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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 UK has “missed the boat” in terms of research and development for Generation III nuclear reactors and needs to invest in R&D for Generation IV, including fast-breeder reactors, a parliamentary committee has been told.
Europe has reached “a full agreement” on funding for the next two years of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project based at Cadarache in southern France.
Global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased by 49 percent in the last two decades, according to the latest figures by an international team including researchers at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia in the UK.
Critical units of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant withstood shaking from the 11 March earthquake before being flooded by the tsunami that followed, Tokyo Electric Power Company has said.
The UK government says it intends to convert “the vast majority” of the country’s civil separated plutonium into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for use in civil nuclear reactors.
A report by the University of Chicago says small modular reactors (SMRs) could compete with natural gas and have the potential to achieve “significant” reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
The UK’s energy minister has responded to a post-Fukushima report on nuclear safety by saying he continues to see no reason why the country should not proceed with its policy that nuclear should be part of the future energy mix.
Westinghouse Electric has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Czech company Vítkovice for the manufacture of key equipment for the proposed new Temelin reactor units 3 and 4.
The operator of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan has said nuclear fuel melted through the primary containment vessel (PCV) at the facility’s number one reactor unit following the accident on 11 March 2011.
State-owned Polish utility Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE) has shortlisted the northern Polish towns of Choczewo, Gaski and Zarnowiec as sites for its first nuclear power plant, chief executive officer Tomasz Zadroga has said.
