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France’s Macron wants to build 14 new Nuclear reactors by 2050. 6 is more realistic

energy post eu, April 29, 2024 by Jonathan Bruegel

France’s President Macron is talking about a nuclear renaissance, after years of uncertainty over its future. The goal is to build 14 new reactors by 2050. But Jonathan Bruegel at IEEFA says this is unrealistc. France’s nuclear sector has much to recommend it. It produces up to 80% of the country’s total power generation, the highest share of nuclear in the generation mix anywhere in the world, and CO2-free. However, France hasn’t built a nuclear reactor since 1999, and construction delays and budget overruns plague the completion of its latest reactor, Flamanville 3, started in 2007. And with many of the 56 currently operational reactors reaching the end of their 40-year lifetime, decisions must be made whether to shut them down or extend their lifetimes by 10 or 20 years through major refits. Bruegel looks at the fundamentals and estimates that a more realistic goal is to build 6 new reactors by 2050, and to extend the lifetimes of 13 (or a maximum of 20) reactors. That would leave nuclear’s share in France’s 2050 mix at a maximum of 40% and more realistically 30%.

Key findings

  • Given that new nuclear projects have faced significant construction delays and cost overruns, France’s plan to build 14 new reactors by 2050 is unrealistic.
  • Nuclear should continue playing a key role in France’s power sector but not at the expense of renewables growth.
  • French policy has recently shifted from a commitment to reduce nuclear generation to calls for a “renaissance” of the technology.
  • France’s heavy reliance on nuclear has kept its power sector emissions relatively low but left it exposed to the many challenges associated with the technology.

Energy security

………………………… In the last two years, Europe’s imports of Russian piped gas have been largely replaced by liquified natural gas (LNG) from alternative sources. Curtailments and demand response mechanisms have contributed to absorbing the price shock…………………………..

In the case of France, this energy crisis was especially challenging since it coincided with many nuclear reactors being taken offline for maintenance work. In 2022, the country was a net power importer for the first time in more than 40 years. In 2023, as most nuclear reactors went back online, it resumed being a net power exporter. The episode illustrated the risks of France’s exposure to nuclear power.

Nuclear has dominated France’s power mix since the 1980s

……………………………..However, as Chart 1 [on original] shows, France hasn’t built a nuclear reactor since 1999, meaning its EPR expertise hasn’t benefitted its domestic nuclear fleet as much as it could have. Construction of the latest reactor, Flamanville 3, started in 2007. It has yet to be commissioned. So far, it is delayed by 12 years and is almost four times over budget.

With many reactors reaching the end of their 40-year lifetime, decision-makers must choose whether to shut them down or extend their operations by 10 or 20 years through major refitting programmes.

Policy shift sees France plan a “nuclear renaissance”

Nuclear’s role in France’s future power mix has become an increasingly crucial and controversial political debate.

After his election to the presidency in 2012, François Hollande committed to reducing the share of nuclear in France’s power production to 50% by 2035, with an ambitious decommissioning plan. However, not one nuclear unit was decommissioned under his presidency and no legally binding decommissioning dates for plants were set. The only binding commitment was to cap French nuclear capacity to 63GW.


During his first term between 2017 and 2022, President Emmanuel Macron did not engage in any nuclear policy shift, postponing the debate. The Flamanville 1 and 2 nuclear reactors were decommissioned in 2020 because they had exceeded their 40-year lifetime and no agreement had been made with operator EDF for a major refit programme.

Criticisms

During his second term, Macron has called for a “nuclear renaissance” and announced a goal to build 14 new reactors by 2050, implicitly targeting a maintenance of the 63GW of capacity and nuclear’s share in the power generation mix. The announcement was heavily criticised from across the political spectrum, with the main argument being that nuclear would slow the growth of renewables. Concerns have also been raised about the challenges associated with nuclear technology such as safety issues, long construction times, massive capital expenditures (see Chart 2 on original), a levelised cost of electricity higher than renewables and waste management.

Despite its role in reducing carbon emissions, Nuclear must not limit Renewables growth

Nuclear is not considered a renewable technology since uranium is needed, but the debate remains open on whether nuclear is green. 

