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The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

35 years after Chernobyl disaster, nuclear power industry is struggling and is not part of climate change solution

Monday was the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the night when technicians let safety tests get out of hand, leading to the world’s worst nuclear disaster.   By Richard Dixon, Thursday, 29th April 2021        https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/35-years-after-chernobyl-disaster-nuclear-power-industry-is-struggling-and-is-not-part-of-climate-change-solution-dr-richard-dixon-3217326

Chernobyl had a remarkable impact around the world, with new nuclear plans put on hold and reactors under construction never completed; the disaster even contributed to the Soviet Union’s eventual fall.

If you were an adult at the time you probably remember wondering if you had been out in the rain during the days of worst fallout. It was only in 2011 that restrictions on Scottish sheep movements due to contaminated soil were lifted and radioactive isotopes from Chernobyl still show up in fish and marine sediments around Scotland.

The US TV series of Chernobyl has brought the horror of what happened 35 years ago to a new generation. Add to that the three reactors melting down in the Fukushima disaster ten years ago and you might think the nuclear industry has had its day.

But ever alive to an angle for PR spin, the industry is now telling us it is the answer to climate change. Environmentalist Jonathon Porritt has just produced an excellent report giving the lie to the industry’s arguments on that.

Since Chernobyl, only three reactor projects have begun in Europe, all being built by the French state-owned company EDF.

The Olkiluoto reactor in Finland is now running 13 years late and three times over budget and might generate its first power next year. Plans for another reactor at the site have been cancelled. The Flamanville reactor in France is only running 11 years late and will be more than three times over budget.

The Hinkley Point C reactor was approved in 1990 after the UK’s longest public inquiry, so long ago that my father submitted evidence.

Construction began in earnest in 2014. EDF originally promised the station would be cooking your Christmas turkey in 2017 but the start date is now expected to be 2026 at the earliest.

The nuclear enthusiasts of the 1990s told us that the UK needed eight new nuclear stations and they would cost £2 billion each. As UK and foreign companies have given up or put plans on hold, Hinkley is the only one under construction and costs have risen to at least £23 billion. The economics only work at all because the government has guaranteed to make every electricity consumer in the UK pay higher bills for the next 35 years.

The obvious lesson we seem incapable of learning is that, even with strong state support, the nuclear industry cannot build a new reactor by the date or for the price they promise.

Scotland has four operational reactors. The two at Hunterston have had major problems with cracks in their cores and are unlikely to still be running in 2022. The two reactors at Torness are actually the newest reactors in the UK, having been opened by Margaret Thatcher in 1989. They are due to close in 2030. No one is daft enough to propose new reactors for Scotland.

With ridiculous cost and time overruns, and the cost of renewables beating nuclear in all circumstances, surely it is time to admit that we have reached the end of the nuclear dream.  Dr Richard Dixon is director of Friends of the Earth Scotland

May 1, 2021 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Many hurdles to jump before Bradwell nuclear station starts construction. Meanwhile renewables race ahead

Nuclear Engineering International 29th April 2021. JUST BEFORE THE TURN OF the year, on 18 December, UK energy regulator Ofgem granted an electricity generation licence to Bradwell Power Generation Co
Ltd. The company is planning to build a new nuclear station at Bradwell on
the UK’s Essex coast, near where one of the country’s first nuclear
stations is in a ‘care and maintenance’ decommissioning phase.

The licence was welcomed by Bradwell Power Generation chief executive Alan
Raymant, who called it, “an important milestone on the journey to
completing the Bradwell B project and demonstrates our continued
progress”.

But what may sound like the culmination of a process is in
fact an early step, and Raymant admitted, “The generating licence is one
of many licences and permits we will need in order to develop, construct
and operate Bradwell B”.

Support for the Bradwell project is mixed. The
UK government generally acts on the assumption that nuclear will continue
to supply around a fifth of electricity supply, as it has over the last two
decades. But that is largely because it was thought that replacing this
large tranche of zero-carbon power with renewables sources was too
ambitious.

