stop oldbury

2015-07-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

French Protestors are blocking the Ministry of the economy
in order to urge the Government to invest in Renewables and divest from Nuclear

2015-06-02T06:49:00.001-07:00

The mixed outlook for new nuclear power plants

June 2, 2015 by Paul Dorfman Leave a Comment

Two Pressurized Water Reactors under construction at Kudankulam nuclear power plant, India (photo: IAEA, 2013)

Nuclear power has had a makeover. What was once seen as a futuristic source of limitless energy has been reframed as a response to global warming, an ideal solution for countries looking for a continuous source of low-carbon power. Nuclear advocates claim that nuclear power capacity is expanding, but according to Paul Dorfman, Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Energy Institute at University College London, in reality the global picture is mixed at best.
At the moment 31 different nations operate nuclear power plants (see page 14 here, with a total of 388 reactors, and before Fukushima, most planned nuclear power plant projects were in Asia and Eastern Europe, extending a trend from earlier years.
Industry lobbyists the World Nuclear Association suggests that nuclear power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily, with more than 60 reactors under construction in 13 countries. They say that eight countries are either planning to build for the first time (Belarus and United Arab Emirates), have signed contracts (Lithuania and Turkey), or have some plans to build (Bangladesh, Jordan, Poland, and Vietnam).
In contrast, the more independent World Nuclear Industry Status Report describes a declining trend, with annual nuclear electricity generation reaching a maximum of 266 GW in 2006 and dropping to 235 GW in 2013 – with 50 fewer operating reactors than the peak in 2002, and total installed capacity comparable to levels last seen two decades ago. This decline is also confirmed in BP’s recent Energy Outlook.

Oil and coal are set to decline but renewables not nuclear will take up the slack. BP energy outlook 2035
In terms of new build, 67 reactors are under construction worldwide with a total capacity of 64 GW. For the nuclear industry this at first sounds promising, but then “under construction” doesn’t necessarily mean it will be finished any time soon – work first began on one reactor opened in Argentina last year back in 1981.
It’s true to say that the risk to people, the environment and to the future of nuclear energy from another major incident is still very real, and reactor accidents from “beyond design-base” cascading events, such as the Fukushima disaster and all other major nuclear accidents, are the single largest financial risk – far outweighing the combined effect of market, credit, construction and operational risks. The thing is, in trying to “design out” these accidents, reactors have become much more expensive, complex, and hence, difficult to build on time and on budget.
Of the 67 currently being built, eight reactors have been under construction for more than 20 years, another for 12 years; and at least 49 have significant delays. For the remaining 18 reactor units, either construction began within the past five years or the reactors haven’t reached projected start-up dates, with construction projects in Finland and France very many years behind schedule.
Average construction times are increasing:

Note: bubble size is equivalent to the number of units started up in the given year. MSC based on IAEA-PRIS 2014
The Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom is building in Russia, China, and Belarus, and claims more than 20 export reactor orders in Iran, Turkey, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Jordan, Hungary, Finland, Egypt, India and South Africa. But there are questions about whether it’s got the finances and supply chain resources to carry out more than a small fraction of these – most depend on Russian finance, hit hard by the recent downturn, and Rosatom is already facing delays in its homeland due to lack of resources.
Meanwhile, the World Nuclear Status Report shows that China has 28 reactors under construction – 42% of the world’s total new-build – with 21 reactors (17 GW) in operation, which in 2013 provided 2.1% of the country’s electricity. If all their reactors under construction come online before 2020, this would bring the total to 49 reactors. To put this into perspective, in 2013 alone, China installed 12 GW of solar, a threefold increase over 2012.
And recent events have challenged China’s plans for nuclear. There’s been the usual construction delays, cost increases, doubts over the siting of reactors in provinces inland, and questions over safety and regulatory oversight – and, remarkably, just last month, significant faults were found in the reactor pressure vessels already installed in the Areva EPRs at Taishan 1 and 2.

Nuclear Reactors listed as World Nuclear Industry Status Report/IAEA-PRIS, MSC, 2014
While nuclear carries very real technical and regulatory risk – construction cost represents a key challenge. New builds will only go ahead after government guarantees public subsidies, including long-term power purchase agreements. This is because the private sector can’t afford to build new nuclear plants themselves. The reality is that nuclear new builds are high-value, high-risk projects with a marked tendency for significant delay and delay claims, cost growth and investor risk.
For example, in Finland, their nuclear corporation TVO is pressing a €2.7 billion compensation claim for delays to the Olkiluoto EPR nuclear power plant. Perhaps amusingly, the French nuclear corporation Areva is in turn demanding €3.5 billion from TVO. The project’s turn-key price was €3 billion in 2005 and the current estimated price stands at €8.5 billion, with a construction time of 13 years and rising. And just recently, TVO has dashed Areva hopes of building any more EPRs in Finland.
So the general post-Fukushima situation in the EU implies there will be limited construction in the coming decade. Although new builds are still planned in Finland, France and the UK – Italy and Switzerland have cancelled plans for new reactors, Belgium has confirmed a nuclear phase-out, and eight EU countries have signed a declaration that nuclear power is incompatible with the concept of sustainable development.
At the heart of the nuclear question are differing views on value for money, foresight and responsibility. Huge long-term investments are needed and it’s clear there are critical social, environmental and economic decisions to be made.
Germany, Europe’s dominant electricity user, has made its choice. Its decision to phase out nuclear power by 2022 and to instead invest in renewables, efficiency measures, grid infrastructure and energy storage, will prove significant for both European and international energy policy.
Editor’s Note
This article was first published on The Conversation and is republished here with permission from the author.

Filed Under: *, Articles, Nuclear Tagged With: coal power, electricity market, energy transition, financing, natural gas, nuclear energy, renewables

2015-05-01T03:22:00.002-07:00

Forest fire threatens Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear zone

Date: 29-Apr-15
Country: UKRAINE
Author: Natalia Zinets and Alessandra Prentice

Forest fire threatens Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear zone Photo: Andrew
Kravchenko/Pool
An aerial view through a window of a helicopter shows fire and smoke from
buildings of an abandoned village are on fire in northern Ukraine, April
28, 2015.
Photo: Andrew Kravchenko/Pool

Emergency services were battling on Tuesday to prevent Ukraine's largest
forest fire since 1992 from spreading towards the abandoned Chernobyl
nuclear power plant, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said.

Earlier, the interior ministry had warned that high winds were blowing the
fire in northern Ukraine towards Chernobyl, where in 1986 a reactor fire
led to the world's worst nuclear disaster.

A 30 km (18.6 miles) exclusion zone remains in place around the plant,
which remains contaminated by radioactive particles.

"The situation is being controlled, but this is the biggest fire since
1992. We've not had this scale of fire," Ukraine's Interfax news agency
reported Yatseniuk as telling journalists.

"It is around 20 kilometers (from the fire) to the plant. Our emergency
services are actively working there to prevent the fire spreading
further," he said.

In February, international experts warned that a large amount of dangerous
isotopes remained in the forests near Chernobyl, which could be spread by
forest fires.

"Wildfires ... pose a high risk of redistributing radioactivity,"
according to a paper published in Ecological Monographs, titled 'Fire
evolution in the radioactive forests of Ukraine and Belarus: future risks
for the population and the environment.'

Chernobyl's Reactor 4, the epicenter of the 1986 blast, is covered with a
concrete casement that the Ukrainian authorities plan to replace by 2016.

To read the Ecological Monographs paper: here

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Larry King)

Fukushima's affect on Canadian coast

2015-04-29T02:36:00.001-07:00

Dana Durnford’s Post-Fukushima Odyssey: Documenting Ecocide on Canada’s
West Coast

By Robert Snefjella

21 April, 2015
Countercurrents.org

Dana Durnford’s odyssey, in 2014 and 2015, has been to
document what has happened and is happening since Fukushima to wild life,
plant and animal, in the waters and tidal zone and pools on the West Coast
of Canada. His boat is a little Zodiac water craft, almost impossible to
sink, but no comfort inn. He has sailed it largely alone, with his
intrepid old dog Zoey, for months and for many hundreds of kilometers
along the shores of British Columbia and its islands and out to the Queen
Charlotte Islands.

Resourceful and brave and determined is Dana, as he struggles and endures
many troubles and hardships. For an able bodied person to undertake what
Dana has done would be heroic. Dana is physically handicapped from an
accident and relies on a wheelchair and crutches.

Dana has taken many thousands of photographs, and has been interviewed
weekly many times by Jeff Rense on his radio show at Rense.com. These are
archived at Rense.com

Dana also reports via his website nuclearproctologist.org.

Dana is plain spoken and usually low key, sometimes nearly inaudibly so,
as he brings us news of the Pacific Ocean’s palliative condition. Even
Dana’s angry comments seem muted by his grief and disbelief, as he
describes his voyage and his observations and shares his thoughts. His web
site already has much photographic and other information, and his current
journey will add many thousands more.

Dana’s observations underline that we have reached the end, a dead end, at
least for civilization on its contemporary terminally dysfunctional basis,
and announces a time of grievous troubles for much of life as we have
known it.

From his website:

   Fukushima will kill the entire Pacific Ocean

   October 9, 2014

   Day 18 on the beaches we hit Pine Island off the north east of
Vancouver Island and several other islands in a 75 km 7 hour trip. We
stayed out till dark it took about 80 minutes to ride back with a full
moon behind the heavy rain clouds. We still only found just a small
handful of kelp and algae out of 600 known species. We have to hunt to
find any species to take a picture of. The chances of finding the same
species anywhere else is tiny we still have not seen any sea cucumbers
or sea squirts or sea fans or large snails or rocks full of snails and
limpets etc etc or life in tidal pools. Underwater life is clinging
for the time being but we are not even trying to stop fukushima….

   Out of 70 species of sea anemones we have found 5 species collectively
throughout the coast lines but only two species on these islands today
and they are very few and very random.

   We see all along Vancouver Island coast line only 5 species of star
fish out of 64 known local species that were everywhere pre Fukushima.
Did you know Fukushima really happened and the Jet Streams are real,
yea go figure. Did you know that three reactors are bleeding and
hemorrhaging into the pacific ocean 24/7 – 365 days a year and that
the media and nuclear crazy apologist use numbers from a single
release from a single reactor and have never included the ongoing
massive plumes pouring into the sea every freaking day and into the
jet stream from three 100% melt downs and melt outs all day every day
unrelenting.

   In BC life accumulates [that is, used to, until Fukushima: RS] in
every millimeter of its 26,000 km shore line, after all it was the
nursery of the ocean. The B.C. entire coast line’s biodiversity is
well known because all universities have [been] categorizing and
counting the species around BC coast line for decades, many times
over.

   I only wonder … what point of extinction will it take before the world
cares….[?]

Part transcript of March 9th, 2015 Rense radio interview:

   Jeff Rense: “Okay, and we’re going to go up this half hour, somewhere
along the wilds of the coast of British Columbia to talk to another
remarkable man who has put his life on the line over and over again to
try to bring the truth about what’s happening to our west coast
whether you be Canadian or American, and that the government will not
tell us…. “

   Dana: [describing the coastline of Canada] “… less than a hundred
species, total, throughout the entire coastline, out of …”

   Jeff: “Out of 6500 that ought to be there.”

   Dana: “The visible ones and another 5500 or so of invertebrates….

   ….the divers a couple of days ago found starfish legs and there was
two of them [divers] and they were horrified, because, and rightly so,
but I mean the whole sea floor was covered in, in ah, star fish legs,
a lot of leather starfish, in particular, and just the legs, didn’t
find the bodies, just the legs everywhere, and they’re pretty
convinced that it’s radiation ….

   .... no snails to be found anywhere whatsoever, I couldn’t even find
one….

   …. normally you would find millions and millions and millions [of
snails] on each beech and on the rocks and all the mussels were
missing and the algae [is missing and] a lot of them look’s like
they’re petrified, but they all look really, really bad, they look
really unhealthy, and once again the rocks are bare everywhere else.

   …. folks don’t understand, in that entire day of hunting at the low
tide zone I could put everything I found in the back of a pickup
truck, and that, you should be able to do that on any beach, let alone
the entire, you know mile after mile after mile, ah we’re coming to an
anniversary of the fourth year, I guess you could call it that.

   …. and there was around 50 eagles, that’s the most eagles I’ve seen at
any given time since August … to see 50 eagles was really impressive.
That was a spectacular event. I stopped and got pictures of it. And it
looked like they were feeding and this is something we haven’t seen
along the entire coastline. We should see that every mile. And I
covered, a few weeks back, I covered over 700 nautical miles and never
seen a single flock and there should have been 700 flocks or more if
not five times that, because that’s how this coastline used to be,
always, no matter where you went, so all of that is missing, there’s
just a handful of any species out of 160 odd migratory and 148
residential, there’s only a handful throughout the entire coastline
and you’re only finding them in tiny groups so we’re in a lot of
trouble….

   [Dana’s effort is …]…. so stressful at night time, just trying to come
to a stop and have a meal and get some sleep and not drag anchor all
night wrong, and have the waves pound you all day and all night,
relentless, but … my brain will not let me stop it until we complete
it, because it has to get done and nobody else is going to do it. And
if we don’t get the job done [recording the situation on the British
Columbia coastline] we’ll regret that for ever.

   …. but they [Canadian Coast Guard] came all the way into the beach
just to yell out and ask me what I was up to. So I told him …. I said
I’m checking for damage from the radiation fallout from Japan and he
said you finding any? I said “Everything is missing!” I said “Are you
blind?!” I named out the species to him and I think I scared the
daylights out of him cause they went away but … I was pretty angry…. I
was heartbroken, I was on this beach after beach after beach and this
little group of islands this morning, it’s blowing really hard, and
I’m got up tight to an island, and I went to the island and got up on
the beach cause you couldn’t do anything else, and it’s stunning that
I couldn’t find anything in the microscopic world or the small world
….”

From March 16th, 2015 interview on Rense radio.

   Jeff: “…. Mr. Dana Durnford is there, our special guest, who god knows
where he is, where are you?”

   Dana: “Hi Jeff, yes, I’m back in Queen Charlotte City.

   Been a rough ride. Today was a very rough one, so both of the boat
motors went down on me today, in rough water….

   …. an interesting thing is yesterday I went out at high tide and that
high tide strip is really visible. The ocean comes right up to the
rain forest here on the coastline and so it’s only like a foot, two
foot, at the really highest tide, with a full moon, there will be like
a 2 foot gap there. Now yesterday there was probably a four foot gap
there and you still couldn’t see any kind of life whatsoever at that
high tide line, and that ought to be the best part of it. That’s very
telling, because that should be full of the fauna, the flora, the sea
anemones and all kinds of little critters that live in that particular
zone. That’s a very unique strip along British Columbia that is
actually missing. And that was the big thing about getting out here to
see, to really say, okay, look, it’s actually missing here too. Cause
people won’t believe it until you actually show it to them. You
actually basically have to go look and get pictures of it and actually
show the people before they’ll ultimately believe you, I know that in
my soul, and so that’s why I do the things I do because I know that if
we don’t get that data you can’t have a lucid conversation with
anybody, but if you got the data they ain’t got no wiggle room, and
they’re gonna have to pay attention and they got no way of just
disregarding what you say.”

From February 23rd, 2015 interview on Rense radio:

   Dana: “….it’s just impossible to imagine that a couple of years ago
you could break your neck trying to go ashore at the low tide line and
anywhere in British Columbia, this is what I specialize in, these low
tide zones, and now you can go ashore anywhere in British Columbia,
there’s nothing to worry about, ….[whereas previously, due to all the
kelp and algae] you would slip and slide, dangerous, extremely
dangerous, very slippery, unimaginable, nobody could make it up the
high tide line, at low tide, without really hurting their elbows, or
knees, or twisting an ankle, or really being an acrobat, and now
anybody can walk ashore. It’s inconceivable! It’s just devastating to
the entire eco-system. It’s the nursery of the ocean. It’s all
missing!: The very nursery of the ocean itself. And the biggest carbon
sequesterer of the ocean is the phytoplankton. And that’s missing. And
that was also the biggest oxygen producer obviously. And the basis of
the food chain. But it was also the biggest carbon sequesterer on the
planet. And so to blame everything on carbon, but there’s nothing
there to sequester, like it’s normally been doing throughout whoever
knows how long this process has been going on. And so that is all
missing. And all I’m trying to, when I say things like they can’t hide
it much longer, I truly mean they can’t hide it much longer. I can’t
see how they can. They can lie about it all they want for a short
period of time, but it’s going to be impossible to ignore a dead
ocean…Like I can’t ignore what I’m seeing out there. It’s enough to
make you cry. I kid you not.

   This is being completed on April 16th, 2015. Over the last couple of
weeks, which is far beyond late - after the most despicable dishonesty
about, and censorship of, information about Fukushima, a bit more of
the disturbing light of reality regarding Fukushima is escaping into
view via more or less ‘official’ Japanese spokesmen. The problems at
Fukushima are declared “insurmountable”, the technology to fix the
situation is declared not to exist. And as Jeff Rense has pointed out,
talk of “decommissioning” the Fukushima reactors is propaganda
nonsense. Decommissioning is the daunting challenge which can be
attempted pertaining to, typically, aged reactors that exist in
something of their original form: Much of the plutonium etc of
Fukushima has evacuated the scene of the crime, to join the global
environment, and extremely radioactive cauldrons of unknown location,
and quantity, and makeup, remains. (1)

The official response, globally, has been to tell lies and to censor.

The massive damage to life within and adjoining the Pacific Ocean – on the
West Coast of North America, an ecocide - has been demoted to an
egregiously distorted footnote. Fukushima is an extreme assault on the
blueprint for life of much of the planet.

This is screaming proof of the pathology, and the terminal dysfunction, of
our current culture, and especially of our basic institutions of
government, and mass communications. We are being fatally misled.

Now, very, very late, Fukushima remains a salvage-what-we-can-operation of
the most extreme urgency, and requires our utmost honest and intelligent
fullness of attention and discourse. WAKE UP!

Note: (1) For research connections and pertinent comments on plutonium in
the Pacific see http://majiasblog.blogspot.ca/

For a recent (April 11th, 2015 missive from Dana Durnford see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9RNBCp0QKs

Robert Snefjella is a retired organic farmer living in Ontario, Canada. He
can be reached at robts@xplornet.com

Uranium Mining in Canada

2015-04-21T14:02:00.005-07:00

Canada last week, April 2015

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed a deal
with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa to confirm the export of
3,220 tonnes of uranium from northern Saskatchewan to India, a country
that has never signed the United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT). That very day in Quebec City, Indigenous activists from
all over the world working to end uranium mining were meeting with
allies at the World Uranium Symposium. The symposium brought together
200 activists and organisers, physicians, environmentalists, and
researchers from the natural and social sciences, all working with the
intent to dismantle the nuclear industry and the huge costs associated
with it.
Polls suggest that Canadians oppose a nuclear deal with
New Delhi, perhaps out of fear of the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
But Indigenous activists reminded the symposium that the most obvious
costs were already being felt by their communities, even without the
immediate threat of nuclear war. Uranium mining, nuclear power
generation, and nuclear waste all result in grievous harm to ecological
and human health that lasts for countless generations.
Additionally, the social cost is high, in the public subsidies necessary to keep
nuclear energy viable, in the diversion of immense amounts of water
resources for nuclear industry use, and in the high carbon costs
associated with mining, transport, and storage of uranium, which makes
nuclear power a dubious choice to fight climate change. The only
tangible benefit to Harper's deal with India is the profit distributed
to shareholders of Cameco, the company responsible for uranium mining in
northern Saskatchewan. Attendees from Saskatchewan's Committee for
Future Generations suggested that the complicity between government and
industry has led to a health system that refuses to acknowledge problems
related to the industry. Saskatchewan environmentalist and former MLA
Peter Prebble recalled that when it started in 1952, uranium mining was
established in the province to provide plutonium for the nuclear arms
industry of the USA, and baseline health studies were never
done.
While Harper appeases his constituents, the agreement must also be viewed in
the context of longstanding grassroots resistance in India to nuclear
plants, most famously at the plant in Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu, where
the full repressive force of the Indian state has been deployed against
anti-nuclear activists. Similar popular resistance occurs in Maharashtra
at the Jaitapur plant. India's civil nuclear programme has also been
placed under scrutiny through the country's mechanism for public
interest litigation. Indian researchers attending the Symposium affirmed
that lax industry regulations are a concern, with companies preying on
the poor. But Modi too is pandering to those who can extract profit in
the short-term from the building and maintenance of nuclear power
plants, rather than those who will deal with its long-term
costs.
Prime Minister Harper stated that the moratorium on export of nuclear
industry materials to India, which has been in effect ever since New
Delhi used Canadian technology to develop a nuclear bomb in the 1970s,
had exerted an unnecessary pall over the collaboration possible between
the two countries. While diversion of uranium into military purposes
remains a concern, the Symposium did note that the most pressing threat
for nuclear war remained in the stockpiles of nuclear weapons still held
by the five traditional nuclear powers, the vast majority of them in
the United States and Russia, and called for complete disarmament. The
symposium's declaration also notes the dangers associated with uranium
in all phases of its extraction and use; from mining, processing,
civilian and military use, and storage. It calls for a worldwide ban on
the exploration and use of uranium, especially in that such activities
violate the rights of Indigenous peoples to free, prior and informed
consent for activities on their territories. It insists that
accountability for those harmed by uranium should last generations into
the future while the mineral remains radioactive. That this list
of demands has to be stated at all may seem depressing. But there is
hope. World experts such as Mycle Schneider reported to the Symposium
that the world's generation of nuclear power is decreasing, dropping in
2012 by 12 per cent over the historic maximum in 2006. Additionally, the
world's largest builder of reactors, French state-controlled company
AREVA, lost up to 88 per cent of its share value between 2008 and 2012.
Germany is now creating more jobs in renewable energy than in nuclear
and coal energy production.' The declaration also highlights that
Quebec is now also home to some of the most promising work against
uranium exploitation. The Cree Nation of Eeyou Itschee has stood in
solidarity with its citizens in Mistissini who have resisted uranium
exploration near their community, with Cree youth walking 850 km across
Quebec last year to demonstrate their opposition to the plan. Their work
has galvanised opposition around uranium mining, with the Inuit of
Nunavik in northern Quebec, the Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and
Labrador which includes 10 Indigenous nations across 43 communities, and
over 300 municipalities in Quebec rejecting uranium mines. Meanwhile,
Saskatchewan's premier Brad Wall has welcomed the deal with India,
stating that the 4,000 workers, including many Indigenous employees,
stand to benefit from the deal. The struggle against uranium is
not over, not across Canada, not in India, nor elsewhere. An
immigrant who made Montreal home, Baijayanta Mukhopadhyay is currently a
rural family doctor in northern Ontario. He is an organizer with the
Canadian chapter of the People's Health Movement and a
co-representative for the North America region on its global steering council.
Lori Hanson is on the global steering council of the People's Health
Movement. She is a professor in community health and epidemiology and
lives in Saskatoon. Declaration of the World Uranium
Symposium 2015 Quebec City, Canada | April 16 2015
To endorse this resolution go to the link below:
"http://uranium2015.com/en/news/quebec-declaration-uranium">http://uranium2015.com/en/news/quebec-
declaration-uranium

We

,
the participants of the World Uranium Symposium 2015, coming from 20
countries on five continents, having gathered in Quebec City, Canada,
the traditional territory of
the Huron-Wendat Nation, in April
2015; Acknowledging
that in 1943 Quebec City was the site where the United States, the United
Kingdom, and Canada entered into a formal cooperation agreement to
develop the first atomic bombs, resulting in the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in 1945; Respecting the moratorium imposed by the
Cree Nation of Eeyou Istchee in Northern Quebec on all
uranium-related activities on their lands, as well as the broad
consensus against uranium development by the Assembly of First
Nations of Quebec and
Labrador, the Inuit of Nunavik and over 300
municipalities across the province of
Quebec;

Recognizing the
growing awareness that nuclear power is not a cost-effective,
timely,
practical
or safe response to climate change, and applauding the enormous
expansion
of the use of renewable energy and the significant strides
made in recent years to
phase out nuclear power;

Acknowledging
the need for sustainable development and responsible
environmental
stewardship;

Recognizing
the unique health, environmental and social dangers present at all
stages
of the nuclear chain, from the exploration, mining and milling
of uranium, to nuclear
power generation, the development of nuclear
weapons and the storage of radioactive
waste;

Recognizing that
the risk of contamination resulting from the extraction, use and
storage
of radioactive substances presents a unique and grave threat to all
living
creatures, their environments and watersheds, transcending all
political and geographic
boundaries and enduring for eons to
come;

Recognizing
that there are stores of radioactive waste throughout the world that
have
not been effectively isolated;

Recognizing that there is
compelling scientific evidence that there is no safe dose of
exposure
to radioactive emissions, and that even small doses can present health
risks
to miners and local populations, animals and plant
life;

Recognizing
that more must be done to understand, recognize and acknowledge the
full
scope and extent of all social, health and environmental short and long
term impacts
of uranium and nuclear-related activities on human
life, wildlife and plant life;

Recognizing both that the
technological development of nuclear energy opens the door
to the
development of nuclear weapons against which there is no effective
protection,
and that nuclear power generation facilities present a
serious threat in and of
themselves;

Insisting that nuclear
regulating bodies be independent and work solely in the best
interests
of people, animals and plant life;

Recalling the tragedies at
Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima Daiichi and many
other places
around the world;

Convinced that all non-military end-uses of
uranium, including medical uses, can be
readily satisfied in an
alternative manner;

Insisting that nuclear weapons and those
using depleted uranium be criminalized and
that all signatories be
held accountable to the obligations set out in the
Non-Proliferation
Treaty;

Appalled
by the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, alarmed by
the
maintenance
and proliferation of nuclear arsenals, and convinced that the
devastating
consequences of nuclear detonations can be avoided only
when all nuclear weapons
and the systems that manufacture them have
been eliminated;

Affirming that it is in the interest of the
survival of humanity and of life on this planet
that nuclear weapons
are never used again, under any circumstances;

Recognizing that
those most immediately affected by uranium and nuclear related
activities
often lack proper capacity and resources and that, as a result, such
activities
infringe their fundamental human rights to life and
security of the person;

Affirming our commitment to the
principles of sustainable and equitable development,
and respect for
the fundamental human rights of all individuals and peoples for all
time;

Acknowledging that unique and irreplaceable cultures and
landscapes have been and
continue to be endangered by uranium and
nuclear related activities;

Acknowledging that the world’s
Indigenous Peoples have disproportionately borne the
harmful burdens
of the global uranium industry, nuclear activities (including
nuclear
testing)
and the dumping of radioactive waste;

Recalling that the United
Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
affirms the
rights of the world’s Indigenous Peoples to self-determination, and
to
territorial,
social and environmental integrity which includes free, prior and
informed
consent achieved through an independent, fair, transparent
and impartial process, and
recognizing that the survival and
well-being of Indigenous Peoples depends on full
respect for these
fundamental and inalienable rights;

Determined to reduce the
burden on future generations resulting from the extraction
and use of
radioactive substances;

Dedicating ourselves to a nuclear-free
future;

WE SOLEMNLY DECLARE THAT:

1. We reaffirm the
Declaration of the World Uranium Hearing in Salzburg, Austria in
1992,
of the Indigenous World Uranium Summit in Window Rock, Navajo Nation,
USA
in 2006, and of the IPPNW-World Conference in Basel, Switzerland in
2010:
Uranium and all radioactive substances must remain in their
natural location.

2. We demand a worldwide ban on uranium
exploration, mining, milling and
processing, as well as the
reprocessing of nuclear waste, and the irresponsible
management of
radioactive waste;

3. We call on all states, authorities and
Peoples to recognize and respect the rights of
Indigenous Peoples
including the right to self-determination and to free prior and
informed
consent achieved through an independent, fair, transparent and
impartial
process, and to cease the pursuit of uranium- and
nuclear-related activities on
Indigenous Peoples’ lands in violation
of these rights;

4. We urge all states, authorities and Peoples
to provide full, fair and equitable redress
to all those harmed by
uranium- and nuclear-related activities and to ensure that
those
responsible are held accountable for their actions and failures;

5.
We demand that all states, authorities and Peoples phase out and
eliminate nuclear
power generation and use, and dedicate themselves
to the development and use of
intelligent energy services based on
sustainable, safe and renewable energy resources;

6. We call on
all states, authorities and Peoples to strengthen their commitments
to
nuclear
non-proliferation and disarmament, to eliminate all existing nuclear
weaponry,
to cease any and all development of nuclear weapon
technologies, and to support and
advance a legal treaty to ban all
nuclear weapons;

7. We call on all states, authorities and
Peoples to ensure that all existing radioactive
products, material
and structures from all phases of the nuclear weapons and power
systems
are secured and managed in accordance with the best and safest
available
technology for the people, animals and plant life.

To
endorse this resolution go to the link below:

class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://uranium2015.com/en/news/quebec-declaration-uranium">http://uranium2015.com/en/news/quebec-declaration-uranium

2015-04-19T02:06:00.002-07:00

Rise in wildfires may resurrect

Chernobyl's radiation

11:35 09 February 2015 by Debora MacKenzie

Fallout from the world's worst nuclear accident just won't go away. Radioactive clouds may once again spread
over Europe, as rising fires release radiation locked up in the upper layers of soil in the dense forests near
Chernobyl in Ukraine and Belarus

Forest fires there have already been re-distributing that radioactivity over Europe. But the situation is set to
worsen with climate change, political instability – and a bizarre effect of radiation on dead leaves.

After a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded in 1986, people were evacuated from 4800 square
kilometres of the most heavily contaminated areas in Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus.
This "exclusion zone" became ahaven for wildlife and a dense boreal forest.

Nikolaos Evangeliou at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research and colleagues have analysed the impact of
forest fires in the region, and calculated their future frequency and intensity. To do so they fed satellite
images of real fires in 2002, 2008 and 2010, and measurements of radioactive caesium-137 deposited
on the area, to models of air movements and fires.

They estimate that of the 85 petabecquerels of radioactive caesium released by the Chernobyl accident,
between 2 and 8 PBq still lurk in the upper layer of soil in the exclusion zone. In another ecosystem this
might gradually fall with erosion or the removal of vegetation. But in these abandoned forests,
says Evangeliou, "trees pick up the radioactive ions, then dead leaves return it to the soil".

Radioactive smoke

The team calculates that the three fires released from 2 to 8 per cent of the caesium, some 0.5 PBq,
in smoke. This was distributed over eastern Europe, and detected as far south as Turkey and as far west
as Italy and Scandinavia.

"The simulation probably underestimates the potential risks," says Ian Fairlie, former head of the
UK government's radiation risk committee, who has studied the health impacts of Chernobyl.
That's because the estimate depends on the half-life the team assumed for Cs-137, he says,
and some investigators believe it is longer.

The team's calculated release would have given people in the nearby Ukrainian capital, Kiev, an average
dose of 10 microsieverts of radiation – 1 per cent of the permitted yearly dose. "This is very small," says
Tim Mousseau of the University of South Carolina at Columbia, a co-author of the study. "But these fires
serve as a warning of where these contaminants can go. Should there be a larger fire, quite a bit more
could end up on populated areas."

And the average dose isn't the problem. Some people will get much more, as fires dump radioactive
strontium, plutonium and americium as well as caesium unevenly, and as some foods concentrate these
heavy metals, for example caesium in mushrooms. "The internal dose from ingestion can be significant,"
says Mousseau. The resulting cancers might be hard to spot among many other less-exposed people.
"But they will be very significant for those who experience them."

Increased forest fires seem likely. The area is due to get drier, according to the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. The team found thatdroughts are already worsening forest fires in both area
and intensity, and those are predicted to worsen.

This may be down to a range of factors, including lack of management of the forests. Most forests are
managed by removing dead trees, clearing roads or cutting fire breaks but this isn't being done here.
Moreover, dead vegetation that fuels fires is accumulating at a rate that has doubled since 1986, the team says.

Insect killer?

This is partly because the radiation itself seems to inhibit the decay of leaf litter, perhaps because it kills
key insects or microorganisms. "We brought litter from an uncontaminated zone into a contaminated
area and found it decayed only half as fast," says Evangeliou.

The models predict peaks of forest fires between 2023 and 2036. By 2060, fires might continue, but much
of the radioactive fallout will have decayed away.

To cap it all, once a fire starts, local fire-fighters in Ukraine have seven times fewer crews and equipment per
1000 hectares than elsewhere in the country – a situation unlikely to improve given the ongoing conflict.
The UN Environment Programme is installing video surveillance for fires, but much of the forest is
inaccessible or slow to reach due to blocked roads. "It's like a jungle in there," says Evangeliou.

"This is clearly an important problem and one that applies also to Fukushima, where a significant amount
of forest land has been contaminated," says Keith Baverstock of the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio,
formerly head of radiation protection at the World Health Organization's European office. "They have a very
valid point. The lack of management of forests, the apparently slower decay of vegetation exposed to
radiation, climate change leading to drought and the expansion of forested areas all contribute to increasing
the risk of forest fire and therefore further dispersal of long-lived radioactive nuclides."

The actual amount of radioactivity redistributed by the recent fires is about a tenth of what was deposited
on Europe in 1986, and its health effects are still a matter of debate among epidemiologists.
But long-lived emitters of radioactivity persist and accumulate, so any dose is bad news, says Mousseau.
"A growing body of information supports the idea that there is no threshold below which they have no effect."

Journal reference: Ecological Monographs, DOI: 10.1890/14-1227.1

2015-04-19T01:34:00.000-07:00

Stop Hinkley takes the message to Brussels: ‘No Subsidies For New Nuclear Power Plants’

Report by Jo Smoldon

Stop Hinkley were invited to Brussels to take part in a demonstration on the 24th March. It took place at the EU headquarters and our Euro MEP Molly Scott Cato joined the list of speakers who inspired us. We were thrilled to be invited as it was important for us to be there and represent our Stop Hinkley campaign, which was central for the other participant's presentations. Molly spoke of Stop Hinkley's long standing commitment to the anti-nuclear campaign in Somerset over 30 years and acknowledged our presence and perseverance.

The demo was outside the EU headquarters and our Euro MP Molly Scott Cato joined the list of speakers who inspired us. We were thrilled to be invited and to take part – it was important for us to be there and represent our Stop Hinkley campaign which was central for the other participant's presentations.

Many countries and anti-nuclear groups were represented including Austria , Holland , Belgium and Germany . It was affirming that all of these people were there for us too, different groups coming together in a united way, with common cause, across all our different languages. It gave great strength to us all.

An Austrian speaker's informative talk highlighted the 1957 Euratom treaty which the EU countries all signed in support of nuclear. Austria sees today that this needs to be updated and for nuclear power to be removed. One solution is for individual countries to pull out from the Euratom treaty, perhaps Luxembourg and Austria , and then encourage Germany to pull out. Hopefully others will follow to undermine the dictating Euratom treaty.

Peter Smith, a Stop Hinkley supporter who spent many years working in a very senior position at Hinkley, spoke from the heart about his journey from Hinkley Point worker to anti-nuclear campaigner. The audience fell silent listening to the details of his life experience revealing the delusion, denial, and danger leading to disaster and destruction from the nuclear industry. His shock when he realised that the industry has never confessed to its employees that the finances won't ever add up. The money needed for decommissioning and waste storage is never costed into the nuclear energy production. Nuclear workers are continuously being deceived!

There are many in Europe asking about the UK government and wondering what is going to happen in the forthcoming elections. One speaker, when looking at the attitudes to energy provision comparing nuclear to renewables, described Cameron as not only a donkey in the horse race, but a dead donkey!

Molly spoke of Stop Hinkley's long standing commitment to the anti-nuclear campaign in Somerset over 30 years and acknowledged our presence and perseverance.

The power network was talked about. In the South West the spare capacity is already allocated to Hinkley on the grid and renewables have been left with no possibility to feed in. Is there a strategy in DECC? Businesses are being told that no intermediate renewable sized projects can be approved, only small domestic ones.

We heard about various other reactors around Europe . In Austria , although they finished a nuclear power station, they decided never to switch it on.

Inspiration was given when it was revealed that last year in Germany energy saving technology has meant that in a year 5% of their energy has been saved. That just shows how, by simply looking at what we are doing, from individuals to big companies, everyone can make a difference to the energy total that is required.

The Belgium speaker told of the 18cm cracks in their reactor and again it was highlighted the importance of individuals investing in renewables.

As the different countries told their stories, no one could miss the fact that the two countries pushing for nuclear are UK and France . This is due to the nuclear weapons facility for Europe being subsidised ad infinitum. As always, the weapons issue was mentioned. It has underpinned the need for nuclear power from the beginning.

Everyone pledged to get more signatures on the petition against the illegal subsidy for nuclear. Subsidy and waste needing £billions to keep it safe, goes on and on and on and on…..so must our determination to stop it. https://www.ews-schoenau.de/campaign

2015-03-13T06:04:00.000-07:00

STAND against Oldbury

14th Newsletter

www.standagainstoldbury.org           July 2014

Wrong technology, wrong place, better ways to power our future

STAND is at present trying to find ways to get the people of Bristol aware of the plans for new Oldbury - and all the problems connected with it.

In October we will be taking part in Nationally organised events to highlight the issue of Nuclear waste.

In the meantime, here is some national and International news.

Government showing desperation in trying to solve problem of nuclear waste storage.

This week the Government has said that communities could be paid millions of pounds just to consider having a facility to bury nuclear waste in their area.

Community projects could receive payments of up to £1 million a year if local people engage with officials about developing a geological disposal facility to permanently store underground the radioactive waste from nuclear power, industry and defence.

The figure would rise to £2.5 million a year if drilling of bore-holes to assess the suitability of a site went ahead - money that would be "no strings attached" as the community would still not be tied in to hosting a site.

However, alongside the bribes, the Government has removed a local council’s right to stop the process, as it is no longer possible for any one, single, layer of government to refuse to host the waste, as happened at Cumbria, making a mockery of any attempt at consultation.

With the process of talking to communities and investigating sites taking up to two decades, communities could be paid more than £40 million without committing to accepting a £12 billion nuclear waste facility - with increased payments if it gets the go-ahead.

The Government said going ahead with a facility, would be paid for by the taxpayer and take 100 years to plan, construct, fill and seal off.

Greenpeace UK energy campaigner Louise Hutchins said: "This is a bullying and bribing approach by a government that is getting desperate about solving this problem.

"First David Cameron reneged on his promises not to allow new nuclear reactors until the problem of waste disposal was solved. Now he's resorting to bribing reluctant communities just to talk about nuclear waste whilst stripping them of the right to veto it.

"A better use of this money and political will would be to spend it on the proven clean energy technologies that don't require thousands of years and billions of pounds to clean up."

STAND steering group hold meeting with Chris Gifford

Last week a group of STAND members had a very useful meeting with the author of books on Nuclear Power and a retired Health and Safety Executive chief for engineering. The key points he talked about were:

·      Most people are not aware of a lack of evacuation plans and the fact you can not insure your home against radiation.

·      The safety review following Fukushima has done nothing to protect us against a similar accident. The only difference is that emergency plans have been extended from 2 to 2.5 km where the limit goes through an area of population.

·      The Government is still planning for 10 new nuclear stations.

·      The nuclear lobby is powerful and self perpetuating through bodies such as Royal Society of Engineers.

·      The Health and Safety Executive for NP has now become the Office for Nuclear Regulation. ONR is paid for by the nuclear industry while being the only safety overseer. There is concern that ONR is bringing in a new culture, which includes "supporting economic growth", while still "holding industry to account".

International news

·      Fukushima – The water problem - Too much water

For nearly 40 months now, water has been poured down through the three reactors at Fukushima which suffered melt-downs in the March 2011 disaster. This is in order to prevent them again heating up causing the cores to again become molten and start flowing; and nuclear fission reactions to restart, resulting in the release of yet more high-level radiation.

It’s been reported that as much as 300 tonnes of water has to be poured through the three reactors daily. The trouble with this is that the water becomes radioactive in passing through the reactors, so it can’t just be allowed to run into the sea. This water could be recycled through the reactors but this would mean that this water will just become more and more radioactive.

To prevent all this radioactive water contaminating the Pacific, the only present method seems to be to store it in an ever-increasing number of tanks, where it will presumably have to stay until some better way of dealing with it is found or until its radiation level drops sufficiently for it to be considered “safe” to let it flow into the sea, say in a few thousand years time. As there is in fact no safe level for radiation – it has been shown by reputable scientists that any increase in radiation level means an increase in the risk of some cancers - any so-called “safe” level is an arbitrary matter. Indeed the officially safe level of radiation has itself been raised in Japan since the disaster.

In addition many of these tanks have proved inadequate for storage even for a short time and have sprung leaks or have become over-filled by mistake and all this lost radioactive water inevitably flows into the nearby Pacific.

TEPCO has used unroofed tanks, so rainwater has also fallen into the tanks which has also caused them to overflow.

Fukushima was built in the path of a stream and this is responsible for sending some 100 more tonnes of water into the site daily to mix with the radioactive water already swilling around the site. This year TEPCO started doing something about this, by trying to divert this stream of water round the site and into the Pacific without passing through it. But since this water is presumably not itself markedly radioactive this does little to reduce the amount of radiation on the site, all is does at best is to lower by some 25% the volume of radioactive water having to be stored on the site while ceasing to dilute its radioactivity.

The water won’t freeze !

In September 2013, TEPCO announced it planned to build an underground « ice wall » by pumping super-cooled calcium chloride into a line of wells it was to dig. It was hoped this would prevent radioactive water from the site seeping into the Pacific.

However this June TEPCO had to admit that they couldn’t get the water to freeze. The problem seemingly is the continual spread of wastewater through the site…

·      US study – over-use of water

A report from the US Department of Energy entitled “The Water-Energy Nexus: Challenges and Opportunities” (published 18th June) argued that US « water stress » may drive a shift to more wind and solar power generation to conserve water.

It found thermoelectric power, including gas, coal and nuclear, was responsible for 40% of all US freshwater use and that among thermoelectric generation technologies, nuclear power was the most dependent on water, withdrawing around 45,000 gallons/MWh.

Furthermore there was a risky mutual dependence between energy and water, with energy needed to pump, treat and transport water, while water is needed to cool electricity generating equipment in thermal power plants such as gas, coal and nuclear ones.

And, the report argued, climate change would exacerbate these mutual risks. Climate change would be likely to involve shifts in rainfall and water temperatures and these would be likely to lead to more regional variations in water availability. Also rising temperatures had the potential to increase demand for electricity for cooling.

Indeed the effects of this have already been felt, it said : «When severe drought affected more than a third of the United States in 2012, limited water availability constrained the operation of some power plants and other energy production activities.»

Solutions to this included less water-intensive forms of power generation including wind and solar photovoltaic power; greater efficiency of fossil fuel generation; and the use of alternative water supplies, ranging from “produced water” in oil and gas extraction to solar-powered desalination.

The report calculated that the U.S. energy mix was already moving in the right direction, towards using less water, as result of rising wind and solar power generation replacing coal. It said, “While more than 90% of the (power generating) capacity set to retire requires cooling, only 45% of the planned additional capacity requires cooling,” referring to expected additions and retirements up to the end of 2017.

·      France cutting Nuclear Power

President Hollande pledged during his 2012 election campaign that he would reduce France’s reliance on nuclear for electricity production from its present roughly 75% to 50%. He seems intent to carry out this policy - on 18^th June a draft energy policy was announced to do just that…by 2025.

Initially the plan would be to cap energy at present levels, ruling out installing any new nuclear plants that would raise nuclear electricity output above the current 63.2GW. This would mean EDF would have to close some existing capacity before connecting the under-construction Flamanville plant to the grid. The policy’s commitment to reduce France’s dependence on nuclear electricity from 75% to 50% by 2025 would of course require many more of France’s present 58 reactors to be shut down.

However, the French energy and environment minister Ségolène Royal told a news conference that: "We won't exit nuclear, that's not the choice we're making. » She said the aim was rather to diversify energy sources. Part of this would be to increase generation of electricity from renewables from the present 20% to 40% by 2030.

To return to the water question, France itself was forced to suspend the operation of many of its nuclear power stations in 2012 when a drought meant many rivers were too low to supply all the water needed for cooling purposes for the stations. In France as in the US, but unlike in Britain, most nuclear power stations are built inland, using water from rivers or lakes for cooling.

Nuclear Train derails

On June 17th, a diesel locomotive drawing a carriage loaded with highly-radioactive spent nuclear fuel rods from HMS Talent derailed in Devonport Navy Dockyard. The submarine was there for a refit and the spent fuel rods were on their way to Sellafield in Cumbria for reprocessing or storage.

Nuclear Veterans fight on

The Supreme Court hearing  intended to address the question of "Limitation" and qualification for Nuclear Verteran claimants from the UK, NZ, Fiji, and Australian, was lost by the most narrow of votes a - 4 to 3 majority. But the Supreme Court verdict has not closed down the nuclear test veterans campaign .

The Supreme Court verdict is regarded as inherently unsafe because the prime causal link to ill health from genetic damage arising from inhaled / ingested radiation (alpha and beta particles) has not been allowed to be presented in court .

Nuclear test victims in Australia, including the indigenous aboriginal populations victims of downwind fall out, as with armed forces personnel of Commonwealth nations who participated in the British nuclear test experiments, would show significant elevated chromosomal translocations in their DNA if cytogenetically blood tested. This was recognized and demanded by Senator Lynn Alison but the UK government and the nuclear industrial protectionist Australian government preferred instead to hide behind the manipulated epidemiological Adelaide University study which, without any cytogenetic blood analysis of victims, could not show the inherent genetic damage and subsequent legacy ill health in those who were present in the fall out zones. The US government on the other hand compensate not only their veterans who attended fall out locations but also their civilians downwind of US mainland nuclear weapon test locations.