Although its challenges are well known (e.g., safety, costs, waste management), the French plan to build 14 new nuclear units by 2050 seems at best unrealistic.

Significant construction delays and cost overruns faced by the two latest EPRs, Flamanville 3 in France and Olkiluoto 3 in Finland, are evidence that building an average of one reactor every two years until 2050 is not a feasible goal…………………………………………………. more https://energypost.eu/frances-macron-wants-to-build-14-new-nuclear-reactors-by-2050-6-is-more-realistic/

May 6, 2024 Posted by | France, politics | Leave a comment

Bill before Australian Parliament would allow UK and USA to dump decades of high-level nuclear waste in Australia.

Dave Sweeney, 6 May 24

Minister Marles has a Bill before Parliament to establish a dedicated regulator for military radioactive waste arising from AUKUS – it is deeply flawed legislation but a particular concern is that it would permit Australia hosting UK and US naval nuclear waste – including waste from six decades of their nuclear submarine programs.

Media attention to this has been limited apart from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/poison-portal-us-and-uk-could-send-nuclear-waste-to-australia-under-aukus-inquiry-told and a story from today’s Australian.

ACF has put in a submission and a supplementary and presented to a current inquiry by the Senates Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

This Committee – https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Foreign_Affairs_Defence_and_Trade/ANNPSBills23 – is due to report on May 13 and is likely to be supportive of the plan and there are concerns that Marles may look to do a deal with Dutton and steam this legislation through under the cover of the Budget week.

Marles states that the government ‘has no intention’ to do this but we have clear confirmation that the legislation would allow for the import and hosting of AUKUS partners military waste.

On 13 March 2024, the Chair of the Senate Committee investigating the bill asked Government officials: “could you also clarify whether there is scope in the legislation for Australia to take high-level waste from the US and UK submarines? Mr Kim Moy from the Department of Defence confirmed that this was the case. In a subsequent hearing on April 22, Senator David Shoebridge sought to establish whether other stakeholders were aware of this fact. Mr Peter Quinlivian, Senior Legal Counsel for weapons manufacturer BAE Systems Australia, admitted that “the legislation, as drafted, is in language that would accommodate that scenario”.

This loophole must be closed

May 6, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics, wastes | , , , , | Leave a comment

New US Antisemitism Law Turns Critics Against Israeli Genocide Into Criminals

By Joachim Hagopian, Global Research, May 03, 2024

On Wednesday May 1st, the House overwhelmingly passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act by a 320-91 vote, with only 21 Republicans joined by 70 Democrats against it. Expanding the scope of what is legally considered antisemitism, this is another bipartisan uniparty trap to ensnare the thousands of protesters exercising their free speech against the apartheid Israel’s extermination of Palestinians, in effect criminalizing those that are critical of the genocide. This is piece of legislation is a betrayal of our First Amendment rights and a betrayal of the American people, and a testimonial how AIPAC Israel through bribery and blackmail have turned our constitutional republic into a totalitarian technocratic police state.

Foreign national influence is outlawed in the United States except with one exception, the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) that allows Zionist Israel money and bribery control to essentially own the treasonous US Congress.

Through intelligence agencies Mossad, CIA and MI6 in addition to AIPAC, US politicians are systemically coerced, bribed and blackmailed into unconditional support for Israel.

As Tucker Carlson admitted recently to Joe Rogan, politicians are afraid to not vote in line with these intimidation tactics imposed by foreign agent operatives, that threaten kiddie porn on their computers or truth exposing pedo-blackmail activity, to ensure that Zionist Israel always gets what it wants with total impunity. With this kind of captured control over politicians, and now with this latest antisemitism law, dare criticize Israel or Zionism or Jewish power, it can now get us locked up under antisemitic hate speech. Zionist bloodline moneychangers like the Rothschilds and Rockefellers would not want it any other way.

A Thursday May 2nd Truthout article states:

House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve legislation directing the U.S. Department of Education to consider a dubious definition of antisemitism, despite warnings from Jewish-led groups that the measure speciously conflates legitimate criticism of the Israeli government with bigotry against Jewish people.

Uniparty Republicans and Democrats passing this new antisemitism bill destroying US Constitution’s First Amendment that guarantees our citizens’ free speech rights, confirms that US Congress panders and grovels in submission to their master Zionist Jewish State and its bloodline master founding owner, the Rothschild banking cartel. America’s uniparty is owned and operated by foreign agent AIPAC Israel.

Again, look at what inexhaustible lengths our Congress goes to, to protect the rights, security and safety of Jews, while Palestinian Arabs are brutally massacred daily and American citizens’ disappearing constitutional rights, our safety and national security are blatantly trampled upon.

Only the apparent “chosen ones” receive preferential legal protection under bipartisan US law, while all the rest of us members of the human race, to Israel and US Congress, are all Palestinians in the genocidal crosshairs of our common Zionist Darkside enemy.

My article on Global Research last week is titled “In Defense of Genocide and War on ‘Antisemitism’, There Go Our Constitutional Liberties.” I cite the increasing number anti-hate speech laws grossly conflating criticism of Israeli genocide with antisemitism conveniently misused to falsely justify criminalizing and silencing our fundamental First Amendment rights of free speech, including the right to assemble for peaceful protest. 

On Saturday April 27th, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) called out his colleagues over this very same issue:

Some of my colleagues are introducing legislation to create federally sanctioned ‘antisemitism monitors’ at colleges. I’ll vote No. Policing speech, religion, and assembly is not the role of the federal government. In fact, it’s expressly prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.

In a related news story illustrating how the will of Zionist Israel controlling America through AIPAC bribery and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as Israel’s thuggish enforcer, the bought and sold US Congress completely abandoned the will of the American people demanding that the recently passed FISA law be stopped or amended. The ADL/Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations actively lobbied Congress emphasizing the FISA renewal was necessary to keep Israel, Jews in the US and all Americans safe from terrorism.

The need for spying without warrant on anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian protesters was used to sell the FISA law’s passage as the biggest domestic surveillance legislation since the subversive Patriot Act. The alleged “rise of antisemitism” events in America hyped artificially by the mainstream media also helped pass the law during the current wave of college campus pro-Palestine protests.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt is attempting to create a legal framework whereby pro-Palestine protesters are charged with providing material support to the designated foreign terrorist organization Hamas. This move along with inciting antisemitic hate speech are the legal angles currently in process to violate and eliminate our First Amendment free speech rights that includes the right to protest. The mass arrests of hundreds of peaceful student protesters across US campuses is part of this unconstitutional dystopian agenda.

ASL’s Greenblatt showed up at the Columbia University campus calling for the NYPD and/or National Guard to arrest and expel “student agitators” in order to assure the public safety and civil rights of Jewish students since Columbia administration’s response was deemed too lax. And as my article alluded to, hundreds of protesters exercising their legal constitutional rights were illegally incarcerated across multiple campuses nationwide. Again, we are rapidly in tyrannical freefall descent towards the Soviet Gulag era.

It seems what Israel, AIPAC and ADL Zionists want, Israel, AIPAC and ADL Zionists get……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Moreover, it’s an overtly dangerous indication that the US federal government is aggressively silencing and outlawing Americans’ right to dissent, protest and exercise free speech, while condoning and protecting Israeli genocide and war crime atrocities in favor of unconstitutional censorship, suppression and unlawful criminalization. All Americans should be joining the college students in mass protests against our own government’s all too obvious treasonous betrayal in addition to the genocide. We the People need to hold both the Israeli government as well as the US government to account for their appallingly egregious, thus far unprosecuted crimes.

The US and Israel should not be above the law, but if no court, agency or organization with the legal, political and economic will, clout and teeth is in place to hold them accountable, then they can and still will get away with murder and genocide. With the geopolitical and economic power dynamics shifting currently from unipolar kingpin America led Western bloc to the multipolar Global South nation majority led by Eastern powers Russia and China, gradually the international community is in a position to effectively hold them and in fact, any nation that flagrantly violates international law accountable…………………………………………………………….more https://www.globalresearch.ca/antisemitism-law-critics-israeli-genocide/5856331

May 6, 2024 Posted by | civil liberties | Leave a comment

First Nations leaders voice opposition to nuclear power plants

By Angel Moore, Apr 30, 2024,  https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/first-nations-leaders-voice-opposition-to-nuclear-power-plants/

Leaders from three First Nations in New Brunswick made the trip to Ottawa to voice their opposition to the expansion of a nuclear power plant in the province.

The federal government, which is pushing the concept of small modular reactors, or SMRs, and the province are proposing to put new nuclear power plants on the Point Lepreau nuclear site.

The plant sits next to the Bay of Fundy and is Atlantic Canada’s only nuclear facility.

“Our people were never consulted or asked about our input or concerns about nuclear so we’re sitting here today talking about nuclear waste and where to put it, where to place it,” said Wolastoq Council Grand Chief Rom Tremblay.

The plant also sits on the traditional territory of the Passamaquoddy nation.

“Every child needs to see what I saw, they need see those fish they need to see those trees they need healthy air and they do not need nuclear contamination for thousands of years,” said Chief Hugh Akagi at the news conference in Ottawa.

The power plant has been operating since 1983 and provides New Brunswick with 40 per cent of its power.

Like other plants, it uses uranium processed in refineries such as the d’uranium de Blind, located in Blind River, Ont., a small community west of Sudbury on the traditional land of the Mississauga First Nation.

Band Councillor Peyton Pitawanakwat said her band council issued a resolution that said, “To declare opposition to any future use of the Blind River refinery site that would see these lands being used as a disposal site for radioactive wastes unfortunately that challenges faced by our first nation are not unique, and the environmental discrimination is happening all across the country.”

Pitawanakwat said the community is consulting with the Canada Nuclear Safety Commission and that their treaty rights are not being upheld.

“There’s a lot of more in-depth discussions that need to be had and we really are at a point where we need to re-set the relationship and ensure that our rights are being upheld,” she said.

New Brunswick Power didn’t respond to a request for an interview. The Canada Nuclear Safety Commission said an interview was not possible.

May 6, 2024 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues | Leave a comment

The undersea nuclear graveyard now more costly than HS2

Behind the much delayed plan to store the radioactive waste generated over decades

A vast subsea nuclear graveyard planned to hold Britain’s burgeoning piles of radioactive waste is set to become the biggest, longest-lasting and most expensive infrastructure project ever undertaken in the UK… ……………………………..(Subscribers only)  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/05/66bn-nuclear-graveyard-became-expensive-challenge/

May 6, 2024 Posted by | oceans, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

NATO using war games to ‘prepare for conflict’ – Moscow

 https://www.rt.com/russia/596996-nato-conflict-prepares-russia/ 5 May 24

The US-led bloc is holding its largest exercises in decades near the Russian border, the Foreign Ministry has pointed out

NATO’s largest exercise since the Cold War are being held near Russia’s border, indicating that the US-led bloc is “seriously preparing” for a potential conflict with Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

The Steadfast Defender drills, featuring some 90,000 troops from all 32 NATO member states and 1,100 combat vehicles, started in late January and will end in May.

According to the wargame scenario, “the coalition’s actions against Russia are being practiced using all the instruments, including hybrid and conventional weapons,” Zakharova said in a statement on Saturday.

”We have to admit that NATO is seriously preparing for a ‘potential conflict’ with us,” Zakharova said.

The diplomat was commenting on accusations made by NATO earlier this week that Russia was allegedly carrying out “hybrid activities” on the member countries’ soil, which they insist constitute a threat to their security. These actions include “sabotage, acts of violence, cyber and electronic interference, disinformation campaigns, and other hybrid operations,” the bloc claimed in a statement on Thursday.

Zakharova dismissed the allegations as “disinformation” and an attempt to shift public attention from NATO’s own activities.

The bloc and the leadership of individual member states are “increasing the degree of anti-Russian hysteria in order to justify the unprecedented scale of militarization in Europe,” the official stated.

According to the diplomat, it was NATO that launched “a hybrid war against Russia in all operational environments and in all geographic directions.” In addition, the bloc members are actively involved in the Ukraine conflict. They are providing Kiev not only with financial support, but also with weapons and intelligence data – which are then used “to strike civilians and civilian infrastructure in Russia,” Zakharova added

Back in March, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said that NATO’s Steadfast Defender 2024 exercises were “increasing tensions and destabilizing the situation in the world” by simulating a military confrontation with Moscow. The official described the bloc as an “important tool” employed by the US to exert pressure and influence on other nations. NATO has come directly to Russia’s western border and is preparing for future conflicts, he stressed.

