Platts - Thursday, March 30, 2006 http://www.platts.com ------------ UK government confirms rise in nuclear clean-up cost to GBP70 bil London (Platts)--30Mar2006 The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's (NDA) strategy published Thursday that sets out for the first time how the UK will tackle the clean-up of its historic nuclear facilities confirms the estimated cost for this has risen to GBP70 billion from GBP56 billion, NDA spokesman Brian Hough told Platts. The strategy--which was subject to a three-month public consultation last year--sets out a comprehensive plan for the decommissioning and clean-up of the NDA's 20 civil nuclear sites. The revision of the figure is significant, sources said, since the government is still in the middle of an energy review--expected to be unveiled this summer-- and has yet to decide whether to go ahead with a new generation of nuclear power plants. In publishing the report, the NDA confirmed that its had received government apporval for its strategy and that UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Brian Johnson would address the House of Commons Thursday on the sale of British Nuclear Group (BNG), the nuclear clean-up arm of British Nuclear Fuel (BNFL). The NDA's life cycle baseline assessment of GBP56 billion in 2004 rose to GBP62.7 billion in 2005. The authority already identifies a further needed GBP7.5 billion that will be refelcted in its 2006 assessment. "You would be quite right to calculate that the cost is predicted to rise to GBP70 billion," spokesman Hough said. SELLAFIELD CLEAN UP MOST COSTLY The total cost covers the clean-up of the 20 sites for which the NDA is responsible only, with Sellafield in Cumbria being the most expensive. Any further increase depends on the amount of waste found at a site and the time needed to decommission it. In Sellafield's case this is 75 years, Hough said. "That's why the government has given us till 2008 to reach a copper-bottomed figure," he said, adding, "It takes time to work out the legacy we've inherited." NDA Chairman Anthony Cleaver said in a statement that gaining a much better understanding of the costs associated with delivering its remit had been one of the authority's most significant achievements over the past 12 months. "We are today publishing new site life cycle baselines which together total GBP62.7 billion, but we have also identified a potential further GBP7.5 billion of costs that will be included in the 2006/7 estimates. Within these overall totals are the cost of our income generating commercial operations at GBP14 billion and the cost of decommissioning and clean-up at GBP56 billion." However, NDA said there are a range of factors, some of which are the subject of government policy reviews, which will require further assessment. "We are targeted to establish the full costs of clean-up by 2008 and so this remains work in progress," the NDA said. The authority's priorities for the coming year are to launch its first competition--the contract to manage and operate the low-level waste facility at Drigg--and, by April 2007, issue a new Sellafield contract as part of the sale of BNG. It also intends to undertake consultations on the best approach to addressing socio-economic issues; to review site end states with stakeholders and to evaluate the business case for accelerated decommissioning for Magnox and other reactor sites. KEY PRINCIPLES Key principles established in the strategy include: prioritising safety, security and the environment by making the reduction of high hazards its key focus; an aspiration to deliver accelerated decommissioning wherever feasible; a competition schedule to create a strong competitive market that will achieve value-for-money for the taxpayer; maintenance and development of skills; effective stakeholder engagement; the provision of socio-economic support for communities directly affected by decommissioning and clean-up. Cleaver said the NDA was confident that its approved strategy provided the best approach--in terms of safety, cost efficiency and sustainability--to tackle the UK's historic 60-year nuclear legacy. "Central to the strategy is the competition schedule and, as a result of considerable feedback during the consultation period, we have revised this in a way which also accommodates the sale of BNG. We believe our schedule sets ambitious but realistic targets that will create a strong competitive market. The government's decision to approve a sale of BNG brings the benefits of competition, by way of a sale, to our biggest site, Sellafield, earlier than in our original schedule," he said. By offering a five-year contract to the new owner the NDA said its aim is to provide the incentive to drive strong performance improvements while also providing a period of stability for the site. Approval of the NDA's strategy within its first year is the culmination of a "range of significant achievements," NDA said, including: delivering real savings on the first year's work program; progress towards the creation of a new, industry-wide pension scheme; progress on the skills agenda, including initiatives to establish a Nuclear Skills Institute and a National Nuclear Skills Academy. ---claire-louise_isted@platts.com For more news, request a free trial to Power UK at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/ ------------ PSEG Nuclear to submit new Hope Creek uprate request in August Washington (Platts)--29Mar2006 PSEG Nuclear plans to submit a new uprate request for its Hope Creek nuclear power plant in August, company officials told Nuclear Regulatory Commission staffers at a meeting Wednesday at the agency's headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. In February, PSEG withdrew a request for a 15% "extended power uprate" after NRC indicated that some parts of the application did not contain enough information to allow the staff to proceed to a detailed technical review. The New Jersey plant has a gross capacity of 1,118 MW currently. PSEG Nuclear is the nuclear generation arm of Newark, New Jersey-based Public Service Enterprise Group, which is the midst of merging with Chicago-based Exelon Corp. For more information, take a trial to Nuclear News Flashes at http://www.nuclearnews.platts.com. ------------ Bulgaria organizing to build new nuclear plant Brussels (Platts)--29Mar2006 Bulgaria will decide next month on organization of the Belene nuclear plant completion project, Minister of Economy & Energy Rumen Ovcharov told Platts in an interview. He said that decision, by the Council of Ministers, would include a financing plan. The plant will be initially under the management of national electricity company NEK. Two bids were submitted to NEK in February from vendor consortia led by Atomstroyexport and Skoda JS, both for building VVER-1000s at Belene. The site was first chosen before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ovcharov said the NEK evaluation committee would finish its work by June or July and a decision on a vendor would be made shortly thereafter. ------------ New Rosatom appointments seen as paving road toward reform London (Platts)--29Mar2006 Sergey Kiriyenko, head of Russian federal nuclear agency Rosatom, last week named a new director general to national nuclear utility Rosenergoatom, or REA, in what observers saw as another sign of yet more wrenching reform to come in the country's nuclear bureaucracy. Kiriyenko, who himself was named only a few months ago to head up Rosatom, on March 16 named Sergey Obozov as acting director general of REA, replacing Stanislav Antipov, whom he named his personal adviser. Obozov had come to REA only three months ago as deputy director general and head of the division responsible for construction of floating nuclear power plants. Kiriyenko also named Alexander Lokshin, director of the operating company Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant, to the new position of REA first deputy director. Russian experts see the turnover of high managers as the start of the anticipated restructuring of Rosatom and creation of a nuclear vendor organization known informally as Atomprom, on the model of gas supply giant Gazprom ("prom" stands for "industry"). Putin and Kiriyenko have made no secret of their desire to set up such a holding company that would combine all the branches of the former Soviet nuclear complex into a powerful nuclear power and fuel cycle corporation. Kiriyenko has already appointed new directors in several enterprises and institutes forming the agency's structure. In particular, last week he appointed Nikolay Petrov to replace Yevgeniy Yeliseyev as director of ZarubezhAtomEnergoStroy, which is responsible for construction of nuclear-power projects abroad and one of two shareholders in export vendor Atomstroyexport. Just before, on March 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted a government session devoted to development of the nuclear energy branch. Rosatom has drafted a bill that would regulate separation between the civilian and defense branches of the nuclear complex, and allow private investment in the civilian enterprises. REA would be incorporated into Atomprom and would no longer be the customer for new nuclear power plants. The draft legislation addresses the task of setting up an international uranium enrichment center, considered urgent and which Putin has made a priority. It states that foreign legal entities will be allowed to receive services offered by such a center. This would guarantee Iran access to enriched uranium produced in the proposed Russian center. Such a move could help resolve the current international struggle over Iran's enrichment program, since it would theoretically remove Iran's need to enrich on its own territory. But Kiriyenko has said the center would be needed for other developing countries that want access to nuclear energy as well. This story was originally published in Platts Nucleonics Week. Request a free trial at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/ ------------ French government okays bill endorsing reprocessing, repository London (Platts)--29Mar2006 France's Council of Ministers on March 22 approved a landmark nuclear waste policy act that was submitted to parliament the same day. Debate on the measure is set to begin April 6, according to industry minister Francois Loos. The legislation establishes deep-geologic disposal as the "reference solution" for high-level and long-lived radwastes, and sets goals of licensing a "reversible" deep geologic repository by 2015 and opening that facility by 2025. It does not designate a site for the repository, but at present the only candidate is in a clay formation near Bure in eastern France, and the bill doesn't require a second candidate site. The bill also establishes spent fuel reprocessing and recycling of usable materials as France's policy, so as to reduce the quantity and the toxicity of wastes to be disposed of underground. It also foresees interim aboveground storage of wastes that "cannot be recycled," Loos said at a press conference following the Council of Ministers session. Six antinuclear groups, including the National Coordination against Burial of Radioactive Wastes, Greenpeace, and Sortir du Nucleaire, called immediately for major mobilization against the legislation, which they said the government wants to rush through the National Assembly and the Senate. Francois Dose, who represents the district around Bure in the National Assembly, said in a note posted on his Internet site that he feared the government would push the bill through under an accelerated procedure. He said that would be "lamentable" given the long time scale involved in radwaste management. Dose's opposition Socialist Party (PS) has submitted its own draft waste legislation, but under French law the government's bill is the basis for the parliamentary debates. Loos said there was so far no decision to use the "urgent" procedure, which cuts short parliamentary debate by allowing only one reading of a bill in each chamber. But observers said it could be a tight squeeze to get the controversial waste bill through both houses by "the end of summer," as President Jacques Chirac has called for. Loos said the "urgent" procedure decision would depend on how debate goes in parliament. The waste legislation is the culmination of 15 years of research undertaken under the country's first waste management act, passed on December 30, 1991. That act called for the parliament to revisit the issue formally within no more than 15 years. The government doesn't want to let the issue drag out until the end of this year, when legislators will be preoccupied with national elections scheduled for next spring. Target dates The waste bill differs from the 1991 act in its programmatic nature, Loos noted March 22. It stipulates formal periodic planning in a National Plan for Management of Radioactive Waste and Reusable Materials and sets target dates for choosing solutions for managing several different types of waste. Most notably, perhaps, beyond the goal of a deep repository by 2025, the bill calls for operation by 2020 of a prototype reactor to test transmutation of long-lived radioelements?as Chirac called for early this year. It sets a target of 2008 for having "procedures for disposal of disused sealed sources in existing or new centers" as well as "new solutions for interim storage of tritium wastes." Solutions for management of wastes containing technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material are to be ready by 2009. Proposals for final management of reusable materials?essentially, irradiated nuclear fuel?in the event their owners decide not to recycle them are to be ready by 2010. The bill doesn't give a target date for a new long-term interim storage facility, though it foresees a possible need for such a facility, whose construction and operation would be conferred to Andra. The bill doesn't provide for any further formal intervention of the parliament in decision-making on siting or construction of a deep repository, though the parliament would be kept informed of progress in all waste fields by various reports. Nor does it mention the need for a second waste laboratory, a facility some members of parliament say is required by the 1991 law. There is also no provision for a laboratory to study long-term interim storage, a measure recommended by the recent national debate on radwaste management. Loos said there was no need for a second laboratory because outside experts who reviewed the French waste program?essentially the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency?had said long-term storage "wasn't necessary," that deep geologic disposal was the world's "reference technical solution," and that the Callovo-Oxfordian argilite (clay) layer being investigated by Andra at Bure had great promise as a repository host formation. The government's bill contains provisions for financing local development around the site of a deep repository. They are based on the existing "accompaniment" measures around the Bure laboratory, via the Public Interest Group, GIP, that manages the development fund, with priority to zones less than 10 kilometers (about 6.2 miles) from the main repository entrance. The development measures would be financed by a special waste tax levied on producers. Heretofore, the GIP has been financed directly by Andra, leading to charges that the waste agency was "showering" the region with money to buy acceptance of a repository. A second waste tax, also on producers, would finance a special fund within Andra to continue research and design studies into interim storage and deep disposal of wastes. Waste producers would be required to constitute dedicated asset funds covering all projected waste liabilities, and to report every three years on how they calculate those liabilities. The bill gives the administration the authority to require producers to keep their waste funds at the required level. The bill reconstitutes the independent scientific panel charged with reviewing the French high-level and long-lived waste management program?currently known as the National Scientific Evaluation Committee, or CNE?and renews the mandate of the CLIS, the Local Information and Monitoring Committee that follows Andra's work at Bure. The major difference in the Socialists' bill appears to be a requirement for a long-term interim storage center to be in operation by 2016.The PS bill would also require parliamentary approval before licensing of any deep geologic repository, while the government's bill would allow it to be licensed by decree. For more news, request a free trial to Nucleonics Week at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/ Limerick-1 sets industry record with refueling outage ------------ Washington (Platts)--28Mar2006 Limerick-1 set an industry record with its refueling outage which ended March 24, Exelon Nuclear said in a March 25 press release. The outage was the sixth consecutive one at Limerick completed in less than 20 days, "an industry record for refueling outage efficiency" in that no other US utility has completed more than three refueling outages in a row so quickly, Exelon said. ------------