2023 July 28 « nuclear-news

If Albanese’s such a buddy of Biden’s, why is Assange still in jail?

An initial refusal from Biden is only an invitation to ask a second time, in a firmer voice

Bob Carr Bob Carr was NSW’s longest-serving premier and is a former Australian foreign affairs minister. 27 jul 23, https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/if-albanese-s-such-a-buddy-of-biden-s-why-is-assange-still-in-jail-20230721-p5dqci.html

Julian Assange is in his fourth year in Britain’s Belmarsh prison. If the current appeal fails, he will be shackled and driven off in a prison van and flown across the Atlantic on a CIA aircraft for a long trial. He faces likely life imprisonment in a federal jail, perhaps in Oklahoma.

In 2021, then opposition leader Anthony Albanese said, “Enough is enough. I don’t have sympathy for many of his actions, but essentially, I can’t see what is served by keeping him incarcerated.”

As prime minister, Albanese said he had already made his position clear to the Biden administration. “We are working through diplomatic channels,” he said, “but we’re making very clear what our position is on Mr Assange’s case.”

So we can assume that at one of his seven meetings with US President Joe Biden he has raised Assange, even on the fringes of the Quad or at one of two NATO summits. Or perhaps in San Diego when they launched AUKUS, under which Australia will make the largest transfer of wealth ever made outside this country. This $368 billion is a whopping subsidy to American naval shipyards and to the troubled, chronically tardy British naval builder BAE Systems.

But it clinches Australia’s reputation as a deliriously loyal, entirely gullible US ally. It gives President Biden the justification for telling Republicans or Clinton loyalists in his own party that he had no alternative but to end the pursuit of Assange. “Those Aussies insisted on it. They’re doing us all these favours … we can’t say no.”

In addition to the grandiose AUKUS deal, Biden could list other decisions by the Albanese government that render Australia a military stronghold to help US regional dominance while materially weakening our own security.

Candid words, but they aren’t mine. They belong to Sam Roggeveen of the Lowy Institute in this month’s edition of Australian Foreign Affairs. In a seminally important piece of analysis, Roggeveen nominated Australia’s decision to fully service six American B52 bombers at RAAF Tindal, in the Northern Territory, as belonging on that list. It is assumed these are aimed at China’s nuclear infrastructure such as missile silos. “It is hard to overstate the sensitivity involved in threatening another nation’s nuclear forces,” Roggeveen writes.

In his article, he reminds us we’ve also agreed to host four US nuclear subs on our west coast at something to be called “Submarine Rotational Force-West”. Their mission would be destroying Chinese warships or enforcing a blockade of Chinese ports.

The east coast submarine base, planned most likely for Port Kembla, will also directly support US military operations. It’s another nuclear target. As Roggeveen says, all these locations raise Australia’s profile in the eyes of the Chinese military planners designing their response in the event of war with the US.

In this context, I can’t believe the US president is not on the point of agreeing to the prime minister’s request to drop charges against Assange.

Apart from the titanic strategic favours, two killer facts help our case. One, former US president Barack Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, who had supplied Assange with the information he published. The Yank is free, the Aussie still pursued.

Two, the crimes Manning and Assange exposed involved US troops on a helicopter gunning down unarmed civilians in Baghdad. They are directly comparable to the alleged Australian battlefield murders in Afghanistan we are currently prosecuting.

An initial refusal from Biden is only an invitation to ask a second time, in a firmer voice.

It’s possible to imagine an Australian PM – Fraser, Hawke, Keating, Howard or Rudd – being appropriately forceful with a US president. There would be an inflection point in their exchange – prime minister to president – when the glint-eyed Australian says, “Mr President, it’s gone on too long. Both sides of our politics are united. Your old boss commuted Chelsea Manning, an American, in the same case.”

A pause. A beat. Then the killer summation. “Mr President, I speak for Australia.”

Surely this counts.

I don’t believe the president can shake his head and say, “nope”, given all we have gifted – the potent symbolism of B52s, nuclear subs and bases on the east and west coast. It would look like we have sunk into the role of US territory, as much a dependency as Guam or Puerto Rico.

US counter-intelligence conceded during court proceedings there is no evidence of a life being lost because of Assange’s revelations. Our Defence Department reached the same view.

If Assange walks out the gates of Belmarsh into the arms of his wife and children it will show we are worth a crumb or two off the table of the imperium. If it’s a van to the airport, then making ourselves a more likely target has conferred no standing at all. We are a client state, almost officially.

July 28, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, civil liberties, Legal, politics international | 2 Comments

Why investing in new nuclear plants is bad for the climate

the climate crisis demands urgency and requires such large investments that cost efficiency is of key importance.

Joule, Luke Haywood Marion Leroutier Robert Pietzcker, July 21, 2023

There has been a strong push to promote increased investments in new nuclear power as a strategy to decarbonize economies, especially in the European Union (EU) and the United States (US).

The evidence base for these initiatives is poor. Investments in new nuclear power plants are bad for the climate due to high costs and long construction times. Given the urgency of climate change mitigation, which requires reducing emissions from the EU electricity grid to almost zero in the 2030s (Pietzcker et al.¹), preference should be given to the cheapest technology that can be deployed fastest.

On both costs and speed, renewable energy sources beat nuclear. Every euro invested in new nuclear plants thus delays decarbonization compared to investments in renewable power. In a decarbonizing world, delays increase CO₂ emissions.

Our thoughts focus on new nuclear power plants (not phasing out existing plants) in the US and Europe. In Europe, new nuclear power plants are planned or seriously discussed in France, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. We do not focus on China, where government-set electricity prices and subsidized capital costs make it more difficult to contrast the profitability of different types of energy sources.

Nuclear energy is expensive

The cost overruns on recent nuclear projects are dramatic. In an international comparative assessment of construction cost overruns for electricity infrastructure, Sovacool et al. ² find that nuclear reactors are the investment type with the most frequent and largest cost overruns, alongside hydroelectric dams. 97% of the 180 nuclear reactor investment projects included in their analysis suffered cost overruns, with an average cost increase of 117% per project.

More recently, the current estimate of the construction costs of the French Flamanville project stands at €13.2 billion up from an initial €3.3 billion (figures that do not even include financing costs, which the French audit office estimated at €4.2 billion up from an initial €1.2 billion) and those of the recently opened Finish Olkiluoto at €11 billion instead of €3 billion. “Construction costs are high enough that it becomes difficult to make an economic argument for nuclear,” Davis finds. Similarly, Wealer et al.conclude that “investing into a Gen III/III+ nuclear power plant … would very likely generate significant losses.”

Why is nuclear so costly?

Construction costs are driven by safety. Nuclear accidents remain a possibility—and damages may be global. Rangel and Lévêque note that huge damages occurring at “low and uncertain probability” make it difficult to determine whether safety investments are cost-effective. The nuclear plants built relatively quickly in previous decades had lower safety. requirements. Policy makers’ preferences for safety makes sense given that nuclear power plant operators’ private insurance coverage is typically very limited.

Beyond construction costs, the cost of capital is a critical parameter for evaluating the viability of nuclear power. First, the very long construction times and delays generate particularly large financing costs for a given interest rate. Portugal-Pereira et al. report an escalation of capital costs worldwide due to increasing construction delays for the last generation of nuclear reactors constructed since the 2010s. The French court of auditors estimates that the cost of the French nuclear power plant Flamanville will increase from €13.2 billion to €20 billion once financing costs and delays are taken into account. Second, the historically high risk of default translates into higher interest rates. These two factors make the profitability of nuclear projects very dependent on financing conditions.

Finding an economic rationale for continued investment in new nuclear requires optimism regarding costs………………………………………….

Costs are not projected to come down very much even for the six new reactors planned to be built by 2035 (estimated to cost €52 billion in total, or €8.6 billion per reactor). The most recent EPR construction, Sizewell C in the United Kingdom, is also one of the most expensive projects at around €23 billion (£20 billion). This pattern of increasing costs over time has generated some interest in the literature (Lovering et al.⁷ and Eash-Gates et al.⁸).

Most of the candidate explanations (in particular, increased safety regulations) do not provide grounds for optimism for the future. In a wide-ranging review of different technologies, Meng et al.⁹ find nuclear power to be a “notable exception” where progress is overestimated with actual costs consistently higher than expected.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) may not be an exception: their advantages in terms of lower complexity may not translate into sound economics given lower energy production. Glaser et al ¹⁰ note that even optimistic estimates require many hundreds of reactors to be built before electricity produced is cost-competitive compared with larger reactor designs. The potential of modularity to reduce costs appears limited in practice.

Nuclear power is not cost-competitive with renewables

Despite poor profitability, nuclear power is advanced as a good investment to fight climate change. However, today, the challenge for nuclear profitability does not come from coal or gas but from renewables. It is hard to overstate how strongly the costs of renewables have decreased (see Figure 1 on original) . Few publications have anticipated these cost decreases, and public debate is often based on outdated cost assumptions.

Baseload and flexibility

…………………………………….Shirizadeh et al. ¹² find that costs of storing variable renewable electricity production appear manageable, with storage costs of less than 15% of total costs associated with a fully renewable electricity grid for France. Pietzcker et al.¹ find that new nuclear constructions would not decrease the costs of achieving EU climate targets. Shirizadeh and Quirion ¹³ find that a 100% renewable system is very cost-effective for France.

Taking into account wider economic impacts does not favor nuclear

………………………………….adding non-market benefits to the equation implies that non-market costs should also be considered. This is not easy: how should we account for nuclear waste? Nuclear waste is the unresolved problem of the nuclear industry. Cheap long-term storage for anthropogenic radioactive substances is elusive despite worldwide, decades-old efforts. In absence of any proven low-cost permanent storage technology, nuclear waste will have to be retreated regularly and stored in facilities above the ground.

Costs would arise for many thousands of years. The importance of costs and benefits for future generations in today’s decisions has been a controversial topic for climate change policy, and it appears even more relevant for nuclear waste. Krall et al. ¹⁴ argue that SMRs may actually “exacerbate the challenges of nuclear waste management.”

Third, uranium mining causes pollution and radioactive exposure. As a report of the EU’s Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks notes, “almost 100% of the total eco-toxicity and human toxicity impacts over the whole nuclear life cycle is connected to mining and milling … While mining and milling is regulated [within the EU], 90% of what the EU need globally comes from 7 countries (none in Europe).” In Niger, for example, the systematic neglect of health and safety procedures in countries producing uranium for EU consumption persists despite evidence of “grave environmental impacts and rampant institutional failures.” ¹⁵

Finally, the continued development of nuclear energy could contribute to the risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as the risk of nuclear power plants being targeted in armed conflict, a permanent risk in Ukraine today.

Building new nuclear takes time we do not have

The business case and economics may be poor, but in light of the very real threat of climate catastrophe, should we not invest in all alternatives to fossil fuels? The problem is that building nuclear plants is slow and delivery is uncertain.

Even the International Atomic Energy Agency and Nuclear Energy Agency—organizations promoting the use of nuclear energy—assume construction times of around one decade, ¹³ whereas renewables can come online in a fraction of that time. Given lags in planning and regulatory approval, any new nuclear plants would come online too late to help decarbonize our economies on time. However, even this time frame appears optimistic:………………………………………..

Conclusion: In solving the climate crisis, new nuclear is a costly and dangerous distraction

……………………………………………………………….. the climate crisis demands urgency and requires such large investments that cost efficiency is of key importance……………………………… If governments and economic actors believe that nuclear power will come online at a certain date, they will not make alternative plans, and without alternative plans, the current carbon-intensive electricity system will remain in place—rendering climate targets unachievable.

References (many) ……………………….. https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(23)00281-7

July 28, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

$45 Billion to Keep Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant Alive?

Outrageous Costs and Deadly Dangers are the Real Risks of Keeping Diablo Open

Independent , By Grant Smith and Anthony Lacey, Wed Jul 26, 2023

California ratepayers might have to foot a staggering $45 billion-plus cost to keep the aging Pacific Gas & Electric, or PG&E, Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant online beyond its slated 2025 closure.

The outrageous price tag is the estimated cost for operating the plant from 2021-2045, or hundreds of millions of dollars every year. And that’s just the expense of prolonging the troubled facility’s life. It doesn’t account for the enormous extra costs that would be incurred following a major disaster like a reactor leak or an earthquake that damages the plant.

EWG used testimony recently filed by The Utility Reform Network, or TURN, in PG&E’s current rate case to parse the capital and operating expenses of the plant. EWG considered PG&E’s estimates for the plant costs, which likely lowball the true expense, and TURN’s assessment of the plant expenses, which may be closer to the actual burden.

EWG estimates it will likely amount to hundreds of millions of dollars every year, for total costs ranging from more than $20 billionto nearly $45 billion from2023 through 2045 — or more.

That’s just the base cost of running the facility. The alarming figure doesn’t account for the additional massive costs that would come from a disaster at the plant, like an earthquake or a nuclear reactor leak, or unanticipated maintenance and security costs that often plague old nuclear power plants.

That cost — reaching tens of billions of dollars — will be passed on to 15.8 million Californians already fleeced by PG&E’s exorbitant electricity bills. According to EWG estimates, keeping Diablo Canyon open could add from $55to $124 a year to the typical utility bill, considering the cost of the facility as a fixed charge over 23 years.

Or it could be even higher because these costs, at the moment, are highly speculative and the older Diablo Canyon gets, the higher the capital and operating costs will become to keep it online and providing electricity.

An extension of the facility’s life for 20 years after its scheduled 2025 shutdown could also generate other large costs just to ensure its ongoing operation. Many aging nuclear power plants are notorious for wasting millions of dollars on unanticipated maintenance and security costs…………………………………………………..

An Unnecessary Nuclear Facility

What’s just as outrageous as the potential $45 billion-plus cost of extending Diablo Canyon’s life is the fact that the state has no need to keep the plant open after the scheduled 2025 closure………………………………………………………………………

The Danger of Diablo Canyon

Diablo Canyon, located on California’s central coast in San Luis Obispo County, sits atop a web of fault lines and rests above a cliff below the Pacific Ocean, putting it at heightened risk of damage from an earthquake, tsunami or both.

The facility was set to close both of its two reactor units by 2025, following a carefully crafted 2018 deal between PG&E, unions and environmentalists. The deal had the support of state regulators and then-Lieutenant Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was elected governor in 2018.

That deal is now at risk of collapsing………………………….. https://www.independent.com/2023/07/26/45-billion-to-keep-diablo-canyon-nuclear-power-plant-alive/

July 28, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Massachusetts rejects request to discharge radioactive water from closed nuclear plant into bay

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station was closed in 2019. Kevin Clark 7.26.2023

By MARK PRATT Associated Press https://www.power-eng.com/ap-news/massachusetts-rejects-request-to-discharge-radioactive-water-from-closed-nuclear-plant-into-bay/

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts environmental regulators have denied a request by the company dismantling a shuttered nuclear power plant to release more than 1 million gallons (3.8 million liters) of radioactive wastewater into Cape Cod Bay.

The state Department of Environmental Protection’s draft decision issued July 26 said it denied Holtec’s request for a permit modification because the discharge from Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth would violate a state law that designates the bay as an ocean sanctuary.

The draft will not be finalized until after a public comment period that ends Aug. 25.

Environmentalists and politicians praised the decision.

Release of the treated wastewater would pose a threat to the bay’s environment, human health, the fishing and shellfishing industries, and the economy of the region, Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, said in a statement.