In recent months, multiple senior officials from NATO member states claimed that Moscow was planning to launch an attack against the military bloc in the coming years.

Russia has repeatedly denied those claims, with President Vladimir Putin saying the country “has no interest … geopolitically, economically or militarily … in waging war against NATO.”

May 6, 2024 Posted by | EUROPE, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Germany records 50 hours of negative electricity prices for April, largely due to renewables.

Average retail prices fell to €6.24 ($6.70)/kWh on the German electricity spot
market in April, largely due to renewables covering about 70% of the
network load. These low price levels in the electricity market can be
attributed to the high shares of renewables in Germany. According to Rabot
Charge, renewable energy systems covered 70% of the network load in April.

PV Magazine 3rd May 2024

May 6, 2024 Posted by | Germany, renewable | Leave a comment

Israel’s Defenders Talk So Much About Feelings Because They Can’t Talk About Facts

Last October the imperial media suddenly got a lot less interested in reporting on the facts on the ground with Israel and Gaza, and a whole lot more interested in reporting on how some groups of people feel about it instead. 

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 04, 2024,  https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israels-defenders-talk-so-much-about?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144302441&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

The Guardian has an article out titled “Israelis voice sadness and defiance over Gaza protests on US campuses”, subtitled “People in Jerusalem express little sympathy with anti-war demonstrators, with some accusing them of hatred for Israel”.

It’s exactly what it sounds like: an entire news report about the feelings that some Israelis are feeling in their feely bits about protests in another country on the other side of the world. The Guardian’s Jason Burke asked some random people about their feelings outside a theater in Jerusalem, and then presented this weird nothing thing as relevant news reporting.

“We didn’t know so many people hated Israel,” some random security guard is quoted as saying.

“Such feelings appear widespread among the Jewish majority in Israel, seven months after war was triggered by surprise attacks launched by Hamas into the south of the country in which about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 250 taken hostage,” writes Burke.

“Jewish Israelis interviewed by the Guardian this week blame outrage overseas on misinformation, ignorance, historical hostility from international institutions such as the UN, global ‘double standards’ and entrenched antisemitism,” Burke informs us.

If you’re just tuning in, it might seem odd to you that a major news outlet would publish a story about the emotions that some Israelis are feeling about foreign protests against an active genocide being committed by their country. After all, this is not a news story. A story about how some people’s feelings are feeling is not news, and is not journalism. 

But that’s exactly what the last seven months have looked like in the imperial media: a nonstop fixation on feelings instead of facts. Israelis have upset feelings about anti-genocide protests. Western Jews have upset feelings at campus demonstrators. Biden has upset feelings at Netanyahu. Last October the imperial media suddenly got a lot less interested in reporting on the facts on the ground with Israel and Gaza, and a whole lot more interested in reporting on how some groups of people feel about it instead. 

Western reporters, pundits, politicians and officials cannot stop talking about this. The feelings of Israelis and western Jews are not only given more importance than the feelings of Palestinians or any other group, they are given more importance than Palestinian lives. Some Zionist kid pretending to feel “threatened” on an Ivy League campus will get more coverage than the daily massacres that have been occurring in the densely-packed city of Rafah.

Watch Matt Orfalea’s latest video about the deluge of coddling, cooing media coverage that was given to a Zionist activist who falsely pretended to have been “stabbed in the eye” by a pro-Palestine activist for a good example of this behavior:

Israel is the only issue where the western political-media class treats people’s feelings as a matter of supreme importance.

If you’re a stressed-out single parent struggling to pay bills and keep a roof over your kids’ head, they don’t care about your feelings.

If you’re an American who’s been cast into destitution and homelessness by medical bills, they don’t care about your feelings.

If you’re a Palestinian whose apartment complex was bombed with your entire family inside, they definitely don’t care about your feelings.

But if you’re a western Zionist who doesn’t like the cognitive dissonance that comes with encountering anti-genocide protesters, or even if you’re an Israeli who’s upset about anti-genocide protests in whole other country on the other side of the planet, they’re very, very interested in your feelings.

This is of course because the west’s unconditional support for Israel cannot be defended through facts, so the narrative control needs to focus instead on one nonstop appeal to emotion fallacy. Their position is so gross and indefensible that all they have left is babbling about some select people having upset feelings and holding those feelings as more important than stopping an active genocide.

The propagandists and empire managers don’t have facts on their side and don’t have morality on their side, so they attempt to manipulate by pulling on the heart strings using sympathy and compassion. They appeal to some of the healthiest impulses within us in order to dupe us into supporting some of the most evil actions the world has ever seen.

Which is an absolutely disgusting thing to do, naturally. But, again, it’s all these freaks have left.

May 6, 2024 Posted by | culture and arts, Israel | Leave a comment

The breadth and depth of the nuclear lobby in Canada.

Brennain Lloyd, 4 May 24 Tt appears from the url that the Canadian Nuclear Yearbook for 2019 wasn’t published until 2022, and it is the most recent one, but it’s still worth a scroll through, out of interest. All promotional stuff, of course, but a couple of things to note:

  • CNSC has a full page ad for the participant funding program; be interesting to see their procurement policy for paid advertising
  • summary reports from the major nuclear advocacy organizations (Canadian Nuclear Society, Canadian Nuclear Association, Nuclear Workers, Council,  Organization of Canadian Nuclear Industries (OCNI), Women in Nuclear)
  • list of all nuclear facilities in Canada, including the multiple facilities within large complexes, such as at Whiteshell and Chalk River
  • list of all CANDU operations
  • various lists of suppliers and services

The lists give you a sense of the breadth and depth of the nuclear lobby in Canada. It’s seems to me that it is not OPG, NB Power and Hydro Quebec doing the heavy lifting in terms of the nuclear lobby; it all these other organizations and companies that are making large amounts of money from promoting and perpetuating this industry. 

It’s posted online at https://cns-snc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/CNS_Yearbook_2019_web.pdf

May 6, 2024 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

Tell President Biden: WE WANT COOPERATION, NOT CONFLICT!

Biden is still asking for billions of dollars to spend on militarizing the Asia-Pacific region and encircling China. While the China-US summit in November was a good start, we’re a long way to building a sustainable and human-centered bilateral relationship where war is unlikely. Tell Biden we can’t afford one more penny on global aggression.

Dear President Joseph R. Biden,

You made an Oval Office address, during which you said, “American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe.” In your more than fifty years of public service, however, the US has been involved in multiple wars. Currently, the US is occupying Syria, Iraq, Somalia in addition to supporting Israel’s siege and ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza. Meanwhile, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has dragged on with no effort dedicated to peace talks.

As your administration seeks $105 billion in military spending, it seeks to allocate $7.4 billion of that money for militarizing the Asia-Pacific region, including more weapons to Taiwan. That doesn’t even include the $10 billion for weaponizing Taiwan authorized by the US Senate last year. About $3.4 billion of your request is for building a base to host attack submarines targeting China. This is all on top of the $9.1 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative proposed by the Pentagon earlier this year.

Civil society organizations and environmentalists in the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Japan, South Korea, and Guam have protested our military exercises and bases, which many say will make them the first casualties in a potential war. Military alliances don’t make them feel safe, and it is also taking away funds from targeting real threats like the climate crisis.

As we spend money on militarizing the region, it’s only made China more wary of cooperation. Yet, China is a natural ally in our fight against climate change. From Brooklyn to Beijing, extreme weather events are getting deadlier; 83 million more could die from climate-related disasters this century if we don’t limit global warming to 1.5° C by 2030.  We implore you to strike a global climate finance deal.

Instead of tens of billions going to genocide in Gaza, war in Ukraine, and weapons systems in the Pacific, we must allocate resources to ensure a livable ecosystem. That kind of leadership is exactly what two-thirds of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2020 would like to see – leadership focused on the climate crisis. President Xi has pledged to peak carbon emissions by 2030. You have expressed support for $11 billion in climate finance by 2024. If we don’t fund war, we could spend what you proposed on protecting our planet and much more.

May 6, 2024 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, weapons and war, Women | Leave a comment

‘Inside an oven’: sweltering heat ravages crops and takes lives in south-east Asia

Governments issue health warnings as schools shut and crops fail, with fears that worse is to come as heatwave tightens grip

Extreme heat has gripped much of south and south-east Asia over recent weeks, killing dozens of people, forcing millions of students to miss school and destroying crops.

Both the Philippines and Bangladesh shut schools due to the unbearable heat last month, while governments across the region have issued health warnings. In Thailand, at least 30 people have died from heatstroke since the start of the year.

The extreme weather has seen durian fruit burst on trees in Thailand, destroyed rice crops and caused eggs to shrink, according to local media. The heat has even been cited as a factor that led to an ammunition blast in Cambodia that killed 20 soldiers at an army base last weekend.

Records have been broken across the region. Bangladesh experienced its hottest April ever recorded, with daily maximum temperatures between 2C and 8C hotter than the 33.2C average daily high for the month. In Myanmar, 48.2C was reached in the town of Chauk, in central Magway region – the hottest April temperature since records began……………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/04/inside-an-oven-how-life-in-south-east-asia-is-a-struggle-amid-sweltering-heat

May 6, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Huge success of renewable energy in California – over 100% of demand for many days

Statistics and Graphs for the 48 of 56 Days From March 8-May 2, 2024,
Where Wind-Water-Solar (WWS) Supply Exceeded 100% of Demand on
California’s Main Grid for 0.25-9.92 Hours Per Day.

 Stanford University 3rd May 2024

Click to access California100Pct.pdf

May 6, 2024 Posted by | renewable, USA | Leave a comment

Why UK Government nuclear quango has ruled out Trawsfynydd from initial mini-nuke rollout

The site in Gwynedd could still be considered later on in the process

Owen Hughes, Business correspondent, 3 MAY 2024

A UK Government nuclear quango has dropped Trawsfynydd from the initial rollout of small modular reactors. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson had said in 2022 that the UK Government are “looking to build another small modular reactor(SMR) on the site at Trawsfynydd”.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and Welsh Government owned Cwmni Egino had been working up plans for a new nuclear station close to the former power station, which stopped generating in 1991 and is in the long process of being decommissioned. The location had also previously been tipped by Rolls Royce SMR as a location for an SMR.

But those hopes have been dealt a blow after Great British Nuclear(GBN) said the site would not be considered in its initial rollout phase. It is understood the size of the site and the volume of cooling water counted against it. They also said it may not be able to deploy as quickly as some other sites.

It has though not been ruled out completely and could play a part in the future. A source explained that the initial rollout was looking at locations that could host four or five SMRs, which Traws does not have capacity for.

But once these larger sites are developed a further rollout would consider smaller sites that could host one or two SMRs, with would put the Gwynedd site back in contention.

On Anglesey, UK Government is buying the Wylfa site in a bid to progress nuclear development on the island after two failed attempts for a Wylfa B. This could be used for four or five SMRs or a single large scale nuclear power station…………………………………

GBN’s plans for its first phase of work for SMRs proposes to make decisions on investments by 2029, with power on the grid by the mid-2030s.  https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/uk-government-nuclear-quango-ruled-29108206

May 6, 2024 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

Banned By Germany

Apr 30, 2024 YANIS VAROUFAKIS

Germany recently prohibited a Palestinian Congress from taking place in Berlin, arrested its Jewish supporters, and barred one of its organizers, Greece’s former finance minister, from entering the country. But the turn to repression is powerful evidence that the country’s pro-Israel political consensus is breaking down.

ATHENS – Three weeks ago, I was banned from entering Germany. When I asked the German authorities who decided this, when, and under what rationale, I received a formal reply that, for reasons of national security, my questions would receive no formal reply. Suddenly, my mind raced back to another era when my ten-year-old self thought of Germany as a refuge from authoritarianism.

During Greece’s fascist dictatorship, listening to foreign radio broadcasts was banned. So, every evening, at around nine, my parents would huddle under a red blanket with a short-wave wireless, straining to hear Deutsche Welle’s dedicated Greek broadcast. My boyish imagination was propelled to a mythical place called Germany – a place, my parents told me, that was “the democrats’ friend.”

