Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

CNN: POWER POINTS: Cost Concerns Loom Over US Nuclear Revival
’For U.S. utilities gearing up to build new nuclear-power plants, the rewards could be great, but the risks of cost overruns, delays and regulatory battles persist. Expanding the nation's use of nuclear power is seen by many as a key component of any strategy to fight climate change, and utilities are lining up to provide it. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received applications from 14 companies to build and operate new nuclear power plants. Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week told utility executives that nuclear power, along with renewable energy and conservation, will be an important way to meet growing U.S. energy demand while cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. The companies behind these projects, including Southern Co. (SO) and Duke Energy (DUK), are upbeat on their prospects, noting guaranteed long-term returns on investment and increasing acceptance of a need to replace coal-fired power plants and their emissions. History sounds a cautionary note, however. Nuclear-power plants under development in Europe have come under fire for exceeding previously estimated costs, a fate that led developers to abandon several nuclear-power projects during the last U.S. nuclear build-out that ended in the early 1990s.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Cost Concerns Loom Over US Nuclear Revival" »

Posted by Justin at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In May we told you that the review being conducted by the UK’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate into new reactor designs had issues with EDF and Areva’s European Pressurised Reactor (EPR). Further details are now coming out about how the Inspectorate regards the EPR design as ‘significantly compromised’…

The Health and Safety Executive, which oversees the NII, said that the EPR design could be rejected for use in Britain if its concerns could not be satisfactorily addressed. “It is our regulatory judgment that the control and instrumentation architecture appears overly complex,” the NII letter [to EDF] said. “We have serious concerns about your proposal which allows lower safety class systems to have write access [the ability to override] to higher safety class systems,” it continued.

The letter also highlighted concerns about the absence of safety display systems or manual controls that would allow the reactor to be shut down, either in the station’s control room or at an emergency remote shutdown station.

In other words, the NII don’t trust the designs of EPR’s control and safety systems. Areva is apparently ‘scrambling to produce revised plans’, a situation mirrored in Finland where plans for the control system for the massively late and over-budget EPR being built in Olkiluoto have been described by Finland nuclear watchdog STUK as ‘without a proper design that meets the basic principles of nuclear safety’.

Apparently, in the UK’s case, ‘the design assessment phase could be delayed well past its expected completion in 2011.’ So in Finland, so in the UK. Areva and EDF are nothing if not consistent.

Posted by Justin at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Wednesday evening last week, Vincent De Rivaz, Chief Executive of EDF Energy, was interviewed on the UK’s Sky News channel. It was the same day as the UK government announcing its latest nuclear power strategy.

The interview is worth watching because of the evasions and contradictions in what Mr De Rivaz said that are common in nuclear power propaganda. Unfortunately they weren’t challenged by the interviewer so, in a short series, we're going to challenge them instead ( - part one is here, part two is here).

What about the highly dangerous waste produced by nuclear reactors? Here’s Mr De Rivaz’s entire response to the question, ‘there is the legacy of waste, isn’t there? That can be very dangerous for many years…’

The biggest challenge that we are facing all of us, we know it and we know it more and more, is climate change. We need to de-carbonise electricity and if we as a country to deliver what is our plan in 2050, 80% reduction of C02 emissions we need to de-carbonise electricity. So nuclear is part of the solution for sure.

Do you think he answered the question or singularly failed to address it? We know what we think. The biggest problem of nuclear power, it’s toxic, deadly legacy that will be with the human race for hundreds of thousands of years to come, is the waste it produces. And yet the CEO of EDF, lacked the courage to give a straight question on this vital issue with a straight answer.

According to writer H. Michael Sweeney there are 25 Rules of Disinformation. The number one rule? Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.

Posted by Justin at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Wednesday evening, Vincent De Rivaz, Chief Executive of EDF Energy, was interviewed on the UK’s Sky News channel. It was the same day as the UK government announcing its latest nuclear power strategy.

The interview is worth watching because of the evasions and contradictions in what Mr De Rivaz said. Unfortunately they weren’t challenged by the interviewer so, in a short series, we're going to challenge them instead ( - part one is here).

Mr De Rivaz said, ‘I am very open to debate and discussions’ with the like of Greenpeace on the matter of nuclear power and climate change. Debate? What debate? How is this debate to conducted? Where will these discussions take place?

What about the debate at the European Commission’s European Nuclear Energy Forum (Enef) from which ‘Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Sortir du Nucléaire, the only groups invited into the industry-dominated body, have walked out, accusing Enef of stifling critical voices, ignoring their concerns and riding roughshod over alternative scientific evidence’? EDF is part of that industry-dominated body. Where was Mr De Rivaz’s openness to debate and discussion at those meetings?

Posted by Justin at 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Wednesday evening, Vincent De Rivaz, Chief Executive of EDF Energy, was interviewed on the UK’s Sky News channel. It was the same day as the UK government announcing its latest nuclear power strategy.

The interview is worth watching because of the evasions and contradictions in what Mr De Rivaz said. Unfortunately they weren’t challenged by the interviewer so, in a short series, we're going to challenge them instead.

Answering the question about how his nuclear ‘renaissance’ will be funded (‘Will it happen with government subsidy?’), he said:

I’ve always said we don’t ask for taxpayers’ money. We don’t ask for government subsidy. I’ve always said that. I’m still saying that. I will continue to say that.

That’s pretty definite. And it’s a nice little piece of spin. Mr De Rivaz isn’t asking the British government to directly support EDF. No, he’s a little more subtle than that. What he actually asked in May this year was for the British government to fix the energy markets to make financial life easier for EDF…

New nuclear power stations will not be built in Britain unless the government provides financial support for the industry, the head of the country’s biggest nuclear generator has warned.

Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of the UK subsidiary of EDF, told the Financial Times that a “level playing field” had to be created that would allow the nuclear industry to compete with other low-emission electricity sources such as wind power.

‘We believe nuclear is competitive,’ he said in the Sky News interview when he actually doesn’t believe anything of the kind. He believes it could be competitive but only with serious government intervention.

Posted by Justin at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)