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Russia’s pension funds for elderly – used to pay for building Finland’s nuclear power plant

“Finland’s Pyhäjoki nuclear plant takes our pension money”    While four million elderly Russians live below the poverty line, the country’s pension fund pays for Rosatom-backed nuclear plant in northern-Finland. «Deeply unfair,» says Oleg Bodrov from the closed town of Sosnovy Bor near St. Petersburg.   Barents Observer By  Thomas Nilsen, January 29, 2018

Reactor design, construction, uranium supplies and important financier. Russia has a core role in what will be Finland’s northernmost nuclear power plant. Located in Pyhäjoki south of Oulu, construction work has already started. Though, the plant still lack building permit.

«What happens in Finland is even more controversial than how the nuclear industry behave home in Russia,» says Oleg Bodrov, a prominent expert on Russia’s nuclear complex. Bodrov chairs the Public Council of the South Coast of the Gulf of Finland, an environmental network with the majority of members from the St. Petersburg area.

«According to Russian law, no-one can start construction work without having the final permit for building a nuclear power plant,» Bodrov explains and shakes his head over what happens in Finland.

Huge trucks are already moving excavated soil and rock at the site where the nuclear power company Fennovoima prepares the ground near the Gulf of Bothnia. Buildings are raised. As previously reported, the permit is delayed by Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK), and is likely not to be ready before the end of 2018.

The nuclear power plant project is controversial in Finland.

«Our pensioners’ money»

Parts of the funding to the plant, where RAOS Voima, a subsidiary to Russia’s state-owned company Rosatom, holds 34% of the shares comes from the National Wealth Fund.

«They are playing with the money of our pensioners,» says Oleg Bodrov.

He argues that this part of the fund is at high risk. «There is no way building a nuclear power plant in Finland will give pay-back to Russia. All future predictions show that alternative energy will produce electricity cheaper than nuclear reactors.»

Oleg Bodrov has first hand knowledge. Coming from the closed town of Sosnovy Bor, he has for decades monitored developments at Leningrad nuclear power plant. Within some weeks, a new reactor of the VVER-1200 design will be commissioned. This reactor is similar to the one to be built in northern Finland.

Little transparency in Russia

«Russian nuclear industry is a closed society. Hundreds of thousands of people are employed, often living in closed cities where there are little transparency into funding and technology,» Bodrov explains. «Now, Russia is exporting it’s newest and biggest reactor project abroad. Only to keep alive its own society of nuclear workers.»

«There are about four million pensioners living below the poverty line in Russia today. They need the money, not subsidized nuclear industry in other countries.»

……….. Second-hand uranium from Kola PeninsulaThe uranium fuel for the reactor is also to be delivered by Rosatom.

In a supplement to the application for construction, Fennovoima says it has chosen to use reprocessed uranium fuel during the first operating years.

This is uranium extracted from nuclear fuel earlier removed from a reactor. Today, Russia has one such reprocessing plant, located in Mayak, South Urals. Here, all spent fuel from military submarines and civilian nuclear powered icebreakers on the Kola Peninsula is reprocessed. So are fuel from VVER-440 reactors.

Oleg Bodrov warns the Finnish government about this deal and says Finland must study closer how the reprocessing industry in Russia works.

«Reprocessing submarine and icebreaker fuel from the Kola Peninsula creates huge amount of nuclear waste. Part of this is liquid and from the Mayak plant, leakages could go to the river system connected with Ob and with the water-flow end up in the Arctic. The mouth of Ob river is to the Kara Sea.

«Finland’s nuclear power plant construction in Pyhäjoki is not only social and economical a bad idea. It is also environmental risky, in Finland, in Russia and for the Arctic,» Oleg Bodrov says.

Bodrov’s Russian network is together with Friends of the Earth in Norway and Greenpeace in Finland now working on a project promoting renewable energy cooperation across the borders between Russia and the Nordic countries. https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2018/01/finlands-pyhajoki-nuclear-plant-takes-our-pension-money

February 2, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, Finland, politics, Russia | Leave a comment

Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review – quite a mess

North Korea: Trump administration’s ‘sloppy work’ in Nuclear Posture Review   AT FIRST glance you might not see what’s wrong with this map used in Donald Trump’s nuclear review. But it has left some experts baffled. news.com.au , Debra Killalea, 1 Feb 18, 

A DRAFT report of the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) has been slammed as embarrassing after featuring a graphic showing Debra Killaleaa very different looking North Korea.

The draft report, leaked two weeks ago, omits South Korea and instead shows the whole peninsula represented by the North’s flag.

Experts slammed the “sloppy work” in the report and said they hoped it would be corrected ahead of its final release tomorrow, US time.

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, raised concerns about the map, tweeting the authors actually want to strengthen tailored deterrence.

