A big week in nuclear news
Unfortunately, right now when alternative news on nuclear issues is needed more than ever, our international website, nuclear-news.net is not available. This is due to a domain name problem, which I hope will soon be fixed. Nuclear-news.net has, for over 12 years, been gathering together those few news items that show the ‘other side’ of nuclear news – in a media landscape dominated by glossy spin from the nuclear lobby – regurgitated by the corporate media.
Indeed – right now – it borders on the hilariously funny – as corporate media pushes nuclear power as safe and clean, while Ukraine, Belarus, even Europe anxiously fear catastrophe at Zaporizhia.
A bit of good news – Humanity’s Moment: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope by Joëlle GergisReviewed by Kara Nicholson
AUSTRALIA.
Our Air Force is already ‘operating against China’. Anti-AUKUS campaign ramps up over U.S.-China war talk.
US admiral issues blunt warning on building Australian submarines in overstretched shipyards. Australian submariners to train onboard British nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS deal. Britain supports Australia’s nuclear submarines – (UK and USA vying for the sale to Oz?)
AI Group Unveiled: a propaganda service for Defence, big business and the Coalition.
INTERNATIONAL.
Russia and the U.S. are entering ‘dangerous and uncharted’ nuclear territory.
Podcast – How the Western Press has become a propaganda tool of the war industry and the Ukrainian government.
Infographic: The impact of nuclear tests around the world. Can the testing on anti-satellite weapons be banned?.
No energy solution without a radical rethink — World leaders suck in the fossil-nuclear mindset.
$Multibillion costs in the struggle to deal with nuclear wastes across the globe.
Global fossil fuel subsidies rocket to almost $US700 billion in 2021
UKRAINE.
Zaporizhia. Collective madness — Zaporizhzhia is the poster child for abandoning the use of nuclear power. Very real risks of nuclear catastrophe at Zaporizhia nuclear station, with the memory of Chernobyl ever present. A1 IAEA at Zaporizhia nuclear station: Dr Paul Dorfman assesses the risks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7jdMlL3Ohc Ukraine’s nuclear plant partly goes offline amid fighting. Fighting goes on near Ukraine nuclear plant; IAEA on site. Nikopol under attack: Residents flee fighting near Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
UN thanks Russia for keeping nuclear team safe. Fighting at Ukraine nuclear plant brings chances of a meltdown to a ‘coin toss’, expert says. U.S. Calls For ‘Controlled Shutdown’ Of Zaporizhzhya Plant As IAEA Inspectors Seek Access. New artillery attack as IAEA heads to Ukraine nuclear plant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ooAMfR7PrQ
Pentagon admits ‘likelihood’ of Ukrainian shelling near nuclear plant. Ukraine accused of targeting possible route of nuclear inspectors. Russia accuses Ukraine of fresh shelling of nuclear plant. Satellite images show damage to buildings right next to Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactors. Russia blames Ukrainian forces for potential disaster.
European Union providing Ukraine with over 5 million doses of potassium iodide tablets. Zelensky aide says UN nuclear watchdog should be mistrusted ‘by default’. If people take part in referendums in Donbass region, Ukraine government will prosecute them as criminal offenders. Ukrainian government wants to sell nuclear energy to Germany .
Moscow says – US Afraid Inhumane Acts Committed by Azov Terrorists Will Be Made Public. International Atomic Energy Agency inspection team on its way to Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
JAPAN. Fukushima town lifts evacuation order, but few former residents want to come back. Fukushima Plants Showing ‘Unusual Growing Patterns’.
PACIFIC ISLANDS. As Japan builds nuclear dumping facilities, Pacific groups say ‘stop‘.
RUSSIA. Gorbachev Ended Cold War, Eased Nuclear Tensions But Trusted US Too Much – Experts.
UK. New nuclear bases and nuclear submarines in Scotland deemed “unachievable” by a UK Government watchdog. Navy officer opposed to nuclear weapons sues UK Ministry of Defence .
You can’t trust Liz Truss (oil and gas devotee) on energy policy for Britain Nuclear power: the accumulating problems. Boris Johnson unveils £1.45billion nuclear submarine. Boris Johnson’s parting gift – a £30 billion nuclear debt. Boris Johnson locking the next Prime Minister into unsustainable nuclear debt. High Court legal challenge to UK government against decision to build Sizewell C nuclear station.
Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion condemns decision for massively costly Sizewell C nuclear station. Boris Johnson’s legacy of the nuclear fantasy. Compulsory purchase orders of land for Sizewell C nuclear project . Stop Sizewell C urges Boris Johnson’s successor to totally review this costly nuclear project. £3.3 million tax-payer boost for untried non-existent technology . Nuclear power for Britain – a “financial basket case “. UK’s Nuclear Gambit Faces Long Odds Even With Sizewell Approval.
GDF Community Partnership promotes “feel good” books to children., making nuclear waste dump ‘cute and safe’. A concerted push now for renewable energy would save Britons billions of pounds.
USA. Mothers For Peace disappointed that California Governor supports ”lifeline” for Diablo Canyon nuclear power station. USA’s Inflation Reduction Act a tidy little bonanza for the nuclear industry . City of Aiken will receive more than $168M in plutonium storage settlement. Radioactive Waste ‘Everywhere’ at Ohio Oilfield Facility, Says Former Worker.
CANADA. Walk in Ignace protests nuclear waste storage site.
EUROPE. Gas prices and nuclear outages put European grid at breaking point.
SWITZERLAND. Future threat to Europe’s water supplies as Switzerland’s glaciers are rapidly thawing . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-18HL-dpWw
FRANCE. France braces for uncertain winter as nuclear power shortage looms.
PAKISTAN. The ‘horrors of climate change‘ hit Pakistan . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGvggMbBfWY
SOUTH ASIA. South Asian countries facing devastating extreme weather events – seek reparation from rich countries.
IRAN. Iran does not seek to develop nuclear weapons, says President Ebrahim Raisi. Iran seeks stronger U.S. guarantees for revival of 2015 nuclear deal.
Collective madness — Zaporizhzhia is the poster child for abandoning the use of nuclear power.
The IAEA team that went to Zaporizhizhia aren’t superheroes and can’t fix what’s broken
Collective madness — Beyond Nuclear International By Linda Pentz Gunter
The deadly peril posed by nuclear power plants embroiled in a war zone — something we have been warning about since before the Russian invasion of Ukraine — just came into even sharper focus.
The continued military activity around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, home to six of Ukraine’s 15 reactors, has raised worldwide concern about the terrible consequences should a missile strike a reactor, or worse, the unprotected irradiated fuel pools or radioactive waste storage casks.
Let’s remember that the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster — the result of the explosion of a single, relatively new unit — has rendered a 1,000 square mile region (the Exlusion Zone) uninhabitable still today and for the foreseeable future. Any one of the Zaporizhzhia reactors contains a far larger radioactive inventory and a more densely packed fuel pool than was the case at Chornobyl. A major breach of any one of the six would release long-lasting radioactive contamination into the environment, forcing permanent evacuations and sickening countless people.
Several obvious conclusions emerge from all this.
- Nuclear reactors cannot be in a war zone.
- The consequences of an attack on a nuclear plant could be catastrophic, long-lasting and far-reaching.
- It is impossible to predict where a war might happen (Lindsey Graham’s recent reckless statements remind us that yes, there could even be (civil) war again here in the US).
- The odds of a catastrophic failure at a nuclear plant must be zero given the unacceptable consequences; an impossibility.
- Nuclear power plants are not only ill-suited to the climate of war, but also to both the present and impending extremes of climate change (major sea-level rise; floods; fires; violent weather events etc).
Therefore, it is senseless and irresponsible to continue using nuclear power as an energy source.
Instead, as a 14-person delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made its way to the Zaporizhzhia plant, its General Secretary, Rafael Grossi, stated that theirs was a mission “that seeks to prevent a nuclear accident and to preserve this important — the largest, the biggest — nuclear power plant in Europe”.
Preserve? Well, as Henry Sokolski just reminded us in his August 31 article — The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Is Kindling for World War III — “The IAEA was founded seventy years ago to promote nuclear power.” It is set up to “conduct occasional nuclear audits, not to physically protect plants against military attacks or to demilitarize zones around them,” he wrote. “The IAEA can’t provide the Zaporizhzhia plant with any defenses, nor will it risk keeping IAEA staff on-site to serve as defensive tripwires.”
James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, issued similar warnings about the limitations of the IAEA delegation when he was interviewed about the worsening situation at Zaporizhzhia and the IAEA visit on the August 29th edition of The Rachel Maddow Show.
“We should be realistic about what they can achieve,” he said. “It’s their job to report what’s going on in the plant, to assess the safety and security features on the plant and to report back. They don’t have a magic way of defending the plant or repairing broken equipment.”
The White House has called for the Zaporizhzhia reactors to be shut down. It should be calling for all reactors to be shut down. Instead, it is blindly persisting with nuclear power as a present and future energy program.
The White House is not alone, of course. The illogical — and arguably insane — response to the war in Ukraine by a number of governments has been to insist on the continued or even expanded use of nuclear energy. Given what is at stake in so doing — and given the obvious safer, faster and cheaper alternatives of energy efficiency and renewable energy— this appears to be a symptom of some kind of collective madness.
Let’s face it, if Zaporizhzhia was a 6-acre wind farm instead of a 6-reactor nuclear power plant, we wouldn’t even be talking about it, let alone worrying about how to pronounce it.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and curates Beyond Nuclear International.
Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant loses power line – IAEA
ZURICH, Sept 3 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant again lost connection to the last remaining main external power line, but continues to supply electricity to the grid through a reserve line, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Saturday.
The agency also said, in a statement posted on its website, that only one of the station’s six reactors remained in operation…………..
The U.N. nuclear watchdog’s experts now stationed at the plant were told by Ukrainian staff that the site’s fourth operational 750 kilovolt power line was down after three others were lost earlier, the IAEA said.
But IAEA experts also learned that a reserve line linking the facility to a nearby thermal power plant was delivering electricity to the external grid. This reserve line can also provide backup power to the ZNPP if needed, it said.
“One reactor is still operating and producing electricity both for cooling and other essential safety functions at the site and for households, factories and others through the grid,” the IAEA said……… https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-loses-power-line-iaea-2022-09-03/
NSW opens registrations for first big renewables and storage tender
NSW opens registrations for the first big renewable and storage tender that will replace most, if not all, its coal fired generators over the coming decade. The post NSW opens registrations for first big renewables and storage tender appeared first on RenewEconomy.
NSW opens registrations for first big renewables and storage tender — RenewEconomy
Greens “climate trigger” bill faces tough crowd in parliament, but gets billionaire backing — RenewEconomy
Greens table “climate trigger” bill in parliament, and get the backing of Australia’s richest man, Andrew Forrest, but not the Labor government. The post Greens “climate trigger” bill faces tough crowd in parliament, but gets billionaire backing appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Greens “climate trigger” bill faces tough crowd in parliament, but gets billionaire backing — RenewEconomy
Nuclear power for Britain – a “financial basket case “
Recent days have seen Government ministers blaming opposition parties for
the failure to deploy nuclear power in the UK. But the problem is not
politicians, not the Conservatives, Labour or anyone else; it is the
extreme difficulty of delivering nuclear power itself.
Financially, it is a basket case, and any other technology with similar problems simply wouldn’t
get past the lobbyists’ meetings with politicians. On August 7th Kwasi
Kwarteng produced a tweet blaming Nick Clegg and Labour for delays in
building nuclear power, saying: ‘Thanks to Labour’s 13-year moratorium
and Lib Dem blockers in the Coalition, we made no progress on nuclear.
Supply chains disappeared. Since 2015, we got Hinkley approved and Sizewell
C received planning consent last month. ‘
However, this explanation does
not stand up to serious analysis. In their 2005 manifesto the Conservatives
did not even mention nuclear power, referring instead to renewables and
energy efficiency as a means of protecting energy security. By the 2010
election both Labour and Conservatives were backing the idea of building
more nuclear power plant, but Conservatives ruled out giving nuclear
subsidies. Their manifesto said they would be ‘clearing the way for new
nuclear power stations – provided they receive no public subsidy’ .Of
course the Liberal Democrats were very much opposed to new nuclear power
before they joined the Coalition in 2010.
But then it was the Liberal
Democrat Energy Secretary of State Chris Huhne who proposed a new
electricity market reform consultation paper at the end of 2010. This
allowed, in effect, nuclear power to receive public subsidies under the
cover that this same subsidy would be available to other low carbon
sources. This laid the basis for the current contracts for difference (CfD)
regime which is funding Hinkley C.
But in practice the offer of a generous
CfD for Hinkley C proved not to satisfy the prospective nuclear generators.
This included EDF which was/is backed by the French state who wanted to
promote France’s new European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) design. The most
fundamental problem was that no major British political party was then
willing to underwrite cost overruns – this was seen as giving nuclear
constructors a blank cheque, which it is. Nevertheless this underwriting
has now, latterly, been given EDF for Sizewell C under the so-called
‘RAB’ arrangements.
100% Renewables 3rd Sept 2022
Youth- led 7 day anti-nuclear march against UK government’s plan for small nuclear reactors
Members of the youth cohort of CND Cymru will be embarking on a 7-day march
from Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Station in Gwynedd to Wylfa Nuclear Power
Station on Ynys Môn in September, in protest against the Westminster
government’s decision to locate Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) on
the decommissioned sites.
This decision came hand in hand with the growing
frustration felt by young people following the government’s
‘greenwashing’ of nuclear energy; selling it as a form of clean, safe and
homegrown energy in the backdrop of the climate crisis.
We are equally concerned about the disastrous effects of uranium mining on the lands of
indigenous people in Australia as well as in areas of the Global South –
not to mention the links between nuclear power, the military and nuclear
weapons.
The young people who have decided to march against the
construction of SMRs in Trawsfynydd and Wylfa want their voices heard in
the debates that will depict the future landscape in which they will have
to live in. They demand to see preparations for a genuinely green future
and the creation of jobs that will not come at the expense of the health of
workers and their communities, or the environment.
Climate justice cannot
be achieved by nuclear energy. We will be walking with the support of the
Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Nuclear Free Local Authorities
(NFLA), CADNO, PAWB, Cymdeithas yr Iaith, XR Cymru, Youth Fusion and Mabon
ap Gwynfor (MS). Although the march will be youth-led, anyone wishing to
join will be most welcome.
CND Cymru 4th Sept 2022
As Japan builds nuclear dumping facilities, Pacific groups say ‘stop’
September 1, 2022
Pacific civil society groups are calling on Japan to halt its plans to dump radioactive nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.
Earlier this month the Japanese government started building facilities needed for the discharge of treated, but still radioactive, wastewater from the defunct Fukushima nuclear power plant.
In a joint statement, civil society groups, non-governmental organisations and activists described the Fumio Kishida Government’s plans as a fundamental breach of Pacific peoples’ right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Joey Tau from the pan-Pacific movement Youngsolwara Pacific said this breaches Pacific peoples’ rights to live in a clean environment.
Tau told Pacific Waves the Pacific Ocean is already endangered and Japan’s plan will have devastating impacts.
“We have a nuclear testing legacy in the Pacific. That continues to impact our people, our islands and our way of life, and it impacts the health of our people.
“Having this plan by Japan poses greater risks to the ocean which is already in a declining state.
“The health of our ocean has declined due to human endured stresses and having this could aggravate the current state of our region.
“And also, there are possible threats on the lives of our people as we clearly understand in this part of the world, the ocean is dear to us, it sustains us,” Tau said.
Tau said both the opposition in Vanuatu and the president of the Federated States of Micronesia have expressed serious concerns at Japan’s plans, and the Pacific Islands Secretariat this year has appointed an international expert panel to advise the Forum Secretary-General and national leaders.
The Northern Marianas’ House of Representatives has also condemned Japan’s plan to dump the nuclear waste.
Tau said the plans should not proceed without the Pacific people being able to voice their concerns and being better advised.
September 4 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “No Going Back To Reliance On Russian Gas From Here” • The reason the Nord Stream 1 pipeline is closed is that repairs can’t be done without German technology imports, which are subject to sanctions, Gazprom says. However, the cut-off is just another problem in decades of dysfunction in the energy relationship between […]
September 4 Energy News — geoharvey
1.This month.
The Road to War brings a sharp focus to why it is not in Australia’s best interest to be dragged into a war with China which will almost inevitably go nuclear very quickly. The filmmaker has interviewed some of Australia’s senior foreign policy analysts who have vast experience behind them in analysing what really is going on here as the United States rattles its sabres with China. And sets us up to be its proxy, like the poor Ukranians have been fed into the Meatgrinder. So America can remain the Top Dog. The Road to War reveals how the United States through its spy base at Pine Gap and by stationing six nuclear capable B52 bombers in the Top End (without permission from the traditional owners) is making Australia a prime nuclear target if the current war of words suddenly melts down into full scale war.
The Road to War shows the implicit connection between Carbon emissions (the US military uses a whopping 70% of America’s annual petroleum to move its armies and vast War Machine around the globe to its 800+ military bases..but under a loophole wangled at Kyoto, the US military does not have to report its C02 annual emissions). The Road to War starts screening at selected cities and regional centres in March. See the trailer end for details.
Antinuclear 