86654899
submission
mdsolar writes:
If the Hinkley plan seems outrageous, that’s because it only makes sense if one considers its connection to Britain’s military projects — especially Trident, a roving fleet of armed nuclear submarines, which is outdated and needs upgrading. Hawks and conservatives, in particular, see the Trident program as vital to preserving Britain’s international clout.
A painstaking study of obscure British military policy documents, released last month by the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex, demonstrates that the government and some of its partners in the defense industry, like Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, think a robust civilian nuclear industry is essential to revamping Britain’s nuclear submarine program.
For proponents of Trident, civilian nuclear projects are a way of “masking” the high costs of developing a new fleet of nuclear submarines, according to the report. Merging programs like research and development or skills training across civilian and military sectors helps cut back on military spending. It also helps maintain the talent pool for nuclear specialists. And given the long lead times and life spans of most nuclear projects, connections between civilian and military programs give companies more incentives to make the major investments required.
One might say that with the Hinkley Point project, the British government is using billions of Chinese money to build stealth submarines designed to deter China.
86634499
submission
mdsolar writes:
A coalition of environmental and consumer activists say New York electricity customers will be jolted by a "huge tax" stemming from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plan to subsidize aging nuclear power plants.
Customers of National Grid, New York State Electric & Gas and other state-regulated utilities will see bills climb by more than $2 per month beginning next year — and even more in subsequent years — if the plan stays on track, the critics said.
The proposal is part of Cuomo's plan to ensure New York gets at least 50 percent of its power from renewable sources, including solar and wind, by 2030. He contends it makes New York a national leader in the push to curb climate change linked to greenhouse gases.
But representatives of more than 70 groups — consumer, environmental and conservative — announced this week that they are working in unison to derail the "bailout" of reactors near Rochester and Syracuse.
The subsidy's cost is expected to top $7 billion, according to a projection by the Public Utility Law Project, which is fighting the plan. Household customers would shoulder about $2.3 billion of that, it said, with the rest passed to industry, institutions and school systems.
"This is one of the biggest transfers of wealth in New York state history," said Blair Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group.
86483161
submission
mdsolar writes:
A new review of the safety of France’s nuclear power stations has found that at least 18 of EDF’s units are are ”operating at risk of major accident due to carbon anomalies.”
The review was carried out at the request of Greenpeace France following the discovery of serious metallurgical flaws by French regulators in a reactor vessel at Flamanville, where an EPR plant is under construction.
The problem is that parts of the vessel and its cap contain high levels of carbon, making the metal brittle and potentially subject to catastrophic failure. These key components were provided by French nuclear engineering firm Areva, and forged at its Le Creusot.
“The nature of the flaw in the steel, an excess of carbon, reduces steel toughness and renders the components vulnerable to fast fracture and catastrophic failure putting the NPP at risk of a major radioactive release to the environment”, says nuclear safety expert John Large, whose consultancy Large Associates (LA) carried out the Review.
His report examines how the defects in the Flamanville EPR reactor pressure vessel came about during the manufacturing process, and escaped detection for years after forging. It then goes on to investigate what other safety-critical nuclear components might be suffering from the same defects.
86268525
submission
mdsolar writes:
The House Ways and Means Committee voted Wednesday to remove a key deadline for a nuclear power plant tax credit.
The legislation from Reps. Tom Rice (R-S.C.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) would remove the requirement that newly-built nuclear power plants be in service by 2020 in order to receive a tax credit for producing power.
The credit was first enacted in 2005 to spur construction of new nuclear plants, but it has gone completely unused because no new plants have come online since then.
The bill passed 23-9, with only Democrats opposed.
It would likely benefit two reactors under construction at Southern Co.’s Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia and another two at Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in South Carolina. Both projects are at risk of missing the 2020 deadline.
Rice emphasized that it is not an expansion of the tax credit, because it can still be applied only to a total of 6,000 megawatts of generating capacity, as it was written in 2005.
“This bill ensures that the 6,000-megawatt capacity authorized by Congress in 2005 is fulfilled as intended, and stops there. This is not an expansion of the program,” Rice said at the committee meeting.