The concerns over the graphic were echoed by Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress, who said the Pentagon could not release a policy document that failed to recognise South Korea.

He also slammed it as embarrassing and unforgivable, adding it was the latest in a series of “avoidable offences”.

South Korea is a major US ally with the two countries forging strong military and economic ties.

Two weeks ago, Mr Mount said the leaked review translates Mr Trump’s impulses into an order for new, more usable nuclear options. He also called it “strategically risky”.

The NPR is used to determine the role of nuclear weapons in the security strategy of the US.

‘EMBARRASSING’ ERROR

John Blaxland, Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies and director of ANU’s Southeast Asia Institute, said the mistake was embarrassing but wasn’t worth reading too much into………

“There is a growing consensus among academic institutions and civil society organisations that the efficacy of nuclear weapons as a deterrent of state-on-state war has waned, if it ever worked effectively in the first place,” he said.

Prof Blaxland said some people argued it wasn’t the atomic weapons dropped on Japan in 1945 that led to Japan’s surrender but rather Russia’s declaration of war.

He also said the steps being proposed by the US today are likely to be extremely expensive and of dubious additional benefit…….

NO GOOD NUKE’

Critics are already warning the NPR could trigger another arms race and raise the risk of miscalculations that might spark an atomic conflict.

Beatrice Fihn, executive director of International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), said the Trump review raised some serious concerns.

“The risk of use for nuclear weapons has always been unacceptably high,” she said.

“The new Trump nuclear doctrine is to deliberately increase that risk. It is an all-out attempt to take nuclear weapons out of the silos and onto the battlefield.

“This policy is a shift from one where the use of nuclear weapons is possible to one where the use of nuclear weapons is likely.”

She also said there was no such thing as a good nuclear weapon.

CONCERNS GROW

The Union of Concerned Scientists has also raised some concerns about the review and has said the gap between China and the US is too wide to argue Washington is lagging behind in a significant way.

While acknowledging Beijing has made significant advances in its nuclear capabilities, it said China’s arsenal is smaller than the US had in 1950.

In a White Paper released last month, they also argue there’s little evidence China is pursuing “entirely new” nuclear capabilities.

The People for Nuclear Disarmament said the leaked NPR made global thermonuclear war more, not less, likely and global nuclear arms racing more probable.

Nuclear disarmament campaigner John Hallam said Mr Trump was looking for ways in which he could differentiate himself from, and take credit for, the immense expansion of US nuclear infrastructure initiated by former president Obama.

Mr Hallam said there is considerable continuity between the Obama and the Trump approach but there was a key difference.

“The only important difference — and it certainly is important — is that while under Obama, the direction of the US nuclear arsenal was officially down it is not officially up,” he said.

“Trump makes no bones about wanting to expand US nuclear capabilities. Never mind if they don’t need them. Never mind if it initiates an arms race or never mind if it makes an apocalypse more likely.

“Obama was also more likely to at least think about risk reduction measures such as de-alerting and no-first-use. Those measures are now clearly not to be considered.” http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/north-korea-trump-administrations-sloppy-work-in-nuclear-posture-review/news-story/15d4114708e70085f87d96d5bbc2ddfe

February 2, 2018 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

New Nuclear : Britain’s Danse Macabre

NuClearNews No 104  New Nuclear –Dance Macabre

With the Japanese media reporting somewhat prematurely that the UK and Japanese Governments have agreed to provide the lion’s share of financing for two new reactors at Wylfa on the Island of Anglesey, and EDF Energy claiming it can build Sizewell C for at least 20% less than Hinkley Point C, one has to wonder if there is some sort of battle going on between EDF and Hitachi to get their hands on limited taxpayer funds.

 But all either company seems to be getting from Government at the moment is warm words. In the meantime, as we shall see in a subsequent story, the Government has cut its projections for nuclear capacity in 2035 from 17GW to 14GW.

Two other EPRs are under construction at Taishan (China). (2) The latest commissioning delay at Taishan is the third in two years and will lead to a further deferral of 5 billion yuan (US$770 million) in annual revenues and potentially more cost overruns, according to ratings agency Moody’s. CGN said right at the end of December that generation at the two reactors had been delayed to 2018 and 2019, from the second half of 2017 and the first half of 2018 respectively. (3) CGN, which is building the plant in a joint-venture with EDF, admitted, in December, to ’partial defects’ in the welding of the three parts of the deaerator. But the state-owned company stressed that the component, which helps cool down the reactor, ’is not part of the nuclear safety system’.

