EPA’s new leader lobbied for Colorado uranium company on Bears Ears . Scott Pruitt resigned on Thursday https://durangoherald.com/articles/230585 By Mark Harden As Originally Reported by Colorado Politics, July 6, 2018
The man who will replace Scott Pruitt at the helm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – at least temporarily – is a former lobbyist who represented a Colorado uranium company.
Andrew Wheeler was narrowly confirmed by the Senate as EPA’s deputy administrator in April despite opposition from environmentalists and most Senate Democrats. He will step in as acting administrator on Monday following Thursday’s resignation of Pruitt in the face of a storm of controversy over his conduct in office.
Wheeler, 53, could serve as acting administrator for more than a year without further Senate action.
As NPR’s Rebecca Hersher noted in a March report, Wheeler “has spent much of his career working for less oversight from the agency” he will now lead.
Between 2009 and this year, Wheeler was a consultant and lobbyist, often representing large energy companies.
Wheeler has worked as a registered lobbyist for, among others, a major uranium mining company – Energy Fuels Resources Inc. – based in Colorado. Last year, the company lobbied to shrink Bears Ears National Monument.
Colorado Public Radio’s Stephanie Wolf reported last December that the Lakewood-based company – also known as Energy Fuels Inc. – “owns a conventional uranium processing mill and a mine just outside the original boundaries of Bears Ears,” and that the company wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior, which runs Bears Ears, “expressing concerns that operations might be disrupted or limited by the monument’s original boundaries.”
Fortune magazine says that “while working as a lobbyist, Wheeler worked, along with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, to open part of Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument for uranium mining.”
Bears Ears was established in late 2016 by then-President Barack Obama near the end of his term in office. Its original size was 1.35 million acres.
The May 25, 2017, letter to the Interior Department from Mark Chalmers, Energy Fuels’ chief operating officer, says:
“We are concerned that the presence of a new national monument literally adjacent to the privately-owned land acquired specifically for constructing and operating a uranium and vanadium processing facility could affect existing and future mill operations.”
The Washington Post reported last December that:
“Energy Fuels Resources did not just weigh in on national monuments through public-comment letters. It hired a team of lobbyists at (law firm) Faegre Baker Daniels – led by Andrew Wheeler … – to work on the matter and other federal policies affecting the company. It paid the firm $30,000 between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, according to federal lobbying records, for work on this and other priorities. The company’s vice president of operations, William Paul Goranson, joined Wheeler and two other lobbyists, including former congresswoman Mary Bono (R-Calif.), to discuss Bears Ears in a July 17 (2017) meeting with two top Zinke advisers.
President Donald Trump, whose administration has been promoting expansion of nuclear energy as a means to produce electricity, last December reduced the size of Bears Ears monument by 85 percent. At the time, Chalmers issued a statement saying the company has “no intention of mining or exploring anywhere within the originally designated (Bears Ears monument).”
Wheeler also has represented Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest power utility, which has invested heavily in renewable energy.
J Truman’s earliest memory is of sitting as a child on his father’s knee in Enterprise, Utah, transfixed by a show in the sky from nuclear-bomb testing in nearby Nevada, including watching pink-gray fallout clouds pass overhead.
“My parents died from cancer,” he says, blaming those radioactive clouds. So Truman, director of Downwinders, Inc., has fought since the 1970s for compensation for victims. A bill by Sen. Orrin Hatch and the late Rep, Wayne Owens in 1990, and expanded in 2000, gave money to victims in 10 southern Utah counties.
Now Truman hails new legislation that proposes finally offering payments to victims in all of Utah — and neighboring states. And payments under the plan would grow from $50,000 for downwind cancer victims to the same $150,000 paid to Nevada Test Site workers. People who received the lower payment could apply to get the additional $100,000.
“Salt Lake County was hit just as hard by fallout” from some nuclear tests as areas in southern Utah that have long qualified for compensation, Truman says. “So was the Uinta Basin,” according to federal fallout studies ordered by the earlier bills.
“We need justice. Not ‘just us.’ There must be equal justice for all exposed and sickened,” Truman says. He adds that the $50,000 offered to some through earlier bills “doesn’t even cover the first round of chemo.”
Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and Rep. Ben Lujan, D-N.M., are sponsoring the new legislation — mostly to help victims in their states that had been excluded. No Utah members of Congress have signed on as co-sponsors so far.
Similar bills have been introduced for the past eight years with no action, but Crapo managed finally to win a hearing last monthin the Senate Judiciary Committee. “This hearing has been a long time in coming,” Crapo said there.
The senator complains that 20 of the 25 U.S. counties hardest hit by radioactive Iodine-131 were in Idaho and Montana, where residents received no compensation.
His bill would now cover victims of cancers tied to radiation in all of Utah, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Guam (because of Pacific ocean nuclear tests).
Crapo said he’s talked to many Idaho farmers who awoke after a 1952 nuclear test to “find their pastures and orchards covered with a fine white dust. It seemingly appeared out of nowhere. It looked like frost. But it was not cold to touch.” It was fallout, and he said no one warned farmers about its dangers.
Crapo complained that the government has long known, because of studies in Utah, about unexplained clusters of cancer downwind of nuclear tests. “That was 40 years ago. However, there are still a number of those affected who are still waiting for the government to do the right thing and make them eligible for compensation.”
Eltona Henderson, with Idaho Downwinders, testified that her native rural Gem County, Idaho, has been devastated by cancer that she blames on the nuclear tests — and has collected the names of 1,060 cancer victims from there. “Some entire families have been wiped out by cancer, where there was no cancer before the 1950s.”
She added, “It seems that because of the nuclear testing, our ‘Valley of Plenty’ is now ’The Valley of Death…. I have 38 people in my family that have had cancer, 14 have died from the disease,“ adding most did not have lifestyles that otherwise would have increased their likelihood for cancer.
Earlier bills also never compensated victims downwind of the nation’s first Trinity atomic bomb test in New Mexico, which developed the bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War
II. Tina Cordova of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders protested that omission at the hearing.
“The radioactive fallout settled on everything. On the soil, in the water, in the air, on the plants, and on the skin of every living thing,” she said. “The New Mexico Downwinders are the collateral damage that resulted from the development and testing of the first atomic bomb.”
Hatch and Owens in earlier decades said a major problem of passing compensation bills was their cost, and Truman said it is also an ongoing problem with new legislation.
Justice Department data show that more than $1 billion has been paid to 21,649 downwiders through the years, “and that’s just covering some rural counties. If bigger urban areas were added, that number could really take off,” Truman said.
When compensation is added in that was paid to workers at the Nevada Test Site and at uranium mines and mills, the U.S. government has paid $2.26 billion in radiation compensation.
Studies have said radiation from nuclear tests hit virtually every county in the nation to some extent.
Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., whose father, former Interior Secretary Stuart Udall, started early lawsuits seeking downwinder compensation in Utah, said paying some but not other victims is a grave injustice. “We must do everything we can now to make sure the many unwilling Cold War victims and their families are compensated.”
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said the new legislation “is about confronting the dark corners of our country and working to bring on the light,” and is about “making sure we do right by people who were wronged when our nation was building up and testing its nuclear arsenal.”
DieterHelm 12th June 2018 Dieter Helm: If the government decides to invest in further nuclear power
station projects, it should obviously try to do so at minimum cost. The
Secretary of State, Greg Clark, has suggested that one option might be to
develop a Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model. Is this concept fit for the
nuclear purposes? How does it compare with the other two options currently
under consideration – direct investment and financial guarantees, and the
Hinkley-style CfD approach. (No assumption is made here as to whether
nuclear projects should be proceeded with: it is about the best means, not
the end).
The RAB approach is in a first best world probably inferior to
the direct procurement route, but the latter is ruled out by the Treasury
imposed constraints. The RAB model is a second best, but much better than
the Hinkley style contract.
None of these approaches leads to the conclusion that nuclear is either necessary or desirable to meet the twin
objectives of security of supply and decarbonisation, though it would
contribute to both. No smart contracting and regulating framework can magic
away the deep challenges that nuclear faces, notably: the possibility that
in the next 60 years much cheaper new low carbon technologies may become
available, possibly including new nuclear ones too; the very large upfront
and sunk costs; the risk and the safety regulation; and the challenges of
getting rid of the waste. It is for society to decide whether it wants new
nuclear or not. The market cannot decide. If that decision is to proceed,
the RAB model is both plausible and preferable to the Hinkley model.
Les Echos 4th July 2018, EDF anticipates “a few months” of delay on the site of the nuclear reactor
Norman, because of the problems of welding announced in April. The weld
problems of the Flamanville EPR announced in April will have an “impact” on
the date of commissioning of the nuclear reactor under construction, said Wednesday EDF. Until then, the electrician only mentioned a possible
“additional” delay.
“What we do know is that there will be an impact on the
project schedule. On the other hand, it is much too early to characterize
it, “said Bertrand Michoud, the site’s development director, reviewing
welding problems at a local information committee gathering industrialists,
the safety authority. (ASN), local elected representatives, unions and
associations, next to Flamanville (Manche). “The order of magnitude is a
few months,”
Nevada’s office of Nuclear Projects has called on David Wright to recuse himself from any further proceedings involving the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.
Wright is a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But Bob Halstead, executive director of the Governor’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, says he’s biased.
“Your participation in the Yucca Mountain licensing process would violate Nevada’s due process right to a neutral and unbiased decision-maker,” Halstead wrote in his formal request for Wright’s removal.
He cited Wright’s participation as an adviser to South Carolina as a member of that state’s Public Service Commission and support for the move by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners to force the Department of Energy to continue with the licensing process, which DoE shut down after the budget for licensing was cut by the Obama administration.
Halstead pointed to Wright’s “frequent and long-standing expressions of opinion that a repository at Yucca Mountain is necessary and will be safe, your criticism of Nevada for daring to oppose the Yucca Mountain repository and your formation of and active participation in at least one organization whose sole focus was the advancement and completion of the Yucca Mountain repository.” …….https://www.nevadaappeal.com/news/government/nevada-wants-official-removed-from-yucca-mountain-process/
Nuclear plant pushes for state assistance, Ledger Enquirer The Associated Press July 06, 2018 WATERFORD, CONN.
Owners of a Connecticut nuclear plant say the facility faces closure unless the state reverses course and fully considers the plant’s benefits to the environment and regional grid in an upcoming electricity auction.
The Day reports that Dominion Energy is urging state regulators to give the Millstone Power Station an “at risk” of closing distinction in an electricity auction. Dominion Energy claims rising expenses and competition from natural gas have weakened the plant.
“At risk” facilities have an advantage because they’re evaluated on their price as well as environmental benefits and grid reliability.
The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection says facilities won’t be considered for their risk status until 2023.
This loss of nuclear competence is being cited by nuclear and national security experts in both the U.S. and in Europe’s nuclear weapons states as a threat to their military nuclear programs. The White House cited this nuclear nexus in a May memo instructing Rick Perry, the Secretary of Energy, to force utilities to buy power from unprofitable nuclear and coal plants. The memo states that the “entire US nuclear enterprise” including nuclear weapons and naval propulsion, “depends on a robust civilian nuclear industry.”
A Double First in China for Advanced Nuclear Reactors, https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/a-double-first-in-china-for-advanced-nuclear-reactorsBy Peter Fairley 5 July 18 Call it the world’s slowest photo finish. After several decades of engineering, construction flaws and delays, and cost overruns — a troubled birth that cost their developers dearly — the most advanced commercial reactor designs from Europe and the United States just delivered their first megawatt-hours of electricity within one day of each other. But their benefits — including safety advances such as the AP1000’s passive cooling and the EPR’s airplane crash-proof shell — may offer too little, too late to secure future projects.
Both projects are coming online years behind schedule, and they are still at least several months away from full commercial operation. But the real problem for the AP1000 and the EPR are the designs’ unfinished Western debuts.
The AP1000 is designed to passively cool itself during an accidental shutdown, theoretically avoiding accidents like the one at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi. But AP1000 developer Westinghouse declared bankruptcy last year due to construction troubles, particularly at dual-reactor plants for utilities in Georgia and South Carolina. The latter abandoned their pair of partially built AP1000s after investing US $9 billion. The Georgia plant, initiated in 2012, is projected to be completed five years late in 2022 and at a cost of $25 billion — $11 billion more than budgeted.
