Antinuclear

Swallow the nuclear spin, baby, swallow the spin!

February 8, 2025, https://theaimn.net/swallow-the-nuclear-spin-baby-swallow-the-spin/

The world gasps at the Americans swallowing lie after lie from the superb dissimulator Donald Trump, but it might not notice Britain’s worthy, virtuous, man of the working people, Keir Starmer, also proclaiming a set of lies. Starmer has got into a super-confident sort of Trumpian mode as he pronounces ‘Build baby build’.

Yes, Sir Keir is “taking on the blockers” to bring the UK back to a leadership position on building nuclear power. The “blockers” are safety and environmental regulators. A new Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce will be established to speed up and streamline the approval of new reactors. This will report directly to the PM. 

For the first time, mini-nuclear power stations will be included in planning rules. Nuclear sites could now be built anywhere across England and Wales, as a list restricting the sites for new reactors will be scrapped. The expiry date on planning rules will be scrapped. A specialist taskforce will lead on making sure nuclear regulation incentivises investment, to deliver new projects more quickly. It will all apply to both the civil and the military nuclear industry.

This has been greeted with joy by X-Energy, EDF, Microsoft, Great British NUclear, the Nuclear Industry Association, Prospect, the Institute of Directors, Laing O’Rourke, Nuclear EMEA at AtkinsRéali, GCHQ, tech UK, newcleo – indeed, all the people who hope to make a financial killing from the UK tax-payer.

Others are less enthused.

“The Labour government has swallowed [the] nuclear industry spin whole,”……….  “They present as fact things which are merely optimistic conjecture on small nuclear reactor cost, speed of delivery and safety.” – Doug Parr, policy director of Greenpeace UK

We must keep in mind, that with all this enthusiasm, these new small nuclear reactors do not actually exist. They are only designs on the computers of a multitude of companies vying for the contracts to build their prototype, and with the history of failures so far, -USA’s NuScale and France’s Nuward small nuclear reactors.

The other side of the hoped-for resuscitation of the nuclear industry is the maintenance and life-extension of Britain’s aging nuclear fleet of big  Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGRs) and one  big Pressurised Water Reactor. With a mean age of 37.1 years they are all due to be decommissioned before long. With exposure to radiation, high temperatures, their components become more brittle, susceptible to cracking, less able to cope with temperature extremes.

It’s as if Sir Keir Starmer had waved his magic wand over the realities of the situation – as Doug Parr pointed out – over the cost, and time of delivery for small nuclear reactors.

Other spin matters happily regurgitated by Starmer are the idea of new nuclear power not only as “cheap” but as providing thousands of “clean” healthy and safe jobs. The fact that the UK is already in a horrible mess with its unsolved problem of plutonium waste, – is just ignored, – yet the new small nuclear designs would produce even more toxic plutonium wastes.

Recent research has backed up many previous studies that prove that workers in the nuclear industry are at higher risk of radiation-induced illness, especially cancer. So – theyr’e not “clean” jobs, and it’s clear now that the new smrs+AI are intimately connected with military applications – not jobs where one could feel safe and proud of doing really beneficial work.

Starmer blames all the opposition, delay on building nuclear power on Vladimir Putin, “holding Britain hostage”. Now it seems, the nuclear history of environmental damage, cancer, accidents, intractable waste problems, and stupendous costs, all mean nothing. Those who oppose new nuclear power in the UK are just tools of pro-Russian propaganda.

Indeed, it is Spin Baby, Nuclear Spin!

February 8, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized