STOP HINKLEY PRESS RELEASE, 18/12/12

Campaigners have accused Britain’s Office for Nuclear Regulation's nuclear regulators of caving in to government pressure and approving a new reactor before its design has been properly assessed. The ONR had previously said that outstanding design problems would not be resolved by the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) before March 2013.

In 2009, independent nuclear experts Large & Associates warned that if the EPR licensing process was allowed to proceed on a piecemeal basis it could be compromised by having to wave through unsatisfactory aspects of the final design. More recently, they called for the ONR to come clean about delays, claiming that resolving outstanding issues by the end of 2012 deadline was unachievable. (1,2)

Speaking today, John Large said, “ I was extremely surprised to hear that the ONR claim to have wrapped this all up when there are still so many unresolved problems arising from Fukushima and the central issue of Instrumentation and Control”.

UK, French and Finnish regulators have been voicing concerns over “Instrumentation and Control” of the new EPR reactors for nearly a decade. Some of these concerns relate to the independence of important systems, whilst others address problems of diversity and susceptibility to common cause failures. UK regulators have previously insisted that the reactors should have a separate non-computerised safety system as a fail-safe.  It is unclear from the documents in the public domain whether or not such a system is now actually proposed and if so, whether it has been assessed. (3)

The lengthy GDA process has been under immense strain, caused by a lack of technical assessors and by EDF being untimely with their submissions. As recently as Spring this year, the ONR stated that at least three control and instrumentation issues were subject to significant delays that “could not be recovered” and would “impact on the target closure date”. (4,5,6)

Stop Hinkley spokesperson Nikki Clark said: “We're very concerned about this development - how can the regulators claim that these issues are resolved ahead of their target deadlines, when their own reports indicate otherwise? We will be writing to the ONR to ask how they've managed to finish the GDA ahead of recent forecasts for completion.”

“The key issue of reactor safety at Hinkley C was excluded from recent public consultations by the planning inspectorate. The ONR’s speedy conclusion of the GDA process make’s permission more likely, yet the findings of the GDA decision will not be available for public scrutiny until March 2013 – AFTER approval for Hinkley C has already been granted!”

“The hurried conclusion of this assessment, without public transparency , has only added to our concern that regulators are now putting political deadlines before public safety.” (7)


*******************************************ENDS******************************************

Contacts:   Large & Associates, John Large: 020 8317 2860
            Stop Hinkley:   Nikki Clarke, 077369 30069  Theo Simon, 07805 666239


Notes to editors

1  Stop Hinkley press release July 2009 http://stophinkley.org/PressReleases/pr090701.htm

2  Large & Associates 2nd Interim review of Generic Design Assessment Outstanding Issues, 3rd Sept 2012 http://largeassociates.com/cz3206/3206 GDA Review/R3206-I2.pdf

3  Large & Associates 2nd Interim review of Generic Design Assessment Outstanding Issues, 3rd Sept 2012 http://largeassociates.com/cz3206/3206 GDA Review/R3206-I2.pdf

4  Office for Nuclear Regulation Generic Design Assessment Quarterly report 3rd quarter 2010 http://www.hse.gov.uk/newreactors/reports/gda-q3-10.pdf

5  Office for Nuclear Regulation Generic Design Assessment Quarterly report 4th quarter 2010 http://www.hse.gov.uk/newreactors/reports/gda-q4-10.pdf

6  Office for Nuclear Regulation Generic Design Assessment Quarterly report 2nd quarter 2012 http://www.hse.gov.uk/newreactors/reports/gda-q2-12.pdf

7  Stop Hinkley NFLA joint press release http://stophinkley.org/PressReleases/pr120601.pdf

France - Human chain reaction has begun - build up to THE event in Paris 9 March 2013

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On Saturday afternoon in the city of Rouen, Normandy - people joined hands to send out a simple messge "yes to renewable energy and no to nuclear".  A very festive occasion with kids, parents, grand parents and in general a wide range of people from all different backgrounds.

This is the first in a series of events in Rouen, with more to follow throughout France and Europe leading up to the massive event on 9 March 2013 in Paris.  Our goal is to surround  different places where decisions are made regarding nuclear such as: Areva, EDF, parliament, the Nuclear Safety Authority, etc.. with a giant humain chain to show that enough is enough! 

For more info check out the site: chainehumaine.org (in French for now but translations to follow)

Here is the flyer for the event in French:

Nuclear giant EDF postpones decision on new Hinkley Point reactor

UK energy policy cast into doubt after company breaks pledge to make investment decision by end of 2012

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• Damian Carrington and Terry Macalister
• The Guardian, Friday 7 December 2012 19.37 GMT

Hinkley Point nuclear plant in Somerset, where EDF is deciding whether to build a new power station. Photograph: PA

The troubled French nuclear giant EDF has postponed its decision on whether to build a new power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset.

The delay puts the nuclear renaissance at the heart of the UK government's energy plans into further doubt after a difficult week in which EDF was hit by cost overruns and the exit of its partner from a key French project.

The new reactors at Hinkley were to be the first of a new generation of atomic plants in the UK and EDF had repeatedly pledged to make a final investment decision by the end of 2012.

But the decision to plough billions of pounds into the project is now unlikely to be taken before April 2013, according to sources close to the project, although EDF declined to comment.

"This is another broken promise from EDF on a policy that has always been failing," said Tom Burke, the founding director of the green thinktank E3G.

"To spend at least £14bn on a pair of reactors at Hinkley is very, very high risk."

The latest projections from the Department of Energy and Climate Change have reduced the amount of nuclear power expected in future, with only Hinkley expected to be up and running by 2025, he added.

The energy secretary, Ed Davey, fast-tracked negotiations over the guaranteed price EDF would be paid for electricity from Hinkley to help the end-of-year deadline to be met.

However, amid concerns that consumers would end up paying a high price, the energy minister John Hayes recently warned that the government could walk away from the talks. EDF is also awaiting planning permission to build the reactors and does not expect that decision before March 2013.

A failure to secure the building of the Hinkley reactors would be a serious blow for both the government and EDF, which is majority owned by the French state.

But it also comes in a week that EDF admitted that the cost of building its prototype European pressurised reactor (EPR) at Flamanville in Normandy had risen by €2bn (£1.6bn) to €8.5bn. The following day EDF's partner in the Flamanville 3 scheme, Enel of Italy, announced that it was pulling out.

EDF said in 2005 that it would construct the EPR, which is similar to the ones planned for Somerset, for €3.3bn. The cost overruns – and delays – have partly been blamed on changes required after the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan but they have also been put down to engineers discovering the project was more difficult than they had foreseen.

New statistics just released by Decc show the British government expects only 3.3 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity to be built by 2025 and 9.9GW by 2030.

This compares with 4.8GW by 2025 and 12GW by 2030 as recorded in Decc's energy and emissions projections 12 months ago.

EDF raises French EPR reactor cost to over $11 billion

Reuters

12:50 p.m. CST, December 3, 2012

PARIS (Reuters) - French utility EDF has raised the cost of the construction of its next-generation nuclear reactor by more than 2 billion euros on Monday, the latest in a series of overruns for the first EPR reactor built in France.

Stricter regulation in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster contributed to bringing the total cost of the 1,600-MW Flamanville European pressurized reactor to 8.5 billion euros ($11.11 billion), the group said.

In 2005, the state-owned utility estimated the reactor's cost at 3.3 billion euros.

The start-up date of the reactor, which had been delayed by two years in 2010 and another two years last year, is still expected for 2016, EDF said.

"The development of the boiler design, additional engineering studies, the integration of new regulatory requirements and everything learnt from Fukushima have also been taken into account," EDF said in a statement.

Flamanville 3 is the first nuclear reactor built in France in 15 years and a landmark project for EDF, which hopes to capitalize on three decades of experience to win deals to build nuclear plants abroad.

Repeated delays have also hit the construction of the first EPR reactor, Finland's Olkiluoto 3, built by French nuclear group Areva and Germany's Siemens.

EDF, which operates France's 58 nuclear reactors, said it had completed 93 percent of the civil engineering and 36 percent of the electro-mechanical equipment in place. ($1 = 0.7650 euros)

Shocking News. Hitachi the builder of Fukushima buys British Nuclear Venture

Japanese company Hitachi yesterday completed its acquisition of German energy companies E.ON and RWE’s UK joint nuclear venture Horizon Nuclear Power for £696 million.

How shocking, that the British government should stoop so low as to seek a bailout from the Japanese company responsible for the construction of the nuclear power plants responsible for the worst nuclear accident ever to occur in the world.

E.ON and RWE set up the 50:50 joint venture in 2009 to develop new nuclear generating capacity at Wylfa on Anglesey in Wales and at Oldbury in Gloucestershire. Earlier this year, they saw the error of their ways and decided to pull out of the nuclear business altogether. They started looking for a buyer for the venture.

Hitachi could no longer build nuclear power plants in Japan, due to the Fukushima crisis. So who offers to set themselves up like lambs to the slaughter? Britain. Hitachi now says it plans to develop two to three 1300 MW nuclear power plants at each of the sites and will be seeking regulatory approval to use Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (ABWR) technology, plants that have been plagued by technical problems, argue critics.

“Hitachi is committed to helping the US achieve its vision of a secure, low-carbon and affordable energy supply,” vice president and executive officer Masaharu Hanyu commented in a statement. But we know that nuclear power is neither cheap, nor affordable. Expect to see electricity prices soar.

Radioactive leak from Uranium mine in Finland

Since the beginning of November the dams of a tailing pond of the Talvivaara
nickel and uranium mine are leaking. Hundreds of thousands of cubic
meters of toxic waste waters have been released to the rivers and
lakes. Despite the authorities hope to stop the leakage since November
14th, it now turned out that there are new leakages in the safety dam.

Activists already speak about Finland's largest environmental disaster
in history. Authorities published that the heavy metals released to
nature will kill fish and damage the environment. Uranium readings in
the water are 3 1/2 times above the "recommended level" - whatever
this means. However, operator and authorities again and again try to
downplay the impacts. Yesterday the government had to admit the new
leakage after denying it for days.

Please spread the word, support the Finnish activists to inform the
international public and to put pressure on the Talvivaara mining
company and the Finnish government to close the Talviivaara mine and
allow independent observers to monitor the leakage and safety
measures.

We have forwarded several international media releases of the Stop
Talvivaara people already. Please do the same, check the provided
media releases and send them to your media contacts and to
anti-nuclear friends around the world.

I have set up a webpage to inform on the Talvivaara spill:
http://www.nuclear-heritage.net/index.php/Talvivaara_mine:_environmental_disaster_in_Finland

Dawn blockade leaves nuclear workers locked out

At 6am this morning 10 protestors blockaded access to EDF energy's nuclear sites at Hinkley Point, preventing the morning shift from starting work. 4 people in arm locks formed a barrier across the main access road at Wick Moor Drove in a bid to prevent further ground clearance work at the planned Hinkley C site and to protest at EDF's plan to extend the life of aging reactors at the Hinkley B station.

Sitting beneath a banner saying "Nuclear Power - not worth the risk" Bristol tree-surgeon Zoe Smith said, "We want the destruction of land at the proposed Hinkley C site to stop. EDF still don't have planning permission for the new nuclear plant, the governments energy policy is in tatters. With Centrica pulling out and the long awaited Electricity Reform Act delayed, there is not even enough investment to finish the project. If the tories fix the electricity price for nuclear so that the project can go ahead it will leave a radioactive waste

dump here for hundreds of years." The early morning blockade caused long tailbacks for scores of workers contracted in to perform maintenance work on the the existing reactors at Hinkley B, EDF have signalled their intention to re-licence the reactor again in 2016.

Bridgwater mum Nikki Clark from South West Against Nuclear said, "Not only do we not need new nuclear, we certainly don't need to extend the life of the existing reactors even further. Just this year alone reactor no 4 in the B station has scrammed at least three times. EDF like to call these emergency shutdowns 'unplanned outages' but this deliberately conceals the fact that these ageing

reactors are now in a dangerous condition. In 2008 the regulators threatened British Energy with closure of the site. The reactors do not have any fewer cracks in the graphite core now than they did then. Do we have to have our own Fukushima here in Somerset before we abandon this insanity and embrace a renewables revolution in the UK?"

Stop Hinkley spokesperson Theo Simon said, "We support this protest. New nuclear is dead in the water. We need public investment in a renewables revolution which could create a million climate jobs and cut energy bills through a programme of home insulation and energy-efficiency. With it's massive marine energy resource, West Somerset is perfectly placed to lead the way in renewables, but EDF's plans would turn it into a toxic waste dump for our grandchildren."

From: South West Against Nuclear