‘Casualty Catastrophe’: Cell Phones and Child Brains
Published on 27 Oct 2013
Insurers stop covering for cell phone use, called the next ‘casualty catastrophe’ after tobacco and asbestos; phone manufacturers hit with a class action and personal lawsuits; and the warning deep inside your mobile.
Seek truth from facts with Ellie Marks, whose husband Alan is suing the industry for his brain tumor, ‘cell phone survivor’ Bret Bocook, leading RADIATION BIOLOGIST Prof. Dariusz Leszczynski, Microwave News editor Dr. Louis Slesin, Storyleak editor Anthony Gucciardi, and former senior White House adviser Dr. Devra Davis.
“Action IS being taken outside the US.
France is moving schools back from Wi-Fi to cabled Internet.
Countries from Germany to Israel and Finland are moving to stop cell phone sales to kids.
But Obama just made industry chief lobbyist Thomas Wheeler head of the regulator itself, the FCC.
A former administration official calls it another astonishing conflict of interest.”
Rhodri Morgan By Rhodri Morgan Rhodri Morgan: Beware the price promises of Hinkley Point nuclear station
Former First Minister and WalesOnline columnist Rhodri Morgan muses over the deal struck for ‘first private sector nuclear power station’ – run by four nationalised industries
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/news-opinion/rhodri-morgan-beware-price-promises-6243754
I could barely believe my ears when I heard the announcement this week of the new nuclear power station to be built at Hinkley Point in Somerset, right opposite Cardiff Airport.
The BBC kept referring to it as Britain’s first-ever private sector nuclear power station.
What the report should have said was that it was to be built by a consortium of four nationalised industries, two French and two Chinese.
Three of the four are 100% state-owned and one is 85%. Overseas nationalised industries are not in the private sector.
In fact I doubt if any private sector company could ever build and operate a nuclear power station now, because they would never be able to get insurance cover.
When the last British nuclear power station was built – Sizewell C – in the late 1980s, it was built by the Central Electricity Generating Board, led by Lord (Walter) Marshall, Margaret Thatcher’s favourite scientist.
He was from Cardiff.
The Cardiff accent, which he never lost, was so unfamiliar to his super-brainy colleagues in the atomic power industry that they all thought he was one of the many wartime refugees from Eastern Europe, who had fled the Nazis.
EDF, the lead company in the consortium that will build the new Hinkley Point “nuke” is the French equivalent of the CEGB.
The CEGB was privatised in 1989. It became Npower, now German-owned.
That’s why we now have to turn to the French and Chinese.
But regardless of which country’s nationalised industries are building the station, “ours” or “theirs”, beware the promises about prices you hear, when a new design of power station hoves into view.
The new Hinkley station will replace an Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor-type station.
The launch of that particular type of station back in 1965 was the occasion of the most embarrassing statement any cabinet minister has ever made. Ever!
Fred Lee was the hapless energy minister in Harold Wilson’s Labour government who had to deliver the statement to the House of Commons.
It contained the sentence “Electricity from these new AGR nuclear power stations will be too cheap to meter. [I’m not making this up.] Britain has really hit the jackpot this time”.
Oy Vey! Oy Vey!
Far from producing electricity that was too cheap to meter, the AGRs were almost impossible to construct – an absolute disaster of Concorde or even Poll Tax proportions when it came to wasting taxpayers’ money.
The new station will certainly create a building boom in the south-west of England.
When people compare the Welsh economy with that of the South West, we normally think instinctively, Wales – private sector economy weak/public sector strong. The South West – private sector strong/public sector weak.
I wonder if that’s really true.
We get conventional regional assistance, European aid etc.
The South West gets its “regional aid” under a different heading, that’s all. It’s called a government-guaranteed £16bn building project creating 25,000 jobs.
Tokyo’s charm offensive to garner support in its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
http://my.sports.yahoo.com/news/japan-pacific-leaders-hold-summit-near-fukushima-154417317.html
26 October 2013
Top leaders from Japan and Pacific island nations will hold a summit in a city near the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant in 2015, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said Saturday.
Kishida made the announcement at a news conference after a meeting of ministers from Japan and the 16-member Pacific Islands Forum in Tokyo to prepare for the triennial summit.
