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
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
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.
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.
EU Observer, By ESZTER ZALANAustria decided on Wednesday (24 January) to sue the European Commission for allowing the expansion of Hungary’s controversial Paks nuclear plant, to be built and financed by Russia.
The project is viewed by critics as an example of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, cosying up to Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Austrian sustainability minister Elisabeth Koestinger tweeted: “Austria will take action against the use of nuclear power plants at all levels. That is why today we have taken a decision in the council of ministers to sue Paks II at European level”.
“There are enough reasons to sue Paks II. We are optimistic to prevail. To protect our country and our children,” she added in a tweet. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager, whose services were responsible for scrutinising the state aid plans for the nuclear plant, told reporters on Wednesday that the EU executive takes Austria’s decision “very seriously”.
“We will of course defend our decision with the arguments that are in the decision,” she added.
Last March the Commission gave its final approval for the project, and that said Hungary’s state aid is not illegal after commitments Budapest had made to limit distortions in competition.
An earlier infringement procedure looking into whether the project was in line with EU procurement rules, as it was initiated without a tender, was closed in 2016 with the ruling that Hungary did not break EU rules.
The project, signed in 2014 in Moscow, would see Russian state-owned company and its international sub-contractors build two new reactors.
The Russian state has also loaned up to €10 billion to Hungary to finance 80 percent of the project.
On track
Austria, Hungary’s neighbour, has no nuclear power plants. Last October, then prime minister Christian Kern said Austria would challenge the Commission’s decision on Paks.
Vienna launched a similar legal action against the Commission in 2015 over its approval of the UK’s state aid support for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project.
“EU assistance is only permissible when it is built on common interest. For us, nuclear energy is neither a sustainable form of energy supply, nor is it an answer to climate change,” a spokesman for Koestinger, a member of right-wing Austrian People’s Party, was quoted by Reuters………
Green MEP Benedek Javor, who has challenged the commission’s decisions and shed light on shady dealings between commissioner Guenther Oettinger and German lobbyist of Russian interests Klaus Mangold with possible links to Paks , argued it is time to rethink the Euratom treaty.
“Is this possible to exempt a major energy generating sector, nuclear energy, from common competition or public procurement law, based on a 60 years old and never really updated regulation, the Euratom treaty? Without giving a clear negative answer to this question, any plans of the Energy Union or the single European energy market might remain a dream,” he said, arguing that the case is not only an Austro-Hungarian dispute.
“It is simply not true, that high amount of state subsidy for a nuclear power plant with 2400 MW of capacity does not distort the market. And it is simply misinterpretation of the Euratom treaty, that the paragraph saying that ‘the development of nuclear energy is a community interest’ means that unprofitable powerplants producing electricity for the market and built from Russian money, with Russian technology and using Russian fuel should be regarded as a community interest and heavily subsidised,” Javor argued………https://euobserver.com/energy/140690
NFLA 24th Jan 2018, As the UK Government plans yet another attempt to deliver a deep
underground radioactive waste repository, NFLA urges them and the
regulators to look carefully at a Swedish court ruling rejecting a
repository licence around real safety concerns.
The Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) has been made aware that the UK Government imminently
plans its latest attempt, which is the sixth attempt in the past 42 years,
to start a process to find a willing community to host a deep underground
radioactive waste repository.
This process now could be, and should be, completely reconsidered after a Swedish court ruling rejecting a licence
application on the waste capsules for a similar development, after many
years of planning.
For over 4 decades, several UK bodies – UKAEA, Nirex,
RWMD and now Radioactive Waste Management Ltd (RWM) – have been
established by the UK Government to deliver a deep underground radioactive
waste repository, often referred to in the industry as a geological
disposal facility (GDF).
Three consultations are expected to be issued
imminently – one on the definition of the community that would decide on
such a repository and how engaging with the public would take place, a
second on a National Policy Statement for a deep waste repository, and the
third the publication by RWM of a national geological screening of England,
Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland is pursuing a separate policy of
‘near site, near surface’ storage of its highly active radioactive
waste).
Throughout its 38 years of operation, NFLA has been heavily engaged
in this debate. It remains sceptical that a deep underground repository is
the most environmentally sound solution for managing the UK’s huge burden
of radioactive waste.
It notes that the Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates
have outlined over 100 key technical and scientific concerns around such
developments, and NFLA has seen no resolution to these issues from the
government or RWM.
France’s previous socialist government pledged to reduce the share of nuclear in power generation to 50 percent by 2025, from 75 percent today. President Emmanuel Macron promised to respect that pledge during his election campaign last year, but since taking office he has pushed the target back by a decade.
Macron now wants to set new targets in a multi-year energy plan that will be debated this year and presented in early 2019.
But renewable energy activists say that at some workshops earlier this month, the government blocked discussion of scenarios under which France would radically reduce its nuclear power capacity, instead focusing on more pro-nuclear scenarios.
Energy and Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot has denied that the government favored the most pro-nuclear scenarios, saying it merely eliminated the two most extreme scenarios and kept the “median” scenarios. He did not specify which scenarios had been eliminated.
Late last year, French grid operator RTE published four 2035 scenarios under which nuclear capacity would be reduced to various degrees from the current 63 gigawatt (GW).
Under the “Volt” scenario, nuclear capacity would be cut to 55 GW by closing just nine of state-owned utility EDF’s 58 nuclear reactors and leaving the share of nuclear in power production at 56 percent. The “Ampere” scenario would close 16 reactors and leave the share of nuclear at 46 percent.
Two more radical scenarios, “Watt” and “Hertz”, would close as many as 52 and 25 reactors respectively, with the Watt scenario cutting the share of nuclear to as little as 11 percent. The remaining power would come from renewables (71 percent) and gas (18 percent).
“The Watt and Hertz scenarios were eliminated from the presentations at the government’s request,” said Yves Marignac of NegaWatt, a group which advocates higher renewables use.
NegaWatt took part in two workshops to prepare the public debate on the issue. It was joined by several energy-focused NGOs, EDF, nuclear firm Orano, and lobby groups. The debates are supposed to lead to a first draft of a multi-year energy plan by summer and a final plan in early 2019. Its conclusions will be crucial for European power markets as they will determine how much nuclear baseload capacity remains available.
· A source involved with organizing the workshops confirmed the government had instructed RTE to withdraw two scenarios.
· “All scenarios were mentioned, but only two were reviewed in detail,” he said.
· A ministry spokeswoman said two scenarios had indeed been removed from the presentation but declined to give details.
· “It is inconceivable that these two scenarios would be withheld from public debate,” NegaWatt’s Thierry Salomon said.
· France has withheld key information on nuclear before.
· In the months before the parliament vote on the 2015 energy law, Hulot’s predecessor Segolene Royal barred publication of an environment agency ADEME report showing France could switch to 100 percent renewables without extra costs.
· “At least this time the information is public. But it looks like the government is putting the interests of the nuclear industry ahead of the energy policy debate,” Salomon said.
AWE bids for ‘more realistic’ nuclear terrorism tests licence, The UK’s nuclear warhead factory is bidding for a licence change to run “more realistic” tests in preparation for “nuclear terrorism”.
A new-build programme would create an intolerable burden on communities into the far future, writes Andrew Blowers; while Rose Heaney wonders why our abundant renewable energy sources are being overlooked
In 1976, Lord Flowers pronounced that there should be no further commitment to nuclear energy unless it could be demonstrated that long-lived highly radioactive wastes could be safely contained for the indefinite future. Ever since, efforts to find a suitable site for a geological disposal facility have been rejected by communities (Wanted: community willing to host a highly radioactive waste dump in their district, 22 January).
There is, therefore, little evidence to support the government’s claim that “it is satisfied that effective arrangements will exist to manage and dispose of the waste that will be produced from new nuclear power stations”. Deep disposal may be the eventual long-term solution but demonstrating a safety case, finding suitable geology and a willing community are tough challenges and likely to take a long time. The search for a disposal site diverts attention from the real solution for the foreseeable future, which is to ensure the safe and secure management of the unavoidable legacy wastes that have to be managed. It is perverse to compound the problem by a new-build programme that will result in vastly increased radioactivity from spent fuel and other highly radioactive wastes which will have to be stored indefinitely at vulnerable sites scattered around our coasts.
