euronews

The European Union has given a conditional green light to EDF’s takeover of British Energy, the UK’s nuclear operator.

France’s state-owned EDF is the world’s biggest nuclear electricity generator, and Europe’s biggest energy utility. It is already the fifth-biggest supplier of electricity to the UK market.

The deal would make it the largest.

FT.com

Construction of new nuclear power stations in Britain will be delayed unless the government acts to streamline its planning and safety approval process, according to senior executives of EDF, the French energy group.

EDF yesterday finalised its £12.5bn takeover of British Energy, operator of eight UK nuclear power plants, raising £4.4bn for the UK government. The group plans to build four of the French-designed 1,600MW EPR reactors on British Energy sites.

TMC News

(Chicago Tribune Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jan. 6--Exelon Corp. will know Tuesday whether to continue pursuing a hostile $6.36 billion takeover of NRG Energy Inc., which would form the country's largest power generation company.

Chicago-based Exelon has said the deal would have enough support to move forward if 30 percent to 40 percent of NRG shareholders tendered their stock. In order to get a majority of NRG shareholders to back the deal, analysts say the value of the offer will need to be raised.

Exelon said Monday it is premature to say what outcome it expects by 4 p.m. CST Tuesday, when the offer officially expires. It has already announced plans to extend the time period for tendering shares. NRG declined to comment.

"If we have a strong showing in the tender, that will have a domino effect," Chris Crane, Exelon's president and chief operating officer, said in an earlier interview outlining the company's merger strategy.

The dominoes could tip in several directions. Exelon could decide to scrap the bid or, contradicting its initial statements, improve the mergers terms, depending on what percentage of NRG shareholders agree to exchange their shares.

"They have a foundation to make more intelligent decisions about whether to increase the price" following Tuesday, said David Stowell, a finance professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

Exelon approached shareholders after the NRG board snubbed its offer of 0.485 shares for each NRG share as being too low.

The NRG board said the deal gave its shareholders too little equity for the cash flow its holdings would produce for a combined company.

Charleston Regional Business - Mount Pleasant,SC,USA

The V.C. Summer Nuclear Station site near Jenkinsville, S.C., has been selected as the preferred site for a new nuclear facility being developed by South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. and Santee Cooper, the companies announced today.

The utilities also selected the WestinghouseAP 1000 pressurized water reactor technology as the preferred reactor design.

"Even with modest load growth projections, both companies will need to add new base load electrical generation within the next 10 years," said Neville Lorick, president of SCE&G, the principal subsidiary of SCANA Corp. "Our customers would benefit from the synergies of locating the new nuclear generation at Summer Station. By taking advantage of the skilled workforce and highly specialized facilities already in place at that plant, we would save both time and money, and that would mean a lower overall cost for our customers versus other locations."

Lonnie Carter, president and chief executive officer of Santee Cooper, a state-owned electric and water utility, noted that nuclear power is safe, clean, dependable, stable in cost and can help reduce the country's dependence on foreign fuel sources.

"The strong system load growth we are experiencing, coupled with the need for greater fuel diversity and the recent surge in coal and natural gas prices, necessitate that we consider new nuclear capacity," Carter said. "By moving forward, we are allowing both companies to keep all generation possibilities open as we look to provide the lowest overall cost and fuel stability for our customers."

Forbes - NY,USA

Missouri's largest electric utility is considering building a second nuclear reactor in mid-Missouri, and that means lawmakers will be considering how to pay for it during the 2009 session that starts Wednesday.

The debate hits on energy production, consumer protection, economic development and environmental concerns.

St. Louis-based utility AmerenUE has filed an application with federal regulators to build a second reactor at its Callaway County facility near Fulton. In mid-December, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted the application, signaling the paperwork is sufficient to begin sifting through the 8,000-page license request.

For Missouri lawmakers, the issue focuses on billions of dollars worth of economic development and a law approved overwhelmingly by voters in 1976.

That measure bars Missouri's investor-owned utilities from adding the cost of new a plant to electrical rates until the facility is online. Utilities can recover debt and financing but not until after a new plant is producing power.

Three decades later, Ameren (nyse: AEE - news - people ) wants the law repealed for electrical plants that use nuclear and other new technology energy sources. But one consumer activist calls the ban the final pro-consumer law left in Missouri's legal code.

That leaves lawmakers caught in between, salivating for a construction bonanza that could equal nearly one-third of the state's budget but worried about protecting electrical customers from a price spike.

"We are going to have a lively debate," said incoming House Speaker Ron Richard, R-Joplin.

Knoxville News Sentinel - Knoxville,TN,USA

The High Flux Isotope Reactor is set to restart this week, following a month-long outage in which some significant work was done on the reactor's cold source.

"We were starting to see vibrations in the engines (that drive the helium refrigeration system)," ORNL's Ron Crone said today. "We had bearings wearing out."

Crone said lab workers did a complete teardown of the engines, in conjunction with the cold source vendor, to determine what caused the premature wearing and to use that information to increase reliability for the future.

"We don't want these things to become unreliable at all," he said.

The issues ranged from the original alignment done by the vendor to the way in which the lubrication was done, he said.

If left unchecked, the motor vibrations in the cold source system could have led to an unplanned shutdown of the Oak Ridge research reactor, Crone said.

The major problems have been fixed, and some other issues will be addressed in upcoming maintenance periods, the ORNL official said.

