France sets out long-term nuclear recycling plans

Lescure (second from left) and Le Maire (centre) pictured with La Hague Site Director Stéphanie Gaiffe (far left) and Orano CEO Nicolas Maes (on the right) during the visit (Image: Orano)

Minister for the Economy, Finance, Industrial and Digital Sovereignty Bruno Le Maire announced the decision to continue with France's treatment-recycling strategy for used nuclear fuel beyond 2040, with plans to extend the life of existing recycling plants and to launch studies for a new MOX fuel fabrication plant and a new used fuel processing plant.

The announcement was made during a visit by Le Maire and Minister Delegate for Industry and Energy Roland Lescure to Orano's La Hague recycling site, days after France's Nuclear Policy Council (Conseil de Politique Nucléaire) said on 26 February that the country would continue with its closed nuclear fuel cycle strategy.

Le Maire announced three measures that will be taken towards this goal: a sustainability/resilience programme extending the life of the La Hague and Melox recycling plants beyond 2040; the launch of studies for a new MOX fuel fabrication plant at the La Hague site; and the launch of studies for a new used fuel processing plant, also at La Hague, by 2045-2050.

"A new page in French nuclear history is about to open. The time for large-scale national projects has returned and the nuclear energy sector has a central role to play," Le Maire said during his visit to La Hague.

In a post on X, Le Maire said the visit to La Hague by the two ministers sends a strong signal. "Thanks to this strategy, we will ultimately reduce the volume of nuclear waste by 75%," he said. "Our message is clear: nuclear power occupies a central place in the decarbonisation of our economy, the strengthening of our energy sovereignty and the reindustrialisation of our country."

Orano CEO Nicolas Maes said the announcements provide for major investments for the La Hague site. "Processing-recycling is one of the French industry's centres of excellence, representing know-how that has been mastered for some 50 years in our plants and of which all the group's employees can be proud," he said.

From the very beginning of its nuclear programme France has chosen to pursue a closed fuel cycle, reprocessing used nuclear fuel to recover uranium and plutonium for re-use. Reprocessing and recycling fuel in this way also significantly reduces the activity and volume of radioactive waste material requiring final disposal.

In the French model, the reusable materials which make up some 96% of used fuel are separated at La Hague. The plutonium recovered from this processing is reused in MOX (mixed-oxide) fuels manufactured by Orano at the Melox plant. Some 10% of nuclear electricity in France today is generated by recycling materials in the form of MOX fuel, Orano said, and this can rise to 25% and to almost 40% if used MOX fuel is further recycled.

Only the plutonium recovered from processed fuel is currently used in MOX. Reprocessed uranium - or RepU - can be re-enriched for use as fuel in existing light-water reactors. Four of France's reactors - at the Cruas-Meysse plant in Auvergne-RhĂ´ne-Alpes - are certified to use such uranium. In February, Cruas 2 became the first of those units to operate with a full core of fuel made from recycled uranium.

Read More........ → Categories: , ,
→

Private sector funding key to climate transition, World Bank chief says

WASHINGTON - The World Bank is working to slash how long it takes to get financing projects off the ground as part of a push to speed up and scale up the 79-year-old development lender, its president told AFP on Wednesday. 

It currently takes 27 months, on average, before "the first dollar goes out the door," Ajay Banga said in an interview in his brightly lit office in the Bank's headquarters close to the White House.

"If I can bring it down by one third over the first couple of years, that would be pretty good," he said. "The Bank needs to change and evolve."

Banga, an Indian-born, naturalized US citizen who previously ran the payments company Mastercard, took over the management of the bank in June on a pledge to boost its lending firepower by encouraging greater private investment in the fight against climate change.

In the seven months since, the 64-year-old has made some big changes, altering the development lender's mission statement to include a reference to climate change, and setting up a private sector advisory body to recommend solutions to address the "barriers to private sector investment in emerging markets."

He's also explored new ways to "sweat" the bank's existing balance sheet in order to boost lending capacity without additional funding from donor countries.

On Wednesday, Banga repeated a previous pledge to "fix the plumbing" of World Bank, and said he plans to "create the credibility" needed for the developed world to increase its capital investment in it.

"For that you have to become a better bank. You have to be quicker, faster, more focused on impact, less focused on input," he said. "Then you can say with credibility, 'I'm now ready to absorb more capital.'"

- Climate or development? -

As part of a push to increase its climate financing, the World Bank Group recently raised its target for climate-related projects from 35 percent of its annual financing to 45 percent.

"I think people in the global south recognize very well that you cannot fight poverty without fighting climate change," Banga said. "The only difference is, what do you mean by climate change?"

Whereas the developed world tends to discuss climate change in terms of mitigating carbon emissions, "the developing world tends to speak about climate change as adaptation," he said.

"They see the climate change impact on them in terms of irrigation, rainfall, soil degradation, loss of biodiversity, forestry cover, that kind of thing," he added.

To meet both of these challenges, the World Bank has decided that half of the 45 percent committed to climate financing in the next financial year will go to adaptation, and the other half to mitigation.

"You have to find these compromises, to enable the donors and the receivers to feel that the bank is navigating in the right way," Banga said.

- Growing the pie -

However, even if the Bank succeeds in raising additional capital from its members and squeezing additional dollars from its balance sheet, it is still unlikely to meet the scale of the challenge posed by climate change alone, Banga said.

The World Bank recently estimated that developing countries will need an average of $2.4 trillion each year between now and 2030 in order to address the "global challenges of climate change, conflict, and pandemics."

Given that the Bank's lending commitments in the most recent financial year were less than $130 billion, the only way to get close to this target is by encouraging far greater private sector participation, according to Banga.

To encourage the scale of private financing needed, Banga said he was working to resolve three outstanding issues.

The first is regulatory certainty, so investors have a "line of sight" to a country's longer-term policy priorities.

The second, more complex, challenge is foreign currency risk.

In many cases, private investors looking to invest in emerging economies are unable to hedge against the risk of fluctuations in the value of local currencies, because local markets simply aren't deep and wide enough, Banga said.

"That's the one that we're really trying to work on," he added.

The third issue is how to protect investors better from risks like war and civil unrest.

This task is currently split among three different World Bank Group institutions, and is done on far too small a scale, Banga explained.

If the bank is able to boost the amount of political risk guarantees it can provide, and simplifies access, they could play a significant role in unlocking private capital, he said.

"The reality is that that gap between tens and hundreds of billions to trillions is not a number that the bank can fill," he added.

"That's why you do eventually need the private sector."

da/dw

Read More........ → Categories: , , ,
→

Dubai Company Buys Used Cooking Oil to Turn Into Biofuel for Cars Citywide to Reduce CO2 Emissions

Used cooking oil collection truck and one of the biofuel production plants – Credit: Lootah Biofuels
A Dubai-based company Lootah Biofuels is producing biodiesel from used cooking oil bringing sustainable transportation options to a major oil-producing country. The result is a fuel that is less expensive, renewable, and clean. The United Arab Emirates company now boasts having their own fuel outlets across the city of Dubai, delivering 60 million liters annually. It is the brainchild of Yousif Bin Saeed Al Lootah, who wants the UAE to be the first nation in the region to mandate that biofuels blends be featured alongside other fuel in all public stations. They pay for the used cooking oil collected, thus giving an incentive to providers like restaurants, bakeries, and food chains, which provide 500,000 liters of waste oil every month. The company says it converted the waste oil into 770 tons of biofuel last year. The Lootah Biofuels website reports that used cooking oil has the highest carbon saving ratio amongst all the available biodiesel feedstock—and calculates their product has caused the reduction of 500 million tons of CO2, so far.MORE RENEWABLE GOOD NEWS: United Dubai Company Buys Used Cooking Oil to Turn Into Biofuel for Cars Citywide to Reduce CO2 Emissions
Read More........ → Categories: , , , ,
→