Hinkley Point: Britain’s nuclear white elephant trumpets again The NAO has produced a scathing report on a prestige project that could cost more than any tinpot tyrant’s folly, Independent, James Moore Chief Business Commentator @JimMooreJourno , 25 June 17 Brits, eh. We like to think we’re all about common sense (except, well, Brexit, but we’ll park that for the moment). We certainly don’t pump money into white elephants. Surely that sort of thing is best left to dictators with God complexes. We’re responsible with taxpayers’ cash!
If that is so, how on earth does the Government explain the plans for a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset?
The National Audit Office has just put a swarm of new flies into that particular bottle of radioactive ointment with the release of a scathing new report.
June 26, 2017
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End $14 billion SC nuke plant project, critics say, http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article157587959.html, BY SAMMY FRETWELL, sfretwell@thestate.com COLUMBIA, SC . 22 June 17
Critics of SCE&G’s over-budget and behind-schedule nuclear expansion project are asking state regulators for help in stopping the company from spending more money on two atomic reactors now under construction in Fairfield County.
With the future of the project already in doubt, Friends of the Earth and the S.C. Sierra Club said Thursday they are requesting that the state Public Service Commission hold a hearing on the wisdom of continuing the now $14 billion project.
In a written filing, the groups said they want the regulatory agency to tell SCE&G “to immediately cease expending further capital costs on the project.’’ The groups have hired an economist to act as an expert witness in future PSC hearings about the V.C. Summer nuclear project.
SCE&G’s nuclear project, being constructed jointly with the state-owned Santee Cooper power company, is in trouble because contractor Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy this past spring. Westinghouse’s parent company, which was supposed to help guarantee money for the project, also is in financial jeopardy.
The project, launched about eight years ago, is today approaching $3 billion over budget and facing potentially more costs if it continues.
SCE&G and Santee Cooper now are reassessing whether they want to continue the project. They are supposed to complete an assessment of the plant’s future by Monday.
Since the project started, SC&G customers have been hit with nine rate increases to finance the work. That amounts to about 18 percent of the average customer’s power bill. All told, ratepayers have put about $1.4 billion toward the unfinished project so far. Construction on the twin reactors is about one-third complete. Ratepayers of Santee Cooper also have been charged for the project and electrical cooperative customers are facing potential increases in the next eight years.
Many people are today concerned that costs of the plant will continue to rise and ratepayers will again be asked to pay more in their monthly bills.
SCE&G and Santee Cooper are now trying to persuade Congress to extend a deadline for the plants to be completed so they can get a production tax credit. More than $2 billion in tax credits are riding on the bill, which is moving through the House of Representatives
June 23, 2017
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Jun 16, 2017,Tom Knox The federal government has awarded $1.55 million to Ohio State University for nuclear energy research.
More than half of the money, almost $800,000, goes toward a research and development project through the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program that deals with risk assessment in power plants…..http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2017/06/16/ohio-state-gets-1-5m-in-federal-money-to-study.html
June 19, 2017
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FT 15th June 2017 The UK’s second shock poll result in a year has created fresh political
uncertainty and renewed concerns over climate and environment policies
following Brexit.
Countless important decisions had already been put firmly
on the backburner before the June 8 election, as ministers’ time was
consumed by the arduous complexities of Brexit. They include the question
of how the UK will fund wind farms and other forms of clean energy after
2020, and the future of the coal power-killing carbon tax that some
manufacturers are lobbying to end, not to mention how the UK will meet its
own domestic climate goals.
The decision to leave the EU has exacerbated this gridlock and raised fresh uncertainties about the future shape of
green regulations for investors and companies. These include:Will the UK
still try to abide by EU air pollution standards the government has failed
to meet, despite being repeatedly dragged to court by environmental
lawyers? How will the UK replace Euratom, the pan-European nuclear energy
regulator? https://www.ft.com/content/a64ba474-51bf-11e7-bfb8-997009366969
June 19, 2017
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France Culture 15th June 2017 [Machine Translation] It’s not eternity, but it’s like it. Hundreds of
millions of years. We leave a poisoned gift to a humanity of the future of which we know nothing. Neither their language, whether they are hordes in rags armed with cudgels or a peaceful technological civilization in the
apogee, knowing how to recycle this radioactive waste …
It is hardly if we decipher the intentions of the civilizations Maya or Egyptian women far away from us by a few thousand years ago …
Reprocessing, vitrification, burial, so many ways to admit that we have not found any really satisfactory solution for our radioactive waste bins. Waste is produced exponentially, and we do not know what to do with it. Neither fuel rod waste nor dismantling tanks, accidentally or unintentionally contaminated water, or radioactive drums that have been thrown randomly on land and in the seas.
Not for eternity, no, but for so long a time that it is, even in thought, unimaginable. Engineers then find themselves with the responsibility of having to think about deeply anthropological issues, which clearly go beyond them.
https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/lsd-la-serie-documentaire/lombre-des-centrales-nucleaires-44-des-poubelles-radioactives
June 19, 2017
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Plutonium pits at core of new Savannah River Site debate By Michael Smith msmith@aikenstandard.com Jun 14, 2017,
Will production of plutonium pits used in nuclear warheads shift from New Mexico to the Savannah River Site?
One nuclear watchdog group fears so, based on remarks made during a recent nuclear symposium in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
But other nuclear observers say discussion of pit production shifting to Aiken County’s SRS is premature……http://www.aikenstandard.com/news/plutonium-pits-at-core-of-new-savannah-river-site-debate/article_0c9c4504-513d-11e7-946c-6beea5792367.html
June 16, 2017
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Barrasso: Senate risks closing nuclear energy watchdog, Washington Examiner, by John Siciliano | Jun 15, 2017, The Senate is under a strict deadline to confirm the head of the nation’s top nuclear watchdog or risk closing the agency for lack of members.
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, raised the concern Thursday in advancing the nomination of Kristine Svinicki, President Trump’s pick to head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, by voice vote to the Senate floor.
“Unless Ms. Svinicki is confirmed by June 30th, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will lose its quorum,” Barrasso said. “We must not let that happen.”…..
The Senate is under a strict deadline to confirm the head of the nation’s top nuclear watchdog or risk closing the agency for lack of members.
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, raised the concern Thursday in advancing the nomination of Kristine Svinicki, President Trump’s pick to head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, by voice vote to the Senate floor.
“Unless Ms. Svinicki is confirmed by June 30th, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will lose its quorum,” Barrasso said. “We must not let that happen.”……http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/barrasso-senate-risks-closing-nuclear-energy-watchdog/article/2626089
June 16, 2017
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Plastic is everywhere; here’s how it conquered the world ABC, RN By Keri Philips and Tiger Webb for Rear Vision, 15 June 17 A hundred years ago, almost everything in our daily lives would have been made of natural materials like wood, leather and cotton. Today, the world we live in is full of things made of plastic. The first plastics were developed as an alternative to ivory. One of the earliest was called celluloid. Semi-synthetic, it was made through mixing camphor and cellulose into a material that, according to historian Jeff Meikle, resembled a kind of baking dough……
The first totally synthetic plastic
In the first decade of the 20th century, a Belgian-American inventor, Leo Baekeland, stumbled upon a form of plastic that could replace shellac…….
World War II fuelled a demand for new plastics. Commercial production exploded in the 1950s, as the big chemical companies — and sole entrepreneurs — looked for ways to turn their wartime discoveries into domestic consumer goods…..
The rise of the plastic bag
By the early 1970s, “plastics” included single-use items: drink bottles, plastic wrap, dry-cleaning bags, garbage bags. There was, Freinkel says, only one place where paper bags still reigned supreme: the checkout……
Professor Sella says, “We now have a real legacy of plastic in the environment.”
Large chunks of plastics take a long time to degrade and end up in gyres at the centre of oceans. On the other side of the scale, micro-plastics are ingested by organisms at every level of the food chain.
“We don’t really understand where this will take us,” says Professor Sella.
Our plastic addiction
Over the last century, plastic has gradually crept into every corner of our lives. For historian Jeff Miekle, it is difficult to imagine life today without it. “Plastics have … created an array of products that could not have existed before.”
As for the negatives, Freinkel reminds us that plastic isn’t the agent: we are. “We use this stuff, and what it does to our lives depends on how we do that.”
“We can take that ingenuity that created some amazing plastic stuff and use it to make useful things for us.
“Or, we can use it to fill the world with silly crap that nobody needs and is going to last for centuries.”http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-14/plastic-how-it-conquered-the-world/8614236
June 16, 2017
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Times Tribune, JOHN INTERVAL , 12 June Wth coal plants closing and nuclear power in serious trouble, natural gas has taken on increasing importance. Cheap and abundant gas has emerged as the Northeast’s No. 1 source of electricity.
Compared to coal and nuclear power, natural gas is a bargain. Natural gas-fired combined-cycle units are more cost-competitive than coal or nuclear power. The idea that natural gas will increasingly displace nuclear power in Pennsylvania is taken seriously.
A case in point: Owners of the Beaver Valley nuclear plant in Shippingport and Three Mile Island in Middletown have announced plans to retire both plants prematurely, unless the state government attaches a value to nuclear power’s role in carbon mitigation and power reliability. But Pennsylvania has rejected the idea of including nuclear power in its renewable electricity standard.
Whenever it finally happens, the tipping point from profitability to loss at Pennsylvania’s three other nuclear plants — Limerick, Peach Bottom and Susquehanna — will reverberate across the state, overhauling energy planning and placing greater emphasis on natural gas and renewable sources. When it happens, it will happen fast. Marcellus Shale offers an abundance of natural gas that goes beyond the dreams of energy planners.
The reality is that owners have either shut down or announced plans to shut down 14 U.S. nuclear plants since 2012, so actually relying on nuclear power for base-load electricity in the years ahead is all but impossible. Huge cost overruns and lengthy delays at the only nuclear plants under construction — two each in Georgia and South Carolina — are also a sign that nuclear power has a long road ahead before it can be relied on again.
The fate of any power plant should be determined by the electricity market, not by cutting deals that force consumers to bail out unprofitable facilities. In that regard, politicians in Illinois and New York State have approved as much as $10 billion in subsidies for five financially ailing nuclear plants, all owned by Exelon, a Chicago-based utility. Bloomberg Intelligence, a finance company, estimates that if every state with reactors in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic adopts subsidies at the same level as those in Illinois and New York state, ratepayers would have to shell out an additional $3.9 billion a year.
For decades, nuclear-generated electricity was competitive with coal and substantially cheaper than natural gas. But a combination of the shale revolution and higher nuclear costs changed the energy calculus. Gas prices declined, but the cost of maintaining and operating aging nuclear plants increased. When faced with the cost of replacing steam generators and other plant components, the owners of nuclear plants in Florida and California closed the facilities rather than shell out hundreds of millions of dollars for replacement parts.
While political interference in the energy market is precisely what we don’t need from government, making a switch to cheap natural gas will benefit consumers and put Pennsylvania in the driver’s seat for economic growth. Replacing aging nuclear plants with efficient gas units is what manufacturers of everything from computers to household appliances seek. Pennsylvania’s future is with natural gas.
…….Whenever it finally happens, the tipping point from profitability to loss at Pennsylvania’s three other nuclear plants — Limerick, Peach Bottom and Susquehanna — will reverberate across the state, overhauling energy planning and placing greater emphasis on natural gas and renewable sources. When it happens, it will happen fast. Marcellus Shale offers an abundance of natural gas that goes beyond the dreams of energy planners.
The reality is that owners have either shut down or announced plans to shut down 14 U.S. nuclear plants since 2012, so actually relying on nuclear power for base-load electricity in the years ahead is all but impossible. Huge cost overruns and lengthy delays at the only nuclear plants under construction — two each in Georgia and South Carolina — are also a sign that nuclear power has a long road ahead before it can be relied on again.
The fate of any power plant should be determined by the electricity market, not by cutting deals that force consumers to bail out unprofitable facilities. In that regard, politicians in Illinois and New York State have approved as much as $10 billion in subsidies for five financially ailing nuclear plants, all owned by Exelon, a Chicago-based utility. Bloomberg Intelligence, a finance company, estimates that if every state with reactors in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic adopts subsidies at the same level as those in Illinois and New York state, ratepayers would have to shell out an additional $3.9 billion a year……http://thetimes-tribune.com/opinion/no-subsidies-for-nuclear-po
June 14, 2017
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Emily Gosden, Energy Editor, The Times, June 13 2017 Vincent de Rivaz, who spearheaded the development of the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant, is to step down as EDF’s chief executive in Britain later this year.
June 14, 2017
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Robert Methot http://www.theday.com/letters-to-the-editor/20170610/nuclear-fuel-chain-produces-much-carbon The Day continues to publish nonsense about “carbon-free” nuclear power, including its editorial “Don’t miss opportunity to secure Millstone’s future,” (June 6). Noting scientific reality as a substitute for alternative facts, only reactor operation is essentially carbon-free. All other stages of the nuclear fuel chain − mining, milling, fuel fabrication, enrichment, reactor construction, decommissioning and waste management − use fossil fuels and hence emit carbon dioxide.
Also, the transport between these segments of the fuel cycle can be very energy intensive, as they can occur in different countries and require long-range shipping. In the longer term CO2 emissions from the nuclear fuel chain will increase substantially as limited supplies of high-grade uranium ore are depleted and lower-grade ore is mined. This is not to suggest that Millstone be shut down, but that the genuine environmental impact of its total operational cycle be recognized.
June 12, 2017
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The South Korean government should rethink its current approach to radioactive waste treatment technologies before attempting to go nuclear free, a renowned American nuclear expert said. In an interview with The Korea Herald, Frank von Hippel, a professor at Princeton University, warned that the state-run Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute is working on technologies that have failed in all other advanced industrial countries. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170607000727
June 9, 2017
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Axios, 1 June 17 “…..The people urging him to withdraw were louder, more influential and more relevant to Trump than the people urging him to stay in, even though there were more of the latter than the former.
The major players outside the White House:
- EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt helped orchestrate a campaign along with conservative interest groups that rallied Trump’s most ardent supporters.
- Obama administration officials, including John Podesta and Todd Stern, urging Trump to stay in the deal tied the issue to people unpopular with Trump.
- Most major fossil-fuel companies supported staying in Paris, but they weren’t as loud and persistent as the conservative interests pulling the other way, such as the 22 Senate Republicans who sent a letter last week to Trump urging him to withdraw.
- Backers of the deal, including world leaders, were not united in pushing for the U.S. to stay in the deal but ratchet down the commitment put forth by former President Obama, which muddled the debate at the G-7 meeting last week and didn’t create a convincing argument to Trump.
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The warring views inside the White House:
- Nationalists, as captured by my colleague Jonathan Swan: Paris is the antithesis of America First. It’s a global deal, which other major countries have no interest in abiding by in good faith, that has potentially profound consequences for American workers. Withdrawing from the climate deal is just as if not more significant than withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Trump began the process of withdrawing from as one of his first acts as president.
- Globalists: If America withdraws from the deal, it’d be America alone, not America first. Leaving the deal leaves millions of U.S. dollars on the table funneled to the global climate effort by the Obama administration. The U.S. has more leverage and power by remaining at the negotiating table than by leaving. Ivanka has been aggressively arguing for him to stay in, sources told Swan.
- Not mentioned: The environmental and public health consequences of climate change are not top of mind for either perspective……https://www.axios.com/why-trump-is-pulling-out-of-the-paris-climate-deal-2427900950.html
June 2, 2017
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http://www.gazettenet.com/Ann-Darling-argues-that-it-s-past-time-to-stop-thinking-of-nuclear-power-as-a-viable-option-10339507 In response to the letter writer promoting nuclear power as safe and clean (“Nuclear energy safest source of power in US,” May 23): I lived a few miles north of Vermont Yankee for decades, and I made a point of educating myself about nuclear power and nuclear waste.
What I learned scared me so much that I left my beloved home and moved as far away from Vermont Yankee as I could and still keep my job.
Nuclear power is not green. Yes, it puts almost no carbon into the atmosphere while the reactor is operating. But since when do we only look at what happens in part of a fuel cycle to determine if something is “green”? Haven’t we learned that extracting, refining, and cleaning up the waste have to be considered, too, with any source of power?
The mining and refining of uranium are extremely energy-intensive and lay waste to areas inhabited mostly by indigenous peoples worldwide. The waste from both ends of the cycle is the most toxic substance on earth, and it is harmful to life for centuries.
These new types of reactors are no magic bullet, either. They still create radioactive waste. And safe? Oh please. Tell the people who lived near Chernobyl and Fukushima who will never be able to go home that nuclear power is safe.
Closer to home, tell the people who live near the nuke in Plymouth that it’s safe. And if there is an emergency, the road off the Cape will be closed. I hope they all have boats.
The more nukes we build, and the older they get, the greater the likelihood of more catastrophes. It’s past time to stop thinking of nuclear as a viable option and put our resources toward bringing truly sustainable power generation to scale.
June 2, 2017
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Carlisle News & Star 31st May 2017 Toshiba, the key backer of Cumbria’s proposed nuclear new build, is to present unaudited accounts to its shareholders at the company’s AGM next month. The troubled Japanese giant – which has a 60 per cent stake in NuGen, which has plans for a power plant at Moorside, near Sellafield, and is taking on full ownership – has not been able to submit detailed results to officials in Japan because of ongoing discussions with its auditors over its American nuclear subsidiary Westinghouse Electric.
Toshiba is forecast to make a £6.5bn loss for the last year of business and its woes stem mainly from Westinghouse, which has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the USA, which may have overpaid – by several billion dollars – for another
nuclear construction and services business. http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/business/Moorside-nuclear-backer-Toshiba-to-present-unaudited-accounts-to-shareholders-0b3b0a0e-d673-4d1d-afda-7171325aaa68-ds
June 2, 2017
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