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AlterNet

Areva SE, a French-owned power company, is betting that the Golden State's disfavor of nuclear power won't stand up after regulators and citizens look closely at its climate goals.

California's global warming law, AB32, calls for utilities to increase their use of renewable energy to at least 30 percent by 2020, and some say they may not make it. Enter Areva SA, a power developer largely owned by the French...

BurlingtonFreePress.com

The Vermont Chamber of Commerce and Vermont Business Magazine announced Monday its annual list of the "Best Places to Work in Vermont" award recipients.

This year's honorees:

Small/medium companies: Edward Jones, King Arthur Flour Company, Mascoma Savings Bank, MBF Bioscience, NRG Systems, Inc., Resource Systems Group, Inc., Seventh Generation, The Bank of Bennington, TPW Management LLC, Wells River Savings Bank.

Large companies: Dealer.com, Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee, Green Mountain Power, Merchants Bank, Vermont Electric Power Company, Inc.

Companies from across the state entered the two-part process to determine the winners. The first part consisted of evaluating each nominated company's workplace policies, practices and demographics. The second, more heavily weighted part consisted of an employee survey to measure the employee experience.

An awards reception will be held March 29 at the Main Street Landing Film House in Burlington.

FT.com

January 25, 2010 11:20pmby Sheila McNulty

It is not surprising that the US government is moving slowly to enact climate change legislation. Politicians are known for catering to special interests, not speedy decision making. And there are many special interest groups who have something to lose from tough action on carbon emissions. While many in US business are among them, a rising number of executives are savvy enough to know the imperative of moving sooner rather than later.

A group of chief executives - 83 to be exact - from across US business, have sent a letter to President Barack Obama that they hope will jar him into addressing their concerns in this week’s State of the Union address. The letter, signed by companies ranging from Exelon to Virgin America to eBay to Nike, want the US to move quickly to enact comprehensive climate and energy legislation that will create jobs and enhance US competitiveness.

These business leaders note that the US is falling behind in the global clean energy race. From the letter:

Inside HPC

Got a pointer over the email transom today to news of a new physics application being developed at Argonne National Laboratory. The neutron transport code, called UNIC, is giving researchers their first look at a highly detailed description of a nuclear reactor core.

The code could prove crucial in the development of nuclear reactors that are safe, affordable and environmentally friendly. To model the complex geometry of a reactor core requires billions of spatial elements, hundreds of angles and thousands of energy groups—all of which lead to problem sizes with quadrillions of possible solutions.

…“The UNIC code is intended to reduce the uncertainties and biases in reactor design calculations by progressively replacing existing multilevel averaging techniques with more direct solution methods based on explicit reactor geometries,” said Andrew Siegel, a computational scientist at Argonne and leader of Argonne’s reactor simulation group.

http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#docketDetail?R=NRC-2009-0482

Deadline for public comment is 2/10/2010.  Please comment in support of this petition.  NRC document; NRC-2009-0482.

The Hindu

Chennai: The sixth reactor at the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station (RAPS-6) at Rawatbhatta reached its first criticality at 9.54 p.m. on Saturday, S.K. Jain, Chairman and Managing Director, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), told The Hindu .

He said this was the 19th reactor in India to be commissioned and it had a capacity of 220 MWe.

He said RAPS-6 was the third reactor to receive imported natural uranium fuel after the Nuclear Suppliers Group exempted India from its guidelines.

Mr. Jain said RAPS-5, which was commissioned last month, was now generating 50 per cent of its capacity of 220 MWe and would generate full power in some weeks.

He said the excavation work for building two indigenous Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) of 700 MWe each at Kakrapar near Surat in Gujarat, had begun 10 days ago. These 700 MWe reactors are the biggest indigenous PHWRs to be built in India by the NPCIL.

Mr. Jain said that the excavation for two more indigenous 700 MWe PHWRs, to be built at Rawatbhatta in Rajasthan, would begin in six weeks.

Bloomberg News

Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., which has developed the world’s biggest atomic reactor, expects to win its first nuclear power plant order in Europe next year, challenging Areva SA in its own backyard.

Japan’s largest heavy machinery maker anticipates a “high possibility” of a utility in northern Europe selecting its new 1,700-megawatt model that comes with advanced fault detection technology, Akira Sawa, head of the company’s atomic business, said in an interview. The U.K. and Switzerland have also sought atomic plant proposals from Mitsubishi Heavy, he said.

“We should be able to expand smoothly into other European countries after Northern European governments, which impose tough regulations, sign off on our product,” Sawa, 61, said Jan. 19 in Tokyo. He declined to name the company or country Mitsubishi expects to win the order from.

Teollisuuden Voima Oyj, the Finnish utility known as TVO, said it shortlisted Mitsubishi Heavy’s EU-APWR model along with reactors from Areva, Toshiba Corp., GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. Asian suppliers are making competition tougher for France’s Areva, the world’s biggest reactor builder, which lost a $20 billion contract in the United Arab Emirates last month to a group led by Korea Electric Power Corp.

Yonhap News

SEOUL, Jan. 25 (Yonhap) -- South Korea is carefully assessing a decision by the Netherlands to halt its contractor selection process for the building of a research reactor, the Seoul government said Monday, as it may allow local companies to bid on the project.

The science ministry said Amsterdam's recent announcement that it will discontinue the bidding process for the 80 megawatt PALLAS reactor could provide a new opportunity to South Korean firms. PALLAS would have replaced the 45 megawatt HFR unit that is set to be decommissioned in 2016.

Unlike commercial reactors that are designed to generate power, research reactors use neutron irradiation for technological and scientific research purposes. These reactors are also designed for isotope production for medical and industrial purposes.

Argentina's INVAP SE was selected as the primary negotiation partner for the reactor in June 2009 and a formal deal was to have been finalized in May.

"The exact reasons why the bid and detailed negotiations were halted are not fully known, but it may have been due to overall cost and a lack on funding from the regional government involved," an official here said.

PRNewsWire

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Entergy Corporation (NYSE: ETR) today indicated that it expects fourth quarter 2009 as-reported earnings of approximately $1.63 per share and operational earnings of approximately $1.74 per share compared to as-reported results of $0.89 per share and operational results of...

Reuters UK

TOKYO, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Japanese utility Kansai Electric Power Co (9503.T) said on Monday it would restart the 1,175-megawatt No.2 reactor at Ohi plant later in the day after an unplanned shutdown in October.

The reactor, which was closed on Oct. 21 for unplanned checks, is slated to resume generating power on Jan. 27, the company said in a statement. (Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori)