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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 head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said there is “now an emerging consensus” for proposals aimed at putting all facilities for enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium under multinational control.
The UK government is to conduct a review of productivity and skills in the engineering construction sector to ensure British companies benefit from projects such as future nuclear new-build.
The second annual Financing Nuclear Power conference in London will take a practical look at the “challenges and developments” of financing the nuclear renaissance, organisers say.
France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy said he is considering the construction of a third European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR) unit as part of a long-term energy policy that could see France “conquer world energy markets” and end its use of oil and gas.
During a visit on Friday 6 February to the Normandy construction site for Flamanville-3, the country’s first EPR, Mr Sarkozy told workers that France has the industrial infrastructure to carry out the policy. With Electricité de France (EDF), GDF Suez, Total, Areva, and Alstom, France also has the capacity to develop its energy exporting capacity, he said.
The Dutch authorities yesterday gave permission to allow the restart of the Petten high-flux research reactor (HFR) in the Netherlands, the Nuclear Research & Consultancy Group (NRG) said.
Russia will supply a total of 2,000 tonnes of natural uranium pellets for India’s pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR) units, under a long-term contract signed by both countries in Mumbai yesterday.
The UK’s Minister for Scotland, Jim Murphy, will underline the government’s intention to promote the expansion of nuclear energy in the UK during a keynote address at a conference in Edinburgh, on 16 February 2009.
Participants at an OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) workshop on the supply of Technetium-99m (Tc-99m) have drawn up a list of measures that should be taken to help ensure supplies of the key medical isotope by strengthening the “vulnerable” supply chain.
The Russian government has approved a request by the Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation for Ukraine to join the project to open an international uranium enrichment centre in Angarsk, Siberia.
