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News January 2020

Climate Policy

Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom has promised to build a “stronger, greener United Kingdom” and “back business to the hilt” after Brexit, as the government geared up to unveil full details of its flagship Environment Bill in Parliament today. In a speech at the Institute of Directors in London last night, the Leadsom said the UK was “on the cusp of a green industrial revolution” that would lead to economic opportunities right across the country, and that every element of the government’s Industrial Strategy would be “net zero proof”. “From creating supply chains for electric vehicles, to decarbonising heavy industry; from designing new, green financial products to designing low carbon buildings, the opportunities of this industrial revolution are endless – with the prize of two million green collar jobs by 2030,” she said. “Personally I have no doubt that we will succeed, because history shows we have done it before. And I think we could grow a clean tech sector which could be even bigger than our financial services sector.”

Business Green 30th Jan 2020 read more »

By implementing stronger policies around walking, cycling, electric vehicles and energy efficiency in homes, the Government could save the NHS at least £3.7bn per year. That is according to a new report from think-tank Green Alliance. Drawing on research by CREDS, a body convening research from academics at 15 UK universities, the report concludes that improved policies on active travel and electric mobility could save the NHS £2.5bn in costs annually, mainly through reduced rates of cardiovascular and lung problems, as well as diabetes. This saving could be realised if just 1.7% of car journeys made annually in England are replaced by walking or cycling. Green Alliance claims this shift could also improve air quality, quality of life and public satisfaction with local authorities and Government.

Edie 30th Jan 2020 read more »

Torness – Emergency Planning

Torness nuclear power station sits only 30 miles east of Edinburgh near Dunbar in East Lothian, meaning there is the slimmest of slim chances that the city could one day be hit with deadly radioactive fallout. It might come as a surprise to find that a historic city like Edinburgh has a complex plan in place to protect residents in the event of full nuclear catastrophe. Torness nuclear power station sits only 30 miles east of Edinburgh near Dunbar in East Lothian and so there is the slimmest of slim chances – the city could one day be hit with deadly radioactive fallout. Last year dangerous cracks were found inside reactors at The Hunterston B nuclear power plant near Ardrossan. Despite this the probability of a full-scale nuclear meltdown remains low, though consequences could be incredibly severe. That is perhaps why authorities have devised a highly detailed step by step action plan in the event the Torness plant was to experience a major disaster on the scale of Chernobyl in 1986. Staying indoors and closing all windows are some of the more obvious instructions issued in the hefty document. Perhaps lesser known is the fact staff at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh have been assigned to work alongside the SAS decontaminating casualties in the event of an nuclear incident. Here’s a closer look at East Lothian’s publicly-accessible nuclear fallout strategy – which gives clear and concise instruction about what people should do in the unlikely event of a nuclear emergency. The emergency masterplan – written up in consultation with Edinburgh City Council and Office for Nuclear Regulation – can be found on the East Lothian council’s website.

Edinburgh Live News 30th Jan 2020 read more »

Chernobyl

Engineers at the University of Sheffield have developed new materials they believe could be used to help clean-up the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power stations. They worked in collaboration with scientists in Ukraine to develop the materials that can simulate Lava-like Fuel Containing Materials (LFCMs) that are said to be obstructing decommissioning efforts at the nuclear disaster sites. LFCMs are a mixture of highly radioactive molten nuclear fuel and building materials that fuse together during a nuclear meltdown. It is believed to be the first time a close approximation of a real LFCM has been achieved. Radioactive materials mixed with fuel cladding and other building materials in the reactors at Chernobyl and Fukushima are difficult and dangerous to remove from the sites and according to the researchers, if left untreated, the LFCMs pose an ongoing radiological safety risk to the local environment.

Energy Live News 30th Jan 2020 read more »

Daily Mail 30th Jan 2020 read more »

World Nuclear News 30th Jan 2020 read more »

Fukushima

Some 20,000 Japanese people died as a result of the tsunami that ripped into that country’s eastern shore in March 2011. At the most, a handful more people may eventually die from radiation released when the tsunami washed through the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, setting off a series of meltdowns within its reactors and creating many days of headline news around the world. And yet it is the nuclear disaster that most of us remember best from those terrible days. Why? Because there is something chilling about an accident involving a nuclear power plant. Something about the invisibility of radiation, and its potential to kill silently, that brings on a condition among many doctors working in the aftermath of Fukushima describe as radiophobia. Radiophobia is not, despite the protestations of nuclear apologists, an irrational condition. We have good reason to fear what we cannot see, or taste, or hear, or touch. If our senses offer no guide to the scale of the risk, we must assume the best or fear the worst.

