nuclear-news

Scottish Bid Imperils UK Nuclear Force

The Scottish government says it seeks “the speediest safe removal” of the weapons “within the first term” of an independent Scottish parliament, which will serve until 2020.

“The most likely option would be submarine basing at Devonport [in southwest England] and a new warhead/missile storage facility in [nearby] Falmouth,” said Chalmers, an opponent of independence. “But the latter, in particular, would take some considerable time—no one knows how long—to build.”

The resulting financial burden could imperil the UK’s status as a nuclear power, said Frances Burwell, director of transatlantic relations at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2014_0708/News/Scottish-Bid-Imperils-UK-Nuclear-Force

Jefferson Morley

The future of the United Kingdom’s nuclear arsenal is in the hands of 4.1 million Scottish voters who go to the polls Sept. 18 to decide whether to end the country’s 307-year union with England and become an independent country.

If the ballot proposal is approved, the ruling pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) has pledged to evict the UK fleet of four nuclear-armed submarines from the naval base at Faslane on Scotland’s west coast by 2020. Having no comparable submarine base, the UK government would then face expensive choices about how to maintain its exclusively sea-based nuclear force.

“It would be an enormous exercise to reproduce the facilities elsewhere,” the UK Ministry of Defence said in an October 2013 analysis of Scottish independence. “It would cost billions of pounds and take many years.”

Although issues of jobs and social welfare programs have dominated the referendum debate, the nuclear defense issue has energized anti-nuclear activists and alarmed UK leaders. Prime Minister David Cameron has taken a strong public stance against Scottish independence, as have his predecessors Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and John Major.

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July 5, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Policy advisors call for Ghana nuclear energy programme to secure economic future really bloody quickly!

http://analysis.nuclearenergyinsider.com/new-build/policy-advisors-call-ghana-nuclear-energy-programme-secure-economic-future

Researchers and Energy policy advisors are strongly proposing a speed up of Ghana’s nuclear energy programme as the surest option to Ghana’s economic development, according to Ghana Web.

The country’s energy deficit could be decreased with the addition of nuclear energy, policy advisors expressed. Nuclear power plants could also eliminate the difficulties being faced by both industrial and domestic users and stabilize energy prices.

Increasing demand for electricity power supply is a result of population increases and industrial expansions, both of which are calls for accelerated measures to venture into nuclear power to ensure sustainable economic growth, said the news report.

The news article also cited Dr Robert B. M. Sogbadji, Head of Nuclear, Energy Efficiency and Conservation and Alternate Energy at the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum as one of the discussants at a seminar organised by Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC) under the auspices of the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MEST).

Sogbadji in his discussion aimed to dispel fears associated with nuclear energy production, saying the GAEC has a sound safety record, and nuclear security would strictly be observed as usual, as the commission has had the experience of managing its current nuclear energy reactor over the years and effectively utilizing it for medical, agricultural, industrial and other uses over the years.

July 5, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

India – now nuclear and environmental dissent is a crime

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2460076/india_now_nuclear_and_environmental_dissent_is_a_crime.html

Kumar Sundaram

4th July 2014

We are fearful that this is a kind of witch-hunt with longer term implications to repress all kinds of popular struggles

In modern India any form of dissent from the neoliberal corporate model of development is being criminalised, writes Kumar Sundaram. Opponents of nuclear power, coal mines, GMOs, giant dams, are all under attack as enemies of the state and a threat to economic growth.

In the same week that France decided to lower its appetite for nuclear energy and increase its reliance on renewable sources, the Indian home ministry started hounding Greenpeace for its role in “stalling India’s development” by opposing nuclear power and genetically modified organisms.

A crackdown on other anti-nuclear networks like the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) and the People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) is being widely anticipated.

The crackdown followed a confidential report by India’s premier internal intelligence agency, the Intelligence Bureau, titled ‘Concerning efforts by select foreign funded NGOs to ‘take down’ Indian development projects‘.

Stirring up a media frenzy

The 21-page report named a number of prominent anti-nuclear activists like Praful Bidwai, Achin Vanaik, Admiral Ramdas, and Surendra Gadekar as well as a number of organisations. Activists have raised questions about how the report made its way to the media before reaching the ministries and the Prime Minister’s office.

S. P. Udayakumar, a leading activist against the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, has taken the Indian government to court, highlighting the serious threat to his life posed by the media frenzy over the report. He fears for his life, stating in a recent interview:

“I am a threat to nuclear energy. I am a threat to the global nuclear industry. The governments of India, Russia, France and America are all together now.

“We are a threat to all of them. Their business interests are hurt. They are going to dump their outdated technology on the hapless people of India. We point out their faults and so we are being targeted.

It’s all rubbish – but the danger is very real

“Unfortunately some people in this country believe these stories. That is the irony of it. This is becoming a threat to my life and to the security of my family. When they name me like this. When they call me – an Indian – a security threat for whatever reasons, it sends a wrong message to the wrong people.

“When I walk on the streets someone may say here goes a traitor and attack me. I might get killed. My school has been attacked twice. You know my people were attacked inside the Tirunelveli collector’s office in full view of the public.

“If something happens to me the Intelligence Bureau and the Government of India are responsible. By maligning me and putting my life at risk.”

Anti-nuclear activists organised a press conference in Delhi in late June calling the Intelligence Bureau report unacceptable “scare-mongering”on the part of the government to malign local agitations and to further repress them. Achin Vanaik, an academic and leading anti-nuclear voice, said:

“We are concerned that the ground is being prepared, by whom we cannot say, to oppose and discredit a whole range of popular movements by targeting NGOs that are providing support to such struggles and resistances. We are fearful that this is a kind of witch-hunt with longer term implications to repress all kinds of popular struggles.”

Criminalising dissent

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July 5, 2014 Posted by arclight2011part2 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment