Political nous and solid relationships will be key to winning the work
If anything is guaranteed to divide public opinion, it is nuclear energy. At one extreme there is a band that sees nuclear as a panacea for a carbon-free UK, at the other it is seen as a risky technology with an unresolved waste management issue that could burden future generations.
A nuclear plant built at a cost of £470m to provide atomic fuel to be used in foreign power stations has produced almost nothing since it was opened six years ago, the government has admitted.
The mixed oxide (Mox) facility at Sellafield in Cumbria - which was opposed by green groups as uneconomic - was originally predicted to have an annual throughput of 120 tonnes of fuel.
POWER companies are to be offered a new range of potential sites to construct nuclear power stations in Britain.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a government agency in charge of the £70 billion-plus clean-up of the UK atomic legacy, is expected to open talks shortly.
The Czech Republic's ruling Civic Democrats (ODS) will seek a revision of their government pact with two other parties so that new nuclear power plants can be built, the Hospodarske Noviny newspaper reported on Thursday. The paper quoted the head of the lower house's economy committee, Oldrich Vojir, as saying that his party would propose building new nuclear blocs after a group of experts presents a report later this year on energy policy options.
German environmentalists won a battle in the fight against nuclear power, when a court ruled energy giant RWE couldn't extend the operating life of one nuclear plant by transferring unused capacity from another.
Amid an ongoing struggle over the future of nuclear power in Germany, a German court ruled that RWE could not extend production at its Biblis A nuclear reactor longer than originally foreseen by German law.
STOCKHOLM (Thomson Financial) - The UN's nuclear watchdog today noted improved security measures at a problem-prone nuclear plant in Sweden, but recommended a number of other steps to increase safety further.
The Forsmark nuclear plant on Sweden's east coast 'has introduced or extended several programmes contributing to improved operational safety,' Miroslav Lipar, head of International Atomic Energy Agency mission in Sweden, said in a statement.
The public will get the chance to hear the outline proposals for new nuclear power stations at Sizewell and Bradwell next month.
British Energy is arranging public meetings “to keep people informed on the decision-making process and to hear views on the impact this may have on the area”.
The complex job of cleaning up Britain’s dirtiest nuclear site is drawing some of the world’s biggest engineering companies to the poorest corner of north-west England, but local companies are wondering how they will fare in the fight for lucrative contracts.
Sellafield, in Cumbria, is the biggest prize currently available in nuclear decommissioning, with decades of work to undo the problems caused by 50 years of atomic research.
Companies building nuclear reactors in the UK will have to meet the full cost of their future closure and clean-up, setting money aside from day one, the government will say on Friday.
Following on from last month’s white paper on nuclear power, the government will on Friday set out the draft framework for how the decommissioning of new nuclear reactors would be paid for.
Several companies, including British Energy, EDF, Eon, RWE and Centrica, are looking at building reactors but have said they want more certainty on a range of issues before they are ready to invest, including decommissioning costs and the disposal of radioactive waste.
The Government is concerned that a lack of competition in the UK nuclear industry threatens to distort decision-making in the race to build a new generation of nuclear power plants.
In an interview with The Times, Malcolm Wicks, the Energy Minister, said the Government would look critically at British Energy’s ownership of eight of the most attractive UK sites for new reactors. “We want to see proper competition here,” he said. “We don’t want to see some sort of cagey deal between one company and another company . . . We have got to facilitate proper competition.”
