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Why were the floods in Spain so bad? A visual guide

Guardian 1st Nov 2024

At least 205 people have died in Spain after torrential rains triggered the
country’s deadliest floods in decades, unleashing a deluge of muddy water
that turned village streets into rivers, destroyed homes and swept away
bridges, railways tracks and cars. An unknown number of people remain
missing, while thousands of others are without electricity or phone
service. The majority of those killed were in the coastal region of
Valencia, where the state-run agency said that nearly a year’s worth of
rain had fallen in just eight hours. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/31/why-were-the-floods-in-spain-so-bad-a-visual-guide

November 4, 2024 Posted by | climate change, Spain | Leave a comment

After two months, Nuclear Free Local Authorities receive vague response on Advanced’ Gas-Cooled Reactors (AGRs)

After a two month wait, the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities has just received a cryptic reply from Labour’s Nuclear Minister in response to our concerns about the future of Britain’s aging ‘Advanced’ Gas-Cooled Reactor (AGR) plants.

Four AGR plants – Hartlepool, Heysham-1, Heysham-2, and Torness – remain operational, each equipped with two gas cooled reactors. They first began generating in either 1983 or 1988, with an estimated operational life of 30 years. The plants are currently expected to cease operations by 2028, but in the Labour Party energy manifesto ‘Mission Climate’, the party pledged to ‘extend the lifetime of the existing plants until 2030’.

The AGR fleet has been operating for many years longer than intended. The NFLAs are concerned that the graphite moderators within each reactor are degenerating, compromising safety. We have previously raised our concerns with senior officials in the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR). It is our view that it is this independent regulator which has the expertise and the legal responsibility to determine whether to further extend the operating dates that should do so, and that it is ‘frankly not the business of Ministers’.

Consequently in his letter to Nuclear Minister Lord Hunt, NFLA Chair Councillor Lawrence O’Neill posed the central question:

‘Can the Minister therefore please reassure me that Labour Ministers will not seek to apply pressure on EDF to make an application to operate these plants beyond 2028, unless they genuinely wish to do so, and more importantly will not apply pressure on the independent regulator ONR to automatically sign off on any application without rigorous scrutiny?’

In his reply, Lord Hunt says cryptically that:

‘Decisions regarding the future operation of the Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor fleet or any nuclear power station in Great Britain would be for the operator, EDF Energy, (and) the ONR. The ONR would not allow a reactor to operate, return to service or extend its operating life if it judged that it was not safe to do so’.

We are hoping that the Minister means that it will fall to the operator EDF Energy to determine if it wishes to apply to the ONR for permission to extend the operating life of any, or all, of the AGR plants, but that it will be the responsibility of the ONR to decide if it can grant that permission based upon the safety case submitted.

This is a situation that the NFLAs shall continue to watch.

November 4, 2024 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

The Wylfa nuclear power station site needs “better storage facilities for waste” 

New Civil Engineer 1st Nov 2024

The Wylfa nuclear power station site needs “better storage facilities for
waste” according to independent experts who visited. The Committee on
Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) shared a diary entry-style update
about a recent visit it made to Ynys Mon (Anglesey) for meetings and to see
the nuclear power plant.

The nuclear power plant on the island has two
reactors but Reactor 2 was shut down in 2012 and Reactor 1 was switched off
on 30 December 2015, ending 44 years of operation at the site .https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/wylfa-nuclear-site-needs-better-storage-facilities-for-waste-01-11-2024/

November 4, 2024 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

New nukes not a plus for unions

Nuclear power is nothing if not hugely capital, not labour, intensive.

    by beyondnuclearinternational

Trades unions should oppose nuclear power as there would be far more jobs in renewables and related industries, argue activists

UK union leaders Mike Clancy of Prospect and Gary Smith of GMB recently appealed to British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to commit to finalising financial arrangements for the Sizewell C nuclear project in order to ‘help the UK meet its net-zero targets, deliver sustainable energy, and strengthen the economy’.

In response, the activist group Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) has written to the unions’ general secretaries setting out why they need to think again regarding their support for Sizewell C.  

What follows is the text of their letter, edited for context and clarity, which also debunks the myths that new nuclear power plants will provide long-term sustainable jobs for union workers. (Note: UK spellings in the original have been retained.)

We write in response to your recent appeals to Sir Keir Starmer to commit to finalising financial arrangements for the Sizewell C nuclear project in order to ‘help the UK meet its net-zero targets, deliver sustainable energy, and strengthen the economy.’ 

In the first instance, we refer you to two important documents. The first,  written by Professors Andrew Blowers, OBE, a social scientist of impeccable pedigree and lecturer at the Open University, and Steve Thomas, Emeritus Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Greenwich,  is entitled: It is time to expose the Great British Nuclear Fantasy once and for all.

The second document we are sending you — an open letter to the Labour Party on energy policy — submitted in June 2024 before the election, was written by members of this organisation, which has been fighting Sizewell C for more than a decade. 

The truth is that the government nuclear energy policy which is most brazenly and shamelessly represented by Sizewell C is unattainable and a recipe for financial and environmental calamity. Keir Starmer, an apparent subscriber to the ‘duty of candour’, will, at some stage, be required to agree. It is noticeable that in all public statements since the election of the Labour administration, ‘nuclear’ is a word which has been studiously avoided. We don’t believe that’s coincidental. 

The final investment decision (FID) for Sizewell C has been delayed because it is a manifestly bad investment option for UK plc and the private investors who have demonstrated their agreement with that view by shunning appeals to invest. Why should the public purse come to the rescue for a venture that was supposed to be ’subsidy-free’, which is already predicted to be at least three times the original cost and years overdue in completion? 

There will be no seamless transition of workers and supply chains from Hinkley because the sites and conditions are entirely different in timing and need. Whatever way the Sizewell C employment issue is regarded, each of the 900 long-term jobs created will have cost several tens of millions of pounds to create. That is a very bad investment in itself. 

Nuclear power is nothing if not hugely capital, not labour, intensive. It costs billions, the plants are always late and over budget, and it doesn’t do what it says on the tin in terms of climate change and security (it relies upon uranium from abroad and Sizewell C is a French design with a French developer – nothing home-grown about it). ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Sizewell C will not, in any way, be the salvation of East Suffolk nor UK plc. We are quite simply being swamped by a development which is a Boris Johnson vanity project, one that is unnecessary to the national energy requirements and that will fail to do all the things you and your trades union colleagues have been told to believe it can do. 

Trades union support for nuclear power is in itself disappointing when an energy policy based on a similar investment programme to that identified for nuclear could be invested in renewables and storage technology, energy conservation projects, microtechnology, decentralisation, and retrofitting thermal insulation. This can be coupled to the creation of many more job opportunities for today’s young people in industries that do not have the stigma of being linked to the nuclear weapons industry and the mass destruction that implies. 

If we need anything right now in the UK, we need Starmer’s duty of candour to be levelled at the nuclear industry and for the trades union movement, of which we are mainly supportive, to help us show the way to a nuclear-free world. 

Learn more at Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) and Stop Sizewell C. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/11/03/new-nukes-not-a-plus-for-unions/—

November 4, 2024 Posted by | employment, UK | Leave a comment

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