Olkiluoto in Finland
EPR’s problems run in the nuclear family
Greenpeace 27 June 09 “…………………………….Areva’s supposedly state-of-the-art, third-generation European Pressurized Reactor.
To recap, currently just two EPRs are being built in the world right now – one at Olkiluoto in Finland and one in Flamanville in France. Both have been beset by long-running construction problems, schedule and cost overruns, and all-round hilarious ineptitude and controversy.
The predecessor of the EPR, its parent if you like, was the Framatome N4 of which France has four. The N4 had problems of its own which sound all too familiar………………..
Design-related problems? Delays in commissioning? Cracked welding? N4 and EPR could be identical twin brothers, not father and son. Has nothing been learned? Nothing at all? We’ve heard this story before. Areva are remaking their own disaster movie.
INDIA: Opposition to ‘Nuclearism’ Builds Up
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Jun 24 (IPS) – As India follows up on the historic civilian nuclear agreement it signed last year with the United States by drawing up hard commercial deals, opposition to ‘nuclearism’ is building up among activist groups.
The ‘India-U.S. Economic Relations: The Next Decade’ report released this week by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) says that the nuclear deal marks the beginning of a new era……………………… “India intends to import 24 reactors in the next 11-15 years, and could create as many as 20,000 new jobs directly and indirectly in the U.S. from nuclear trade,” the CII report says.
But although it was the U.S. that pushed India’s case past the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), other countries – notably France and Russia – are eager players in India’s expanding nuclear commerce………………………………….. Anti-nuclear activists believe that India – following the completion of the Indo-US deal – is on the threshold of a new era of ‘nuclearisation’ which will have far-reaching effects on the way the country is run.
“With the India-U.S. nuclear deal, and the deals with Russia and France and likely private participation in nuclear energy generation, the situation is going to get out of hand in our country,” says S.P. Udayakumar, convenor of the newly launched National Alliance of Anti-nuclear Movements (NAAM).
NAAM, launched at a three-day convention held in Kanyakumari in southern Tamil Nadu, during the first week of June, plans to mobilise ordinary Indians against the ‘nuclearisation’ of the country and protect people against nuclear threats and destruction of the environment from nuclear waste and radiation.
NAAM warns Indian citizens that they are up against a “combination of profiteering companies, secretive state apparatuses and a repressive nuclear department which will be ruthless.”
“This nexus of capitalism, statism and nuclearism does not augur well for the country. These forces are gaining an upper hand in our national polity which will sound the death knell for the country’s democracy, openness, and prospects for sustainable development,” Udayakumar told IPS.
Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Nuclear Power
Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Nuclear Power Energy Matters 22 June 09 Nuclear power has been increasingly hailed by lobbyists as a source of clean, cheap and safe power; but cost blowouts in the construction and maintenance of new nuclear plants, along with their need for massive amounts of water and continuing radioactive waste storage issues, is again making renewable energy look to be the only really viable option to power our future.
According to a recent study by economist Dr. Mark Cooper, a senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School, the cost of electricity generated by new nuclear reactors would be (USD) 12-20 cents per kilowatt hour, whereas increased energy efficiency and renewable energy sourced power would cost around 6 cents per kilowatt hour.
This translates to USD $1.9 trillion to $4.1 trillion more over the life of 100 new nuclear reactors.
Projected construction and maintenance costs for nuclear plants have quadrupled since the start of the nuclear renaissance in 2000. The required massive subsidies from taxpayers and ratepayers would not change the real cost of nuclear reactors, they would just shift the risks to the public, according to the report.
Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Nuclear Power : Renewable Energy News
Nuclear renaissance hits trouble
Nuclear renaissance hits trouble
James Kanter The Age June 21, 2009 The cracks are showing in the latest atomic showpiece, writes James Kanter.AS THE world fights climate change by seeking cleaner sources of energy, governments would do well to consider this cautionary tale of a new-generation nuclear reactor site.The massive power plant under construction on the Finnish island of Olkiluoto was supposed to be the showpiece of a nuclear renaissance. The most powerful reactor built to date, its modular design was supposed to make it faster and cheaper to build. And it was supposed to be safer, too.But after four years of construction and thousands of defects and deficiencies, the reactor’s €3 billion price tag ($A5.2 billion) has climbed at least 50 per cent. And while it was meant to be finished this northern summer, Areva, the French company building it, is no longer willing to say when it will go online……………………….Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as €6 billion, double the price offered to the Finns. Areva announced a steep drop in earnings last year, which it blamed mostly on mounting losses from the project.