Ecologist 31st Jan 2020 read more »

Japan

Kansai Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it would suspend operations at two nuclear reactors after missing a deadline set by the industry regulator to build counterterrorism facilities. Under stricter rules implemented after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, utilities are now required to build emergency off-site control rooms to serve as backup bases that can keep nuclear reactors cooled and prevent meltdowns in the event of a terrorist attack. The suspension of reactors Nos. 3 and 4 at Kansai Electric’s Takahama plant in Fukui Prefecture — for about five months from August and four months from October, respectively — will be the second time for reactors to be shut down in Japan because such off-site facilities were not ready. The No. 3 reactor at the plant will be shut down from August 2 to Dec. 22, and No. 4 will be offline from Oct. 7 to Feb. 10, 2021.

Japan Times 29th Jan 2020 read more »

Italy

The first of 33 scheduled transports aimed at moving about 5600 drums of radioactive resins and sludge departed from Italy’s shut down Caorso nuclear power plant on 28 January en route to the Bohunice plant in Slovakia for their treatment and conditioning. All the drums in this second phase of shipments are expected to be transported by 2022.

World Nuclear News 30th Jan 2020 read more »

Finland -SMRs

Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (Stuk) has published a report discussing the safety assessment and licensing of small modular reactors (SMRs). The regulator says it is preparing for the licensing of such reactors “due to the national and international interest in them.”

World Nuclear News 30th Jan 2020 read more »

Heating

Gas-fired space heating accounts for around 720 terawatt hours (TWh) of energy consumption each year in the UK. That’s more than double the UK’s annual electricity consumption of around 350TWh. Burning all that natural gas isn’t sustainable, which is why the UK government announced in April 2019 that no new properties should be fitted with gas-fired boilers from 2025. One approach is to transform a network based on natural gas into one that uses hydrogen. The H21 project aims to swap out the methane burners in gas appliances, such as boilers, hobs and ovens, for hydrogen burners across the city of Leeds, to demonstrate that such a network is possible. Rather than delivering natural gas to homes, the gas network would deliver water from which domestic heat pumps could extract heat. Water is, after all, never scarce in the UK at the coldest times of year. A house could take in water, extract heat from the water so that it forms ice slurry and dump the slurry down the drain where it would melt again. On the coldest days in winter, the average UK home uses up about 160 kWh of heating energy each day – equivalent to having two big electric kettles turned on continuously.

The Conversation 30th Jan 2020 read more »

Onshore Wind

Scotland’s newest onshore wind farm will be built subsidy-free but the rate of developing new projects will slow down without further support from the government, says SSE Renewables. It confirmed an 11-turbine extension to the existing 70MW, 35-turbine Gordonbush onshore wind farm. In a first for the renewable energy developer, the onshore wind farm north west of Brora in the Scottish Highlands is one of only a few onshore projects to get the green light in GB in recent years after government support was halted after 2015. SSE says the ability to progress Gordonbush Extension on a commercial basis demonstrates the quality of its onshore development pipeline and its ongoing commitment to onshore wind. However, Jim Smith, managing director of SSE Renewables, has warned that “merchant” investments are only possible for a limited number of the most attractive projects, and onshore wind won’t be deployed at the rate needed to reach Scotland and the UK’s net zero targets without intervention from government to provide revenue stabilisation.

Daily Business 31st Jan 2020 read more »

Island Energy

SSE Renewables welcomes the resubmission of the Shetland Needs Case by Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks Transmission. SSE Renewables’ Viking Wind Farm, located on Shetland, is the anchor project which commercially underpins this link. The resubmission is another positive step after the contribution by Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution towards the capital cost of the new link was endorsed by Ofgem in December.

NS Energy 29th Jan 2020 read more »

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