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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.
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.
One third of all households in the UK will be in fuel poverty by 2030 unless the country’s coalition government rapidly moves to encourage and enable building of new nuclear plants, says a report released today.
Japan’s response to the crisis at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant was flawed by poor communication and delays in releasing data on dangerous radiation leaks at the facility, a government-appointed investigative committee has found.
Complete decommissioning of units 1 to 4 at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan could take up to 50 years, according to plans released today by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).
The Japanese government should assume overall responsibility for the recovery effort at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant until decommissioning is completed, a report approved by the Japan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) has said.
