Japan Ramps Up Drive to Restart World’s Biggest Nuclear Plant
Stephen Stapczynski and Aya Wagatsuma, Bloomberg News, 15 Mar 24
Japan’s government is ramping up an effort to secure local approval to resume operations at the world’s biggest nuclear power plant, according to a report, amid a wider push by the nation to restart its idled fleet of reactors.
Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Ken Saito will next week request Niigata Governor Hideyo Hanazumi to endorse the restart of Tokyo Electric Power Co’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station, according to the Niigata Nippo newspaper. METI didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The governor’s approval is one of the last hurdles before the nuclear plant can resume…………………………….
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency this week said that the organization would provide technical assistance for the plant, and send a team of experts to assist Tepco’s effort to gain public trust.
Kashiwazaki Kariwa, which has seven reactors totaling 8.2 gigawatts in capacity, is located about 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Tokyo. The nation’s regulator said in 2017 that reactor units 6 and 7 met post-Fukushima safety protocols.
–With assistance from Winnie Hsu and Shoko Oda. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/japan-ramps-up-drive-to-restart-world-s-biggest-nuclear-plant-1.2047179—
Observing the 45th Anniversary of the Worst U.S. Commercial Nuclear Power Plant Accident
March 13th, 2024, https://nuclearactive.org/
Thursday, March 28th marks the 45th anniversary of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in Pennsylvania. A new documentary, “RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island,” tells the harrowing story of the 1979 accident involving the release of radioactive and toxic materials into the air, soils, water and into bodies young and old. As official evacuation orders were delayed, people received much larger radioactive doses than if the evacuation orders were issued immediately.
Forty-five years later four women continue to challenge what the company and government say about the accident.
One review explained how the documentary “uncovers the never-before-told stories of four intrepid homemakers who take their local community’s case against the plant operator all the way to the [U.S.] Supreme Court –- and a young female journalist who’s caught in the radioactive crossfire.”
It also breaks the story of a “radical new health study that may finally expose the truth of the meltdown. For over forty years, the nuclear industry has done everything in their power to cover up their criminal actions, claiming, as they always do, ‘No one was harmed and nothing significant happened.’”
The director of the outstanding documentary is Heidi Hutner. She is a professor of Literature, Sustainability, Women’s and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University New York, and a scholar of nuclear and environmental history, literature, film, and ecofeminism. Hutner chaired the Sustainability Studies Program for six years.
Beginning on March 12th, the documentary is being streamed on Apple + and Amazon Prime for $3.99. Search for The Women of Three Mile Island.
After you watch the film, be sure to register for the historic webinar coming up on Thursday, March 28th at 6 pm Mountain Time with the director Heidi Hutner and her team: Anna Rondon, who is Diné and founder of the New Mexico Social Justice and Equity Institute; Krystal Curley, who is Diné and director of Indigenous Life Ways; Mary Olson, founder of the Gender and Radiation Impact Project; and Professor Mark Jacobson, Stanford University. Cindy Folkers, of Beyond Nuclear, will moderate. The Sierra Club and Beyond Nuclear host the webinar.
In March and April, seven in-person screenings will be held in the U.S. and Canada. CCNS saw the film last weekend at the International Uranium Film Festival in Window Rock, Arizona. It received the Best Investigation Documentary award. We highly recommend watching this story about how the nuclear industry operates and covers up the truth.
EVENTS:……………………………………………….
This week in nuclear news
A vertical garden at Medellin’s City Hall.
Ralph Nader: Stop the Worsening Undercount of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza.
The horrors of nuclear weapons testing.
March 11 – reflecting on Fukushima.
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Climate. Climate change is warping the seasons. The world is not moving fast enough on climate change — social sciences can help explain why.Europe unprepared for rapidly growing climate risks, report finds.
Noel’s notes. The need for clear thinking on the Holocaust in Gaza. Oh for a bit of sanity and genuine leadership! Normalising the unthinkable – the 16th Annual Nuclear (so-called) Deterrence Summit.
AUSTRALIA.
- The Campaign to Free Assange: Reflections on ‘Night Falls’.
- Prime Minister of Australia, and Henchmen, Referred to International Criminal Court for Support of Gaza Genocide. Shock as Australian Prime Minister learns that he is not above international law.
- AUKUS: Are nuclear-powered submarines a good idea for Australia?
- Australia has had many significant inquiries into nuclear power, over the past 60 years.
- The Coalition wants nuclear power. Could it work – or would it be an economic and logistical disaster? Peter Dutton’s climate denial is morphing into a madcap nuclear fantasy. The ban should stay. Nuclear power: Peter Dutton changes gear in favour of big reactors not small modular ones. Peter Dutton’s nuclear implosion after Dunkley byelection loss. Tell him he’s dreaming’: Bowen rubbishes Coalition claim Australia could have nuclear power in a decade. Peter Dutton won’t back down on the Coalition’s desire to take its nuclear energy policy to the next election. Nuclear slow and expensive, renewables fast and cheap: Bowen slaps down Coalition “fantasy”. Dutton’s nuclear option would condemn us to pricey power and blackouts. Market has ‘made its decision’ about nuclear energy being too expensive. Coalition must come clean on how its nuclear vision would work.
- Coalition’s plan to go nuclear puts five regions on the table as favoured locations for nuclear reactors. MP says coalition ‘must’ explain plan for nuclear power near Anglesea on the Victorian Surf Coast. Top scientist explains nuclear process and risks: Sunshine Coast previously considered for facility. Talk of nuclear power plant sites ‘conjecture’, says Liberal MP amid internal division on Dutton’s policy. Western Australia’s Premier Cook goes nuclear on Dutton’s ‘simplistic, ridiculous’ power plan.
- Senior Western Australia Liberal calls for Australia to become nuclear weapons power.
- Australia nuclear facility installs massive rooftop solar system to save $2 million.
- Events. Peace! – No AUKUS, No War! Australia wide events and protest actions for Peace, end AUKUS, cancel nuclear submarines and mobilise against war 14 – 24 March
NUCLEAR ISSUES
| EMPLOYMENT. Fukushima fishers strive to recover catches amid water concerns. | ENVIRONMENT. Hinkley Point Responds to Environmental Concerns Over Bristol Channel Eel Populations. | ETHICS and RELIGION. Aiding Those We Kill: US Humanitarianism in Gaza. The West has set itself on a path of collective suicide — both moral and economic’ Oceans. Could Fukushima’s radioactive water pose lasting threat to humans and the environment? |
| HISTORY. The lesson from the criminal H Bomb Bravo “test”– Hibakusha remind us. Oppenheimer feared nuclear annihilation – and only a chance pause by a Soviet submariner kept it from happening in 1962 | MEDIA. New York Times: Nuclear Risks Have Not Gone Away.US Media and Factcheckers Fail to Note Israel’s Refutation of ‘Beheaded Babies’ Stories. ‘Mr Dutton is right’: Murdoch’s News Corp papers grant nuclear power glowing coverage. NewsGuard AI Censorship Targets People Who Read Primary Sources To Fact-Check The News. – (a pro-Trumpist article?- but probably true) | OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . ‘It’ll be a shortlist of one!’ Villagers in England fear nuclear dump proposal. An Open Letter from Hollywood On Oppenheimer and Nuclear Weapons. Kenya. Senator Omtatah to take the Uyombo nuclear power plant war international. |
| POLITICS Australia’s Opposition party’s nuclear red herring is a betrayal of the Australian people . – also at https://antinuclear.net/2024/03/11/1-a-coalitions-nuclear-red-herring-is-a-betrayal-of-the-australian-people/ . Scottish National Party ministers to set out plans for removing nuclear weapons after independence. UK Labour versus Green. UK Budget: Government confirms £160m deal to acquire Hitachi nuclear sites. U.S. Congress about to fund revival of nuclear waste recycling to be led by private start-ups. | SAFETY. Greenpeace warns on danger of restarting Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant . Improvement notice served over storage of hazardous materials at Dounreay. ‘Sometimes I can’t sleep at night’: Adi Roche warns of nuclear risks of Ukraine conflict as she picks up peace award. Aberdeen shipping logistics company warned over nuclear transport safety failings.. | SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. China outlines position on use of space resources. Russia says it is considering putting a nuclear power plant on the moon with China. Russia and China announce plan to build shared nuclear reactor on the moon by 2035, ‘without humans’. |
WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES.
- The West’s over-involvement in Ukraine.
- F-35A aeroplanes officially certified to carry thermonuclear bomb. NATO bringing missiles closer to Russia – member state.
- Plutonium. Plutonium pit ‘panic’ threatens America’s nuclear ambitions. Does the US Need New Plutonium Pits?.
- Biden is building for Israel a super weapon to replace the Iron Dome.
- Coalition Kill Chain for the Pacific: Lessons from Ukraine. U.S. Sells ‘Link 16’ Battlefield Communications System to Taiwan – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfF4In5Q99Q
WOMEN. Our International Women’s Day Heroine: Rosalie Bertell.
March 11 – reflecting on Fukushima
by Linda Pentz Gunter https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/03/10/reflecting-on-fukushima/
The lesson learned should be an end to nuclear power. Japan is going in the opposite direction
On March 11 this year, and every year since 2011, we reflect on what happened on that day at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan — and the impacts that continue. The never-ending tragedy.
The news cycle was 24/7 on the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011. Gradually, the media lost interest. Fresh catastrophes — also human-caused — came to dominate the headlines.
The stories of ongoing harm, of physical and psychic pain, disease and death, displacement, family separation, and lawsuits dismissed or lost, are often told through the megaphones of desperate Japanese mothers, determined not to let such a fate befall another generation. They are the new Hibakusha, the Cassandras of Japan, sounding the warning but doomed to be disbelieved or ignored.
Because there will be another major nuclear disaster. And Japan, shockingly, is lining itself up to be a strong candidate. A country that has now experienced the second worst nuclear disaster of all time, and is heavily seismically active, is seeking not only to reopen its old reactors but to explore building new ones, including small modular reactors.
The only lesson from the Fukushima nuclear disaster that successive Japanese governments seem to have learned is how to minimize, cover-up and even dismiss and deny its devastating environmental and health effects.
It has done this by consistently whitewashing the Fukushima aftermath — holding the Summer Olympics (delayed a year only due to covid, not the unacceptable radiation levels); moving people back into still contaminated areas; ascribing the high thyroid cancer rates to increased testing; forbidding schools to teach children about the harms of radiation; and, of course, pouring radioactive water from the site into the Pacific Ocean so the unsightly waste water storage casks — a perpetual reminder of the continued build-up of radioactive water at the site — will vanish from view along with the bad PR.
Japan got another reminder of just what kind of gamble it is taking when a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula on January 1st of this year, not far from the Shika nuclear power plant. Buildings fell, 100,000 people were evacuated and tsunami warnings were posted. Conflicting stories emerged as to whether the Shika reactors, mercifully shut down at the time, had suffered lasting damage or whether there were radioactive spills. Area residents have demanded an investigation.
Catastrophe was averted because luck prevailed. Next time, it might not.
All of this should serve as a warning and not only to Japan of course. It doesn’t take an earthquake or a tsunami— or even a war as we are seeing in Ukraine whose reactors remain at perpetual risk —to cause a nuclear disaster. The safety margins are so fragile at nuclear power plants, that even something as minor as a falling tree limb could set an accident in motion if both offsite and then onsite power is lost to the reactors.
There was no war or earthquake or tsunami in Ukraine in 1986 when Chernobyl Unit 4 exploded. Nor in Pennsylvania in 1979 when the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor melted down. Nor in New Mexico later in 1979 when 90 million gallons of radioactive liquid and eleven hundred tons of solid mill waste burst from the Church Rock uranium mill tailings pond, permanently contaminating the Puerto River.
What was there, on each occasion, were human beings who made catastrophic mistakes with a highly dangerous, obsolete technology that even on a good day, causes harm to human health and on a bad one can leave a deadly, longlasting legacy as we have seen in Fukushima.
All of those human errors were preventable. And they still are — provided we remove the object of fallible human responsibility: inherently dangerous nuclear power plants.
The only worthy legacy of the Fukushima disaster, now 13 years on and still going, is to abandon the use of nuclear technology permanently.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. All opinions are her own.
Today. My dilemma in writing about nuclear issues.
This might be a peculiarly Australian dilemma. I don’t know. The thing is – most people seem able to tolerate a bit of criticism of the nuclear industry. And indeed, when I post articles on my websites – nuclear-news.net and antinuclear.net, or on my newsletter, – that’s OK.
But if I bring in the subject of Ukraine, or especially of Gaza and Israel, – people get upset. What has that got to do with the nuclear industry? (Well, a lot really – as both situations bring us ever closer to the brink of nuclear war).
The big problem is this. As part of an Australian, and indeed worldwide, movement, for a safe clean nuclear-free world, my stuff is accepted as worthwhile. But, when I digress into examining what is going on in Ukraine, or worse, in Israel – then I am no longer to be trusted. Indeed, I am sometimes being called a Putin-lover, a communist. a terrorist – and especially anti-semitic.
As a consequence, then my anti-nuclear coverage is not to be trusted, either. It’s OK to be anti-nuclear – that’s a respectable opinion, as long as you’re pro Ukraine and pro Israel.
I really don’t know how to deal with this. It seems that, to be respected at all, it is necessary to conform to certain dogmas, such as “Russia is always evil” and “Israelis are holy victims”.
In my view – Putin is a murderous thug, but Russia is not always to blame, and Russian policies and aspirations should be viewed fairly.
Similarly, I think that the Jews, over history, have been terribly persecuted and murdered, but that doesn’t give Israel the licence to now do mass murder of the Gazan people.
There’s a dreadful conformity in Australia, and perhaps in all supposedly-white, English speaking countries. We must side with Ukraine, no matter what. And we must not be seen to be anti-semitic, no matter what.
So – I am left with the dilemma – should I ignore those two nuclear-war-trigger situations, in order to sound credible about nuclear matters?
Should I act “nice” about what Israel is doing, and pretend that I don’t notice? That is all too easy to do, in Australia, with its relentless media focus on sport.
Texas wildfires continue to pose threat to Pantex nuclear weapons plant, and climate change will bring further threats to nuclear facilities
By Jessica McKenzie, François Diaz-Maurin | February 28, 2024
A wildland fire in the Texas Panhandle forced the Pantex plant, a nuclear facility northeast of Amarillo, to temporarily cease operations on Tuesday and to evacuate nonessential workers. Plant workers also started construction on a fire barrier to protect the plant’s facilities.
The plant resumed normal operations on Wednesday, officials said.
“Thanks to the responsive actions of all Pantexans and the NNSA Production Office in cooperation with the women and men of the Pantex Fire Department and our mutual aid partners from neighboring communities, the fire did not reach or breach the plant’s boundary,” Pantex said in a social media post on Wednesday afternoon.
At a press conference Tuesday evening, Laef Pendergraft, a nuclear safety engineer with the National Nuclear Security Administration production office at Pantex, said the evacuations were out of an “abundance of caution.”
“Currently we are responding to the plant, but there is no fire on our site or on our boundary,” Pendergraft told reporters.
The 90,000-acre Windy Deuce fire burning four to five miles to the north of the Pantex plant was 25 percent contained as of late Wednesday afternoon.
Until the fire is fully contained, it will continue to pose a threat to the nearby Pantex plant, says Nickolas Roth, the senior director of nuclear materials security at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. “I think the sign that the coast is clear is that the fire is no longer burning,” he told the Bulletin. “One can imagine many reasons operations would resume.”……………………………………….
While the specific cause of the Smokehouse Creek fire has not yet been identified, climate change is making explosive wildfires more likely, with serious implications for the country’s nuclear weapons programs.
Since 1975, the Pantex plant has been the United States’ primary facility responsible for assembling and disassembling nuclear weapons. It is one of six production facilities in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Nuclear Security Enterprise.
In addition to warhead surveillance and repair, the plant is currently working on the full scale production of the B61-12 guided nuclear gravity bomb and 455-kiloton W88 Alteration (Alt) 370 warhead as part of the broader US nuclear weapons life-extension and modernization programs. The plant handles significant quantities of uranium, plutonium, and tritium, in addition to other non-radioactive toxic and explosive chemicals.
If a wildfire were to impact the site directly, the health and safety implications could be enormous.
“I don’t like to speculate in terms of worst-case scenarios,” Roth told the Bulletin. “The potential for danger if a fire ever broke out at a site with weapons usable nuclear material is quite great.”
“The danger from plutonium really comes from inhaling particulates,” Dylan Spaulding, a senior scientist in the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, explained on a podcast in 2023. “So if powder is inhaled, or if somehow powder were to be dispersed through, say, a big fire or some kind of incident at the site, that would certainly pose a risk for surrounding communities.”
Up to 20,000 plutonium cores, or “pits,” from disassembled nuclear weapons can be stored on site. (The exact figure is classified, but experts contacted by the Bulletin said the current number of “surplus” plutonium pits already dismantled is likely to be around 19,000, plus an additional unknown number of backlog pits awaiting disassembly.)
But as Robert Alvarez wrote in the Bulletin in 2018, the plutonium is stored in facilities built over half a century ago that were never intended to indefinitely store nuclear explosives. After extreme rains flooded parts of the facility in 2010 and 2017, some of the containers began showing signs of corrosion.
A 2021 review by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board of the Pantex plant’s operations found that an increasing number of plutonium pits are stored in unsealed containers. These pits are either “recently removed from a weapon, planned to be used in an upcoming assembly or life extension program, or pending surveillance,” the board explained. The board previously recommended that these pits be repackaged into sealed insert containers for their safe long-term staging. But the plant personnel “stated it is only achieving approximately 10 percent of its annual pit repackaging goals, citing a lack of funding and priority.”…………………………………………………………………………..
A Department of Energy report published in April 2022 on fire protection at the Pantex, which identified several weaknesses within the plant, did not discuss risks from wildland fires.
“The event is obviously a stark reminder of the dangers of climate change on even high security nuclear weapons facilities,” said Kristensen.
But as other authors have previously argued in the Bulletin, climate change is a blind spot in US nuclear weapons policy. “All of these [nuclear] structures were built on the presumption of a stable planet. And our climate is changing very rapidly and presenting new extremes,” Alice Hill, a senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Bulletin in 2021……….. https://thebulletin.org/2024/02/texas-wildfires-force-major-nuclear-weapons-facility-to-briefly-pause-operations/
Nuclear news – week to 19 February
Some bits of good news – Sea Otters Returned to a Degraded Coastline Ate Enough Crabs to Restore Balance and Cut Erosion by 90%.England set a biodiversity benchmark. Wind power awards and wildlife photography: Positive environmental stories from 2024.
TOP STORIES. Chris Hedges: Julian Assange’s Final Appeal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvdTG56UbdcAustralian PM Albanese and 85 Other MPs Vote to End Assange Incarceration.
Biodiversity: the first ever State of the World’s Migratory Species report released.
Nuclear Illusions Hinder Climate Efforts as Costs Keep Rising. Nuclear Delays, Cost Overruns Imperil UK’s Net-Zero Goals .
Surviving an Era of Pervasive Nuclear Instability.
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From the archives. The war-mongering of Israel and USA.
Climate.Collapse of Ocean Currents Could Cause Major Climate Problems.
Nuclear. The U.S. industry is pretty quiet, still licking its wounds oveer the NuScale small nuclear reactor fiasco. Not so -Britain. The UK is in a turmoil (actually over lots of things) – but especially over MONEY – and the obscene costs of its Great British Nuclear Policy – not going too well at all!
Noel’s notes: Israel, USA, the “West” can’t hide their atrocious guilt any more. Again – the power of the Zionist lobby. 11 year old boys and nukes in space.
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AUSTRALIA. Australian Parliament votes in favour of bringing Julian Assange home. Dutton goes nuclear on government’s renewable plans. Australia’s nuclear future and the legal ramifications of ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Wind and solar are delivering an energy transition at record speed.
NUCLEAR ISSUES
| ECONOMICS. UK: Spending watchdog launches investigation into Sellafield nuclear waste site. The UK’s biggest nuclear waste dump faces an inquiry by the National Audit Office (NAO) over its soaring costs and safety record. UK Nuclear financing comes unstuck. Energy company Centrica boss says it could fund Suffolk nuclear plant Sizewell C. France: EDF’s setbacks weigh down the relaunch of nuclear power in Europe. France’s first 6 EPR2 nuclear reactors will cost much more than the planned 52 billion euros. Energy company Centrica boss says it could fund Suffolk nuclear plant Sizewell C. | ENVIRONMENT. AI, climate change, pandemics and nuclear warfare put humanity in ‘grave danger’, open letter warns. The Saltwater Threat: A Death Sentence for Freshwater Life as EDF plans to flood area, in service to Hinkley Nuclear Project . | HEALTH. Radiation. Breakthrough research unveils effects of ionizing radiation on cellul |
| POLITICS. UK: Britain must pay more for Hinkley, says France. UK government keen to take control of Anglesey site for Westinghouse to build Wylfa nuclear power station. Planned UK nuclear reactors unlikely to help hit green target, say MPs. Environmental Audit Committee urges UK Government to clarify nuclear SMR strategy UK’s Nuclear Strategy Faces Criticism: Uncertainty Looms for Small Modular Reactors. Nuclear Free Local Authorities call on nuclear industry to spend more on social action. Radiation Free Lakeland urges East Riding Councillors to Withdraw from GDF process. PM Trudeau dismisses Algonquin concerns over Chalk River nuclear waste dump. “Unbelievable” U.S. government bailouts fund zombie nuclear projects. | POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. Nuclear weapons and poison pills: Washington, Beijing warily circle AI talks. EU nuclear weapons ‘unrealistic,’ says German defense committee chair. Shameless Emmanuel Macron demands British taxpayers cough up more cash for nuclear power. | SAFETY. Congress takes aim at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.Nuclear regulator raps EDF over safety flaws. Latest Fukushima leak exposes failures in nuclear crisis management. Safety panel urges Fukushima nuclear plant operator to better communicate with public. The Complexity of Nuclear Submarine Safeguards Impacts the Current Landscape. |
| SECRETS and LIES. South Korea’s nuclear mafia. | SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. The ‘disturbing’ intel roiling the Hill is about Russian nukes in space. From Russia with nukes? Sifting facts from speculation about space weapon threat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xl0C6K2Nug – Long video – but worth it.SpaceX deorbiting 100 older Starlink satellites to ‘keep space safe and sustainable’. ‘Everyone needs to calm down’: experts assess Russian nuclear space threat. Is there really a nuclear weapon in space? | SPINBUSTER. The War on Gaza: Public Relations vs. Reality. Russian ‘nukes in space’ scare by Biden admin is nonsense. Exploding Alberta’s Myths about Small Nuclear Reactors. |
UK Nuclear financing comes unstuck
‘It would be madness to give Sizewell C the final go-ahead while the questions of whether Hinkley C can be finished, and who pays, are not resolved.
It all seems a bit desperate.
All in all, despite attempts to talk it up at COP28, nuclear seem to be facing a real problem with finance, if nothing else, a problem not shared by renewables- they are mostly getting cheaper.
SMR’s look likely to be an expensive diversion.
, https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2024/02/uk-nuclear-financing-comes-unstuck.html
The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says that nuclear power is the ‘perfect antidote to the energy challenges facing Britain’, but things seem to be going a bit amiss with nuclear finance. Basically, not many want to fund new nuclear projects any more, as costs and delays escalate along with political sensitivities.
For example, China’s CGN has halted funding for UK’s part-built Hinkley Point C European Pressurised-water Reactor. CGN may yet restart payments, but, if not, its developer, the French company EDF, will have to fund the completion of the plant alone.
Some portrayed CGNs withdrawal from Hinkley as due to China being ‘miffed’ by its exclusion from the Sizewell project. The UK government had earlier taken over CGN’s initial stake in EDF proposed next project, Sizewell C, after concerns about over-reliance on Chinese funding. That would not have gone down well in China. But it was also claimed that CGN was upset by the large Hinkley overrun costs and delays. Well maybe that’s true too, but CGN was within its rights to exit. It was contractually allowed to only meet any cost overruns on a voluntary basis. And it’s evidently decided not to. Though of course it will still own a share of any profits, if the project still goes ahead.
However, Hinkley prospects now looks even more uncertain, with EDF saying its start date could be delayed from 2027 to 2031 and it cost expand to £35bn or even more, with knock-on effects also likely for Sizewell C.
So some plans seem to be coming adrift, with France and the UK potentially falling out over what happens next. France has already called on the UK to pay more for Hinkley. It could even be that it will pull out of financing Sizewell. Certainly, even if that is avoided, nuclear funding all looks a bit uncertain, with China out of it and EDF strapped for cash.
Under the UK’s proposed RAB funding system, consumers are set to be tapped to in effect provide some of the up-front capital needed for Sizewell, thus talking on some the risk faced by this investment. But as Alison Downes of the Stop Sizewell C campaign group said: ‘It would be madness to give Sizewell C the final go-ahead while the questions of whether Hinkley C can be finished, and who pays, are not resolved. Sizewell C is bound to take longer and cost more, but this time it would be we consumers who would bear the risk and pay the price through the “nuclear tax” on our energy bills.’
However, new private investors are still being sought, and to keep the show on the road the UK government has provided an extra £1.3bn, bringing the proposed UK tax payers funding so far to £2.5 bn.
But will it still happen? As Utility week noted ‘The Sizewell C plant, which has yet to receive a final investment decision by the government, will not be fully commissioned until 2038’. And that could be rather optimistic. More like 2040! All of which could mean that future security of supply may also be uncertain. With Hinkley delayed, EDF now says it wants to keep its old AGR plants running (even) longer, despite their safety issues, to maintain output and its cash flow! It is also talking about running the (already existing) Sizewell B PWR an extra 20 years.
It all seems a bit desperate. Prof. Rob Gross, director of UK Energy Research Centre, said the delays to Hinkley made increasing gas burn in the meantime ‘almost inevitable’. He added Wind or solar are unlikely to plug the gap because the UK is already ‘struggling to connect all the renewables schemes already in the pipeline for 2027/28’. But surely we can do better than that – if we stop wasting money on nuclear dead ends and focus instead on linking up new renewables.
For example, there are new grid technologies which can help green power network integration, including advanced composite-core conductors which, according to a US study, ‘can cost-effectively double transmission capacity within existing right-of-way (ROW), with limited additional permitting’. It claimed that ‘this strategy unlocks a high availability of increasingly economically-viable RE resources in close proximity to the existing network’, and it could upgrade the system very cost effectively. However, it’s not just a matter of better grid technology, or even less money. It also about reducing bureaucracy and getting rid of policy blocks, for example, in the UK context, in relation to on shore wind, which, despite pronouncements otherwise, is still in effect, being blocked.
Cost over-runs and delays with nuclear projects are of course not just British issues. As Counterpunch noted, reactor construction delays and costs hikes are also common elsewhere. ‘The cost of EDF’s EPR reactor being built in France at Flamanville and still incomplete, has more than quadrupled to close to $15 billion. Another EPR, at Olkiluoto in Finland, went from $3.2 billion to more than $12 billion and launched 12 years late. On U.S. soil, two AP 1000 reactors at the Vogtle nuclear power plant site in Georgia, will likely come in at a total price tag of at least $35 billion, $20 billion more than originally estimated, with the second of the two reactors still not on line’.
All in all, despite attempts to talk it up at COP28, nuclear seem to be facing a real problem with finance, if nothing else, a problem not shared by renewables- they are mostly getting cheaper. The nuclear lobby’s last ditch hope is small modular reactors- still a very long shot, with none yet in existence. So far SMR’s look likely to be an expensive diversion. And too late to be much help meeting climate/energy targets. For example, the chair of the UK’s Environmental Audit Committee has said that ‘the first SMR is unlikely to be in operation by 2035, the date ministers have set for decarbonising the electricity supply. So, what role will SMRs have in an energy mix dominated by renewables and supplemented by existing and emerging large-scale nuclear?’
Arguably, ‘big nuclear’ is also unlikely to be favoured for new capacity in many places: potential financiers are more likely to stick with what already works well and is cheaper …At COP28, 22 countries, including the UK, talked about tripling nuclear by 2050. But over 117 committed to tripling renewables by 2030. Arguably a much more credible and useful target.
Exploding Alberta’s Myths about Small Nuclear Reactors
Small nuclear reactors are unproven and years away from being in use. But the Alberta government is presenting them as a way to keep fossil fuels flowing.
The untested technology is more about greenwashing than about cutting emissions.
Tim Rauf 15 Feb 2024, The Tyee
Alberta’s government is really excited about nuclear power.
More specifically, about novel and unproven small modular nuclear reactors. It hopes to use these to help lower the province’s carbon emissions while letting the energy industry continue operating as usual — an enticing prospect to the government given its intention to increase oil and gas production, while still having the energy sector get to net zero by 2050.
Small modular nuclear reactors produce less than one-third of the electricity of a traditional reactor.
The premise is that small reactors are easier to place and build, and cheaper.
Alberta hitched its horse to this wagon with Ontario, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan in 2022, taking part in a strategic plan for small modular reactor development and deployment. Alberta Innovates, the province’s research body, had a feasibility study conducted for it by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The study focused on using the reactors for greenhouse-gas-free steam emissions for oilsands projects, electricity generation in our deregulated market and providing an alternative to diesel when supplying power to remote communities.
More recently, Ontario Power Generation and Capital Power out of Edmonton entered into an agreement to assess SMRs for providing nuclear energy to Alberta’s grid. Nathan Neudorf, Alberta’s minister of affordability and utilities, was gleeful. “This partnership represents an exciting and important step forward in our efforts to decarbonize the grid while maintaining on-demand baseload power,” he said of the announcement.
All of this buzz makes it seem like SMRs are just over the horizon, an inevitability that will allow the province to evolve to have a cleaner, modern energy landscape.
But small modular reactors are nowhere near ready for deployment, and won’t be in Alberta for about a decade. That means for 10 years, they’ll provide no GHG-free steam to mitigate emissions.
“It’s still in the design phase,” Kennedy Halvorson said, speaking about the reactors. Halvorson is a conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association. The reactors are “so far off from being able to be used for us,” Halvorson added. “The earliest projections would be 2030. And we need to be reducing our emissions before 2030. So, we need to have solutions now, basically.”
With SMRs unable to stem the emissions tide for years, it’s confusing as to how they could make enough of a difference to get Alberta to net zero by 2050 (in line with United Nations emissions reduction targets to keep global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees).
Capital Power made similar projections………………………………………………………………………..
Construction itself is only one piece. Adding to that is the need to build a regulatory framework, which Alberta doesn’t have for nuclear…………………………………………………….
Ontario’s nuclear troubles
Listening to these public voices is prudent. We can look east to see what happens when the government and power utilities sidestep the process of getting explicit consent from communities that stand to be affected.
With its status as the nuclear activity hub in Canada, we can use Ontario as a litmus test of sorts and gauge Canada’s track record of care with nuclear. The report card isn’t great. There have been multiple cases of improper consultation with Indigenous Peoples on whose lands the waste, production or extraction sites are placed………………………………………………………………………..
Small reactors face a critical economic challenge
Adding to the timeline troubles are questions as to whether small reactors truly offer that much of an economic advantage, if any, compared with their larger counterparts.
In a previous article Ramana wrote, he pointed to the first reactors as an indication of the answer.
The first reactors started off small. Their size, though, coupled with the exorbitant price tag of nuclear development, meant they couldn’t compete with fossil fuels.
The only thing they could do to reduce the disadvantage was to build larger and larger reactors, Ramana said.
A large reactor that could produce five times as much electricity didn’t cost five times as much to build, he said, improving the return from the investment.
Economically the SMR can’t seem to compete with its larger sibling. Adding this to the delays abundant with nuclear, controversies around construction and communities, and the misalignment of timelines for meeting climate commitments, we need to ask why we’re seeing such a fervent enthusiasm for small modular reactors.
Greenwashing by any other name
The answer is likely a simple one: The Alberta government wants to keep the taps on. Their friends in the energy industry do too. Like carbon capture and sequestration before it, SMRs are the next way to stave off pesky talk of divestment and transition…………………………………………………………….
Deflecting and delaying isn’t the only greenwashing happening either, Halvorson argued. She noted there’s a special kind of tactic that comes with nuclear and other “clean” technology, where only carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas offsets are counted.
“When we reduce it all to just how much CO2 something emits, we’re not getting the full picture of environmental impacts,” Halvorson said. She pointed to water use in nuclear as an example.
“Most nuclear technologies require a massive input of water to work. And as we know, right now we’re in a drought in Alberta. Our water resources are so precious. We already have industries that are using way too much water as is, in a way that’s not allowing our environments and ecosystems to replenish their reserves, like their water resources,” she said.
Despite the cheerleading for nuclear Alberta, where small nuclear reactors will let us enjoy the fruits of fossil fuels (and even produce more) in a cleaner way, the bones don’t read that way. The argument that we can keep on drilling so long as we have that newest silver bullet hasn’t stood up to scrutiny before, and it doesn’t now. https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/02/15/Exploding-Alberta-Myths-Small-Nuclear-Reactors/
From Russia with nukes? Sifting facts from speculation about space weapon threat
“Nuclear weapons in space are a really, really dumb idea,” said Jessica West of Canadian non-profit Ploughshares, but experts note that with Russia, nothing can ever be fully ruled out.
By THERESA HITCHENSon February 15, 2024
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/02/russia-nuclear-weapon-space-mike-turner-threat-white-house/
WASHINGTON — In the 24 hours since a cryptic, but scary, warning from Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, of a “serious national security threat,” mainstream and social media sites alike have been chock-a-block with breathless, and sometimes contradictory, speculation about what might be going on.
Even as other members of Congress and the White House sought to play down Turner’s statement, leaks began to fill the press that the situation involves some sort of Russian nuclear capability in orbit.
The New York Times today quoted officials “briefed on the matter” as saying that the Biden administration has “informed Congress and its allies in Europe about Russian advances on a new, space-based nuclear weapon designed to threaten America’s extensive satellite network.”
PBS News Hour, on the other hand, on Wednesday said that sources characterized the new weapon as a nuclear-powered satellite carrying an electronic warfare payload — which is a very different beast than a nuclear weapons-carry satellite — but today reported that it is unclear which of those two things is correct.
The most detail shared by the administration came in a press conference today, where White House spokesperson John Kirby confirmed that the threat in question is “related to an anti-satellite weapon that Russia is developing.” He also noted that it is not an “active capability that has been deployed,” and that “there is no immediate threat to anyone’s safety.” However, Kirby refrained from providing more specific details.
Moscow, predictably, has issued a blanket denial.
Whatever the exact nature of the new threat is, the White House and President Joe Biden are “taking it seriously,” Kirby said, with briefings planned to Congress, as well as allies and partners. Further, he said, the administration is undertaking “direct diplomatic engagement with Russia” on US concerns.
To be clear, any type of Russian on-orbit anti-satellite (ASAT) would be a bad thing. But all things considered, a nuclear weapon in space would be worse than a nuclear-powered satellite carrying a disruptive EW payload — although for a number of reasons much less likely to be what Moscow is up to.
Nuclear Weapons in Space: Been There, Done That
Yes, nuclear weapons have been detonated in space before, by both the Soviet Union and the US during the early days of the Cold War. The largest was done by the US in 1962. After a series of failed tests, the United States conducted the Starfish Prime experiment, setting off a 1.45 megaton nuke at an altitude of about 450 kilometers (about 280 miles) above sea level.
The blast created an electro-magnetic pulse and lingering radiation belts that ultimately killed eight of the 24 satellites that were then on orbit, including one owned by the United Kingdom, according to a 2022 report by the American Physical Society.
There are around 7,000 active satellites on orbit today, as well as 10 humans aboard the International Space Station and China’s Tiangong station. Thus, a nuclear explosion on orbit likely would create even more havoc than Starfish Prime — including, almost certainly, for Russia’s own assets.
“Nuclear weapons in space are a really, really dumb idea, first because they are banned, but also because they have immediate and long lasting indiscriminate effects on the space environment which means that everyone — including the deployer and its allies — is affected,” explained Jessica West of Canadian non-profit Ploughshares in an email.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, to which both Russia and the US are parties, was created by the United Nations precisely to ban nuclear weapons in space.
“Some people might say that Russia doesn’t care about this because its space capabilities are waning so it has a smaller stake in the game. But I don’t think that any state can aim for functionality let alone ‘great power’ without being able to exploit outer space. There are also easier (and currently legal) ways of having large scale effects on the space environment such as the use of destructive weapons and dirty bombs,” West added.
Todd Harrison of the American Enterprise Institute agreed.
“There is no need to place nukes in orbit. Keeping nukes on Earth atop ICBMs is less expensive, more flexible to operate, easier to upgrade and maintain, etc. But what if your intent is to use the nuke in space (e.g., an EMP blast)? It is still better to base it on the ground,” he told Breaking Defense in an email.
“Detonating nuclear weapons has also been banned by treaty since 1963, not that it would stop Russia from doing it,” he added. “But why did the US and USSR agree to this ban so long ago and stick to it for all these years? It’s because popping off a nuke in space creates a real mess that affects satellites indiscriminately.”
That said, it would be very hard to detect if any country decided to deploy a nuke on a satellites, said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. He told Breaking Defense in an email today that this verification problem was one of the key findings of an unclassified wargame the center conducted last spring on the use of a nuclear weapon in low Earth orbit.
“My hunch is that nobody wants to admit that this is the case. It’s a pretty important point,” he added.
Nuke-Powered Satellite: Old Tech, New Use?
Several experts said that Russian development of an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon being carried on a nuclear-powered satellite, one using a small nuclear reactor to generate on-board electricity, is a more likely scenario. This is because both NASA and Russia’s Space Agency Roscosmos, have used nuclear power for space systems in the past. Indeed, NASA’s famous Voyager spacecraft carry nuclear power generators.
“The advantage is that a nuclear power source gives you power all the time, instead of being dependent on solar arrays pointing at the sun and charging batteries,” Harrison said.
Russia in the 1970s launched a series of naval reconnaissance satellites, called RORSATs for Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellites, equipped with a small reactor. Infamously, one of them crashed into Canada’s Northwest Territories in 1978, scattering radioactive debris for miles. Thus, the UN has “adopted principles regarding the use of nuclear power sources in outer space,” West said, which focus on safety and peaceful uses.
Still, she noted that “obviously the use of nuclear anything in space is fraught with safety concerns, and when this is combined with a military capability, it adds on security concerns and fears that it could also be used as a nuclear weapon.”
Harrison explained that a nuclear power source could be used to operate a number of payloads capable of disabling satellites.
“A nuclear power source could be used for a lot of things, like powering a radio frequency jamming payload to block signals or a high-powered microwave payload that could potentially fry the circuits on a satellite. Both of these applications would make a lot of sense from space,” he said.
Secure World Foundation’s Brian Weeden, in a thread on X (formerly Twitter), said a nuke-powered EW satellite is likely what the Russians are working on — especially considering that there is evidence that they have been developing such a technology, as documented in a 2019 article in The Space Review. The satellite system in question, called Ekipazh, is being developed by KB Arsenal (or Arsenal Design Bureau) of St. Petersburg under a contract with the Ministry of Defense, the article asserts.
All that said, Harrison said that it is also possible that some other non-nuclear capability is at play.
“Of course, all of the speculation could be completely wrong and it could be some other type of counterspace weapon. Russia has tested crazy things in the past, like firing a machine gun in space,” he said.
“But until we know more, and knowing Russia’s history of ASAT weapon development and testing, it is certainly something to be concerned about. Our economy and military are heavily dependent on space, and Russia knows that,” he added.
France’s first 6 EPR2 nuclear reactors will cost much more than the planned 52 billion euros
Why the first six EPR2s will cost much more than the 52 billion euros
initially planned by EDF. During a hearing in the Senate, the executive
director of EDF’s new nuclear projects, Xavier Ursat, indicated that the
first six EPR2s will cost more than the 52 billion euros announced in 2021.
A first slippage in costs including the new estimate is promised for the
end of 2024.
Why the first six EPR2s will cost much more than the 52
billion euros initially planned by EDF. EDF does not brag about it. But in
the Senate commission of inquiry into the price of electricity, Xavier
Ursat, its executive director in charge of the engineering department and
new nuclear projects, was obliged to talk about it.
As predicted by an expert report in 2021, the construction of the first six EPR2s will indeed
cost more than the 51.7 billion euros, rounded to 52 billion by the State,
calculated by EDF at the time Emmanuel Macron had to decide on the relaunch
of a new nuclear program in France. A relaunch confirmed in his speech on
Belfort’s energy strategy on February 10, 2022. “We are carrying out a
new economic assessment. It led to a figure higher than 52 billion,”
Xavier Ursat declared to the senators. Which, for him, “is not very
surprising”.
L’Usine Nouvelle 12th Feb 2024
First Small Nuclear Reactor (SMR) domino falls, potentially to start cascade
February 8, 2024, https://beyondnuclear.org/first-smr-domino-falls-potentially-to-start-cascade/—
Same financial risks viewed as generic to entire reactor type
The nuclear industry is rattled by an Opinion piece appearing in the January 31, 2024 edition of the energy trade journal Utility Dive. The article, astutely entitled “The collapse of NuScale’s project should spell the end for small modular nuclear reactors,” is an extensively documented study of yet another nuclear folly.
Its author, M.V. Ramana, the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, carefully focuses on the financial collapse of what was heralded to be the first units of a bow wave of mass produced small commercial power reactors to be constructed and operated in the United States.
NuScale Power Corp, the Portland, Oregon based company that started up in 2007, was supposed to be the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) poster child to mass produce the first US Small Modular Reactors (SMR) owned and controlled by US nuclear giant and thermonuclear weapons manufacturer Fluor Corporation. Instead, on November 9, 2023, NuScale was announced as just another financial causality in a growing tally of nuclear projects stymied by uncontrollable cost and a recurring pattern of delay after delay. In this case, however, NuScale fell victim even before its selected reactor design could be certified by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a viable license for the groundbreaking ceremony.
The NuScale pilot project’s initial goal was to license, construct and operate twelve contiguous units, (50 to 60-megawatts electric (MWe) each for a total up to 720 MWe of generating capacity per site), housed in a single reactor building with one control room. On the promise that this would be safer, cheaper and quicker to build and operate, the NuScale SMR is really just a redesign of a decades-old technology for the impossibly expensive and larger (800 to 1150 MWe per unit) commercial pressurized water reactors operating on license extensions today.
Yet, even with this extensive experience going back to the 1960’s, the redesign has not yielded to be any more reliable for estimating cost-of-completion, time-to-completion or affordable operation. In fact, with the industry’s abandonment of the design and construction of new reactors on “economies of scale,” the prospect for generating affordable electricity from small “mirage” reactors has apparently only become more unattainable.
The NuScale pilot reactor construction site was awarded by the DOE on the federally owned Idaho National Laboratory (INL) near Idaho Falls. NuScale worked out a deal for its projected electricity customer base on a contract with the Utah Associated Municipal Power System (UAMPS), an electric cooperative of 50 cities in seven western states incentivized by a DOE federal government payout to would be customers of up to $1.4 billion over ten years.
But despite the federally promised awards to reduce nuclear power’s certain financial risks to customers, Ramana documents the NuScale and UAMPS struggle with first building its power purchase subscriptions from members who would shortly run for the designated “exit ramps” scheduled into the contract.
As these municipalities pulled out of the nuclear project because of financial concerns, UAMPS and NuScale renegotiated the project’s generating capacity down to six units each rated at 77 MWe for a total generating capacity of 462 MWe.
The reactor design’s safety, however, is still problematic and uncertified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and now demonstrated to be yet another expensive “house of cards.” Like the previous “nuclear renaissance” initiated by Congress and the nuclear industry in 2005, of the 34 “advanced” Generation III units put forward by industry, only one unit (Vogtle unit 3) is commercially operable today and another unit (Vogtle unit 4) still under construction. The initial $14 billion project in Georgia is now approaching as much as $40 billion to show for it.
In a follow-on article in the February 3, 2024 edition of DownToEarth, M.V. Ramana and Farrukh A. Chishtie are co-authors of “Tripling nuclear energy by 2050 will take a miracle, and miracles don’t happen” which identifies the same dangerous wild goose chase to expand nuclear power that is destined to fail climate change mitigation on the global scale.
Chishtie and Ramana expertly rebut the deluded notion as presented by the United States former Special Envoy on Climate Change John Kerry at the 28th Conference of Parties (COP28) in Dubai, UAE. They cite “the hard economic realities of nuclear power” historically to date as the principal reason nuclear power cannot be scaled up from what can only be termed a preposterous level by 2050. That will be far too late by most accounts to abate an accelerating climate crisis.
“The evidence that nuclear energy cannot be scaled up quickly is overwhelming. It is time to abandon the idea that further expanding nuclear technology can help with mitigating climate change. Rather, we need to focus on expanding renewables and associated technologies while implementing stringent efficiency measures to rapidly effect an energy transition.
Rich men with the wrong answers – nuclear power has no future and yet they persist
None of these realities deter the pro-nuclear lobby, now led most shamefully by the International Atomic Energy Agency itself. Even as its chief, Rafael Grossi, wrings his hands over the immense dangers posed by Ukraine’s 15 reactors embroiled in a war, he and his agency are planning what it boasts is the “first-ever” Nuclear Energy Summit, to be held in late March in Brussels in partnership with the Belgian government.
By Linda Pentz Gunter https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/02/11/rich-men-with-the-wrong-answers/
Pro-nukers warned coal use would rise as reactors closed in Germany. The opposite happened.
Remember all those doomsayers from the pro-nuclear mythology unit who cast Germany’s Energiewende — or green energy revolution — as a catastrophic failure? They claimed, totally erroneously or deliberately misleadingly, that the country’s choice to close all its nuclear power plants guaranteed an increase in fossil fuel use and especially coal.
Germany vehemently denied those false predictions since they clearly knew that the country’s renewables were more than able to replace nuclear and fossil fuels. And so it has come to pass.
Germany’s use of lignite, or brown coal, dropped to its lowest level in 60 years in 2023. Even more dramatically, its hard coal use is at the lowest level since 1955. All of this happened at the same time as Germany was closing its last three reactors.
Meanwhile, according to reporting by Clean Energy Wire (CLEW), and citing an analysis (in German) from the research institute, Fraunhofer ISE, renewables “contributed a record share of more than half of the country’s power consumption” in 2023.
“The country sourced nearly 60 percent (59.7%) of its net power production from renewables, which generated a total of 260 terawatt hours (TWh), an increase of 7.2 percent compared to 2022,” the report said.
The 2022 uptick of coal production in Germany was entirely driven by high gas prices and a shortfall of French nuclear power production. The French nuclear sector was so unreliable that 50% of its reactors were out of action in April 2022, and again in November 2022, just as winter electricity usage began to rise.
Consequently, France had to import electricity to keep the lights on and the heat running.
Far from eating crow, the pro-nuclear boosters like Ted Nordhaus, who co-founded the Breakthrough Institute (BTI), are still crowing about the benefits of nuclear power. Nordhaus couldn’t wait to take ownership of his latest scheme, apparently long in the plotting, to dismantle the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in order to eliminate the industry’s most burdensome (i.e. costly) hassle of having to worry about inconvenient things like reactor safety. Efforts to do just that are now underway in Congress.
“Through years of rigorous research and engagement with the NRC, BTI has pinpointed crucial opportunities to modernize the regulatory framework that will lay the foundation for streamlined and efficient nuclear reactor licensing,” boasts the company’s website.
Meanwhile, we learn that the struggling Vogtle 3 and 4 new reactor project in Georgia, already 20 billion dollars over budget and years late, is set once again to further gouge ratepayers for the mistakes and failures of Georgia Power. And across the pond that the UK twin EPR project will likely top $59 billion with a completion date originally set for 2017 now pushed back to “after 2029”.
None of these realities deter the pro-nuclear lobby, now led most shamefully by the International Atomic Energy Agency itself. Even as its chief, Rafael Grossi, wrings his hands over the immense dangers posed by Ukraine’s 15 reactors embroiled in a war, he and his agency are planning what it boasts is the “first-ever” Nuclear Energy Summit, to be held in late March in Brussels in partnership with the Belgian government.
The IAEA has now become possibly the world’s most aggressive marketer of nuclear power and is still crowing about what it sees as a triumph at COP28, a veritable nuclear coup d’etat. In reality, this encompassed a miserable 24 countries signing onto an absurd fantasy propaganda statement that the world can and must triple global nuclear capacity by 2025.
Is there any point to the COP anymore? (Was there ever?) It has become one big carbon footprint junket, taken over by the oil companies, and hijacked by the nuclear industry and the IAEA, while making pledges rarely kept. The next one, in Azerbaijan, is chaired by yet another oil executive and has precisely zero women on its 28-member organizing committee.
The COP28 triple nuclear declaration was followed by an outrageously presumptuous assertion, by former U.S. energy secretary, Ernest Moniz (with Armond Cohen) in a Boston Globe oped, that, quote, “The world wants to triple nuclear energy.” (The Globe published our reply on January 17.)
Are we tired yet of absurdly rich, mostly White men pronouncing what they have decided the world wants from the comfort of their ivory towers? We are one such elitist down now with the retirement of 80-year old multi-millionaire John Kerry as US climate envoy. As of January 2024, Kerry’s net worth was $250 million, but that’s after divesting himself from his shares in fossil fuel, nuclear power and nuclear weapons companies.
Kerry has been replaced by, yes, drumroll, another old, rich, White man in the person of perennial White House advisor, John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress. Podesta, a stripling at 75, is a mere pauper compared to Kerry with a net worth of just $10 million-$13 million depending on sources, none of which are fully reliable.
Where Podesta might stand on nuclear power is a little murky, although one assumes he will tow the Biden/Kerry line and evangelize accordingly. He is on the record as considering nuclear power as a producer of hydrogen, telling Cipher in a September 2023 interview: “I think the questions around how to utilize existing nuclear and the production of hydrogen are definitely on the table.”
And then there’s Rishi Sunak, prime minister of the UK, who, together with his even richer wife, has a net worth of $670 million. Despite all the evidence of extreme costs, rising sea-levels and agonizingly slow timelines, on January 11, Sunak’s government announced its plan for the country’s “biggest expansion of nuclear power for 70 years to create jobs, reduce bills and strengthen Britain’s energy security.”
Nuclear power of course can achieve none of these. The electricity even of the current new nuclear reactors nearing completion at Hinkley Point will be almost triple the price Britons are currently paying. Promised new jobs will evaporate along with the new reactor plans, as we have already seen elsewhere — the V.C Summer and NuScale projects being prime examples.
To achieve so-called energy security and get off its reliance on imported Russian reactor fuel, Sunak’s government also announced it would invest $381 million to produce the fuel domestically.
This is all a colossal betrayal of working people and their needs, with money squandered on illusory, expensive and irrelevant nuclear projects whose only purpose is to sustain the UK’s nuclear arsenal, one that could destroy the world many times over.
What Moniz, Kerry, Grossi, Sunak and other nuclear-promoting leaders need to understand is what the world actually wants, alongside peace, is fast, affordable and safer renewable energy, not another Chornobyl.
TODAY. Against all the evidence – nuclear industry propaganda blunders on – and the media regurgitates its nonsense!
It would be funny, if it were not so serious.
Promoting the nuclear industry is not just serious, but dangerous. The industry’s only real purpose is nuclear weapons.
Everybody knows that big nuclear reactors are a no-no. They’re astronomically expensive to build, and even more obscenely expensive to demolish and dispose of. (that latter cost to be paid by our great-grandchildren).
So what is needed now by this insane industry – is a fairy-tale window-dressing. And hey presto! There are the non existent magical small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) .
Today – I see heaps of enthusiastic articles, especially from the UK. Wow! Westinghouse Electric Company doing a deal with Community Nuclear Power, privately funded, - “The companies will work together to develop plans for the plants, with the aim of getting backing from the Government.” - to set up SMRs - Business Wire, Teesside Gazette, Northern Echo, Proactive Investor, ………..
They don’t mention the spectacular failure of the USA’s one and only SMR business, as NuScale heads towards bankruptcy.
What else the mainstream media does not say about SMRs:
- Problems of massive cost blowouts and multi-year delays.
- Unproven technology: Even the simplest designs used today in submarines will not be available at scale until late next decade, if at all. Taking into account the learning curve of the nuclear industry, an average of 3,000 SMRs would have to be constructed in order to be financially viable.
- Ineffective climate solution: According to the latest IPCC report published in March 2023, nuclear power is one of the two least effective mitigation options (alongside Carbon Capture and Storage).
