Centrifuge layoffs hit Oak Ridge
’OAK RIDGE - The first wave of layoffs hit the American Centrifuge Project on Friday, affecting more than 150 Oak Ridge workers. USEC Inc. issued pink slips to 29 of its Oak Ridge workers, and USEC's contractors - notably Babcock & Wilcox, the partner in manufacturing centrifuge machines - suffered even more. B&W gave layoff notices to 111 employees, about half of its work force at the Oak Ridge manufacturing plant. According to a chart distributed by USEC, there have been 163 Oak Ridge jobs lost so far as the American Centrifuge Project is scaled back while efforts are made to secure additional funding. That total includes eight Oak Ridge National Laboratory employees working on the project. "These job losses are due to the delay in receiving the loan guarantee (from the U.S. Department of Energy) and the resulting demobilization," USEC spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle said. "Obviously, it was a hard day for people over at the plant today. People got their notices and left." USEC has applied for a $2 billion loan guarantee from DOE, which earlier this summer put the application on hold pending resolution of technical issues on the technology for enriching uranium.’

Plans for next generation nuclear
’Design and planning work worth up to up to $40 million is being offered towards the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP), which aims to use an advanced reactor to produce heat for industry. The money is for the initial planning phase of the project, which aims to result in a high-temperature reactor producing electricity and heat for an industrial purpose like producing hydrogen. A decision to build will be made on the results of first-phase studies. The new funding, of "up to $40 million", will go on the development of a cost-shared conceptual design, cost and schedule estimates and a business plan for integrating detailed design, licensing and construction activities. The US Department of Energy (DoE) is to make two awards in February next year to support these studies on two different reactor concepts. It is hoped that the plant could be built by 2021, although the original schedule was 2010 when NGNP was first announced in 2000. Reactor designs already linked with the project include the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) from South Africa, General Atomics' GT-MHR and the similar Antares unit from Areva.’

China Guangdong Plans Overseas Nuclear Plant, Morning Post Says
’Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) -- China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding plans to build and partly finance the country’s first overseas nuclear reactor, the South China Morning Post said today, citing an official at one of the company’s units. The company will focus on developing countries, the English-language newspaper quoted Xiang Weidong, director of overseas business at CGNPC Uranium Resources as saying, without identifying the nations. CGNPC said on its Web site that it had signed a letter of intent a year ago with Belarus to cooperate in the nuclear power industry, the Morning Post reported.’

AECL extends agreement with Argentina for expanded CANDU nuclear co-operation
’MISSISSAUGA, ON, Sept. 21 /CNW/ - Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) has signed an Agreement with Nucleoeléctrica Argentina S.A. (NASA) and Comisión Nacional de Energia Atómica (CNEA) to extend a number of nuclear co-operation programs related to CANDU 6 and the development of the Advanced CANDU Reactor (ACR-1000). The agreement was signed today by ECL's President and Chief Executive Officer Hugh MacDiarmid, CNEA President Norma Boero and NASA President Eduardo Messi at AECL's corporate office in Mississauga. The agreement is for a period of three years and extends an agreement originally signed in 2006 for a wide range of initiatives including the life extension of the Embalse, Argentina nuclear power plant and a feasibility study to build a new CANDU reactor. "We are very pleased with the continued collaboration between AECL, NASA and CNEA, which will further enhance Argentina's development of nuclear power for generating clean, safe, reliable and economic electricity," said NASA President Eduardo Messi.’

France faces highly charged dilemma over Areva T&D
Anne Lauvergeon is a master strategist in the endless power games played around the nuclear group where she is chief executive. So it is not surprising that she has sought to fuel the competition for her nuclear group’s transmission and distribution arm by threatening to abandon a sale if bids are not high enough. Well, the bids are in and it seems unlikely that the sale will be abandoned, even if the buyers are rather more scarce than hoped for and the price falls short of the €4bn ($5.9bn) that was being touted by the seller just a few weeks ago. The simple fact is that Ms Lauvergeon’s political masters want a sale and a sale there will be. At the close of play Friday night, there were three bidding consortia: GE, with private equity group CVC; Toshiba of Japan; and the French partnership of Alstom, the turbine group, with Schneider Electric. Of the three, Toshiba appears to be the least serious, according to insiders, with a hastily cobbled-together offer that still needs much clarification. That leaves GE and the French bids on the table - estimated at about €bn - and the cynics are placing heavy bets on whom Areva’s government shareholder will choose. The odds seem to be in favour of the French bid. They are so strong in fact that some once keen bidders - such as the China Investment Corp - appeared to melt away in the final stretch.’

India, America: Looking Beyond the Nuclear Deal
’The visit earlier this month by India's Home Minister P Chidambaram to Washington, DC is the latest manifestation of how much the geostrategic picture is changing in South Asia as the India-US partnership deepens, causing consternation in Islamabad as Pakistan's traditional ally cosies up to New Delhi. It is an arrangement that is causing concern in Beijing as well. The four-day official visit to America focused on Indo-US anti-terror cooperation, technological assistance, an assessment of the security situation in South Asia and a study of counter-terrorism institutions and structures. Chidambaram met as well with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a strong indication that America under President Barack Obama is continuing one legacy of the Bush administration, and that is defense. Doubts that the Obama administration might re-look the strategic depth of Indo-US relations have been removed. India has been building on improved strategic ties with America with the civilian Indo-US nuclear deal signed last October as one significant signpost of achievement.’

EDF to sell 20-pct stake in British Energy: report
’French utility EDF plans to sell another 20 percent stake in Britain's nuclear power operator British Energy as part of a five-billion-euro (7.35-billion-dollar) asset sale, a report said on Monday. The economic news daily La Tribune said the sale would also help meet EU conditions set in 2008 when Brussels cleared EDF's acquisition of British Energy. Such a sale would also mean that EDF would no longer need to sell part of its RTE transport operations, which could have proved problematic with unions and on the political front, La Tribune said in an unsourced report. When asked about the report, an EDF spokeswoman said the issue was not being actively discussed at this point.’