The British Serve Up the Sites

The British Department of Energy and Climate Change (and boy, does that sound up-to-date) has released its list of 11 sites for new nuclear plant deployment. You can guess why they’re doing this:

U.K. utilities are vying to build reactors, backed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a way to combat climate change and replace older stations. Atomic plants may generate power more cheaply than coal-fed units, in part because they aren’t required to buy emission permits for carbon dioxide.

We’d say definitely, at least within the projected time for these plants to start up. If clean coal technology catches up, fine, but that probably won’t happen by 2020, so expect some sour times for coal in Britain. (And as we’ll see, coal’s not the problem in this story.)

Most of the plants sites are in England, with one over in Wales; moreover, most are on sites that are hosting or have hosted reactors – that should keep various environmental and other reviews fairly contained.

We won’t list all the sites for you. Go here for a map showing them and another story.

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Britain may have dithered around this issue a little too long:

Dr. [Craig] Lowrey, [head of energy markets at EIC, an independent consultancy], said that the Government’s failure to take firm early action meant that it was now inevitable that the gap would be filled by new, easy-to-build gas-fired power stations.

However, the depletion of North Sea gas means that Britain will be forced to import more and more raw fuel from countries such as Russia, Algeria and Qatar, while consumers will be left increasingly exposed to fluctuations in the wholesale price of gas.

That may sound an overly Cassandra-like note. If Britain really gets these nuclear plants rolling, then keeping older coal-fired and gas plants around as placeholders seems feasible enough. But the warning is well-taken – the country leans on gas quite a lot.

Official figures show that the share of Britain’s electricity produced by burning gas has risen from 2 per cent in 1992 to 35 per cent today. It is expected to rise further, with gas-fired plants under construction at Pembroke in Wales, the Isle of Grain in Kent and Langage, near Plymouth.

So that’s where dithering brings you.

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And in the uncanny spirit of the the unknown purple, here comes FOE, not in Britain (that we can find), but Ireland:

Friends of the Earth Director Oisín Coghlan said nuclear power is not the solution and “offers too little, too late, at too high a price and too high a risk.”

And a little more:

Irish CND [Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament] chairman, Dr David Hutchinson Edgar also criticised the plan and said the new sites increase the risk of a terrorist attack on a nuclear installation.

He said: “In the event of either an accident at a nuclear site, or a deliberate terrorist attack, Ireland, and our coastal waters, could not escape the impact of the fallout.

We couldn’t find these kinds of comments in British coverage of the story. Perhaps a difference in the way the Brits and Irish cover things.

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We looked around for an Irish editorial about this news to see if FOE is tapping a national feeling, but no love: it might still be a little early. In our hunt, we came across this:

Putting developers’ heads on spikes is no business of the asset management agency, writes John Waters.

Uh, we agree?

The plant at Sellafield. This is one of the sites proposed for a new unit.

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...

Nuclear Utility Moves Up in Credit Ratings, Bank is "Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy"

Some positive signs that nuclear utilities can continue to receive positive ratings even while they finance new nuclear plants for the first time in decades: Wells Fargo upgrades SCANA to Outperform from Market Perform Wells analyst says, "YTD, SCG shares have underperformed the Regulated Electrics (total return +2% vs. +9%). Shares trade at 11.3X our 10E EPS, a modest discount to the peer group median of 11.8X. We view the valuation as attractive given a comparatively constructive regulatory environment and potential for above-average long-term EPS growth prospects ... Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy. SCG plans to participate in the development of two regulated nuclear units at a cost of $6.3B, raising legitimate concerns regarding financing and construction. We have carefully considered the risks and are comfortable with SCG’s strategy based on a highly constructive political & regulatory environment, manageable financing needs stretched out over 10 years, strong partners...

NEI Nuclear Notes

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