Todays news keep on following the recent line of nuclear news around the world: no news would be good news.
The CEO of Finnish nuclear power company Fennovoima, Tapio Saarenpää, had to go http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/10/01/nuclear-fennovoima-idINL6E8L1HQ120121001 as well as the chairman of the board Juha Rantanen a few weeks ago http://www.fennovoima.com/en/news/news/fennovoima-s-board-gets-a-new-chairman . Many investors have already abandonned the ship earlier and it seems now that it is only a question of time when the others also see investing in zero-business not worth continuing.
Also TVO had risen its demands for compensations for delay of Olkiluoto-3 NPP to 1,8 Billion Euros. http://yle.fi/uutiset/tvo_ups_stakes_in_areva_compensation_duel/6316761 TVO is trying to get AREVA pay that sum via court. But Areva-Siemens is also demanding TVO to pay them 1,9 Billion Euros for the delay. Bad business is searcing for funders using laywers that will be the real winners of this game.
And the real loosers are the taxpayers and electric power consumers of Finland, France and Germany - they are paying the gamers bills the same way as they are paying for rescueing Euro.
If we look at the global megatrends of energy industry nuclear power is a clear looser. http://nuclear-news.info/2012/07/21/comprehensive-report-on-the-status-of-the-global-nuclear-industry/#more-956 Generating power with nuclear power will be much more expensive in the future, more expensive than with renewables or natural gas. There's an ongoing trend to make the industry to pay all costs of constructing the nuclear power plants, taking care of the security of the plants, paying the real costs of decommissioning the reactors (3,7 billion euros/reactor according to brittish studies - 10 000 times more expensive than expected in 1960ies) and taking care of the spent fuel and radioactive waste for several hundreds of thousands of years. http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/ch_sp_royal/ch_sp_royal.aspx
It is really hard to sell the citizens the thought that they should pay the multi billion costs for benefitting this high tech power generating technology when there are awailable safe and less expensive alternatives like solar, wind, waves and bioenergy. It's true that you may have to pay a little bit more for your power in the beginning of the alternatives era, but in the long run all will be winners with clean energy. And no more evacuation zones and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes and live in fear for the rest of their lives.
When people and politicians worlwide are getting the results of recent studies that low level radiation is much more harmful that it has been told before (for example Hiroshima - Nagasaki survivers -study last round or international nuclear industry workers low level radiation-cancer -study, or medical x-rays related cancer -studies, tell all the same thing - things are far worse than everybody previously have been thinking), there will be a wide discussion about how nuclear industry should pay for the damage it is causing. And the levels of radioactive emmissions allowed in the future will be far stricker than today. I think there will be demands of shutting down the NPPs that are polluting environment with most highest amounts of Tritium because it causes leukemia and cancers among young children living close to NPPs. According to some experts Areva-originated EPR-reactors (like the ones being built in Finland and France) are polluting the environment ten times more than the old BWRs or PWRs.
A few links for check-up:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776242/
http://www.wise-uranium.org/ehw.html
http://apps.who.int/bookorders/anglais/detart1.jsp?codlan=1&codcol=77&codcch=25
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/26/childhood-leukemia-spikes-near-nuclear-power-plants/
http://www.rrjournal.org/doi/pdf/10.1667/RR2629.1
http://enformable.com/2012/06/adults-at-higher-risk-for-developing-cancer-later-in-life-after-childhood-exposures/
http://nuclearhistory.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/wall-street-journal-past-haunts-tally-of-japans-nuke-crisis/
http://enenews.com/just-in-u-s-freezes-all-nuclear-reactor-construction-operating-licenses
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/Chernobyl/HEofC25yrsAC.html
http://solarwindpronet.blogspot.fi/2012/01/too-hot-to-handle-what-if-nuclear.html
So it may be like entering a financically very high risk zone to invest in Nuclear power or even finish the projects that have been started years ago. For me it seems that the right thing to do now for the real businessman would be getting rid of any nuclear power project that his or hers enterprice is involved as quick as possible. There just isn't any sense to carry whole the time more water into a barrel that is rotten and full of holes.
My guess is that the companies that continue to do that will result into nuclear poverty. Well, we'll see.
JPS
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