Platts - Friday, June 08, 2007 http://www.platts.com ------------ Nine European utilites, copper company bid for Belene nuke plant London (Platts)--8Jun2007 Nine European utilities and a copper company bid for up to 49% of the Belene nuclear power plant, Lyubomir Velkov, chief executive of Bulgaria's National Electricity Co., or NEK, said June 6. The utilities are France's EDF, Italy's Enel, Czech Republic's CEZ, Germany's RWE and E.On, Switzerland's ATEL and EGL, Spain's Endesa, and Belgium's Suez-Electrabel. They all submitted expressions of interest to be "strategic partners" in the project, as did the copper smelter-refiner Cumerio Med, the Bulgarian subsidiary of Brussels-based Cumerio. NEK is in charge of the project to build the two reactors on the Danube River site and is expected to own at least 51% of Belene Power Co., which will own and operate the plant. NEK last year chose Atomstroyexport to build two AES-92 model VVERs at Belene. Velkov said a short list of investors will be announced within six weeks, according to the Dnevik newspaper. A final selection will be made by December, along with the final construction contract with Atomstroyexport, he said. ------------ EnergySolutions to buy BNFL reactor sites business London (Platts)--7Jun2007 EnergySolutions will buy British Nuclear Fuels plc's magnox reactor site management business, under an agreement that the companies announced June 7. The value of the transaction was not disclosed. Utah-based EnergySolutions will buy BNFL's Reactor Sites Management Co. Ltd. RSMC's Magnox Electric Ltd. subsidiary holds the licenses to operate 10 magnox sites (a total of 22 reactors). The magnox sites, which employ about 3,500, are owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. BNFL Group CEO Mike Parker told the Nuclear Industry Forum conference in London June 7 that "there were two very keen bidders" -- EnergySolutions and Jacobs Engineering. ------------ UK nuclear industry starts to lose support of young people London (Platts)--7Jun2007 The UK nuclear industry is starting to lose the support of young people, Robert Knight, research director at pollster Ipsos Mori, said June 6. In November 2006, the only demographic group showing "net opposition" to replacing old nuclear plants with new ones was women, he told the Adam Smith Institute's Nuclear Industry Forum in London, organized by Marketforce. By May 2007, however, in a poll conducted to coincide with the publication of the UK government's energy white paper, women had been joined by "the younger age groups up to 44" years of age, he said. In November 2005, 41% of the UK population supported the concept of nuclear replacement construction, he said. Some 28% were opposed and "at that point it looked like things were comfortably moving upwards" on the support front, he said. But in November 2006, "we saw some faltering" of support down to 39%, and by the May 2007 poll "that support has fallen a little more," to 35%, he said. The percentage opposed has remained roughly the same so the supporters must have moved into undecided and "don't knows," he said. More than a third of the public doesn't have a view on nuclear pro or con, he added. ------------ House panel approves full funding for DOE's waste program Washington (Platts)--6Jun2007 House appropriators approved $494.5 million for DOE's nuclear waste program in fiscal 2008, matching the department's full request. Representative Peter Visclosky of Indiana, who chairs the House Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee, said June 6 at a markup of the energy and water spending bill that there was concern that DOE remain "on track" to submit a license application for the planned Yucca Mountain, Nevada repository in June 2008. However, the House Appropriations Committee made deep cuts to DOE's funding request for its Global Nuclear Energy Partnership initiative. The committee would give GNEP $120 million, much less than the $405 million DOE is seeking. The committee also directed DOE to make the Next Generation Nuclear Plant a higher priority than GNEP. The NGNP, aimed at demonstrating high-temperature gas-cooled technology, is slated to be built at the Idaho National Laboratory. ------------ Uranium costs may lead to more regular refuelings: Exelon exec Washington (Platts)--5Jun2007 Rising prices could see utilities revert to 12-month nuclear fuel replacement cycles to save on uranium costs, according to Haksoo Kim, acting director of fuel supply at Exelon Nuclear. Kim, speaking at the World Nuclear Fuel Market conference in Athens Tuesday, said it is a "myth" that there is nothing utilities can do to reduce uranium demand. "We could reduce uranium demand by 15% to 20% if we go back to 12-month fuel cycles," he said. The industry "couldn't afford" 12-month fuel cycles when refueling outages lasted 60 days, he said, but he proposed a scenario of an 18-day outage one year, followed the next year by a seven-day refueling-only outage. ------------ Tenex to develop eight uranium deposits in Siberia Athens (Platts)--5Jun2007 Techsnabexport won a tender to develop eight uranium deposits in Yakutia in eastern Siberia that could produce up to 5,000 lbs/year by 2020, according to Liudmila Zalimskaya, Tenex's deputy director general. The uranium deposits would be among the assets brought together into the joint uranium mining company that Russian uranium and enrichment services provider Tenex is forming with Russian fuel fabrication enterprise TVEL, Zalimskaya said at the World Nuclear Fuel Market conference in Athens June 3-5. Tenex is prepared to invite foreign parties into ventures for joint uranium mining "as well as other sectors in the uranium industry," she said during a presentation. She also said Tenex was creating its own transportation company to avoid depending on freight and transport by an outside service. ------------ Russia's new nuclear holding company to start operations July 1 London (Platts)--5Jun2007 Russia's new nuclear holding company Atomenegroprom will start operations July 1. Atomenergoprom will combine all of Russia's commercial nuclear companies into a government-owned public stock company, effective July 1, according to Liudmila Zalimskaya, deputy director general of Techsnabexport. Techsnabexport, or Tenex, is one of the companies to be combined into the new Russian commercial nuclear company, along with TVEL, Atomstroyexport and Rosenergoatam. Tenex supplies uranium and enrichment services; TVEL makes nuclear fuel; ASE exports nuclear plants; and REA is Russia's nuclear utility. ------------ SXR Uranium One to acquire Energy Metals Corp. Washington (Platts)--4Jun2007 SXR Uranium One Inc. will acquire Energy Metals Corp. in a deal unanimously approved by the companies' boards of directors, the companies said June 4. EMC shareholders will get 1.15 common shares of Uranium One for each issued EMC share, representing a value of $19.12 Canadian dollars per share. Uranium One projects annual production by 2013 of 8 to 10 million pounds of U308 (uranium concentrate) from EMC's asset base of six production centers in the US. Uranium One President/CEO Neal Froneman said the combination of the two companies "will create a powerhouse in the United States uranium sector with the potential to become the domestic supplier of choice for US utilities." A press release and presentation on the acquisition are available online at www.uranium1.com. ------------ Uranium spot price jumps by $5 to $138/pound U3O8: TradeTech Washington (Platts)--4Jun2007 The spot price of uranium jumped at least $5 a pound late Friday to $138/lb U3O8, according to price reporting company TradeTech. The jump followed the submission of bids that day to Atlanta-based American Fuel Resources, which was offering for sale on behalf of several investment funds 250,000 pounds U3O8 and 100 metric tons uranium as UF6. AFR has not yet finished analyzing the bids it received, meaning it is possible that the spot price for U3O8 could go slightly higher, sources said. An AFR source said that the company received offers "from a good representation of bidders," which apparently included one or more utilities. --Mike Knapik, newsdesk@platts.com ------------ IEA praises German energy policy, warns against nuclear phase-out London (Platts)--4Jun2007 The International Energy Agency Monday praised Germany's energy policies but also urged the German government to reconsider the phase-out of nuclear power, the agency said in a statement. The IEA's "Germany 2007 Review" said Germany promoted sound, sustainable energy policy in Europe and around the world but losing the nuclear option would have significant impact on energy security, economic efficiency and environmental sustainability. The IEA urged the country's government to reconsider the phase-out of nuclear power and to focus on energy market reform and climate policy. Claude Mandil, executive director of the IEA, said: "As one of the largest energy markets in Europe and the third largest economy in the IEA, few countries have quite the same impact on European or even global energy policy." But the report warned that "eliminating nuclear from the supply portfolio will reduce supply diversity, increasing reliance on energy imports, particularly natural gas, which is not diversified enough." The IEA said that shutting down productive assets before their useful lifetime would also impact economic efficiency, requiring additional near-term investments in new capacity that could otherwise be avoided. "[G]eneration from nuclear power is free of greenhouse gas emissions [and] could certainly make up some of the resulting gap, there will be greater reliance on carbon-emitting fuels," it said. Germany's previous government passed a nuclear phase-out law in 2002 forbidding the construction of new nuclear plants and limiting existing ones to an average life-span of 32 years. The IEA also urged Berlin "to introduce separate independent system operators to manage transportation assets so that all market participants-- including existing and potential new entrants--play on equal footing and help drive competition." The report said independent system operators for natural gas and electricity networks "do not require ownership unbundling," but do provide the right incentives for companies to operate competitively. ------------ Four antinuclear activists arrested at Flamanville site Paris (Platts)--1Jun2007 Four antinuclear activists came down from a very-high-voltage pylon near Flamanville June 1 after occupying it for three days in protest of the construction of an EPR nuclear unit at the Normany site, according to media reports. However, two other protesters from another antinuclear group scaled a separate pylon and plan to stay there through June 2, said Stephane Lhomme, spokesman for the Sortir du Nucleaire network. SdN organized the initial occupation and supports the second one, he said. Police arrested the initial four SdN activists when they descended the pylon. The Rennes county court had ordered them to come down from the pylon on May 30, after French grid company RTE filed a lawsuit. However, protesters on the ground prevented a judicial official from delivering the order. The activists call for abrogation of Electricite de France's license to build the new reactor. ------------