“Holtec sought to profit at the expense of the people, the environment and economy of Cape Cod and, like most corporate bullies, needed to be told no,” he said.

Holtec promised a transparent decommissioning process when it took over the plant after it stopped generating power in May 2019, U.S. Sen. Edward Markey said.

July 28, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

UK Government’s infrastructure advisors cast doubt over uks biggest energy projects including nuclear clearup

The UK Government’s infrastructure advisors have warned that it is unlikely
that work to efficiently categorise hazardous waste at the Sellafield site
will be a success.

The Infrastructure and Project Authority (IPA) has also
raised concerns about the majority of the Government’s other key energy
infrastructure programmes, including the Low-Cost Nuclear Programme funding
R&D for small modular reactors.

These warnings are contained within the
Authority’s new annual assessment. Published late last week, it assesses
whether 244 Government-backed projects with a total whole-life cost
exceeding £805bn are progressing well. Projects are given a ‘green’
rating if delivery if on time, there are no significant quality issues and
no other issues that could threaten delivery. Those that are unlikely to be
delivered without a major change of direction are ranked as ‘red’. Those
with delays, quality issues or other problems which may yet be resolved
receive an ‘amber’ rating.

Of the 19 projects covered that are overseen
by the Department for Energy Security and Net-Zero (DESNZ), only three get
the ‘green’ rating. These are the Local Authority Delivery scheme, which
funds councils to upgrade homes and reduce carbon; the SIXEP effluent
treatment plant and the storage plant at Sellafield.

But efforts to improve
analytical services at Sellafield, the former centre of nuclear
reprocessing in the UK, received a ‘red’ ranking. The Authority believes
that the successful delivery of the project “appears to be
unachievable”. The project concerts assessing and categorizing waste on
site.

The Authority has also downgraded the UK Government’s plans for a
major geological nuclear waste storage facility to ‘amber’, from
‘green’ in 2021. This facility is being built both to deal with waste
from new nuclear sites, but also to consolidate existing waste storage; at
present, more than 20 above-ground facilities across the UK are used, each
with a maximum design life of 100 years.

Two DESNZ Projects – Sizewell C
and the development of carbon capture and storage – are exempt from
assessment due to commercial sensitivities. Besides the analytical services
at Sellafield, the others are all ranked as ‘amber’. These include the
national rollout of smart meters to homes; the Net-Zero Hydrogen fund; the
Homes Upgrade Grant (HUG) for home retrofitting; the Public Sector
Decarbonisation Scheme; the Industrial Decarbonisation and Hydrogen Revenue
Support scheme and the Green Homes Grant.

Edie 24th July 2023

https://www.edie.net/infrastructure-experts-cast-doubt-over-uks-biggest-energy-projects-including-nuclear-clear-up/

July 28, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Now, not in 15 years’: Call for public vote on Theddlethorpe nuclear waste dump

Campaigners say the area is stuck in limbo. Campaigners are
calling for an immediate public vote on the proposed nuclear waste storage
facility at Theddlethorpe after it was taken off a council agenda last
week.

East Lindsey District Council had been due to discuss whether to move
forward with a public test of support on an underground storage facility.
However this was cancelled as the council sought legal advice, triggering
criticism from both residents and the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local
Authorities (NFLA).

The Lincolnite 24th July 2023

‘Now, not in 15 years’: Call for public vote on Theddlethorpe nuclear waste dump

July 28, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, wastes | Leave a comment

The coming Russian-Polish war

Armageddon Newsletter GILBERT DOCTOROW, JUL 23, 2023

This evening’s News of the Week program on Russian state television opened with a 30 minute documentary survey of Polish-Russian relations from the end of WWI and during the period of the Russian Civil War, when the government under Marshal Pilsudski wrested substantial territory from Russian control. It also dealt extensively with Poland’s well documented role as aggressor and occupier of Czechoslovak, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Belarus lands from before the start of WWII and until Hitler overran Poland. ……………………..

Let us recall that on Friday Putin explained how and why we may expect the formal entry into the war of a Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian joint military force that will officially be presented as defending Ukrainian statehood by occupying the Western Ukraine. However, Putin described this as an occupying force which once installed in Lvov and Western Ukraine would never leave. This would in effect be a repeat of the sell-out of Ukrainian interests to Poles and cession of territory to Poland such as had been perpetrated by their leader Semyon Petlyura in April 1920 and has now been repeated in the secret agreements between presidents Zelensky of Ukraine and Duda of Poland. ……………………………………………………..

From Russian talk shows of the past several days, it is easy to understand the Kremlin’s reading of the present proxy war in and around Ukraine: Washington sees that the Ukrainian counter-offensive is a complete failure that has cost tens of thousands of lives among the Ukrainian armed forces and has seen the destruction of a large part of the Western equipment delivered to Ukraine over the past months. Instead of suing for peace, Washington seeks to open a ‘second front,’ using Poland for this purpose. …………………………………………….

The inescapable conclusion from the latest news is that Washington’s incendiary policies and continuing escalation of the conflict cannot secure Russia’s defeat. On the contrary, they may well lead to the total collapse of the NATO alliance once its military value is disproven in a way that cannot be talked away or papered over by the most creative propagandists in DC. https://gilbertdoctorow.substack.com/p/the-coming-russian-polish-war?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

July 28, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, politics international | Leave a comment

Will the small states of Oceania be able to maintain their independence in the face of a new Sino-American Cold War?

The ‘friends to all, enemies to none’ strategy is living its last days as the US and China press the island nations to take sides

By Timur Fomenko, a political analyst, https://www.rt.com/news/580174-friends-to-all-enemies-to-none/ 23 July 23

Papua New Guinea is a gateway between continents. The island, being effectively cut in half, demarcates an artificial boundary between Asia and Oceania. In the past several centuries, the broader island has been carved upon between almost every colonial power going, having been ruled at various points by the Dutch, Spanish, German, Japanese and British empires. Even after gaining its formal independence from Australia in 1975, these legacies continue to scar the island, with half of it still belonging to Indonesia, known as West Papua, which is now a source of unrest and insurgency.

The history of constantly fluctuating overlords only demonstrates the country’s perceived strategic and military importance. That’s because whoever dominates it has direct access to both Australia and the Pacific, and can project into Asia itself. It is of little surprise that Papua New Guinea (PNG) became one of the most gruesome fronts of the Pacific War in World War II, which subsequently brought it firmly into the hands of the Anglosphere, where it has remained ever since, making it an effective dependency of Australia in terms of aid and humanitarian assistance.

Despite this, the island has nothing to show for centuries of colonial dominion, or from being a subordinate of the English-speaking world as a black Melanesian country. It is one of the world’s poorer nations, and is in desperate need of infrastructure to develop itself. Because of this, it has developed a foreign policy it describes as ‘friends to all, enemies to none’, which seeks to attain and exploit as many development opportunities as possible and better sustain its own strategic autonomy. This of course, has drawn interest from China, who sees the islands as an important partner as a post-colonial, Global South country. Thanks to PNG being part of the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing has built airports, highways, sea ports, and telecommunications infrastructure across the country.

Port Moresby, in turn, sees Beijing as a critical economic partner that can help bolster its own infrastructure and development, the two countries recently having negotiated a free trade agreement. But that doesn’t mean trouble is not afoot. While China seeks to bolster economic relations with the country, the US has other ideas; that is, to forcibly transform Papua New Guinea into a military outpost for the purpose, of course, of containing China. Recently, Washington was able to pry a Defense Cooperation Agreement out of the country, which will give the US access to its bases.

PNG, of course, denies that the is specifically opposing China, and does not rule out security cooperation with Beijing itself. However, it is also a reminder that the country’s weak and vulnerable position, along with its historical subservience to the West, means it does not have the power or political privilege to resist these kinds of overtures, and instead must seek a more delicate balance. In response to this, China is likely to increase its engagement with the country; for example, the Bank of China is working to establish a presence there.

Growing competition over Papua New Guinea also comes amid China’s successes in its relationship with the Solomon Islands, which switched allegiance from Taipei to Beijing in 2019. On July 11, the two countries finally signed a security cooperation pact, which has met with vitriol from Western media and politicians.

What this demonstrates is that the Pacific region has become a ‘cold war’ theater between China and the US, with the latter working through its ally, Australia. The US, after all, has long attempted to make the Pacific an ‘extended backyard’ or ‘ranch’, a large open space over which it seeks to be the exclusive military power. But now, China is expanding into it, and this has led to the emergence of strategic competition.

However, these Pacific countries do not really want to take sides – they are tired of being tossed from one master to the other. This means the fundamental challenge for countries such as Papua New Guinea is to gain benefits to strengthen itself, while nonetheless avoiding subservience. This means it has a fight to continue its ‘friends to all, enemies to none’ approach, while tensions rise and both powers start demanding it take sides on various issues. But if worst-case scenarios can be avoided, and the pace of investment in the country from all sides accelerates, the end product may be that competition could ultimately make PNG and the island countries a lot better off, and therefore a lot more capable of exerting their own will.

July 28, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | OCEANIA, politics international | Leave a comment

No new nuclear facilities along vulnerable coasts, Alaska regulators say

By James Brooks, Alaska Beacon-July 26, 2023

You can build a small nuclear reactor in Alaska, but not within 2,700 feet of a house.

On Monday, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom signed a package of regulations that dictate where small nuclear reactors, sometimes called “microreactors,” may be built in Alaska.

The regulations arrive as the U.S. Air Force advances plans to build the state’s first microreactor at Eielson Air Force Base, southeast of Fairbanks. …………………………………………………………………..

The regulations signed this week don’t deal specifically with nuclear safety, only where a reactor could be sited. Among the restrictions: A reactor can’t be built within 2,700 feet of a residence, 300 feet of a national park or game reserve, in a coastal area vulnerable to storm surge, within 100 feet of a public road or trail, or in an area protected because it’s used for drinking water.

Any reactor site must be approved by the local municipal government, and if a reactor is planned for a site outside an organized borough, the Alaska Legislature must approve the site.

Those site restrictions could also apply to a nuclear waste site or a facility that processes nuclear fuel, the regulations state. None have been publicly announced here.

During a public comment period earlier this year, the proposed regulations were opposed by the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Copper Country Alliance and several individual residents who said they were concerned about dangers posed by nuclear power.

“It seems to be that Alaska is going to be a guinea pig for this experimental technology. Seeing all the polluted places the Army left here does not give me any confidence that they would act responsibly here,” wrote Brigitte Jaeger of Fairbanks……………………………………………………… https://alaskapublic.org/2023/07/26/no-new-nuclear-facilities-along-vulnerable-coasts-alaska-regulators-say/

July 28, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Cumbria set for more nuclear reactors as questions are raised over why land isn’t being used for renewable energy

Cumberland Council are set to discuss small modular reactors and nuclear
power in Cumbria. Councillor Jill Parry for Bothel and Wharrels, Green
Party will ask her question to leader of Cumberland Council Councillor Mark
Fryer, who represents St Johns and Great Clifton, Labour.

“Can the leader please ask the Solway Community Power Company for more detail of the
proposal, including an outline what investigations, surveys and other
preparatory work are needed at this very early stage, and share the
response with council? “

“Would it not be more appropriate for the council
to push that the land is used for renewable energy technologies, such as
solar, in the meantime, which could generate real-time useable electricity
for residents now and could stay in place if SMRs don’t happen?”

Lancashire Live 24th July 2023

https://www.lancs.live/news/cumbria-news/cumbria-set-more-nuclear-reactors-27375167