International

GHG Monitor 5/9/2014 IN EUROPEAN UNION The European Commission said Monday that most heavy industry businesses that had been receiving free carbon permits would be likely to keep them. Under the European Union’s Emissions Trading System, power plants, factories, airlines and other large emitters are required to surrender a permit for every tonne of gas […]

Kenneth Fletcher WC Monitor 5/9/2014 Regulator Issues ‘Formal Cautions’ after Sellafield Contamination Incident The U.K.’s Office for Nuclear Regulation last week issued “formal cautions” to two Sellafield workers after a contamination incident in December at the Highly Active Liquor Evaporation and Storage facility (HALES). The event occurred when the workers removed without permission a contaminated […]

Kenneth Fletcher NS&D Monitor 5/9/2014 A controversial nuclear cooperation agreement with Vietnam was sent by the Obama Administration to Congress this week for its 90-day review. The agreement has raised questions from some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle because it lacks legally binding restrictions on enrichment and reprocessing, known as the ‘gold standard.’ […]

Kenneth Fletcher WC Monitor 5/2/2014 Moving ahead with potentially processing German experimental spent fuel at the Savannah River Site’s H-Canyon, the Department of Energy recently signed a statement of intent with the German government to examine the idea. The highly enriched uranium comes in the form of graphite spheres from the pebble bed AVR gas-cooled […]

Kenneth Fletcher WC Monitor 5/2/2014 EnergySolutions Sues NDA for Damages in Magnox Award Incumbent contractor EnergySolutions this week filed a claim for damages against the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in a challenge to the recent award of the Magnox/RSRL contract to the Cavendish Fluor Partnership. Bechtel, EnergySolutions’ teaming partner in the Reactor Site Solutions bid for […]

Todd Jacobson NS&D Monitor 5/2/2014 The United States should scale back its ambitions to restart arms control negotiations with Russia, House Republicans told a pair of State Department officials this week at a joint hearing of House Foreign Affairs Committee panels, citing tensions over Ukraine and Moscow’s alleged violation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. […]

Todd Jacobson NS&D Monitor 5/2/2014 Legislation introduced this week by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and 20 other Senate Republicans designed to respond to Russia’s actions in Ukraine would terminate U.S. cooperation with parts of the New START Treaty and prohibit arms control negotiations with Moscow. In a statement, Corker said the “Russian Aggression Prevention Act […]

Kenneth Fletcher WC Monitor 4/18/2014 NDA Launches Magnox Transition, No Challenges So Far  The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has launched a five-month transition period for Cavendish Fluor Partnership to take over management of 10 Magnox power plants and two research reactor sites after no legal challenges to the contract award were filed during a recent 10-day […]

Dounreay Costs May Go up £200 Million Kenneth Fletcher WC Monitor 4/11/2014 The last eight double-shell waste tanks built at Hanford had only minor construction issues, according to the final construction review report released by the Department of Energy this week.  The review concluded that double-shell tanks in the AP Tank Farm were in better […]

Todd Jacobson NS&D Monitor 4/11/2014 The Department of Defense this week announced its force structure implementation plan under the New START Treaty, spreading cuts out across the three legs of the nuclear triad. Under the plan, the Pentagon will trim the size of its deployed intercontinental ballistic missile force by 50 ICBMs to 400 but […]

Todd Jacobson NS&D Monitor 4/11/2015 Responding to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) is planning to soon introduce a bill that would suspend all National Nuclear Security Administration work in Russia. The wide-ranging bill would prohibit the "contact, cooperation or transfer of technology" between the NNSA and the Russian Federal until Energy Secretary […]

The following interview with Kazuhiro Suzuki, Executive Director of Japan’s International Research Institute for Decommissioning, was conducted last week on the sidelines of the 2014 Waste Management Symposium by ExchangeMonitor Publications CEO Martin Schneider and RW Monitor Reporter Jeremy L. Dillon. To start, can you talk a little about what people can expect from your […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 3/14/2014 A Dutch medical isotope company will not meet its goal of shifting to the use of low enriched uranium for the production of molybdenum-99 by the 2015 target date, according to a meeting held this week with White House officials. Mallinckrodt confirmed to White House officials that it would […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 3/14/2014 As the procurement to manage Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s nuclear laboratories moves to the next stage, at least three teams appear to have formed to go after the job, RW Monitor has learned. One team, led by B&W and including Battelle and the U.K. firm Cavendish Nuclear, publicly […]

The number of large-scale carbon capture and storage projects under development worldwide has dropped “significant[ly]” over the last year, and governments must act urgently if they would like to build momentum, the Global CCS Institute said in its annual status report of the industry.

A recent asbestos scare, unanticipated engineering work and a shortage of craft labor have caused the projected capital costs for SaskPower’s flagship Boundary Dam carbon capture and storage project to increase by $115 million, the Saskatchewan, Canada-based utility said. 

The Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF), an international initiative focused on the development of carbon capture and sequestration technologies through collaborative efforts, will hold its fifth ministerial meeting in Washington, D.C., next week.

The United States will largely no longer provide aid through international development banks for new oversees coal-fire projects unless those projects deploy carbon capture and storage technologies, the U.S. Treasury Department announced this week.

California, Washington, Oregon and the Canadian province of British Columbia pledged to work together this week to account for the costs of carbon and back efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Energy secretaries from the U.S. and Norway affirmed support for a network of carbon capture and storage test centers at a ministerial meeting of the Carbon Capture Leadership Forum this week, saying the countries will jointly provide resources for administration and development in the network’s first four-year period and will be the first to hold chairmanship.

The Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum announced last week that it is adding the Kemper County carbon capture and storage project and four other CCS projects to its research-and-development portfolio, which serves as a basis for global information sharing on CCS technologies.

The future global demand for coal is uncertain because regional environmental policies vary in stringency, but coal will continue to dominate the power sector along with other fossil fuels through 2035—although they will represent a declining share of generation—according to a new report released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that assesses the global energy market.

Representatives from a number of countries gathered in Warsaw this week for the 19th session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, where they began a new round of deliberations on how to curb greenhouse gas emissions through 2020 in an effort to limit global average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels as they hope to finalize a climate treaty in talks scheduled to be held in Paris in 2015. 

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and Masdar announced last week that they have signed a joint agreement to create the Middle East’s first company that will focus on developing commercial-scale carbon capture and storage projects, paving the way for its first project, which will capture CO2 emissions from the United Arab Emirates’ largest steelworks complex for use in enhance oil recovery.

The top U.N. climate diplomat called for the safe implementation of carbon capture and storage technology on all new power plants—even the most efficient—in the keynote address at the Coal & Climate Summit in Warsaw, Poland this week.

A funding program for carbon capture and storage and other low-carbon demonstration projects has kicked off its second phase, with the European Investment Bank confirming it has started selling 100 million remaining EU emission allowances, according to Point Carbon.

Carbon capture and storage technology enjoyed a spot in the limelight at U.N. climate talks in Warsaw, Poland—where representatives from a number of countries gathered over the last two weeks with hopes to hash out a framework for curbing greenhouse gas emissions through 2020—although there did not appear to be consensus on how or whether CCS will play a part in the world’s future.

The following interview with Marco Mensink, Deputy Director General of the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI), was conducted by GHG Monitor Reporter Karen Frantz.

The Asian Development Bank approved a $900 million loan for a new supercritical coal power unit in Jamshoro, Pakistan despite a “no” vote from the United States due to its new policy of not supporting public financing for coal plants that are not equipped with carbon capture and storage technology.

Coal’s dominance in power generation appears set to continue for years to come, according to the International Energy Agency’s 2013 Medium-Term Coal Market Report, released this week.