In addition, nuclear safety inspectors in France have found cracks in the concrete base and steel reinforcements in the wrong places at the site in Flamanville. They also warned the utility building the reactor that welders working on the steel container were not properly qualified.
On top of such problems come the recession, weaker energy demand, tight credit and uncertainty over future policies, said Caren Byrd, an executive director at the global utility and power group at Morgan Stanley in New York.
“The warning lights now are flashing more brightly than just a year ago about the cost of new nuclear,” she said.
Open your wallet: Electric rates already moving higher to finance new nuclear power
Open your wallet: Electric rates already moving higher to finance new nuclear powerBy: Washington Post Examiner MARK WILLIAMSAssociated Press 06/21/09 8:30 PM EDTCOLUMBUS, OHIO — A ghost from the nuclear industry’s early years has reappeared.It is not public apprehension about safety or disposal issues this time, but the staggering cost of building nuclear reactors.A wave of new reactors now in the works is intended to solve at least part of the nation’s energy problems as it attempts to shift away from fossil fuels. But cost is likely to plague every upcoming nuclear project.This month in Missouri the first of the next generation reactors was put on hold because of the $6 billion price tag.Whether or not AmerenUE’s Missouri reactor was a casualty of the current economic climate, the legal fight in several states shows how big the cost hurdle will be.Some states have altered laws so that consumers begin footing the bill now, even before construction begins. Missouri did not…………………………………………cost, critics say, is a too great and there are better ways to power homes.
“It is so phenomenally costly that it crowds out capital needed for energy efficiency and renewable energy,” said Mark Haim of Missourians for Safe Energy, a group that has been fighting Ameren’s plans.
Yet Republican lawmakers in Washington want more government funding for nuclear power……………………
The nuclear energy industry lobbied hard for $50 billion worth of federal loan guarantees, but that was stripped from the stimulus bill.
So states are revamping laws to help raise money………………………
Utilities say allowing them to charge consumers before reactors are built, rather than after, will save hundreds of millions in financing costs, which would also have to be paid by consumers.
In Georgia, customers of Georgia Power, a subsidiary of the Southern Co., will pay $1.30 extra a month beginning in 2011. However, to cover the cost of two new nuclear reactors that will cost $14 billion, consumers will be paying an extra $9.10 a month by 2017.
Because the utility is allowed to collect money before the plants are on line, rates will increase by 9 percent, compared with the 12 percent they would jump if rates were raised only after completion, the company said.
Big Nuke’s Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio
Signs of Desperation?
Big Nuke’s Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio counterpunch 20 June 09 By HARVEY WASSERMANJob-starved southern Ohioans are being promised a shiny new nuclear plant. But the announcement has come with a cruel reminder, and the scent of a desperate hoax.Using the gargantuan corpse of the shuttered Portsmouth-Piketon uranium enrichment plant as his backdrop, U.S. Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) punctuated his enthusiastic endorsement the new nuke by proclaiming that, with his support, the US government has paid thousands of Ohio workers hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for the health damage they suffered from being irradiated while working there…………………………….
Now the heaviest of nuclear hitters want to use this same site for a 1600-megawatt French-designed plant that would anchor a “Clean Energy Park.” In a region devastated by the enrichment plant’s shutdown, and by the decimation of the American industrial economy, it would be a flagship for the “nuclear power renaissance.”
It is a cruel hoax
……………………………….the most critical spot was occupied by Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of AREVA, the French government’s nuclear front group. She ended her brief speech with a heavily inflected “Go Buckeyes!”
Lauvergeon is a top A-List industry hitter, the flamboyant, hard-nosed chief of the world’s number one reactor pusher. But AREVA’s finances have been hard-hit by an outdated technology teetering at the brink of collapse, even as its supporters push ahead with high-profile—but hollow—events like this one…………………………Other bothersome details remain to be solved, most importantly: who will actually pay for all this?……………….Nor has the insurance industry come forward to provide liability coverage in case of a major accident.
Harvey Wasserman: Big Nuke’s Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio
So-called “CLEAN” nuclear energy
Ohio Governor, Duke Power, UniStar, USEC, and France merge to build “clean energy park” at DOE site
Beyond Nuclear 20 June 09 Background: An alliance involving Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, Duke Power company, United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC), UniStar Nuclear Energy, and France’s troubled nuclear power giant AREVA is being forged to build a new 1600 megawatt Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR) at the now closed atomic bomb and nuclear fuel enrichment factory site in Piketon, Ohio. The proposed site is at the U.S. Department of Energy’s old Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant which was leased to USEC for the enrichment of uranium. USEC ceased operations in May 2001. The Piketon site is also the USEC pilot project for new uranium enrichment technology with the construction of the American Centrifuge Demonstration Facility.
Our View: There is nothing “clean” about this proposed first-of-a-kind nuclear energy park for the enrichment of nuclear fuel alongside a new nuclear power plant including the secret dumping of radioactive contamination from the Cold War Piketon bomb factory. The Piketon facility is still the focus of more than $100 million in long overdue cleanup money from industrial contamination dating back to the bomb factory’s opening in 1952. The construction of a new uranium enrichment and now a new power reactor will likely result in widening contamination and divert vital resources from truly clean renewable energy resources and energy efficiency.
With nuclear waste piling up, FPL seeks Turkey Point rezoning
With nuclear waste piling up, FPL seeks Turkey Point rezoning Miami Herald 19 June 09 Florida Power & Light is seeking a zoning change at Turkey Point that most environmentalists know nothing about.
BY JOHN DORSCHNER
jdorschner@MiamiHerald.com
After more than two million pounds of nuclear waste has piled up in South Dade over 35 years, Florida Power & Light is quietly seeking a zoning change to allow six acres of its Turkey Point site to be used for new above-ground storage casks.
Environmentalists have known for a long time FPL planned to use casks but they knew little, if anything, about the need for a zoning change, which generally allows for public discussion that could lead to modifications of the utility’s plans……………………………….
Environmentalists emphatically want a hearing. ”There are very important issues here,” said Reynolds. “Because this site is so close to the water, we’re concerned about rising water levels with global warming and storm surges from hurricanes.”
LAST CHANCE
A county hearing may be the environmentalists’ last chance to stop expansion of the storage area. Last month, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection gave its approval for the site change.
For more than 30 years, FPL has stored the Turkey Point waste in stainless steel-lined covered concrete pools. Those pools will be filled in the next two years, Veenstra wrote in an e-mail, and FPL plans to switch to dry-cask storage in silo-shaped structures six feet wide and 16 feet tall, consisting of ”stainless steel containers secured inside concrete modules,” two to four feet thick………………………………..The environmentalists’ main concern is protecting the water. ”You’re asking for all kinds of trouble with water intrusion,” said Oncavage of the Sierra Club. “You could have hurricanes on top of global warming — how high do you have to have the casks raised so they’d be safe from storm surge?”
With nuclear waste piling up, FPL seeks Turkey Point rezoning – Miami-Dade – MiamiHerald.com
SC jobseekers line up to clean nuke waste
SC jobseekers line up to clean nuke waste google News By MEG KINNARD 19 June 09 “…………………..The jobs, most of them cleaning up the nuclear waste, are only temporary, funded through September 2011 as part of the federal stimulus package…………………….The new employees will be hired by the end of this summer and will focus on closing down several unused facilities, cleaning up about 600 acres of contaminated soil and disposing of or storing about waste created by processing spent nuclear fuel. Workers will also be tasked with closing several old reactors and evaporating millions of gallons of contaminated water.
Funds to shut nuclear plants fall short
Funds to shut nuclear plants fall short B y DAVE GRAM and FRANK BASS – Google News 17 June 09 VERNON, Vt. (AP) — The companies that own almost half the nation’s nuclear reactors are not setting aside enough money to dismantle them, and many may sit idle for decades and pose safety and security risks as a result, an Associated Press investigation has found……………………………..
At 19 nuclear plants, owners have won approval to idle reactors for as long as 60 years, presumably enough time to allow investments to recover and eventually pay for dismantling the plants and removing radioactive material.
But mothballing reactors or shutting them down inadequately could pose dangerous health, environmental or security problems. In the worst cases, generally considered unlikely, risks include radioactive waste leaking from idled plants into groundwater, airborne releases or a terrorist attack.
During the past two years, estimates of dismantling costs have soared by more than $4.6 billion because rising energy and labor costs, while the investment funds that are supposed to pay for shutting plants down have lost $4.4 billion in the battered stock market…………………………..some analysts worry the utility companies that own nuclear plants might not even exist in six decades.”Our concern is that they’ll just walk away from it,” said Jim Riccio, a Greenpeace nuclear policy analyst. “It’s like a sitting time bomb………………………………….Plant operators appear to benefit from NRC rules that don’t require them to set aside money to store old nuclear fuel, demolish buildings, or return the plant sites to pristine states. Although some states require a full site restoration, the federal government does not.
The Associated Press: AP IMPACT: Funds to shut nuclear plants fall short
Sarkozy’s Sugar Poppa Days in Africa are Numbered «
Sarkozy’s Sugar Poppa Days in Africa are Numbered Mo’dernity Mo’problems 17 June 09 Today, French President Nicolas Sarkozy will attend the funeral of Omar Bongo of Gabon, the world’s longest serving and shortest dictator……………………Mr. Bongo was the grease to France’s sugar poppa politics in Africa. But now, Sarko is weaker in Africa than before and he has to deal with the aftermath of Bongo’s passing, who at time of death was in the middle of a corruption case lodged by Transparency International in French Courts……………………With huge investments in Gabon, a ridiculous court case and the loss of an African ally, Sarko is seems like a sugar poppa no more. From his overtly racist speech in Dakar to his to his absurd claim that new uranium extraction deals with the DRC would help the Congo on its path to peace, French President Nicolas Sarkozy seems more like a bumbling version of Tintin than the president of an post-colonial metropole…………………..His Africa project has all but collapsed.
Sarkozy’s Sugar Poppa Days in Africa are Numbered « Mo’dernity, Mo’problems
“New” Nuclear Reactors, Same Old Story
“New” Nuclear Reactors, Same Old Story Peak Energy 16 June 09 AMory Lovins has a look at various new forms of nuclear power being touted as the next big thing – “…………
…………on closer examination, the two kinds most often promoted—Integral Fast Reactors (IFRs) and thorium reactors4—reveal no economic, environmental, or security rationale,…………………………
Integrated Fast Reactors (IFRs) – ……………Fast reactors were first offered as a way to make more plutonium to augment and ultimately replace scarce uranium. Now that uranium and enrichment are known to get cheaper while reprocessing, cleanup, and nonproliferation get costlier—destroying the economic rationale—IFRs have been rebranded as a way to destroy the plutonium (and similar transuranic elements) in long-lived radioactive waste. Two or three redesigned IFRs could in principle fission the plutonium produced by each four LWRs without making more net plutonium. However, most LWRs will have retired before even one commercial-size IFR could be built; LWRs won’t be replaced with more LWRs because they’re grossly uncompetitive; and IFRs with their fuel cycle would cost even more and probably be less reliable………………………..
Thorium reactors………………..thorium can’t fuel a reactor by itself: rather, a uranium- or plutoniumfueled reactor can convert thorium-232 into fissionable (and plutonium-like, highly bomb-usable) uranium-233. Thorium’s proliferation,9 waste, safety, and cost problems differ only in detail from uranium’s…………
any new type of reactor would probably cost even more than today’s models: even if the nuclear part of a new plant were free, the rest—two-thirds of its capital cost—would still be grossly uncompetitive with any efficiency and most renewables, sending out a kilowatt-hour for ~9–13¢/kWh instead of new LWRs’ ~12–18+¢. In contrast, the average U.S. windfarm completed in 2007 sold its power (net of a 1¢/ kWh subsidy that’s a small fraction of nuclear subsidies) for 4.5¢/kWh. Add ~0.4¢ to make it dispatchable whether the wind is blowing or not and you get under a nickel delivered to the grid.Most other renewables also beat new thermal power plants too, cogeneration is often comparable or cheaper, and efficiency is cheaper than just running any nuclear- or fossil-fueled plant. Obviously these options would also easily beat proposed fusion reactors that are sometimes claimed to be comparable to today’s fission reactors in size and cost……………………….
