Platts - Wednesday, December 21, 2005 http://www.platts.com ------------ EC poised to issue guidelines for decommissioning funds Brussels (Platts)--21Dec2005 The European Commission (EC) will soon publish a "recommendation" (non-binding legal text) on nuclear plant decommissioning funds management that calls for segregating such funds from overall utility accounts, Commission sources said this week. Publication of the text fulfills a commitment the EC made to the European Parliament and Council of European Ministers in 2003 during negotiations on opening the European electricity market to competition. The aim is to ensure that adequate funds are available when needed for nuclear facility decommissioning and spent fuel and radioactive waste management. Nuclear operators would be responsible for taking measures to secure those funds, during the working life of their plants. The recommendation will require that decommissioning funds for any new nuclear power plants be unbundled from nuclear operators' general accounts, and recommend the same unbundling for funds covering existing reactors. Research facilities, which are often state-owned, may be granted special exemptions, an EC official said. In the EC's view, externalizing decommissioning funds should guarantee that the financial resources will not be used in such a way as to distort competition within the European Union internal electricity market. However, the EC's current director general for energy, Francois Lamoureux, says there is no proof that such funds are indeed used in that way today. The EC says decommissioning funds should be used for no other purpose and should be managed with total transparency and "prudently." Lamoureux told Nucleonics Week in a recent interview that this recommendation should serve as an "initial step" until such time as binding legislation with regard to plant safety and radioactive waste management can be introduced. The recommendation will be based on Chapter 3 of the Euratom Treaty, which deals with radiation protection. The European Court of Justice confirmed in 2002 that the EC's jurisdiction under the treaty encompassed nuclear safety. That includes guaranteeing that decommissioning operations will meet the highest nuclear safety standards, the EC says. Because the text is non-binding, member states will not be obliged to implement it. But Lamoureux said that the EC will use the text's provisions as guidelines in reviewing nuclear projects of investors in member states, notably as concerns new nuclear power plant projects. For more information, take a trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://nucweek.platts.com. ------------ Iowa's OCA requests rehearing on Duane Arnold sale Washington (Platts)--20Dec2005 A rehearing of the Iowa utilities board's approval of the Duane Arnold sale was requested today by the Iowa Office of Consumer Advocate (OCA). The OCA, which is a division of Iowa's justice department, also asked the board to issue a stay for the Nov. 30 approval of the sale of Interstate Power & Light Co.'s 70% share in the plant to FPL Energy. One claim OCA made in its rehearing request was that the board incorrectly restricted itself by asserting it could not consider whether there was a better alternative to the sale. ------------ Kazakhstan will store spent fuel from BN-350 in 2007 or 2008 Kiev (Platts)--20Dec2005 Spent nuclear fuel from the decommissioned BN-350 fast reactor at the Mangyshlak Atomic Energy Complex (MAEK) in the Mangystau region will be moved to a long-term storage site in 2007 or 2008, according to Kazakh authorities. Kazakhstan's ministry of energy and mineral resources plans to undertake 50-year storage of the fuel at Baikal-1, located on National Nuclear Center (the former Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, SNTA) property in eastern Kazakhstan. Timur Zhantikin, head of the ministry's atomic energy committee (AEC), said the spent fuel would be transported and stored in dual-purpose metal-concrete casks on a roofed concrete pad. Construction has not yet begun on the SNTA facility; the casks are still being tested. If the tests are successful, a prototype cask would be fabricated and undergo a quality control examination and certification before commercial production could begin. BN-350 was the world's first prototype fast reactor. It went critical in 1972 and began energy production in 1973. The plant also produced fresh water, thanks to an adjacent desalination plant. It was shut in 1999. The Kazakh government decided in April to decommission BN-350, which is part of the MAEK-Kazatomprom Co., Ltd.?a subsidiary of Kazatomprom, the national atomic energy company. The BN-350 fuel was earlier discharged and put into 2,744 containers that were placed in special ponds at the MAEK complex. The packaging process lasted two and a half years and was completed in summer 2001. Major mothballing work on the reactor is expected to be completed by 2015 and includes processing of the sodium coolant. In 2006, a plant capable of processing 1,300 tons of primary sodium into alkali is to be started up. MAEK must also choose a route for spent fuel shipments to the storage site. Two possible rail routes are under consideration, both of which partly cross into neighboring countries. The northern route is 2,800 kilometers, 300 of which extend into Russia. The route runs from Aktau to Kandagach, Aksu, and Deghelen (former Konechnaya). The southern route runs from Aktau to Kandagach, Kyzylorda, Alma-Ata, Semipalatinsk, and Deghelen. Only 19 of the total 4,000 km is outside Kazakhstan, in Kyrgyzstan. However, construction of a new rail spur in northern Kazakhstan is planned before 2006, a move seen as obviating the need to cross into Russian territory. Kazakhstan experts estimate that about 10 trips will be needed, lasting more than a year, to move all the fuel. From the Deghelen rail station, the fuel will be transported to the storage site by truck. ------------ With Constellation purchase, FPL adds to nuclear holdings Washington (Platts)--19Dec2005 FPL Group's purchase of Constellation Energy would create the third-largest nuclear portfolio in the U.S. in terms of megawatts owned, the companies said today in announcing their planned merger. FPL Group, through its subsidiaries, operates St. Lucie-1 and -2, Turkey Point-3 and -4, and Seabrook and has a purchase agreement for a majority interest in Duane Arnold. Constellation operates Calvert Cliffs-1 and -2, Nine Mile Point-1 and -2, and Ginna. FPL estimated the nuclear capacity it owns at 4,434 megawatts (including Duane Arnold), compared to Constellation's 3,794 MW. The leaders of the two companies also said they remained interested in adding to their nuclear operations through continued acquisitions of existing reactors or potential construction of new units. The combined company, also to be called Constellation Energy, will be the largest competitive energy supplier in the U.S., the companies said, and will have total assets of $57-billion. The new company will have the country's largest total generation portfolio, exceeding 45,000 megawatts, the companies said. ------------