NEI Nuclear Notes

As you may have heard, DOE is attempting to withdraw the license application for the Yucca Mountain used nuclear fuel repository from consideration by the NRC. This was a decision that remains controversial and may get a further hearing in the next Congress. Regardless, Yucca Mountain continues its retirement. Yet it is still being paid for via the Nuclear Waste Fund , described as: [A] 1 mill (one-tenth of a cent) fee for every kWh of nuclear-generated electricity sold. Congress established the fee and Nuclear Waste Fund, a federal trust, in 1982 to bankroll the DOE repository program. That may not sound like a lot, but it comes to about $750 million per year and has contributed to a fund that now stands at $25 billion. While one could say that the utilities are paying this. it is actually ratepayers that are doing so. The Nuclear Waste Act of 1982 set Yucca Mountain as the used fuel repository (through an amendment in 1987) and set the initial fee for the Nuclear Waste F...

European energy companies have dropped investment projects worth billions of euros because of European Commission plans to make them buy greenhouse gas emissions permits from 2013. While some EU countries - namely, Germany and Italy - are ratcheting down their nuclear activities, this is proving increasingly untenable as other means of producing electricity are becoming harder to finance. A new report on "Europe's Vulnerability to Energy Crises" found that the EU was more dependent on energy imports and more vulnerable to crises than at any time since the 1970s. "Nuclear power is a promising alternative for both reducing dependency on imports and fulfilling the commitment of all European countries to the Kyoto Protocol (on climate change)," the study said.   The Bangkok Post is hosting a debate on nuclear energy with two articles: Kopr Kritayakirana , an expert adviser with the Nuclear Power Programme Development Office, takes the affirmative while Witoon P...

Details from ITAR-TASS . This is the same project we first mentioned last October .

Details from the BBC .