Domestic political squabbles, funding woes and other hurdles threaten a number of nuclear power plant projects in central and southeast Europe but they will not derail the future of atomic energy in the region.
Analysts say the global economic crisis has made banks reluctant to provide loans for nuclear plants, which cost around 3 billion euros ($4.30 billion) per 1,000 megawatt reactor, for a pay-off that takes decades.
An OSCE meeting on support to Central Asia in mitigating radioactive waste problems held here on Thursday urges international organizations and Central Asian countries to step up cooperation in managing radioactive waste.
According to OSCE press release, this meeting attracted representatives of the OSCE, the UN Development Program, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Bank to discuss ways of enhancing regional cooperation between international organizations, donors and the private sector.
Ambassador Tesoriere, head of the OSCE Centre in Bishkek, noted that this joint presentation seeks to inform a wider international audience about the dangers of radioactive and toxic waste in Central Asia to human life, economy and environment, and to demonstrate how these dangers can be addressed.
Bruce Power has temporarily withdrawn its application to prepare a site for a nuclear power plant near Peace River, and is now considering a second site.
In a letter to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the nuclear power company says a new site was chosen partly because concerns were raised about an aquifer near the first location. The second site is on the west bank of the Peace River, about 30 kilometres north of the town. The original site is on the northeast shore of Lac Cardinal, about 30 kilometres west of the town. It was selected by Energy Alberta, which Bruce Power bought last March.
Nuclear Power Corp. of India plans to raise 3 billion euros ($4 billion) in overseas debt to fund a project to be built in partnership with Areva SA, the world's biggest maker of atomic reactors.
Mumbai-based Nuclear Power, the state-run monopoly atomic energy producer, received bids from 15 international banks, including 10 French institutions, for the loan, Chairman Shreyans Kumar Jain said in a telephone interview.
"Our expression was for 3 billion euros but we have got commitments for 8 billion euros," he said.
"Nuclear energy firm USEC Inc. said Friday it secured a new line of credit that will provide it $225 million upon closing with the option to secure as much as $350 million.
The company said the new line of credit replaces an existing line set to mature in August. The new credit deal is supported by JPMorgan Chase Bank, Wells Fargo & Company and UBS.
The new credit facility will mature May 31, 2012.
USEC is a leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
The company's stock fell 7 cents, or nearly 2 percent, to close at $4.36."
The head of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso began a European Union-wide push on Monday to enforce European nuclear safety standards on the building of atomic energy plants to become the binding worldwide standard, while French president Nicolas Sarkozy chastised international banks' reluctance to invest in nuclear power. Charles Digges, 08/03-2010
The development is seen by analysts as something that could clear the path for France to sell its expensive technology and expertise to other countries. But French environmental groups are warning that the wares its country have on sale are catastrophes waiting to happen.
Buffett's bankroll, Obama's clout and the partnership of a savvy ex-Soviet strongman may turn the steppes of central Asia into a nuclear mecca, a go-to place for "safe" uranium fuel in an increasingly nervous atomic age.
The $150 million idea, with seed money from U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett, must still navigate the tricky maze of global nuclear politics, along with a parallel Russian plan. But the notion of such fuel banks is moving higher on the world's agenda as a way to keep ultimate weapons out of many more hands.
Decisions may come as early as next month here in Vienna.
Uranium will rise above $50 a pound in coming weeks because of reduced production at BHP Billiton Ltd.'s Olympic Dam mine in Australia, Macquarie Bank Ltd. said.
Prices have added 9.8 percent over the past two weeks on concern about reduced supply following an accident at Olympic Dam, the world's fourth-largest producing uranium mine. Uranium oxide concentrate for immediate delivery traded at $47.75 a pound on Oct. 19, Roswell, Georgia-based UxC said in a weekly report.
"Uranium will go up into the low $50s over the next month," Max Layton, an analyst at Macquarie in London, said by phone today.
Uranium will rise above $50 a pound in coming weeks because of reduced production at BHP Billiton Ltd.'s Olympic Dam mine in Australia, Macquarie Bank Ltd. said.
Prices have added 9.8 percent over the past two weeks on concern about reduced supply following an accident at Olympic Dam, the world's fourth-largest producing uranium mine. Uranium oxide concentrate for immediate delivery traded at $47.75 a pound on Oct. 19, Roswell, Georgia-based UxC said in a weekly report.
"Uranium will go up into the low $50s over the next month," Max Layton, an analyst at Macquarie in London, said by phone today.
"A June update by the U.S. Department of Energy said that 1.5 million tons of uranium mill tailings have been removed from near the banks of the Colorado River and buried in a disposal site 30 miles away.
Federal stimulus funding of $108 million has accelerated the cleanup, which will tackle an additional 1.2 million tons of tailings between now and September 2011."
Along with automobile makers and banks, a number of senators whose districts include U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contaminated sites are asking for stimulus money to rejuvenate local economies with cleanup work and perhaps, freshly-cleaned land for industrial development. According to the DOE, spending more and completing cleanup would enable the government to decrease the "footprint" or overall size of each site, releasing more property for development.
The letter asking for the funding was signed by Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.; Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Jim Risch, D-Idaho; and Tom Udall, D-N.M. Sen. Patty Murray, D.-Wash.; is supporting boosting cleanup spending nationally by $6 billion. Since the mid-1990's, the DOE has already spent more than $7.3 billion on environmental cleanup nationally each year.
New technology is providing information on how contaminated ground water from the Hanford nuclear reservation may be entering the Columbia River.
A study for the Department of Energy of where ground water seeps into the river and what contaminants it contains won't be completed until the end of the year. But already there is evidence showing ground water enters the Columbia River in upwellings away from its shores, said Larry Hulstrom, Washington Closure Hanford project lead for the Columbia River investigation.
