FT: “A senior director at Areva, France’s state-owned nuclear champion, has confirmed that he did hire a Swiss intelligence firm to examine its disastrous €1.8bn purchase of a uranium miner but denied that it was part of a plot against Anne Lauvergeon, the company’s former chief executive.” Anne Lauvergeon has begun a legal action claiming her phones were tapped.
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Archive for the ‘Nuclear’ Category
Areva confirms private investigator was hired as ex boss starts legal action..
January 23, 2012 Nuclear“‘Atomic Anne’ leaves Areva under a cloud”: FT.
January 19, 2012 NuclearFT: “Areva’s former chief executive made the startling claim on Monday that, during her 10-year spell in charge of the company, her erstwhile colleagues had arranged for her to be “attacked, slandered and spied on”. Areva declines to comment on her allegation of clandestine inquiries into her life and business activities. But it acknowledges that it has suspended payment of the €1.5m severance package she was awarded last June.”
Ex Areva CEO says she was victim of a plot and that the state spied on her.
January 16, 2012 NuclearShe claims the campaign began 2007, when she opposed breaking the group up: that this “bothered a certain number of private interests,” adding “it was necessary to bring me down, and for that all means were fine, including the dirtiest”.
Big 6 UK energy companies had 4 million complaints in 2011.
January 12, 2012 Coal, Gas, NuclearBill mistakes and inaccurate readings caused the most anger, a Which report finds. It makes the front page of the Daily Mail.
JL blog: Energy dramas for 2012.
January 2, 2012 Clean Energy, Climate, Coal, Finance, Gas, Nuclear, Oil2011 was a year of growing polarisation for those of us who long for renaissance fuelled by renewables. The Germans announced targets to run their railway system entirely on renewable energy, mostly wind,and solar. Yet BP announced it will quit solar entirely to pile ever further into tar sands, unconventional gas and the rest of the carbon status quo. The IEA pronounced that the cost of energy will rise “viciously” on a global basis without clean energy. Yet the British “Big Six” opted for so much gas that the installation rate of British renewables fell steeply: this despite conventional UK energy prices soaring so steeply that fully 1 in 4 of UK households fell into fuel poverty in 2011, up from 1 in 5 in 2010.
There were so many of these stark contrasts in the theatre of energy last year.
It seems that the closer renewables advocates get to their dream, the harder the defenders of the status quo push back the other way, notwithstanding the increasingly clear economic, environmental and social downsides. They surely are teeing up some dramas for 2012.
Not to mention interesting research material for neuroscientists interested in how dysfunctional human cultures work. Its not as though Big Energy, and their cosy nexus with conventional capital, just do these things and be done with it. They lobby for their short-term perceived interests – hard, and mostly below the radar – entraining many in officialdom and politics to their ruinous causes.
To the extent that solar energy in cloudy Britain might be a tiny-corner microcosm of a much bigger picture of the potential for renewable-powered renaissance, there is a particularly interesting drama unfolding as we enter 2012. In case you missed it, the British High Court ruled on 21st December that the UK government has acted illegally in proposing a retrospective reduction in the solar feed-in tariff. The arguments for and against were summarised that night on the BBC, here (headline and 7 mins 20 secs in for the detail). The government can appeal by January 4th, risking further humiliation in its efforts to cut back a solar market just a tiny fraction the size of Germany’s. Or it can switch tack, resurrect an industry that was creating thousands of jobs – at net economic benefit to the UK economy – in a time of dire need for such, while realigning with some its core strategic themes, not least a Big Society countering austerity-related unemployment with a domestic green industrial revolution. This will be a choice to watch as the dramas in the triple crunch of financial crisis, climate crisis, and energy crisis roll on in 2012.
Rebuilding the UK’s energy system by 2050: costs about the same for clean or conventional energy, DECC says.
December 28, 2011 Clean Energy, Coal, Gas, NuclearEvery person in Britain will need to pay about £5,000 a year between now and 2050 on rebuilding and using the nation’s entire energy system, new DECC figures suggest. The cost of developing clean and sustainable electricity, heating and transport will be very similar to replacing today’s conventional power stations. The forecasts come from a unique open-source analysis package, called the 2050 pathways calculator, created by Professor David MacKay, DECC chief scientific adviser. Guardian: “However, the cost of the “do nothing” option does not include the damage to the economy expected as a result of climate change, and the calculator notes that, according to the landmark Stern review: “This is the equivalent of up to £6,500 per person per year on average, on top of the cost of the energy system”.”
Japan succeeds in bringing Fukushima to cold shutdown.
December 16, 2011 NuclearRadiation leaks from the three reactor meltdowns have forced more than 100,000 people to abandon homes and polluted some 3 per cent of Japan’s land mass to levels requiring decontamination.
DECC passed nuclear intelligence documents to industry, documents show.
December 5, 2011 NuclearBadly-redacted documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that DECC passed sensitive documents on government policy to the Nuclear Industries Association. They also passed Greenpeace’s court documents (from the case against HMG) to the lobby group. in which EDF features prominently among 260 member companies.
UK new nuclear plans slip yet again: 2019 now, maybe.
December 2, 2011 NuclearAs the Telegraph puts it: “The first of the new plants will not be built until 2019 because of extra safety checks following Japan’s atomic disaster. Ministers originally hoped to get the first nuclear power station built by 2017, before revising this to 2018. Now there has been a further slippage, after an updated timetable showed the first station in Somerset is not expected until nearer the end of the decade.”
Big Energy firms accused of profiteering, again.
December 2, 2011 Gas, NuclearNew analysis for the Guardian by Manchester University shows a progressive widening between wholesale and retail prices.
Review article on solar FiTs: success in Germany versus threat from nuclear lobby in Japan.
December 1, 2011 Clean Energy, NuclearJapanfocus.org: “Last year, according to figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (link), investment in new generation capacity from renewable energy sources (excluding hydro) totaled USD 187 billion, outpacing the USD 157 billion new investment in natural gas, oil, and coal-fired generating capacity.
….The FIT cost the Germans EURO 3.2 billion in 2008, but the German Federal Ministry for the Environment calculates that the FIT saved Germany EURO 7.8 billion in fossil and nuclear fuels and the public health and other external costs from carbon emissions, air and water pollution, and the like by EURO 9.2 billion. …. it has worked far above expectations in Germany for the past 10 years. Germany set a 2010 target of 12.5 percent share of renewable energy in electric generation in 2000. They surpassed that goal in late 2007 with 15.1 percent share. …. since the German’s have launched their FIT program, approximately 35 to 40 counties have followed suit and implemented their own.
…. Japan introduced a FIT in November of 2009… This FIT is encouraging a rapidly expanding volume of renewables investment inside Japan from co-ops and farmers, households and local communities through to such heavyweights as Softbank, NTT, and Marubeni as well as overseas giants including Germany’s Siemens and China’s number 2 PV producer JA Solar. …. The real risk in Japan is that prices will be set too low so that little deployment is encouraged. This would blunt the incentives of the world’s third-largest economy to lead the energy transition, at the same time driving down its own power costs and externalities as well as those for billions elsewhere, especially in Asia and Africa. This risk is due to the nuclear village having managed to get its people named to the committee that is to set prices. As Japan’s Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies (ISEP) warns in a November 24 press release, these individuals include Shindo Kosei, Executive VP of Nippon Steel and head of Keidanren’s Global Environment Division. ….This ongoing fight over structuring the FIT is part of the larger fight between renewables and nuclear as the pillar of Japan’s power economy, a fight the November 18 New York Times understands to be a “contest over the future of Japan itself”.”
More than a quarter of UK households are in fuel poverty after Big 6 energy price rises.
