Mayor of London announces solar and energy efficiency projects funded by ‘Green New Deal’
Business Green 19th Nov 2020, A host of green projects in London are set to benefit from £10m in funding
announced yesterday as part of the capital’s ‘Green New Deal Fund’, which
the Mayor of London claims could create up to 1,000 new jobs. Announced
yesterday, Sadiq Khan said the first tranche of £10m in funding would be
invested in green projects such as solar panel installations and home
energy efficiency improvements, targeting inequalities exacerbated by the
Covid-19 pandemic such as fuel poverty by helping to improve energy
efficiency, cut energy bills, and improve living conditions.
https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4023653/mayor-london-ploughs-gbp10m-green-deal-projects
Bankrupt AREVA, resuscitated as ‘Framatome’, joins the the Sizewell C nuclear build Consortium
companies and organisations from across the UK working to design, supply
and construct the proposed nuclear power station in Suffolk, England.
Consortium, we are engaging new partnerships with British companies and
suppliers to support lifetime management of the country’s existing
nuclear facilities and new build projects,” said Marc Duret, managing
director of Framatome in the UK.
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsframatome-joins-sizewell-c-consortium-8368345
Extended shutdown for work on Flamanville nuclear reactor build
La Manche Libre 19th Nov 2020, On Wednesday, November 18, EDF requested an exemption from the government
in the event that the shutdown for work on reactor number 2 at the
Flamanville nuclear power plant exceeds the legal deadline of two years.
This reactor was shut down on January 10, 2019 for ten-year maintenance.
Its restart has been postponed several times, in particular because of the
health context linked to Covid-19. It is currently scheduled for Monday,
November 30.
Cheap and effective, but solar energy is omitted from UK govt’s 10 point plan
Energyst 19th Nov 2020, Despite being the most cost-effective electricity generating technology for
the foreseeable future according to the Government’s own forecasts, solar
was noticeably absent from the Prime Minister’s announcement, which is
largely a repackaging of policies already announced earlier this year.
While the Government has yet to make its ambitions for UK solar clear there
is lively activity taking place in other parts of the public sector. The
City of London has announced a new 15-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA)
with developer Voltalia, which will see a 50MW solar park built in Dorset
to supply the City with clean power. STA chief executive Chris Hewett said,
“It is disappointing that Number 10 has yet to grasp the opportunity
presented by solar in the UK. Not only is it set to be the cheapest power
source for years to come, it also provides good jobs and business
opportunities up and down the country.
https://theenergyst.com/uk-solar-industry-body-criticises-lack-of-support-in-ten-point-green-plan/
First canister of used nuclear fuel loaded into Chernobyl storage facility
This storage dump will last for 100 years. But the wastes inside will lasr for 1000s of years . How crazyb is it to just keep on making this toxic trash?
World Nuclear News 19th Nov 2020, The first canister of used nuclear fuel was yesterday loaded into the
Interim Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Facility (ISF-2) at the Chernobyl plant
in Ukraine. ISF-2 is the largest dry-type used fuel storage facility in the
world and has an operating life of at least 100 years.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/First-assemblies-loaded-into-new-Chernobyl-used-fu
UK: Both Hinkley Point B and Hunterston B nuclear power stations will close early due to cracks in graphite cores
Times 20th Nov 2020, The Hinkley Point B nuclear power station will close by July 2022 at thelatest, EDF has announced, triggering renewed calls to invest in
replacement reactors. The Somerset plant started generating in 1976 and was
due to close in 2016 but in 2012 EDF secured an extension until March 2023.
However, the reactor developed cracks in its graphite core, which has
limited its operation. EDF said this summer that the Hunterston B plant in
Scotland, which also has cracks in the core, would close earlier than
planned, in January 2022. Tom Greatrex of the Nuclear Industry Association,
said it was “a reminder of the urgency of investing in new nuclear
capacity to hit net zero”.
30-day public consultation about UK’s Sizewell nuclear reactor project
BBC 18th Nov 2020, Bosses behind a new nuclear power station have told local communities they
are “listening” after making “important” changes to the plans. The
government is close to approving construction of Sizewell C in Suffolk. EDF
Energy has pledged to increase rail and sea deliveries during construction
and reduce the plant’s impact on local beauty spots. Alison Downes from the
Stop Sizewell C campaign said the project was “ridiculously expensive”. A
30-day public consultation starts on Wednesday.
The Biden- Harris administration can change nuclear weapons policy, make it safer, and much cheaper
Whatever you think ails this nation, a new generation of ICBMs is not the answer, WP, by Tom Collina and William Perry, November 18, 2020 Tom Z. Collina is director of policy at Ploughshares Fund. William J. Perry was secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997. They are co-authors of the book “The Button: The New Nuclear Arms Race and Presidential Power from Truman to Trump.”
Are any of these challenges addressed by nuclear weapons? Clearly not. Yet the United States is planning to spend well over $1 trillion to rebuild its nuclear arsenal, complete with a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The United States can move to a smaller but more secure second-strike nuclear force whose sole purpose is to deter nuclear attack. We do not need to spend hundreds of billions more in a dangerous and futile attempt to “prevail” in a nuclear conflict.
The Biden-Harris campaign has rightly stated that “the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring — and if necessary, retaliating against — a nuclear attack. As president, [Biden] will work to put that belief into practice, in consultation with our allies and military.”
The best policy would specifically rule out preemptive nuclear attacks, as such attacks have a high risk of starting nuclear war by mistake, and should not be considered under any circumstances. Similarly, a sole-purpose policy should prohibit launching nuclear weapons on warning of attack, as such launches increase the risk of starting nuclear war in response to a false alarm.
The Biden-Harris administration can make a sole-purpose policy more credible and further reduce the risk of accidental launch by retiring the ICBMs. ICBMs are most likely to be used first in response to a false alarm. They are highly unlikely to ever be used in retaliation, as most would be destroyed in any (highly unlikely) Russian nuclear attack against the United States. Thus, ICBMs have no logical role in a U.S. sole-purpose, deterrence-only policy.
This transformational nuclear policy would be win-win: It would free up federal resources to address more urgent needs and, at the same time, reduce nuclear dangers to the nation. In this time of crisis, change and opportunity, our government must have the courage to spend our federal dollars where they are needed most. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/17/how-biden-administration-could-create-win-win-situation-nuclear-policy/
European security officials fear that Trump may trigger a war against Iran
Security officials worry Israel and Saudi Arabia may see the end of Trump as their last chance to go to war with Iran, MSN insider@insider.com (Mitch Prothero) 18 Nov 20,
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- European security officials are worried that outgoing president Donald Trump will trigger a military conflict with Iran in order to tie President-Elect Joe Biden’s hands, sources tell Insider.
- They also fear that Israel and Saudi Arabia may see the departure of Trump as a ticking clock they need to beat.
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- “Both countries are run by immature leaders who have been screaming about the need for war with Iran for so long it’s possible they really believe that a Biden administration will be followed by an Iranian nuclear attack,” one source told Insider.
- Trump has elevated hardliners on Iran inside the Pentagon.
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- European intelligence officials are alarmed about the possibility of military action towards Iran in the waning days of the Trump administration.
Concern that Trump — who has pushed for
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- — or a combination of Israel or Saudi Arabia creating a military confrontation in the waning days of the administration has been a concern for over a week, according to three European intelligence officials who spoke with Insider.
The news that last week the president requested a list of military options from his military and diplomatic advisors has
sent these concerns into overdrive.
One fear is of unilateral action by the US to force a military clash that might make it impossible for the incoming Biden
Israel conducted a series of attacks in Iran over the summer, in the knowledge that Trump was sympathetic to a
“maximum pressure” strategy.
The fears were underlined last week, in the wake of Trump’s election defeat, when the president replaced much of
hardliners on Iran. That inflamed worries among both Democrats and European allies, said all three sources.
Biden — who enters office on Jan 21, 2021 — has not expressed any solid policy positions on Iran except to
Security officials say the US will be a ‘crippled world power’ until Biden takes over and fear Trump will declassify intelligence that will help Putin
Israel keeps blowing up military targets in Iran, hoping to force a confrontation before Trump can be voted out in November.
