International

U.S. Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) this week said she has urged the State Department to partner with the Canadian government to ensure a deep geologic repository for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste is not built less than a mile from Lake Huron in Ontario. The agency, though, does not appear to have pursued the lawmaker’s […]

GHG Daily 2/3/2016 Jim Carr, Canada’s minister of natural resources, will host U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and Mexican Energy Minister Pedro Joaquín Coldwell next week in Winnipeg, Manitoba, “to build a foundation for greater continental focus on climate change and energy collaboration,” according to a Canadian government press release. “Working collaboratively with the […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Daily 2/2/2016 The variance of commitments pledged by developed and developing nations in the Paris climate agreement took center stage Tuesday during a hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Republican members of the committee and their witnesses argued the commitments made by developed countries are far more […]

With less than a year until the next president takes office, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on Tuesday highlighted the Obama administration’s key international nuclear security and nonproliferation achievements, as well as the political challenges that remain in the U.S. nuclear modernization program.   During a Wilson Center address on nuclear nonproliferation, Moniz said the […]

GHG Daily 2/2/2016 The Canadian government last week announced five new principles to be applied when considering the approval of energy infrastructure proposals. Among them, for the first time, is a test regarding the climate impacts of the proposals. However, the government provided little detail as to what such a test would consist of. Matt […]

GHG Daily 2/2/2016 Janos Pasztor, former assistant U.N. secretary general on climate change, on Friday was appointed senior adviser for climate change to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. “In his new role as Senior Adviser to the Secretary-General on Climate Change, Mr. Pasztor will support efforts of the Secretary-General to mobilize world leaders and all […]

Senior delegates from 37 nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency, European Union, and United Nations met last Thursday in Livermore, Calif., to practice effective responses to emerging nuclear security threats, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced yesterday. Apex Gold, “the first ever minister-level gathering to identify national and international actions to address a […]

As the United Nations’ Conference on Disarmament begins its 2016 session, one nonproliferation expert doubts the likelihood of significant progress in the body’s long-stalled arms control negotiations. The multilateral forum, which held its first public plenary meeting of the year last week, faces a stalemate of almost two decades due to a lack of consensus […]

GHG Daily 2/1/2016 In order to build confidence in the commitments made under the Paris climate agreement to limit or reduce annual emissions of greenhouse gases, countries, especially those in the Group of 20, should establish domestic policy frameworks in line with those commitments, according to a report published Monday. “Governments have the opportunity to […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Daily 2/1/2016 China has indicated to the European Union that in the future it could be open to merging with the EU carbon market, according to David King, U.K. special representative for climate change. “I’ve just come back from Beijing and it may be of interest that the Chinese government is […]

GHG Daily 2/1/2016 The United Kingdom’s National Audit Office will probe the scrapping of the country’s £1 billion carbon capture and storage commercialization competition, according to The Guardian. The newspaper reported Sunday that it has acquired a letter written by Auditor General Amyas Morse. “In the coming weeks we will begin work looking at particular […]

GHG Daily 2/1/2016 A scenario in which sufficient steps are taken to increase clean energy development to limit global temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius represents an investment opportunity of $12.1 trillion over 25 years, according to a new report developed by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Ceres. “A world working to achieve the […]

Staff Reports NS&D Monitor 1/29/2016 Members of an advisory board to the Savannah River Site this week shared their concerns on the site possibly receiving 1 million graphite spheres containing highly enriched uranium from German research reactors. The SRS Citizens Advisory Board (CAB) received an update Tuesday on the potential transfer of the material that […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 1/29/2016 The United States’ nuclear posture should be updated to reflect the increased danger posed by Russian nuclear weapons threats and modernization, according to a panel of experts that testified Wednesday before the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee. Keith Payne, president and co-founder of the National Institute for Public Policy, […]

Alissa Tabirian NS&D Monitor 1/29/2016 The United Nations’ Conference on Disarmament held its first public plenary of the 2016 session this week in Geneva, Switzerland. Kim Won-soo, acting U.N. high representative for disarmament affairs, read a declaration emphasizing the urgency of reducing nuclear stockpiles from the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the year’s opening […]

