term outlook for nuke safety is bleak By ROBERT BURNS –WASHINGTON (AP) — The long-term outlook for keeping U.S. nuclear weapons safe and reliable is “bleak,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
The Hindu Business Line : Nuclear power uneconomical: Lester Brown
Nuclear power uneconomical:
THE HINDU Business Line 28 oct 08 Lester Brown WASHINGTON: At a time when India is focusing on developing sources of nuclear energy, a leading scholar has said nuclear power is uneconomical and little private capital is going into this sector while investors are pouring tens of billions of dollars in to wind farms each year.“Despite all the industry hype about a nuclear future, private investors are openly sceptical and while the world’s nuclear generating capacity is estimated to expand by only 1,000 MW this year, wind generating capacity will likely grow by 30,000 MW,” no ted environmentalist and scholar Mr Lester Brown said in a media article ‘The Flawed Economics of Nuclear Power’.Drawing attention to the book ‘The Nuclear Illusion’ by Amory B Lovins and Imran Sheikh, Mr Brown said the cost of electricity from a new nuclear power plant is around 14 cents per kilowatt hour while it costs only 7 cents per kilowatt hour at a wind farm
The founder of Earth Policy Institute, Brown, argued that given this huge gap, the so-called nuclear revival can only be done by unloading costs onto taxpayers, including the costs of disposing of nuclear waste, insuring plants against an accident and de commissioning the plant when it wears out.
The Hindu Business Line : Nuclear power uneconomical: Lester Brown
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, rafioactive, uranium
Barbara Rose Johnston: The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine?
The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine?
counter punch 27 oct 08 By BARBARA ROSE JOHNSTON
“…………………………Because nuclear energy was been redefined by the Bush administration as a national security concern, social and environmental safeguards can be legally ignored. Thus, as one example of many recent rulings, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under its enhanced authority to dismiss environmental and social safeguard legislation recently ruled that onsite above ground dry cask storage of PG&E’s radioactive waste at Diablo Canyon in California can go forward without further study of whether such storage is safe from terror attacks or adequately protects the health of nearby residents. The NRC’s ruling overturns a federal court order to consider these concerns………………………………………………s nuclear energy truly the clean, green machine that the Nuclear Energy Institute and its proponents make it out to be? Is it truly cost-effective? Will nuclear power finally prove to be a “safely-harnessed” source of sustaining energy? Or, will we once again, be lured into what many folks see to be a dance with the devil?…………………………………..
The average cost to build a nuclear power plant is reportedly some 2 billion dollars, though a 2007 estimate including costs to generate power by Lew Hay, chairman and CEO of Florida Power and Light, suggests that “the cost of a two-unit plant will be on the order of magnitude of $13 to $14 billion.” Actual flow of energy will not occur for years. Technological innovation has reduced the time it takes to build a nuclear reactor, it will still take some 7 – 12 years after plans are approved for energy to flow.
For those communities and workers that host the nuclear fuel chain — uranium mining, milling, enrichment, energy and military use, and storage of wastes — the label of “clean” and the notion of a “cost-effective” energy system is, simply and sadly, ludicrous. The no-emissions carbon footprint label assigned by the Nuclear Energy Institute ignores the significant environmental impact resulting from mining, transportation, processing fuel, using water as energy and coolant, and building nuclear power facilities. Cost-effective energy becomes an even more problematic label when you factor in the short-term and long-term health consequences of absorbing toxic heavy metals and the radioactive nature of these exposures, and the health care costs of treating such illness and disease.
And then there are the stewardship costs of protecting, storing, and (maybe some day) remediating nuclear waste. The cleanup for the 680-acre site of the Uravan uranium and vanadium mine and processing facility in Colorado completed in September 2008 reportedly cost $120 million. Cleanup costs from mining, milling, and the inevitable spills and releases associated with Manhattan Project research and Cold War militarism at 17 nuclear weapons plants have been projected in reports to Congress to reach between $100 billion to $200 billion dollars — and this estimate does not include the clean-up costs associated with nuclear weapons detonation, nor the cleanup of dumped waste from nuclear submarines. The eventual decommissioning of an aged nuclear power plant is currently priced at $300 million or more per plant. The costs to create, build, monitor and secure a safe storage facility for substances that pose a threat for tens of thousands of years to come are harder to estimate, given the many unknowns in the future.
Barbara Rose Johnston: The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine?
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, rafioactive, uranium
www.miningmx.com | energy Uranium One shuts the Dominion mine
Uranium One shuts the Dominion mine
Brendan Ryan 22 Oct 2008[miningmx.com] — URANIUM ONE has finally thrown in the towel on its troubled Dominion Mine near Klerksdorp and placed it on care and maintenance.The move follows a year of growing market speculation that the project was fatally flawed which was consistently denied by current CEO Jean Nortier and his predecessor Neal Froneman who resigned abruptly in February this year.Both Froneman and Nortier have at all times presented an overwhelmingly optimistic outlook on the future of Dominion despite repeated cuts in the mine’s forecast production profile over the past year.As of end-June the Dominion mine was valued in the company’s books at US$1.9bn compared with a total value for mineral interests, plant and equipment of $4.6bn………………………….. The failure of Dominion is one of South Africa’s biggest mining venture collapses………………………According to today’s statement Dominion has been closed following completion of a detailed life of mine planning process and budget “which has shown that the project would require a sustained recovery in uranium prices as well as significant additional capital investment in order to become economically viable.
www.miningmx.com | energy Uranium One shuts the Dominion mine
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, rafioactive, uranium
Inflation Hits Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump | NBC Chicago
Inflation Hits Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump
CHICAGO NEWS Oct 22, 2008WASHINGTON, DC, August 5, 2008 (ENS) – It will cost 38 percent more to build, operate and decommission the nation’s first nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada than the federal government estimated seven years ago, the U.S. Department of Energy said today in an updated life cycle cost estimate.
The highly radioactive waste is left over from nuclear power generation and national defense programs.
An increase in the amount of waste to be shipped and stored at the repository and more than $16 billion for inflation have added to the cost, says the DOE official in charge of Yucca Mountain………………………
The new cost estimate of $79.3 billion, when updated to 2007 dollars, comes to $96.2 billion, a 38 percent increase from the last published estimate in 2001 of $57.5 billion.
The total cost of building and operating the repository is divided between utility ratepayers and taxpayers, with ratepayers estimated to pay a little more than 80 percent, or $77.3 billion.
Inflation Hits Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump | NBC Chicago
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Bloomberg.com: Africa
Uranium One Closes Dominion, May Put Mine Up for Sale
By Ron Derby and Antony Sguazzin Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) — Uranium One Inc. shut its Dominion mine in South Africa and may seek a buyer for the operation as prices for the nuclear fuel slip to a two-year low. The company slid 19 percent in Johannesburg trading.
The operation, based on South Africa’s largest uranium deposit, needs a “sustained recovery” in uranium prices and “significant additional capital investment” to become economically viable, the company said in a statement to the Stock Exchange News Service in Johannesburg today………………..Prices have slumped 50 percent this year, partly on concern that the credit crunch will slow the development of new nuclear power projects……………….Uranium One fell 2.10 rand to 9 rand in Johannesburg trading, giving the company a market value of 4.22 billion rand ($378 million). The stock has declined 83 percent since Froneman’s departure and traded as high as 112 rand last year.
In Toronto, the shares fell 11 Canadian cents, or 10 percent, to 95 cents as of 11:11 a.m. local time.
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
The limits of nuclear power – International Herald Tribune
The limits of nuclear power
Internationmal Herald Tribune Daniel Botkin 20 Oct 08 – “…………………….to what extent can nuclear power really help achieve energy independence?There’s a problem about nuclear energy that gets little attention. At present, fossil fuels provide 87 percent of the world’s total energy while nuclear power plants provide just 4.8 percent. (All nuclear power plants currently generate electricity, accounting for about 15 percent of world electricity generation, while fossil fuels produce almost 67 percent of the electricity.)…………………………
Suppose it were possible to replace all fossil fuels with nuclear power. Suppose that we could use nuclear energy to make liquid and gas fuels to power vehicles, and could do this quickly using conventional nuclear power plants.
