….Keith Allott, chief advisor on climate change at WWF-UK, said: “Backing nuclear means shifting a huge liability to British taxpayers for the cost of building, electricity and, crucially, dealing with the waste.
“Unlike renewable energy, the costs of nuclear keep on rising, as witnessed by the fact that the only reactors currently being built in Europe are massively over-budget and far behind schedule. Focusing on renewables and energy efficiency, on the other hand, where the UK has huge potential to be an industrial leader, could deliver both huge cost reductions and a substantial boost to UK economic growth and manufacturing.”…. Guardian
[..]
…One part of this permit provides for the discharge of treated radioactive waste into the Bristol Channel via the outfall tunnel. No individual limits are specified for these disposal outlets. Meanwhile schedule 23 of the permit allows for both the disposal of radioactive waste on or from the premises and the receipt of radioactive waste for the purpose of disposal. This theoretically could result in waste from the entire country being shipped to Hinkley C. … Schnewz
Davey told the House of Commons the French energy giant EDF would be allowed to build two new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset, on the site of an existing power station, which is due to close in 2023.
“It’s vital to get investment in new infrastructure to get the economy moving,” said Davey. “[Hinkley] will generate vast amounts of clean energy and enhance our energy security. It will benefit the local economy, through direct employment, the supply chain and the use of local services.”
The two new 1.6-gigawatt reactors will become one of the biggest power plants in the UK, providing enough electricity for up to 5m average homes. The nuclear plant is expected to be the first in a series of new ones the coalition has proposed as part of its plans to replace ageing coal and nuclear facilities that are due to be closed over the next few years.
However, the symbolic decision on planning permission still leaves Davey’s department for energy and climate change and EDF locked in negotiations over how much subsidy the company will get during the life of the plant.
It is thought officials are discussing a contract that would guarantee the French company being paid nearly £100 for each megawatt hour of electricity produced over 30 to 40 years.
Under the system, called “contracts for difference“, if the market price, which is currently about half that level, is lower than the agreed minimum “strike price”, electricity suppliers will have to pay the difference by making a surcharge on customer bills; if the market price rises higher, then the company would forfeit the difference.
EDF and government officials also have to agree how much the company will pay for long-term storage of nuclear waste.
….“This is an unstable situation that will continue to be so for several years until fuel is removed from the plant to safe storage,” said Bellona’s nuclear physicist and General Manager Nils Bøhmer, who, with other Bellona staff, returned from Fukushima on Friday…..
Four fuel storage ponds at Japan’s tsunami-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were deprived of fresh cooling water for more than 20 hours due to a power outage, the plant’s operator said today, raising concerns about the fragility of a facility that still runs on makeshift equipment.
The plants owner said power has “partially” been restored at one of the cooling ponds, and that the others were expected to be back on line by later today and tomorrow.
The outage had hit ponds at reactors 1, 3 and 4, the statement said, but cooling to the reactors themselves was not affected. Fukushima Daiichi’s common storage pool was also affected by the outage, Japan’s NHK reported.
Power has been partially restored to the No 1 the cooling pond at about 2:20 p.m. Tokyo time, the plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co, or Tepco, said in a statement. The primary system of Unit 4 spent fuel pond alternative cooling system was started at 1:20 PM. The secondary system is planned to be restarted at 8:00 PM today.
The statement went on to say that power the No 3 spent fuel pond was scheduled to come back online by 8:00 p.m. today, and that the common pond’s cooling purification system is planned to be restarted at 8:00 AM tomorrow.
Tepco’s earlier announcement today about the power outage said it had hit at 6:57 Japan time on Monday. The nearly day long delay in reporting the incident has done nothing to settle the nerves of the Japanese public.
Tepco had been racing against a deadline of four days before the ponds heat up beyond safety limits, said the company.
The temperature in the hottest fuel pond, at Unit 4, was 30.5 degrees Celsius on Tuesday morning, Tepco said, well below the safety limit of 65 degrees. However Tepco did say that temperatures at the ponds had risen slightly.
Today marks the second anniversary of the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that killed 19,000 people in Japan, causing massive devastation and a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Two years later, a 19-mile area around Fukushima is still blocked off, and hundreds of thousands of residents may never return to their homes.
Souls of Zen — Buddhism, Ancestors, and the 2011 Tsunami in Japan is a new documentary that looks at Japanese Buddhism and the way it has chanced in the wake of the disaster. The directors, Tim Graf and Jakob Montrasio, traveled from Tokyo to the hardest-hit prefectures in Eastern Japan, interviewing scholars, clergy, and laypeople from the Soto Zen and Jodo Pure Land traditions.The film provides a complex portrait of Buddhism in the aftermath of the triple disaster, and looks at the changes that have happened in Japanese Buddhism both because of the disaster and because of demographic changes and religious pluralism.
Souls of Zen has been screened at several film festivals around the world and is now being screened at select locations around North America. Click here for a full schedule, and follow the film on Facebook for more updates.
Buddhist teacher Michael Stone is also at work on a documentary, called Reactor, about Japan’s response to the disaster. The film seeks to answer several questions, including “How are the old Zen traditions and cities of beautiful temples responding? How are the young rethinking the stories of their lives? How can we embody the Bodhisattva vow in this time?”
Abby Martin sits down with former NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake, about his personal story as a whistleblower and what he describes as a ‘total betrayal’ by part of the government.
Prof Chris Busby was invited to make an Intervention by the Green Group in the European Parliament on 29th January 2013 over the proposals to the European Parliament by the Commission to adopt the new Basic Safety Standards Directive, which replaces the old Directive 96/29 which is currently Member State law. Prof Busby points out that the new Directive explicitly bases itself on the obsolete and dangerously inaccurate ICRP risk model.
He draws attention to a Petition sent by hundreds of individuals to the European Parliament Petitions Committee to ask the Parliament to force a re justification of all practices involving exposures. Details of the Petitions are on the website www.nuclearjustice.org where the powerpoint that he is referring to will also be posted soon.
Those people who sent the petition should get on to the Petitions Committee and ask what has happened. At least one individual has been informed in writing that their petition has been accepted and the matter transferred to the Environment Health Directorate for Action.
Urgent appeal to stop misuse of the medical based “radiation dose model” after nuclear accidents.
The ICNJ (International Commission on Nuclear Justice) has been appealing to the European population to sign up to a petition to challenge the ICRP dose model on permitted doses of radiation to the public.
This campaign was contrived and developed during the convention in Berlin 2011 and The “Alternate World Heath Organisation” Geneva 2012
For the independence of W.H.O.
«The World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) is failing in its duty to protect those populations who are victims of radioactive contamination.»
And out of those meetings of minds was born this organisation
The International Committée on Nuclear Justice was formed on the 7th of December 2011 by the attendees of the international conference of environmental NGOs and scientists in Vilnius, holding three day seminars in the houses of Lithuanian Parliament and Vilnius Municipality. The original 24 committee members were doubled after the Independent WHO Conference in Geneva 12-13th of May 2012, now collecting a full scope of globally acknowledged scientists fr Japan, UK, Switzerland, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Sweden, USA etc and environmental NGO leaders from France, Germany, Sweden, Finland…
Talks here about the realities of measuring nuclear contaminated lands against the “dose model” used by the IAEA and ICRP supported Chernobyl Forum group..
Early in the video Prof Yablokov states that he uses real data against mathematically derived data and that is how he can get a real estimate of damage done to the point where the data has stopped 2006 (approx)
A personal plea here from Prof. Chris Busby for europeans to sign the petition before the end of August 2012 to get the case moving.. he gives a clear explanation of the procedure! UPDATE ..The deadline has been extended..
Published on Aug 6, 2012 by radioactivebsr (12 minutes long)
A quick breakdown here
http://www.nuclearjustice.org is the site dedicated to a new project to force the governments of the world to realise that the radiation risk model of the International Commission on Radiological Protection is unsafe. This will stop further nuclear contamination of the environment and show the military use of Uranium to be illegal. The first part of this is to use existing legislation in Europe, the terms of the EURATOM Basic Safety Standards Directive. What we want you to do is to download the Petition asking for re-Justification from the website, sign it and post it to:
European Parliament The Petitions Committee of the European Parliament Rue Wiertz B-1047 BRUSSELS Belgium
EDITORS NOTE: Please note that little marketing is possible with this campaign as the IP`s seem to have some way of blocking links etc to this campaign pages so please pass around far and wide .. if we get this done in Europe it will be possible to get it done in Fukushima too! the children of Fukushima and Chernobyl are relying on us Europeans to do the right thing.. I sincerely hope we do..
And welcome to a world where all of this, and everything else that you do or is done on a computer, is saved, correlated, studied, passed around from company to company without your knowledge or consent; and where the government accesses it at willwithout a warrant.
Welcome to an Internet without privacy, and we’ve ended up here with hardly a fight……
Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSac hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practiced good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up.
Bruce Schneier
And three: Paula Broadwell,who had an affair with CIA director David Petraeus, similarly took extensive precautions to hide her identity. She never logged in to her anonymous e-mail service from her home network. Instead, she used hotel and other public networks when she e-mailed him. The FBI correlated hotel registration data from several different hotels — and hers was the common name.
The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we’re being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period.
Increasingly, what we do on the Internet is being combined with other data about us. Unmasking Broadwell’s identity involved correlating her Internet activity with her hotel stays. Everything we do now involves computers, and computers produce data as a natural by-product. Everything is now being saved and correlated, and many big-data companies make money by building up intimate profiles of our lives from a variety of sources.
Facebook, for example, correlates your online behavior with your purchasing habits offline. And there’s more. There’s location data from your cell phone, there’s a record of your movements from closed-circuit TVs.
This is ubiquitous surveillance: All of us being watched, all the time, and that data being stored forever. This is what a surveillance state looks like, and it’s efficient beyond the wildest dreams of George Orwell.
Sure, we can take measures to prevent this. We can limit what we search on Google from our iPhones, and instead use computer web browsers that allow us to delete cookies. We can use an alias on Facebook. We can turn our cell phones off and spend cash. But increasingly, none of it matters.
There are simply too many ways to be tracked. The Internet, e-mail, cell phones, web browsers, social networking sites, search engines: these have become necessities, and it’s fanciful to expect people to simply refuse to use them just because they don’t like the spying, especially since the full extent of such spying is deliberately hidden from us and there are few alternatives being marketed by companies that don’t spy.
This isn’t something the free market can fix. We consumers have no choice in the matter. All the major companies that provide us with Internet services are interested in tracking us. Visit a website and it will almost certainly know who you are; there are lots of ways to be tracked without cookies. Cellphone companies routinely undo the web’s privacy protection. One experiment at Carnegie Mellon took real-time videos of students on campus and was able to identify one-third of them by comparing their photos with publicly available tagged Facebook photos.
Maintaining privacy on the Internet is nearly impossible. If you forget even once to enable your protections, or click on the wrong link, or type the wrong thing, and you’ve permanently attached your name to whatever anonymous service you’re using. Monsegur slipped up once, and the FBI got him. If the director of the CIA can’t maintain his privacy on the Internet, we’ve got no hope.
In today’s world, governments and corporations are working together to keep things that way. Governments are happy to use the data corporations collect — occasionally demanding that they collect more and save it longer — to spy on us. And corporations are happy to buy data from governments. Together the powerful spy on the powerless, and they’re not going to give up their positions of power, despite what the people want.
Fixing this requires strong government will, but they’re just as punch-drunk on data as the corporations. Slap-on-the-wrist fines notwithstanding, no one is agitating for better privacy laws.
So, we’re done. Welcome to a world where Google knows exactly what sort of porn you all like, and more about your interests than your spouse does. Welcome to a world where your cell phone company knows exactly where you are all the time. Welcome to the end of private conversations, because increasingly your conversations are conducted by e-mail, text, or social networking sites.
And welcome to a world where all of this, and everything else that you do or is done on a computer, is saved, correlated, studied, passed around from company to company without your knowledge or consent; and where the government accesses it at will without a warrant.
Welcome to an Internet without privacy, and we’ve ended up here with hardly a fight.
Marine Mammal Center Manager Sue Andrews: “This year they are for some reason coming out of the rookery underweight, underfed and emaciated, low energy some with already having infection.” http://enenews.com/reports-from-calif…
Japan Diplomat: We don’t know what’s happening underground of Fukushima reactors — Potential accident remains now http://enenews.com/japan-diplomat-we-…
The declaration specifies four concrete fields of action:
Universal access to modern energy supplies in conjunction with the formulation of positive targets for energy efficiency and the use of renewable energies, such as the doubling at least of the proportion of renewable energies in the global energy mix and a significant increase in energy efficiency. Progress should be monitored by an international agency.
Accelerated development of sustainable innovations in the fields of energy efficiency and renewable energies which have global significance, in other words, those which are relevant to people. The technologies in question are generally already in place, for example, energy-efficient buildings and electrical appliances, solar-powered cooling systems, solar-powered desalination facilities for the production of drinking water, efficient public transport systems, zero-emission vehicles, highly efficient and economical renewable energy systems and storage technologies. First and foremost, these are products which are targeted at the needs of poorer regions, such as simple power supplies and water purification systems. The convention cites international business competitions such as the “Golden Carot” program in the US and highly effective market-stimulating feed-in tariffs started in Germany and adopted in more than 60 countries worldwide as positive and particularly successful examples of suitable incentive programmes.
Financing of innovation and infrastructure development by the abolition of environmentally harmful subsidies, the introduction of financial transaction taxes and green taxation such as a CO2-tax, reductions in military spending including the abolition of nuclear weapons, and an exclusive focus on sustainable innovations and infrastructure in future economic stimulus programmes.
The acknowledgement by the planet’s leading corporations of the environmental and social impacts of their business practices, and their subsequent adoption of the systems and technologies necessary for a sustainable and equitable future.
The environmental laureates participating at the convention see the current critical situation as a failure of imagination. It is not the dream of a sustainable society that is unrealistic, but the blind belief that the status quo can be prolonged with marginal adjustments…..
Laureates from 44 countries propose two-speed model instead of search for the lowest common denominator within the international community
Freiburg, Germany, 16 March 2013 – Until this coming Sunday, the 2nd International Convention of Environmental Laureates is being staged by the European Environment Foundation EEF in Freiburg, Germany. Today a declaration in which the participating environmental laureates urge a fundamental change in environmental and climate policy was signed. The constant search for the lowest common denominator within the international community must be replaced by a two-speed model. The participants at the convention specify four concrete fields of action in their declaration.
What distinguishes the EEF International Convention of Environmental Laureates from other conferences and summits is the diversity of its participants. Eighty winners of internationally renowned environmental prizes have come together from 44 countries. The conference delegates cover a wide spectrum, from scientists to environmental and civil rights activists, from successful ecological entrepreneurs to publicists and critics of capitalism. The EEF is convinced that such a broad base is necessary to put global environmental and climate protection on a new, workable footing.
The EEF does not see its convention as a contrary model to the major international environmental and climate summits. The laureates are of the opinion, however, that developments have reached a point at which the field should no longer be left entirely to career politicians. “The environmental and climate summits in the international political arena scarcely go beyond mere bartering over emission limits and volumes”, explains Eicke Weber, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the EEF and Head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE). As Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Member of the Board of Trustees of the EEF and Co-President of the Club of Rome points out, “These international negotiations must continue, however, since they have indeed long been generating important impetus for initiatives in individual countries, bilateral agreements and vital technological developments. If we continue in this way, though, we are unlikely to succeed in finding the lowest common denominator within the international community on the subject of global environmental and climate protection.”
In their declaration, entitled “Call for Action to Policy Makers and Pioneers of Change”, the participants at the convention express their alarm in the face of the current accumulation of crisis situations. These, in their opinion, are closely related on various levels and mutually detrimental. They are the imbalance in wealth and poverty, the problem of hunger and malnutrition, climate change and other ecological crises, financial crises and excessive debt in many countries and, finally, high unemployment particularly among young people. According to Rainer Grießhammer, Member of the Board of Trustees of the EEF and Head of the Institute for Applied Ecology in Freiburg, “These undesirable global trends can no longer be tackled in isolation. The current standard growth model does not deliver the necessary control information and impetus for a sustainable future.”
After a full week of intensive activities in Oslo during the Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons, major anti-nuclear campaigners moved Monday to the Bahraini capital, Manama, in yet another step towards the abolition of atomic weapons.
“Nuclear weapons – the most inhuman and destructive of all tools of war – are at the peak of a pyramid of violence in this increasingly interdependent world,” said campaigners during the presentation of an anti-nuclear exhibition held on Mar. 11 in Manama.
“The threat of atomic weapons is not in the past,” the organisers said. “It is a major crisis today.”
Organised by the Tokyo-based non-governmental civil society association Soka Gakkai International (SGI), with the support of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), together with the UN Information Centre in Manama and promoted by the Bahraini and Japanese ministries of foreign affairs, the exhibition — “From a Culture of Violence to a Culture of Peace: Towards a World Free from Nuclear Weapons” — will be held in Manama from Mar. 12-23.
The First Ever in an Arab Country
“This exhibition –the first ever in an Arab country – (represents) a step further toward making the human aspiration to live in a world free from nuclear weapons a reality,” SGI’s executive director for peace affairs, Hirotugu Terasaki, told IPS.
“The very existence of these weapons – the most inhuman of all – implies a major danger,” said Terasaki, who is also the vice president of this Buddhist organisation that promotes international peace and security, with more than 12 million members all over the planet.
Asked about the argument used by nuclear powers that the possession of such weapons is a major guarantee of safety and security – the so-called “deterrence doctrine” – Terasaki said, “The world should now move beyond this myth.”
“Security” begins with basic human needs: shelter, air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat. People need to work, to care for their health, to be protected from violence, according to the SGI exhibition.
According to Terasaki, nuclear weapons differ from other, so-called “conventional”, weapons in two main regards.
Nuclear Bombs Are Now Several Thousand Times More Powerful Than the One Dropped on Hiroshima
“One is their overwhelming destructive power. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 delivered a blast equivalent to about 13 kilotons of TNT,” he said.
Some 140,000 people lost their lives just at the end of that year, he said.
“Since then nuclear weapons with yields of more than 50 megatons have been developed, several thousand times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”
Whereas conventional weapons can, at least to some degree, distinguish between military and civilian targets, nuclear weapons kill indiscriminately, destroying all life on a massive scale, according to Terasaki.
….Bidders are lining up for for Urenco’s privatisation, which could put £4bn in the UK chancellor’s coffers….
…The newspaper said that Areva was holding talks with private equity firms including Apax and CVC, regarding a possible joint offer for Urenco, and that Morgan Stanley had been appointed to handle the sale, with a float also a possibility….
…..SNC-Lavalin is part of this trade mission too. In June, 2012 it made a short list for a contract to build two to four new reactors that would use some of the spent fuel from the U.K.’s current fleet of nuclear power plants…..
“So you add up all these factors and it really doesn’t look like there is likely to be a long-term future for CANDU.”
Canada Pension Plan eyes nuclear fuel producer Urenco: paper
(Reuters) – The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), one of the world’s biggest pension funds, could be interested in bidding for nuclear fuel producer Urenco, the Sunday Times reported without citing sources.
CPPIB, which manages Canada’s national pension fund, declined to comment on the article.
The Dutch government, which co-owns Urenco with the British government and German utilities RWE (RWEG.DE) and E.ON (EONGn.DE), has now dropped its opposition to a sale of the firm, the Sunday Times also reported, citing sources close to the talks.
Cameco (CCO.TO), a Canadian uranium producer, is also weighing an offer for Urenco, said the Sunday Times. Sources told Reuters in January that France’s Areva (AREVA.PA) and Japan’s Toshiba Corp (6502.T) were considering bids for the company.
The newspaper said that Areva was holding talks with private equity firms including Apax and CVC, regarding a possible joint offer for Urenco, and that Morgan Stanley had been appointed to handle the sale, with a float also a possibility.
Analysts estimate that the Buckinghamshire, UK-based uranium enrichment firm is worth between 2.5 billion euros and 3.6 billion euros ($3.27 billion to $4.70 billion), but some of the sellers are hoping for as much as 12 billion euros.