Years later, in 2015, the German media presented me as Germany’s foe. I was aghast; nothing could be further from the truth. As Greece’s finance minister, I opposed the German government’s monomaniacal insistence on harsh universal austerity, not merely because I thought it would be catastrophic for most Greeks, but also because I thought it would be detrimental to most Germans’ long-term interests.

The specter of deindustrialization that today casts a depressing shadow across Germany is consistent with my prognosis.

In 2016, when choosing a European capital to launch DiEM25, the pan-European political movement that I helped to found, I chose Berlin. At Berlin’s Volksbühne Theatre, I explained the reason: “Nothing good can happen in Europe if it does not begin in Berlin.” To reinforce the point, in the 2019 European Parliament elections I chose symbolically to be DiEM25’s candidate not in Greece (where I could win easily) but in Germany.

Given my lengthy relationship with the land of Goethe, Hegel, and Brecht, the German center-left government’s decision to ban me is more bewildering than even my nearest and dearest can imagine. I shall leave to my lawyers the legality of being denied the right to know the rationale behind the ban, and I will set aside the threat to my safety from the reckless insinuation that I am, somehow, a threat to Germany’s national security. Nor will I delve into what my ban means for a European Union where free movement and association are singular virtues. Instead, I want to focus on the ban’s deeper significance.

The trigger for banning me was a Palestinian Congress co-organized by DiEM25’s German party (MERA25), various Palestinian support groups and, crucially, the German organization Jewish Voice for a Just Peace. But the writing had been on the wall well before that.

Last November, Iris Hefets, a friend and member of the aforementioned Jewish organization, staged a one-woman protest in Berlin. Walking alone, in silence, she held a placard on which she had written: “As an Israeli and as a Jew, stop the genocide in Gaza.” Astonishingly, she was arrested for anti-Semitism. Soon after, the bank account of her organization was frozen – by officials unable to grasp the irony, indeed the horror, of the German state seizing Jewish assets and arresting peaceful Jews in Berlin.

In the run-up to our Palestinian Congress, a coalition of political parties representing almost the entire German political spectrum (including two leaders of my former comrades in the Left party) took the extraordinary step of creating a dedicated website for denouncing us. Their charges?

First, they branded us as “terrorism trivializers” vis-à-vis Hamas’s October 7 attacks in Israel. It was not enough for them that we had condemned as war crimes all acts of violence against civilians (regardless of the identity of perpetrator or victim). They wanted us to condemn resistance to what even Tamir Pardo, the former Mossad director, described as an apartheid system designed to push Palestinians either into exile or into permanent servitude.

Second, they claimed that we were “not interested in talking about possibilities for peaceful coexistence in the Middle East against the background of the war in Gaza.” Seriously? All participants in our Congress are committed to equal political rights for Jews and Palestinians – and many of us, taking our cue from the late Edward Said, support a single federal state as the solution to the conflict.

Dismissing their groundless accusations, let me home in on the central question: How could almost the entire German political class embrace this denunciation, which prepared the ground for the subsequent police action? How could they remain silent as the police arrested Udi Raz (another Jewish comrade), prohibited our conference and, yes, banned me from entering Germany – even from connecting via video link to any event in the country?

Their most likely answer is the German state’s official semi-rationale, or Staatsräson: the protection of Jewish lives and Israel’s security. But the German state’s recent behavior is not at all about protecting Jews (especially my friends Iris and Udi) or Israel. The purpose is to defend Israel’s right to commit any war crime its leaders choose in the process of enforcing an agenda whose goal is to render impossible the two-state solution that the German government claims to favor.

If I am right, something else is behind the current political consensus in Germany. My hypothesis is that Germany’s political class has a penchant for national catechisms that unite its members behind a common will: net exports as Germany’s strength; China as German industry’s playground; Russia as its source of cheap energy; and Zionism as proof that it has turned a page, morally.

Once such a catechism is established, debating it rationally becomes next to impossible. Moreover, the fear of being denounced for abandoning it motivates the concerted denunciation of any apostate who questions it.

A silver lining here is that young Germans, seeing the bodies piling up in Gaza, are not afraid that they will be denounced if they challenge a catechism that has jeopardized German democracy, the rule of law, and basic common sense. This is why, despite the ban, I am not giving up on Germany.

May 6, 2024 Posted by | Germany, politics | Leave a comment

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