Australia has highest coal power emissions per capita in the world — RenewEconomy
Australia has the most emissions per capita from coal power in the world, new analysis reveals. The post Australia has highest coal power emissions per capita in the world appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Australia has highest coal power emissions per capita in the world — RenewEconomy
One pumped hydro project still standing as South Australia heads to 100pct wind and solar — RenewEconomy
There appears to be only one pumped hydro project left in the race to deliver long term storage to South Australia as it charges to 100 per cent wind and solar. The post One pumped hydro project still standing as South Australia heads to 100pct wind and solar appeared first on RenewEconomy.
One pumped hydro project still standing as South Australia heads to 100pct wind and solar — RenewEconomy
It’s time to reform solar rebate scheme and adapt it for household batteries — RenewEconomy
Simple modifications to the SRES program could deliver 10,000MW of batteries by 2030, and provide a buffer to help manage coal closures. The post It’s time to reform solar rebate scheme and adapt it for household batteries appeared first on RenewEconomy.
It’s time to reform solar rebate scheme and adapt it for household batteries — RenewEconomy
Australia’s biggest battery discharges at full capacity for first time — RenewEconomy
Australia’s biggest battery discharges at full capacity for first time, suggesting it will be ready in time for the peak summer period. The post Australia’s biggest battery discharges at full capacity for first time appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Australia’s biggest battery discharges at full capacity for first time — RenewEconomy
Nuclear War and Climate Change: The Urgency for Action — The Center for Climate & Security
Christine Parthemore speaks on nuclear war and climate change at a COP26 side event hosted by the International Forum for Understanding, Nov 1, 2021. Source: International Forum for Understanding By Christine Parthemore I had the honor of delivering a keynote speech at a COP26 side event hosted by the International Forum for Understanding on November…
Nuclear War and Climate Change: The Urgency for Action — The Center for Climate & Security
EXPLORING THE SECURITY RISKS OF CLIMATE CHANGE Nuclear War and Climate Change: The Urgency for Action By Christine Parthemore
–There is urgency in this Conference’s proceedings. The urgency is greater because the world’s leaders, to date, have not yet taken the climate crisis seriously enough. Not even close. Yet this echoes a shared challenge: across the most catastrophic risks facing humanity, whether climate change, biological risks, or the risk of nuclear war, we have historically underestimated these threats.
Nuclear weapons – shared history of underestimating effects
What happens when our policies and plans do not fully account for the damage they may cause to the world?
Just as we are witnessing the answers to this question unfolding regarding the climate crisis, there is a similar and in many ways shared history of underestimatingthe catastrophic effects that could come from nuclear weapons.
During World War II, in the surge by the United States to ready nuclear weapons for potential use in the war, most estimates of damage focused on immediate blast effects of the use of these weapons — not secondary or enduring damage that may come after. And our knowledge of those effects was not robust.
Those who created nuclear weapons largely seemed to believe that everyone within the area hit by these weapons would die from the nuclear blast itself — that everything would be obliterated quickly. That, it would be learned, was not necessarily the case.
The first evidence came from the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The full human toll will never truly be known — estimates are between 110,000 and 210,000 people killed.
Yet those who lost their lives directly from the attacks were just one aspect. The degree to which the use of atomic bombs in conflict caused serious, lasting, devastating injuries was underestimated. For those who were not immediately lost, thousands suffered ghastly burns, loss of skin, and shrapnel embedded in their bodies that caused excruciating pain for as long as they lived. This is in addition to extreme suffering beyond injuries and sickness, in years and in some cases lifetimes of economic hardship, social stigma, and psychological damage.
Under-estimating the damage of nuclear weapons contributed to the United States and Soviet Union producing astronomical numbers of them — tens of thousands — in part driven by the belief that they needed tens of thousands of nuclear warheads in order to effectively deter one another from war—or to effectively wipe out the other nation.
Along with these growing nuclear arsenals came increasing nuclear tests. Soviet and U.S. citizens – and those of other nations – were subject to radiation effects from the detonation sites.
Some of the early U.S. nuclear tests were carried out in the Marshall Islands. Others, in the desert of the U.S. southwest.
Almost one quarter of all nuclear tests in history were conducted at one test site in what is now Kazakhstan from 1949 to 1989. The citizens of nearby villages that were exposed now tell the story of the radiation damage caused, including significant genetic effects that crossed generations.
On these terrible legacies of nuclear weapons tests was built significant knowledge of their effects. Before the international community united to ban them, mostly ending the practice, this included more than 2,000 nuclear tests.
Though results were classified in their earliest decades, extensive data from these tests revealed that the use of nuclear weapons could cause major disruptions to temperature patterns, sunlight, and precipitation. Into the 1970s and 80s, it became clearer that such nuclear weapons effects could cause more geographically dispersed and longer-enduring harm than previously realized.
With such data, the world was able to create mathematical and computer models of ever-increasing sophistication.
mportantly, the results of modeling potential effects of nuclear war started becoming public in the last decades of the 20th Century. Citizens of the world began to learn more about how the use of nuclear weapons could cause dramatic changes in weather patterns, and how this could drive severe changes in the availability of food and water, and how it would affect peoples’ health and their ability to care for their families. One such initiative labeled the potential damages of nuclear war as a “nuclear winter” that would befall the planet in some scenarios. ………..
Arms race today / Inflection Point
Unfortunately, this momentum has not been sustained. In the earliest decades of this Century, we have begun moving back in the wrong direction.
During this time, the risk of nuclear war has begun rising again. Most nuclear-armed nations are trying to expand the types of nuclear capabilities they possess, adding even more scenarios for how these weapons might be used in conflict.
Unfortunately, several nations — including my own — are reigniting interest in types of nuclear weapons that are envisioned to be more usable in conflict. These include increasing focus on the horrifically mis-labeled, so-called low-yield nuclear weapon options.
Even more dangerous than the mere presence of such weapons is the mindset that, in the heat of a conflict, it may be feasible to use one nuclear weapon without it being reciprocated. This is a fallacy, and we should not accept it as an assumption steering policy.
While this wasn’t the case early in the Cold War, this time, under-estimating the effects of using such nuclear weapons is not an excuse. We have to assume that the use of even one nuclear weapon would be followed by another, and potentially lead to a broader nuclear exchange and the catastrophic damage that would follow. Today, we know in great detail what that could look like…………..
Convergence
If the intersection of nuclear weapons use and climate change is rooted in work to understand how our atmosphere and our world may be altered by both, today we have an even more daunting task. We have to consider how these threats may actually manifest together.
Some effects of climate change are reigniting attention to past nuclear weapons damages. The Marshall Islands are a central case: at one atoll where the United States conducted nuclear weapon tests, a concrete dome that was designed to encase debris contaminated by these tests is now being inundated by rising seas. We don’t have to model this damage — it has been measured, and we have drone footage recording this occurring………………..
We know that in addition to the immediate death and destruction, such a nuclear conflict also risks significant damage to agricultural production through contamination or disruptions in weather patterns. Now combine this with a scenario in which such conflict occurs when extreme weather exacerbated by climate change has already spent years devastating the world’s food supplies.
How many more millions of people could starve? How many millions of people will try to move in order to save themselves and their families, and how many communities could descend into instability or internal conflict if pressure is not relieved any other way?
This is the reality of the world that we live in today — in which several catastrophic risks to humanity are occurring simultaneously, and they are not isolated from one another in time or space. ………….
I urge the leaders of our nations to commit to serious progress in addressing the climate crisis in the days ahead. We must then also act with urgency, expanding those efforts to rally similar momentum to reduce the risks of nuclear war as well. https://climateandsecurity.org/2021/11/nuclear-war-and-climate-change-the-urgency-for-action/#more-29718
“Perilous Profiteering: The companies building nuclear arsenals and their financial backers”
Table on original lists the top 10 investors in nuclear weapons –Vanguard, State street, Capital Group, Blaxk Rock, Bank of America, Citigroup, J P Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley
$63 billion drop in investments: New report shows impact of nuclear weapons ban treaty on nuclear weapons business, ICAN,
Anew report released by ICAN and PAX today, has found that the number of banks, pension funds, asset managers and insurance companies investing in the production of nuclear weapons has gone down in 2021, and shows significant drops in the shareholder values of investments in the 25 companies involved in nuclear weapon production around the world. There is also an early but visible impact of the entry into force of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), with many institutions citing the treaty’s entry into force and the risk of a negative public perception as reasons for the change in their investment policies.
The 2021 report “Perilous Profiteering: The companies building nuclear arsenals and their financial backers” exposes the banks, pension funds, asset managers and insurance companies investing in the production of nuclear weapons and examines the companies involved in producing, manufacturing, or developing nuclear weapons for six of the nine nuclear armed countries for which data was available between January 2019 and July 2021.
Download the Executive Summary
Key findings from the report:
- While $685,184 million was made available to the 25 nuclear weapons producing companies during this period, this actually marks a $63 billion drop from the 2019 “Shorting our security”report, a trend that is affecting the producing companies’ stock holdings. There is also a marked shift in how the nuclear industry is raising funds to off-set debt, from significant loans to issuances, and underwriting of bond issuances rose by $80 billion.
- Northrop Grumman is the biggest nuclear weapons profiteer, with at least $24 billion in outstanding contracts, not including the consortium and joint venture revenues. Raytheon Technologies and Lockheed Martin also hold multi-billion-dollar contracts to produce new nuclear weapon systems.
Table on original lists the top 10 investors in nuclear weapons –Vanguard, State street, Capital Group, Blaxk Rock, Bank of America, Citigroup, J P Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley
The Good news:
- In 2021,127 financial institutions stopped investing in companies producing nuclear weapons, valued at $31 billion. .
- Several of these institutions are from states that joined the TPNW, including the Bank of Ireland and AIB (Ireland), and Investec (South Africa), but they are not the only ones. Exclusions by financial institutions based in nuclear-armed states or allied countries are worth billions, such as Longview Asset Management (U.S.) which divested $5.7 billion from General Dynamics or Nomura (Japan) which divested $273 million from Larsen & Toubro.
- The nuclear weapons industry itself is getting smaller, with companies acquiring or merging together, which in turn makes it easier for financial institutions and other investors to exclude them from investments. Instead of tracking down hundreds, or even thousands of contributors to catastrophic threats, it’s simply a matter of exiting a few relationships
ICAN and PAX show how despite $squillions still going to nuclear weapons, – $63 billion has moved away from this funding
Perilous Profiteering: The companies building nuclear arsenals and their financial backers
The 2021 report “Perilous Profiteering: The companies building nuclear arsenals and their financial backers” is a joint publication of ICAN and it’s partner PAX. The report details how 338 financial institutions made $685 billion available to 25 nuclear weapon producing companies from China, France, India, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States.
This report looks at those with vested interests to keep a nuclear arms race going. The companies that want to get contracts to build weapons of mass destruction, and the private sector financiers and investors that want to generate a profit without apparent concern for the devastating potential consequences of any use of the products they support. It is only by knowing those who seek to maintain the status quo that we can engage and shift their behaviour……….https://www.icanw.org/perilous_profiteering_companies_building_nuclear_weapons_and_financial_backers?utm_campaign=perilous_profiteers_launch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ican
ICAN – If you only take one thing away from this, it is that we moved $63 billion in funds away from the companies producing nuclear weapons in the last 2 years.
Today, PAX and ICAN are releasing the latest Don’t Bank on the Bomb report “Perilous Profiteering: The companies building nuclear arsenals and their financial backers”, which names the 338 investors backing 25 nuclear weapon producing companies and the size of their investments. This report is also the first time we were able to find information on Russian and Chinese investments.
But that’s not the most interesting part. The report also found three clear signs that financial institutions are starting to see nuclear weapons as risky business, and are leaving them behind:
• From 2019 to 2021, the total amount made available for nuclear weapons producing companies dropped by an impressive $63 billion, and the total number of financial institutions willing to invest in nuclear weapons producing companies went down too.
• Nuclear weapons producing companies, despite billion dollar contracts, have debt. But investors are moving away. So instead, they’re borrowing from wherever they can to raise cash. In other words: producing weapons of mass destruction has become extremely unattractive.
• 127 financial institutions stopped investing in companies producing nuclear weapons this year!
Of course, we still have a lot of work to do to hold these profiteers accountable. Banks, insurers, asset managers and pension funds still made $685 billion available for the companies producing nuclear weapons (like Northrop Grumman, which has $24 billion in outstanding contracts).
Our banks, insurers, and pension funds have no business investing in companies that choose to be involved in illegal weapons of mass destruction, and we need to tell them. Can you start today by reading and sharing the key findings of the report?
FW de Klerk, who ended South African apartheid, leaves another legacy: nuclear disarmament
FW de Klerk, who ended South African apartheid, leaves another legacy: nuclear disarmament, Bulletin
By Robin Ephraim Möser | November 12, 2021 Almost nothing suggested that former South African president Frederik Willem de Klerk would be the one to dismantle apartheid. He was born into a family of politicians of the nascent apartheid state, became a member of Parliament in 1972, and was complicit in—even supportive of—all the evil committed under apartheid during numerous ministerial posts. But while serving as president, de Klerk stunned the world in February 1990 when he removed the ban on opposition political movements, including the African National Congress, and released political prisoners, including the individual with whom he would later share the Nobel Peace Prize—Nelson Mandela.
De Klerk’s death at the age of 85 this week has been widely reported in the New York Times, the BBC, der Spiegel, the Daily Maverick, and other international media. Yet none mention that, under his leadership in 1991, South Africa joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and fully dismantled the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
De Klerk believed that nuclear weapons, having lost their deterrence value following the end of the regional conflicts, would subsequently burden his government. Two weeks after assuming the presidency, he held a top-secret meeting of advisors in which he requested a plan to rid the country of nuclear weapons. Those who attended agreed, though some rather grudgingly, as he recounted in my 2017 interview with him………..
Almost three decades later, in my 2017 interview with him, de Klerk revealed that his distaste for nuclear weapons preceded his presidency. He had decided that if ever he became president, he would review South Africa’s nuclear weapons program. He had that chance by 1990—and seized the denuclearization opportunity.
De Klerk’s nuclear rollback was complete and verifiable. Not only was South Africa free of nuclear weapons, but the development served as a catalyst for Africa as a nuclear-weapon-free zone. In 1995, President Nelson Mandela and other African heads of state signed the Treaty of Pelindaba, which forbade atomic bomb testing and banned nuclear weapons from the African continent.
South Africa remains the only country to have gone full circle on nuclear weapons. The South African National Party politicians initiated a nuclear weapons program during the 1970s and de Klerk ended it in 1989. De Klerk expressed the hope that South Africa’s example might inspire the nine leaders of other nuclear weapons states—the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea—to eliminate their arsenals. The world can only hope that, over time, they do. https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/fw-de-klerk-who-ended-south-african-apartheid-leaves-another-legacy-nuclear-disarmament/
November 12 Energy News — geoharvey
COP26: ¶ “Draft Deal Calls For Stronger Carbon Cutting Targets By End Of 2022” • Countries are being urged to strengthen their carbon-cutting targets by the end of 2022 in a draft agreement published at the COP26 Glasgow climate summit. The document says vulnerable nations must get more help to cope with the deadly impacts […]
November 12 Energy News — geoharvey
Glasgow Brief: Negotiations head into crunch mode as COP president warns “time is running out” — RenewEconomy
COP26 heads into crunch time, as the COP president pleads with negotiators to finish on time. New Zealand emerges as a surprise agitator on 2030 targets. The post Glasgow Brief: Negotiations head into crunch mode as COP president warns “time is running out” appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Glasgow Brief: Negotiations head into crunch mode as COP president warns “time is running out” — RenewEconomy
1.5°C When, And Could The Climate Sink Us? — One Finite Planet
Ok, the planet warming 1.5°C may not sound like it would be similar to ‘the ship’ hitting an iceberg, but it does feel like people are rearranging deck chairs, and it makes you question if the ship is in danger of sinking. I began with 3 questions, but each raised two more questions How much […]
1.5°C When, And Could The Climate Sink Us? — One Finite Planet
Nuclear power for Australia? A crazy fantasy that would surely lose the election for the Liberals
The notion advanced by some advocates that Scott Morrison should take a nuclear industry proposal to the 2022 election would be an act of electoral madness and court political suicide. Morrison has enough problems at present without gifting Labor the perfect scare campaign on an issue that has no policy or political saliency.
The populist conservatives have form. Before the 2019 poll, they campaigned on the mad idea that Morrison follow Donald Trump and quit the Paris Agreement. Now they campaign on the equally mad but more dangerous idea that he seek to split the country by running on nuclear power.
Why nuclear power for Australia is just a grand fantasy https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/why-nuclear-power-for-australia-is-just-a-grand-fantasy/news-story/e8a35f288ca1ea44be9bec66864f3536 8 Nov 21, Paul Kelly
One result of more ambitious emissions-reduction targets from the Glasgow climate conference will be rising support for nuclear power, but its champions in Australia need to start talking to the people who will decide this issue – the Labor Party, the left, and climate change progressives.
As the difficulty intensifies around getting to net zero and keeping rising temperatures within the 1.5C limit, investors will reassess nuclear – but the idea that conservative politics in Australia will stage a glorious resurgent battle that culminates in nuclear power is yet another grand fantasy.
Civil nuclear power in Australia would be an intergenerational, whole-of-government project that would require long-run political bipartisanship to underwrite investment security with legislative and regulatory backing.
The notion advanced by some advocates that Scott Morrison should take a nuclear industry proposal to the 2022 election would be an act of electoral madness and court political suicide. Morrison has enough problems at present without gifting Labor the perfect scare campaign on an issue that has no policy or political saliency.
Can you imagine the media frenzy? The invoking of Chernobyl and the biggest scare since WorkChoices? Every Coalition MP would be quizzed by Labor and the media on whether they would accept a nuclear power plant in their electorate. The issue would divide the Coalition side, unite Labor, distract from Morrison’s re-election campaign on the economy and create a destructive sideshow.
IIt would undermine, perhaps fatally, Morrison’s national security achievement, the nuclear submarine fleet as authorised by the AUKUS agreement. As Morrison has explained, he proceeded only because technical advice said it could be delivered short of a civil nuclear industry.
Continue readingAustralian-UK-US nuclear submarine deal makes the connection clear between civilian and military nuclear activities
In failing fully to investigate this link between military nuclear and civil energy policy, the UK media have also missed more intimate connections. The senior Energy Ministry figure who negotiated the extraordinarily costly electricity contracts with France from the sole UK nuclear power plant currently under development went on to become the leading official in the Defence Ministry.
This same individual confirmed under questioning by Parliament that the nuclear submarine program is connected to civil nuclear policy. And it is this same person who is reported to have played a lead role in brokering the AUKUS deal.
In the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Australia, policies in non-military, non-nuclear areas are often shaped by military nuclear interests. The AUKUS alliance is driven, in part, by a longstanding crisis in the nuclear submarine industry’s efforts to realize economies of scale.
In these countries, energy policy is steered towards risky, costly, delay-prone nuclear options rather than alternatives. In the process, policymakers impede progress on vital climate targets. Throughout, the public remains unaware. So, the gravest damage inflicted by hidden nuclear military interests is not their warping effects on non-military policy but on the health of democracy.
Australian-UK-US nuclear submarine deal exposes civilian-military links, https://thebulletin.org/2021/11/australian-uk-us-nuclear-submarine-deal-exposes-civilian-military-links/ Bulletin, By, Phil Johnstone | November 9, 2021 Andy Stirling Andy Stirling is Professor of Science and Technology Policy in the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University where he co-directs the ESRC. Phil Johnstone is a Senior Research Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University. Phil has researched and published widely .
Under the AUKUS agreement, the United States and the United Kingdom plan to transfer nuclear submarine technologies to Australia. One international security scholar characterized the deal as “a terrible decision for the nonproliferation regime,” noting grave concerns for peace and security worldwide. Others have expressed concerns about “loopholes” surrounding nuclear submarine fissile materials, increased nuclear risks in the Pacific, and a potential acceleration of an arms race in the region. Still others doubt the purported efficacy of nuclear-propelled submarine designs.
Within national borders, nuclear activities often depend on expensive access to specific skills, supply chains, regulatory and design capabilities, educational and research institutions, and waste management and security infrastructures. These dependencies are especially strong in national struggles to build, maintain, and operate nuclear-propelled submarines. The AUKUS announcement overturned normally sacrosanct nuclear secrecy on these matters. It also raised bigger questions about energy policy, climate strategies, and democracy itself.
In democratic nuclear weapons states such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, shared civil-military nuclear industrial bases are largely—albeit indirectly—funded by electricity consumers. Colossal investments in new nuclear power are underwritten by anticipated revenues from future electricity sales. These investments flow through nuclear construction supply chains and outward to support military nuclear activities. In this way, crucial support is given to military infrastructures, outside of defense budgets and off the public books. But as civil nuclear power declines, this massive hidden funding flow may diminish, which presents problems for nuclear submarines whose costs are not only often prohibitive but escalating.
The AUKUS deal makes more sense when viewed in light of this crisis in the US, UK, and French national nuclear submarine industries. Spiralling civil nuclear construction delays, technological failures, bankruptcies, and fraud exercise little effect on government commitments to civil nuclear power, given pressure to underpin military capability. This is why these governments are failing to recognize the radical technology and market changes that render baseload power, according to industry, “outdated.” This is why policymakers so often neglect renewables and storage options that are outcompeting nuclear power. This is why some argue that nuclear power must persist as a “necessary part of the mix” in nuclear weapons states, despite diverse alternatives offering sufficient volumes of zero carbon power more quickly and cheaply than can nuclear.
Although well documented in the defense policy documents of existing and aspiring nuclear weapons states, these military drivers have been seriously neglected in discussions of energy and climate strategies. Recently however, some countries have begun to acknowledge the strong connections between civil and military nuclear capabilities.
In the United States, for instance, a report led by former energy secretary Ernest Moniz said in 2017 that “a strong domestic supply chain is needed to provide for nuclear Navy requirements. This supply chain has an inherent and very strong overlap with … commercial nuclear energy.” Since then, multiple high level reports have acknowledged that US military nuclear programs depend on a vibrant civil nuclear sector. “The connectivity of the civilian and military nuclear value chain—including shared equipment, services, and human capital—has created a mutually reinforcing feedback loop, wherein a robust civilian nuclear industry supports the nuclear elements of the national security establishment,” according to one study. Civil nuclear activities transfer an effective value of $26.1 billion dollars to the US military nuclear enterprise, according to this study.
In recent years, French press reports have hinted that dwindling civil nuclear power threatens national military nuclear capabilities. President Macron confirmed this when he said that “without civil nuclear power, there can be no military nuclear power.” Military drivers of civil nuclear activities are also acknowledged in more authoritarian nuclear states like Russia and China.
Australia possesses some of the most abundant and competitive renewable energy resources in the world. Yet the Australian nuclear lobby argues that acquiring military nuclear technology will benefit the claimed imperative to establish a civil nuclear industry. Prime Minister Scott Morrison asserted that he is not pushing for a civil nuclear power program, but other prominent voices disagree. Referring to submarine-derived small modular reactors, Australian politician and UK trade advisor Tony Abbott said that “if nuclear power is ok at sea, pretty soon it will be ok on land, too.” The Minerals Council for Australia claims that acquiring military nuclear technology is an “incredible opportunity” because it “connect[s] [Australia]… to the growing global nuclear power industry and its supply chains.”
Australian civil nuclear proponents welcome the aspirations of military nuclear proponents—and the reverse is also true. Australia’s military is concerned that a lack of a civil nuclear industry may pose difficulties for sustaining nuclear submarine competencies. Australian Navy Admiral Chris Barry pointed out that the absence of a civil nuclear industry left a “big gap” in the country’s ability to manage nuclear submarines. Some argue that a civil nuclear sector in Australia could provide the skills and expertise to enable military nuclear capability. Others are concerned that Australia will be the only country with nuclear submarines but no civilian nuclear industry. Military nuclear ambitions drive otherwise-inexplicable civil nuclear attachments.
In the United Kingdom, some worry about a post-imperial loss of a coveted “seat at the top table” of world affairs. Here again, nuclear submarine capabilities take center stage. Former prime minister Tony Blair worried that relinquishing nuclear capabilities would be “too big a downgrading of our status as a nation.” Meanwhile, detailed official energy policy analyses urged the government to set nuclear plans aside, given trends in renewables and related options. But shortly after a Defence Ministry report on submarine capabilities, Tony Blair swapped the open energy policy consultation for a quicker, covert process, after which the government proclaimed a “nuclear renaissance.”
The Royal Courts of Justice found reasoning for this policy insufficient, but Blair doubled down. “Nuclear power is back with a vengeance,” he said, invoking the name of the recently launched ballistic missile submarine, HMS Vengeance. He did not mention the military rationale. Since then, UK government white papers have failed to justify the country’s civil nuclear commitments—for instance by comparing nuclear costs with those of renewable alternatives. The commitment is taken for granted.
In the United Kingdom, the submarine industry’s openness about military pressures for civil nuclear power contrasts with energy policymakers’ silence. Now-declassified defense reports express grave worries that faltering civil nuclear programs undermine provision for essential military skills. Submarine-builder BAE Systems admits that funding for civil programs “masks” military costs. Naval reactor manufacturer Rolls Royce states that their expensive, government-funded efforts on ostensibly civilian small modular reactors can “relieve the burden” on Defence Ministry efforts to retain skills and capabilities for military programs. Numerous other government documents highlight synergies between civil and military nuclear skills. Yet when challenged, the UK Government denies that civil nuclear commitments influence military activities.
Boris Johnson emphasized that the AUKUS deal offers the United Kingdom “a new opportunity to strengthen Britain’s position as a science and technology superpower, and … could reduce the cost of the next generation of nuclear submarines for the Royal Navy.” Indeed, as discussed in this publication, the deal is “…likely to have particular significance for the UK’s nuclear program” because “the UK is struggling through a number of issues related to the revamping of its nuclear enterprise.” Despite government denials, Johnson’s statement confirms that the AUKUS deal is influenced by the same cost pressures and economies of scale associated with dogged maintenance of a shared civil-military industrial base.
In failing fully to investigate this link between military nuclear and civil energy policy, the UK media have also missed more intimate connections. The senior Energy Ministry figure who negotiated the extraordinarily costly electricity contracts with France from the sole UK nuclear power plant currently under development went on to become the leading official in the Defence Ministry. This same individual confirmed under questioning by Parliament that the nuclear submarine program is connected to civil nuclear policy. And it is this same person who is reported to have played a lead role in brokering the AUKUS deal.
In the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Australia, policies in non-military, non-nuclear areas are often shaped by military nuclear interests. The AUKUS alliance is driven, in part, by a longstanding crisis in the nuclear submarine industry’s efforts to realize economies of scale. In these countries, energy policy is steered towards risky, costly, delay-prone nuclear options rather than alternatives. In the process, policymakers impede progress on vital climate targets. Throughout, the public remains unaware. So, the gravest damage inflicted by hidden nuclear military interests is not their warping effects on non-military policy but on the health of democracy.
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating scathing about Australia’s planned nuclear submarine deal
Mr Keating accused Mr Morrison of ‘wantonly leading Australia into a strategic dead end by its needless provocations against China’.
Australia’s eight nuclear subs by 2040 will be like ‘throwing toothpicks at a mountain’ when facing China, ex-PM declares in scathing pro-Beijing speech slamming Scott Morrison’s Covid origins probe. Daily Mail UK
- Australia cancelled a $90billion submarine contract with France in September
- Instead Scott Morrison has partnered with US and UK to obtain nuclear boats
- Former Prime Minister Paul Keating said they will be ‘very old’ when ready
- He also blasted Mr Morrison for offending China with call for Covid inquiry
By CHARLIE MOORE, POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA 10 November 2021 In September, Mr Morrison cancelled a contract with France for 12 conventional submarines in favour of a new partnership with the US and UK known as AUKUS which will give Australia the technology to build nuclear boats for the first time.
But Mr Keating said they will take too long to arrive and pale in comparison to China’s navy which already has six nuclear-powered subs and more than 50 diesel-powered subs.
Mr Keating, who led Australia as a Labor Prime Minister between 1991 and 1996, said the eight US-style nuclear submarines would have no impact militarily.
‘These Virginia-class submarines were designed in the 1990s – by the time we have half a dozen of them it’ll be 2045 or 2050 – they’ll be 50 or 60 years old.
‘In other words, our new submarines will be old tech – it’ll be like buying an old 747.
‘And here we are, we’re going to wait 20 odd years to get the first one and 35 to 40 years to get the lot. For what will be then very old boats.’
Mr Keating said Australia was falling in line with the US strategy to use nuclear ‘hunter killer’ submarines to contain China.