The intractible problem of San Onofre’s, and indeed, America’s, nuclear waste
Mosko: Public Safety at Stake in Debate Over Nuclear Waste Storage at San Onofre, https://voiceofoc.org/2020/11/mosko-public-safety-at-stake-in-debate-over-nuclear-waste-storage-at-san-onofre/by SARAH MOSKO 18 Nov 20 SoCal Edison’s 
spokesperson, John Dobken, authored an Oct. 20 editorial touting the dry nuclear waste storage system Edison chose when a radiation leak from steam generator malfunction forced permanent closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in 2013. Ignoring for the moment the numerous obfuscations and omissions of critical facts, the essence of Dobken’s article is this: Edison wants to divert public attention away from the inadequacies of its dry canister storage system while promising that a deep geological national repository, as mandated in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, will magically materialize before their storage canisters fail.
There’s plenty Dobken did not say that the public needs to know.
First off, we are nearly four decades past passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and there is no tangible progress toward creation of a national repository operated by the Department of Energy. The cold hard reality is that no state wants it and, worse still, there is no feasible technology currently available to make a geological repository workable, according to the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board. Plans for a geological repository at Yucca Mountain were rejected by Nevada, and subsequent proposals for “interim” storage sites in Texas and New Mexico are opposed by those states too.
Thus, the dream of a national repository remains in limbo for the foreseeable future, and it’s misleading to suggest otherwise. Also misleading is Dobken’s suggestion that, if needed, a failing canister could be transported to “a centralized Department of Energy facility” for repackaging in the future, as no such facility exits anywhere in the United States for this purpose.
Consequently, the plan throughout the country is to leave highly radioactive nuclear waste onsite indefinitely. The relevant 2014 report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) openly states that a repository might never become available. Like all other nuclear plant operators in the United States, Edison is saddled with a storage task never originally intended.
For dry storage, Edison chose thin-walled (just 5/8 inch thick), welded-shut stainless steel canisters which contrast sharply with the 10-19 inch thick-walled and bolted-shut casks many nuclear waste safety advocates in Orange, San Diego, and Los Angeles Counties are advocating for. Unlike the thick casks, SONGS’s canisters are vulnerable to stress corrosion cracking from numerous conditions, such as a salty marine environment like San Onofre. A 2019 Department of Energy report assigned “#1 Priority” to the risk of through-wall cracking in welded, stainless steel canisters in a moist salty environment.
The 73 Holtec canisters at SONGS are warranted for only 25 years, covering only manufacturing defects. This means the warranty excludes environmental conditions like earthquakes, salt air, water intrusion, seagull droppings, and any other corrosive damage to the canisters. Edison has not divulged what the warranty covers on the 51 older Areva canisters, which are already up to 17 years old. Dobken’s statement that the nuclear waste will become less radioactive in 100 years is meaningless in the timescale of the hundreds of thousands of years the waste will remain deadly to humans.
Dobken argues that the fact SONGS’s canisters are welded shut and can never be opened is a plus. This completely ignores the crucial safety requirement in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that spent nuclear fuel storage containers be designed to be monitored inside and out and the contents retrievable from the containers. Edison purposely chose welded shut canisters, making it impossible to monitor or retrieve the fuel assemblies, which means the canisters can’t lawfully be accepted by the Department of Energy (DOE) for either an interim or permanent storage site.
In listing six other nations that also use welded-shut canisters (Brazil, Mexico, Slovenia, South Africa, Ukraine, United Kingdom), Dobken hopes readers won’t notice these are not countries the United States typically aims to emulate technologically. From that standpoint, a partial list of countries using thick-walled casks is more formidable: Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, and Switzerland. And, thick casks are used in the United States too, though thin-walled canisters are unfortunately most common.
In arguing that robotic camera technology – which Edison applied to the exterior of a sample of eight of 123 total canisters in 2019 – can be relied upon to detect defects like cracking, Dobken hides the fact that Edison has admitted that this methodology does not meet American standards for an inspection. This is because nuclear storage containers are pressure vessels, thus subject to standards set by the American Association of Mechanical Engineers for safe storage and transport of nuclear pressure vessels which explicitly require use of either magnetic particle or dye penetrant methodology to inspect for defects like cracking (ASME N3).
Edison used neither ASME-approved method simply because they can’t be applied to their canisters which are both too hot, too radioactive and inaccessible in their concrete storage overpacks. Furthermore, a robotic camera can never access the bottoms or inside walls of canisters to look for cracks originating there. Nor can it characterize cracking that might start on the exterior but proceeds laterally rather than straight through the canister wall.
Consequently, many nuclear safety advocates are arguing strenuously for retention of the cooling pools until a specialized dry fuel handling facility (aka “hot cell”) can be constructed onsite. This is because the only means to repackage the radioactive contents of a defective canister into another container is to perform the transfer within a cooling pool or hot cell.
Dobken correctly points out that NRC is nevertheless allowing decommissioned nuclear plants to destroy the cooling pools. This highlights a troublesome relationship between NRC and Edison which the public needs to understand. NRC has granted safety exemptions and waivers in dry storage systems nationwide which has allowed Edison to proceed with a canister system that is unsafe and cannot legally be accepted by DOE into either an interim storage site or permanent repository. Consequently, there is no plan to prevent or stop radioactive releases.
This liaison between NRC and Edison played out during the July 2020 meeting of the California Coastal Commission when NRC representative, Andrea Kock, remained mute as Edison cited the unapproved canister repair technology as justification for destroying the cooling pools. Though community nuclear waste safety advocates ardently cited factual objections, Kock’s silence no doubt helped shape the unanimous vote of the nine commissioners to grant Edison’s request. However, that two commissioners literally uttered “boos” despite casting “yes” votes speaks to doubts about Edison’s plan among the commission’s ranks.
Lastly, Dobken offers no defense for the fact that San Onofre had by far the worst safety record of any nuclear plant in the country during its pre-2012 operation, yet he cries foul any suggestion this should undermine public confidence in how Edison is currently handling dry storage. What’s not mentioned is that, in 2018, it took a conscience-driven whistleblower to expose a near-drop incident where a 54-ton canister loaded with radioactive waste was poised to plummet 18 feet while it was being lowered into its storage overpack. NRC’s subsequent investigation attributed the event to both design flaws and human error and cited Edison with the single most serious violation ever imposed on a spent fuel licensee.
Moreover, it was only because of this incident that Edison bothered to look at the canisters with the contrived robotic camera technology, revealing that essentially all the canisters get scraped/gouged during downloading into storage overpacks.
Dobken makes one point with which everyone agrees: “The public deserves the facts about spent nuclear fuel and its storage.” As the public listens to this debate over safe nuclear waste storage, both sides should be held accountable for underlying motivations. In asking Edison to opt for bolted-shut thick-walled casks with safety features lacking in thin-walled canisters, community safety advocates are seeking safety for their families and communities. Edison, on the other hand, will save untold $millions should the public be swayed to trust in Edison’s promises that their canister system won’t fail and that a national repository will materialize in time to save the day.
Sarah (Steve) Mosko is a local freelance journalist focused on solutions to environmental problems and social injustices.
Trump still has the awesome power to launch America’s nuclear arsenal
By the Way, Donald Trump Could Still Launch Nuclear Weapons at Any Time The president’s responsibility for the US nuclear arsenal is a Cold War anachronism. The Trump era shows why it needs reform, Wired, .GARRETT M. GRAFF, SECURITY, 11.17.2020 THE NATION IS entering a particularly dangerous period of Donald Trump’s presidency. Still refusing to concede his election loss and angrily tweeting at all hours of the night, Trump faces the dwindling days of his administration, with all the authorities of the office intact and nothing left to lose. Among the authorities he’ll retain until his final minutes in office? The awesome and awful power to launch the United States’ nuclear arsenal on command.
Donald Trump’s “fire and fury” presidency has exposed all too clearly the intellectual fallacy at the heart of the nation’s nuclear plans: that the commander-in-chief will always be the most sober, rational, and conservative person in the room.
Many people assume, wrongly, that some other official has to agree with a presidential order to launch nuclear weapons; surely the White House chief of staff, the secretary of defense, the vice president, or maybe the general in charge of the nation’s nuclear forces has to concur with a presidential launch order, right? Nope. The president can choose to consult with those officials, or whoever else he may like, but from the dawn of the atomic age in the 1940s and 1950s, there has been no procedure to require any such second, concurring opinion in order to authorize a nuclear strike.
Advancing technologies and expanding arsenals have negated that fear; today’s nuclear submarines ensure a so-called “survivable deterrent” such that even under the most extreme surprise attack scenarios, the US could still destroy dozens of foreign targets and kill tens of millions of people.
Even as the underlying technology and need changed, the US has never revisited its launch strategy. It doesn’t have to be this way, though. There’s simply no need for the nation’s weapons to be placed on routine high-alert and left in the hands of a single individual. We shouldn’t have to worry whether presidential whims endanger our world and human civilization.
This isn’t the first wake-up call for the US. In the final days of Richard Nixon’s presidency, as Watergate consumed his administration from within, his top aides worried what he might do. Nixon was despondent and drinking heavily. Those around him raised fears about his mental state; during one meeting with members of Congress he’d reportedly emphasized the world-ending powers at his fingertips …………
The impending end of Donald Trump’s presidency and a new Biden administration provides an important opportunity to reform the nation’s launch authorities. The country should insist upon a new command-and-control system that ensures the same checks and balances that we insist upon elsewhere in the nuclear system, as well as the same checks and balances we insist on other aspects of government power. Such a move would dramatically improve the safety of the world.
Policymakers have sketched out some ideas for what a new system might look like in recent years………..https://www.wired.com/story/donald-trump-nuclear-weapons-system-reform/
Extradition hearing of Julian Assange – defence witnesses destroy myths, demonstrate his integrity
Julian Assange: Three myths destroyed by defence witness statements, Independent Australia, By Sara Chessa | 19 November 2020
Witness statements towards the journalistic integrity of Julian Assange have been heard in court, debunking various myths in the process. Sara Chessa reports from the UK.
THE EXTRADITION HEARING of Julian Assange closed last month in London’s Central Criminal Court, the world-famous “Old Bailey”. We will have to wait until 4 January next year for the decision of the Judge. However, the Court heard impressive and authoritative witness statements highlighting the importance of Assange’s journalistic work and years of smear campaigns carried out by those states which were embarrassed by the way WikiLeaks disclosures made civil society aware of war crimes and the reality of the public interest.
Reconstructing the events starting from these accounts means getting out of the chronic opinionism of our time and taking the first fundamental step to return to the concrete facts. Therefore, while we wait for Judge Vanessa Baraitser to announce her decision, let’s go through the main myths that have been debunked by the witness statements heard at the Old Bailey.
Debunked myth one: On the redaction of the classified documents
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The subtle game of the prosecution has been to deny that the charges against Mr Assange are about the disclosure of information that the public had the right to know, such as the Collateral Murder video. They have rather claimed to have identified WikiLeaks fault in the failure to redact the secret papers in deleting names of people who gave information to the American military and intelligence services whose life could have been in danger after the release. However, several WikiLeaks media partners were heard in Court testifying that strenuous steps had been taken by Wikileaks to redact any names before the release of documents. John Goetz, the German journalist who collaborated with WikiLeaks on their reporting about the U.S. military Afghan and Iraq War logs before publication, testified under oath that the redaction initiative put in place by Assange was “robust” and had involved a huge investment by WikiLeaks, both financially and in human resources. The Court also heard from one of the most celebrated whistleblowers in history, former U.S. Marines officer Daniel Ellsberg, best known for leaking to the New York Times in 1970 the huge tranche of U.S. Government documents on the Vietnam War – the “Pentagon Papers” – showing that the American Government had lied to the public from the very beginning of the conflict. Ellsberg told the packed court that Assange’s approach was the exact opposite of that of a reckless publication. He also explained that the U.S. Government could have prevented sensitive names from being released merely by revealing those that raised concerns, so they could be redacted. They didn’t do this, Ellsberg suggested, so to leave open the possibility of future prosecution……….. Debunked myth two: On the Trump supporters desperately believing he was going to save AssangeIf before September hearings we could have said that only a complete ignorance of the case had led people to think of U.S. President Donald Trump as a “hope” for Assange, now, after listening to the witness statements, we have a complete dossier of facts proving how harshly the incumbent U.S. President is fighting against WikiLeaks and investigative journalism. ……….. Moreover, the naïve vision of Trump as Assange’s saviour does not match with the witness statement of Mark Feldstein, Professor in the Journalism Department of the University of Maryland. He told the Court that the Trump Administration wanted a “head on a spike” to discourage future leaks. Feldstein explained that in 2010 and 2011, the Obama Administration wanted to prosecute WikiLeaks. However, the Justice Department stated that this would have been unconstitutional and would have set a precedent that could lead to many other journalists being prosecuted, as Assange’s conduct was “too similar” to that of journalists in hundreds of different newspapers. However, the Trump Administration decided to prosecute him anyway, leveraging the attempt by Assange to access classified documents. “It can’t be right that the only way journalists can get information is anonymously by post,” Feldstein said, concluding by highlighting that the nature of the accusation showed that the Trump Administration had journalism firmly in its sights. Debunked myth three: On the fact that Assange prosecution will only destroy his lifeKey witnesses have been clear: Assange’s conviction would criminalise all journalists. Trevor Timm, the founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told the court that there have been numerous attempts by the U.S. Government to use espionage charges against journalists and none have ever succeeded. His qualified opinion is that this prosecution would mean that any journalist in possession of confidential information could be arrested. As he explained, if the charges against Assange were applied in 1970, the journalists who revealed the Watergate scandal under the Richard Nixon Administration – Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – could have been thrown in jail under this standard. Reconnecting the issue to the present, he said that if asking a source for classified information is espionage, then the secure “dropbox” systems used by more than 80 publications worldwide to encourage whistleblowers to send them information would also be illegal, since they “solicit classified information” — one of the charges against Assange. Despite this, we are still waiting for a massive reaction from journalists. Of course, the International Federation of Journalists has taken action and the UK National Union of Journalists is finally organising to do the same. However, a lot of work still needs to be done to explain the impact that a decision to extradite Assange would have on the freedom of the press to inform the public, so the people could truly assess the action of their rulers.https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/julian-assange-three-myths-destroyed-by-defence-witness-statements,14531
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British govt produced no evidence that nuclear plants are essential, in secret deals for the convenience of the nuclear industry
Greenpeace 17th Nov 2020, Greenpeace briefing on SMRs and Sizewell. The government has produced no analysis to show that nuclear reactors are essential, despite being asked by select committees to do so. It is making the same strategic mistakes in decision making as the Cameron and May governments did with Hinkley. Being drawn in to commitments they can’t pull out from, by conducting secretive deals behind closed doors with no scrutiny or competition, for the convenience of the nuclear industry.
What energy policies is Greenpeace calling for instead of nuclear?
A commitment to ensuring at least 80% of the UK’s power is generated from renewables by 2030; In addition to a commitment to delivering at least 40GW of total offshore wind generation by 2030, publicly commit to targets for total generation of 45GW of solar and 35GW of onshore wind by 2030.
Hazardous plan for Peel Ports to take over the decommissioning of Britain’s dead nuclear submarines
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Ferret 17th Nov 2020. The company that runs the port at Hunterston in North Ayrshire wants to useit to break up the radioactive hulks of defunct nuclear submarines, The Ferret can reveal. A plan by Peel Ports, released under freedom of information law, discloses that the firm sees “opportunities” for military submarine decommissioning at Hunterston.
But the idea has brought condemnation from politicians, environmental and community groups. They warn that the transport and dismantling of submarines would be “potentially hazardous” and could cause “significant environmental damage”. The 50-strong group of nuclear free-local authorities (NFLA) in the UK pointed out that prolonged public consultations had resulted in
agreement that decommissioning should only take place at Rosyth and Devonport. “If Peel Ports is lobbying for a change in that policy to undertake this work at Hunterston port, we would be concerned,” said NFLA Scotland’s convenor, SNP Glasgow councillor, Feargal Dalton. There were “complicated and potentially hazardous transport issues of moving
submarines from the east to the west coast of Scotland, and the required level of expertise to do this,” he argued. “It would also require a new consultation process at a time when the last one took years to deliver. I doubt the Ministry of Defence would like to reopen that process – and if they do, we and others will robustly challenge any significant change that increases the hazards to this operation.” https://theferret.scot/hunterston-peel-ports-nuclear-submarines/ |
Russia and the United States Nuclear Industry
Trump’s Impact on Nuclear Proliferation, Treating Foreign Policy as a Business, Just Security, by Tamsin Shaw, November 18, 2020 “…………….Russia and the United States Nuclear Industry
It’s only relatively recently that the public and private U.S. institutions have begun to examine seriously the intricate financial network that lies behind and links Russian nuclear business dealings in the United States. Public perception of these dealings has been dominated by the false Uranium One conspiracy theory. This distraction has diverted attention from the extent to which Russia has established a strong foothold in the US nuclear industry in a way that suggests an aspiration to vertical control.
The grain of truth in the Uranium One story is that in 2010 Canadian company Uranium One, which was responsible for mining 20% of the currently licensed uranium in the United States, made an agreement with JSC Atomredmetzoloto, or ARMZ, the mining arm of Rosatom, giving them a controlling stake (51%). In 2013 Rosatom acquired full ownership. Uranium One continues to mine approximately 10% of that licensed in-situ uranium.
The United States also relies, both for civilian utilities and defense purposes, on nuclear fuel supplied by Russian subsidiary of Rosatom called Techsnabexport (TENEX). No U.S. uranium enrichment facilities are currently in operation. The U.S. company, Centrus has a new centrifuge design but it will likely be over a decade before it goes into action.
Nor does the United States currently have a company that builds commercial nuclear reactors. The only U.S. company now aiming to construct them is Bill Gates’s TerraPower, which is working on what will likely be the next generation of reactors, small modular reactors (SMRs), but again these won’t be commercially viable for a decade. Commercial nuclear reactors were previously designed and built by US company Westinghouse. But on March 24, 2017, Westinghouse declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The sale of that company naturally has serious national security implications. But the story of the sale and of the role that the Trump administration played in it raises many questions.
Trump’s friend and adviser, Tom Barrack, seized on the opportunity presented by the Westinghouse bankruptcy to put together a new version of the Marshall Plan for the Middle East, producing his own document setting out the details. In his March 2017 white paper, Barrack refers to the plan interchangeably as the “Trump Marshall Plan” and the “Trump Plan.” The July 2019 House Oversight and Reform Committee report details the ambitious deal Barrack tried to put together to purchase Westinghouse. Barrack had permission from the highest levels at the White House for a US-led consortium involving Colony Capital, IP3, and financial firms Blackstone and Apollo. Barrack assured Blackstone CEO Steve Schwartzman,
Our GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] allies in Saudi Arabia and the UAE have committed to invest in the Westinghouse acquisition and are willing to concurrently lock in Westinghouse as the primary partner on the 30+ reactors expected to be constructed in their countries in the coming decade.
IP3 officials were very optimistic. President Trump and Jared Kushner had met with MBS on March 14, and IP3 boasted that this meeting prepared the way for a “partnership to acquire Westinghouse between IP3 and Saudi Arabia.” They eagerly arranged meetings with officials in the administration to promote the plan, including then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and top National Security Council (NSC) Staff officials. They also briefed Jared Kushner.
But in January, 2018 it was announced that Canadian company, Brookfield Business Partners, a subsidiary of investing giant Brookfield Asset Management, would purchase Westinghouse. And Westinghouse promptly and unilaterally decided to sever ties with IP3. ProPublica discovered that Kushner was the one who prevented the IP3-led deal from happening, reporting that Kushner “wanted to table the nuclear question in favor of simpler alliance-building measures with the Saudis, centered on Trump’s visit in May, according to a person familiar with the discussions.”
The Westinghouse sale went through on August 1, 2018. Three days later it was announced that Brookfield Properties, another subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management that had just purchased Westinghouse, would buy Jared Kushner out of his catastrophic real estate deal involving 666 Fifth Avenue.
Who Owns Westinghouse?
The Westinghouse purchase was naturally considered an extremely sensitive deal, deserving scrutiny by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which at the time included Steve Mnuchin, Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, Wilbur Ross and Dan Coats. The committee approved the transaction but with a Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC) Requirements Notice forbidding transfer of their licenses and insisting on compliance with all applicable statutory and regulatory requirements. But the NRC filing submitted to CFIUS is fairly thin. It tells us that Westinghouse would be “ultimately controlled” by Brookfield Asset Management, but little about the money behind the deal. According to their 2018 20-F annual report, BBU acquired 44% of the company, while having a 100% voting interest, having put in $405m of equity totaling $920m, with the balance coming from “institutional partners.” The rest of the purchase price was funded with approximately $3b of long-term debt financing. The sources of the equity and financing aren’t disclosed.
Immediately prior to the Westinghouse sale, prominent foreign policy experts Thomas Duesterberg and William Schneider wrote an article expressing serious concerns about the opacity………….https://www.justsecurity.org/73422/trumps-impact-on-nuclear-proliferation/
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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