The 2015 meeting will be held in Iwaki, a provincial city located about 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the plant.
A massive earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 ravaged Japan’s northeast coast and sparked a meltdown crisis at the plant which has released radiation into the environment.
“Holding the Pacific island summit in the disaster-hit area will provide a chance to tell the world how our country is making a strong recovery from the east Japan earthquake,” Takumi Nemoto, Japan’s minister for reconstruction, said in a statement.
Japan has hosted the summit six times since 1977 to discuss maritime order, resource management and new ways to cooperate in trade and investment at a time when China is boosting its presence in the Pacific.
At last year’s summit, held in Okinawa, Japan pledged aid worth up to $500 million over three years to Pacific island nations, of which Kishida said about 90 percent had been extended.
The Pacific Islands Forum groups Australia, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
Like Japan, Australia and New Zealand are taking part as aid givers.
The summit is seen as one prong of Tokyo’s charm offensive to garner support in its bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
US Gov’t: Plutonium is from Fukushima reactors, not fuel pools — Experts: Plutonium needs to be in U.N. assessment of radioactive releases
Published: October 26th, 2013 at 11:27 am ET
By ENENews
Physicians for Social Responsibility, IPPNW, etc., Oct. 18, 2013: […] the emission of radioactive particles from Fukushima Dai-ichi continues until today and that the available source term [i.e. total radioactive release] estimates only deal with the emissions during the first weeks of the disaster, it is important to look at which source term estimate to use […] UNSCEAR [United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation] bases its calculations on the source term estimate of the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), an organization that was severely criticized […] for its collusion with the nuclear industry […] The renowned Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) found a release of cesium-137 three times higher than the JAEA estimate. […] By relying on data from neutral international institutions rather than the Japanese nuclear industry, accusations of selective data sampling could be reduced. Also, it is important to include not only iodine-131 and cesium-137 in atmospheric release assessments, such as JAEA, but also radioisotopes such as iodine-133, strontium-89/90 and plutonium-isotopes, as they were also detected in soil, groundwater and sediment samples in Fukushima Prefecture.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission FOIA ML12128A322, Published May 1, 2013: Page 8 — “Pu contamination in soil thought to be coming from the reactors”
TEPCO, April 10, 2012: Detection of Pu in the soil in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station […] there are possibilities that [the Pu-238, Pu-239, and Pu-240] originate from the accident this time, taking the previous analysis results into consideration. Pu-238, Pu-239, and Pu-240 have been detected in the samples collected after March 21 at some places; however, there have been no major changes in the amounts.
Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation!
2013/10/26
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
There are a staggering 4400 tons of nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima, which greatly dwarfs the total size of radiation sources at Chernobyl.” Worldwide Contamination!
http://thewararoundus.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/by-prof-michel-chossudovsky-fukushima.html
Global Research’s Online Interactive I-Book Reader brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Research feature articles and videos, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter. In this Interactive Online I-Book we bring to the attention of our readers an important collection of articles, reports and video material on the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and its impacts. The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.
The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”. In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami: “This time no one dropped a bomb on us. We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lives.”
Nuclear radiation which threatens life on planet earth, is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities. While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths.
8 months, 10 mishaps: A look at Fukushima errors
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
The Associated Press
Published: October 26, 2013
TOKYO — Workers overfill a tank, spilling radioactive water on the ground. Another mistakenly pushes a button, stalling a pump for a vital cooling system. Six others get soaked with toxic water when they remove the wrong pipe. All over the course of one week in October.
A string of mishaps this year at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was swamped by a tsunami in 2011, is raising doubts about the operator’s ability to tackle the crisis and prompting concern that another disaster could be in the making.
Worried Japanese regulators are taking a more hands-on approach than usual. They met with Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials this week to discuss how to prepare for a typhoon that could dump heavy rain on Fukushima on Saturday. And Nuclear Regulation Authority Chairman Shinichi Tanaka has scheduled a Monday meeting with Tokyo Electric’s president to seek solutions to what he says appear to be fundamental problems.
