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In focus with Sir Bernard Ingham
Up to our ears in debt but value for money still has no appeal
Well, now we know how much Chancellor George Osborne is committed to value for money in energy policy. Not much. True, in his autumn statement he halved subsidies for solar panels but only because their cost has come down substantially. He also brought in £250m energy cost relief for intensive energy users who are supposed to be a prime target for reducing carbon emissions, thereby complicating energy policy still further while usefully helping to retain heavy industry in the UK.
With 65 reactor units under construction around the world the nuclear energy industry can play an important role in job creation and economic growth, providing both near-term and lasting employment and economic benefits, a US industry group has said.
The Dutch government has given the green light for a new research reactor to be built at Petten in the Netherlands, replacing the existing High-Flux Reactor (HFR), which has been in operation since 1961 and is reaching the end of its economic life.
Nuclear output in OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries will be restored to pre-Fukushima levels by 2020, but thereafter will show only modest growth, according to a new report from energy company BP.
About 30 workers at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan received between 100 millisieverts (mSv) and 250 mSv of radiation exposure, which would have increased their chances of cancer by about one percent to 2.5 percent, a parliamentary committee in the UK was told.
The Japanese government plans to introduce a new law to limit the lifetime of nuclear reactors to 40 years, Japan’s minister for nuclear accidents has said.
Shikoku Electric Power Company started procedures today to shut down unit 2 at the Ikata nuclear power plant, bringing the number of nuclear units offline in Japan to 49 out of 54.
The first public meeting about the stress tests that have been carried out on Europe’s nuclear power plants and the related peer review process will be held in Brussels on 17 January 2012, the European Nuclear Safety Regulators’ Group (Ensreg) has said.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved Westinghouse’s AP1000 nuclear reactor design, clearing the way for potential construction of the first US reactors in three decades.
The municipality of Villar de Cañas in the province of Cuenca, central Spain, has been chosen as the site for a centralised interim storage facility (Almacén Temporal Centralizado, or ATC) for all high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel generated in the country, Spain’s Council of Ministers has confirmed.
France’s radioactive waste management agency Andra has signed a six-year contract with the Gaiya joint venture formed by Technip and Ingerop to be the main contractor for the design of its future deep geological repository.