The UK and Australian governments are clearly lagging behind in the moral and ethical stakes regarding persons exposed to ionising radiation and have much catching up to do.

STAND member and speaker Dennis Hayden still works tirelessly on this issue.

It may be hard to protest against Nuclear in the UK – but at least we can !

The Russian organization Ecodefense, who are actively involved in our anti-nuclear networks, and who successfully campaigned against Baltic NPP and uranium waste transports from Germany to Russia, has been declared a "foreign agent" by the Russian Ministry of Justice about two weeks ago. Currently they are appealing against this punishment.

At the same time a case against the Murmansk human rights group "Humanistic Youth Movement" (GDM) started in court. It is also about "foreign agent" persecution. Activists of GDM are involved in the Nuclear Heritage Network and in projects like NukeNews and ATOMIC BALTIC.

A classification as "foreign agent" virtually means the closure of the affected NGO. It is almost impossible to continue work with this stigmatisation.

All the more reason for us to be active while we can!!

Please email barbara@standagainstoldbury.org or ring 01291 689327 to offer help.

Best wishes,

Barbara, for STAND against Oldbury

2015-03-13T05:58:00.000-07:00

NIS Update: September - October 2014

Contents of this month's NIS Update newsletter from Nuclear Information Service:

Rolls-Royce fined £200,000 after workers exposed to radiation.

Ministry of Defence uses trucks which should have been scrapped five years ago to transport nuclear materials.

Environment Agency raps Atomic Weapons Establishment over radioactive waste management staff shortages.

'Stop work' notice issued following safety concerns during refit work on nuclear powered submarine HMS Trenchant at Devonport dockyard.

Navy staff shortages leave one in ten submarine crew posts unfilled.

Consultation to commence on storage sites for submarine radioactive wastes.

USA consolidates its influence over UK warhead programme with appointment of new AWE Director.

Environment Agency probes AWE on future of the Pangbourne Pipeline.

UK military expenditure set to fall below NATO target of two per cent.

Rolls-Royce fined £200,000 after workers exposed to radiation

The company that builds nuclear reactors which power the Royal Navy's fleet of submarines has been fined £200,000 for breaches of safety and environmental laws following an incident in which members of staff were exposed to radiation.  Read more.

Ministry of Defence uses trucks which should have been scrapped five years ago to transport nuclear materials

Cargoes of highly radioactive military nuclear materials are being transported along British roads in ageing Ministry of Defence (MoD) trucks which are regularly experiencing breakdowns and safety shortfalls because of delays in arranging for new vehicles to take over their duties.  Read more.

Environment Agency raps Atomic Weapons Establishment over radioactive waste management staff shortages

The factory that manufactures the UK's nuclear weapons has been rapped by a government regulatory agency for the second time this year for failings in radioactive waste management arrangements.  Read more.

'Stop work' notice issued following safety concerns during refit work on nuclear powered submarine HMS Trenchant at Devonport dockyard

Concerns about emergency response arrangements resulted in a 'stop work' notice being issued for refit work on a nuclear powered submarine at Devonport naval dockyard earlier this year, according to a report published by the government's nuclear safety regulator.  Read more.

Navy staff shortages leave one in ten submarine crew posts unfilled

New figures released by the government reveal that more than one in ten posts are vacant across the Royal Navy's nuclear powered submarine fleet, raising concerns about risks to safety.  Read more.

Consultation to commence on storage sites for submarine radioactive wastes

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is set to begin public consultation this autumn to identify a location for the storage of radioactive waste from the Royal Navy's out-of-service nuclear submarines.  Read more.

USA consolidates its influence over UK warhead programme with appointment of new AWE Director

AWE plc, the company which runs the Atomic Weapons Establishment, has announced that its new Managing Director is to be Kevin Bilger – an American citizen from the USA's Lockheed Martin Corporation, one of the three parent companies which comprise the AWE consortium.  Read more.

Environment Agency probes AWE on future of the Pangbourne Pipeline

The Environment Agency has met with the Atomic Weapons Establishment to discuss decommissioning of the Pangbourne Pipeline, formerly used for the disposal of radioactive effluent from the AWE Aldermaston site.  Read more.

UK military expenditure set to fall below NATO target of two per cent

A new study by the Royal United Services Institute indicates that Britain's defence spending will for the first time fall below a NATO target of 2 per cent of GDP in 2015 – at the same time that the government is urging other European nations to meet the target.  Read more.

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2015-03-13T05:43:00.002-07:00

Oldbury and Berkley nuclear power stations site stakeholder meeting

November 5th 2014

Thornbury Golf Centre

Oldbury

Fifty percent of the fuel has been removed from the two reactors

comprising 26,000 fuel elements.

Oldbury nuclear power station is now shipping flasks at the rate of two or three per week

by road to Berkley, then by rail from there on.

They estimate that they will send a further 175 flasks to Sellafield

with the last flask leaving Oldbury in 2016.

In the power station the fuel elements are clad in steel.

As they are taken out of the power station the cladding is removed

under water, to protect the workers.

The steel cladding is then sent to Berkley, where it has been sent for the past 45 years.

The cladding, (fuel element debris or FED) which is classified as intermediate level radioactive waste,

has been dumped, together with the boronated steel control rods, in underground vaults on the Berkley site up until now.

Berkley has now decided to remove this intermediate level radioactive waste

from the vaults mechanically and transport it to enormous onsite storage sheds.

Stroud College has agreed to invest money in renovating an old rig hall and a range of office buildings on the Berkley site

to transform it into a college: South Gloucestershire and Stroud (SGS) and Berkley Green College. The NDA has given the college a 999 year lease.

When I asked what was green about it, I was told that Green stands for Gloucestershire Renewable Energy Engineering and Nuclear !!!

When I asked what sort of renewable technology they would be teaching I was told that the building itself would embed renewables:

PV, ground source heat pumps but no wind because people don't like wind !!!

This college will cater for 14 year olds, as a technical college, or free school.

They need £10 million for this. Then they need a further £8 million for the degree courses in engineering, manufacturing and construction.

There is also funding for PhDs in:

radionuclide characterisation, waste, packaging and storage, land quality, decommissioning, spent fuel and nuclear material;

i.e. anything that is of benefit to the NDAs mission.

They don't mention any renewable research subject (so no surprise there).

Meanwhile Oldbury continues to discharge radioactive waste water into the Severn from its fuel ponds.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which owns the sites, contracts them out to a Parent Body,

in this case a consortium of two companies: Cavendish and Fluor,

Caverndish is the name given to Babcock, a company that employs 27000 employees and is involved in airports, energy, mining, property, rail, training and nukes.

For some reason they are not allowed to use the name Babcock while contracted out by the NDA.

Fluor is an American firm with an annual turnover of £12 billion. Cavendish and Fluor second in personnel to manage Oldbury and Berkley.

These personnel comprise the site licence company (SLC) and are regulated by the regulators.

Who the regulators are was not made clear, whether another private company or whether government controlled.

The boilers from Berkley nuclear power station were sent to Sweden to be smelted.

Dungoness and Bradwell have fuel element debris dissolution plants. I wonder what they do with the dissolved fuel element debris . . .

Berkley, on the other hand, just stores them.

Berkley publishes a graph showing annual discharges of radioactive aerosols from their reactors, which were put into safe storage in 2010.

They don't actually measure the tritium and carbon 14 but base their estimates on temperature and pressure.

I wonder how they measure the tritium and carbon 14 emissions from Oldbury . .

2015-03-13T05:33:00.000-07:00

May/June 2012

In this issue:

R adiation in Kyrgyzstan's Schools

India: Small Project, Big Potential

The T oxic Sites Identification Program

Small Research Grants

World Meeting on Pollution in Bellagio

From The Pollution Blog:

Filtering Radiation Out of Water in Kyrgyzstan's Schools

Recent news reports that fish caught off the coast of Southern California contained radiation from Japan's damaged Fukushima
nuclear plant illustrates the great distances that some toxic substances can travel.

If radioactive particles (albeit small doses not enough to cause health concerns) can journey some 6,000 miles across the ocean, imagine what the town of Mailuu-Suu is like? When local children turn on the tap in their schools, they get water highly contaminated with radiation.

That is because Mailuu-Suu, in Kyrgyzstan, is located downstream from an old uranium mine with piles of toxic radioactive waste left exposed to the elements. Here, the potent pollutant only needs to travel a few miles to reach the town. Mailuu-Suu was on Blacksmith's first-ever list of world's worst polluted places.

For decades, piles of radioactive waste in Mailuu-Suu have been slowly leaching into the ground, contaminating the land and water, and sickening its 20,000 residents.
Moreover, with each earthquake or heavy rain, there is a danger that a catastrophic landslide will block the river next to the dumpsites, cause a flood, and spread radiation throughout large parts of Kygryzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Data collected over 17 years show a clear correlation between cancer and congenital diseases with the level of life-threatening pollution in the town.

While the World Bank works on a long-term plan to protect the dumpsites from flooding, Blacksmith is reducing the risks to the most vulnerable residents by placing water filters in the town's hospital and schools. The cartridge in each filter is designed to remove toxins for three years. However in Mailuu-Suu, the extraordinary level of contamination renders the cartridges useless in just nine months.

This year, Blacksmith is returning to install filters in three additional schools and replace cartridges in older filters. Since 2008 when the program began, levels of radioactive elements in the water have decreased by between 48% and 65% in the hospital and schools where filters were installed.

2015-03-13T05:26:00.000-07:00

Kyrgyzstan's uranium wastes: solution still elusive

Published Date: 11-05-2009
Source Date: 08-05-2009

It's been declared one of the world's ten "worst polluted" places, by the US-based Blacksmith Institute (reporting in 2006). See: http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=845

The abandoned uranium tailings piles and plants in Kyrgyzstan - particularly around the town of Mailii-Suu - continue to defy adequate arrangements for neutralising their present dangers and to prevent future disaster.

The dire situation has been covered on the MAC website over the past six years. See: http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=1859

In December 2008 we reported that there was no consensus among the 'experts' as to whether these deadly wastes should be removed or 'stabilised' in situ:http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=8957

Following a conference held in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, earlier this month, which was organised by the UNDP and the government, the first option now seems to have been dropped.

Kyrgyzstan Drafts Plan to Address Soviet-Era Uranium Waste

ENS

7th May 2009

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - Radioactive dust, contaminated groundwater and toxic landslides and floods threaten more than a million people in Central Asia, warned experts at a conference last week.

The radioactive threat stems from 92 toxic waste sites in Kyrgyzstan that contain tailings, or waste, from uranium mining during the Soviet era.

In addition to Kyrgyzstan, neighboring Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are also vulnerable to the radioactive material.

"The state of these tailings, which contain large amounts of highly toxic wastes of uranium - over the tens of years since the shutdown of the facilities, has significantly worsened,"Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiev cautioned in a speech at the conference.

Entitled, "Uranium tailings: local problems, regional consequences, global solutions," the conference was initiated by the Kyrgyz government and was organized with assistance of the UN Development Programme in the Kyrgyz Republic.

The waste sites are relics of the time when the former Soviet Union mined the uranium for use in its nuclear arsenal. Now the sites are an ongoing hazard in the region.

The small town of Mailii-Suu, in the south of Kyrgyzstan, for instance, is marred by two million cubic meters of radioactive waste buried alongside a river flowing through the Ferghana Valley, the most populated and fertile area in Central Asia.

"The USSR's first atomic bomb was made from Mailuu-Suu's uranium," said Torgoev Isakbek Asangalievich, a scientist at Kyrgyzstan's National Academy of Science.

Now, landslides and earthquakes threaten to wash huge quantities of uranium waste into the Ferghana Valley's Syr Darya River.

The poorly guarded sites are visited by local villagers in search of scrap. In one recent incident, three Chinese tourists bought depleted uranium at a flea market in Kyrgyzstan hoping to resell the radioactive material as a souvenir.

Uranium mining towns also have suffered setbacks and pose development challenges since there are few economic opportunities for the people living there. In some areas, women and children graze livestock in contaminated areas.

"Tailings and dump sites are a wonderful place for livestock grazing with lots of grass," said Zharas Takenov, an environmental program officer with the UN Development Programme. "Tailings are covered with flat squares which are also well fit for children's football matches."

Experts worry that earthquakes and related landslides or mudslides could spread the radioactive material to rivers, contaminating the groundwater in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan andUzbekistan.

Currently, the uranium tailings are loosely contained in impounding areas and dams.

Takenov warns that an inventory of the condition of these dams has not been conducted in 30 years.

In response to these issues, the Kyrgyzstan government has partnered with the UN Development Programme to work towards proper management of dangerous sites, countermeasures such as recycling and raising public awareness.

Funding for such programs is also critical, particularly in view of the global economic downturn. At the moment, the UNDP estimates roughly US$42 million is needed to rehabilitate the radioactive waste sites and minimize the regional environmental threats.

In 2004, the World Bank approved a seven-year, $6.9 million project to minimize the exposure of people and livestock to radiation from abandoned uranium mine tailings and waste rock dumps in the area around Mailuu-Suu.

Two of the project components are the stabilization of large landslide areas and a program of capacity building to improve the national system for disaster management, preparedness and response. The third component is the establishment of real-time monitoring and warning systems at major landslide areas in Mailuu-Suu and other key hazard areas. That project closes in 2010.

Based on the outcome of the Bishkek conference discussions, a framework document setting forth a plan for future action will be developed for presentation during the International Forum on Uranium Tailings on June 29 in Geneva, which was initiated by President Bakiev.

The plan of action also will be used in the subsequent bilateral and multilateral negotiations between Central Asian nations and donors, international organizations and the private sector. These talks will center on attracting the necessary financial and technological assistance and direct investments to deal with the 92 toxic radioactive waste sites in Kyrgyzstan.

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Sellafield Horrow

2014-11-08T03:18:00.000-08:00

Whistle-blower’s photos lay bare risk of disaster as expert warns it's another Fukushima waiting to happen

Abandoned nuclear waste lying in rotting containers in decaying tanks which are open to the elements

These photos of highly radioactive waste in crumbling ponds proves Sellafield is a Fukushima-like nuclear disaster waiting to happen on our doorstep.
These alarming images show nuclear waste abandoned 40 years ago lying in rotting containers in decaying tanks which are open to the elements.
While Sellafield portrays itself as a modern facility using latest technology the photos paint a picture of wanton neglect and reckless management of the most toxic substance ever created.
The images were leaked by a concerned worker who wanted the world to know parts of the plant – which is nearly 70 years old – are falling apart.

Rusty and corroded pipes and tanks at Sellafield

The concrete walls of tanks where waste was abandoned in the 1970s are crumbling raising fears of a nuclear catastrophe just 200km from Dublin.
If the ponds drain, the spent fuel can spontaneously ignite spreading radiation over a wide area.

SellafieldPond2012.jpg

Such a disaster would call for mass evacuations along our east coast and a Chernobyl-like permanent exclusion zone in contaminated areas.

Sitting ducks..one of the abandoned nuclear ponds at Sellafield

Nuclear exert John Large fears a massive radioactive leak.
He told The Ecologist website: “Looking at the photos I’m very disturbed at the degraded and rundown condition of the structures and support services. In my opinion there is a significant risk the system could fail.
“I’d say there’s many hundreds of tonnes in there. It could give rise to a very big radioactive release.
“It’s not for me to make comparisons with Chernobyl or Fukushima, but it could certainly cause serious contamination over a wide area and for a very long time.”
The alarming photos show cracked concrete tanks half-full of water contaminated with high levels of radiation.
On the walkways around the tanks lies a dangerous mess of discarded pipes and equipment while weeds grow from crevices in the cracked concrete.

Alarm bells...Corroded pipes at Sellafield Nuclear Plant

Seagulls regularly land in the deadly contaminated water and carry it on their bodies when they fly off.
In one picture a gull has made its nest a metre above the radioactive soup.
John Large added: “This pond is built above ground. It’s like a concrete dock full of water.”
But the concrete is in dreadful condition, degraded and fractured and Mr Large, warned: “If you got a breach of the wall by accident or by terrorist attack, the Magnox fuel would burn.”
The tanks were commissioned in 1952 and used until the mid 1970s as a short-term storage facility for spent fuel.
But as the photos show the entire area was abandoned in the 1970s and have had little or no attention in 40 years.

Plastic tanks inside the abandoned cooling pond are open to the elements

Decommissioning work has now started and “de-flocculation” of the water has made it possible to at last to see what is in the tanks. Until recently no one was sure what was stored below the water.
John Large said: “For the first time in decades we can see into the pond and see the contents, and it’s breathtaking.
“It’s all thanks to the whistleblower that I’m looking at them. If the Euratom inspectors could see what we can see now, my there would have been a row.”
A significant amount of the spent fuel was created during the oil crisis of the 1970s when Britain became more dependent on nuclear power
Mr Large told the Ecologist: “During the three-day week they powered up the Magnox reactors to maximum, and so much fuel was coming into Sellafield that it overwhelmed the line and stayed in the pool too long.

Lethal legacy...an aerial shot of nuclear waste at abandoned pond in Sellafield

“The magnesium fuel rod coverings corroded due to the acidity in the ponds, and began to degrade and expose the nuclear fuel itself to the water, so they just lost control of the reprocessing line at a time when the ponds were crammed with intensely radioactive nuclear fuel.
“This left the fuel in a very unstable condition, with actual nuclear fuel complete with uranium 238, 235 and all the fission products, in contact with water.
“The problem then is that you get corrosion with the formation of hydride salts which leads to swelling, outside cracks, and metal-air reactions.
“The whole fuel ponds began to look like milk of magnesia, and what with the poor inventories that had been kept, no one even knew what was in there any more.
“Even the Euratom nuclear proliferation inspectors complained about it as there was by some estimates over a tonne of plutonium sitting there in the fuel rods and as sludge that was never properly accounted for.”

Sellafield

The UK Office of Nuclear Regulation, the statutory nuclear safety regulator, told the Ecologist it does not intend to prosecute anyone for abandoning huge amounts of nuclear waste.
In a statement the ONR said: “The legacy facilities at Sellafield were built in the 1950s and 1960s and therefore don’t meet modern engineering standards.
“ONR is not considering enforcement action in relation to the complex historical chain of events leading to the current situation at Sellafield but instead is focusing, together with other key stakeholders, on accelerating the reduction of hazard and risk on site, and how we can do that quickly and safely.”

2014-11-08T03:15:00.001-08:00

Jonathon Porritt becomes Patron of Nuclear Information Service

By Nuclear Information Service

Date: 30 September 2014

Categories:

Media

Image credit: Forum for the Future

Nuclear Information Service (NIS) is delighted to announce that Jonathon Porritt has agreed to become a Patron of our organisation.

Jonathon will be the first of our Patrons, and will assist in raising NIS's profile, developing our networks, and acting as a figurehead for the organisation.

Jonathon is a co-founder of Forum for the Future, former director of Friends of the Earth UK (1984 – 1990), and a former co-chair of the Green Party (1980 – 1983). He stood down as Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission in July 2009 after nine years of providing high-level advice to government ministers, and was installed as the Chancellor of Keele University in February 2012. Jonathon received a CBE in January 2000 for services to environmental protection.

Jonathon Porritt commented, "I am delighted to have become Patron of Nuclear Information Service. I am looking forward to acting as an ambassador for NIS, who occupy a unique place in the nuclear disarmament arena by providing high quality, carefully researched information on nuclear weapons and related activities which is highly valued by the whole of the sector ".

Pete Wilkinson, NIS Director, said "We are very excited to be able to call on the expertise and patronage of Jonathon Porritt who is a leading figure and commentator on environmental issues including nuclear disarmament."

EDF START WORK ON HINKLEY C

2014-11-08T02:31:00.003-08:00

Witch Watch Full moon gathering at Hinkley Point STATEMENT

Edf are currently moving the largest diggers in Europe onto the Hinkley Point proposed C site- 60 tons and with a bucket big enough to hold a police riot van is the whisper. They are moving them onto site during the day and night and haven't announced it from fear that they will be road blocked... meanwhile they also have a delegation in China negotiating with 2 big companies there in order to give them juicy deals for HPC... No ethics, No humanity.. Money rules and the masses will suffer. And song birds are found in the most unlikely of places and will always sing in the face of those with misplaced morals who care only for there own wealth - which pays the way into a bankrupt and warped conscience.. These people wage war on the Mother planet that gives them life, believe they can conquer her and have no eyes to see the beauty under their noses, no foresight, compassion or love for the living, or for future generations

Firms envolved

Firms appointed to various roles on the mega-project include Laing O’Rourke, Bouygues, Costain, Kier, Bam Nuttall and Dean & Dyball, a subsidiary of Balfour Beatty.

Main construction work on the UK’s first nuclear power plant in a generation could begin as early as December, Building can reveal.

Contractors delivering the civils packages on EDF’s £16bn Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project are being told to prepare to start on site in December this year, according to market sources.

The news comes as the European Commission (EC) announced it was set to approve a deal between the developer and the UK government on how the project will be funded.

Building understands firms appointed to the project are being told the developer will make a “broad” final investment decision in November, after the project receives approval from the EC, which is expected next month.

Sources close to the project said firms building the plant were being told to prepare to start on site in the South-west in December.

Preparatory work on the site has been ramping up this month and will continue to increase in the run-up to December.

Hitachi's involvement in the design of Fukushima and proposed design of new nuclear in UK

2013-11-18T08:27:00.000-08:00

Toshiba And Hitachi - Building For Our Future.

Toshiba supplied the steam generator, architecture and reactor for Fukushima reactors nos 3 and 5

Hitachi supplied the reactor, steam generator and architecture for Fukushima reactor no 4

You can find a full list of all the companies which built the six Fukushima reactors at

http://nuctrans.org/Nuc_Trans/locations/daiichi/daiichi.htm

In 2012 Hitachi acquired Horizon Nuclear Power at Oldbury in Gloucestershire and Wylfa in Anglesey.

they plan to build new nuclear reactors at these two sites. Hitachi wants to build an advanced boiling water reactor, like the ones at Fukushima.

High alert at Fukushima

2013-11-17T04:38:00.003-08:00

Japan and nuclear power

The riskiest part yet of the Fukushima clean-up is soon to begin

Only don’t connect

AMONG the twisted metal and random debris that litter much of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, the fourth reactor looks in relatively good condition. A new structure covers the damage from a hydrogen explosion that blew its roof off days after a massive earthquake and tsunami hit the plant in March 2011. But the building is still unstable, and its spent-fuel storage pool highly dangerous. This month Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) will start plucking out over 1,500 radioactive rods from the pool in order to store them more safely. Over the pool a crane waits to start the procedure, and a yellow radiation alarm stands at the ready. Experts call the operation the riskiest stage of the plant’s clean-up so far.

Removing spent fuel is a routine task at all nuclear facilities, says Akira Ono, the plant’s manager. Engineers will have to take out each fuel assembly one by one without mishap, and overcome the risks of fire, earthquake and the pool boiling dry. The fuel rods can ignite if they lose coolant, or explode if they collide.

The rods are being moved just when trust in the utility that owns Fukushima Dai-ichi is at a low point. A series of leaks of highly radioactive water this year, and other dangerous accidents including a power cut in March—a rat chewed through the wiring—has brought it under fierce attack. In August the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said leaks of contaminated water were a level-three or “serious” incident on an international scale that goes up to seven. Now some are calling for the removal of spent-fuel rods from reactor four to be closely monitored by foreign experts.

Even the pro-nuclear ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) wants to take TEPCO in its current form out of the decommissioning process, which will take 40 or more years. A new entity, including the utility’s staff but separate from its commercial side, would take charge. Finding a solution to the problem of TEPCO’s structure (among other things, the company is financially precarious) would help the government’s efforts to switch nuclear power back on.

At the moment Japan is entirely without nuclear energy, but that is unlikely to last for long. Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, is pushing for as many of the country’s 50 usable reactors to restart as soon as possible after passing safety checks by the NRA. The need to import energy has pushed up the price of electricity and added to a series of trade deficits since 2011. In September TEPCO won approval from the governor of Niigata prefecture to apply for a safety check in order to restart two reactors at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, the world’s biggest. If it is allowed to restart, others would probably follow.

Most of the public are broadly against restarting nuclear plants even once they pass new checks. Nonetheless, says Hide

yuki Ban, secretary-general of the Citizens Nuclear Information Centre, an anti-nuclear group, no consensus exists on whether an official phase-out should happen quickly, over 20 years by natural attrition, or something in between. Junichiro Koizumi, a popular LDP former prime minister, has stepped in, calling for an immediate end to nuclear power. After he broadcast his views at a press conference, a poll showed that three-fifths of those who were surveyed backed his plan.

Mr Koizumi still knows how to rouse the public, says Jeff Kingston of Temple University in Tokyo, but there is little chance that Mr Abe’s commitment to nuclear power will change. His government’s links to the “nuclear village” are too strong. Big business is clamouring for the power stations to restart. Mr Koizumi’s style is certainly more orthodox than Taro Yamamoto’s. At a garden party, the new member of parliament dared to hand a letter to the emperor, Akihito, about the impact of the Fukushima catastrophe. Such direct contact with a near-divine was considered an outrage by everybody in the establishment (except Akihito, who carried on chatting with him). Japan’s nuclear-energy drama is far from over.

Saudi nuclear weapons 'on order' from Pakistan

2013-11-07T03:31:00.001-08:00

BBC News, 6 November 2013 Last updated at 21:57 GMT

Mark Urban, Diplomatic and defence editor, Newsnight Article written by Mark Urban Diplomatic and defence editor, Newsnight

Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, a variety of sources have told BBC Newsnight.

While the kingdom's quest has often been set in the context of countering Iran's atomic programme, it is now possible that the Saudis might be able to deploy such devices more quickly than the Islamic republic.

Earlier this year, a senior Nato decision maker told me that he had seen intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery.

Last month Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, "the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring."

Since 2009, when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned visiting US special envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross that if Iran crossed the threshold, "we will get nuclear weapons", the kingdom has sent the Americans numerous signals of its intentions.

Gary Samore, until March 2013 President Barack Obama's counter-proliferation adviser, has told Newsnight:

"I do think that the Saudis believe that they have some understanding with Pakistan that, in extremis, they would have claim to acquire nuclear weapons from Pakistan."

The story of Saudi Arabia's project - including the acquisition of missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads over long ranges - goes back decades.

In the late 1980s they secretly bought dozens of CSS-2 ballistic missiles from China.

These rockets, considered by many experts too inaccurate for use as conventional weapons, were deployed 20 years ago.

This summer experts at defence publishers Jane's reported the completion of a new Saudi CSS-2 base with missile launch rails aligned with Israel and Iran.

It has also been clear for many years that Saudi Arabia has given generous financial assistance to Pakistan's defence sector, including, western experts allege, to its missile and nuclear labs.

Visits by the then Saudi defence minister Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz al Saud to the Pakistani nuclear research centre in 1999 and 2002 underlined the closeness of the defence relationship.

In its quest for a strategic deterrent against India, Pakistan co-operated closely with China which sold them missiles and provided the design for a nuclear warhead.

The Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was accused by western intelligence agencies of selling atomic know-how and uranium enrichment centrifuges to Libya and North Korea.

AQ Khan is also believed to have passed the Chinese nuclear weapon design to those countries. This blueprint was for a device engineered to fit on the CSS-2 missile, i.e the same type sold to Saudi Arabia.

Because of this circumstantial evidence, allegations of a Saudi-Pakistani nuclear deal started to circulate even in the 1990s, but were denied by Saudi officials.

They noted that their country had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and called for a nuclear-free Middle East, pointing to Israel's possession of such weapons.

The fact that handing over atom bombs to a foreign government could create huge political difficulties for Pakistan, not least with the World Bank and other donors, added to scepticism about those early claims.

In Eating the Grass, his semi-official history of the Pakistani nuclear program, Major General Feroz Hassan Khan wrote that Prince Sultan's visits to Pakistan's atomic labs were not proof of an agreement between the two countries. But he acknowledged, "Saudi Arabia provided generous financial support to Pakistan that enabled the nuclear program to continue."

Whatever understandings did or did not exist between the two countries in the 1990s, it was around 2003 that the kingdom started serious strategic thinking about its changing security environment and the prospect of nuclear proliferation.

A paper leaked that year by senior Saudi officials mapped out three possible responses - to acquire their own nuclear weapons, to enter into an arrangement with another nuclear power to protect the kingdom, or to rely on the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

It was around the same time, following the US invasion of Iraq, that serious strains in the US/Saudi relationship began to show themselves, says Gary Samore.

The Saudis resented the removal of Saddam Hussein, had long been unhappy about US policy on Israel, and were growing increasingly concerned about the Iranian nuclear program.

In the years that followed, diplomatic chatter about Saudi-Pakistani nuclear cooperation began to increase.

In 2007, the US mission in Riyadh noted they were being asked questions by Pakistani diplomats about US knowledge of "Saudi-Pakistani nuclear cooperation".

The unnamed Pakistanis opined that "it is logical for the Saudis to step in as the physical 'protector'" of the Arab world by seeking nuclear weapons, according to one of the State Department cables posted by Wikileaks.

By the end of that decade Saudi princes and officials were giving explicit warnings of their intention to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran did.

Having warned the Americans in private for years, last year Saudi officials in Riyadh escalated it to a public warning, telling a journalist from the Times "it would be completely unacceptable to have Iran with a nuclear capability and not the kingdom".

But were these statements bluster, aimed at forcing a stronger US line on Iran, or were they evidence of a deliberate, long-term plan for a Saudi bomb? Both, is the answer I have received from former key officials.

One senior Pakistani, speaking on background terms, confirmed the broad nature of the deal - probably unwritten - his country had reached with the kingdom and asked rhetorically "what did we think the Saudis were giving us all that money for? It wasn't charity."

Another, a one-time intelligence officer from the same country, said he believed "the Pakistanis certainly maintain a certain number of warheads on the basis that if the Saudis were to ask for them at any given time they would immediately be transferred."

As for the seriousness of the Saudi threat to make good on the deal, Simon Henderson, Director of the Global Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told BBC Newsnight "the Saudis speak about Iran and nuclear matters very seriously. They don't bluff on this issue."

Talking to many serving and former officials about this over the past few months, the only real debate I have found is about how exactly the Saudi Arabians would redeem the bargain with Pakistan.

Some think it is a cash-and-carry deal for warheads, the first of those options sketched out by the Saudis back in 2003; others that it is the second, an arrangement under which Pakistani nuclear forces could be deployed in the kingdom.

Gary Samore, considering these questions at the centre of the US intelligence and policy web, at the White House until earlier this year, thinks that what he calls, "the Nato model", is more likely.

However ,"I think just giving Saudi Arabia a handful of nuclear weapons would be a very provocative action", says Gary Samore.

He adds: "I've always thought it was much more likely - the most likely option if Pakistan were to honour any agreement would be for be for Pakistan to send its own forces, its own troops armed with nuclear weapons and with delivery systems to be deployed in Saudi Arabia".

This would give a big political advantage to Pakistan since it would allow them to deny that they had simply handed over the weapons, but implies a dual key system in which they would need to agree in order for 'Saudi Arabian' "nukes" to be launched.

Others I have spoken to think this is not credible, since Saudi Arabia, which regards itself as the leader of the broader Sunni Islamic 'ummah' or community, would want complete control of its nuclear deterrent, particularly at this time of worsening sectarian confrontation with Shia Iran.

And it is Israeli information - that Saudi Arabia is now ready to take delivery of finished warheads for its long-range missiles - that informs some recent US and Nato intelligence reporting. Israel of course shares Saudi Arabia's motive in wanting to worry the US into containing Iran.

Amos Yadlin declined to be interviewed for our BBC Newsnight report, but told me by email that "unlike other potential regional threats, the Saudi one is very credible and imminent."

Even if this view is accurate there are many good reasons for Saudi Arabia to leave its nuclear warheads in Pakistan for the time being.

Doing so allows the kingdom to deny there are any on its soil. It avoids challenging Iran to cross the nuclear threshold in response, and it insulates Pakistan from the international opprobrium of being seen to operate an atomic cash-and-carry.

These assumptions though may not be safe for much longer. The US diplomatic thaw with Iran has touched deep insecurities in Riyadh, which fears that any deal to constrain the Islamic republic's nuclear program would be ineffective.

Earlier this month the Saudi intelligence chief and former ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar announced that the kingdom would be distancing itself more from the US.

While investigating this, I have heard rumours on the diplomatic grapevine, that Pakistan has recently actually delivered Shaheen mobile ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia, minus warheads.

These reports, still unconfirmed, would suggest an ability to deploy nuclear weapons in the kingdom, and mount them on an effective, modern, missile system more quickly than some analysts had previously imagined.

In Egypt, Saudi Arabia showed itself ready to step in with large-scale backing following the military overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi's government.

There is a message here for Pakistan, of Riyadh being ready to replace US military assistance or World Bank loans, if standing with Saudi Arabia causes a country to lose them.

Newsnight contacted both the Pakistani and Saudi governments. The Pakistan Foreign Ministry has described our story as "speculative, mischievous and baseless".

It adds: "Pakistan is a responsible nuclear weapon state with robust command and control structures and comprehensive export controls."

The Saudi embassy in London has also issued a statement pointing out that the Kingdom is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and has worked for a nuclear free Middle East.

But it also points out that the UN's "failure to make the Middle East a nuclear free zone is one of the reasons the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia rejected the offer of a seat on the UN Security Council".

It says the Saudi Foreign Minister has stressed that this lack of international action "has put the region under the threat of a time bomb that cannot easily be defused by manoeuvring around it".

Watch more from Mark Urban on Saudi Arabia on Newsnight on Wednesday 6 November 2013 at 2230 on BBC Two, and then afterwards on the BBC iPlayer and Newsnight website.

Nuclear costs blow as taxpayers will underwrite new plant with no guarantee of lower energy bills

2013-10-24T10:48:00.001-07:00

22 Oct 2013 00:00

French energy firm EDF and its Chinese partners, who are
building the generator, are guaranteed an income of £80billion
from the project
Cam he fix it? No he can't Cam he fix it? No he can't
PA

Taxpayers will underwrite the Hinkley Point nuclear generator
to the tune of up to £1billion a year – with no guarantee of lower
power bills.

Energy Secretary Ed Davey also failed to say how many people
would get work from the construction of the £16billion plant in
Somerset, visited yesterday by David Cameron.

But French energy firm EDF and its Chinese partners, who are
building the generator, are guaranteed an income of £80billion
from the project.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change calculated
that with new nuclear power bills could be £77 a year lower by
2030 than they would otherwise be.

But when quizzed about that figure, Mr Davy said: “There’s a
huge amount of uncertainty here.”

He also came under pressure to explain why taxpayers were
subsidising the cost of Hinkley Point.

The Government has agreed a “strike price” – the amount it will
pay for energy from the plant – of £92.50 per megawatt hour,
which is double the current cost for electricity.

This price will be linked to inflation and remain in place for 35
years after the station opens in 2023.

Energy expert Dr Paul Dorfman said: “It is essentially a subsidy of
between £800million to £1billion a year that the UK taxpayer
and energy consumer will be putting into the pockets of Chinese
and French corporations.”

Source:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nuclear-costs-blow-taxpayers-underwrite-2478134

2013-10-22T08:45:00.001-07:00

HINKLEY POINT C NO DONE DEAL

On 21^st October, EDF issued a press release titled: “Agreement reached on commercial terms for the planned Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.”

My aim in this article is to examine exactly what has been “agreed” and its implications for the likelihood of Hinkley C being built and if so, when.

In the first paragraph of the press release, the claim in its given title above is qualified, when we read that “EDF Group and the UK Government have reached in principle an agreement on the key commercial terms for an investment contract of the planned Hinkley Point C…” [my emphasis here and in the quotations below.]

The release then goes on to list other “agreements” that have been arrived at, in addition to the “key commercial terms”. These are

“Confirmation that the project will benefit from the Government’s Infrastructure Guarantee under terms and conditions to be agreed on.”

· “Letters of intent with equity partners.”

· “The four main contracts for engineering and construction.”

· “Terms for a Funded Decommissioning Programme for Hinkley C.” This is not expanded on in the press release; it would be interesting to examine the terms.

The document then adds: “Finalisation of these agreements and construction of the plant are subject to a final investment decision. The Government and EDF Group will work together to address the remaining steps which must be taken before that final decision can be taken.”

At the end of the document these remaining steps are listed:

“Agreement of the full investment contract.” I suppose this means the contract being agreed in concrete rather than just, as at present, “in principle”.

· “EDF Group to finalise agreements with industrial partners for equity funding and with Infrastructure UK for debt funding.” I’ll come back to this later.

· “A decision from the European Commission on state aid.”

So a final investment decision by EDF and any partners it may or may not acquire will only be taken after all the above steps are achieved.

Nevertheless the document says, “Subject to a final investment decision by July 2014, the power station is expected to complete commissioning of the first unit [ie Hinkley C; the document envisages the possibility of Sizewell C being also commissioned in the future] in 2023.

But this is a big “if”, especially as required the steps two and three above are out of EDF and the Government’s hands. As we have seen potential investment partners with EDF have not actually agreed investment in the project but only signed “letters of intent” to do so. And it seems extremely optimistic to suppose that the European Commission will come to a decision on the Government’s proposal of state aid for the project in nine months, let alone that it would be favourable. Some sources have suggested it might take years.

And what’s this with Hinkley C being built in 9 years from the final investment decision anyway? Just two other EPR reactors of the type to be built at Hinkley are being built elsewhere in Europe. In Finland the EPR began construction in 2005 with an estimate that it would begin operation in 2009; currently the estimate is that it will not begin operation until 2015 at the earliest; in France, the EPR started construction in 2007 with the estimate that it would begin operation in 2012; the latest estimate is that it won’t be completed until at least 2016.

By the “key commercial terms for an investment contract” is meant it seems the mechanism of “Contract for Difference”, which involves, the document helpfully explains, that once the plant is operational, “If wholesale prices rise above an agreed “strike price”, consumers will not pay extra. If they fall below this price the generator will receive a top-up payment.”

So it is crucial what the “strike price” is to be set at and for how long. Here the document is precise: it is set at:

“£89.5/MWh if Sizewell C goes ahead” and

· “£92.5/MWh…if Sizewell C does not go ahead.”

This strike price, “indexed to inflation through the Consumer Price Index” will be maintained “for 35 years from the date of commissioning”.

It cannot be over-emphasised what a potential enormous financial burden this agreement places on future consumers and/or taxpayers.

The current wholesale price of electricity is just over half the £92.5/MWh figure and there is no way of predicting how electricity prices will move by the date Hinkley C is commissioned. Indeed the prices of electricity from renewables are tending to fall at present. Unless the wholesale price rises near the £92.5/MWh by 2023 or whenever Hinkley C is commissioned, consumers/taxpayers are locked in to paying enormous subsidies to EDF and whatever other foreign firms own Hinkley by then for a period of 35 years!

The document reports: “DECC forecasts…electricity from Hinkley Point C will be competitive with future gas generation as well as all low carbon energy sources. It is estimated that the UK new nuclear programme will save households £74 a year in today’s prices by 2026-2030.”

They would, wouldn’t they? But how can they possibly know? The game is given away by the suspiciously precise figure of £74 a year. When Edward Davey was tackled on this on Channel 4 News on October 1^st he was forced to admit he could not defend the figure and that any such claim was problematic. And he should know – he is after all the Secretary of State at DECC. It seem to me that the status of the £74 claim is much that of the claim in the “Iraq dossier” that Iraq could deploy chemical weapons within 15 minutes, a claim that sounds impressive but actually has no basis in fact whatever.

What about the question of “equity partners”? EDF had previously said it wanted to sell a 49% stake in the Hinkley project after the UK Centrica sold out its 20% stake in it in January this year.

The document says that “Agreement in principle on the scope of the UK Guarantees scheme [see below] and on the key terms of the investment Contract allow EDF Group to move ahead to secure partners for the financing of the project. The share of the equity is expected to be: EDF Group: 45-50%; AREVA [the designers of the EPR planned to be built at Hinkley]: 10%; China General Nuclear Corporation and the China National Nuclear Corporation: 30-40% [between them]. Discussions are also taking place with a shortlist of other interested parties who could take up to 15%.” So nothing is actually signed and delivered on this front yet.

The costs of constructing Hinkley C (including £2Bn costs already incurred) is estimated in the document as £16Bn. 65% of this cost is to be guaranteed by the Government under the “UK Guarantees scheme”. Of course, another enormous subsidy since it will be financed by government debt. David Polden

China to control British Nuclear Power stations

2013-10-21T02:42:00.000-07:00

Undemocratic State to control British nukes

Stop Hinkley Campaigners today labelled George Osbourne's coalition deal with China as 'reckless. China is experiencing significant home-grown opposition to it's nuclear plans with officials cancelling a significant nuclear project amidst protests back in July.

Said spokesperson Nikki Clark “The coalition government having dug themselves into a hole - desperate as they are to implement their half-baked energy strategy, it seems don't know when to stop digging - they'll go to any lengths to create more nuclear power stations. They claim we need nuclear for climate change but as well as as the long predicted construction delays translating into carbon target delays, the nuclear establishments green credentials are highly contested. The coalition government also claim that we need nuclear power to keep the lights on but this latest move is akin to giving away the light switch! Since when is Russia having control of our gas taps more problematic that the largest most powerful authoritarian state in the world having control of our most dangerous technology – nuclear?”

China is a nuclear weapons state, and has NO basic nuclear safety laws and very limited regulations, despite generally accepted global standards of 20 to 40 people (regulators) per station, China's regulatory body has less than a 1,000 staff to regulate it's 17 operational reactors and 30 planned reactors. According to the World Nuclear Association the nuclear power workforce in China is “another factor affecting nuclear safety in China”.

In 2011 Prof He Zuoxiu, a Chinese atomic bomb scientist called Chinese plans for a 20-fold increase in nuclear power by 2030 as potentially 'disastrous' saying China is 'seriously under-prepared on the safety front' whilst in the same year wikileaks revealed that there were serious concerns held by the global nuclear establishment over China's weaknesses in management and regulatory oversight.

Ms Clark said “It's not just investment that the Chinese are looking to make by getting involved in nuclear technology in the UK – they want a say in the day to day operations of any future Hinkley or Sizewell C. The government can't have it all ways – on the one hand they claim we need to renew Trident the Nuclear so-called deterrent, and on the other, they now want to give control of our most dangerous technology to precisely the kind of regime that many of the British public would feel the need to be protected from - an unaccountable, undemocratic, authoritarian regime. This raises serious security issues and can't possibly be in the public interest.”

Successive governments have been influenced by the power of the nuclear establishment and it's never-to-be-realised promises. Nuclear power is being revealed to be the same way it always has - dirty dangerous and expensive and now the government want to give the Chinese control over it. We feel that bringing an authoritarian regime such as China is a step to far, the prospect of their being brought in with no approval from the public, when all along the country has been promised that government energy policy is going to give us energy security is a recipe for disaster. Said Nikki “We think the coalition are going to have a fight on their hands.”

*******************ENDS*********************************

Notes to editor

First the labour government and now the coalition government have claimed that we need nuclear to keep the lights on:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coal-and-nuclear-will-keep-lights-on-says-hutton-938030.html

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/electricity-market-reform-keeping-the-lights-on-in-the-cheapest-cleanest-way

see here for why we don't:

www.stophinkley.org/NoNeed4Nuclear.pdf

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/nuclear/we-can-keep-lights-without-nuclear-power-20121022

nuclear green credentials contested:

http://www.greenrightnow.com/nwahomepage/2010/02/25/rfk-jr-explains-why-nuclear-power-isnt-green-and-coal-isnt-cheap/

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2007/06/24/why_nuclear_energy_isnt_the_great_green_hope?wp_login_redirect=0

http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/uploadedFiles/Publications/InsideTrackIssue11HavingOurCake.pdf

Nuclear Waste Train being loaded

2013-10-18T12:54:00.001-07:00

Angela Paine shared Southwest AgainstNuclear's photo.

Nuclear Waste Train being loaded this

morning next to Eastover Primary School

at Bridgewater St

Second one this week

EDF Signs a historic agreement with London

2013-10-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

Nucléaire: EDF signe un accord historique avec Londres

Par Veronique Le Billon | 17/10 | 13:20 | mis à jour à 18:55

L’électricien public a scellé un accord avec le gouvernement britannique pour construire deux EPR sur le site de Hinkley Point dans le Somerset. Areva et les chinois CGN et CNNC deviennent partenaires minoritaires et Londres ouvre la voie à de futures participations majoritaires chinoises.

French Electricity provider signs an agreement with the British Government to construct two EPR nuclear power plants at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Areva and the Chinese become partners.

China General Nuclear Power Corp. and Areva to join Hinkley Point UK nuclear consortium

2013-10-18T09:57:00.002-07:00

Date: 17-Oct-13
Country: FRANCE
Author: Geert De Clercq

French nuclear group Areva is ready to join the EDF-led consortium that
plans to build a nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in the UK, Bloomberg
reported on Wednesday, quoting people with knowledge of the matter.

Bloomberg said China General Nuclear Power Corp. would also become a
shareholder and that Areva and EDF's boards would meet next week to
approve the deal.

Areva and EDF declined to comment on the report.

Areva would take a stake in the project from French utility EDF, allowing
EDF to share the cost of building two Areva-designed EPR reactors
estimated at 14 billion pounds (16.5 billion euros).

On Sunday, British Energy Minister Ed Davey said Britain was "extremely
close" to sealing a deal with EDF unit EDF Energy to build the country's
first new nuclear power station since 1995, adding there would also be
Chinese involvement in the talks.

The British government and EDF have long been in talks over financial
terms to build a new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset, southwest
England.

The Financial Times reported on Saturday that British Finance Minister
George Osborne would sign a memorandum of understanding this week to back
Chinese General Nuclear Power Group (CGNPG) entering a deal with EDF for
the planned Hinkley Point plant.

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; editing by David Evans)
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