World Nuclear News 14th Sept 2018 , Consultants Frazer-Nash, in collaboration with Rolls-Royce, the National
Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), EDF Energy, Jacobsen Analytics, Lancaster
University, University of Bristol and University of York are set to deliver
a nuclear safety and security research contract. Frazer-Nash said yesterday
that, working on behalf of the Department of Business, Energy and
Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the GBP3.6 million (USD4.7 million), two-year
project, aims to deliver a “step change in the UK’s capability as the
country moves toward an era of new nuclear build and new technologies”.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/UK-companies-to-deliver-safety-and-security-resear
The 73-year-old said he was held for 19 hours under the Explosives Act before being released with no further action………..
A cordon was set up around his home on Wednesday morning when the two officers complained of feeling unwell – which Dr Busby attributed to “psychological problems associated with their knowledge of the Skripal poisoning”.
The scientist said he was handcuffed and interviewed all night by police who suspected he was making a bomb, but the only substances found at his home were “innocuous chemicals for research into radiation”.
He returned home that night to find officers had searched his home laboratory and sealed off his home in Bridge Street.
“They destroyed my experiment. It was most irritating,” he said.
Dr Busby said he felt he was being targeted because of his criticism of the government’s current assessment of radiation risks.
The force said the affected officers were unharmed and there was no risk to the wider public.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-45516797
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But although the government’s broad commitment is secure, little remains of its original vision of a series-build approach that would cut costs and build a domestic industry. In practice, the UK has become something of a test bed for Asian reactor exporters, rather than a new rebirth for European nuclear, with Chinese and Japanese companies leading projects. The UK nuclear new-build programme has been a casualty of both global nuclear industry failures and a changing domestic power industry, which has seen dramatic falls in the cost of offshore wind and a boom in interconnection. Nuclear still has strong political backing – in fact, it seems that the government will have to take some kind of stake in future projects. That is partly because the projects are seen as so risky by investors, and partly because successive reports by parliamentarians and UK financial watchdogs, like the National Audit Office, have pointed out that the government’s insistence that it had transferred that risk to the private sector had been a major factor in raising costs, because the government could secure cheaper finance for the project than the private sector. Far from giving the go-ahead for a series, the influential National Infrastructure Commission said this year in its National Infrastructure Assessment that “Government should not agree support for more than one nuclear power station beyond Hinkley Point C before 2025.” Continue reading |
Business Green 14th Sept 2018 Companies have pledged to power their London-premises with 100 per cent
renewable energy,as Sadiq Khan announces first London Climate Action Week
Eleven leading businesses, including Tesco, Sky, and Siemens, have
partnered with London Mayor Sadiq Khan in support of plans to make the
capital a zero carbon city by 2050. The companies announced yesterday they
will work with the Mayor’s Office to cut levels of pollution and emissions
beyond current government targets, while also committing to power their
London premises with 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020 and supporting
the transition towards zero-emission vehicles.
https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3062752/zero-carbon-capital-businesses-team-up-with-london-mayor-in-decarbonisation-drive
The curious looking Belgian motor-hopper Sloeber made her first round trip from Hinkley Point to the Cardiff Grounds – a mile off shore from Penarth. She then opened-up her belly underwater to disgorge thousands of tonnes of mud on one massive “bowel movement” – last night .
Although the Conservative-run Vale of Glamorgan Council has protested about the mud dumping scheme, not a single Labour Assembly member, councillor or MP has raised a so much as a peep of protest about what is easily the worst-ever case of deliberate pollution ever witnessed in Wales.
Last night the Belgian hopper MV Sloeber – loaded with 2,000 tonnes of mud dredged from the sea bed adjacent to 3 Somerset nuclear power stations – sailed around the far side of the Monkstone light and skirted the sandbanks. As night fell she turned to port and headed directly towards Penarth, pausing just a mile offshore to dump her controversial cargo into the shallow sea of the “Cardiff Grounds” – which up to now have only been used to deposit dredged mud from the approach channel to Cardif Docks .
Sloeber’s party trick is to split herself open from stem to stern with both halves of the ship opening up wide below the waterline to allow her cargo of mud to fall out of the ship under its own considerable weight .
In 3 months or so, when all the thousands of tonnes of mud from Hinkley Point have been dumped in the sea in Welsh waters, the French energy company EDF will be able to wash its hands of all responsibility for this material and whatever lurks within it.
