EDF To Buy British Energy for $23.2 Billion

We have a winner in the British Energy Stakes. Per the BBC,

French energy firm EDF has agreed to buy British Energy, the firm which operates eight UK nuclear power plants, in a £12.5bn deal.

In addition, British Gas-owner Centrica said it is in talks with EDF to take 25% of all power generated by British Energy once it is in French hands.

It will also take a 25% stake in all new nuclear plants built by EDF.

British Energy power plants generate about 14% of UK energy supply, but many are due to be shut within 15 years.

British Energy chairman Sir Adrian Montague said the deal was "good for shareholders, good for staff, good for the nuclear industry and good for the country".

In an interview with the BBC, he played down concerns about the extent of which the UK's energy provision would fall into foreign hands should the tie-up be successful.

"This country has had a history of being very open to foreign capital. All the investors in the energy industry have sustained jobs and investment in the UK," he said.

"I think it's more important to look at the strength of the supply we enjoy in the UK rather than who owns it."

Comments

Rod Adams said…

Does anyone know what the UK process for license extensions entails? Is there any possibility that the often repeated phrase that the current BE reactors are due to shut down within 15 years is about as true as the similar comment about US reactors was in the 1990s?

In other words - can the reactor licenses be extended? How hard is that and what kind of capital investments need to be made?

September 27, 2008 at 10:16 PM

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog