The Department of Trade and Industry has sold its $4 billion share in British Energy and placed the profits in a fund to manage the dismantling of a fleet of reactors built to an ill-advised reactor design that has been compared to the Stanley Steamer. A similar design was built once in the United States (Colorado’s Fort St. Vrain), with even worse results.
Link.
Filed under Decommissioning, Economics, Financing, International
Posted on May 31, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »
“These [decommissioning] funds are tax exempt so long as they are held by a state regulated utility. But when they transfer to non-regulated corporations like Amergen and Entergy, under present law they become taxable. So these corporations have been lobbying the IRS and Congress, so far unsuccessfully, to change the law so they won’t have to pay these taxes. They stand to avoid paying $1 billion in taxes should they succeed.”
And…why should the IRS take money set aside by law for cleanup?
Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Decommissioning, Missing the Point, Politics and Regulation
Posted on May 30, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »
via WNN. They imploded the cooling towers last Sunday. Unofficial video is below, with a huge raspberry to BNG for using a non-standard file format for their official “download” that not only doesn’t work with any video hosts but also doesn’t work with video editing software. Here’s a tip: if you put a file online, don’t (1) make it impossible for people to use it and (2) lie about it on said website.
This is not in fact the first time this has been done; Trojan’s cooling tower was imploded last year, although they might have been referring to the four towers at Chapelcross instead of one at Trojan:
Filed under Decommissioning, International
Posted on May 26, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »
Under Germany’s nuclear phaseout law, each nuclear power plant is allotted a certain number of kilowatt-hours; this obviously is a strong disincentive to improvements in these plants’ fuel efficiency and can be manipulated in a number of ways, including temporarily suspending electricity generation until a more favorable government comes in. That is precisely what RWE should do in this case IMO; their administrative challenge to the original rejection of a completely legal proposal to transfer production allotments from another plant to the Biblis A plant has been rejected, like everyone knew it would. They are considering a legal challenge next, which will also be rejected.
However, there are risks: if these plants are all shut down before their allotments are up, a new government might just order them all decommissioned, reasoning that they evidently aren’t needed. There’s no doubt about it: nuclear power is not necessary to keep the lights on. Every nuclear power plant in the world could be shut down, some places (like France) requiring two or three years’ notice. But nuclear power is desirable; it’s a matter of what shape the environment will be in when we get done pumping coal fumes into it.
Link.
Filed under Decommissioning, Environment, International, Politics and Regulation
Posted on May 26, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »
“Stop Hinkley is dedicated to the removal of nuclear reactors from the Bristol Channel and the Severn Estuary and is committed to the introduction of greener technologies more appropriate to the new millennium.”
Those “greener technologies” were our first energy sources and belong in the dustbin of history.
Filed under Alternatives, Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Decommissioning, Sustainability, Their Actions
Posted on May 26, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »
Part 1 of this anti-nuclear email alert as well as the entirety of this one are devoted to complaining about the decommissioned LaCrosse nuclear power plant’s reactor pressure vessel (a tank of pressurized water that the reactor’s fuel rods were once suspended in) heading to the Barnwell low-level waste site. They inaccurately call it a “core” (the core is the fuel rods and associated structure to hold them in place) and say that Barnwell will close in 2008 (it will close to low-level waste from all states except those in the Mid-Atlantic Compact).
Filed under Decommissioning, Their Actions, Waste
Posted on May 20, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »
As they predicted a while back.
It actually seems to manage the decommissioning fund (as well as a couple of other things) better than we do–and that should be a source for shame, not pride. American regulations have not been systematically reviewed since 1954.
Link.
Filed under Decommissioning, International, New Build, Politics and Regulation
Posted on May 20, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »
If they return the separated plutonium as separated plutonium, the Italians might be able to restart their nuclear power program (stopped by politicians after Chernobyl, even though they didn’t have any Chernobyl-style reactors) from scratch with IFRs.
“And while I’m dreaming, I’d like a pony.”
-Calvin and Hobbes
This does not affect the previous contract with BNFL to reprocess spent fuel from a British-supplied reactor.
Link.
Filed under Decommissioning, Fuel Cycle, New Build
Posted on May 20, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »
If the problem is decommissioning, why shut them down before you absolutely have to? Yes, there are “economic considerations,” but if there’s going to be an energy gap, it’s not prudent to get in the same position that California did with Trojan. There was no California energy gap in 1992, when Trojan was shut down, but by 2000, when they needed the plant, it wasn’t there. The old AGRs might be nuisances now, but they could very well make the difference between the lights going out or not in 10 years.
Link.
Filed under Decommissioning, Economics, Energy
Posted on May 18, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »
They want a new nuke to replace Wylfa when it closes.
Take any support you can get, guys.
Link.
Filed under Decommissioning, International, New Build, Perception
Posted on April 30, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »
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