News February 2018

France

14th February 2018

EDF plans to build a new central storage pool for nuclear waste but has not yet decided on a site, the company said. French environment news site Reporterre on Tuesday wrote that EDF plans to build a central spent-fuel pool on the grounds of its Belleville-sur-Loire nuclear plant, which could receive up to 8,000 tonnes of spent fuel, the equivalent of up to about 90 reactor cores. An EDF spokesman confirmed that the utility, at the request of nuclear regulator ASN and the environment ministry, is studying the possibility of building such a site and will send a proposal to the ASN, by 2019 at the latest. The choice of a site would be made around 2020. He said the central pool would be built on the site of one of its 19 nuclear plants and that it would receive the spent fuel of all of EDF’s 58 nuclear reactors.

Reuters 13th Feb 2018 read more »

[Machine Translation] EXCLUSIVE – EDF wants to build a giant pool of nuclear waste in Belleville-sur-Loire. The swimming pools of La Hague (Channel), where the spent fuel of the nuclear reactors are stored, overflow? No problem, EDF is currently preparing, in the greatest discretion, a new pool ” centralized storage ” to dump the surplus. According to information from Reporterre , EDF wants to build this very large equipment on the site of the Belleville-sur-Loire nuclear power plant in the Cher. It could accommodate between 6,000 and 8,000 tonnes of irradiated heavy metal (tMLi, the mass unit for irradiated fuels) – in short, the equivalent of 69 to 93 nuclear reactor cores of high-energy and high-energy fuels

Reporterre 13th Feb 2018 read more »

[Machine Translation] Radioactive waste: EDF’s “centralized” swimming pool resurfaces. According to “Reporterre”, the electrician would consider establishing in Belleville-sur-Loire (Cher) its future giant cooling pool to accommodate the spent fuel from its reactors. According to EDF, the choice of the site is not yet stopped.

Liberation 13th Feb 2018 read more »

Les Echos 13th Feb 2018 read more »

EDF plans to build a giant nuclear garbage pool in Belleville-sur-Loire instead of stopping producing unmanageable waste!

Sortir du Nucleaire 13th Feb 2018 read more »

Is nuclear power flexible, round 2: a rise of 21GW in 30 minutes on the French fleet? Last October, I wrote an article on the flexibility of nuclear power and its compatibility with a large part of intermittent renewable energy, I deplored the lack of existing work on the subject. Since then, the maneuverability of the French nuclear fleet has become a strategic topic in the debate on the new EPP, but few new information has come to inform the discussion. Tired of waiting, I propose my own estimate based on the actual production of French reactors since 2011.

Energie & Development 13th Feb 2018 read more »

Emmanuel Macron does not exclude the construction of new nuclear reactors.

Europe1 13th Feb 2018 read more »

The French government should await the findings of a public debate before it drafts how it will meet its goal of reducing the share of nuclear energy in power generation, the commission tasked with organising the forum said on Tuesday. The most controversial issue is how many of French state-controlled utility EDF’s 58 nuclear reactors will have to close to reach the 50 percent target and by when. After initial consultations with energy companies, NGOs and sector specialists last month, a public debate is planned between mid-March and June. A first draft of the new PPE is due this summer.

Reuters 13th Feb 2018 read more »

US

14th February 2018

The US Congress has passed a budget bill that extends the nuclear production tax-credit (PTC), which will apply to new nuclear power plants coming into service after 31 December 2020, Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) said. The NEI, which represents the US nuclear industry, said the bill allows the secretary of energy to allocate credits up to a 6,000-MW capacity limit for the first new nuclear reactor units put into service after 31 December 2020. The 2005 Energy Policy Act provided a tax credit of 1.8 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity produced from new reactors, but set a deadline of 2020 for the plants to be in service. The new bill removes that deadline and ensures that the two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors being built at Southern Nuclear Operating Company’s Vogtle site in Georgia can benefit from the credit. The 6,000-MW capacity limit also means that the PTC will benefit plans by NuScale Power and its consortium partners to build a commercial small modular reactor power station at the Idaho National Laboratory by 2026, the NEI said.

Nucnet 12th Feb 2018 read more »

President Donald Trump is proposing a boost in funding for nuclear weapons and fossil fuels programs at the expense of science and renewable energy initiatives. The president’s fiscal year 2019 spending plan, released Monday, seeks $30.6 billion for the Department of Energy. That is a $2.6 billion increase over DOE’s requested budget for the current fiscal year. About $1.1 billion of the increase in the DOE’s budget would go to the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees nuclear weapons programs, including work at Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories. DOE spends more money in New Mexico — about $5 billion a year — than in any other state, and an increase in the department’s budget could be a financial shot in the arm for New Mexico’s struggling economy. Energy Department officials said the president’s budget request revolved around the need to modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal, with nearly $780 million more for weapons programs over fiscal year 2018.