“When Congress passed the 2005 act, it could not have contemplated the effort it would take to get a nuclear plant designed and licensed.”
Blumenauer said he supports the legislation because he believes it could make small modular nuclear reactors a reality.
“It’s part of our future to see if we can make nuclear energy work in a way that’s safe and effective and manageable. Making this production credit work with this technology is an important step in that direction,” he said.
But some Democrats and environmentalists opposed the bill due to their overall objections to nuclear power. They pushed the Ways and Means Committee to instead act on renewable power tax incentives, such as credits for geothermal and similar technologies that were left out of a wide-ranging tax bill last year.
“I think the real problem with nuclear power is that it does better in a socialist economy than in a capitalist one, because nuclear energy prefers to have the public do the cleanup, do the insurance, cover all of the losses and it only wants the profits,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas).
86073947
submission
mdsolar writes:
In the wake of a nuclear emergency, the Environmental Protection Agency thinks it would be acceptable for the public to temporarily drink water containing radioactive contamination at up to thousands of times normal federal safety limits.
The agency is proposing this in new drinking-water guidelines for use in the weeks or months after a radiological event, such as a nuclear-power-plant accident or terrorist “dirty” bomb.
The EPA has been looking for years at issuing drinking-water guidelines as part of a broader set of recommendations about what to do if radioactive material is released into the environment. Agency officials have said the 2011 accident at the Fukushima nuclear complex in Japan, where radiation was released, influenced their thinking on the matter.
Public comments on the proposed drinking-water guidelines are still being evaluated and the EPA expects to release a final document sometime this year, an agency spokeswoman said.
In written filings, the EPA said its normal radiation-safety limits, which are based on presumed exposures over decades, can be relaxed for a relatively brief period in the wake of emergencies without unduly increasing people’s risk of harm. The new guidelines would help officials decide when protective actions, such as bringing in bottled water, are needed.
Opponents of the EPA drinking-water proposal, including the New York attorney general and environmental groups, say the initiative represents a drastic departure from normal protection limits and could endanger people’s health. Internal EPA documents written by agency officials and obtained by environmentalists under the Freedom of Information Act, also raised concerns.
86049639
submission
mdsolar writes:
After spending more than 40 years and $5 billion on an unfinished nuclear power plant in northeastern Alabama, the nation’s largest federal utility is preparing to sell the property at a fraction of its cost.
The utility, the Tennessee Valley Authority, has set a minimum bid of $36.4 million for its Bellefonte Nuclear Plant and 1,600 surrounding acres of waterfront property on the Tennessee River. The deal includes two unfinished nuclear reactors, transmission lines, office and warehouse buildings, eight miles of roads and a 1,000-space parking lot.
Initial bids are due Monday, and at least one company has expressed interest in the site, with plans to use it for alternative energy production. But the utility is not particular about what the buyer does — using the site for power production, industrial manufacturing, recreation or even residences would all be fine, said Scott Fiedler, an agency spokesman.
“It’s all about jobs and investment, and that’s our primary goal for selling this property,” Mr. Fiedler said. The utility hopes to close the deal in October.
The interested buyer, Phoenix Energy, based in Nevada, has said it will offer $38 million for Bellefonte in hopes of using it for a non-nuclear technology to generate power.
85915597
submission
mdsolar writes:
Britain’s biggest and most toxic nuclear waste site is facing fresh questions over its safety after allegations that staffing levels are frequently too low and that radioactive waste is being stored in degrading plastic bottles.
If a fire were to break out at the Sellafield site in Cumbria, it could “generate a plume of radiological waste that will go across Western Europe”, one whistleblower claims in a BBC Panorama documentary.
Staffing at Sellafield fell below the “minimum safety manning level” on average once a week in the six months to May this year, according to figures obtained by the BBC. In the year to July 2013, there were 97 incidents with too few workers, it said.
The Cumbrian site is also still storing radioactive plutonium and uranium in plastic bottles originally intended for temporary storage, some of which are now degrading, it claimed.
While Sellafield is working to deal with the bottles, there are still more than 2,000 of them on site, it claimed.
Sellafield is home to the majority of the UK’s nuclear waste, much of it housed in ponds and silos constructed in the 1940s and 50s. The eventual clean-up is expected to take more than 100 years and cost tens of billions of pounds.
The BBC allegations are the latest in a series of safety concerns to be raised about the site, which in 2013 was fined £700,000 after sending bags of radioactive waste to a regular landfill rubbish dump.
85625105
submission
mdsolar writes:
When a drum containing radioactive waste blew up in an underground nuclear dump in New Mexico two years ago, the Energy Department rushed to quell concerns in the Carlsbad desert community and quickly reported progress on resuming operations.
The early federal statements gave no hint that the blast had caused massive long-term damage to the dump, a facility crucial to the nuclear weapons cleanup program that spans the nation, or that it would jeopardize the Energy Department’s credibility in dealing with the tricky problem of radioactive waste.
But the explosion ranks among the costliest nuclear accidents in U.S. history, according to a Times analysis. The long-term cost of the mishap could top $2 billion, an amount roughly in the range of the cleanup after the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.
The Feb. 14, 2014, accident is also complicating cleanup programs at about a dozen current and former nuclear weapons sites across the U.S. Thousands of tons of radioactive waste that were headed for the dump are backed up in Idaho, Washington, New Mexico and elsewhere, state officials said in interviews.Link to Original Source
85468615
submission
mdsolar writes:
Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), operated by the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the global average July temperature was nearly one-fifth of a degree Celsius higher than previous July temperature records set in 2015 and in 2009. July was also 0.55 degrees Celsius higher than the July average for 1981-2010.
Compared to the July average, the south-central part of the United States including Texas and into northern Mexico were the most anomalously warm for North America.
Globally, portions of western Russia and the Southern Ocean were warmest compared to average.
In Russia, fires and an anthrax outbreak have been blamed on warmer than average temperatures.
Each of the last 12 months has been the warmest on record for their respective months. This is due to a combination of global climate variability and human activity according to C3S.
July is typically the warmest month of the year globally because the Northern Hemisphere has more land masses than the Southern Hemisphere.
(NASA GISTEMP confirms today)Link to Original Source
85393079
submission
mdsolar writes:
The world's next energy revolution is probably no more than five or ten years away. Cutting-edge research into cheap and clean forms of electricity storage is moving so fast that we may never again need to build 20th Century power plants in this country, let alone a nuclear white elephant such as Hinkley Point.
The US Energy Department is funding 75 projects developing electricity storage, mobilizing teams of scientists at Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and the elite Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge labs in a bid for what it calls the 'Holy Grail' of energy policy.
You can track what they are doing at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). There are plans for hydrogen bromide, or zinc-air batteries, or storage in molten glass, or next-generation flywheels, many claiming "drastic improvements" that can slash storage costs by 80pc to 90pc and reach the magical figure of $100 per kilowatt hour in relatively short order.
“Storage is a huge deal,” says Ernest Moniz, the US Energy Secretary and himself a nuclear physicist. He is now confident that the US grid and power system will be completely "decarbonised" by the middle of the century.Link to Original Source
85352189
submission
mdsolar writes:
China has cautioned Britain against closing the door to Chinese money and said relations were at a crucial juncture after Prime Minister Theresa May delayed signing off on a $24 billion nuclear power project.
In China's sternest warning to date over May's surprise decision to review the building of Britain's first nuclear plant in decades, Beijing's ambassador to London said that Britain could face power shortages unless May approved the Franco-Chinese deal.
"The China-UK relationship is at a crucial historical juncture. Mutual trust should be treasured even more," Liu Xiaoming wrote in the Financial Times.
"I hope the UK will keep its door open to China and that the British government will continue to support Hinkley Point — and come to a decision as soon as possible so that the project can proceed smoothly."