…As of last night the first consignment of English ‘nuclear mud’ become Wales’s problem. The mud dropped from the belly of MV Sloeber last night will soon be washed ashore on the coastline between Penarth and Lavernock – and could permanently change the shoreline.
Experts say the consequences of this operation – which involves the dumping of over 320,000 tonnes of English nuclear mud in Welsh Waters – may not become apparent for generations.
Meanwhile Sloeber returned to Hinkley Point to load more mud for another visit to Wales later today.
Edward Snowden surveillance powers ruled unlawful https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45510662
Wales Online 11th Sept 2018 , EDF has confirmed it has started to dump mud from the Hinkley Point nuclear
power station in the Severn Estuary off Cardiff. The news came on the same
day that rock musician and anti-nuclear campaigner Cian Ciaran lodged
papers at the High Court seeking an injunction to stop the dumping. The
papers name NNB Generation Company (HPC) Ltd as the respondent in the
action. The firm is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the French energy company
EDF, which obtained a licence to carry out the dumping. More than 100,000
people have signed petitions against the dumping plans , which campaigners
say could pose health risks.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/radioactive-mud-dumping-begins-coast-15136164
Wales Online 12th Sept 2018 , Letter: It is hard for the layman to know whether or not the assurances
about the safety of the mud from Hinkley Point can be accepted at face
value. Other issues do arise as well, however. Will the addition of this
sizeable tonnage of waste at Cardiff Grounds have any effect on the flows
of sand and mud within the Bristol Channel?
We have all seen how the opposite process – dredging – has over the years changed the nature and
shape of various beaches, usually to their detriment. Also does any income
accrue to Wales from the use of this site for the receipt of waste material
from elsewhere? This is perhaps the least we might expect given the vast
sums of money which are being made available for this project.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/western-mail-letters-wednesday-september-15140781
Cumbria Crack 11th Sept 2018 , The Government has rejected a plea by Workington MP, Sue Hayman, to save
the Moorside nuclear power station project, as the developer, NuGen,
confirms the loss of 70 jobs. Sue, the co-chair of the All Party
Parliamentary Group on Nuclear Energy, wrote to the Secretary of State for
Business, Greg Clark MP, at the end of July, when NuGen announced it was
consulting on job losses, calling on him to guarantee Government support
for the project.
Mr Clark said in June that he “will consider direct Government investment” in the proposed Wylfa
nuclear power station in Wales, but he has refused to make any similar
commitment to Cumbria. In a response to Sue’s letter, energy minister
Richard Harrington MP said: “The Secretary of State and I understand the
potential importance of the Moorside project to the local area. However
(…) the proposed sale of NuGen is principally a commercial matter for
Toshiba and it would not be appropriate for me to comment on those ongoing
negotiations.”
https://www.cumbriacrack.com/2018/09/11/government-rejects-mps-plea-to-save-nuclear-new-build/
Carlisle News & Star 12th Sept 2018 , Business chief blames Government policy for “frightening off” Moorside
investors. Cumbria Chamber of Commerce boss urges ministers to change tack
to save £15bn project. Rob Johnston, chief executive of Cumbria Chamber of
Commerce, told in-Cumbria that the Government’s use of a regulated asset
base (RAB) model to finance Moorside was a risk of killing the
transformation project. Repeating previous calls for the Government to
invest directly in Moorside to ensure it happens, he placed the blame for
the delays squarely at the door of its Nuclear Sector Deal published back
in June.
http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/business/Business-chief-blames-Government-policy-for-frightening-off-Moorside-investors-47c201f1-f162-4f96-b702-629bb2ff41a3-ds
Building 12th Sept 2018 , The company behind the £10bn Moorside nuclear power station in Cumbria is
cutting more than 60 of its 100 staff as its parent Toshiba continues its
struggle to sell the company. NuGen was originally a joint venture between
Toshiba and French multinational Engie but ran into trouble last year when
Toshiba’s US subsidiary Westinghouse – which had been due to supply the
nuclear reactor for Moorside – filed for bankruptcy.
Mediapart 12th Sept 2018 [Machine translation] Nuclear: these signs of aging that EDF would like to
make disappear.