Small reactors……………………….the whole nuclear business will complete its slow death of an incurable attack of market forces. Meanwhile, the rest of us shouldn’t be distracted from getting on with the winning investments that make sense, make money, and really do solve the energy, climate, and proliferation problems, led by business for profit.
Russia says bank problems delaying Iran nuclear plant
Russia says bank problems delaying Iran nuclear plant
Washington, 10 June (WashingtonTV)—In an interview with the Interfax news agency published on Wednesday, the head of Russia’s nuclear contractor, Atomstroiexport, said that the completion of Iran’s first nuclear power plant was being delayed by Russian banks refusing to work with Tehran.
The state-owned Atomostroiexport is building the nuclear power plant in the southwestern Iranian city of Bushehr, along the Persian Gulf. The project has experienced numerous delays, including some linked to disagreements over payment terms.
“The problems with financing exist because not all Russian banks are ready to work with Iran, and we have to find alternative options,” Atomstroiexport head, Dan Belenky, told Interfax, according to AFP.
http://televisionwashington.com/floater_article1.aspx?lang=en&t=2&id=11149
AECL worried about Ont. nuclear cost overruns
AECL worried about Ont. nuclear cost overrunsUpdated:
Tue Jun. 09 2009 8:56:31 PMctvtoronto.caAs Ontario comes close to deciding who it will pay $20 billion to build two new nuclear reactors, the Canadian bidder is already worried that it will face large cost overruns.The warnings are contained in the secret documents left by a former member of Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt’s staff at CTV’s Ottawa bureau recently.In the documents is a page dealing with the bid by Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. (AECL), which hopes to win the contract. On that page is the following statement: “… There is the risk there could be large cost overruns.”……..
….The last nuclear plant constructed in Ontario was the Darlington project, which went over-budget by about $15 billion when it was finally opened nearly 20 years ago. Ontario’s hydro customers are still playing off that debt.
Final Nail in Nukes’ Coffin?
Final Nail in Nukes’ Coffin? nj.com by Bill Wolfe June 06, 2009 Huge cost overruns, construction delays, and subsidies doom nuke renaissance – “Things have not gone as planned” In a devastating story, the New York Times Business page lands what could be a knockout blow to the nuclear industry’s attempt to revive nuclear power. Nuke industry PR has argued that new “safe” and “cost effective” engineering designs have solved the safety and economic issues, while the global warming crisis warrants a huge expansion. But the Times story destroys those myths, on purely economic grounds: In Finland, Nuclear Renaissance Runs Into Trouble Cost Overruns at Finland Reactor Hold Lessons – NYTimes.com
At the same time construction costs are escalating, the industry is seeking even more subsidies by taxpayers and electric rate-payers.
The Times story is a huge warning to the Obama energy planners and to State level public utility regulators and policy makers.
Would NJ Legislators and/or the BPU allow electric consumers to get stuck with footing the bill for a failed technology?……………………..
Any move by NJ BPU to allow rate increases to subsidize nuclear construction risks would be a political nightmare.
Finally, would private investors ignore “warning lights” and take on investment risks under current (and projected) market and regulatory conditions?……………………….
“On top of such problems come the recession, weaker energy demand, tight credit and uncertainty over future policies, said Caren Byrd, an executive director of the global utility and power group at Morgan Stanley in New York.
“The warning lights now are flashing more brightly than just a year ago about the cost of new nuclear,” she said.”
1 This Month
petition to oppose the rapid increase of space-military industry threatening Jeju Island and the region.
[Petition by April 19th (KST)] Stop the joint military-Hanwha Systems-Jeju Provincial Government Sea Launch!
World Nuclear Power. Reactors 1951-2026, 75 Years of Nuclear Power.
Interactive Map– https://dv.worldnuclearreport.org/
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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