Decommissioning

Companies mentioned this week include: Rosatom, Atomic Energy Agency, Energy Solutions, NDA, DECC, EDF, RWE, British Energy, Pacific Gas & Electric, Bulgarian Energy Holding, CERN, Iberdrola, GdF Suez, Scottish and Southern Energy

Russia's Rosatom signs billion dollar contracts with India

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev this week, as the two countries signed deals on nuclear energy and arms sales.

India and Russia signed several raft of agreements, including one on cooperation in civilian atomic energy after the two leaders held talks at the Kremlin, Russian news agencies reported.

The pact would guarantee unhindered supply of uranium for Indian reactors and the right to reprocess spent fuel, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency quoted unnamed officials as saying.

The news is additional good for the nuclear industry given that Russia is already building two nuclear power units in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and has agreed to install four more nuclear reactors there as part of an agreement signed during Medvedev's visit to India last year.

Rosatom, Russia's state-owned nuclear power firm, could ultimately could build up to 20 nuclear power units in India in total, of which four to six will be in the state of West Bengal, the ITAR-TASS state news agency reported, citing the company's chief.

"These are not just billions, these are tens of billions of dollars" worth of contracts, Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko said, quoted by ITAR-TASS.

In the televised signing ceremony, Singh said that India welcomed the broadening of its nuclear energy programme. The peaceful use of atomic energy, he said is a major step forward.

Ahead of Singh's visit to Moscow, Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said India and Russia had been trying to put together an agreement that would broaden a nuclear fuel import pact.

Nigeria set to order first nuclear plant

Nigeria is ready to undertake the significant work necessary to prepare for ordering its first nuclear power plant, it was reported this week.

The news follows the African country’s certification by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a 10-year action plan to become nuclear efficient. 

According to Nigerian publication, The Guardian, Senate President, David Mark, said that Nigeria's nuclear power programme would generate about 1,000 megawatts (mw) of electricity into the national grid within the next 10 years and up to 4,000 mw by the year 2030.

American jobs at risk at Energy Solutions

Energy Solutions, a Utah-based nuclear waste processing company, says American jobs are now at risk following a US House of Representatives vote to ban imports of radioactive wastes.

Congressman, Jim Matheson, in particular, is against the US importing such waste. 

Energy Solutions wants to import 20 tons of low level waste from Italy for it to be processed in Tennessee and buried in Utah's west desert.

If the House of Representatives sign a bill into law to ban nuclear waste imports, the US, although the only nation to import waste of this kind at present, could be putting American jobs at risk, according to Energy Solutions’ President Val Christensen.

In a statement he said:  "We are disappointed that the House of Representatives voted to place American jobs at risk.

If signed into law, this bill will prevent American companies from playing an international role in the global nuclear energy industry.”

The import of radioactive waste is topical of late following theories published by ex Navy nuclear engineer, Eric Loewen, who believes there is a way to turn old waste into new energy, without emitting CO2.

His sodium fast reactor idea “burns nuclear waste, emits no CO₂, and shuts itself down in an accident,” according to an Esquire report.

“We have enough fuel to power the whole world for tens of thousands of years. It will end global warming, and even if global warming is just another paranoid Armageddon fantasy, it will save us from the dying oceans and starvation and resource wars that are inevitable as the world's energy supply dwindles.

It will unleash new industries and revitalize America's manufacturing industry,” he said.

Loewen is making the rounds to Senators across the US to explain how a reactor, practically already developed by GE, could use liquid sodium instead of water to slow things down and have a higher neutron speed, which turns into fuel.

Pressure from utilities to make nuclear profitable

Rumours of a newly devised tax break for nuclear power have been floating through Whitehall, highlighting the need for the UK’s nuclear new build programme to not only take haste, but to also consider loan guarantees to utility companies.

The estimated tax exemption for the industry could be worth up to £300m per annum or £3bn over the next ten years in parallel with the UK’s ambitious construction programme. 

According to The Times, officials at the Department for Energy and Climate Change have been studying the possibility of an exemption for nuclear electricity from the climate change levy, a tax on industrial energy consumption that was created to boost energy efficiency.

Low-carbon sources of electricity, such as wind energy, are already exempt from the levy.

While the DECC has not stated any plans to drop the levy for nuclear, pressure from foreign utility heavy weights, such as France’s EDF, could form an impetus for MPs to create tax incentives and/or ‘guarantees’ to ensure new plants will be profitable businesses.

German utility, RWE, in recent weeks abandoned its plans to build a 2000MW nuclear facility in Bulgaria (Belene), following the new government’s change in stance on providing loan guarantees.

NDA budget in question

Reports that the Treasury is reviewing the NDA’s £800m annual budget could put pressure on future decommissioning projects for utility companies such as British Energy (part of EDF Energy), creating even greater funding challenges for those servicing the nuclear sector.

The review puts into question whether utility companies will be able to sustain new build costs when decommissioning funds will be cut so close to new build targets.

For example, British Energy’s Hinkley Point B located near Bridgwater in Somerset has an estimated decommissioning date of 2016—that’s just six years away.

Its parent company EDF plans to build its four EPRs at Hinkley Point and Sizewell in Suffolk with the first set to be operational by the end of 2017.

But with no concrete investment framework put in place, EDF’s goal to power up to 40% of all homes in the UK – a total of 10 million homes—could seriously be put on hold.

The NDA’s response has been to sacrifice certain parts of its services to accelerate others, such as overheads and administration.

The newfound resources would be dedicated to core decommissioning of UK sites.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. requests 20 year extension

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has requested a 20-year extension on the life of its Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo, California.

PG&E said it is investing $1bn in the power plant through to the end of 2010.

John Conway, senior vice president of energy supply for the utility, called the plant extension a "critical" move to meet the state’s greenhouse gas emissions reductions goals.

The plant employs more than 1,200 full-time workers and last year contributed more than $25m in property taxes to San Luis Obispo.

Built in 1985, the plant supplies nuclear power to more than 3 million homes. California, a state riddled with a looming energy shortage, has just two reactors, two of which are at the Diablo Canyon site.

Bulgaria seeks consultancy to attract €200m for Belene nuclear project

The Belene nuclear project in the Bulgarian Danube will require an estimated €200m to be maintained, according to local reports.

"Now is not a good time for suspending the project, it should be sustained even though with minimum of funds," said Boris Pekov, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bulgarian Energy Holding and executive director of the state enterprise “Radioactive waste”.

The Bulgarian Energy Holding, which recently received news that German utility, RWE, was abandoning its plans to build a 2000MW nuclear facility in Belene, could also face financial claims from contractors should delays remain for the unforeseeable future.

RWE would have had a 49% stake in the Belene project with state utility, NEK, owning the remaining majority stake.

Bulgaria's new centre-right government is reviewing the cost analysis of Belene and is expected to decrease its share in the nuclear project from 51% to between 20 and 30%.

 Politicians and government agencies alike are keen to find strategic partners to fund the financial gap and are in the process of hiring a consultant to attract new funds, which could take more than a year to finalise.

The Belene situation could be one of several examples of utility company pull-outs in Europe should other governments not be willing to provide guarantees.

It is reported that the previous cabinet in Bulgaria under Socialist power started talks with the Russian government on a €EUR 3.8bn state loan for the project and offered guarantees for it.

However, the centre-right GERB party says it is not willing to provide any state guarantees for loans.

This change in stance has put Belene’s future in limbo as the current government has yet to decide whether or not Belene is a viable option.  

According to Pekov delaying the project any further could cost money.

However at the time of writing, Russia's Atomstroyexport, which was contracted to build the two 1 000 megawatt reactors, had yet to claim damages in accordance with the delay.

Copenhagen hosts UN Climate Change Conference (December 7-18)

This week and next Copenhagen will stage a conference to discuss how nations can decrease global warming. Representatives of 192 nations will take part at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the latest of its kind since 1997 when Japan hosted what ultimately developed the Kyoto Protocol.

However, the protocol was never ratified by the US Senate and expires in 2012, placing more pressure on all parties concerned.

President Obama and China's Hu Jintao are hoping to set a realistic agreement among delegates to merely agree that emission limits should be put in place.

The specifics of such limits, however, will be left to be decided in the future.

What hangs in the balance is a unilateral movement from nations to sacrifice the fossil fuel industry, sooner rather than later, so that investment can be made swiftly into the next generation of electricity supply: solar, wind and nuclear.

CERN launches Big Bang pop-up book

Science lovers of all ages are interested in how the world began. And just in time for Christmas, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has launched Voyage to the Heart of Matter, a new pop-up book about the science of CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Renowned paper engineer Anton Radevsky has vividly illustrated 7000 tonnes of metal, glass, plastic, cables and computer chips to leap from the page in miniature pop-up, to tell the story of CERN’s quest to understand the birth of the universe.

The book skilfully explains how protons travelling at nearly the speed of light collide 40 million times a second within the heart of particle detectors like ATLAS, sending out showers of debris, to recreate the conditions that existed millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the event that set our universe in motion.

“Heavy stuff” that won’t weigh down the Christmas stocking.

The UK edition of the book is published by Papadakis.

http://www.papadakis.net

Sarah Roberts Tel. +44 (0) 16 35 24 88 33
sarah.roberts@papadakis.net

NDA sells land at Sellafield for £70m

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has sold an area of land comprising 190 ha (470 acres) lying to the north of the existing site at Sellafield in Cumbria for a value of at least £70m.

The winning consortium includes Iberdrola, GdF Suez and Scottish and Southern Energy.

The sale will result in an upfront payment of £19.5m for the NDA, followed by a further payment of at least £50.5m in the next six years.

The sale represents further continuation of the NDA's programme of asset disposals, all raising funds which the NDA can put towards its core mission of decommissioning the UK's fleet of existing nuclear power stations.

The consortium will now progress with detailed site investigations to determine the exact location for its proposed nuclear development and then apply for the necessary planning and licensing permissions.

 Land surplus to requirements will be returned to the NDA.

"The sale of this land is a significant milestone in our asset disposal programme and follows on from the successful sale of land at three of our sites earlier this year,” said John Clarke, NDA’s Commercial Director.

“The £450m generated from these sales will be utilised to support the NDA's clean-up mission and is good news for the UK taxpayer."