The scale of the renewables roll-out has put that assumption
under pressure in some quarters. The GDA process has been under way since
January 2017 and in February 2020 it reached step four, the final step,
which ONR describes as “Successful completion of the high-level technical
assessment of the design”. ONR estimates that step 4 will be completed by
the start of 2022. As part of this process, in January the Environment
Agency opened a consultation on its assessment of the design.

The EA’s role is to regulate “specific environmental matters at nuclear sites in
England by issuing environmental permits to cover site preparation,
construction, operation and decommissioning”. EA provides a statement
about a design’s acceptability at the end of the GDA. During the GDA, it
works by identifying concerns.

So-called ‘GDA Issues’ are significant,
but resolvable, and must be resolved before construction of the reactor
starts and before GDA can be completed. ‘Assessment Findings’ are
matters best resolved at the site- specific stage. In a consultation now
under way EA has listed six potential GDA Issues and 40 Assessment
Findings.

The GDA Issues are: While operational experience is used to
support safety case documentation, the Environment Agency and ONR have
noted that it is not used consistently across the project. The Requesting
Party has not addressed a Regulatory Observation about this. The Requesting
Party has shown that it has considered the environmental aspects of the
station design. However, it still has to demonstrate that it has adequately
considered the safety aspects of the design.

Where safety aspects are still
under review the Requesting Party must ensure that environmental protection
is given appropriate consideration. The Requesting Party has proposed using
rectangular filters in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning
system. It must demonstrate that these are equivalent or better than
cylindrical types, which are considered best practice in the UK.

ONR/EA have not yet received design requirements for the spent fuel, which define
the specifications for an interim store which will be used before the fuel
is disposed of in a geological disposal facility. The Requesting Party has
yet to confirm its strategy for disposing of the in-core instrument
assemblies and that this will not affect disposal of the waste in-core
instrument assemblies.

The Requesting Party has still to get advice from
Radioactive Waste Management Ltd on whether the higher activity waste from
the UK HPR1000 will be able to be disposed of in the latter’s planned
geological disposal facility. No date for submission of the final
application to the Planning Inspectorate have been published by Bradwell
Power Generation, but it is likely to be after 2022.

https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurethe-development-clock-is-ticking-on-bradwell-b-8707354/

May 1, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

The nuclear menace from under the seas and from high in the sky- theme for May 21

Why would anyone persist in pushing Small Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) and pretending that they can solve climate change, when they clearly cannot?

Well, the answer is – if you’re a toxic macho nuclear zealot or a nuclear weapons corporation – ( Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics etc)- this myth about SMRs is manna from heaven.

It means that the tax-payer, not private enterprise investors, will take over the SMR push – and the military-industrial-complex will race away with nuclear sites and weapons in space, and with powerful killer nuclear submarines.

Meanwhile those billionaire nuclear gurus – Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, , Richard Branson, Jack Ma and othes , will be laughing all the way to the bank, as they promote ”peaceful, nuclear-powered” space travel.

The global media promotes the joy and delight of space travel, rarely acknowledging its intimate connection with militarism. And there’s a crazy sort of national pride – hubris in being in the space race.

The space race to what? Apart from the obvious – nuclear war and annihilation, there’s the danger of ecosystem plutonium pollution from accidents and leaks, drastic accidents, and the gobbling up of public funds that might otherwise go to the public good – health, education, welfare, climate ation – heck – even good international relations!

The USA and Russia have long been in a toxic competition to militarily control the world especially by nuclear submarines. There’s a strange and unwarranted confidence that nuclerar submarines are ”clean” and somehow ”safe”. That’s because they release their radioactive trash unseen, into the world’s ocean waters. When they have an accident, well they just sink, and their poisonous mess is invisible. Dead nuclear submarines seem to be no trouble, hidden on the sea floor. Now that the world has become (a bit) aware of the radioactive danger of nuclear submarines, the dead ones lie in port, as nobody really knows what to do with them, how to clean up the nuclear mess.

In this time of pandemic, it is urgently necessary to put the brakes on NATO, and Russia – in regard to the increasing danger to the world, of nuclear submarines. Even more than cruise ships, they can be a hot-bed of coronavirus – making them even more unsafe in a number of ways.

May 1, 2021 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Christina's themes, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, weapons and war | 3 Comments

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