It's generally been assumed that ground water enters the river in seeps and springs within the first 6 feet of its banks. But some of the ground water may become trapped below a hard layer in the ground and only seeps into deep areas of the river, rather than at its shores.
"We've never had the technology available to determine if it was upwelling further beyond 6 feet," Hulstrom said.
Thanks to everyone who contacted the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) and their Members of Congress two weeks ago, urging an extension of DOE's public comment period on its proposed weakening of taxpayer protections in its nuclear loan guarantee program. Under pressure from concerned citizens and U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), DOE extended the comment deadline from Sept. 8th to Sept. 22nd.
Now we must take advantage of this extension to get our comments in! DOE's most clearly outrageous proposal is to give up its "first lien" in the event of a new reactor loan repayment default. This would mean that taxpayers would be placed behind other lenders, such as foreign export-import banks, in terms of receiving compensation. Thus, taxpayers likely would not be compensated at all, but rather left holding the bag for billions when a new reactor or uranium enrichment facility goes belly up. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted, based on the nuclear industry's history, that well over half of all new reactors could default on their loans. Taxpayers' liability for dozens of new reactor loan guarantees could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars. DOE's rule change would increase, not decrease, taxpayer risk.
Eskom's hikes in the electricity price by around a quarter and a third in two years and its need to repeat such price increases for the next three years bring one issue to a head.
Why are Eskom and the departments of energy and public enterprises so grimly determined to generate electricity by the most expensive and complicated of all options -- atomic power stations and their high-level radioactive waste depositaries?
Eskom and other power companies have set up Westcor (Western Corridor Power Company), incorporated in Botswana. This has spent years conducting road shows for the World Bank and others, estimating the Inga3 hydro-electric power project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) at around R70-billion.
The Department of Energy is considering tearing down Hanford's K Reactors that stand on the banks of the Columbia River rather than sealing them up for 75 years.
If the plan goes forward, it could lead to tearing down eight of the nine plutonium production reactors along the river instead of leaving them "cocooned." Only B Reactor, which is expected to be preserved as a museum, would remain standing.
Demolishing the reactors now instead of waiting 75 years to dispose of them could "save a ton of money" in long-term costs, said Dave Brockman, manager of the DOE Hanford Richland Operations Office.
"Colorado Governor Bill Ritter stood by the banks of the Arkansas River near a neighborhood contaminated by a uranium mill today and signed legislation that will force uranium mills to clean up existing messes before launching new projects.
"This just gives us a better hold on the milling process," Ritter said before signing the bill, a bipartisan measure sponsored by Rep. Buffie McFadyen, and Sens. Ken Kester and Bob Bacon.
Greenwood Village based Cotter Corp. operates the mill that became a Superfund cleanup site in 1984. During the statehouse battle over the law, Cotter vice president John Hamrick said the legislation would kill Cotter's proposed project to refurbish the mill and haul 12.5 million tons of uranium ore from New Mexico for processing. Hamrick on Tuesday declined to comment on the status on any future project."
"Namibia's Chamber of Mines, which represents the mining industry in the southern African country, is concerned that power and water supply shortages and royalty tax legislation could hamper investment.
Mike Leech, president of the industry body in one of the world's top uranium producers, said a royalty tax passed at the end of 2008 would "increase rather than reduce investor risk".
"(The tax) is likely ... to make it harder for exploration companies to get projects past the credit committees of the banking institutions they will have to raise the money from," he said in an annual review the chamber published last week."
Colorado uranium mining operations are being shut, postponed or scrapped as stock and commodity prices plummet and financing dries up.
In the past six weeks, two mines - Whirlwind and JBird - have temporarily shut.
A project in San Miguel County has been scrapped, and the development of the Van-4 mine in Montrose County has been postponed.
"There have been lower prices, but there hasn't been this precipitous a drop in the last 25 years," said Stuart Sanderson, president of the Colorado Mining Association.
The ingredients for the market free-fall are a 40 percent drop in uranium prices this year, a sharp decline in mining stock prices and a lack of financing for projects.
Behind those trends are hedge funds that had bought up uranium and banks no longer willing to lend money, mining industry executives said.
"Industrywide, everyone is suffering," said Greg Barnes, an analyst with TD Newcastle Inc. in Toronto.
There are no plans to add a second nuclear reactor to the Clinton power plant anytime soon, Exelon Nuclear officials say, despite rumors to the contrary.
Exelon Nuclear received an early site permit in March 2007 from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That allows the utility to "bank" the property adjacent to the Clinton plant for a potential new reactor for up to 20 years.
"We have no immediate plans to build a nuclear plant at the site, but if over the course of the next 18 years we decide to do something, we have the process started," Exelon spokesman Bruce Paulson said.
A Montpelier firefighter lets a pedestrian into the Chittenden Bank on State Street in Montpelier on Monday while, in the foreground, a protest against Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant takes place on the sidewalk. Authorities said members of the Yankee protest made demands inside the building, then dumped a smelly substance on the floor, sparking a precautionary evacuation of part of the building. The material was determined not to be hazardous and no one was harmed. Police are investigating.
Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions Inc. announced increased profits and revenues for the third quarter.
Net income jumped to $10.9 million, or 12 cents per share, compared with $200,000 in the same period last year. Revenues were $419 million, up 7.7 percent from $389 million from the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2007.
"In summary, our core business remains strong in spite of the effects of the current turmoil in the financial markets," CEO R Steve Creamer said. "Our capital structure is sound, our debt levels are manageable and we have over $100 million of cash and undrawn lending commitments from our banks."
Among the highlights of Tuesday's earnings announcement:
