TODAY. New heights of folly as UK government releases its Civil Nuclear Roadmap.
When Rishi Sunak rose to the political throne in Britain, I thought: ”Well, of the stupid Tories, at least he’s probably less stupid than the rest of them”.
Well, now I wonder. With an election due by early 2025, surely Sunak and co. are not planning upon political suicide?
So I can only conclude that Sunak is as thick as a brick.
He’s launched the Civil Nuclear Roadmap for UK to increase nuclear generation by up to four times to 24GW by 2050. The Prime Minister said: “Nuclear is the perfect antidote to the energy challenges facing Britain – it’s green, cheaper in the long term and will ensure the UK’s energy security for the long-term.” “This is the right long-term decision and is the next step in our commitment to nuclear power”
The UK intends to build up to eight new reactors, and will invest up to £300 million into producing the HALEU fuel required for new high-tech reactors, and which currently is only commercially produced in Russia.
And there’ll be a fleet of “small modular reactors” to be .built across Britain.
Sounds great, don’t it?
BUT:
Large nuclear reactors. The cost of Hinkley Point C has spiralled to £33bn, a 30 per cent increase from 2015 when it forecast the cost at £25-£26bn. Sizewell C has not yet received a final investment decision.
Six reactors on three sites have been shut down since 2021 and will be need expensive dismantlement
Most of the UK’s 9 functioning nuclear reactors are nearing the end of their operating lives, although 2 of them Heysham 1 and Hartlepool are to be extended.
Small Nuclear Reactors. Regulation and planning rules will be loosened . A developer-led approach will replace previous rules. Rather than ministers specifying sites, developers will be asked to identify locations for small nuclear reactors .
Nuclear plants will be ruled out in line with “population density” and “proximity to military activities” . But apart from those considerations, “All other criteria willbe discretionary, including size, flood risk, proximity to civil airports, the natural beauty, ecological importance or cultural heritage of the site. ”
Divorced from reality? Does Rishi Sunak not know what happened to the USA’s one and only small nuclear reactor project – the rapid decline and fall of the NuScale enterprise?
The mainstream media faithfully touts Rishi Sunak’s nuclear plans. But investors and the general public are not that gullible.
I think it more likely that the Nuclear Roadmap will prove the antidote to a Tory government for 2025
The Case for Genocide
A ruling by the court could be years away. But South Africa is asking for provisional measures that would demand Israel cease its military assault – in essence a permanent ceasefire. This decision could come within two or three weeks.
The International Court of Justice may be all that stands between the Palestinians in Gaza and genocide.
By Chris Hedges /ScheerPost, https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/12/chris-hedges-the-case-for-genocide/
The exhaustive 84-page brief submitted by South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) charging Israel with genocide is hard to refute. Israel’s campaign of indiscriminate killing, wholesale destruction of infrastructure, including housing, hospitals and water treatment plants, along with its use of starvation as a weapon, accompanied by genocidal rhetoric from its political and military leaders who speak of destroying Gaza and ethnically cleansing the 2.3 million Palestinians, makes a strong case against Israel for genocide.
Israel’s smearing of South Africa as “the legal arm” of Hamas exemplifies the bankruptcy of its defense, a smear replicated by those who claim that demonstrations held to call for a ceasefire and protect Palestinian human rights are “anti-Semitic.” Israel, its genocide live streamed to the world, has no substantial counter argument.
But that does not mean the judges on the court will rule in South Africa’s favor. The pressure the U.S. will bring – Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called the South African charges “meritless” – on the judges, drawn from the member states of the U.N., will be intense.
A ruling of genocide is a stain that Israel – which weaponizes the Holocaust to justify its brutalization of the Palestinians – would find hard to remove. It would undercut Israel’s insistence that Jews are eternal victims. It would shatter the justification for Israel’s indiscriminate killing of unarmed Palestinians and construction of the world’s largest open air prison in Gaza, along with the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It would sweep away the immunity to criticism enjoyed by the Israel lobby and its Zionist supporters in the U.S., who have successfully equated criticisms of the “Jewish State” and support for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism.
Over 23,700 Palestinians, including over 10,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas and other resistance fighters breached the security barriers around Gaza. Some 1,200 people were killed – there is strong evidence that some of the victims were killed by Israeli tank crews and helicopter pilots that intentionally targeted the some 200 hostages along with their captors. Thousands more Palestinians are missing, presumed buried under the rubble. Israeli attacks have left over 60,000 Palestinians wounded and maimed, the majority of them women and children. Thousands more Palestinian civilians, including children, have been arrested, blindfolded, numbered, beaten, forced to strip to their underwear, loaded onto trucks and transported to unknown locations.
A ruling by the court could be years away. But South Africa is asking for provisional measures that would demand Israel cease its military assault – in essence a permanent ceasefire. This decision could come within two or three weeks. It is a decision that is not based on the final ruling by the court, but on the merits of the case brought by South Africa. The court would not, by demanding Israel end its hostilities in Gaza, define the Israeli campaign in Gaza as genocide. It would confirm that there is the possibility of genocide, what the South African lawyers call acts that are “genocidal in character.”
The case will not be determined by the documentation of specific crimes, even those defined as war crimes. It will be determined by genocidal intent – the intent to eradicate in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group – as defined in the Genocide Convention.
These acts collectively include the targeting of refugee camps and other densely packed civilian areas with 2,000-pound bombs, the blocking of humanitarian aid, the destruction of the health care system and its effects on children and pregnant women – the U.N. estimates there are around 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, and that more than 160 babies are delivered every day – as well as repeated genocidal statements by leading Israeli politicians and generals.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu equated Gaza with Amalek, a nation hostile to the Israelites in the Bible, and cited the Biblical injunction to kill every Amalek man, woman, child or animal. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called Palestinians “human animals.” Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated, as the South African lawyers told the court, that everybody in Gaza is responsible for what happened on Oct. 7 because they voted for Hamas, although half the population in Gaza are children who are too young to vote. But even if the entire population of Gaza did vote for Hamas this does not make them a legitimate military target. They are still, under the rules of war, civilians, and entitled to protection. They are also entitled under international law to resist their occupation via armed struggle.
The South African lawyers, who compared Israel’s crimes with those carried out by the apartheid regime in South Africa, showed the court a video of Israeli soldiers celebrating and calling for the death of Palestinians – they sang as they danced “There are no uninvolved civilians” – as evidence that genocidal intent descends from the top to the bottom of the Israeli war machine and political system. They provided the court with photos of mass graves where bodies were buried “often unidentified.” No one – including newborns – was spared, the South African lawyer Adila Hassim, Senior Counsel, explained to the court.
The South African lawyers told the court the “first genocidal act is mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza.” The second genocidal act, they stated, is the serious bodily or mental harm inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza in violation of Article 2B of the Genocide Convention. Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, another lawyer and legal scholar representing South Africa, argued that “Israel’s political leaders, military commanders and persons holding official positions have systematically and in explicit terms declared their genocidal intent.”
Lior Haiat, spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called Thursday’s three hour hearing one of the “greatest shows of hypocrisy in history, compounded by a series of false and baseless claims.” He accused South Africa of seeking to allow Hamas to return to Israel to “commit war crimes.”
Israeli jurists, in their response on Friday, called the South African charges “unfounded, “absurd” and amounting to “libel.” Israel’s legal team said it had – despite U.N. reports of widespread starvation and infectious diseases from a breakdown in sanitation and shortage of clean water – not impeded humanitarian assistance. Israel defended attacks on hospitals, calling them “Hamas command centers.” It told the court it was acting in self-defense. “The inevitable fatalities and human suffering of any conflict is not of itself a pattern of conduct that plausibly shows genocidal intent,” said Christopher Staker, a barrister for Israel.
Israeli leaders accuse Hamas with carrying out genocide, although legally if you are the victims of genocide you are not permitted to commit genocide. Hamas is also not a state. It is not, therefore, a party to the Genocide Convention. The Hague, for this reason, has no jurisdiction over the organization. Israel also claims the Palestinians are warned to evacuate areas that will come under attack and provided with “safe areas,” although as the South African lawyers documented, “safe areas” are routinely bombed by Israel with numerous civilian casualties.
Israel and the Biden administration intend to prevent any temporary injunction by the court, not because the court can force Israel to halt its military assaults, but because of the optics, which are already disastrous. The ICJ’s ruling depends on the Security Council for enforcement – which given the veto power by the U.S., renders any ruling against Israel moot. The second objective of the Biden administration is to make sure Israel is not found guilty of committing genocide. It will be unrelenting in this campaign, heavily pressuring the governments that have jurists on the court not to find Israel guilty. Russia and China, who have jurists in The Hague, are battling their own charges of genocide and may decide it is not in their interests to find Israel guilty.
The Biden administration is playing a very cynical game. It insists it is trying to halt what, by its own admission, is Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Palestinians, while bypassing Congress to speed up the supply of weapons to Israel, including “dumb” bombs. It insists it wants the fighting in Gaza to end while it vetoes ceasefire resolutions at the U.N. It insists it upholds the rule of law while it subverts the legal mechanism that can halt the genocide.
Cynicism pervades every word Biden and Blinken utter. This cynicism extends to us. Our revulsion for Donald Trump, the Biden White House believes, will impel us to keep Biden in office. On any other issue this might be the case. But it cannot be the case with genocide.
Genocide is not a political problem. It is a moral one. We cannot, no matter what the cost, support those who commit or are accomplices to genocide. Genocide is the crime of all crimes. It is the purest expression of evil. We must stand unequivocally with Palestinians and the jurists from South Africa. We must demand justice. We must hold Biden accountable for the genocide in Gaza.
Aw gee! Did ya know that Australia is partnering USA in making multiple strikes on Yemen?
Yeah. It’s happened already. And many thanks to the American media (CNN) for letting me know. Not that it was discussed in the Australian Parliament or anything like that. But don’t worry. Our Defence Minister Richard Marles has it all in hand. I believe that he’s going to make an announcement to the Australian public soon. So no need to worry. The Labor government has everything in had, just as the Liberal government under John Howard did, in 2003, when we joined USA to bomb Iraq, without consulting Parliament.
Not a peep out of our Prime Minister yet. I wonder if the Australian media will bother to cover it?
UK’s Nuclear Roadmap is Pure Fantasy
11th January 2024, http://stophinkley.org/press-releases/nuclear-roadmap-is-pure-fantasy/
The Stop Hinkley Campaign has described the Government’s so-called Nuclear Roadmap as “pure fantasy”.
The Roadmap majors on plans to explore the possibility of building another large-scale power plant as big as Hinkley Point C. Anglesey and Cumbria are suggested as possible sites. But these sites were designated twelve and a half years ago and have come to nothing. The problem is finding somebody willing to invest the huge sums of money required for these risky projects. SSE, Iberdrola, Engie and Toshiba have already rejected the idea of investing in Moorside in Cumbria. And RWE, Eon and Hitachi have given up on Wylfa on Anglesey.
The Financial Times reports today that the Government and EDF might be able to raise £20bn to fund Sizewell C by end of this year. This looks as though it will probably include investment from the United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund. So, we have basically jumped out of a Chinese frying pan into a UAE fire.
Stop Hinkley Spokesperson Roy Pumfrey said:
“This plan is yet another vague wish-list from the Government. It is pure fantasy. Many people will be tempted to echo Beryl from Bristol’s famous phrase “Not another one!” There is nothing here which get us any closer to the important target of zero carbon electricity by 2035. We need to rapidly ramp up energy efficiency and home refurbishments – something we could be doing right now that would save people money.
Global renewable energy capacity grew by the fastest pace recorded in the last 20 years last year, but it’s still not fast enough. Britain is fast losing its lead in this area, thanks to Government bungling and too much focus on fantasy nuclear projects.”
He continued:
“The two reactors being built at Hinkley Point C are now unlikely to be generating electricity until 2028 and 2029 at the earliest and the cost is likely to reach £33bn. Our climate simply doesn’t have the time to wait around for these expensive white elephants to come on-line.
We need to get on with energy efficiency and renewable developments right now.”
Biden’s $582 Million Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia. Can It Be Blocked?
BY CHARLES PIERSON, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/01/11/bidens-582-million-arms-sale-to-saudi-arabia-can-it-be-blocked/
On December 24, 2023, the Biden Administration announced a $582 million arms sale to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Three Congressional resolutions aim at blocking the sale.
S.Res. 109,[1] which Senator Christopher Murphy (D-CT) introduced on March 15, 2023, invokes a little-used section of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.[2] Section 502B bars the US from providing “security assistance,” including arms sales, to any country with a “consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”[3] The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia certainly fits that requirement.
502B allows Congress to request that the White House produce a report on a foreign government’s human rights record. A 502B report on Saudi Arabia[4] would focus on (1) Saudi Arabia’s human rights record; and (2) Saudi conduct with respect to Yemen, particularly the Kingdom’s disproportionate killing of civilians (which the US has aided).[5] If the Executive fails to produce the report within 30 days all security assistance to the country in question stops automatically.[6]
There are exceptions. Even if the Executive does not produce a report within 30 days security assistance can continue if the Secretary of State determines that “extraordinary circumstances” exist;[7] or, if in the Secretary’s opinion, continuing the assistance is in the US “national interest”;[8] or, the if president determines that there has been a significant improvement in the country’s human rights practices.[9] These exceptions are big enough to drive a truck through and could allow the president to evade enforcing the law. Whether Congress approves S.Res. 109 or not may not make a difference.
Biden Promises to End US Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia
Even before he was elected, Biden promised to reevaluate the US-Saudi relationship.
This was in part a reaction to the assassination of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who had been chopped up by a bone cutter at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. Khashoggi’s murder was ordered by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. During the November 20, 2019 Democratic presidential debate, Biden called Saudi Arabia an international “pariah” and vowed that the US would no longer sell weapons to the Saudis.
Biden condemned arms sales to Saudi Arabia in his first major foreign policy speech as president on February 4, 2021. Biden announced that he was “ending all support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” Pay close attention to that wording.
Biden’s Empty Promises
The Biden Administration has not treated Saudi Arabia as a “pariah.” Biden even visited the crown prince on July 15, 2022, in hopes of persuading Bin Salman to boost oil production.
And the weapons continued to flow. For the first six months of Biden’s presidency there were no US arms sales to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. In January 2021, the administration announced a temporary freeze on the Trump Administration’s pending weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. There was less to this move than met the eye. As the Wall Street Journal noted: “U.S. officials said it isn’t unusual for a new administration to review arms sales approved by a predecessor, and that despite the pause, many of the transactions are likely to ultimately go forward.”
Then on August 2, 2021 the Biden Administration announced $5 billion in arms contracts to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This was followed by a $650 million arms sale to Saudi Arabia which was announced on November 21, 2021.