Karl Herchenroeder RW Monitor 01/29/16 Top officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the European Union convened last week in Vienna, Austria, where officials vowed to strengthen cooperative efforts on international nuclear safety, waste management, decommissioning, and emergency preparedness and response. IAEA Chief Coordinator Cornel Feruta said during the senior officials meeting that frequent […]

Karl Herchenroeder RW Monitor 01/29/16 A partnership of four companies has been confirmed to support decommissioning of Britain’s Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing and decommissioning site, with a stipulation that the group funnel an estimated £500 million into a socioeconomic benefits package expected to create 1,140 jobs per year until 2025. Located in Cumbria, England, Sellafield […]

GHG Daily 1/29/2016 Using data gleaned from tree rings and historical documentary evidence, a group of 45 scientists from 13 countries have concluded that the high summer temperatures experienced by much of Europe in recent decades represent the warmest summers on the continent in the last two millennia. “Summer temperatures during the last 30 [years] […]

GHG Daily 1/29/2016 While acknowledging that it is not in line with long-term global climate goals, the U.K.’s Climate Change Committee this week reaffirmed a recommendation that the government’s carbon budget for 2028-32 be set at 1,765 MtCO2e. Under the U.K.’s Climate Change Act, the committee is tasked with advising the government on setting successive, […]

GHG Daily 1/29/2016 The Canadian government has released a list of new guiding principles for the approval of fossil fuel projects. The principles include a declaration that project decisions will “be based on science, traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples and other relevant evidence,” that the views of the public and affected communities will be considered, […]

GHG Daily 1/28/2016 In an open letter to the government of the United Kingdom, a number of U.K. business leaders called for “clear leadership and stable [energy] policy from government.” The letter, published Tuesday, is signed by officials from 19 companies including Amec Foster Wheeler, BOC, and General Electric. The group said the U.K.’s energy […]

GHG Daily 1/27/2016 Following five years of negotiations, Switzerland and the European Union have struck an agreement to combine their carbon emissions trading systems, the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment announced Monday. “Linking the Swiss and EU CO2 emissions markets would be beneficial for both environmental policy and the economy. The technical negotiations have […]

GHG Daily 1/27/2016 Thirteen of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred in the 21st century. The idea that such a situation might have happened naturally is extremely small, according to a scientific report published Monday in the journal Nature. “Natural climate variations just can’t explain the observed recent global heat records, but man-made […]

GHG Daily 1/27/2016 The United Kingdom, in deciding to close all of its coal-fired power plants by 2025, will need to find a way to fill the significant electricity supply gap left as a result, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers said in a new report. According to the report, the U.K. national grid on a […]

A tunnel collapsed Tuesday at a nuclear waste storage site being built in France, killing one worker and injuring another, according to local authorities. Reuters reported the incident occurred while crews were taking measurements at the front of a 500-meter-deep tunnel at the site in Bure, a commune in northeastern France. French nuclear waste agency […]

Energy industry veteran Tony Fountain will become the new chairman of the Sellafield Ltd. board on April 1, the U.K. National Decommissioning Authority (NDA) announced last week. That is the date at which the firm that operates the Sellafield nuclear fuel recycling and decommissioning site in Cumbria, England, will become a wholly owned NDA subsidiary.   […]

The United Nations’ (UN) Conference on Disarmament is holding its first public plenary of the 2016 session today in Geneva, Switzerland. Kim Won-Soo, acting U.N. high representative for disarmament affairs, will read a declaration from the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the session of the multilateral arms control negotiating forum, the U.N. said. The […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Daily 1/26/2016 Oslo, Norway’s Waste-to-Energy Agency on Monday launched a first-of-its-kind test plant at its waste incineration plant at Klemetsrud. The waste-to-energy plant is Oslo’s greatest source of emissions, responsible for about 20 percent of the city’s total emissions. Oslo-based Aker Solutions will test its CO2 capture technology at the plant. […]

Though Sellafield Ltd. has secured a £2 billion budget for 2016-17, the operator of the Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing and decommissioning site said recently that it will need to find further financial efficiency in order deliver the work it has planned for the upcoming year. The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) granted the budget […]

More than 23 percent of decommissioning-related equipment and structures have been dismantled at Lithuania’s shuttered Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, according to the state enterprise managing the decommissioning project. Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant reported on Jan. 15 that 30,358 tons of equipment and related structures have been dismantled at the facility, where decommissioning is expected to […]