Platts - Monday, December 19, 2005 http://www.platts.com ------------ Iran to make new proposals in nuclear talks Tehran (Platts)--19Dec2005 Iran will make new proposals during talks on its nuclear program with Britain, France and Germany this week but will not compromise its demand to conduct sensitive fuel work, an official said Monday. "We will make other proposals," Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, a vice president and head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told Iranian news agencies. Iran is due to meet with the so-called EU-3 in Vienna on Wednesday. The meeting is aimed at examining the possibility of resuming long-term negotiations, which broke down in August. "The Iranian delegation will welcome all proposals, on the condition that they recognize the rights of Iran," Aghazadeh said. Iran insists it only wants to make reactor fuel and generate electricity, and that the uranium enrichment process is a "right" to any signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But the process can be extended to make the core of a nuclear weapon, and the European Union and the United States argue that Iran cannot be trusted with such technology. This core issue is the cause of the current deadlock. Aghazadeh did not elaborate on the possible new proposals Iran could present, but pointed to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's proposal for foreign firms to be involved in enrichment on Iranian soil as a form of guarantee that the fuel cycle will not be diverted to weapons making. The Europeans have already rejected this idea, and are in turn pressing a proposal from Moscow whereby Iran could only enrich its uranium on Russian soil. Tehran has rejected the idea. For more information, take a trial to Platts Global Alert at http://globalalert.platts.com. ------------ Enthusiasm of ENC 2005 tempered by public acceptance, absences London (Platts)--19Dec2005 Buoyed by concrete signs of a nuclear renaissance on three continents, the European Nuclear Conference (ENC) 2005 convened last week in Versailles amid an atmosphere of euphoria that stood in sharp contrast to the gloom that has marked ENCs since the late 1970s. For the first time in well over a decade, ENC delegates heard of a new nuclear power plant under construction in Europe?Finland's Olkiluoto-3?and of plans for more, beginning in France but quite possibly spreading to the U.K. and beyond. Moreover, the revival of the U.S. nuclear market has also fueled hopes, expressed at the Versailles sessions, that the newly found enthusiasm for nuclear power will spread worldwide. ENC 2005 also drew a healthy attendance, with nearly 600 participants and 60 exhibitors from 10 countries. But although several speakers at the ENC opening session Dec. 12 stressed that public support remained the biggest obstacle to nuclear expansion in many countries, the opening session was marred by two major no-shows: French Industry Minister Francois Loos, and Anne Lauvergeon, chairman of Areva?the world's largest nuclear company?who is seen as the European industry's leader. Loos sent the director of his ministry's energy division, Dominique Maillard, to address the ENC participants. It was the second time Maillard had stood in for a French minister at an ENC meeting: the first was seven years ago in Nice, when the nuclear community was in deep doldrums and in need of high-level moral support from the host country, but Industry Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn canceled his presentation. Lauvergeon, for her part, was supposed to receive the WIN Global Award from Women In Nuclear in Versailles, but officials said she was detained in Paris. The absence of the key political and the key industry leader from the host country, home to the world's biggest nuclear utility and its biggest nuclear vendor firm, was hard to understand for many ENC delegates. Who did come to Versailles was U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), who was awarded the Grand Medal of the French Nuclear Energy Society (SFEN), the first time the honor went to a non-Frenchman. Jacques Bouchard, former director of nuclear energy at France's Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (CEA), also received the SFEN award. In accepting the award, Domenici said he "never would have believed" in 1997, when he made his "New Nuclear Paradigm" speech at Harvard University, that it would be possible to revive the nuclear option in only eight years. He noted "French nuclear leadership" during that period, but said that now, the process of bringing the U.S. back to new nuclear construction is under way. "The Energy Policy Act of 2005 is already bearing fruit," said Domenici, who led that legislation through the Senate. He noted that eight U.S. utilities are in various stages of planning 13 new nuclear power units, saying, "This is good news for the world. ... There can be no doubt that if the U.S. comes to life, the signal will go out far and wide that the cradle of nuclear power is once again aware of the immense benefits" of the technology. Domenici also said he would "never have believed" that legislation promoting nuclear power by extending the Price-Anderson Act ("without it, nuclear cannot exist in the U.S.") and putting in place nuclear licensing risk insurance and tax benefits for the first few reactors, as the 2005 energy act does, "could pass in the U.S. with such ease." He said, "The stars are lined up" for a U.S. nuclear revival. At the ENC session, James Reinsch, senior vice president, power of Bechtel Inc., and president-elect of the American Nuclear Society, said he expected that "in the early to mid-teens (2010s) we will have a robust plan in the U.S. and we will join the rest of the world" in deploying new nuclear. The head of the European utility that is building the world's first Generation III PWR, Finland's Teollisuuden Voima Oy (TVO), told the conference that "technology is not a major problem" in new nuclear, because suppliers have technology that meets all western standards and is "acceptable." Safety is also not a big issue, said TVO CEO Pertti Simola, nor is competitiveness, in his view. The issues to be resolved, he said, include financing?but TVO's success shows "there are financing models which are acceptable"?and management of spent fuel and waste. But Simola predicted that carbon dioxide emissions trading "will have a big impact including on money flows" between companies, and said that high fossil fuel prices will continue to make Gen III plants a "relevant way to generate nuclear energy in the coming decades." Tackling public acceptance Several speakers depicted public acceptance as the Achilles' heel of nuclear power. Larry Foulke, current ANS president, called on the nuclear community to become "engaged in telling the story" of nuclear's benefits to the public. "Facts will win over at the end of the debate," he said, and "eventually opposition to civilian nuclear energy will be revealed as among the greatest errors of our time." Pierre Gadonneix, chairman/CEO of Electricite de France (EDF), said the future of the nuclear industry "depends on our capacity to develop public acceptance" and demonstrate that nuclear power "is both safe and competitive." That, he said, requires "overcoming fears" in particular about long-term waste management, through "clear demonstration" that solutions exist with "a calendar on a human scale." But Bernard Bigot, high commissioner for nuclear energy at the CEA, said that while technical improvements like waste minimization can help overcome "fear and mistrust" among the public, "the answers cannot be only scientific and technical, but will surely need a new relationship between scientists and society." Maillard said responsibility for greater public acceptance rests not only on governments and administrations, but also on "companies and scientists" in the nuclear community. "We have concrete answers" to issues of nuclear plant competitiveness and financing, Maillard said, "but we must not neglect the strong emotional (issue) that nuclear represents for our fellow citizens." He said a "specific way of exchanging information" on nuclear with the public must be found. Loos and fellow ministers are determined to develop new methods of nuclear industry "governance," which could be part of the high-level waste management bill the government will submit to the parliament next spring, Maillard said. This story was originally published in Platts Nucleonics Week. Request a free trial at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/ ------------ SGT awarded contract for Salem-2 replacement steam generators Washington (Platts)--16Dec2005 SGT will carry out the steam generator replacements at Salem-2, the company announced today. The value of the contract was not disclosed. Framatome ANP is manufacturing the four new steam generators, which are scheduled to be installed in spring 2008. SGT is a joint venture of Framatome ANP and Washington Group International Inc. China starts construction of 1,000 MW nuclear power reactor Beijing (AFP)--16Dec2005 China has started construction of its first homegrown 1,000 MW nuclear power plant near the boomtown of Shenzhen in the southern province of Guangdong, state press said Friday. The Ling'ao II project will be comprised of two generating units, each with an installed capacity of 1,000 MW, with the first unit scheduled to start operation in December 2010, Xinhua news agency reported. The second unit will go online in August 2011, the report said, citing sources from the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Co Ltd (CGNPC). On completion, the two units will generate 150-bil kWh of electricity each year for the booming province which borders Hong Kong and has been driving the nation's robust export-driven economy. The new plant will be adjacent to the Daya Bay nuclear power plant and the Ling'ao I project which began commercial operation in 2003, with two 990-megawatt generating units. China currently has nine nuclear generation units in operation, including four in Daya Bay and Ling Ao and five reactors at the Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant in east China's Zhejiang Province. China gets just 2.3% of its energy from nuclear power plants and is hoping to increase that to 4.0% by 2020, which will make it the world's fastest developer of atomic energy. For more information, take a trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://nucweek.platts.com. ------------ Sweden increases nuclear tax for 2006 by 85% London (Platts)--16Dec2005 Sweden's Social Democrat-led government has increased the tax on nuclear power for 2006 by 85%, or SKr1.8-bil (Eur0.19-bil) to SKr3.1-bil, a spokesman for energy industry group Svensk Energi said Friday. The real estate tax on hydro power will also be increased from 0.5% of the real estate value to 1.2% for 2006, and to 1.7% for 2007. Hydro power companies paid around SKr800-mil in real estate tax in 2004, the spokesman said. Tax increases for both nuclear and hydro power will come into effect from Jan 1 2006. For more information, take a trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://nucweek.platts.com. ------------