But international consultant, Mycle Schneider, says the problem goes way deeper than that. It poses questions about lax quality control which could impact on nuclear safety. He says this goes beyond a lack of transparency and constitutes a major indictment of CGN. (4)

Sizewell C

EDF claims it can build a second nuclear power station to follow Hinkley Point C (HPC) for20% less. HPC is expected to cost it at least £19.6 billion, and as much as £20.3 billion if delays push the start date back from 2025 to 2027, (although EDF says it is confident HPC will come on linein 2025).

The majority French Government-owned company says it can cut the construction cost for Sizewell C (SZC) thanks to efficiencies from “copying and pasting” large elements of HPC. (1)

This is for a reactor type which has yet to be built successfully anywhere in the world, with projects in France, Finland and China all delayed. CGN, the Chinese company working in partnership with EDF in Britain and China, confirmed further delays at their Taishan project in January. (See Box 1)

EDF expects to be able to make savings at SZC by eliminating the majority of the £2 billion costs it spent on pre-construction work at HPC. It also expects to make billions more in savings by using contractors and equipment that have already gone through training and certification processes for use on nuclear sites. Cutting the cost of building to about £15 billion could help to reduce the subsidy contract price to nearer £70 per megawatt hour (MWh) (See Box 2).

The Company believes that significant further reductions could be made if the government were to agree a new financing model so that developers did not have to bear all the upfront construction cost. EDF, along with the rest of the industry and the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee, is urging ministers to look at alternative funding models that the National Audit Office said would have significantly reduced the eventual cost to consumers had they been used for HPC. These include the government taking a direct equity stake or adopting a regulated asset base model similar to that used for the Thames Tideway Tunnel, under which developers would receive income during construction. Without such a change, the project is unlikely to go ahead since EDF, which required a French state bailout to afford HPC, could not fund another plant in advance. (5)

The Guardian explained that the Thames Water approach for London’s £4.2bn super-sewer allows the project to be taken off the company’s balance sheet by creating a new company that other investors pour equity into. Pension funds are among the potential investors EDF is hoping to court. Unlike a consortium seeking a public stake for a separate nuclear power plant at Wylfa in Wales, Simone Rossi, EDF’s new chief executive said government finance was not a prerequisite. (6)

Rossi says he’s is in talks with major investment funds to support the project. He confirmed to The Daily Telegraph that early stage talks have already begun and a deal may be agreed before the end of the year. The pressure to drive nuclear subsidies lower follows a dramatic decline in costs for other low-carbon energy technologies such as wind and solar power. Offshore wind in particular has halved its costs in recent years with recent projects accepting deals of under £58/MWh to build turbines. (7)

Dr Dave Toke, reader in Energy Politics at Aberdeen University, said EDF’s ‘cheap nuclear’ plan will ruin taxpayers. If the plan involves getting taxpayers to pay for a large chunk of the ‘equity’ financing of the plant and getting the Government to guarantee the bulk of the rest of the costs, this could lead to the biggest black hole in the nation’s finances since the financial crash which would have a catastrophic effect on public finances and deprive the Exchequer of many billions £s that could otherwise be spent on public services. This will be the subsidy to top all subsidieshttp://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/NuClearNews_No104.pdf

February 2, 2018 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

EPA chief’s only true option is to remove West Lake’s radioactive hazard

s http://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-epa-chief-s-only-true-option-is-to-remove/article_929d4e36-9dc3-519b-af15-a9e5a8b582ce.html, By the Editorial Board

E

      nvironmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is

hours away from a decision

     on the future of the West Lake Landfill — a decision that could free the St. Louis area of the seven-decade environmental burden it has borne in America’s quest for nuclear superiority.

For Pruitt, the right decision would be costly and complicated. The wrong decision, though far cheaper and most expedient, would leave in place a radioactive nightmare that would haunt the region for generations to come. The right decision is the only decision.

At issue are thousands of tons of radioactive waste left over from secret uranium refinement carried out in St. Louis during the Manhattan Project, the 1940s effort to produce America’s first nuclear bomb. Although officials at the time were well aware of the radioactive dangers, they paid little heed to where they dumped the wastes from years of uranium processing. An uncovered, unlined pit at the West Lake landfill became the dumpsite of choice, two miles northwest of St. Louis Lambert International Airport

The landfill, uphill and less than two miles from the Missouri River, was never designed for radioactive waste and never would have met today’s federal safety guidelines. Various radioactive hot zones have been discovered in downstream watersheds, as have large cancer clusters among residents. For years, a slow-moving underground fire at an adjacent landfill is believed to be advancing toward the buried nuclear waste.

 In tests conducted from 2012 to 2014, groundwater at West Lake contained unsafe levels of radioactive uranium, radium and thorium-230, along with arsenic, manganese, barium and benzene.