On December 7, the US Senate voted 30-67 against a joint resolution (S.J. Res. 31) which would have blocked the sale.
Biden said during his February 4 speech that he was “ending all support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” The key word here is “offensive.” Which weapons are “offensive” and which “defensive”? The Biden Administration won’t say and has rebuffed Congressional attempts to find out. Many weapons can be used for either defense or offense. Whenever the Biden White House sells arms to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates it simply asserts that they will be used for defense, such as defense against Iran or the Houthis.
This brings us to the $582 million sale announced by the Administration on December 24, 2023. S.Res. 109 would block this sale, along with all other arms sales and security assistance to Saudi Arabia. Two other resolutions target only the $582 million sale. The two resolutions are S.J. Res. 53 , introduced on Dec. 11, 2023 by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and H.J. Res. 106 , introduced on January 2, 2024 by Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN-5). Representative Omar has said: “It is simply unconscionable to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia while they continue to kill and torture dissidents and support modern-day slavery.” Omar has also excoriated Saudi Arabia’s “systematic murder, rape, and torture of [hundreds of Ethiopian refugees]” who were attempting to enter Saudi Arabia from Yemen.[10]
S.Res. 109 has been gathering dust since March 2023 without a vote. Let’s hope that these two new resolutions have more luck.
Could Israel’s War in Gaza Spiral Into a Regional War?
Since the early days of this war, the conflict has not been contained to Gaza. Is a regional conflict with Iran, Hezbollah, and other actors on the horizon?
SCHEERPOST, By Maximillian Alvarez and Chris Hedges / The Real News Network 12 Jan 24
Over three months into Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, there is little hope the carnage will stop anytime soon—and with each passing day, the danger of Israel’s war on Gaza spiraling into a larger regional conflict increases. The devastation in Gaza is unlike anything seen in the 21st century, but Israel’s military strikes—like last week’s assassination of Saleh al-Arouri, a top leader of Hamas, in Lebanon—have not been limited to Palestine alone.
At the same time, armed resistance groups in Iraq and Syria have launched hundreds of attacks on US bases, confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah has created a simmering northern front along the Lebanese border, and Yemen’s blockade of the Red Sea has created an international crisis for shipping and trade.
Should any of these fronts open into a new facet of this war, it could lead to the unraveling of the entire region, with a very real possibility of a showdown between Israel and the US against Iran. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with former war correspondent Chris Hedges on the slippery slope to a regional war.
TRANSCRIPT……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Chris Hedges: At this particular moment, I don’t think we’re that close. And that’s because Iran, in particular, but also Hezbollah, do not want a conflict with Israel…………………………… the longer the conflict goes on in Gaza, the more things can spiral out of control.
………………………………. But it could happen, and if it does, it will be absolutely catastrophic. Because a war with Iran, throughout the region, will not be interpreted as simply a war with Iran, it’ll be interpreted as a war against Shiism and 60% of Iraq is Shia, Bahrain, 3 million Shias in Saudi Arabia. So it will be interpreted by Shia, the Shiites, as a religious war and will immediately extend beyond the borders of Iran itself.
The big question in Gaza, we know what the Israeli goal is, whether they can achieve it or not, is an unknown. They want to push the 2.2, 2.3 million Palestinians out. They want them ethnically cleansed……………………………………………… really, the goal of Israel is to offer the Palestinians a choice between death by bombs, bullets, infectious diseases or exposure, or leaving Gaza.
Now, the problem that Israel has run into, although Anthony Blinken tried to run interference, is that none of the countries, especially Egypt which borders Gaza to the south, is willing to accept the Palestinians. …………………………………………………… And now we know, and this has been public, by the Netanyahu government, they are reaching out to countries in Africa and South America to take the Palestinians and offering them, reportedly, financial inducements to do so.
…………………. Netanyahu and his government is counting on that restraint to prevent a wider conflict. I read The New York Times this morning, it was kind of a remarkable front page story about all of the provocations that were being carried out by Iran. In fact, it’s the complete opposite, the provocations are carried out by Israel. And the nation that has exercised, up until this point, considerable restraint is Iran.
………………………………………………. Well, in the case of Iran and Hezbollah, it’s the fact that they don’t want to go into an open conflict with Israel because that will also probably, in the case of Iran, include a direct conflict with the United States. Netanyahu has long wanted to attack Iran, in particular the nuclear sites in Iran, and he has periodically made pushes to get the United States involved.
…………………. the push by Netanyahu is to get the United States to take out the aerial defense systems and then allow Israeli jets to bomb in particular nuclear sites. But if they bomb those sites, we’re talking about thousands and thousands of deaths, Iranian deaths.
…………………………………………………….. the longer Israel carries out these kinds of strikes, the more those provocations take place, the closer we come… despite a reluctance on the part of Iran and Hezbollah, the closer we come to a regional conflict.
……………………………………………………………… I think in the end, it’s really totally dependent on how far Israel goes. And if they do not show restraint, then I could see it beginning with Hezbollah. And once Hezbollah is actively engaged, especially if Israel does make a ground incursion into Lebanon, then you bring Iran a few steps closer to being involved in a conflict. And at that point, it becomes a regional conflict and very, very dangerous.