We would have to build enough plants to increase energy production by 17.4 times, which means using 1.2 million tons of uranium ore each year. At that rate of use, the reserves of uranium would be used up in less than five years…………….Considering the enormous costs of building the large number of nuclear power plants that are contemplated to replace fossil fuels, the United States would be courting disaster if it chose this route with nothing but blind faith that there may be a lot more uranium out there if we only look for it………………………The bottom line: From what is known about resources of uranium and the present and future state of nuclear power plants, there is no way that nuclear power can play a dominant role in the world’s energy supply.
The limits of nuclear power – International Herald Tribune
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
TheStar.com | Business | Nuclear costs pressure industry
Nuclear costs pressure industry
TheStar.com Tyler Hamilton 20 Oct 08 “………………..Resource, labour and regulatory constraints continue to draw attention to the risks and uncertainties of building new nuclear reactors, and as North American utilities start digging into the details they’re finding expansion of their nuclear fleets are likely to cost much more than originally thought.
And that’s ignoring any impacts the current credit crunch could have on financing these massive projects……………………………..
Over in Finland, energy group Teollisuuden Voima is now saying a next-generation reactor being built by France’s Areva SA could be delayed until 2012, three years behind schedule. Already, the Olkiluoto 3 plant is reportedly $2 billion over budget since construction began in 2005…………………
Credit-rating agency Standard & Poor’s released a report last Wednesday – “We expect that capital costs for nuclear projects will be significantly higher than what we have seen in the power industry thus far,” said the agency, referring to the unique labour and material costs associated with nuclear development. “The nuclear construction industry will be particularly prone to price spurts from transportation bottlenecks and fuel-price swings because nuclear units require a significantly higher amount of material than do other types of power assets.”
Complicating the risks even more, it said, was a “scanty construction track record for the new technologies and an untested regulatory process.” The nuclear industry knows it. At a World Nuclear Association conference in London last month, executives said costs have jumped so quickly they no longer wanted to publicly commit to estimates.
TheStar.com | Business | Nuclear costs pressure industry
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Bloomberg.com: Europe
Areva to Settle Finnish Project Loss With Client TVO )By Anne-Sylvaine Chassany Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) — Areva SA, the world’s largest reactor maker, is negotiating with Teollisuuden Voima Oyj, or TVO, to share losses at a reactor it is building for the Finnish utility………………………………OL3, which has been plagued by component, construction and organization problems since it started in 2005, is more than 25 percent over its 3 billion-euro ($4.1 billion) initial budget and its delivery date has been pushed back two years to mid-2011. Even that target is “challenging,” Jouni Silvennoinen, senior VP at TVO, said today in a presentation on site……………….
The company has never disclosed the exact amount of provisions for the project over the time. Areva’s reactors and services unit had a 258 million-euro operating loss in the first half on additional charges as the company tried to accelerate the work and allocated more resources than planned, it said.
The OL3 contract was the first reactor order negotiated by Areva after the nuclear power industry’s long pause.
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Nuclear agency worries fear will block growth – International Herald Tribune
Nuclear agency worries fear will block growth
International Herald Tribune By James Kanter October 16, 2008“……………………………The eport by the Nuclear EnergyAgency, an organization in Paris that advises industrialized countries on nuclear power, said the technology represented a more secure supply of power than oil or gas. But it said that opposition to nuclear power remained strong enough to curtail such an expansion.
………………………………….The report said that “a significant fraction of public opinion perceives that the risks of nuclear energy outweigh its advantages.” The report noted that people were more “concerned about some aspects surrounding nuclear energy (radioactive waste, terrorism and proliferation) than about the actual operation of nuclear power plants.”………………Skeptics of nuclear power say that expanding the technology would require huge amounts of government subsidies and would be an inefficient use of taxpayers’ money, which could be better spent on developing renewable sources of energy like solar, wind and bio-fuels and on increasing energy efficiency.
Perhaps the most serious concern facing the industry is the question of how to handle nuclear waste.
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Nuclear agency worries fear will block growth – International Herald Tribune
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
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