An exhaustive, 814-page EPA study, updated on Jan. 10, outlines the dangers and costs associated with six options Pruitt can choose from for West Lake. One option, doing nothing, is laughable. Three cheaper proposals call for partial excavation of the site at varying depths and capping the site but leaving many toxins behind. The two best options involve full excavation — one would store the waste on-site in a modern, secure containment cell, and the other would transport it offsite to a remote, federally approved storage facility.

 Full excavation and removal would keep the region safest over the long term. But it’s also the most expensive option at $695 million. Capping the site would cost about $75 million but also would pose the greatest future cancer risks to farmers and residents downstream.

Pruitt has the comfort of making this decision from Washington, D.C., far from the exposure zone. We urge him to consider all who have suffered so far because of the irresponsible, lazy solutions imposed on St. Louis decades ago. If Pruitt would regard it as unacceptable for his own family to be exposed to such risks, then he must conclude that St. Louisans deserve the same consideration. This radioactive time bomb must go.

January 31, 2018 Posted by | environment, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Massachusetts gets a great power deal from Quebec. What is Ontario waiting for?

-Angela Bischoff,, 31 Jan 18, On the heels of signing an agreement to supply Massachusetts with enough power to meet the needs of one million homes at the barn burner price of 3 to 5.3 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), Hydro Quebec says it is still ready to make similar deals with Ontario and New York.

Meanwhile, Ontario muddles forward with plans to rebuild aging nuclear reactors at tremendous expense and is about to hold hearings on the safety of keeping the 47-year-old Pickering Nuclear Station (surrounded by 2.2 million people) running for up to another 10 years. As a result, Ontario Power Generation has told the Ontario Energy Board that it will need to raise its price of nuclear power to 16.5 cents per kWh.

Hydro Quebec has already offered Ontario power at a great price (5 cents kWh) only to have this province respond with the bizarre claim that the offer wasn’t competitive enough — despite it being less than one third the cost of rebuilding and extending our aging nuclear fleet.

Now Quebec is making it clear it won’t wait forever for Ontario to come to its senses and will prioritize deals with those jurisdictions that are ready to reap the benefits of its low-cost, renewable power right now.

With five months until the next provincial election, could this be the moment when our opposition parties finally get serious about offering real solutions to dealing with rising electricity costs and begin to champion making a deal with Quebec? Are there any candidates for the PC leadership ready to offer real help to Ontario power users by promising to quickly ink a deal with Quebec? Will the NDP make a money-saving Quebec deal part of its “pocketbook” promises to help average Ontarians? The next few months should be very interesting.

Please contact Interim PC Leader Vic Fedeli [vic.fedeli@pc.ola.org], potential PC Leadership candidate Caroline Mulroney [caroline@carolinemulroney.ca] and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath [ahorwath-qp@ndp.on.ca] and ask them to champion a long-term deal with Hydro Quebec to lower our electricity bills.

January 31, 2018 Posted by | Canada, politics, renewable | 1 Comment

SCE&G customers may get reprieve from paying for failed nuke plant – at least temporarily

By Andrew Brown and Jamie Lovegrove abrown@postandcourier.com jlovegrove@postandcourier.com

    Jan 30, 2018 , COLUMBIA — A compromise being considered by state lawmakers would temporarily halt nuclear-related payments to SCANA until regulators and the state’s courts decide who should pay for the cancelled reactors at V.C. Summer.

The South Carolina House is set to amend legislation that would roll back the 2007 law that put in motion the eventual $9 billion construction failure in Fairfield County, according to three sources familiar with the amendment.

House leaders briefed the Republican and Democratic caucuses about the amendment Tuesday afternoon. The measure could be brought up for a vote as early as Wednesday. …….https://www.postandcourier.com/business/s-c-house-plans-to-suspend-nuclear-payments-to-scana/article_9fa23698-05e6-11e8-a13e-03634560ece0.html

January 31, 2018 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump ready to spend $716 Billion on weapons in fiscal 2019 budget

Pentagon Wins as Trump Readies a $716 Billion Budget Request, Bloomberg, By 

Anthony Capaccio and Erik Wasson 
  • Big increase for Pentagon would deepen the U.S. deficit
    • Mattis has raised alarm over U.S. ‘competitive edge’ eroding

    President Donald Trump will propose $716 billion in defense spending in his fiscal 2019 budget request, a 7.2 percent from his request for this year that backs the Pentagon’s push for a major buildup, a U.S. official said.

     The funding would include $597 billion for the Defense Department’s base budget, with the rest going for its war-fighting account and to other government programs such as the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the release of Trump’s second proposed budget next month.

    The amount is a sharp increase from the $668 billion total Trump proposed last year for fiscal 2018 and also offered as a placeholder for fiscal 2019. Currently, the Pentagon is operating under stopgap funding at fiscal 2017 levels, which totaled $634 billion. The plan, reported earlier Friday by the Washington Post, represents a victory of defense hawks over those trying to constrain deficit spending.

     The U.S. official confirmed Trump’s next proposed budget will include major increases on procurement spending over the $124 billion sought this year.
     Mattis’s Push

    Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has pushed for a jump in defense spending to match the breadth of the new National Defense Strategy he released this month……….

  • Ultimately, Trump’s proposal will be measured by the amount it exceeds the caps in the Budget Control Act of 2011.Unless Congress waives the budget limits, as it’s done three times in the past, the cap for fiscal 2019, which begins Oct. 1, is $563 billion for defense-related spending, including $534 billion for the base defense budget.

    War-Fighting Fund

    The official said more than $90 billion of Trump’s budget proposal would come from the war-fighting fund — known as Overseas Contingency Operations — that’s exempt from caps. While the fund is supposedly for pressing war needs, it’s often used as a tool to bulk up overall defense funding. Trump’s war-fighting budget for the current year includes $10 billion for weapons acquisition……..https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/trump-is-said-to-seek-716-billion-for-defense-in-2019-budget

January 29, 2018 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Abe’s government moving towards abandoning Japan’s no-nuclear weapon policy?

Is Japan moving to renege on no-nuclear weapon policy? http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/opinion/30337363, opinion January 29, 2018  , By Cai Hong ,China Daily , Asia News Network , Tokyo    Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, was denied a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during her recent visit to Japan.

Visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Fihn urged Japan, the only country to have suffered nuclear attacks, to play a leading role in the campaign aimed at abolishing nuclear weapons.

It is not difficult to understand why Abe shunned Fihn. She has appealed to the Japanese government to join the nuclear weapons ban treaty. But on January 17, Japan and the United States allowed their agreement on nuclear cooperation to automatically renew in July, when it is supposed to expire. The agreement, signed in 1988, gives Japan blanket approval to reprocess spent nuclear fuel for weapons-grade plutonium. Japan adopted nuclear power in the 1950s (one of the first countries to do so) at the urging of the US. In fact, the US began engaging with Japan on nuclear energy soon after the end of World War II, as it was eager to promote and sell its nuclear reactor technology around the world.

Japan had to return some 300 kilograms of plutonium, provided by the US, Britain and France decades ago for what was described as research purposes, to the US in 2016. Thanks to the US-Japan cooperation agreement on peaceful uses of nuclear energy, Japan now owns 48 tonnes of separated plutonium, most of which is in Europe, where it was reprocessed. And Japan has no clearly defined use for this huge amount of nuclear material. Japan once hoped fast reactors would help meet its energy security needs, take care of its surplus plutonium and solve its spent fuel problem. But that hope has faded. Commercialising of fast reactors is still decades away. Surplus weapons-grade material have always worried arms control experts. In 1977, believing that nuclear weapons could be made from plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel in Japan’s light water reactors, the US conveyed its view to Tokyo, according to Japanese diplomatic documents declassified in 2013.

Now, despite having surplus plutonium, Japan is planning to open a massive spent reactor fuel reprocessing plant at Rokkasho, the country’s large commercial reprocessing facility, in the autumn of 2018. It is designed to produce 8,000kg of weapons-usable plutonium enough to make 1,000 nuclear weapons a year, according to International Atomic Energy Agency standards. The ostensible reason for operating the plant is recycling spent fuel to supply power reactors and a fast reactor.

In their Foreign Policy article on August 17, 2017, Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Centre, and William Tobey, a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, said Japan has five reactors on line and terminated its only fast reactor project. So Japan cannot operate Rokkasho in the northern part of the country without piling up tons of plutonium for years on end. The Rokkasho plant would significantly increase Japan’s existing plutonium surplus. A potential linkage between Rokkasho’s product and nuclear weapons has been hanging over the project from the start. Japan will only be able to burn a fraction of the huge amount of nuclear material extracted there. Japanese reprocessing plants will produce reactor-grade plutonium, but they will have high weapons’ potential.

 Japan has a “three Nos” national policy on nuclear weapons: no possession, no manufacture and no allowing nuclear weapons on Japanese territory. But there is no lack of Japanese politicians talking about nuclear weapons. Former Japanese defence minister Shigeru Ishiba, seen as a possible successor to Abe, said in September that Japan should have the technology to build a nuclear weapon if it wants to do so. He added, though, that he is not taking the position that Japan should have nuclear weapons.

Japan’s plutonium surplus goes against its principle of not possessing the material without a specified purpose.

January 29, 2018 Posted by | Japan, politics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Legislation to protect Georgia consumers from Vogtle nuclear power costs

Georgia Senate bill aims to protect consumers’ pocketbooks from Vogtle, Savannah Now, January 27, 2018, By Mary Landersmary.landers@savannahnow.com  Legislation co-sponsored by state Sen. Lester Jackson, D-Savannah, seeks to limit the money paid by ratepayers — particularly schools — for Georgia Power’s expansion of Plant Vogtle.

If enacted as written, it would immediately reduce monthly residential power bills. And it could provide big rebates if the project isn’t completed.

The troubled expansion is five years behind schedule and its price tag has nearly doubled to $27 billion. Despite a staff recommendation that the project is uneconomic and a finding that the company will make $5 billion in profits from the delays, the Georgia Public Service Commission in December gave the green light to complete the expansion with few added consumer safeguards.

Senate Bill 355, sponsored by Rome Republican Chuck Hufstetler and introduced Wednesday, would amend the Georgia Nuclear Energy Financing Act to limit in several ways the ongoing collection of a nuclear fee while these reactors are being built and prevent the utility from automatically collecting the same nuclear fee on future projects. It would also provide for a refund if the reactors never become operational…….. http://savannahnow.com/news/2018-01-26/georgia-senate-bill-aims-protect-consumers-pocketbooks-vogtle

January 29, 2018 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

No plan for vote on financial rescue for Ohio nuclear plants

 http://www.the-review.com/news/20180128/no-plan-for-vote-on-financial-rescue-for-ohio-nuclear-plants  COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A state lawmaker says there are no plans to hold more hearings on a proposal to increase electrical bills to help keep Ohio’s two nuclear power plants operating.

Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. has been pushing for the financial rescue that it says is needed to keep the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo and the Perry plant near Cleveland operating.

The legislation would give FirstEnergy’s plants an extra $180 million a year.

Republican Sen. Bill Beagle leads the Senate’s Public Utilities Committee. He says he doesn’t anticipate taking up a vote on the plan.

A FirstEnergy executive said earlier this week that the plants will likely close without a financial rescue.

The company has been saying the plants can’t compete with cheaper natural gas plants in the current market.

January 29, 2018 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

State of Nevada raises new concerns on plan to license Yucca Mountain as nuclear waste dump

Nevada raises new concerns about Yucca Mountain licensing plan, Las Vegas Review Journal, By Gary Martin Review-Journal Washington Bureau, January 26, 2018 – WASHINGTON — Nevada has detailed fresh concerns about plans to expedite licensing of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear repository in a report that was delivered Friday by the state’s congressional delegation to key House members.

Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., distributed the state’s report to lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce and the House Appropriation committees asking that they review it before moving forward on the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act.

The amendments bill passed out of the Energy Committee on a 49-4 vote last June, and is largely expected to pass in the full House, which has yet to schedule a vote.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval has led the state’s opposition to storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, noting that “no amount of monetary benefits can compensate for the coerced selection of an unsafe site.”

In the report, the state said the bill does not address the amount of funding that would be needed for expediting the licensing application by the Department of Energy and the participation of federal, state and local governments in the process before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The state also says in its report that the bill ignores potential adverse economic impacts that could result in developing Yucca Mountain, noting the uncertainty of liability of DOE contractors……https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-nevada/nevada-raises-new-concerns-about-yucca-mountain-licensing-plan/

January 29, 2018 Posted by | politics, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

How to impose a radioactive trash dump UK style – bribe communities and bypass local authorities

Times 26th Jan 2018, Communities will receive up to £42 million if they agree to consider
hosting an underground nuclear waste dump. They can keep the money even if
they ultimately decide against it, under government plans. The payments,
which will be spread over 20 years, are aimed at persuading communities to
engage in the process of selecting and testing a site that will store
enough radioactive waste to fill the Albert Hall six times.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said more than one community
could receive the funding, with each being given up to £42 million. The
proposals appear to weaken the power of county councils, making it harder
for them to prevent a community from agreeing to host the £19 billion
“geological disposal facility” (GDF).

A consultation document states
the final decision will be subject to a “test of public support”, which
could be a local referendum. The right to vote in the referendum could be
restricted to a small area around the proposed site.

Cumbria is still  viewed as the most suitable location because of the ease of transporting
waste at Sellafield and the willingness of the community. However, other
areas with ageing or decommissioned nuclear plants have been suggested,
including Dungeness, Kent, and Hartlepool, in Co Durham. Doug Parr, of
Greenpeace, said: “Having failed to find a council willing to have
nuclear waste buried under their land, ministers are resorting to the
tactics from the fracking playbook — bribing communities and bypassing
local authorities.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/42m-offer-to-communities-that-take-radioactive-waste-svrjj29nb

January 27, 2018 Posted by | civil liberties, politics, spinbuster, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

France plans to phase out nuclear power without increasing carbon emissions

France rules out increasing CO2 as it closes nuclear reactors https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclearpower/france-rules-out-increasing-co2-as-it-closes-nuclear-reactors-idUSKBN1FF28A, Reuters Staff
PARIS (Reuters) 27 Jan 18, – France will not increase carbon emissions as it reduces its reliance on nuclear energy in coming years, a junior minister told energy newsletter Enerpresse.