…………………………………………………… , the Congress is bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. Biden is one of the largest recipients of Israel lobby aid. Both parties are completely wedded to Israel. Our intelligence services are integrated with the Israeli. Israel is the 10th largest arms exporter in the world. So it’s totally, it’s training our police forces. So I think, especially because it’s Israel, it doesn’t really matter what the public and all these demonstrations, which have been very heartening to people like myself, it doesn’t matter. Especially, it’s worse because it’s Israel. So if somehow there began to be a conflict between Iran and Israel, I have little doubt that we would intervene. And at that point, we’re at war with Iran………. https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/12/could-israels-war-in-gaza-spiral-into-a-regional-war/
Sizewell C: UK and France-owned EDF look to raise £20bn for Suffolk nuclear site
The UK government and EDF energy has announced its bid to raise £20bn for an extension to EDF’s nuclear facility in Suffolk.
The British government and the French-owned energy company EDF plan to build the UK’s second-largest power station, Sizewell C, on the Suffolk site.
They hope to raise the money by the end of 2024, the energy minister responsible for the sector told the Financial Times.
Ministers approved the construction of the building in 2022 after a decade of consultations. It is expected to take a further decade to build, although delays and high costs at sister plant Hinkley Point C suggest that it may take even longer.
“It’s a phenomenal sum of money but we are genuinely very pleased and very positive about the reaction we have had through the capital-raising process so far,” Andrew Bowie told the Financial Times. “We are very much on track.”
The UK government has already committed £1.2bn to the project, while a UAE sovereign wealth fund is among several potential investors.
On Thursday, the UK government launched its £300m civil nuclear road map in the “biggest expansion of nuclear power for 70 years”, which restates its aim to build up the UK’s supply of nuclear energy to 24GW by 2024…………………… more https://www.cityam.com/sizewell-c-uk-and-france-owned-edf-look-to-raise-20bn-for-suffolk-nuclear-site/
UK Government’s nuclear power expansion plans branded hot air
12 Jan 24 https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/government-nuclear-power-expansion-plans-branded-hot-air
NEW government plans for “Britain’s biggest nuclear power expansion in 70 years” were dismissed today as “unevidenced” hot air.
Unite and Greenpeace poured doubt over ministers’ latest “grandiose” promises of cheap energy provision amid faltering nuclear output and project delays.
The government has published a roadmap recommitting itself to building a series of nuclear reactors capable of producing 24 gigawatts — a quarter of national electricity demand — by 2050.
Approval would be given for one or two new reactors every five years from 2030 to 2044, alongside backing for another large-scale reactor in addition to Hinkley Point C and the planned Sizewell C.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hailed the announcement as “the next step in our commitment to nuclear power, which puts us on course to achieve net zero by 2050 in a measured and sustainable way.”
But Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “The government’s announcement to expand nuclear power sounds like a lot of hot air.
“We have had years of time wasting and underinvestment by ministers in this industry, which is vital to achieving energy security and net zero.”We have had years of time wasting and underinvestment by ministers in this industry, which is vital to achieving energy security and net zero.
“If they now want to be taken seriously we need to see far more detail and clarity. Any plans for nuclear need to include small modular reactors as part of Britain’s balanced energy mix.
“It is also essential that we don’t just hand over government funding to private companies and hope for the best.”
French energy giant EDF said the cost of Hinkley Point C has spiralled to £33bn, a 30 per cent increase from 2015 when it forecast the cost at £25-£26bn.
Hinckley Point C’s planned successor project at Sizewell C in Suffolk, which has been planned for the past 12 years, is yet to receive a final investment decision.
Greenpeace UK chief scientist Doug Parr said: “Every few months the government makes a grandiose public announcement about future nuclear in the hope that a big investor will believe the hype and step up to fund this 20th century technology, but it isn’t working.
“The energy industry knows that the economic case for slow, expensive nuclear just doesn’t add up, and the future is renewable.
“This vague, aspirational announcement with its unevidenced claims of cheap energy is unlikely to change their minds when there are real reactors overshooting their massive construction budgets and showing them the truth.”
Nuclear Power: The Thousand Year-Plus Albatross Around Humanity’s Neck
BY EVE OTTENBERG, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/01/12/nuclear-power-the-thousand-year-plus-albatross-around-humanitys-neck/
The only sane reaction to Japan’s December debut of its six-story experimental fusion reactor is uh-oh. You thought we had it bad with fission reactors blowing up in places like Fukushima and Chernobyl, spewing radioactivity over land and into the ocean? Well, if lotsa money starts pouring into fusion reactors, mark my words, we’ll have it even worse. Of course, fusion boosters claim there’s no danger or nuclear waste and fusion will be the cleanest energy ever. But rest assured there will be radioactive or other hiccups down the road. Like what happens if something goes wrong and a fusion reactor as hot as the sun blows up? Our species has its hands full with the environmental mess it made with fission power plants, whose waste litters the landscape because no one knows what to do with it. Why not hold the fusion ones till we solve the fission problems first?
