Group urges caution on new nuclear plants
DesMoines Register
Written by PERRY BEEMAN
11:52 PM, Jan. 5, 2012

Iowa should not build more nuclear plants unless they produce power at a lower cost than other options, including energy conservation, the Iowa Public Interest Research Group said Thursday.

The group also contends that stockholders — not customers — of MidAmerican Energy, which is considering a new nuclear plant, should bear the financial risks. MidAmerican has said it will continue work on legislation that would let the utility charge customers for the cost of a feasibility study, even if the plant isn’t built. The Legislature, which failed to act on the bill last session largely because of debate scheduling considerations, convenes Monday.

Iowa PIRG said nuclear plants across the country have been plagued by cost overruns, and half of those proposed don’t get built.

The report, “A Nuclear Gamble: Why Nuclear Power Is A Bad Bet For Iowans,” was released Thursday.

“Nuclear power is among the most costly approaches to solving Iowa’s energy problems,” the authors contended. “Fearing the many significant financial risks of new nuclear projects, private investors have stayed away. As a result, utilities and nuclear proponents are now asking Iowa citizens and businesses to pay.”

AARP on Thursday promised to renew its fight against the bill. The group’s executive director, Kent Sovern, said the organization doesn’t oppose nuclear power, but does have a problem with the legislation.

“At a time when record numbers of Iowa residential customers are struggling to afford their utility bills, it would be unconscionable to force Iowa ratepayers, instead of utility companies and their shareholders, to front the high costs and cancellation risks of a possible plant years before it is built, when the actual costs to build are not known, and when it may or not be completed,” Sovern said.

russshackleford wrote:

Japan to set 40-year limit for operation of nuclear reactors
(Mainichi Japan) January 6, 2012

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Japanese government plans to limit the operation of nuclear reactors to 40 years, and to legally require nuclear plant operators to take measures to prepare for severe accidents that could result in serious damage to the reactor core, nuclear disaster minister Goshi Hosono said Friday.

The plan is to be included in a bill to amend a law on the regulation of nuclear reactors and nuclear fuel material, which the government is currently compiling in the wake of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

It would be the first time for the country to stipulate the life span of a nuclear reactor, according to government officials.

The bill is expected to be submitted to parliament during the ordinary Diet session to be convened later this month. The officials, however, did not make clear when they expect the revised law to come into force.

According to the outline of the planned law revision, the government would not allow nuclear reactors to operate for more than 40 years, although there would be exceptions if certain requirements are met.

If a plant operator sought an extension, the government would check the degree of obsolescence of the facility, and the operator's technological ability to appropriately maintain the facility.

But Hosono told a press conference that approved extensions would be "very rare" under the envisioned regulatory reinforcement.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/201 ... 6000c.html

Anyone who has actually seen the insides of one of these places knows about obsolescence. All of the weapons I worked on were controlled with dials, there was no such thing as a "touch screen" when they were assembled.

Obviously this is just words and not actions, but it's words that have never been spoken before in "the land of the rising sun".

Japan May Nationalize Nuclear Power Plants, Edano Tells Yomiuri
Bloomberg
By Taku Kato - Jan 6, 2012 1:48 AM ET

Japan’s government will consider taking control of the country’s atomic power stations unless private utilities assume more responsibility for the risks involved in their operations, the Yomiuri newspaper reported, citing Trade and Industry minister Yukio Edano.

Japan’s government needs to decide whether to nationalize nuclear power stations and assume the risks of accidents or make the country’s utilities pay higher insurance premiums and shoulder any costs themselves, Edano was cited as saying.

Tokyo Electric is being supported by a government fund to avoid insolvency as it compensates those who lost their homes and livelihoods after the disaster at its Fukushima Dai-Ichi atomic station. A government panel in October said Tokyo Electric may have to pay 4.5 trillion yen ($58 billion) in compensation payments by 2013.

'Crunch time’ at troubled nuclear fuel plant
Washington Post
By Steven Mufson, Friday, January 13, 12:07 PM

U.S. Enrichment Corp., which produces fuel for nuclear power plants, is having its own sort of meltdown.

Disillusioned investors have wiped out 95 percent of the company’s market value since 2007. Standard & Poor’s has saddled it with a dismal CCC-plus credit rating. And USEC’s chief executive John Welch says that “clearly we’re coming to crunch time here.”

When USEC was created by the U.S. government in the 1990s, the idea was to privatize the job of uranium enrichment. USEC leased an old Energy Department plant and under a program known as Megatons to Megawatts, it has blended down highly enriched uranium taken from 17,698 Russian warheads under a U.S.-Russia treaty.

Two decades later, however, the Bethesda-based firm is still struggling to stand on its own two feet. Its deal for inexpensive supplies from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons runs out at the end of 2013. A contract for electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority expires in May and USEC’s outdated plant — which devours as much electricity as the city of Nashville — will be unable to compete with other companies.

USEC says it needs government help. It wants to build a new, more efficient facility that would house thousands of 43-foot-tall centrifuges. But the two-month budget measure Congress passed in December blocks a $150 million Energy Department grant that USEC needs to continue development. And USEC’s application for a $2 billion Energy Department loan guarantee has been stalled for nearly four years, despite lobbying by the entire congressional delegation from Ohio, where the company wants to build the plant.

For now, USEC is getting nothing. Some experts and a few lawmakers, including Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), say that’s exactly what should happen.

“The U.S. government sold USEC to the private sector and should now treat USEC like it treats other private-sector companies,” said Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert and associate professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. “I think USEC shouldn’t be given any special preferences.”

The only concrete help for USEC recently has come not from Washington, but from Russia. Techsnabexport (Tenex), USEC’s Russian counterpart and a unit of a subsidiary of the State Atomic Energy Corp. (ROSATOM), has agreed to provide a 10-year supply of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to the company.

USEC has already invested $2.1 billion of an eventual cost projected at $4.5 billion. Now “highly leveraged,” according to S&P, USEC needs help to finish. Babcock & Wilcox and Toshiba have agreed to invest $200 million if the loan guarantee comes through.

But the company’s finances are too weak to meet the standards for a federal loan guarantee.

EU funding shortfall for ex-Soviet nuclear plants clean-up
AFP
Wed Feb 08 2012 14:27:31 GMT+0400 (Arabian Standard Time) Oman Time

Bulgaria: The EU faces a shortfall of some 2.5 billion euros to complete de-commissioning of eight ex-Soviet nuclear plants in Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia, the European Court of Auditors said Wednesday.

In a damning report, assessing 2.85 billion euros of European Union monies already spent on the clean-up agreed with the three states during negotiations to join the EU, the Luxembourg-based court warned that "major infrastructure projects face delays and cost-overruns."

Covering work done between 1999 and 2010, it said authorities were still in the process of identifying tasks needing completion and warned that costings were incomplete "in the absence of key information on radioactive waste."

The court's inspectors said EU authorities still did not know how safe the sites would be, the report stating that "the degree of mitigation achieved is not known."