The centrist government of French President Emmanuel Macron has launched a year-long debate about energy policy before deciding in early 2019 on the future share of nuclear energy in France’s power production. It now stands at 75 percent.

To assist discussions, grid operator RTE has prepared scenarios for cutting nuclear energy’s share from 56 percent to 11 percent by 2035, and an additional scenario on reducing nuclear reliance to 50 percent by 2025.

 Environment activists complain that the government has withheld scenarios cutting back nuclear capacity the most, when it held workshops this month to prepare for the public debate.

Junior Energy and Environment Minister Sebastien Lecornu told Enerpresse the scenarios that would lead to the construction of new thermal power stations were held back.

“We are clear about what we want for the energy mix, the increase of carbon emissions is not an option for us,” he said.

France would not build more plants powered by coal or fuel oil, he said, but said the government would consider whether there was a role for gas, which has lower emissions than coal or other fossil fuels.

Lecornu’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.

Sustainable energy advocacy group NegaWatt said on Thursday the most ambitious scenarios for reducing nuclear reliance could be achieved without boosting CO2 emissions provided there was a stronger focus on energy efficiency and if the nuclear reactors had their lifespans’ extended a little beyond 40 years.

 The majority of EDF’s nuclear reactors were connected to the grid between 1980 and 1990. Closing them all promptly after 40 years, their scheduled lifespan, would cut so much capacity that France would have to build new gas plants to fill the gap.

EDF wants to extend the lifespan of its reactors to 50 years, but will need approval of nuclear regulator ASN for each reactor. The ASN has said it will rule on the principle of lifespan extensions in 2021.  Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Edmund Blair

January 27, 2018 Posted by | climate change, France, politics | Leave a comment

Epic crisis in USA’s nuclear industry – Trump’s trying to stop solar power will not save nukes

Trump’s Assault on Solar Masks an Epic Crisis in the Nuclear Industry, The Progressive , by Harvey Wasserman, January 25, 2018    As Donald Trump launches his latest assault on renewable energy—imposing a 30 percent tariff on solar panels imported from China—a major crisis in the nuclear power industry is threatening to shut four high-profile reactors, with more shutdowns to come. These closures could pave the way for thousands of new jobs in wind and solar, offsetting at least some of the losses from Trump’s attack.

Like nearly everything else Trump does, the hike in duties makes no rational sense. Bill McKibben summed it up, tweeting: “Trump imposes 30% tariff on imported solar panels—one more effort to try and slow renewable energy, one more favor for the status quo.”………

the burgeoning U.S. market for cheap Chinese panels has birthed a very large industry. More than a quarter-million Americans now work in photovoltaics, with most of the jobs in building desert arrays or perching the panels on rooftops. Except for the very marginal pressure from Suniva and SolarWorld, solar advocates have focussed on the rapid spread of low-cost panels, even if they come from China.

Powered largely by Chinese product, the cost of a solar-generated watt of power has dropped from $6.00 in the late 1990s to around $0.72 in 2016. Further drops are considered inevitable. At that price, there is virtually no economic margin for any other new energy production construction except wind and natural gas. Even gas—with its uncertain long-term supply—is on the cusp of being priced out.

Thus, the industry’s reactionto Trump’s solar panel tariff has been fierce.

“We are not happy with this decision,” Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the American Solar Energy Association, told Reuters. “It’s just basic economics—if you raise the price of a product, it’s going to decrease demand for that product.” Trump’s move is predicted to drop upcoming solar installations by 10 to 15 percent and cost some 23,000 jobs.

Sustainable energy professor Scott Sklar, in an email to The Progressive, estimated that Trump’s 30 percent tariff will, after four years, “retard the solar market by 9 percent, cause the loss of thousands of U.S. jobs, and not save the two companies that brought the anti-competitive tariff request initially. The tariff was a political statement to China rather than specifically addressing the health of the U.S. solar industry and increasing U.S. solar jobs.”

Two major developments in the nuclear power industry further illustrate the absurdity of Trump’s decision.

In California, the Public Utilities Commission has gutted a major agreement that would have kept two mammoth reactors at Diablo Canyon operating for several more years. The landmark deal—cut between Pacific Gas & Electric, the host communities around San Luis Obispo, the reactors’ union workers and two environmental groups—called for PG&E to collect some $1.3 billion from ratepayers.

But the California commission cut PG&E’s take to about $300 million. To continue running the two fast-deteriorating old reactors would require massive capital repairs. The company also has admitted that all of Diablo’s power can be otherwise produced with zero- and low-carbon green technologies.