- Waste problem: Current SMR designs would create 2-30 times more radioactive waste in need of management and disposal than conventional nuclear plants.
And there’s that other intriguing little problem. The proudly British company Rolls Royce has been counting on government backing to start off its SMR project. Now shock horror – an American company looks like winning this foolish SMR sack race. Bill Gates’ Terra Power, GE-Hitachi, Mitsubishi – all these companies will be peeved, too. An international political fracas?
Nuclear news – week to 6th February
Some bits of good news . Heroes in pink: Lao midwives supporting rights and saving lives Zimbabwe launches cholera vaccination to curb the spread. Wild panda population nearly doubles as China steps up conservation efforts.
TOP STORIES.
- EDF’s Hinkley Point woes pile pressure on global nuclear push. also at https://nuclear-news.net/2024/02/04/2-a-edfs-hinkley-point-woes-pile-pressure-on-global-nuclear-push/
- Nuclear Waste: Changing Conditions May Affect Future Management of Contamination Deposited Abroad During U.S. Cold War Activities.
- The new space race Is Causing New Pollution Problems. also at https://nuclear-news.net/2024/02/03/1-a-the-new-space-race-is-causing-new-pollution-problems/
- AI chatbots tend to choose violence and nuclear strikes in wargames
Climate. Greta Thunberg’s public order charge dropped as judge criticises police action. Greta Thunberg was given ‘final warning’ before London arrest.
Nuclear. I’m still trying to stay off the Israel-Gaza topic. But it is all bringing us closer to nuclear war.
Noel’s notes. Goodbye Mastodon! The power of the Zionist lobby. Mastodon has closed me down again – this time for supporting United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). WHAT’S GOING ON? How very unfashionable! Scottish MP is worrying about health aspects of nuclear power, (instead of the finances!) What’s the connection between the UK Post Office scandal and Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov?
*****************************************************************************
AUSTRALIA. Australian Conservation Foundation is seriously concerned about the AUKUS nuclear submarine project, its costs and consequences and the way this initiative is being advanced. Expect weapons-grade NIMBYism as leaders fight over where to store AUKUS nuclear waste. Australian Sailors Embed Aboard Submarine Tender for Nuclear Experience.
| CLIMATE. COP28 pledge to expand nuclear capacity is out of touch with reality. | CIVIL LIBERTIES. A Radically Different World Since Assange’s Indictment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egLJ3-jF1Uo | ECONOMICS. UK’s Nuclear “money pit” tops $59 billion. EDF, France’s state-owned nuclear company now in a fatal trap, as Hinkley Point C costs soar. Is this the World’s Most Expensive and Most Delayed Power Project? Are the French going cold on UK nuclear? France limits its investment in Britain’s Sizewell C, as the global nuclear industry requires massive government subsidies. Many challenges [? big problems] [? big problems] stand in the way of a ‘nuclear power renaissance’ Czech Republic / Government Seeks Binding Tenders For Four Nuclear Reactors From EDF And KHNP. |
| ENERGY. German energy companies reject nuclear energy proposals – citing high risks and toxic waste problem . Tripling nuclear energy by 2050 will take a miracle, and miracles don’t happen. | ENVIRONMENT. ‘Odd’ Hinkley Point C salt marsh plan has Somerset locals up in arms. | HEALTH. Man suffered most painful death imaginable after horror accident made him ‘cry blood’ and ‘skin melted’. Sellafield nuclear plant: Cancer fears raised by Scottish MP. |
| INDIGENOUS ISSUES. Tell it to the Chieftain: Nuclear power plants, and Is advanced nuclear a pipe dream? | LEGAL. Holtec International avoids criminal prosecution related to false documents, pays $5m fine. US Court Hears Case Alleging Biden Complicit in Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. The provisional measures of the International Court of Justice. What Happens Now That the ICJ Has Ordered Israel Not to Engage in Genocide? | MEDIA. Neck Deep in the Big Media Mudd |
| OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . MP calls for vote on Holderness nuclear site which local petition brands ‘hazardous waste dumping ground’. It’s not a done deal and you are not alone’: anti-GDF campaigners pledge solidarity with South Holderness over nuclear waste dump plan. South Holderness nuclear waste plan not safe – residents. Blackwater Against New Nuclear Group (BANNG) firmly contradicts Therese Coffey, MP on Bradwell as a nuclear site. Campaigners Warn Return of US Nukes to UK Would ‘Make Britain a Guaranteed Target’. | POLITICS. Nancy Pelosi’s attack on Gaza ceasefire advocates is a disgrace. Holtec to get $1.5 bln loan to re-open Michigan nuclear power plant -source, The Future of Pickering Nuclear Generating Station and Its Impacts on Ontario. Ford Government Issues Blank Cheque for Nuclear Power, Shows Reckless Disregard for Nuclear Waste Generation . How not to go nuclear: Hinkley and Sizewell. Hinkley C – don’t say I didn’t warn you!- (a pro-nuclear view!) UK govt awards Hitachi £33.6 m to design small nuclear reactors. UK govt designates British Nuclear Fuels Ltd as Great British Nuclear (…..whatever this means). Hinkley Point shambles shows why UK must scrap disastrous nuclear strategy. Cracks appear in Labour-Green alliance over claims that Heysham power stations letter was ‘reckless’. |
| POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. France seeks loan guarantees from UK over Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. The feckless four – hypocrisy of the nuclear weapons nations. French firm EDF shows its power over the UK govt – no judicial review now required over fish protection from Hinkley nuclear cooling system | SAFETY. Safety concerns persist at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant . France’s ASN nuclear safety authority warns of fraud risk in nuclear industry.Britain plans ‘robocop’ force to protect nuclear sites with paint bombs. Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA) Disappointed in Province’s Decision on Pickering Nuclear Plant. Residents ask for full examination of damage to nuclear plant caused by quake. Magnitude-4.8 earthquake jolts Tokyo and the Kanto region. | SECRETS and LIES. Military-Intelligence Corruption Information Center. As Ukraine begs for more weapons, corruption in its Defense Ministry is revealed. Chinese nuclear fuel engineer Li Guangchang caught in anti-corruption net targeting ‘high-risk’ areas. |
| SPACE. EXPLORATION, WEAPONS. Nuclear industry takes control of NASA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRZnSkC-nXg Nuclear power on the moon: NASA wraps up 1st phase of ambitious reactor project. | SPINBUSTER. Ontario counts nuclear power as “Green”. | TECHNOLOGY. Advanced nuclear power is costly and tech is still developing: Is a Pueblo plant realistic:? Will AI Warfare Usher in a Massive Expansion of the Surveillance State? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLBrP084X5Y Blade hub idea for old n-plant site. |
| WASTES. USA’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant to increase its space for nuclear trash. VINCI wins contract to dismantle nuclear reactors in Sweden. Strong opposition on plans to store nuclear waste in East Yorkshire | WAR and CONFLICT. US unleashes strikes across Middle East. The U.S. Quest for Nuclear Primacy | WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. US reportedly planning to station nuclear weapons in Britain for first time in 15 years. Documents unambiguously state ‘incoming nuclear mission’ to Britain. RAF Lakenheath: Plans progress to bring US nuclear weapons to Suffolk – a risky target? Britain will test fire Trident nuclear missile for the first time since 2016 as fears of World War Three grow.Russia has no plans to deploy nuclear arms beyond Belarus, says deputy minister. NATO chief says more war, more weapons, are the way to secure lasting peace in Ukraine. Democrats press Blinken on arms sales to Israel without congressional approval. U.S. Congress about to weaken its oversight of weapons sales to foreign countries. Could a Rogue Billionaire Make and Sell a Nuclear Weapon?. |
1 This month
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