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EDF Energy wants Britain to fix the market if it builds nuclear plants - Times Online
British families could be forced to pay up to £227 extra on their annual energy bills to help to fund a new generation of nuclear power stations under plans proposed by the French company expected to build most of them.
EDF Energy, which wants to build four reactors in Britain at a cost of about £20 billion, was accused of holding the Government to ransom last night, after an executive told The Times that none would be built unless the Government agreed to underwrite part of the cost. Speaking before a government announcement on Britain’s energy future on Monday, Humphrey Cadoux-Hudson, managing director of EDF Energy’s new nuclear business in Britain, said the nuclear programme would proceed only if the Government ensured that consumers paid more for electricity from fossil fuels, such as coal and gas, which is cheaper but produces more greenhouse gas, making nuclear more competitive.
What’s the Allure of Nuclear?
Since 2007, there have been applications to license 26 new nuclear reactors in the US. Nine have been canceled or suspended indefinitely in the last 10 months, and 10 have been delayed 1-5 years.
Why? Because, as almost always happens with nuclear plants, they end up being much more expensive than original plans project. In these cases, costs over-runs were triple that of estimates, while the price for natural gas declined, making them even less attractive.
And, importantly, energy efficiency programs combined with reduced energy demand because of the recession dramatically reduced the need for new power supplies.
Nuclear looks good to lots of people - and Republicans are demanding strong incentives for it in the Senate Climate Bill - but the history of nuclear is frought with significant cost over-runs, multiple delays and cancellations. It's a fact that energy efficiency combined with renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are much faster to ramp up and much cheaper.
Independent citizens panel needed for nuclear dilemma
Last week's revelation that the proposed STP nuclear expansion may cost $4 billion (31 percent) more than expected, is a blessing and an opportunity for San Antonio.
Courageous leadership is now needed, especially in light of the apparent attempt by CPS Energy management to hide this information before a council vote.
If this news had not been discovered, ratepayers would have been saddled with $400 million more for nuclear paperwork, setting a path for billions more in uncontrolled spending.
Warning about CPS debt, bond-rater Moody's dropped CPS' outlook from “stable” to “negative,” and noted council must be readily willing to raise electric rates.
How high will rates go? The cost overruns imply nuclear costs of 13-15 cents/kWh — much higher than projected.
What to do now? A completely fresh start is needed.
A nuclear renaissance needs government funding to move ahead - Nov. 2, 2009
The industry is poised to get billions in federal help, but some say that's a bad idea.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Whatever happened to all those new nuclear power plants the country was supposed to build?
Last year, with energy prices soaring and global warming making headlines, talk of a so-called "nuclear renaissance" was rampant. Energy experts, utility heads, even presidential candidates called for the construction of dozens of new plants. Billions were going to be spent. Investing magazines ran stories on how to get in on the action.
Funds dwindling to oversee Utah's hazardous waste - Salt Lake Tribune
Regulation » Inspections of businesses that handle disposal are becoming less frequent.
Salt Lake City » Businesses that handle some of Utah's most dangerous materials are being inspected less often because of dwindling funds to pay for the work.
State monitoring of hazardous and radioactive waste has for years been funded by fees collected from commercial waste companies. That fund -- which reached nearly $6 million in 2006 -- has fallen off with the down economy, dwindling to just $30,000 at the end of the last fiscal year.
Utah is still adequately regulating hazardous waste operations but is no longer able to inspect them as often as in the past, said Dennis Downs, director of the state's Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste. That includes not only monitoring of large hazardous-waste disposal sites in Utah but also regular checks on hundreds of smaller operations -- from auto body shops and dry cleaners to oil refineries -- that generate and store dangerous materials.
The Energy Daily: New Nuclear Is Not Cost-Competitive
Judging from its recent actions, the nuclear industry has given up on the pretense that the technology is cost competitive with presently or soon-to-be available alternatives, whether or not climate change legislation is enacted.
Recognizing that capital markets will not support the construction of new reactors, nuclear industry lobbyists at the federal and state legislatures have launched a full court press to get loans from taxpayers (in the form of federal loan guarantees) and ratepayers (through construction work in progress, or CWIP) to fund these projects. The same factors that have led Wall Street to refuse to finance reactors and to lower the ratings of utilities that are trying to build them are the very reasons that taxpayers and ratepayers should not be forced to foot the bill for new nuclear reactors. Loan guarantees and CWIP force taxpayers and ratepayers to bear the marketplace, execution, policy, technology and financial risks that capital markets will not.
Cost could mar STP nuclear deal
Two troubling issues emerged from news that the cost estimate for the proposed expansion of nuclear generation at the South Texas Project has suddenly gone up by as much as $4 billion. That's a 30 percent increase, and CPS Energy won't have a fixed-price contract for the two new reactors until at least 2012.
Toshiba Corp., the main contractor for the expansion, may merely have thrown out the inflated cost as a negotiating tactic. That's what CPS Energy interim general manager Steve Bartley suggests it is.
Another explanation could be that Toshiba is weak in producing estimates, with the initial figures being too low or the current ones being too high.
“Risking San Antonio’s Economic Future, Nuclear Experts Explain Flaws and Risks of Pursuing More Nuclear Reactors” part 1 on Vimeo
Craig Severance, CPA Author, Business Risks & Costs of New Nuclear Power
Dr. Arjun Makhijani President, Institute for Energy & Environmental Research
Perform an in depth analysis of the financial risks that San Antonio faces with the proposed expansion of the south texas nuclear project and discuss other alternatives that the city should be considering.
Billions spent and very little to show
Splurge till you drop. Ask and you won't get. Nearly a century after King Chulalongkorn's departure, which is being commemorated nationwide today, our kingdom has been effectively split into two countries.
The divide goes deeper than the confrontations between the Democrats versus Puea Thai, Prem versus Chavalit/ Thaksin, yellow versus red, or even between Siam and Patani..
Here I am referring to a Thai-land-of-wastefulness, and on the other hand folks have to fight tooth and nail for years before they receive a single satang of compensation from the powers that be. And even then they may still be accused of being too greedy.
Nuclear power: The consumer always pays | Environment | The Guardian
Model for new UK reactors reveals damaging disagreements between Finland and French contractors
From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the warehouse by the offices on Finland's Olkiluoto island, site of what should have been the world's first modern nuclear reactor. But inside, stacked on five kilometres of shelving, are 160,000 documents. "If a valve for the reactor is changed, it comes in a small box and a van full of documents," complains Jouni Silvennoinen, project director for Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), the Finnish utility that ordered the plant from the Franco-German consortium Areva-Siemens.
The paper mountain helps explain why the reactor, which should have cost €3bn (£2.72bn) and been working this year, will now miss its revised completion date of mid-2012 and will cost at least €5.3bn. In the latest delay, Finland's nuclear safety regulator halted welding on the reactor last week and criticised poor oversight by the sub-contractor, supplier and TVO.
Report looks at hidden health costs of energy production - Politics AP - MiamiHerald.com
Generating electricity by burning coal is responsible for about half of an estimated $120 billion in yearly costs from early deaths and health damages to thousands of Americans from the use of fossil fuels, a federal advisory group said Monday.
A one-year study by the National Research Council looked at many costs of energy production and the use of fossil fuels that aren't reflected in the price of energy. The $120 billion sum was the cost to human health from U.S. electricity production, transportation and heating in 2005, the latest year with full data.
The report also looks at other hidden costs from climate change, hazardous air pollutants such as mercury, harm to ecosystems and risks to national security, but it doesn't put a dollar value on them.
Cooper Report on Nuclear Economics PDF
Within the past year, estimates of the cost of nuclear power from a new generation of
reactors have ranged from a low of 8.4 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) to a high of 30 cents. This
paper tackles the debate over the cost of building new nuclear reactors, with the key findings as
follows:
• The initial cost projections put out early in today’s so-called “nuclear renaissance” were about
one-third of what one would have expected, based on the nuclear reactors completed in the
1990s.
• The most recent cost projections for new nuclear reactors are, on average, over four times as
high as the initial “nuclear renaissance” projections.
• There are numerous options available to meet the need for electricity in a carbon-constrained
environment that are superior to building nuclear reactors. Indeed, nuclear reactors are the worst
option from the point of view of the consumer and society.
• The low carbon sources that are less costly than nuclear include efficiency, cogeneration,
biomass, geothermal, wind, solar thermal and natural gas. Solar photovoltaics that are presently
more costly than nuclear reactors are projected to decline dramatically in price in the next
decade. Fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage, which are not presently available, are
projected to be somewhat more costly than nuclear reactors.
• Numerous studies by Wall Street and independent energy analysts estimate efficiency and
renewable costs at an average of 6 cents per kilowatt hour, while the cost of electricity from
nuclear reactors is estimated in the range of 12 to 20 cents per kWh.
• The additional cost of building 100 new nuclear reactors, instead of pursuing a least cost
efficiency-renewable strategy, would be in the range of $1.9-$4.4 trillion over the life the
reactors.
Nuclear energy will cost Britain dear -Times Online
IN Jonathan Leake’s article (“Britain ‘must go nuclear’ to control climate”, News, last week) Professor David MacKay cites Sizewell B as a model to follow. But it took 13 years to build and cost taxpayers the equivalent of £4 billion. Hardly a glowing reference. What’s more, if the nuclear industry’s track record is anything to go by, MacKay is whistling in the wind if he thinks it is possible to build the number of reactors he suggests in time to do anything to save the climate. The government of Ontario was recently quoted almost £14 billion for two reactors.
GAO: Evaluate leaving more waste in Hanford tanks -Tri-City Herald
Given the high cost to empty and treat Hanford's radioactive tank wastes, the government should consider leaving more waste in the underground tanks, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
The report also challenges the Department of Energy to find ways to reduce costs for retrieval and final disposal of high-level radioactive wastes, saying they could be more costly than justified by the reduction in risk.
The estimated price tag to empty Hanford's underground tanks of radioactive waste and treat it are rapidly escalating and could be from $86 billion to more than $100 billion -- rather than the $77 billion that DOE estimates, according to the report. The study was prepared at the request of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development.
Cost escalation is the result of a range of issues, including the difficulties Hanford workers have had in emptying the leak-prone tanks of millions of gallons of waste, questions about how well vitrification plant technology will work and a decision not to send treated wastes to Yucca Mountain, Nev., for disposal, the report says.
SA Current: Atomic Numbers
Most Texas homes weren’t built as if energy mattered. Despite 100-degree summer days, our roofs are still covered in heat-absorbing black-tar shingles. Cheap insulation in the attic, leaky doors, and single-paned windows mean when the air conditioner runs, it runs loads of cooled air right out the house.
San Antonio’s CPS Energy plans to spend $850 million to eliminate 771 megawatts of wasteful energy consumption through weatherization programs and rebates to help residential and commercial customers replace lights and appliances, and hoist solar panels onto their roofs by 2020. To do that will cost roughly $1,100 per saved kilowatt, according to the utility.
However, 80 miles to the northeast, municipally owned Austin Energy has already cut 800 megawatts through energy efficiency over the last 20 years at a cost of roughly $350 per kilowatt, said Scott Jarman, consulting engineer with Austin Energy’s efficiency program. But after 20 years of efficiency work, the savings are increasingly hard to find, and accordingly, more costly.
SA Current: Risky Business: Part Two In a Series: What CPS won't tell you about nuclear power
The banquet room inside the city’s lavishly refurbished Pearl Brewery is filled with solar advocates, coal-power people, city decision makers and bureaucrats, geothermal enthusiasts, and a table of Express-News staffers. They dine on salmon and judge in quiet gestures the performance of the panel at the front of the room.
As a tense but generally amenable exchange between the nuclear-energy proponents and the renewable-power disciples winds down, Matagorda County resident Susan Dancer steps from the shadows at the back of the room to steer the conversation, briefly, into dangerous waters. In a rapid-fire indictment of the entire course of the debate, Dancer drops the controversial “C” word.
But cancer isn’t on the menu at today’s forum. In fact, the talk is almost entirely of money. For more than a year, the city has been drifting, in multi-million-dollar installments, into a second helping of nuclear power from the South Texas Project nuclear facility outside Bay City.
Belgium eyes annual nuclear power levy - paper | Industries | Industrials, Materials & Utilities | Reuters
Belgium could raise between 500 million euros ($740 million) and 1 billion per year by extending the life of its nuclear power stations, business daily De Tijd reported on Wednesday.
The money would come primarily from dominant electricity player Electrabel, the Belgian arm of French utility GDF Suez (GSZ.PA).
De Tijd said Energy Minister Paul Magnette would soon be submitting to the government a report that concludes Belgium cannot meet its energy needs without nuclear power.
The country plans to shut its three oldest reactors in 2015 and the remaining four by 2023.
Italy Nuclear Power Plan May Cost EU40 Billion, Sole Reports - Bloomberg.com
Italy’s plan to increase nuclear power may cost 40 billion euros ($59 billion,) Enel SpA Chief Executive Officer Fulvio Conti told daily Il Sole 24 Ore.
Italy will probably need about eight reactors that will cost as much as 5 billion euros each, Conti said, according to the newspaper.
Italy, which has the highest electricity prices in the European Union, has been looking for ways to cut power costs and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Italians voted to shutter the country’s nuclear power plants in a 1987 referendum following the Chernobyl power-plant accident in the former Soviet Union.
Enel may invest an additional $1.3 billion over the next three to four years in the U.S., where the utility has invested in renewable energy projects, Conti told the newspaper.
New Trident 'could cost UK £97bn' - Scotsman.com News
THE cost of a replacement for Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent could reach £97 billion, environmentalist group Greenpeace has warned.
In a new report, Greenpeace suggested the procurement of submarines and missiles could reach about £34bn – around double the £15-£20bn estimate cited by ministers – while running costs could eat up as much as 6 per cent of the Ministry of Defence budget.
The report also predicted the Royal Navy's two new aircraft carriers would cost £5bn to build, compared to the latest official estimate of £3.9bn.
Nuclear power maybe too costly for Saskatchewan: premier
Nuclear power may be too large and too costly for Saskatchewan, Premier Brad Wall says.
He made the comments this week in what appears to be another indication of his government's diminishing enthusiasm for nuclear power.
Earlier this week, a report was released on public consultations on the government's Uranium Development Partnership, a bid to explore the future of nuclear energy in the province.
The report showed an "overwhelming" rejection of nuclear power from respondents.
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