Delays for the EPR, whose dual-layered concrete shield protects against airplane strikes, contributed to the breakup of Paris-based nuclear giant Areva in 2015. And the first EPR projects in France and Finland remain troubled under French utility Electricité de France (EDF), which absorbed Areva’s reactor business, Fromatome. The Finnish plant, started in 2005 and expected to take four years, is currently slated for startup next year, and deadlines continue to come and go. In June, Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj announced that startup had slid another four months to September 2019.
The troubled EPR and AP1000 projects show that U.S. and European firms have lost competence in nuclear construction and management. ”It’s no coincidence that two of the four AP1000s in the U.S. were abandoned, and that the EPRs that started much earlier than Taishan’s in Finland and France are still under construction,” says nuclear energy consultant Mycle Schneider, principal author of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. “The Chinese have a very large workforce that they move from one project to another, so their skills are actually getting better, whereas European and North American companies haven’t completed reactors in decades,” says Schneider.
This loss of nuclear competence is being cited by nuclear and national security experts in both the U.S. and in Europe’s nuclear weapons states as a threat to their military nuclear programs. The White House cited this nuclear nexus in a May memo instructing Rick Perry, the Secretary of Energy, to force utilities to buy power from unprofitable nuclear and coal plants. The memo states that the “entire US nuclear enterprise” including nuclear weapons and naval propulsion, “depends on a robust civilian nuclear industry.”
A letter sent to Perry last month by 75 former U.S. military, industrial and academic leaders adds to the nexus argument, citing a statement from the Trump Administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review about the United States’ inability to produce enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. “Re-establishing this capability will be far easier and more economical with a strong, thriving civil nuclear sector,” write the signatories.
Heavy dependence on China, meanwhile, puts the global nuclear industry in a vulnerable position. Total nuclear generation declined last year if one takes out China, notes Schneider. And he says a Chinese nuclear growth gap is coming since it hasn’t started building a new reactor in 18 months.
For more than a decade, the AP1000 has been the presumed successor to China’s mainstay reactors, which employ a 1970s-era French design. Areva’s EPR was a fallback option. The Chinese government may now wait to see how the first reactors actually operate before it approves a new wave of reactor construction.
All the while, nuclear is falling further behind renewable solar and wind power. As Schneider notes, the 3.3 GW of new nuclear capacity connected to the grid worldwide in 2017 (including three in China and a fourth in Pakistan built by Chinese firms) pales in comparison to the 53 GW of solar power installed in China alone.
The UK government has been forced to take a multibillion-pound nuclear cleanup contract back into public ownership, after a botched tender to the private sector landed the taxpayer with a £122m bill.
The government will take over the decommissioning of Britain’s 12 Magnox sites, including the former nuclear power stations at Dungeness in Kent and Hinkley Point in Somerset.
The move is a response to the fallout from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) awarding a 14-year deal to the international consortium Cavendish Fluor Partnership in 2014.
Last year the government settled with two US companies that lost out on the £6.2bn contract and brought a legal challenge over the tender process.
Ministers terminated the contract early, leading to speculation over whether it would be put out to tender again to the private sector or brought back into public hands.
David Peattie, the NDA’s chief executive, told staff he understood they had faced uncertainty in recent months, as he confirmed that the private company Magnox Ltd would become a subsidiary of the NDA on 1 September. He said the change would result in “more efficient decommissioning”.
A source close to the process said: “The reason that this has been done is to remove some of the commercial complications and the large fees paid to contractors. This will ensure more money is spent directly on cleaning up these sites.”
Unions said they wanted talks with the new management regime for assurances over pay and terms.
Peter McIntosh, the Unite union’s acting national officer for energy, said: “This decision is long overdue. The 2014 contract should not have been awarded to any organisation.”
He added: “We need to ensure the taxpayer gets value for money through the transfer of the business and it is not paid for at the expense of the workforce.”
Whitehall’s spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), has strongly criticised the NDA and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy over the handling and oversight of the nuclear cleanup contract, one of the government’s biggest ever.
A review of the failings that led to the bungled process, written by the former National Grid boss Steve Holliday, is due to be published later this year.
Bringing the Magnox work back into the public sector means that about 85% of Britain’s nuclear cleanup work is in public hands, after the NDA’s takeover of the Sellafield storage and reprocessing site in 2016.
The PAC last week announced an inquiry into the NDA’s work at Sellafield, which is forecast to be £913m over budget and faces potential delays.
Magnox Ltd looks after 10 former Magnox power stations and two nuclear research sites.
Plans for a controversial multibillion-dollar U.S. nuclear research reactor are coming together at lightning speed—much too fast, say some nuclear policy experts. With a push from Congress, the Department of Energy (DOE) has begun designing the Versatile Fast Neutron Source, which would be the first DOE-built reactor since the 1970s. It would generate high-energy neutrons for testing materials and fuels for so-called fast reactors. But U.S. utilities have no plans to deploy such reactors, which some nuclear proliferation analysts say pose a risk because they use plutonium, the stuff of atomic bombs.
Researchers are divided on whether the reactor, which would likely be built at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) near Idaho Falls, is badly needed or a boondoggle. “Definitely, there is a lack of capability in the U.S. and a shortage of such facilities worldwide,” says Massimiliano Fratoni, a nuclear engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. But Frank von Hippel, a nuclear physicist at Princeton University, says, “It’s a pork-barrel project.”
The reactor does enjoy extraordinary congressional support. In March, Congress gave the project $35 million for this year, although DOE only requested $10 million. The House of Representatives and the Senate have passed separate bills that call for completing the facility by 2025, with the House bill authorizing DOE to spend $2 billion. Von Hippel speculates that the cost could end up reaching $10 billion.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority has concluded that the Tokai No. 2 nuclear power plant in Ibaraki Prefecture, operated by Japan Atomic Power Co., meets improved safety standards for a restart.
The watchdog body’s decision effectively paves the way for bringing the idled facility back online.
But a slew of questions and concerns cast serious doubt on the wisdom of restarting this aging nuclear plant located at the northern tip of the Tokyo metropolitan area, given that it is approaching the end of its 40-year operational lifespan.
There is a compelling case against bringing the plant back on stream unless these concerns are properly addressed.
The first major question is how the project can be squared with the rules for reducing the risk of accidents at aging nuclear facilities.
The 40-year lifespan for nuclear reactors is an important rule to reduce the risk of accidents involving aging reactors that was introduced in the aftermath of the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in 2011.
Although a reactor’s operational life can be extended by up to 20 years if approved by the NRA, the government, at the time of the revision to the law, said it would be granted only in exceptional cases.
Despite this caveat, Kansai Electric Power Co.’s applications for extensions for its three aging reactors all got the green light.
The NRA has yet to approve the requested extension of the Tokai No. 2 plant’s operational life. But it is obvious that the nuclear watchdog’s approval will cause further erosion of the rule. It will also undermine the regulatory regime to limit the lifespan of nuclear facilities per se.
Local communities have also raised objections to restarting the Tokai No. 2 plant. Some 960,000 people live within 30 kilometers of the plant, more than in any other 30-km emergency planning zone.
The local governments within the zone are struggling to develop legally required emergency evacuation plans to prepare for major accidents.
This spring, an agreement was reached between Japan Atomic Power and five municipalities around the plant, including Mito, that commits the operator to seek approval from local authorities within the 30-km zone before restarting the plant.
Winning support from the local communities for the plant reactivation plan is undoubtedly a colossal challenge, given strong anxiety about the facility’s safety among local residents. The gloomy situation was brought home by the Mito municipal assembly’s adoption of a written opinion opposing the plan.
But Japan Atomic Power is determined to carry through the plan as its survival depends on the plant continuing operation.
The company was set up simply to produce and sell electricity by using atomic energy. Its nuclear reactors are all currently offline, which has placed the entity in serious financial difficulty.