The fact that the UK government is still going ahead with plans to construct new power stations, generating even more toxic radioactive waste, troubles and puzzles me immensely. Here, on the beautiful isle of Anglesey, where tidal, solar and wind energy production are all highly feasible alternatives and could also provide opportunities for well-paid employment, politicians appear to be happy for an area of outstanding natural beauty to be contaminated for further than the foreseeable future, not to mention the immense eyesore that will occupy acres of fertile land. It is an eye-wateringly costly venture that many fear will expose taxpayers to huge financial risk and will also leave future generations guarding the threat to their environment and health long after it ceases to function.
Future generations will doubtless wonder, when most of Europe is shutting down its nuclear power stations and not planning any more, why in the world the local population didn’t protest harder.
Rose Heaney
Holyhead, Gwynedd
A new-build programme would create an unmanageable and intolerable burden on communities into the far future. To suggest that a repository is the solution is in the realm of fantasy.
Prof Andrew Blowers
Member of the first Committee onRadioactive Waste Management
MKG 23rd Jan 2018,The Swedish Environmental Court says no to the power industry’s Nuclear
Waste Company SKB’s license application for a final repository for spent
nuclear fuel in Forsmark, Sweden.
This is a huge triumph for safety and environment – and for the Swedish NGO Office for Nuclear Waste Review
(MKG), the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC), and critical
scientists who have been presenting risks of the malfunction of the
selected method. Now it is up to the Swedish government to make the final
decision. This is a triumph for us.
From now on, the work on evaluating safer disposal solutions will continue. The decision that will be made
concerns waste that will be hazardous for thousands of years. Several
independent researchers have criticized both the applied method and the
selected site. There is a solid documentation as base for the Environmental
Court’s decision. It is hard to believe the Swedish Government’s
conclusions will be any different from that of the Court’s, says Johan
Swahn, Director at MKG. http://www.mkg.se/en/the-swedish-environmental-court-s-no-to-the-final-repository-for-spent-nuclear-fuel-a-triumph-for-th
East Anglian Daily Times 23rd Jan 2018, Drone footage shows off ‘huge impact’ Sizewell C could have on
landscape. Campaigners fighting proposals for a new nuclear power station
on the Suffolk coast claim drone footage of Hinkley Point shows what a
“massive, life-changing, countryside-destroying intrusion” Sizewell C
would be.
Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) says the film of work taking
place on the £19.6billion project to build Britain’s first new nuclear
plant for more than 20 years shows the dramatic scale and impact of the
project.
TASC chair Pete Wilkinson said: “The actual scale and impact of
the proposed development at Sizewell has never been fully explained to the
public and they have never been asked if they support it or oppose it.
“It has always been disingenuously described by politicians as an
inevitability which it is not: new nuclear is a choice not an imperative.
We can and should say ‘no’ and be given the opportunity to tell our
politicians that we reject this monstrous plan. “This footage gives us
the evidence on which to base an informed view about the Sizewell
development and shows the fate that awaits this area if EDF get their way.
This two minute film does what EDF and the government have been unwilling
to do for five years – to show us just how Sizewell C will utterly
devastate a huge area of Suffolk on a scale that we cannot even think about
tolerating. http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/drone-footage-shows-off-huge-impact-sizewell-c-could-have-on-landscape-1-5366719
Bellona 24th Jan 2018, Bellona publishes groundbreaking report on the state of Ukraine’s nuclear
industry. It won’t come as a surprise that safety would be a critical
challenge still facing the nuclear industry in Ukraine, which inherited the
infamous Chernobyl plant when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Chief Executive Philippe Knoche said a new name and logo were necessary to start another chapter in the history of the state-owned company, which was split in two and recapitalized in 2017 after years of losses wiped out its equity.
“We had to change our name – we are a new company with a different perimeter, focused on the fuel cycle,” Knoche said at a presentation of the new brand.
Orano refers to uranium, the core of the firm’s business, and its new circular yellow logo references the yellowcake uranium concentrate that it extracts from the ore.
To mark the change – and reduce real estate costs by 10 million euros (8.78 million pounds) a year – Orano will move out of its prestigious Paris headquarters, a distinctive black-slab skyscraper inspired by the monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”.
The move is part of a plan to cut costs by about 250 million euros in the 2018-2020 period. With its nuclear reactor building unit sold to fellow state-owned utility EDF last year, Orano goes back to being a pure nuclear fuel company, similar to its predecessor Cogema, before it was merged into Areva.
Orano has net debt of close to 3 billion euros and by 2025 plans to invest about 2 billion euros in its plants and a similar amount in its mines, Knoche said.
The company aims to be cash-flow positive from this year, but Knoche said nothing about profit targets and admitted that market prices for uranium are too low to invest in new mines.
He said long-term contract prices for uranium were about $10 per pound higher than spot prices, but declined to say what price Orano needed to operate profitably in the long run.
Uranium prices are down 80 percent from a decade ago as Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster has led to a slowdown in reactor newbuilds and countries such as Germany abandon nuclear.
Knoche said Orano was banking on nuclear growth in Asia. He expects the firm to earn 30 percent of its turnover there by 2020, up from 20 percent last year.
Talks about selling a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant to China were “accelerating”, Knoche said, but would not give a deadline. Discussions about the project have been going on for a decade, while the price the firm hopes to get has fallen to around 10 billion euros from 15 billion euros.
He said the reprocessing plant deal was not essential for Orano’s survival. This month, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the operation could “save” the French nuclear industry.
With an order book worth nearly eight years of turnover and solid business in service and maintenance for a large part of the world’s more than 400 nuclear reactors, Orano faces the prospect of rebuilding a profitable operation.
“We will do it with humility. That is why the name is written in lower case,” Knoche said. Reporting by Geert De Clercq and Benjamin Mallet; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Dale Hudson
Even though it’s over 30 years since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, radiation levels exceeding 39 706 Bq (becquerel) per kilo have been found in Swedish wild boar meat taken from the Uppland area.
According to the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, this is the highest ever level measured in wild boar meat in Sweden, way exceeding the 1500 Bq/kg safe limit set by the Swedish Food Agency for meat consumption.
Speaking to The Local, Paul Andersson of the Swedish Radiation Authority explained that “wild boar were practically non-existent outside the southern counties of Skåne and Sörmland, two Swedish counties unaffected by radiation. However, in the years since, the wild boar population has multiplied and migrated to northern areas of Sweden”, which is why the authority is keen to test wild boar meat.
Andersson noted that wild boar may be particularly susceptible to radiation for a number of reasons: ”Wild boar forage for wild mushrooms and have the ability to find truffles in the ground, which may explain why this particular wild hog had such high levels of radiation.”
In contrast, he said elk meat’s radiation levels have consistently gone down since 1986, rarely exceeding the safety limit for meat consumption of 1500 Bq/kg.
The authority is encouraging hunters to send them wild boar meat samples for testing.
Guardian 21st Jan 2018, The government is expected this week to begin a nationwide search for a community willing to host an underground nuclear waste dump to store highly
radioactive material for thousands of years.
Britain has been trying for years to secure a site with the right geology and local communities which would volunteer to host a £12bn geological disposal facility (GDF), as a
long-term solution for the most dangerous waste from nuclear power
stations.
The last effort hit a brick wall in 2013 when Cumbria county
council, the only local authority still in the running as a host for the
dump, rejected it.
Now, ministers are to relaunch their mission to win over
a community to host the GDF. The task has taken on heightened importance
now that a nuclear power plant is under construction in Somerset, with
plans to build four others.
Radioactive Waste Management, the government
body tasked with building the facility hundreds of metres underground, said
it had made significant progress since 2014 in “developing the offer” to
interested communities. Consultations on the planning process and how the
government will work with communities will be launched this week, said two
sources close to the process. “I hope to God they get it right this time,”
said one. “The mess they made in the past can’t be repeated. It’s
outrageous it became a victim of local politics last time.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/21/search-area-willing-host-highly-radioactive-waste-uk-geology
nuclear-news 