As of today, the reactor is good to go, Crone said.

Center For American Progress - Washington,DC,USA

SOURCE: AP/Jamie-Andrea Yanak A new study puts the generation costs for power from new nuclear plants at 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour-triple current U.S. electricity rates!

This staggering price is far higher than the cost of a variety of carbon-free renewable power sources available today-and 10 times the cost of energy efficiency (see "Is 450 ppm possible? Part 5: Old coal's out, can't wait for new nukes, so what do we do NOW?"

The new study, "Business Risks and Costs of New Nuclear Power," is one of the most detailed cost analyses publically available on the current generation of nuclear power plants being considered in this country. It is by a leading expert in power plant costs, Craig A. Severance. A practicing CPA, Severance is co-author of The Economics of Nuclear and Coal Power (Praeger 1976), and former assistant to the chairman and to commerce counsel, Iowa State Commerce Commission.

This important new analysis is being published by Climate Progress because it fills a critical gap in the current debate over nuclear power-transparency. Severance explains:

All assumptions, and methods of calculation are clearly stated. The piece is a deliberate effort to demystify the entire process, so that anyone reading it (including non-technical readers) can develop a clear understanding of how total generation costs per kWh come together.

World Nuclear News - London,UK

Daily Citizen - Dalton,GA,USA

ATLANTA - The Georgia Public Service Commission will continue its hearings on the Georgia Power Co. request seeking commission certification of two new nuclear power generation units at Plant Vogtle at 10 a.m. on Monday, January 12, 2009. The meeting will take place in Room 110 at 244 Washington Street, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia. (Dalton Utilities owns part of Plant Vogtle.)

The hearings will continue at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, January 13, 2009 through Friday, January 16, 2009 if necessary, with the Commission Public Interest Advisory Staff and other intervenors presenting testimony and evidence in support of their positions. The January 15, 2009 hearing will begin at 1:30 p.m. The Public Interest Advisory Staff in their pre-filed testimony of December 19, 2008, recommended approval of the certificate based on Georgia Power's acceptance of certain financial conditions recommended by other Staff witnesses.

The remaining schedule is:

• February 9-13, 2009--Hearings for Company rebuttal

• March 6, 2009-Briefs and proposed orders due

• March 17, 2009--Commission decision

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - Pittsburgh,PA,USA

Westinghouse Electric Co. said Monday it signed a $7.65 billion deal to build two nuclear reactors in Florida -- its third such contract in nine months.

The agreement, which Westinghouse and partner The Shaw Group signed with Progress Energy Florida, is an engineering, procurement and construction contract to build two AP1000 reactors in Levy County, along the state's northern Gulf Coast. Shaw, of Baton Rouge, La., is a 20 percent owner of Westinghouse.

Last spring Westinghouse and Shaw signed similar deals with two other utilities to build two reactors each: one with Georgia Power for a site near Waynesboro, Ga., and a second with South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. and Santee Cooper for a site in Jenkinsville, S.C.

Press of Atlantic City - Atlantic City,NJ,USA

A licensing decision regarding the Oyster Creek Generating Station in Lacey Township has been made, but it's not exactly the one people have been anticipating for more than a year.

Exelon Corp. is set to become on Thursday the sole owner and operator of the nation's oldest nuclear plant, which will no longer operate under its subsidiary, AmerGen. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, approved the license transfer, which was originally filed in June.

"The difference between AmerGen and Exelon, it's been in name only," said Dave Benson, a spokesman for Exelon. "It doesn't affect the license renewal."

 TBO.com

TAMPA - Progress Energy Florida said Monday that it has signed a contract to build two nuclear reactors on a 5,100-acre site in Levy County.

Jeff Lyash, president and chief executive of the St. Petersburg-based utility, called it a major step in Florida's effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"Expanding our nuclear capacity will ensure our customers will continue to have a reliable supply of energy, while reducing reliance on fossil fuels and helping to eliminate greenhouse gas from our environment," Lyash said in a statement.

The deal with Westinghouse Electric Co. and The Shaw Group Inc. includes the purchase of two 1,105-megawatt reactors. Together, the reactors could generate power for more than 1.3 million Florida homes.

The State - Columbia,SC,USA

The public will have two chances this month to make comments about the environmental impact of two nuclear reactors proposed by SCE&G.

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold two meetings in Fairfield County where people can suggest environmental issues that need to be analyzed, according to a notice published Monday in the Federal Register. The hearings are part of the commission's process in writing an environmental-impact statement about the reactor.

And the environmental-impact statement is one step in the federal licensing process, which can take three to four years.

The meetings will be:

• Jan. 27 - Fairfield Central High School, 836 U.S. 321 Bypass in Winnsboro

• Jan. 28 - McCrorey-Liston Elementary School, 1978 State Highway 215 South in Blair

Reuters - USA

TOKYO, Jan 6 (Reuters) - The table below shows the latest operational status
of Japan's nuclear power plants.

Chubu Electric Power Co manually shut its 1,267 megawatt Hamaoka No. 5
nuclear generator on Dec. 30 for an unplanned inspection, three days after
restarting it. The company still has not given a timetable for the unit's
restart. [ID:nT264857]

After the shutdown of the unit, 31,780 megawatts of nuclear power generation
capacity, or 64.4 percent of Japan's total, are in operation, according to
Reuters calculations.