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14 October 2010
US loan guarantee program "unworkable"
American plans for new nuclear construction were hit by uncertainty after UniStar partner Constellation declared the terms of loan guarantees flawed, unrealistic and unworkable. The company does not see a path "to reaching a workable set of terms and conditions" for the guarantee of about $7.5 billion in private loans. The money is required to build a1700 MWe Areva EPR unit at the existing Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant, and UniStar would raise this from private financiers. However, the US government's conditional offer to guarantee the loans is pivotal to securing the finance package. But the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has set fees of 11.6% of the loan amount - in this case some $880 million, on the basis of assumed likely default. The charge would come in addition to interest on loans and "would clearly destroy the project's economics, or the economics of any nuclear project for that matter." OMB said that a revised offer was pending when Constellation pulled out.
Nuclear Energy Institute CEO Marvin Fertel said that Constellation’s rejection of the loan guarantee on these terms “is further recognition that the federal government’s loan guarantee program for clean energy sources is in serious need of reform.” In particular the government’s method for calculating costs is “seriously flawed” and overstates them. The Director-General of WNA, John Ritch, said the OMB recalcitrance was "a classic governmental perversity, with the left hand thwarting what the right hand set out to do."
WNN 11/10/10. US policy
China demonstrates fuel recycling
The world's first commercial demonstration of directly recycling uranium recovered from used PWR fuel is under way in Qinshan III unit 1, using fuel bundles with recycled uranium blended with depleted uranium to give natural uranium equivalent, similar to normal CANDU fuel. Subject to supply from reprocessing plants, a full core of such natural U equivalent is envisaged. This is a collaborative project among Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL), the Nuclear Power Institute of China, Third Qinshan Nuclear Power Company and China North Nuclear Fuel Corporation. It means that CANDU reactors can effectively be fuelled by what amounts to waste products from the conventional fuel cycle, and in fact one CANDU reactor can be run on the recycled uranium from three light water reactors, using present technology.
J Hopwood, WNA Symposium 17/9/10, WNN 24/3/10. China fuel cycle
New Namibian mine solely to heap leach low-grade ore
Marenica Energy has announced new resource figures for its Namibian uranium deposit, taking in lower-grade material which would be amenable to upgrading through screening and scrubbing, followed by heap leaching of the remaining half. The company then announced that a scoping study focused on a $260 million heap leach operation showed production of 1350 tU/yr over 13 years looked feasible, from 2014. The project is 30 km north of Areva's Trekkopje, and early this year Areva bought a 10.4% stake in it. Marenica now has indicated and inferred resources of 62,000 tU in 0.008%U ore, split between palaeochannel and granite-alaskite basement rock down to 60 metres. It will possibly be the first uranium mine on this scale designed solely for heap leaching of broken ore on surface pads.
WNN 11/10/10. Namibia
Other papers updated on the WNA Public Information Service (see WNA web site): Advanced reactors, Small nuclear reactors,