Since the company is unable to raise on its own funds to implement the necessary safety measures at the Tokai No. 2 plant, which are estimated to exceed 170 billion yen ($1.54 billion), Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) and Tohoku Electric Power Co., which are both shareholders and customers of the company, will provide financial support.
But TEPCO has been put under effective state control to deal with the costly consequences of the Fukushima disaster.
It is highly doubtful that the utility, which is kept alive with massive tax-financed support, is qualified to take over the financial risk of the business of another company in trouble.
TEPCO claims the Tokai No. 2 plant is promising as a source of low-cost and stable power supply, although it has not offered convincing grounds for the claim.
Some members of the NRA have voiced skepticism about this view.
TEPCO and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which supervises the power industry, have a responsibility to offer specific and detailed explanations about related issues to win broad public support for the plan to reactivate the Tokai No. 2 nuclear plant.
A hard look at the grim situation surrounding the plant leaves little doubt that restarting it does not make sense.
Japan Atomic Power and the major electric utilities that own it should undertake a fundamental review of the management of the nuclear power company without delaying efforts to tackle the problems besetting the operator of the Tokai No. 2 plant.
A new wave of nuclear reactor restarts became more likely as the government approved the new Basic Energy Plan on July 3, confirming that nuclear power will remain a key component of Japan’s energy strategy.
But by rubber-stamping the plan, the government also strengthened its commitment to giving renewables such as solar and wind power a major role in energy generation.
The latest Basic Energy Plan, which charts the nation’s mid- and long-term energy policy, marks the fifth in a series that is required by law to be reviewed about every three years.
The second plan to be revised under the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stated for the first time that the country will strive to make renewable energy a major power source, although it noted fluctuations in output due to weather conditions.
Renewables can become a viable source of a stable power supply when they are combined with rechargeable batteries and hydrogen, according to the plan.
The plan also maintained the reliance on coal-fired thermal power as a base-load energy source despite high emissions of carbon dioxide.
The Abe administration decided to promote nuclear energy when it revised the plan in 2014, reversing the policy of the previous government led by the then-Democratic Party of Japan, which pledged to phase out nuclear power by 2039 in the face of mounting public concern over the safety of nuclear power following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Under the latest plan, the ratio of nuclear energy, renewables and coal thermal power in the nation’s overall energy as of fiscal 2030 will remain at 20-22 percent, 22-24 percent and 26 percent, respectively, in line with the government’s target set three years ago.
Experts say about 30 reactors need to be reactivated to achieve the 20-22 percent target, but only nine have gone back on line so far after they cleared the more stringent reactor regulations that took effect after the Fukushima accident.
The plan did not touch on the need for building a new nuclear plant in light of the widespread public opinion against nuclear energy. The last Basic Energy Plan did not mention the subject, either.
The latest plan re-endorsed using the nuclear fuel cycle, in which plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel at nuclear plants is used to generate power.
But the plan, noting calls from the United States, said that Japan “will make efforts to cut the stockpile of plutonium.”
Japan holds a total of 47 tons of plutonium, equivalent to 6,000 Nagasaki-type atomic bombs, a source of criticism from the United States and other countries.
The country has failed to reduce its plutonium stockpile due to little progress in the nuclear fuel cycle over decades.
The project to operate the Monju prototype fast-breeder reactor in Fukui Prefecture, the core part of the nuclear fuel cycle, rarely worked over 20 years due to numerous glitches. The government finally decided to pull the plug on it in 2016.
Burning a mixed oxide form of plutonium and uranium has not spread among conventional nuclear reactors, although it was considered a way to reduce the plutonium stockpile.
In its attempts to export nuclear plants, the country has hit major problems wherever it has pitched them.
But the government will maintain the export policy as a key component of the administration’s strategy for expanding the Japanese economy.
According to the Basic Energy Plan, “Japan is determined to make a positive contribution to enhancing the safety of nuclear energy and the peaceful use of nuclear energy” through exports of nuclear plants.
World Nuclear News 4th July 2018 , French engineering group Assystem is to conduct site characterisation and
impact studies for Saudi Arabia’s first nuclear power plant under a
contract from the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy
(KA-CARE). The contract was awarded recently following an international
call for tenders launched by KA-CARE. Assystem said the services to be
provided under the contract include site characterisation studies –
including geological and seismic analyses – as well as studies on the
impact of a nuclear power plant on the environment, demographics and on
electricity grids. These services will be provided over an 18-month period. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-Assystem-to-assess-potential-Saudi-sites-0407185.html
Natural gas pipelines can be targeted by cyberattacks. So can electric grids. And power plants. And hospitals, city governments, banks, entertainment companies, and virtually anything else that exists in the digital age.
Like most of those entities, pipeline companies have taken aggressive steps to better shield their infrastructure from hackers, isolate critical systems, and beef up physical security. Recent allegations by some that the natural gas industry is increasingly vulnerable to cyberattack are unsubstantiated and not based on any factual evidence.
A recent incident affecting a third-party service provider, used for scheduling and nominations by some pipeline operators, demonstrates how the industry’s preparedness protects consumers. After an attack in March halted data exchanges from the company, the operators that used their services to facilitate gas deliveries and billing sprang into action. There was no impact on natural gas deliveries and gas never stopped moving through pipelines as a result of this incident.
Natural gas pipeline companies have a long standing track record of reliable service, and are dedicated to meeting the highest industry and federal standards for safety, security and resilience, ensuring the flow of natural gas. This is par for the course in an industry where the number of threats are increasing, but advances in security and system resilience have made inflicting any real damage increasingly difficult.
Compared to cyberattacks that shut down entire electric grids in the Ukraine and a ransomware virus that hobbled services in Atlanta for days, the natural gas industry has avoided any attacks causing a halt in services. Preparedness is key, and the industry has demonstrated its commitment through participation in programs like the Downstream Natural Gas Information Sharing and Analysis Center, as well as real-world training exercises like the NERC GridEx. There is still work to be done, but we are on the right track.
Despite this progress, a recently leaked “pre-decisional” memo from the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Security Council argues that natural gas cybersecurity threats are proof that aging coal and nuclear power plants need to be propped up through unprecedented and legally-questionable use of federal national security powers.
This represents a solution to a problem that does not exist. If the Energy Department acts, consumers will be saddled with as much as $11.8 billion to pay for the uneconomic coal and nuclear plants.
That might be justifiable if these facilities increased the reliability of the grid. But they don’t. That’s why threepreviousattempts to find legal justification to subsidize these plants have failed. That’s also why PJM, the non-profit electric grid operator for the region that has seen most coal and nuclear retirements, dismissed the proposal as “damaging to markets and therefore costly to consumers.”
5 July 18 Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation now says first reactor to come online in late 2019 or early 2020, The United Arab Emirates said Wednesday that its first nuclear reactor would come online in late 2019 or early 2020, further delaying the launch of the Arab World’s first atomic power station….https://www.arabianbusiness.com/energy/400041-uae-further-delays-launch-of-first-nuclear-reactor
Morning Star 29th June 2018 ,ENVIRONMENT Secretary Michael Gove promised earlier this month to crack
down on “crony capitalism.” At the same time his cabinet colleague
Energy Secretary Greg Clark was offering a £5 billion bailout to Japanese
nuclear firm Hitachi.
It looks like a classic crony capitalist deal. Gove
argued: “Crony capitalists have rigged the system in their favour and
against the rest of us.” A classic crony capitalist deal is where a big
firm uses its power and lobbying to squeeze a contract from the government
that is good for the capitalists but bad for us.
The Hitachi bailout looks like such a rigged deal. Hitachi Europe chief executive Sir Stephen
Gommersall isn’t an expert in nuclear power or engineering. He is the
former British ambassador to Japan. Gommersall was hired right out of the
Foreign Office to help open doors for Hitachi. Tim Stone sits on the board
of Horizon Nuclear Power, Hitachi’s British nuclear arm. Stone, a former
KPMG consultant, was chief adviser to the energy secretary from 2008-13,
helping shape both Labour and Tory-Lib Dem governments’ nuclear energy
policy. Before that Stone advised the government on many PFI deals,
including famously bad-value ones. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/nuclear-powered-crony-capitalism
nuclear-news 