While Trump’s tariffs may slightly alter the math, they’re not expected to make photovoltaics, wind, geothermal, or increased efficiency more expensive than the power Diablo might generate in the coming seven years. Thus, Diablo opponents like Linda Sealey of the San Luis-based Mothers for Peace are extremely hopeful for early shutdowns.

“We think this makes it likely they’ll shut as early as 2020,” she told me January 18 on California Solartopia at KPFK radio in Los Angeles. “They just can’t compete.”

A parallel fate may soon overtake Ohio’s ancient Perry and Davis-Besse reactors on Lake Erie. Because the increasingly decrepit nuclear plants have been priced out of the market and face huge capital repairs, their owner FirstEnergy has been desperately begging the Ohio legislature for massive bailouts, which it has so far resisted. As a result FirstEnergy is poised to go bankrupt, and may soon be bought out by financiers expected to insist the two reactors finally shut. A decision is expected in April.

The shutdown of four more major reactors would be a huge blow to the downwardly spiraling atomic energy industry. California’s booming solar business employs more than 100,000 Americans, more than are currently digging coal nationwide. The void left by Diablo’s shutdown would generate thousands of Golden State jobs and billions in renewable revenue.

In northern Ohio, massive wind potential is also poised to create far more jobs than are currently in place at the two reactors, with energy to be generated far more cheaply. Overall, the closure of these four high-profile plants would thus accelerate the already rapid run away from nuclear power toward renewable sources, regardless of any attempt by the Trump Administration to alter the course.

Harvey “Sluggo” Wasserman’s “California Solartopia Show” is broadcast at KPFK-Pacifica 90.7FM in Los Angeles. His “Green Power & Wellness Show” is podcast at prn.fm. His History of the US and Solartopia! are at www.solartopia.org, which will publish his America at the Brink of Rebirthlater this year. http://progressive.org/dispatches/trumps-assault-on-solar-masks-an-epic-crisis-in-nuclear-180125/

January 26, 2018 Posted by | politics, renewable, USA | Leave a comment

UK’s £1m a year bribes to communities to host nuclear waste

Communities offered £1m a year to host nuclear waste dump https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/25/communities-offered-1m-a-year-to-host-nuclear-waste-dump

New search for communities willing to host underground site for thousands of years, Guardian, Adam Vaughan, 25 Jan 18, Local communities around England, Wales and Northern Ireland will be offered £1m a year to volunteer to host an underground nuclear waste disposal facility for thousands of years, as part of a rebooted government programme.

The financial incentive is one way the government hopes to encourage communities to host the £12bn facility, after previous efforts failed in 2013 when Cumbria county council rejected the project.

Under new plans published on Thursday, a test of public support will be required for the scheme to go ahead, which could include a local referendum.

The only areas to explore the idea last time round were Copeland and Allerdale borough councils in Cumbria, and Shepway District Council in Kent.

This time, interested communities that explore hosting the facility will also receive £1m a year, which officials say could be spent on developing skills locally or apprenticeships. The payments, which could rise to £2.5m annually as a community considers whether to proceed, are expected to last for around five years.

The geological disposal facility (GDF) is seen by experts as the best long-term solution to storing the estimated 750,000 cubic metres of waste generated by half a century of nuclear power and defence, which would fill three quarters of Wembley Stadium.

It also includes the radioactive material created by potentially five new plants that the government expects to be built, including Hinkley Point C, which EDF Energy is constructing in Somerset.

The Institute of Directors said storing waste deep underground would be cheaper than storing it above ground, as it is at present at around 30 sites.Business, unions and local authority groups welcomed the renewed bid to site a GDF.

“Running costs for a geological disposal facility storing the waste 1,000 metres below the surface would be significantly lower,” the business group said.

Richard Harrington, energy minister, said: “We owe it to future generations to take action now to find a suitable permanent site for the safe disposal of our radioactive waste. And it is right that local communities have a say.”

But Greenpeace criticised the payments, calling them bribes, and said new nuclear power plants should not go ahead without a long-term solution in place for their waste.

Doug Parr, the group’s chief scientist, said: “Having failed to find a council willing to have nuclear waste stored under their land, ministers are resorting to the tactics from the fracking playbook – bribing communities and bypassing local authorities.

“With six new nuclear plants being planned, the waste problem is just going to get much worse. Since there is no permanent solution for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel, the responsible thing to do would be to stop producing more of it instead of just passing the radioactive buck to future generations.”

Nuclear waste is currently stored at about 30 sites, but predominantly at ground level at Sellafield in Cumbria. The GDF project is expected to cost £12bn, spread over a century.

January 26, 2018 Posted by | politics, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

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