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China’s First Advanced Nuclear Reactor Faces More Delays

BEIJING—China’s ambitions to be a leader in nuclear technology have been dealt a fresh blow, as construction of its most advanced reactor is facing a new delay. The project—which China is developing with Westinghouse Electric Co. of the U.S.—faces new development problems and now isn’t expected to start up until 2016 at the earliest, the chief engineer at China’s state-owned reactor technology company said Thursday. “We discovered some new problems during tests so we need to delay it more until next year,” Wang Zhongtang, chief engineer of China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp., said on the sidelines of an industry conference. Mr. Wang didn’t specify the nature of the latest problems found at ongoing trials for the reactor, nor did he provide a more precise time frame for its launch. The delay is the second for the project, which had been slated to start by the end of 2013. […]

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Vermont Nuclear Power Plant Shut Down as Industry Evolves

ENLARGE The Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Vernon, Vt., had been generating electricity since 1972. Associated Press The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant ended more than four decades of electricity production on Monday, moving to full retirement amid growing competition from cheap natural gas from the shale boom. Environmentalists, who had waged a lengthy fight to close the General Electric Type 4 boiling-water reactor, in Vernon, Vt., applauded the news. Others lamented the loss of a source of low-cost, carbon-free electricity and jobs in the region. Owner Entergy Corp. said the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station produced 171 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity since 1972—more than 70% of the electricity generated in Vermont over that period. ISO New England, the agency that oversees the area’s high-voltage electricity grid, already has determined that the region’s power system can reliably operate without Vermont Yankee given other power sources and the interconnectedness of […]

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E.P.A. Wrestles With Role of Nuclear Plants in Carbon Emission Rules

WASHINGTON — Trying to write a complicated formula to cut carbon emissions, the Environmental Protection Agency thinks it has found a magic number: 5.8. The agency is trying to complete a rule governing carbon emissions from power plants, and among the most complicated and contentious issues is how to treat existing nuclear power plants. Many of them are threatened with shutdowns because cheap natural gas has made their reactors uncompetitive. The agency’s proposal gave an odd mathematical formula for evaluating nuclear plants’ contribution to carbon emissions. It said that 5.8 percent of existing nuclear capacity was at risk of being shut for financial reasons, and thus for states with nuclear reactors, keeping them running would earn a credit of 5.8 percent toward that state’s carbon reduction goal. Since receiving tens of thousands of comments on the proposal, the agency is now reviewing the plan. It must evaluate all comments […]

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China Wants ‘Made in China’ Nuclear Reactors

ENLARGE Out of 71 nuclear reactors being built globally, China is constructing 26. The Hongyanhe power station was one of the first to come online in China after the Fukushima disaster. Zuma Press BEIJING—When a unit of North Carolina’s Curtiss-Wright Corp. won a roughly $300 million deal in 2007 to supply components for new reactors in China, industry officials trumpeted China’s nuclear boom as good for U.S. business. Today, Chinese companies are competing for that business—and foreign companies risk getting left out. Meanwhile, Curtiss-Wright’s contract is caught up in a legal dispute, while Chinese authorities blame the company in part for the delay of a landmark nuclear project. U.S. and other foreign companies are now struggling to keep their hold in China, the industry’s biggest growth market and a rare bright spot more than three years after the Fukushima disaster in Japan put many of the world’s nuclear projects […]

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Almost all U.S. nuclear plants require life extension past 60 years to operate beyond 2050

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, based on U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Note: Graph does not include planned nuclear additions but does include scheduled retirements. When nuclear power plants are built, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has the authority to issue initial operating licenses for a period of 40 years. Beyond that, the reactors need license renewals, and the NRC has granted 20-year license renewals to 74 of the 100 operating reactors in the United States. These reactors may now operate for a total period of 60 years. They represent a cumulative capacity of a little more than 69,000 megawatts (MW). The NRC is currently reviewing license renewal applications for an additional 17 reactors, and expects to receive seven more applications in the next few years. With the bulk of the existing nuclear fleet licensed before 1990, nearly all existing reactors will be more than 60 years old by 2050. […]

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Fukushima radiation found in California

4712 Votes Fukushima radiation found in California Very small amounts of radiation from the 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant have been detected off the California coast, a scientist who has been monitoring the fallout said this week. Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said trace amounts of telltale radioactive compounds were found 100 miles west of the northern California town of Eureka. Buesseler’s crowd-funded monitoring project has been taking ocean samples along the coast of California, Alaska and Canada. The blast and collapse of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant as a result of a devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 released cesium-134 at unprecedented levels. This and other radioactive elements have been slowly making their way across the Pacific Ocean, becoming diluted as they go. The meltdown of three core reactors at the Fukushima plant amounted to the largest nuclear […]

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Bill for shutting nuclear plants will reach $100bn

Photo taken on October 14, 2009 shows a board indicating a contaminated area at the French electricity group EDF (Electricite de France) nuclear plant in Flamanville, western France ©Getty The bill for closing down and cleaning up the world’s ageing nuclear reactors will exceed $100bn over the next 25 years alone, the leading energy watchdog has said, warning that governments risk underestimating the cost. With almost 200 reactors due to be shut down by 2040, the International Energy Agency says in its annual report there are “considerable uncertainties” about decommissioning costs, reflecting governments’ limited experience in safely dismantling nuclear plants. In the last 40 years, only 10 reactors have been closed down. More On this topic Energy watchdog in investment warning Japan has high hopes for ‘flammable ice’ Lex LNG – Buyers beware IEA warns of future oil supply crunch IN Energy Peabody sees reprieve from US carbon rules […]

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Sendai Vote Signals Quicker Pace on Reactor Restarts

Japan quickened its pace to restarting its idled atomic reactors after local officials voted to resume operations at Sendai’s nuclear plant on the nation’s southern island. Council members for the town of Satsumasendai on the island of Kyushu voted 19 to four to restart the reactors as soon as possible in an almost 3 1/2 hour meeting interrupted frequently by the shouts of protesters opposing the measure. “If they do manage to restart these, it would obviously make the follow-on reactors a lot easier to deal with,” Tom O’Sullivan, founder of Tokyo-based energy consultant Mathyos, said before the vote. “It kind of opens up the path to further restarts in different areas.” Sendai’s two reactors are the first of Japan’s atomic plants in line to restart under tougher safety rules set by the Nuclear Regulation Authority, the agency created after the Fukushima disaster to restore confidence in the industry. […]

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Lockheed says makes breakthrough on fusion energy project

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Lockheed Martin Corp said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready for use in a decade. Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed’s secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work. Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a 100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet, which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire told reporters. In a statement, the company, the Pentagon’s largest supplier, said it would build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than […]

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U.S. fusion plan draws blistering critique

4581 Votes U.S. fusion plan draws blistering critique Many U.S. fusion scientists are blasting a report that seeks to map out a 10-year strategic plan for their field , calling it “flawed,” “unsatisfactory,” and the product of a rushed process rife with potential conflicts of interest. One result: Last week, most members of a 23-person government advisory panel had to recuse themselves from voting on the report as a result of potential conflicts. “The whole process was unsatisfactory,” says Martin Greenwald of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT’s) Plasma Science and Fusion Center in Cambridge. Achieving fusion—nuclear reactions that have the potential to produce copious, clean energy—requires heating hydrogen fuel to more than 100 million degrees Celsius, causing it to become an ionized gas or plasma. Huge and expensive reactors are needed to contain the superhot plasma long enough for reactions to start. The largest current fusion effort is […]

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