‘The whole point of these hunter killer submarines is to round up the Chinese nuclear submarines and keep them in the shallow waters of the Chinese continental shelf before they get to the Mariana Trench and become invisible,’ he said.
‘To stop them having nuclear capability towards the United States.’
The 77-year-old insisted that China has no desire to expand its territory in the east and said Australia should be focussing on its own defence with conventional subs.
[Former Deputy Prime Minister] Kim Beazley and I built the Collins [class submarines]. I built the Anzac frigates, they were built for the defence of Australia. Their range was to stop any incoming vessels, military vessels against us,’ he said. ……….
Mr Keating accused Mr Morrison of ‘wantonly leading Australia into a strategic dead end by its needless provocations against China’.
Instead, he said Australia should show China respect for the way it has brought millions of people out of poverty with rapid economic growth over the past few decades.
‘I think what the Chinese want is the acknowledgement of validity of what they have done and what they have created,’ he said.
Mr Keating, who has frequently defended the Chinese Government, said Beijing does not represent a threat to Australia despite its military build up in the south and east china seas and its sweeping territorial claims in the region.
China does not represent a contiguous threat to Australia,’ he said, insisting it is not like the Soviet Union which wanted communism to spread across the world after the Second World War.
‘China is not about turning over the existing world order. It only wants to reform it, and it wants to reform it because of its only scale,’ he said.
‘It signed up to the World Trade Organisation, it signed up to the International Monetary Fund, it signed up to the World Bank, it signed up to the World Health Organisation.’……………… https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10184775/Paul-Keating-blasts-Australias-nuclear-submarines-pro-China-speech.html
President Macron boosts nuclear industry, but in reality, France’s prospects for new reactors are grim
“too expensive, too slow and too dangerous”.
“Announcing a nuclear revival and the construction of new reactors is totally disconnected from reality”
Macron boosts nuclear power plans to meet France’s net-zero ambitions, The Age, By Bevan Shields, November 10
”…………………in a shift, the French President on Tuesday night, Paris time (Wednesday morning AEDT) said the country would rededicate itself to atomic power.
“…………….we will for the first time in decades revive the construction of nuclear reactors in our country………….” Macron said.
He did not give details but the comments were seen as a reference to the expected green-lighting of as many as 14 next-generation nuclear plants proposed by grid operator RTE.
Macron made the announcement against the background of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, where new forms of electricity generation have been identified as a key issue in the fight against climate change, and an energy crisis in Europe triggered by falling gas supplies and an unusually calm summer and autumn which has affected the output of wind turbines.
While confidence in nuclear took a hit in France following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, it is still a relatively uncontroversial technology compared to other countries such as Australia, where some Coalition MPs are pushing Prime Minister Scott Morrison to explore its feasibility.
Macron sought to tie the new nuclear push to French innovation and national pride – key themes for the President as he enters a tough presidential election campaign in 2022.
His position is in stark contrast to Germany, where nuclear power is on course to be phased out by next year.
The vast majority of France’s nuclear facilities were built in the 1970s and 1980s. A third reactor is being added to a plant in Flamanville, in the Normandy region, but the project which started in 2007 has been plagued by cost overruns and huge delays.
Greenpeace France energy transition campaigner Nicolas Nace condemned Macron’s latest announcement and pointed to the Flamanville project to claim nuclear power was “too expensive, too slow and too dangerous”.
“Announcing a nuclear revival and the construction of new reactors as the nuclear industry is totally disconnected from reality,” Nace said.
A new nuclear facility being constructed in Somerset, England, has also been hit by delays and cost blowouts.
An International Energy Agency analysis released earlier this month found global nuclear capacity would reach 582 gigawatts by 2040 – well below the 730 gigawatts needed to achieve net zero emissions.
“This gap widens even further after 2040, so long-term operation of the existing nuclear fleet and a near-doubling of the annual rate of capacity additions are required,” the report said.
“While some of this additional nuclear capacity will not come online until the late 2030s, policy decisions are required now to put nuclear back on track.”
About 20 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity need to be added each year between now and 2050 to achieve carbon neutrality – a rate of construction is comparable with the pre-Fukushima period. https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/macron-backs-nuclear-power-to-meet-france-s-net-zero-ambitions-20211110-p597kk.html
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