The comments signal deep frustration in Beijing at May's move to delay, her most striking corporate intervention since winning power in the political turmoil which followed Britain's June 23 referendum to leave the European Union.Link to Original Source
84339931
submission
mdsolar writes:
The Indian Point nuclear reactor that was shut down for three months after inspectors discovered hundreds of damaged bolts was taken offline again early Thursday so workers could fix a leaking pipe.
Indian Point’s owner, Entergy, said the leak of Hudson River water came from a pipe in a “non-radioactive system” and that it would not have an impact on safety at the Buchanan plant.
"There is no ongoing leak and there was no challenge to safety, however the plant needs to be shut down for weld repairs to be completed, in accordance with NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) regulations," Entergy said.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a longtime opponent of Indian Point, said the leak was part of a pattern of "repeated and continuing problems" at the plant.
"In the last year alone, there has been unprecedented degradation of Indian Point Unit 2 baffle-former bolts, groundwater contamination, and increased NRC oversight at Unit 3 due to numerous unplanned shutdowns," Cuomo said in a statement. "This is yet another sign that the aging and wearing away of important components at the facility are having a direct and unacceptable impact on safety, and is further proof that the plant is not a reliable generation resource"
84307285
submission
mdsolar writes:
California's nuclear-powered dream has an expiration date. The state's utility conglomerate Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) announced yesterday that they will close the last remaining nuclear plants by 2025. They'll replace the output with renewable energy and better efficiency in other stations. But, barring any changes to the moratorium on new plants, it's likely the end for atomic power in the Golden State.
The plant closures were negotiated with environmentalists and labor unions, but unique state policies sealed their fates, PG&E's CEO Anthony Earley told Scientific American. Specifically, SB 350 passed last year raised the state's minimum energy needed to come from renewables to 50 percent. Despite PG&E's requests, the bill left nuclear energy out of the sources it considers "renewable." This, combined with the bill's doubling of mandated energy efficiency, along with the rise of homegrown electricity, contributed to their decision to close the plants.
The moratorium on building new nuclear plants only exists until California finds a permanent solution for existing radioactive waste, but that's another hurdle that doesn't exist for renewable energy sources. Environmentalists believe this agreement could be a template for other states to shutter nuclear or fossil-fuel plants and replace them with renewable energy sources
83854803
submission
mdsolar writes:
Exelon said Thursday it will move ahead with plans to shutter the Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear plants, blaming the lack of progress on Illinois energy legislation.
The company, the parent of Chicago-area utilities provider ComEd, said the Clinton Power Station will close June 1, 2017, and the Quad Cities Generating Station in Cordova will close June 1, 2018. Both plants, the company said, have lost a combined $800 million in the past seven years, despite being "two of the best-performing plants," the company said in a statement.
83825075
submission
mdsolar writes:
The German government passed a regulation on Wednesday that aims to ensure utility companies remain liable for the costs of shutting down nuclear power plants even if they split up.
Germany decided to end nuclear power by 2022 following Japan's Fukushima disaster five years ago.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet said it would adopt recommendations made by a commission requiring Germany's utilities to pay 23.3 billion euros (18 billion pound) into a state fund to cover the costs of storing nuclear waste.
This included a provision that will make all parts of a company liable for the costs of Germany's nuclear shut down even if the utility has split up, the Economy Ministry said.
"Any spin-off after this date will be covered by the intended regulation," the ministry said in a statement.
Shareholders will vote on plans to spin off the utility's power plant and energy trading unit At E.ON's annual general meeting on June 8.
Germany's No.2 utility RWE also plans to hive off its renewables, grids and retail units into a separate entity and sell a 10 percent stake in an initial public offering.
Last year, the German cabinet approved a draft law that ensures power firms will remain liable for the shutdown and decommissioning costs for as long as it takes, even if they spin off subsidiaries that own the nuclear entities.
But there was some uncertainty over whether this would still apply if the nuclear assets remain with the parent company.
The new legislation seeks to close that loophole and ensure that taxpayers won't be forced to foot the bill for the costs of dismantling and storing nuclear waste if a firm goes bankrupt.