More than a third of French nuclear reactors undergo an
excessive demand of their circuits. EDF monitors these phenomena but does
not repair them. However, the older the plants, the more these problems
increase.
Our revelations from internal documents obtained from a
whistleblower. In collaboration with the German site Correctiv. With a
capacity of 900 megawatts (MW), the 34 oldest reactors of the park begin to
exceed their 40 th year of use and therefore to undergo the examination.
To determine the conditions, an unprecedented consultation of the public has
just opened and will last until March 2019.
In 2015, the energy transition law for green growth marked the principle of reducing the proportion of
nuclear energy to 50% by 2025. But EDF, an 85% state-owned company, refuses
this deadline and plans to close no reactor before 2029, with the exception
of those of Fessenheim (Alsace), at the time when the EPR of Flamanville
(Manche) will enter into activity.
This position of negation of a law yet voted is tacitly supported by Édouard Philippe, who has just announced
that the multiannual energy programming (EPP) , expected document end of
October, will set the goal of a reduction to 50 % of electricity of nuclear
origin around 2035
https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/120918/nucleaire-ces-signes-de-vieillissement-qu-edf-voudrait-faire-disparaitre
Eureka 10th Sept 2018 , The cover story of Eureka’s September issue looks at the programme to
decommission the UK’s legacy nuclear power plant, with particular
emphasis on the opportunities this creates for engineering innovation. The
reasons for this are clear: radioactive environments represent some of the
most challenging engineering scenarios possible, with extended human
presence in them simply not feasible. This means that robotics have a
massive role to play and it is these solutions that are attracting much
investment.
What many may not understand is just how massive an undertaking
this decommissioning programme is. Decommissioning across 17 nuclear sites
will take more than a century and involve the expenditure of an estimated
£118 billion pounds over that period. Clearly this offers considerable
scope for investment in and applications of new technologies. The Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority currently offers significant funding for the
right solutions. With that in mind, it would seem a good time for the
UK’s design engineers to step up.
http://www.eurekamagazine.co.uk/design-engineering-blogs/the-decommissioning-dividend-1/182843/
Plans for new Cumbria nuclear power station on verge of collapse,Toshiba’s plan to sell plant in disarray over government’s ‘risky’ financing plan, Guardian, Adam Vaughan, 11 Sept 18 Plans for a new nuclear power station in Cumbria are on the verge of collapsing after the Toshiba-owned company behind it laid off 60% of its workforce and embarked on a final effort to sell the project.Toshiba was due to sell the NuGen consortium to South Korea state-owned firm Kecpo in early 2018, as the Japanese firm exits international nuclear projects and looks to recoup some of the £400m it has spent on the Moorside plant.
However, Kepco has been delaying a final decision, due in part to the UK government signalling a new approach to financing nuclear power stations.
That forced NuGen to cut 60 of 100 jobs on Tuesday, following a six-week consultation with staff.
Unions said the the project’s problems showed the need for the government to take a stake in Moorside. Justin Bowden, the GMB national secretary, said: “The looming collapse of this vital energy project has been depressingly predictable for months.”
The skeleton NuGen team is now focused on clinching a deal with Kepco by the end of the year before Toshiba writes the unit off entirely at the end of March 2019………..
A team of about 30 government officials is being assembled to work on new nuclear financing, the Guardian understands. The government’s feasibility study on using RAB for new nuclear is expected in January. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/11/toshiba-plans-for-new-cumbria-nuclear-power-station-on-verge-of-collapse
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Global Warming Policy Foundation 10th Sept 2018 An important new briefing paper published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals that the government has kicked a key nuclear programme into the long grass.
This follows an announcement last week by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on its small modular nuclear (SMR) competition, which outlined new funding for feasibility studies into a range of new nuclear technologies.
The report, by nuclear industry expert Andrew Dawson, shows that while this might appear to represent progress, in reality it is likely to be the end of the SMRs in the UK: “When George Osborne announced the SMR competition in 2015, it was about identifying SMR technologies that could be deployed in the near-term. But in its announcement last week, BEIS made it clear that it would only back “blue-skies” projects, some of which are not SMRs, and
none of which have any hope of breaking ground in the next few decades……
https://www.thegwpf.org/who-killed-the-small-modular-nuclear-programme/
1 June Webinar – The High Cost of Nuclear Power – Register
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
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