In time of nuclear war – women and children – last!
BBC staff offered chance to survive nuclear holocaust – but wives left at home http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/23/bbc-staff-offered-chance-to-survive-nuclear-holocaust—but-wive/ Telegraph Reporters 23 JULY 2016 • 7:56PM
BBC employees were offered the chance to survive a nuclear holocaust by broadcasting from an underground bunker, but they could not tell their wives, newly released files reveal.
The broadcaster secretly drew up plans during the Cold War for how it would run a Wartime Broadcasting System in the event of a major disaster.
Early versions of the plan – known as the ‘War Book’ – say that staff were “assigned” or “designated” to go underground, but later editions suggest they were “invited”. Chosen workers were informed not to tell their wives or bring them to the bunker, the files released by the BBC reveal.
“My clearest memory is of a discussion about whether people with spouses could bring them along,” Bob Doran, an experienced editor in Radio News in the 1980s, who attended a civil service seminar in Yorkshire said. The answer was no.
BBC bosses planned to set up 11 protected bunkers – known as ‘Regional Seats of Government’ – spread across the UK, each with a studio and five staff from nearby local radio stations.
A bunker at the Engineering Training Department at Wood Norton in Worcestershire would be a headquarters staffed by 90 BBC staff including engineers, announcers, 12 news editors and sub-editors.
The output would be controlled by the government, but the BBC made a collection of cassette tapes of old radio comedies to entertain the public.
Shows chosen to amuse listeners during Armageddon included the Goon Show, Just a Minute and Round the Horne.
North Wales citizens oppose transport of high level nuclear wastes
The People against Wylfa B (PAWB) group leafleted railway stations across North Wales Demonstrations have been held against radioactive waste being transported by rail along the North Wales coast. Daily Post,, 24 JUL 2016 BY GARETH WYN-WILLIAMS
Members of PAWB (People Against Wylfa B) handed out leaflets at train stations including Bangor, Llandudno Junction, Colwyn Bay and Rhyl on Saturday morning, alerting commuters of the nuclear waste that is transported up to twice a week from Wylfa to Sellafield in Cumbria. The Nuclear Decomissioning Authority (NDA) say such waste has been transported since 1962 without a single accident.
But PAWB argues that if a train carrying waste was to be involved in a collision, residents would be exposed to “highly dangerous and lasting radiation”. Anti-nuclear campaigner Dylan Morgan, who has been protesting for years against a new nuclear plant on Anglesey, said: “The Wylfa trains go weekly on the North Wales coast line through our towns and villages, often at peak times and within three metres of ordinary passenger trains.
“Each of these waste flasks contain hundreds of extremely radioactive atomic fuel rods. Should one of these flasks become damaged, we would be exposed to highly dangerous and long lasting radiation.
“At Sellafield, some of that nuclear waste is reprocessed. That waste contains plutonium, which can be used for nuclear bombs like Trident.
“Sellafield receives far more waste than it can manage and has become a highly radioactive waste dump, which will pollute the environment for centuries to come and cannot be stopped from radiating.”…….http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/campaign-against-anglesey-nuclear-train-11652484
Legal wrangling in UK nuclear waste contracts
High court to rule on £7bn nuclear clean-up contract https://next.ft.com/content/5c2dbe24-4f39-11e6-8172-e39ecd3b86fc A win for Energy Solutions would raise questions about procurement process y: Gill Plimmer
Britain’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is in the High Court this week for the final ruling in a long-running damages claim on a £7bn deal to clean up Britain’s oldest nuclear power plants.
Energy Solutions, a US-based company, filed a high court writ in 2014 after losing the contract to engineering company Babcock and Texas-based Fluor.
It had been managing the nuclear sites for 14 years and in documents filed to the court alleged that the NDA did not follow its own procedures when the new contract was awarded and that its point scoring system was flawed. Continue reading
There’s no end to Fukushima crisis while melted fuel remains
Fukushima Governor Masao Uchibori, left, speaks with Vice Industry Minister Yosuke Takagi
A massive concrete structure encases the wrecked No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, site of the catastrophic 1986 accident.
Dubbed the “sarcophagus,” it was erected to contain the fuel that could not be extracted from the crippled reactor.
I never expected this word (“sekkan” in Japanese) to crop up in connection with the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis.
Local governments raised objections to the use of this word in a report compiled by a government organ that supports the decommissioning of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
While the report discusses the extraction of melted fuel as a requirement, it is written in such a way as to suggest that the construction of a sarcophagus is an option that should not be dismissed out of hand.
This outraged the governor of Fukushima, Masao Uchibori, who…
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Antinuclear 