Sante Fe New Mexican 12th Feb 2018 read more »

South Carolina members of Congress have been fighting for years to protect an over-budget, behind-schedule project at a local nuclear facility. The battle to save the effort has gotten even tougher. Not even White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney, who until a year ago was a former South Carolina Republican congressman, is willing or able to intervene. In previous years, the state’s majority-Republican congressional delegation was able to rebuff a Democratic president’s opposition to the mixed-oxide fuel fabrication, or MOX, program at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. But having a Republican president is proving to be no help. For the second year in a row, President Donald Trump is taking the same stance that the program should end.

Miami Herald 13th Feb 2018 read more »

Nigeria

14th February 2018

A new peer review service has been launched by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to assist member states in the development of infrastructure for nuclear research reactors. The first Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review for Research Reactors (INIR-RR) mission was carried out last week in Nigeria. According to the IAEA, operation of a research reactor requires a national infrastructure – including a legal and regulatory framework – to ensure that national and international obligations are met during planning, design, construction, operation and decommissioning.

World Nuclear News 13th Feb 2018 read more »

Renewables

14th February 2018

Europe’s wind power sector is booming, according to new figures released today by industry group WindEurope. Not only was 2017 a record-breaking year for installations across no less than seven EU member states and the bloc as a whole, but wind provided more than half of total new power capacity installations across the continent. And that’s not the only green energy update out today. A survey of 800 renewables professionals from Lloyds Register offers an insight into the future outlook for the clean power sector, while new reports emerged suggesting France is working on new plans to dominate the tidal power sector.

Business Green 13th Feb 2018 read more »

The boom in wind farms across the European Union has single-handedly driven the net growth in power generating capacity as fossil fuel plants shut faster than they are built. The steady shutdown of polluting coal plants across the UK and the rest of EU outstripped the number being built by more than four times over. New gas plants only narrowly replaced the number of older gas generation units being shut down. By contrast the number of new wind turbines mushrooming across the EU increased by 20pc from the previous year to set new records in Germany, the UK and France. As a result wind power is now Europe’s second largest source of electricity, behind gas-fired power plants, after it made up almost a fifth of all electricity produced across the block last year.

Telegraph 13th Feb 2018 read more »

Renewables – offshore wind

14th February 2018

Orsted has lined up Siemens Gamesa to supply turbines to the Contracts for Difference-backed 1386MW Hornsea 2 wind farm off east England. The manufacturer will supply its 8MW machine featuring a 167-metre rotor diameter with the “majority” of the blades to be delivered from the Siemens Gamesa facility in Hull.

RENews 14th Feb 2018 read more »

Europe powers up record levels of offshore wind energy. The UK and Germany led the way as Europe powered-up a record amount of offshore wind energy last year, it’s emerged. Countries installed 3.1 gigawatts of new sea-based renewable power, making it the continent’s biggest year ever, according to WindEurope. The industry body says rapidly falling costs means investing in offshore wind is now more attractive. The vast majority of new power came from the UK and Germany, but France, Finland and Belgium also connected wind farms to the grid. Among the UK’s new additions was Hywind Scotland, the world’s first floating wind farm, situated off the coast near Aberdeen. Its turbines, tethered to the seabed, can be moved to deeper waters than conventional wind farms, allowing them to be moved to more productive locations.

Euro News 12th Feb 2018 read more »

Engineering firm BiFab has notified the Scottish government of the potential for redundancies among its workforce. The Unite union has warned that 260 workers could lose their jobs at yards operated by the company in Fife and Arnish on Lewis. BiFab said it was going through a “natural down-manning process” as it approached the end of work on the Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm project. It has warned this could also mean redundancies among permanent staff. BiFab has informed workers about potential planned redundancies, but said that no decisions had been taken. The Scottish government said it has been “fully focused and working intensively” to secure the company’s long-term future.

BBC 13th Feb 2018 read more »

Ministers have insisted that they are doing everything they can to save the engineering firm Burntisland Fabrications after the company announced that 260 jobs were likely to be lost in Scotland because of a lack of orders.

Times 14th Feb 2018 read more »

Scotsman 13th Feb 2018 read more »

Herald 14th Feb 2018 read more »

Renewables – solar

14th February 2018

One of the UK’s leading clean tech advocates yesterday launched a new charitable campaign to save the lives of babies admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Government Hospital in the city of Bo, Sierra Leone, where they are currently at risk from frequent blackouts. Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, officially kicked off Project Bo this week with the goal of raising £100,000 to install a 20kW solar and storage system that will provide uninterrupted power supply to the ward. The campaign was triggered last year by a Tweet from Dr Niall Conroy who was working at the hospital. “Three of our oxygen-dependent babies died last night when the power went off,” he wrote. “Not good enough in 2017. Low-cost tech eg affordable solar power must be a priority for saving newborn lives”. https://www.projectbo.org/

Business Green 13th Feb 2018 read more »

US solar manufacturer and developer First Solar is to build a 65MW solar farm and a 50MW/135MWh battery storage facility in Arizona – after beating out peaking gas plants to provide power into the evening peak. The win by First Solar – in its first big foray into solar plus storage – confirms the swing point in “dispatchable power” is rapidly moving away from fossil fuel generators to wind and solar technologies paired with storage. The facility will take advantage of Arizona’s excellent solar resources to deliver power – either directly from its solar facility or via its solar-fuelled battery – between 3pm and 8pm, hitting the local peaks on the grid in summer. The local utility, Arizona Public Service (APS), called for proposals from any technology to deliver the power in the afternoon and evening peak. And despite the prevalence of so-called “cheap” gas in the US, the solar plus storage facility won out over proposals from conventional renewables, standalone batteries and natural-gas peaking plants. Greentech Media said the joint system “suggests a new paradigm for solar-rich markets: the solar peak power plant.” It said the solar plant will charge up the battery during the day and deliver power during the first few hours of the peak window, until the sun sets. Then the battery will kick in and discharge stored power through the rest of the window.

Renew Economy 14th Feb 2018 read more »

Climate

14th February 2018

Global surface temperatures during the three years from 2014 to 2016 – each hotter than the last – boosted the total level of global warming since 1900 by 25%, according to new research. A separate study has confirmed that heat extremes, too, have outpaced the global average. Maximum temperatures during the hottest heat waves have in the last 30 years risen three times faster – especially in crowded cities that are home to more than 10 million – than average temperatures as a whole. And a third study warns that unless the world’s nations start to reduce carbon emissions, then within the next 17 or 18 years, planetary temperatures will be at least 1.5°C above the world average for most of human history. And 35 to 41 years from now, these temperatures will have climbed 2°C above the level that held before the Industrial Revolution, and the arrival of fossil fuels as a global energy source.

Climate News Network 13th Feb 2018 read more »

100% Renewables

14th February 2018

New Mark Z. Jacobson Study Draws A Roadmap To 100% Renewable Energy. Last August, Mark Jacobson, a renewable energy expert and senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, was the leader of a study that identified how 139 countries around the world could obtain 100% of their energy from renewable sources by 2050. But that study got some pushback from people who questioned its assumptions. The naysayers said the study relied too heavily on energy storage solutions such as adding turbines to existing hydroelectric dams or storing excess energy in water, ice, and underground rocks. Those criticisms stimulated another piece of work from Jacobson and his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley and Aalborg University in Denmark. They are now back with a new report they believe thoroughly addresses the concerns brought up by skeptics of the first report. It begins by breaking those 139 counties into 20 regions and proposing energy storage solutions uniquely suited to each region.

Clean Technica 8th Feb 2018 read more »

Stanford News 8th Feb 2018 read more »

Fossil Fuels

14th February 2018

An Urgent Request from Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole. – Please Send Objections into Cumbria County Council to Make Sure we STOP the First Deep Coal Mine in the UK for 30 years. Below is an objection from Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole.

Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole 13th Feb 2018 read more »

Surging output of US shale oil has once again shattered the assumptions of Opec and the global energy establishment, pushing the crude market back into surplus and smothering the nascent boom. The International Energy Agency said the world is witnessing the second great wave of US shale growth, with production soaring by 1.3 million barrels per day (b/d) over the last year. Extra US supply threatens to match the entire growth in crude demand from China, India, and the rest of the world in 2018. This is a nightmare come true for the Opec cartel and Russia as they struggle through yet another year with production cuts of 1.8m b/d. It raises the prospect of endless attrition, a shale-driven slump that keeps cutting short the normal petroleum cycle and will soon have gone on longer than the First World War. “The main message is very clear: in 2018, fast rising production in non-Opec countries is likely to grow by more than demand,” said the agency in its monthly Oil Market Report.

Telegraph 13th Feb 2018 read more »

Hinkley

13th February 2018

West Somerset Council not invited to key Hinkley C meeting. WSC was ‘unaware’ of a meeting in which the leader of Sedgemoor District Council (SDC) travelled to Westminster to discuss uncertainty over Hinkley C money with senior officials. Cllr Duncan McGinty met with MP Jake Berry, parliamentary undersecretary for Housing, Communities and Local Government to discuss the uncertainty surrounding ‘Community Benefit’ funding for Sedgemoor and West Somerset from Hinkley C. Councillor McGinty said: “It was a really positive meeting. Sedgemoor has taken the lead in raising this issue at a national level. But while Hinkley C falls within West Somerset, the district council was not invited to send a representative.

Bridgwater Mercury 12th Feb 2018 read more »