Human error is mostly to blame, as workers deal with a seemingly unending stream of crises. Tanaka said earlier this month the repeated “silly mistakes” are a sign of declining morale and sense of responsibility. The operator, known as TEPCO, acknowledged a systemic problem in a recent report: Workers under tight deadlines tend to cut corners, making mistakes more likely; at times, they don’t fully understand their assignment or procedures.
The utility has been losing experienced workers as they reach their radiation exposure limits, and hundreds of others are quitting jobs seen as underpaid given the difficulty and health risks. Regulators have urged the plant to have enough supervisors to oversee the workers on site; TEPCO says it has added staff and is ensuring proper field-management.
Some of this year’s mishaps:
— Oct. 20-21: Heavy rains wash contaminated storm-water over protective barriers around storage tanks at six locations, before workers finish setting up additional pumps and hoses to remove the water.
— Oct. 9: Six workers remove the wrong pipe, dousing themselves with highly radioactive water. TEPCO says exposure for the workers, who were wearing facemasks with filters, hazmat suits and raingear, is negligible. An estimated 7 tons of water almost overflows the barrier around it.
— Oct. 7: A worker mistakenly presses a stop button during a power switchboard check, stalling a pump and cooling-water supply to the Unit 1 reactor for a split second. A monitoring device for Units 1 and 2 and a building ventilator also fail briefly until backup power kicks in.
— Oct. 2: Workers overfill a storage tank for radioactive water, spilling about 430 liters (110 gallons). The workers were trying to maximize capacity amid the plant’s water storage crunch. Most of the spill is believed to have reached the sea via a nearby ditch.
— Oct. 1: About 5 tons of contaminated rainwater overflows when workers pump it into the wrong tank, most of it seeping into the ground.
— Sept. 27: A piece of rubber lining mistakenly left inside a water treatment unit clogs it up, causing it to fail hours after it resumed a test-run following repairs. The fragment is removed, and the unit returned to testing.
— Sept. 19: A firefighting water pipe is damaged during debris removal, and 300 liters of non-radioactive water spurt out. The same day, TEPCO provides Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a hazmat suit for a plant visit with the wrong Japanese character for his family name on the nametag. Spotting the mistake halfway through the tour, an apparently displeased Abe peels the sticker off.
— Sept. 12: A water treatment machine overflows, leaking about 65 liters of contaminated water, when a worker doing unrelated work nearby inadvertently shuts a valve.
— Aug. 19: A patrolling worker finds a massive pool of contaminated water spilling out of a protective barrier around a storage tank. TEPCO later concludes an estimated 300 tons escaped unnoticed over several weeks.
— April 4: A worker pushes the wrong button on a touch panel, temporarily stopping one of three water treatment units during a pre-operation test.
Humans aren’t always to blame. A rat sneaked into an outdoor power switchboard on March 18, causing a short-circuit and blackout lasting 30 hours in some areas. Four nuclear fuel storage pools lost cooling, but power was restored before a meltdown. A few weeks later, workers caused another short-circuit while installing anti-rat nets, leaving one of the fuel storage pools without cooling for several hours.
Illinois’ Distinction As State With Most Nuclear Waste Worries Activist
Says Kraft: “There’s absolutely nothing inherently safe about a thousand Hiroshimas in a box.”
October 25, 2013
CBS) — The state of Illinois now appears to be the nation’s biggest producer of dangerous radioactive waste.
CBS 2’s Mike Parker reports.
There are 70,000 metric tons of potentially deadly nuclear waste stored at both active and inactive nuclear plants in the U.S.
Bloomberg.com reports that Illinois, with its 14 nuclear plant sites, is the country’s biggest atomic dump site.
There are roughly 9,000 tons of “high level, long lived, dangerous spent fuel” in Illinois, according to David Kraft of the Nuclear Energy Information Service, an anti-nuclear group.
That is more nuclear waste than any other state.
Kraft says he is worried about “natural catastrophes like we saw in Japan at Fukushima, terrorists, accidental airliners hitting buildings, or whatever.”
Although the federal government seems to recognize the dangers, critics say Washington can’t seem to decide how and where to move the waste for safe keeping. So it continues to sit in casks and cooling pools at the plants.
Says Kraft: “There’s absolutely nothing inherently safe about a thousand Hiroshimas in a box.”
Video and links
Activists dispute reports on Kudankulam plant supplying power
2013 / October / 27 /
Chennai: The first unit of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KNPP) is supplying around 175 MW power and is still connected to the southern grid, officials said, even as activists disputed the claim.
“The unit is still connected to the grid and power supply is around 175-200 MW,” an official of the Power System Operation Corporation Ltd, a subsidiary of the National Grid Corporation and which manages the Southern Grid, told IANS Saturday, preferring to remain anonymous.
A source close to KNPP told IANS that the unit was running and transmitting power to the grid. The 1,000 MW-capacity unit that tripped Oct 22 was reconnected to the grid Friday night.
Anti-KNPP activists, citing the Power System Operation Corporation’s reports, dispute the reconnection of the atomic power plant to the grid Friday night.
“The daily operation report of the grid company does not mention anything about the power supplied by the Kudankulam unit,” M. Pushparayan of People’s Movement Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) told IANS.
A retired employee of Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB), preferring anonymity, told IANS that when even the generation data of power units that have not started commercial production are reflected in the reports, data relating to KNPP should also be there.
Pushparayan said even the reports of Tamil Nadu Transmission Corporation Ltd make no mention of power from KNPP.
Officials of KNPP belonging to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) were not available for comment on the status of the unit despite several attempts by IANS to contact them.
On Oct 22, the first unit at KNPP was synchronised with the power grid at 2.45 a.m, generating 75 MW of power. The power generation was subsequently increased to 160 MW.
Nearly two hours later the unit tripped though KNPP officials maintain that the plant had been stopped. The NPCIL has been setting up two 1,000 MW Russian reactors at Kudankulam in Tirunelveli district, around 650 km from here. The total outlay for the project is over Rs.17,000 crore. (IANS)
UNSCEAR報告「健康影響ゼロ」は非科学的〜市民ら声明
Video here;
http://www.ourplanet-tv.org/?q=node/1662
投稿者： ourplanet 投稿日時： 木, 10/24/2013 – 07:46
国際人権NGO「ヒューマンライツ・ナウ」や国際環境NGO「FoE Japan」など国内の63団体は24日、国連科学委員会（ＵＮＳＣＥＡＲ）が明日、国連総会に提出する「福島調査報告」について、抜本的な見直しを求め る緊急声明を発表した。福島原発事故の健康影響について、子どもの甲状腺がん以外はないとする同報告書について、客観性や独立性が乏しく、被曝を過小評価 していると指摘。内容を見直すように求めている。
問題となっているのは、明日25日に国連の第４委員会に提出される国連科学委員会の「福島報告書」。同報告書は、福島県の成人の平均生涯実効被曝線量を 10ミリシーベルト以下と推定。乳幼児の甲状腺がんは増加すると言及しているものの、「被ばくした一般市民やその子孫において、放射線由来の健康影響の発 症の識別し得る増加は予期されない。」と結論づけている。
＜付属文書＞成人の推定実効線量（事故後１年間）福島県避難区域外および近県
＜付属文書＞１歳幼児の平均実効線量（ 事故後１年間）福島県避難区域外および近県
＜付属文書＞推定実効線量 福島市在住者（2011年に成人、10歳子ども、1歳幼児）
これに対し、声明では、国連科学委員会は、原発事故後、独自の調査を実施しておらず、
日本政府や福島県から提供されたデータのみに基づいていると批判。中立性や生活性に疑問があるとしている。
また、低線量被曝については、放射線影響調査研究所による広島・長崎の原爆被害者のLSS(
寿命調査）報告（2012年）をはじめ、ここ数年、新たな論文が次々に発表されているが、こうした最近の疫学研究を踏まえていないと指摘している。
ヒューマンライツ・ナウ事務局長の伊藤和子さんは、記者会見で「安易に健康影響を過小評価している」と。また、FoEジャパン理事の満田夏花さんは「報告 書がドラフトの段階で、一度も一般公開されず、被災当事者や市民、第三者の専門家によるパブリック・レビューを得ていないことのは、大きな問題」と指摘。 科学というものは、第三者が検証できてはじめて科学と言えるが、この報告書は、第三者の検証ができない、極めて非科学的なもの」と断じた。
また、昨年11月に福島原発事故後の人権状況について現地調査をした国連「健康に対する権利」に関する特別報告者のアナンド・グローバー氏が、今年5月に 国連人権理事会に調査報告書を提出した報告書に言及。グローバー氏は、日本政府に対し、年間１ミリシーベルトという明確な基準を示して、健康管理調査や支 援措置などの政策改善を勧告しているが、満田さんは「国連総会の議論にも、グローバー氏の勧告が十分に反映されるべき」と強調した。
国連科学委員会の「福島報告」は、国連総会第４委員会での審議を経て、通常ならば、１２月に国連総会で採択される。ただ、汚染水問題や原発作業員の被ばく線量など、報告書のもととなるデータを網羅した付属文書がまだまとまっていないため、見通しは未知数だ。
ヒューマンライツウオッチらは、このあと、日本時間２２時３０分から、国連総会が開催されるニューヨークでサイドイベントを開催し、その場で、アナンド・グローバー氏が同報告書にコメントをする見込み。
【共同声明】日本の市民社会は、国連科学委員会の福島報告の見直しを求める。
http://hrn.or.jp/activity/topic/post-235/
国連科学委員会が25日に国連総会に提出する「福島報告書」
Report of UNSCEAR to the 68th General Assembly: To be presented in New York on 25 October 2013
http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=A/68/46
UN report on Fukushima Criticized
…Mari Inoue, a representative of Tokyo-based Human Rights Now, meanwhile called for the UNSCEAR report to be revised.
She said the report should endorse evacuation from areas where exposure exceeds 1 millisievert of radiation per year, well below the Japanese government’s yardstick of 20 millisieverts per year….
Oct 25, 2013
NEW YORK – Human rights experts, including a U.N. special rapporteur, are criticizing a U.N. scientific report dismissing concerns about the effects of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster on the Japanese public.
Speaking Thursday at an event organized by U.S. and Japanese nongovernmental groups, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to health Anand Grover took issue with the report’s conclusion that “there is nothing to worry about” for members of the public exposed to radiation from Fukushima No. 1.
The report was prepared by the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.
The committee, which studied the levels and effects of radiation exposure caused by the nuclear disaster after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, found that for the general public, “no discernible increased incidence of radiation-related health effects are expected.”
Grover, who visited Japan in November 2012 and compiled his own report on the situation from a human rights perspective, said the data on radioactive exposure is insufficient to rule out the possibility that low doses could have ill effects on health.
He also said that ensuring the participation of affected communities in decision-making is “one of the core obligations” of governments and that the public has a right to information.
Special rapporteurs are independent investigators tasked by the United Nations with investigating human rights issues and can only investigate a country if invited to do so by its government.
Mari Inoue, a representative of Tokyo-based Human Rights Now, meanwhile called for the UNSCEAR report to be revised.
She said the report should endorse evacuation from areas where exposure exceeds 1 millisievert of radiation per year, well below the Japanese government’s yardstick of 20 millisieverts per year.
It should also recommend continued study of contract workers exposed to radiation, increased community participation in the government response to the disaster, and recognition that it is too early to rule out future health effects for the exposed, Inoue said.
Also on Thursday, Human Rights Now released a statement signed by 64 community organizations in Japan calling for revisions to the report.
The UNSCEAR’s full report, including scientific data supporting its findings, has not yet been published. The group said when finished, the report will be “the most comprehensive scientific analysis of the information available to date.”
Nuclear commission issues license to Army for depleted uranium at 2 training areas in Hawaii
…”The real issue is all live fire needs to be stopped at Pohakuloa and cleanup of all depleted uranium that is present,” he said.
Depleted uranium likely is more widespread than the Army has acknowledged, he said….
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/726f58fbe3b047a0aa13d085b513f54c/HI–Depleted-Uranium
HILO, Hawaii — The Army has been granted a license to possess depleted uranium at two Hawaii training areas.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday issued the license for the Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island and Schofield Barracks on Oahu , the Hawaii Tribune-Herald (http://bit.ly/Hk9r8H) reported.
The Army six years ago revealed that rounds used as part of the Davy Crockett weapons program were fired at the locations about 50 years ago.
The military between 1960 and 1968 used 8- by 1-inch spotting rounds containing 6.7 ounces of depleted uranium alloy to identify the flight path of Davy Crockett warheads, according to the Army Garrison-Hawaii website. The weakly radioactive alloy was used to add weight to the spotting rounds so they could mimic the flight of the warheads.
Fragments were found first at Schofield Barracks. A review of Army records indicated their use at Pohakuloa.
The Army had operated with a license to manufacture and distribute the spotting rounds. The Atomic Energy Commission license expired in 1978.
The NRC determined that enough depleted uranium had been used to warrant a new license for possession. The license authorizes possession of 275 pounds of depleted uranium and puts in place regulations to address contamination.
No additional use of depleted uranium is authorized. The license requires air and plant sampling plans within 90 days.
A safety plan establishes a “radiation control area” where spotting rounds had been fired and requires the Army to notify the NRC when explosives will be used.
The Pohakuloa facility covers 133,000 acres. The affected nuclear area is about 2,190 acres, Clint German, safety manager for U.S. Army Garrison-Hawaii, said by email.
Peace activist Jim Albertini said the license is inadequate.
“The real issue is all live fire needs to be stopped at Pohakuloa and cleanup of all depleted uranium that is present,” he said.
Depleted uranium likely is more widespread than the Army has acknowledged, he said.
Any cleanup would have to be approved by the NRC, German said.
Solar set to beat nuclear on headline strike price by 2018 never mind 2023
| 24 October 2013,
Just two weeks ago, energy minster Greg Barker laid down a crystal clear challenge to the solar PV sector. The only way to maximise solar’s contribution to the 2020 renewables target would be to “squeeze out subsidy” and to “compete like-for-like with fossil fuels”, he said. That’s some challenge, but it is one that is not being extended to any other low carbon technology. Certainly not to nuclear. The contrast between the minister’s uncompromising message to our industry on 8 October and the Hinkley Point C deal announced by DECC this week could not be any clearer.
The very suggestion from energy secretary Ed Davey in the House of Commons on Monday, that the nuclear price “is competitive with projected costs for other plants commissioning in the 2020s”, is frankly absurd. Indeed it is so absurd that I had to check and double-check Hansard to make sure that that was really what his speech writers at DECC had written for him. Nuclear industry claims that this deal makes its technology the “cheapest” low carbon energy technology are even more outrageous, confusing, as they do, the headline £92.50/MWh CPI-linked 2023 nuclear strike price with next year’s draft renewables strike prices. The correct comparison is with projected costs for renewables projects completing in 2023 and beyond not in just six months’ time.
The nuclear lobby and its supporters also assume incorrectly that the renewables strike prices proposed by DECC are those that will actually be set. In fact, such is the projected pace of cost reduction in the solar PV sector that the Solar Trade Association (STA) has been able to ask for a strike price of £91 in 2018. It is inconceivable in my view that DECC will now set a higher solar strike price than £91 in 2018. If they were to do so, it would be the first time to my knowledge that the energy department had ever told a main trade body, “Thank you so very much for asking for a lower level of support than we proposed but we insist that you have more”.
So even if we were to leave out the multi-billion loan guarantees and the other sweeteners required for new nuclear, solar PV will be beating nuclear on strike price alone by 2018, some five years before Hinkley Point C is due to be completed. By 2019, the Solar Trade Association predicts that the industry will require a strike price of £86, falling year on year thereafter, paid over 15 not 35 years and with no nuclear-style small print permitting a possible increase in strike price once those terms are set.
For those who say that none of this matters, there’s plenty of funding room for both nuclear and renewables, it’s important to sound a serious note of caution. We do not yet know what will replace the current Levy Control Framework funding envelope for low carbon generation that runs to 2019, but the Treasury will be examining very closely the implications for bill payers of the nuclear deal. This process will have profound implications for renewables support into the 2020s, now that the government has locked us into a more expensive form of low carbon generation from 2023.
Solar and nuclear: some facts
When the government announced the strike price for Hinkley Point C on Monday, it also published an infographic comparing the amount of land required by solar and wind farms to generate the same amount of electricity as the proposed Somerset nuclear power station. Although DECC said the graphic was only intended to be illustrative, it was seized upon by certain parts of the press as evidence of the “blight” of renewable energy. In our own graphic we present some other facts and figures about nuclear and how it compares with solar. Illustration by Viki Hämmerle.
Japan secrecy act stirs fears about press freedom, right to know
…”There is a demand by the established political forces for greater control over the people,” said Lawrence Repeta, a law professor at Meiji University. “This fits with the notion that the state should have broad authority to act in secret.”…
….”This may very well be Abe’s true intention – cover-up of mistaken state actions regarding the Fukushima disaster and/or the necessity of nuclear power,” said Sophia University political science professor Koichi Nakano…..
…”As things stand, the state gets a more or less free hand in deciding what constitutes a state secret and it can potentially keep things secret forever,” Nakano said….
hursday Oct 24, 2013 | Linda Sieg, Kiyoshi Takenaka for Reuters
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government is planning a state secrets act that critics say could curtail public access to information on a wide range of issues, including tensions with China and the Fukushima nuclear crisis.
The new law would dramatically expand the definition of official secrets and journalists convicted under it could be jailed for up to five years.
Japan’s harsh state secrecy regime before and during World War Two has long made such legislation taboo, but the new law looks certain to be enacted since Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party-led bloc has a comfortable majority in both houses of parliament and the opposition has been in disarray since he came to power last December.
Critics see parallels between the new law and Abe’s drive to revise Japan’s U.S.-drafted, post-war constitution to stress citizen’s duties over civil rights, part of a conservative agenda that includes a stronger military and recasting Japan’s wartime history with a less apologetic tone.
AREVA to acquire a ten percent stake at Hinckley because the British Government has bailed them out of a dark nuclear hole!
Thu Oct 24, 2013 1:57pm EDT
AREVA: At September 30, 2013: Backlog of €42bn
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/24/areva-idUSnBw246420a+100+BSW20131024
Robust revenue growth to €6.847bn:
+4.7% vs. Sept. 2012 (+7.6% like for like)
Strong organic growth (+9.9%) in the nuclear operations
Regulatory News:
AREVA (Paris:AREVA):
Luc Oursel, Chief Executive Officer, offered the following comments on the group’s performance in the first nine months of 2013:
“After a remarkable first half and as anticipated, our third quarter revenue was stable in the nuclear operations compared with the third quarter of 2012. Globally, our nuclear operations generated organic growth of 10% in the first nine months of 2013. This performance demonstrates the strength of our commercial positions in the installed base market, where we continue to innovate while improving our competitiveness. The success of our integrated offers and of our Safety Alliance and Forward Alliance programs are perfect examples of this. Moreover, agreements signed for the EDF project at Hinkley Point strengthen our position in the new builds market and bolster the credibility of our EPR™ offers to other customers.
In the Renewable Energies BG, revenue is below our Action 2016 plan outlook, mainly due to the current indecisiveness in the renewable markets.
Based on our performance over the past nine months, we confirm our revenue outlook for our business as a whole in 2013.”
Fukushima water reaches new radiation high
Oct 24, 2013
http://japandailypress.com/fukushima-water-reaches-new-radiation-high-2438477/
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the utility operator that manages the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said on Thursday that the water they collected from the drainage ditch has double the radiation than from the previous week. This is a new record high for contaminated water in the plant, ever since the meltdown in 2011, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
TEPCO said that the readings they collected from the water sample in the drainage ditch on Wednesday sets it at 140,000 becquerels per liter of beta ray-emitting substances. It is 2.3 times more than the previous record of 59,000 becquerels seen last Tuesday in the same area and 11 times higher than the reading from the previous day. TEPCO theorizes that the heavy rains from the past few days may have carried the radioactive material to the areas surrounding the ditch.
Even though there were sandbags placed in anticipation of the rains from Typhoon Wipha last week, the heavier than expected rains may have caused the contaminated water to overflow into the Pacific Ocean. The location where they got the water samples is just 600 meters from the ocean and close to the storage tanks containing the contaminated water that TEPCO admitted had leaked almost 300 tons of radioactive water last August.
They also announced on Thursday that they have started transferring the contaminated water that have built up in the tank’s flood enclosures to a closed reservoir in preparation for Typhoon Francisco that is expected to hit Japan this weekend.
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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