Quick Links to Download SONE's Most Popular Leaflets
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.
A national partnership has been launched between the Australian National University (ANU) and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto).
Tony Ward,* a nuclear energy specialist with Ernst & Young, talks to NucNet about investment in new nuclear and the importance of industry players preparing a “robust project” and never forgetting the importance of safety.
The Association of Imaging Producers and Equipment Suppliers (AIPES) says it is investigating steps to “significantly improve” European production of the radioisotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99). This isotope is needed for the production at hospitals and clinics of technetium-99m (Tc-99m), the most widely used radioactive isotope in medical diagnostics.
Two national opinion polls have shown “clear support” for building new nuclear power plants in the US, the industry group the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) has said. Both polls indicate that most Americans now support building more nuclear power plants.
In what it has called “a first for Africa”, South Africa’s Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) company has manufactured high temperature reactor fuel spheres or “pebbles” containing 9.6% enriched uranium.
The UK Atomic Energy Authority today announced it has reached an agreement with Babcock International Group for the sale of 100 percent of its commercial arm, UKAEA Limited, for 50 million pounds (81 million US dollars, 55 million euro).
Keeping old isotope production reactors operating is not the solution to the shortage of medical radioisotopes, the five-member commission of France’s nuclear safety authority (Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire, ASN) said in a position paper released this week.
The head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has urged a UN climate change conference later this year to consider allowing the inclusion of nuclear energy as a way of helping to combat CO2 emissions.
Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom and the French Commission for Atomic Energy (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique or CEA) will draft a new cooperation agreement that includes increasing their joint work on fast reactor technologies.
