POWER February 2014 - 12

2. Avatar. As Drax, Alstom, and BOC prepare
to build the 426-MW White Rose carbon
capture and storage project on land adjacent
to the existing 4-GW Drax Power Station
shown here near Selby, in North Yorkshire,
Drax plans to convert three of six units at the
power station from coal to wood-pellet biomass.
Courtesy: Drax
was announced at the opening of the Drax
coal-to-biomass conversion unit (Figure
2). Drax, which is looking to transform itself
into a predominantly wood pellet-fueled
generator, recently converted one of
its six generating units at the 4-GW Drax
station to biomass and intends to convert
a further two units by 2016 at a cost of
£700 million.
tain the power plant, including its carbon
capture facilities, while BOC will build, operate,
and maintain the air separation unit
that provides oxygen for the operation of
the oxyfuel combustion capture plant. A
final investment decision could come as
early as 2015, which could mean construction
will begin by 2016 and the plant will
be operational by 2020.
According to the Global CCS Institute,
nearly $22 billion was committed by an
assortment of governments in direct funding
for large-scale CCS demonstration
projects between 2008 and 2012, but
some funding mechanisms were canceled
before they were legislated due to the
global financial crisis or changing government
priorities. As of October 2013,
for example, the institute estimated the
highest amount of funding any single CCS
project could receive from the European
Union's NER300 program is €290 million.
Given the program's rules, the international
CCS watchdog group says, two CCS
demonstration projects at most are likely
to be funded in the second round-which
represents less than 10% of the €6 billion
to €9 billion proposed by the European
Commission when the program was initially
designed. " The fall in funding value is
largely due to the decreased carbon price
in Europe; the NER300 program is funded
by the forward sale of carbon allowances. "
Notably, the White Rose CCS project is the
only applicant the UK government has put
forward to the European Investment Bank
for NER300 funding.
CCS has been the cornerstone of the
UK's plans to bolster its energy security
and mitigate climate change, and the DECC
has pushed for a reform of the UK electricity
market so CCS will be able to compete
with other low-carbon sources. The UK's
FEED award to White Rose in December
12
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POWER | February 2014
Japan, South Korea Stick
to Nuclear Ambitions
Japan and South Korea, countries that
depended heavily on nuclear power before
the Fukushima catastrophe in 2011 (Figure
3), separately released draft long-term
energy plans in December, both placing
renewed emphasis on nuclear.
As it redrafted its energy plan, Japan's
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry
underscored nuclear's importance as
a " base-load power source that serves
as a foundation " for the stability of the
resource-poor island nation's energy supply.
The draft also calls for the reactivation
of all the country's 50 reactors that
are shut pending safety reviews by the
Nuclear Regulation Authority-but it
stops short of endorsing construction of
new nuclear plants or replacing old ones
with new ones.
The ministry stated that electricity
prices have soared because the country
has been forced to import fuel for thermal
power generation to offset the loss
of nuclear power. The higher power rates
have caused companies to transfer production
overseas or suffer tremendous
losses, it said.
No dates have been set to restart the
reactors, and the country's 10 utilities
have significantly increased their use of
coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG). LNG
imports jumped to ¥6 trillion ($57 billion)
in 2012-nearly double the ¥3.5 trillion
spent on LNG imports in 2010.
The revised draft will be presented to a
team tasked with revising the 2010 Basic
Energy Plan, which had called to increase
nuclear's share of total capacity to 41%
by 2019.
Meanwhile, South Korea's crippling
electricity shortfall, which stemmed
from a documentation scandal that led
to the closure of several nuclear units,
was alleviated this January. Korea's
Nuclear Safety and Security Commission
(NSSC) approved restart of operations at
Shin Kori Units 1 and 2 and Shin Wolsong
Unit 1-OPR-1000 reactors that
only began commercial operation between
February 2011 and July 2012. A
draft of the country's next long-term energy
plan suggests, meanwhile, that the
country will temper plans for a massive
nuclear expansion.
The documentation scandal and subsequent
power crunch began in November
2012, after authorities initiated an investigation
into faked certificates for small
components at five nuclear plants. Two
3. Cleaning up. Three years after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, Tokyo Electric Power Co.
(TEPCO) continues clean up efforts at the stricken nuclear plant. In November, TEPCO began
moving nuclear fuel assemblies from Reactor Unit 4 to the Common Spent Fuel Pool (shown
here). Courtesy: Greg Webb/IAEA

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POWER February 2014

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