Remember it was Japan that not too long ago began dumping radioactive waste water from its infamous Fukushima nuclear power melted-down reactors into the ocean in huge quantities, prompting Beijing to ban the import of Japanese fish. China’s move is all very well and good, but who says the irradiated fish will only remain near Japan’s shores? Tokyo’s monkey-brained scheme of filling the Pacific with damaging isotopes has no guard rail around northern waters. It can spread – and will. The Pacific is gigantic, you say? Well, so are the quantities of contaminated water from Fukushima.
Japan began dumping this poison in late August, with an initial release of a modest three Olympic swimming pools-worth of water. According to the AP August 24, “The plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power has…reduced the increase in contaminated water to about 100 tons a day, one fifth of the initial amount.” Most of the water is “stored in around 1000 tanks, which are already filled to 98 percent of their 1.37 million-ton capacity.” And that’s the kicker: Tokyo plans to release that 1.37 million tons of radioactive water into the Pacific. If you think that’s kinda a lot, you have a knack for understatement.
Japan says discharging this radioactive water will take 30 years. That’s plenty of time for ocean currents to swill this mess to every coastline of the earth. “China has accused Japan of treating the ocean as its ‘private sewer,” the BBC reported August 25. But this drek won’t stay still, as in a storage pool, nope. There are seven major currents that Fukushima’s garbage will travel through: Oyashio Current, North Pacific Current, California Current, North Equatorial Current, Kuroshio Current, Yellow Sea warm Current and Tsushima warm Current. So this stuff will pour directly throughout the entire Pacific Ocean.
And it doesn’t stop there. Every day Fukushima produces contaminated water. So it’s not as if dumping 1.37 million tons of these atomic dregs over 30 years will be the end of it. After all, 30 years is not set in stone. It could take longer to dismantle the reactors, remove the nuclear fuel and all the buildings. Meanwhile the good news is that some isotopes have half-lives of only 30 years, that is cesium-137 and strontium-90; but the bad news is Plutonium-239 has a half-life of an eye-popping 24,000 years. So yes, you got it, Japan is polluting the ocean for thousands of years.
None of this would have happened had nuclear power plants not been built in tsunami-earthquake zones. But shockingly little care appears to have been taken over the years about locating humanity’s most hubristic creations. Just as common sense rarely prevails in corporate/governmental decisions about whether or not to prolong the life of reactors that are clearly on their last legs. Most decisions about aging reactors are to keep them running, even though that vastly increases the chances of catastrophic accident. This is extremely problematic in the U.S., given that nuclear reactors here are generally not spring chickens. Their average age is 40. Fortunately, so far, this fact has not caused disasters. Let’s hope our luck holds long enough to get some of these rust buckets shut down.
The list of troubled nuclear power plants in the U.S. is long. “Repeated near-disasters at Davis Besse in Ohio include a hole eaten through a critical core component by boric acid that was missed because the owners refused to do required inspections,” wrote Harvey Wasserman in Truthout July 31. “Monticello and Prairie Island in Minnesota threaten the entire Mississippi Valley. Critical intake pipes at South Texas recently froze, as its builders never anticipated the cold weather that hit it unexpectedly in 2021.” Truthout describes numerous nuclear power plants in the U.S. and abroad that are in lousy shape and should be shuttered. The gist of the article is that industry claims that the so-called peaceful atom can help alleviate the climate catastrophe are fictitious.
Because it’s not just accidents and the dilemma of waste storage that menace humanity as we play with nuclear fire. The construction of nuclear power plants and the mining, milling and enrichment of uranium are very carbon intensive, indeed they go a long way toward cancelling out the supposed green benefits of nuclear power. So don’t believe the hype about atomic energy saving our species from the dangers of our fossil fuel addiction. Nuclear power is not the answer. Wind farms and solar panels on every building on the planet are.
But don’t’ tell Joe “So-Called Climate President” Biden. His infrastructure bill contained $6 billion for nuclear power. That’s just for starters. “A billion in federal dollars has been promised,” according to Truthout, “to keep California’s Diablo Canyon running along with another billion from the state.” That’s the same power plant that a Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector said should be closed “because of the danger posed by seismic activity.” What danger? This rusty old thing lies just 45 miles from the San Andreas Fault. Needless to say, the NRC inspector was ignored. With any luck, someone with a brain will decide that yes, this plant should be shut down.
Sadly, our Climate President not only goes all out for oil and gas, he’s a multi-billion- dollar nuclear booster, too. This is puzzling, because at the start of his term, Biden showed environmental promise. But then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine, suicidal western sanctions on Moscow’s energy, wild inflation of gasoline prices and the predictable terror of homo politicus at voter fury over paying through the nose at the pump. So then Biden’s hunt was on for cheap oil and gas, as the Climate President’s lofty goals went out the window and bad ideas like nuclear power came in. So Biden did this to himself – and all the rest of us. Thus the wretched results of one imperial politician’s lust to settle a score with another superpower, half way around the globe.
Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest book is Lizard People. She can be reached at her website.
Mini nuclear plants to be built almost anywhere in UK
Mini-nuclear power plants will be allowed almost anywhere outside built-up
areas, as ministers relax planning rules to allow a “reawakening” of
atomic electricity.
Under plans to quadruple capacity in the next quarter
of a century, ministers want a fleet of “small modular reactors” to be
built across Britain alongside large power plants. Unlike conventional
plants, small modular reactors do not need to be built on the coast and the
government wants to open up far more areas as potential sites, in a
developer-led approach that will replace rules that allow nuclear power
stations only in eight named locations.
Rishi Sunak argues that “nuclear
is the perfect antidote to the energy challenges facing Britain”, helping
meet net zero goals with reliable, domestically produced power. A
consultation on overhauling planning rules published on Thursday says that
rather than ministers specifying sites, developers will be asked to
identify locations for such reactors based on a new list of safety and
environmental criteria. Only “population density” and “proximity to
military activities” will rule out nuclear plants, meaning they cannot be
built in areas with more than 5,000 people per square kilometre. This would
rule out cities and most towns, and is designed to “minimise the risk to
the public” in the event of a radioactive spill.
All other criteria will
be discretionary, including size, flood risk, proximity to civil airports,
the natural beauty, ecological importance or cultural heritage of the site.
“Sites may still be considered suitable for nuclear deployment even where
they fail to fully meet individual discretionary criteria, although not
fully addressing multiple discretionary criteria may cumulatively lead to a
site being considered unsuitable,” the consultation says. Officials
believe developers are likely to want to site plants near industrial
estates needing power and heat, or in areas that have skilled workers and
grid connections. “The government particularly encourages applications to
develop on former industrial and brownfield land,” the consultation says.
Times 11th Jan 2024
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nuclear-power-plants-built-uk-plans-2024-rv5qxhzg2
No to nuclear power: stop the expansion
The UK government hopes to plough ahead with its biggest expansion of nuclear power for decades, despite major concerns over safety, cost, the legacy of nuclear waste, and its link to nuclear weapons.
A long-awaited plan was unveiled by ministers on Thursday and follows a commitment made at COP28 last November to triple nuclear power production by 2050. The roadmap includes plans by government and the nuclear industry to cut red tape in order to “accelerate new nuclear projects,” build another nuclear reactor in addition to Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, and make investment decisions on new nuclear projects every five years from 2030 to 2044. £300 million has also been made available to launch a high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) programme – making Britain the only country in Europe after Russia to commercially produce such a fuel.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak lauded his nuclear plan as the “perfect antidote to the energy challenges facing Britain” adding “it’s green, cheaper in the long term and will ensure the UK’s energy security for the long-term.” But is it?
Britain’s two existing nuclear projects – Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C – have been beset with problems since the beginning. A 2015 forecast of Hinkley Point put the project at around £25 billion. These costs have since spiralled by 30 percent to £33 billion and the start date for the plant is likely to be in the early 2030s instead of 2027. Sizewell C is also struggling to attract private financing and the government has already spent over £1 billion on the project. Energy consumers too will pay more: a Regulated Asset Base (RAB) funding model proposed to help fund the project will add a levy to customer bills years before the plant ever starts to generate electricity.
Safety standards within Britain’s nuclear industry have also been under the spotlight recently. The Guardian’s Nuclear Leaks investigation revealed a litany of safety concerns at the Sellafield nuclear waste site including: crumbling infrastructure at some of the site’s most dangerous areas; security breaches; and a toxic workplace culture including harassment of whistleblowers. The scandal has already led to senior management leaving.
Sellafield remains Europe’s most toxic nuclear site and efforts to build a new underwater nuclear waste dump in Cumbria or Lincolnshire have so far failed to achieve community support.
CND General Secretary Kate Hudson said:
“The nuclear lobby was an obvious presence at last November’s COP28 summit and the UK government is working overtime to sell to the public the myth that nuclear power is the answer to the climate crisis and Britain’s energy needs. The evidence points in the opposite direction as renewables are cheaper, faster to deliver, and cleaner. Meanwhile, Hinkley Point C is seriously delayed and overbudget and the government thinks it’s ok to bill consumers twice for Sizewell C: once through taxation and again through a levy on consumer bills. Even if these projects were brought in on time and on budget, it still doesn’t solve the issue of Britain’s shocking record when it comes to safety, as shown in the recent Sellafield Leaks, or with what to do with nuclear waste. We must also bear in mind the main reason this government is so in favour of nuclear power: it helps to normalise Britain’s nuclear weapons and ensures a steady stream of skilled personnel to maintain and manufacturer them. Anyone who tells you any different is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.”
New Revelations Shed More Light On Sabotage Of Iran Nuclear Program
Tuesday, 01/09/2024, Iran International Newsroom, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202401095698
The malware that disrupted Iran’s nuclear program in 2010 was delivered by a Dutch engineer working at the enrichment plant in Natanz, a Dutch daily has claimed.