Urenco and Areva were not immediately available for comment. ($1 = 0.7654 euros)
(Reporting by Sarah Young; Editing by Alison Birrane)
Canadian nuclear suppliers are undertaking a trade mission to the United Kingdom next week.
Ten companies that supply parts and services to CANDU reactors are hoping to pick up some of the work that’s being created as Britain expands its nuclear program.
Catastrophic nuclear accidents, like Chernobyl in 1986 or Fukushima No. 1 in 2011, are very rare, we’re incessantly told, and their probability of occurring infinitesimal. But when they do occur, they get costly. So costly that the French government, when it came up with cost estimates, kept them secret.
But now the report was leaked to the French magazine, Le Journal de Dimanche. Turns out, the upper end of the cost spectrum of an accident at a single reactor at the plant chosen for the study, the plant at Dampierre in the Department of Loiret in north-central France, would amount to over three times the country’s GDP. Financially, France would cease to exist as we know it.
Hence, the need to keep it secret. The study was done in 2007 by the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), a government agency under joint authority of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Environment, Industry, Research, and Health. With over 1,700 employees, it’s France’s “public service expert in nuclear and radiation risks.” This isn’t some overambitious, publicity-hungry think tank.
It evaluated a range of disaster scenarios that might occur at the Dampierre plant. In the best-case scenario, costs came to €760 billion—more than a third of France’s GDP. At the other end of the spectrum: €5.8 trillion! Over three times France’s GDP. A devastating amount. So large that France could not possibly deal with it.
Yet, France gets 75% of its electricity from nuclear power. The entire nuclear sector is controlled by the state, which also owns 85% of EDF, the mega-utility that operates France’s 58 active nuclear reactors spread over 20 plants. So, three weeks ago, the Institute released a more politically correct report for public consumption. It pegged the cost of an accident at €430 billion.
TEHRAN – European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has called on Western negotiators to be “determined and creative” in their discussions with Tehran on Iran’s nuclear program, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Speaking on March 16 at the German Marshall Fund’s Brussels Forum, Ashton said negotiators had to do more to build a level of “communication” and “trust” with the Iranian side.
Such a move, she said, would encourage Iranian officials to engage in a “real discussion”.
“When I first started to lead these negotiations, we weren’t really discussing the subject. Now we discuss the subject in detail, we have the slideshow presentations, we have a real discussion about the issues both when the technical-level discussions take place and the political-level,” Ashton said.
The most recent round of talks between Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) was held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on February 26 and 27, and the two sides agreed to meet again at the same venue in April.
They also agreed to meet at expert level in Istanbul on March 18.
Iran denies Western allegations that it is covertly seeking the capability to make nuclear weapons, saying its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.
In Almaty, the major powers dropped their demand that Iran shut down its underground uranium-enrichment plant at Fordo, and insisted instead that Iran suspend enrichment work there and agree to unspecified conditions that would make it hard to quickly resume production. They also said that Iran could continue to produce and keep a small amount of its uranium enriched to a purity level of 20 percent for use in a research reactor that produces medical isotopes, according to the New York Times.
If Tehran agreed to these steps, the major powers said they would suspend some sanctions against Iran, including trade in gold and petrochemicals, and would not impose new sanctions through the United Nations Security Council and the European Union. The main oil and financial sanctions that have caused Iran’s oil revenues to drop would not be loosened.
Section 4 of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 channels the liability for nuclear damage to the operator of the nuclear installation. The operator of the nuclear installation after paying the compensation for nuclear damage, shall have a right of recourse against the supplier in accordance with Section 17 of the said Act. The supplier has no liability to pay compensation for nuclear damage in the first instance to the victims of a nuclear incident.
Under the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 the liability of the operator is strict and based on the principle of no-fault liability with the underlying objective to provide prompt compensation to the victims of a nuclear incident.
There is no proposal at present .before the Government to amend this provision.
The Minister of State in the ministry of Personnel, PG & Pensions and in the Prime Minister’s Office Shri V. Narayanasamy Gave this information in reply to a written question in the Lok Sabha today.
Absolute liability must on be on nuclear suppliers
New Delhi, March 17 (IANS)
The nuclear liability act, passed after the India-US civil nuclear deal, should ensure “absolute” responsibility of suppliers to pay adequate compensation to victims in the wake of accidents, experts said here Sunday.
The round-table conference on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010, was organised by Rashtriya Jagriti Sansthan and GreenPeace India at India International Centre here.
Former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar said the legislation should be discussed in the Indian context and shoul not be “hijacked” in a “pro-American rhetoric”.
“As the demand for nuclear energy grows, there is a need for such legislation. The nuclear programme will remain in the hands of private sector for long time. The purpose is to ensure quick compensation in case of an accident without bothering much about whose fault it is,” said Kakodkar.
“The need is to fix responsibility for the compensation to the victims,” he said.
Former Chief Justice of India A.M. Ahmadi said the act should be viewed in the context of the Bhopal gas tragedy.
“I came across so many cases where very little compensation was given even to the families of dead. There should be no cap about the upper limit of liability, as no one can estimate the magnitude of nuclear disasters,” he said.
“No time-frame for compensation should be fixed, as the ramification of such disasters eventually spread the other generation as well,” he added.
Jordan, which imports about 96 percent of its energy needs annually, plans to build several nuclear reactors for power generation……
[…]
The $300 million is the latest in a string of international assistance agreements for clean energy in Jordan, including a $112 million loan Jordan secured from the World Bank in July to support the establishment of a 100MW concentrated solar power plant.
“These funds will help Jordan develop its one true energy solution: solar and wind,” Batayneh told The Jordan Times in a recent interview…….
AMMAN, March 16 (Xinhua) — Jordan said Saturday it will select the technology for its first planned nuclear reactor in mid-May, the state-run Petra news agency reported.
Khaled Toukan, chairman of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission, said there is a “strong competition” between two offers that Jordan has preselected recently to provide the technology for the reactor.
Russia‘s Atomstroyexport and a consortium of France‘s Areva and Japan‘s Mitsubishi were prequalified, Toukan said, adding that the winning offer will be announced in mid-May.
Regarding the location of the reactor, Toukan said studies will be completed by the end of this month on three possible sites, and the final site will be jointly determined by the cabinet, the Lower House and the local communities.
Also in May, Jordan will select the strategic partner of the project, Toukan said, adding that the final agreement to build the nuclear reactor will be signed in the second half of 2013.
Jordan, which imports about 96 percent of its energy needs annually, plans to build several nuclear reactors for power generation.
….Amman – The Jordanian government on Monday inked a memorandum of understanding with the British-Australian Rio Tinto group for the exploration and mining of uranium and other nuclear ores in the country, according to an official statement……
Gulf funds to support solar, wind projects in south
by Taylor Luck | Dec 30, 2012
AMMAN — Jordan is set to receive $300 million from the Gulf states to boost investment in renewable energy, officials say, as Amman looks to solar and wind power as potential solutions to the country’s chronic energy woes.
Two years after the March 11th disaster: Radiation problems in Fukushima
Slow Progress in Decontamination
The nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has changed the lives of people who lived nearby. More than 150,000 residents have been forced away from their homes, even to this day. Decontamination of the area is essential to returning to the lives they once had. However, only 3% of the prefecture’s decontamination work has been completed. Our story investigates why the progress has been especially slow in the city of Minamisoma.
For Children’s Sake
Because of evacuations from Minamisoma, the number of students in the city’s Odaka Elementary School is one- fourth of what it was before the disaster.
Residents have been working to create an environment in which children don’t have to worry about radiation, at least while in school. For example, they check for radiation in school lunches to ensure the food is safe to eat. The residents hope their efforts will convince parents to bring their children back.
NHK Program: Japan 7 Days
Air Date 3/15/13
All material provided on this channel is for educational purposes only. No copyright infringement intended.
The directors, Tim Graf and Jakob Montrasio, traveled from Tokyo to the hardest-hit prefectures in Eastern Japan, interviewing scholars, clergy, and laypeople from the Soto Zen and Jodo Pure Land traditions.The film provides a complex portrait of Buddhism in the aftermath of the triple disaster, and looks at the changes that have happened in Japanese Buddhism both because of the disaster and because of demographic changes and religious pluralism.
nuclear-news 