December 1, 2011 Gas, NuclearWith households spending 10% or more of income on home heat and electricity up from nearly one in five households last year to one in four now (4.1 million), the government looks set to miss its statutory obligation to eliminate fuel poverty by 2016. It now looks certain to fail to meet its legal duty. And these estimates were calculated before the huge prices rises announced last summer by the Big 6. New calculations, provided by Consumer Focus and seen by the Guardian, based on actual bills, show the figure for England alone is now over 5 million households. In the summer price hikes the biggest supplier, British Gas, put its gas and electricity prices up by 18% and 16%, meaning an average annual dual-fuel bill for its 9m customers has risen from £1,096 to £1,288. Price rises have averaged 21% since last year. Over the past five years, average prices have gone up 88%. Some 2.5m people are already in debt to their energy supplier. “Excess” winter deaths are already running at 27,000 a year.
UK government announces it needs a new Mox plant at Sellafield.
December 1, 2011 NuclearAs the Guardian puts it: “The government has astonished the anti-nuclear lobby by outlining plans to spend £3bn of public money building a new mixed-oxide fuel (Mox) plant – months after announcing the closure of a similar facility that lost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds.”
EDF searches for partners beyond Areva.
November 15, 2011 NuclearHenri Proglio, CEO of EDF, tells the FT: “For sure, Areva; but [also] Rolls Royce in Great Britain, Rosatom, in Russia or the Russian area, Chinese companies. We need international industrial partnerships that fit with the future of nuclear, and not just a French flag proposal.” Ed Crooks observes that “EDF’s huge commitments at home and in the UK may curb its international ambitions. If Mr Proglio gets his way, though, the Areva relationship may become strained once more.”
Nuclear power, at a crossroads, cannot afford another accident.
November 15, 2011 NuclearSo writes Sylvia Pfeifer in the FT. More than 500 reactors planned or proposed, a market worth thousands of billions of dollars, are at risk from the Fukushima fallout, the dire progress in Finland, and the collapse in public trust.
Uncertainty will remain about China’s nuclear policy until next spring.
November 15, 2011 NuclearChina suspension of approvals for new nuclear plants, announced less than a week after Fukushima, is still in place and a sweeping review of laws and regulations underway. Twenty-seven reactors are under construction in China today, more than 40 per cent of the global total, and about 10 more were on track before the suspension. The new rules may be completed by next spring, the FT reports.
Nuclear protests in India upset government expansion plans.
November 15, 2011 NuclearProtests at a plant nearing completion at Kudankulum in Tamil Nadu have come as a shock to the government, the FT reports. They plan 32 GW of new nuclear by 2020. Other protests lead analysts to predict a rocky future for the industry in India.
“Anti-nuclear mood melts Tepco’s hopes of normality”.
November 15, 2011 NuclearThe FT describes how far the ward of the state is from returning to its $65 bn monopoly business as usual. Japan has retreated from a pre-disaster target of lifting nuclear in the mix to 50%, and many mayors and governors are refusing to let reactors start up again.
UK’s ambitious nuclear programme looks shaky.
November 14, 2011 NuclearPlans for up to 12 reactors by 2025 look wobbly, the FT reports. EDF and Centrica’s plans for Hinkley Point have been moved from a 2018 start to no fixed date. The EON-RWE consortium looks to have financial difficulties.
Ofgem study undermines case for nuclear.
November 13, 2011 Clean Energy, NuclearThe cost of feeding the north of Scotland’s renewable energy into the national power grid could fall by 80% under proposals in a study carried out for Ofgem: so much that if the costs were to be shared equally across the UK, they would remove the financial incentives to build any new nuclear power stations, and shift a projected £17bn of nuclear investment to other technologies. The Ofgem consultancy Redpoint assessed the impact on the energy mix if Ofgem were to remove the high costs currently mandated for the north of Scotland and the subsidies for the south of England.
“India should claim full nuclear liability from suppliers”.
November 20, 2011 Clean Energy, Commentaries, NuclearSo I say in the Times of India. This way, no investor will back nuclear, and India can “catch up and shine” in clean energy, which is preferable, and the imperative if India wants to avoid the economic devastation of climate change.