For more than a decade, no one knew how the virus Stuxnet –widely believed to be an American-Israeli creation– had found its way to the control systems of Iran’s most sensitive and tightly watched nuclear facility in Natanz.
In 2019, two investigative journalists, one Dutch and one American, published a report in Yahoo News, suggesting that the virus had been released by “a mechanic working for a front company doing work at Natanz”, who in reality worked for AIVD, the Dutch intelligence agency.
At the time, the authors believed the mole to be Iranian. But the investigative report in the Dutch daily Volkskrant has named him as Erik van Sabben.
According to the report, van Sabben was married to an Iranian woman and worked in Dubai for a company that serviced Iran’s oil and gas industry. So he could have been the perfect recruit. And he was indeed recruited by AIVD in 2005 at the request of US and Israeli secret services.
The US and Israel have never acknowledged involvement in the cyber attack on Iran’s nuclear program, but most experts share the view that such a sophisticated cyberweapon could have been developed by Israel and the United States only as part of a joint sabotage campaign known as Operation Olympic Games, which is still unacknowledged.
The new report comes at a time when Iran has once more accelerated its enrichment program, turning its back on a secret deal many diplomats say the regime had made with the Biden administration in 2023 to cap the enrichment at 60-percent purity in exchange for the release of billion of dollars of its money in Iraq and South Korea.
Iran is reported to have enough highly enriched uranium to make three nuclear bombs, if enriched further during a few weeks. The UN nuclear watchdog (IAEA) has repeatedly raised concern about Iran’s enrichment levels –which experts say has no civilian justification.
In its latest report (December 2023), the IAEA stated that Iran is enriching to up to 60%, close to the roughly 90% that is required to make a nuclear weapon. One place this is being done is the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) at Natanz complex –the very same facility Stuxnet targeted almost 15 years ago.
Stuxnet is believed to have had affected the control systems at Natanz enrichment facilities, forcing a change of speed in the centrifuges’ rotor and causing breakdown.
The extent of the damage it caused is not known with certainty. It seems to have been significant enough, though, to force the nuclear authorities in Iran to halt uranium enrichment several times.
In November 2010, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then-president of Iran, confirmed for the first time that a cyberweapon had hit the country’s nuclear facilities. “They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts,” he said.
Fingers were pointed at “the Americans” and “the Israelis”, especially after two Iranian nuclear scientists were assassinated. But no reasonable explanation was given as to how the malware had entered the facilities.
More than a decade later, Volkskrant has offered an explanation –but little consolation for those who, according to the new report, spent around “one billion dollars” on a malware that they hoped would set back Iran’s nuclear program, although the operation undoubtedly slowed down Iran’s efforts for a while.
Nuclear Free Local Authorities question the Chief Constable on alleged misconduct among Civil Nuclear Constabulary
Following the December 2023 revelations in The Guardian alleging misconduct
amongst some officers of the Civil Nuclear Constabulary and a ‘toxic work
culture’ amongst police and civilian staff employed at the Sellafield
nuclear complex, the Chair of the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities
wrote to the Chief Constable outlining our concerns and offering him an
‘opportunity’ to respond. The letter sent 3 January and the response of 8
January are reproduced below.
NFLA 10th Jan 2024
Ministers told to say how Sizewell C will be funded as new nuclear plan launched.
Government announced plans to build third new nuclear plant, even
though existing plan for reactor yet to be decided. Ministers are facing
demands to reveal the timetable for a final investment decision in Sizewell
C before a general election is called after the Government committed to
building a third major nuclear plant.
The Government announced plans to
build a new large scale nuclear power station that will be able to provide
energy to more than six million homes, even though the final funding for an
existing proposal in Suffolk has yet to be secured. Energy minister Andrew
Bowie faced calls from Labour to reveal the timetable for a final
investment decision in the Suffolk power station before the end of
Parliament.
Shadow business minister Sarah Jones insisted it was “all
well and good talking about commitments to new stations in the next
Parliament” before demanding what the timetable is for the Sizewell C
investment decision. Ms Jones urged Mr Bowie to give a “categorical
promise” that the final decision will come before the election, adding:
“Time is running out.” Mr Bowie replied: “We remain committed to
making that decision by the end of this Parliament, and in fact on Hinkley
Point C we are very proud of the progress that is being made.” The new
station is expected to be built at Wylfa in Anglesey, north Wales, with
firms from South Korea, the US and France expected to bid for the scheme.
Government sources said that Chinese firms will be blocked from any bidding
process, to avoid any risk to the country’s critical infrastructure.
iNews 11th Jan 2024
1 This Month.
Let’s keep radioactive waste away from our river!
Nuclear Power? -Never again
(Switzerland –https://www.greenpeace.ch/de/handeln/atomkraft-nie-wieder/+)
PETITION – Close Down the Monticello Nuclear Reactor on the Mississippi River!
Now until to February 10, 2026 Radioactive waste storage in France: the debate is finally open! How to participate?
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