Clouds gather over Turkey’s nuclear ambitions Pantelis Oikonomou is a former nuclear inspector at the International Atomic Energy Agency. The article is an excerpt from his upcoming book “Global Nuclear Threat” (published by Sideris). In early December 2018, five years after Turkey and Japan signed a bilateral agreement concerning the construction of four nuclear reactors in the city of Sinop on the Black Sea, the project looks like it might be shelved. According to foreign news agencies, the Japanese-French consortium is set to abandon the project.The consortium says that delays in launching construction have more than doubled the estimated costs. Tougher international safety measures that came into force following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 have reportedly inflated the bill from 20 billion to 44 billion dollars. Turkey’s economic problems and the significant plunge of the Turkish lira also played a role.
It should be noted that the Turkey-Japan deal and the Turkey-Russia agreement for the construction of the Akkuyu power station in the southern province of Mersin both contain controversial clauses (articles 8 and 12 respectively) giving Ankara access to enriched uranium and plutonium. Both nuclear materials are, under certain conditions, required to build nuclear weapons. According to a senior official in the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Article 8 was included on Turkey’s persistent request.
In early December 2018, five years after Turkey and Japan signed a bilateral agreement concerning the construction of four nuclear reactors in the city of Sinop on the Black Sea, the project looks like it might be shelved. According to foreign news agencies, the Japanese-French consortium is set to abandon the project.
The consortium says that delays in launching construction have more than doubled the estimated costs. Tougher international safety measures that came into force following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 have reportedly inflated the bill from 20 billion to 44 billion dollars. Turkey’s economic problems and the significant plunge of the Turkish lira also played a role.
It should be noted that the Turkey-Japan deal and the Turkey-Russia agreement for the construction of the Akkuyu power station in the southern province of Mersin both contain controversial clauses (articles 8 and 12 respectively) giving Ankara access to enriched uranium and plutonium. Both nuclear materials are, under certain conditions, required to build nuclear weapons. According to a senior official in the Japanese Foreign Ministry, Article 8 was included on Turkey’s persistent request.
Pantelis Oikonomou is a former nuclear inspector at the International Atomic Energy Agency. The article is an excerpt from his upcoming book “Global Nuclear Threat” (published by Sideris).
New Civil Engineer 24th April 2019 Planning Inspectorate officials have completed their examination of plans for the £20bn Hitachi-backed Wylfa nuclear power plant in North Wales.
Officials will rule on a development consent order (DCO) application for
the project in three months. If the Planning Inspectorate approves the DCO,
the project must also be approved by business secretary Greg Clark before
it can go ahead. Introduced in 2008, DCOs are designed to streamline
construction planning for projects designated as nationally significant by
rolling other individual consents such as planning permission, listed
building consent and compulsory purchase orders into one. The decision to
continue with the DCO application for Wylfa comes despite work on the site
remaining suspended – work was stopped in January when Hitachi struggled
to secure additional private investment in the project.
Hard duty in the Chernobyl zone, Life as a liquidator after the 1986 nuclear disaster
Cathie Sullivan, a New Mexico activist, worked with Chernobyl liquidator, Natalia Manzurova, during three trips to the former Soviet Union in the early 2000s. Natalia was one of 750,000 Soviet citizens sent to deal with the Chernobyl catastrophe.Natalia is now in her early 60s and has long struggled with multiple health issues. She was treated last year for a brain tumor that was found to be cancerous. A second tumor has since been found and funds were recently raised among activists around the world to help with the costs of this latest treatment. Natalia and Cathie together authored a short book, “Hard Duty, A woman’s experience at Chernobyl” describing Natalia’s harrowing four and a half years as a Chernobyl liquidator. What follows is an excerpt from that book with some minor edits.
By Natalia Manzurova
When I tell people that I was at Chernobyl they often ask if I had to go. My training is in radiation biology and I was born in a city that was part of the secret Soviet nuclear weapons complex, much like Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the first A-bomb was built. People from my city considered it a duty to go to Chernobyl, just as New York City firefighters went to the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Because of the radiation danger to women of child-bearing age, those under 30 did not go, but being 35 in 1987, I began my 4.5 years of work at Chernobyl. ………..
Sad experiences
In 1987, when I first arrived at Chernobyl, my group of about 20 scientists from the Ozyersk radio-ecology lab started a Department of Environmental Decontamination and Re-Cultivation. We used a 10-acre greenhouse complex for our plant studies, built before the accident, and for office space we used an empty, nearby kindergarten……..
Like many liquidators I ‘wear’ a ‘Chernobyl necklace’, the scar on the lower throat from thyroid-gland surgery.* While working in the exclusion zone I experienced slurred speech, memory loss and poor balance. One of my bosses and I realized that we were forgetting appointments and obligations and agreed to help each other remember who, what, where and when. I had severe amnesia for a time and read letters I wrote my mother to help fill in forgotten years.
The Chernobyl accident is not over, in fact its damaging effects on people and the land will only taper off slowly for generations—lingering harm that is almost certainly unique to nuclear accidents.
Natalia Manzurova, with fellow Russian activist, Nadezhda Kutepova, was awarded the 2011 Nuclear-Free Future Award in the category of Resistance.
Japan Atomic Power Co. is considering setting up a subsidiary specializing in the scrapping of retired nuclear reactors at domestic power plants, sources close to the matter said Tuesday.
Japan Atomic Power, a wholesaler of electricity generated at its nuclear plants, is planning to have U.S. nuclear waste firm EnergySolutions Inc. invest in the reactor decommissioning service unit, which would be the first of its kind in Japan, the sources said.
The Tokyo-based electricity wholesaler, whose shareholders are major domestic power companies, will make a final decision by the end of this year, they said.
The plan is to support power companies’ scrapping of retired reactors using Japan Atomic Power’s expertise in decontaminating and dismantling work, in which it has been engaged in since before the 2011 nuclear disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s Fukushima No. 1 complex, according to the sources.
The plan comes as a series of nuclear reactor decommissioning is expected at power companies in the country. Since stringent safety rules were introduced after the Fukushima disaster, 11 reactors, excluding those at the two Fukushima plants of Tepco, are slated to be scrapped.
Nuclear reactors are allowed to run for 40 years in Japan. Their operation can be extended for 20 years, but operators will need costly safety enhancement measures to clear the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s screening.
Decommissioning a reactor with an output capacity of 1 million kilowatts is said to take about 30 years and cost around ¥50 billion. Typically, some 500,000 tons of waste result from scrapping such a reactor, and 2 percent of the waste is radioactive.
Japan Atomic Power first engaged in decommissioning a commercial reactor in 2001 at its Tokai plant in eastern Japan. It has been conducting decommissioning work at its Tsuruga nuclear power plant in western Japan since 2017.
It is also providing support to Tepco for the decommissioning of reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 plant.
EnergySolutions, founded in 2006, has engaged in scrapping five reactors in the United States.
Japan Atomic Energy and EnergySolutions have had previous business ties, and the Japanese company has sent some employees to the Zion nuclear station in Illinois, where the U.S. partner has been conducting decommissioning work since 2010.
Chinese companies lobby for 2nd nuclear power plant in Bangladesh, New Age, Shakhawat Hossain | Apr 21,2019 Chinese companies are showing interest in constructing the planned second nuclear power plant in Bangladesh’s south although the site is yet to be selected.
Two Chinese companies — Dongfang Electric Corporation and China State Construction Engineering Corporation — have already lobbied the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission to win the deal, officials said. …….The officials said that some other Chinese companies, including Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, were making queries about the second nuclear power plant, site of which was likely to be selected in June 2019.
Science and technology secretary Anwar Hossain said that they were considering extending the duration of the site selection programme by six months.
………..Officials said that the Chinese corporation assured the commission of ‘timely commencement and completion’ of the project against the backdrop of criticism that many projects, including Padma Multipurpose Bridge, implemented by Chinese companies in Bangladesh caused cost overrun due to delay in construction.
National committee to protect oil, gas, mineral resources, power and ports member secretary Anu Muhammad said that he was not surprised to find the over enthusiasm of the Chinese companies for the planed second nuclear power plant.
Since the government hardly maintains transparency in the energy related projects, many Chinese companies are active to win projects through the ‘backdoor’, he noted.
Tomgram: Smithberger and Hartung, The Pentagon’s Revolving Door Spins Faster
Tom Dispatch by William Hartung and Mandy Smithberger , January 29, 2019.Give Donald Trump credit. As a businessman, he’s brought into office some skills that previous presidents lacked. Take, for example, his willingness to plough staggering sums of money into five casinos destined to go bankrupt (and then jump ship, money in hand, leaving others holding the financial bag). Now, he seems to be applying the same principles to the Pentagon. He’s already insisted on establishing a sixth branch of the armed services, a Space Force, which will cost a pretty penny — as much as $13 billion just to set up its new bureaucracy. And lest that seem too financially ambitious, just the other day he unveiled a 2019 Missile Defense Review aimed at creating a modern version of President Ronald Reagan’s extremely expensive (and failed) Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars.” Its purpose, as he put it, will be to “ensure that we can detect and destroy any [nuclear] missile launched against the United States anywhere, anytime.” The cost: possibly up to a trillion dollars without such a system being in any meaningful way capable of taking out Russian or Chinese missiles launched at the U.S. As a plan, however, it could hit the Trumpian trifecta: putting high-tech weaponry in space, heating up a new global nuclear arms race, and busting a Pentagon budget that’s already in the stratosphere……….
As Mandy Smithberger from the Project On Government Oversight and TomDispatch regularWilliam Hartung suggest today, the very Pentagon that President Trump is so eager to launch into space is now filled, from its acting secretary of defense on down, with former officials of, or consultants to, America’s largest arms makers, a crew clearly prepared to give out lucrative contracts for space failure to such firms. Sooner or later, in true Trumpian fashion, they, too, will undoubtedly jump ship — or rather step back through that Washington revolving door and exit the premises, money in hand, before the military version of the Titanic hits an iceberg.
The way personnel spin through Washington’s infamous revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry is nothing new. That door, however, is moving ever faster with the appointment of Patrick Shanahan, who spent 30 years at Boeing, the Pentagon’s second largest contractor, as the Trump administration’s acting secretary of defense………
Shanahan is unique. No secretary of defense in recent memory has had such a long career in the arms industry and so little experience in government or the military. For most of that career, in fact, his main focus was winning defense contracts for Boeing, not crafting effective defense policies. While the Pentagon should be focused on protecting the country, the arms industry operates in the pursuit of profit, even when that means selling weapons systems to countries working against American national security interests. …….
Shanahan’s new role raises questions about whether what is in the best interest of Boeing — bigger defense budgets and giant contracts for unaffordable and ineffective weaponry or aircraft — is what’s in the best interest of the public……..
He has similarly been the Pentagon’s staunchest advocate when it comes to the development of a new Space Force, something that likely thrills President Trump. He’s advocated, for example, giving the Space Development Agency, the body that will be charged with developing military space assets, authority “on steroids” to shove ever more contracts out the door. As a producer of military satellites, Boeing is a major potential beneficiary of just such a development. ……..
The Revolving Door Spins Both Ways
Shanahan and Faulkner are far from the only former defense executives or lobbyists to populate the Trump administration. Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson is a former lobbyist for Lockheed Martin. Ellen Lord, who heads procurement at the Pentagon, worked at Textron, a producer of bombs and military helicopters. Secretary of the Army Mark Esper — rumored as a possible replacement for Shanahan as secretary of defense — was once a top lobbyist at Raytheon. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood was a senior vice president at Lockheed Martin. And the latest addition to the club is Charles Kupperman, who has been tapped as deputy national security advisor. His career includes stints at both Boeing and Lockheed Martin. (His claim to fame: asserting that the United States could win a nuclear war.)
All of the above, including Patrick Shanahan, spun through that famed revolving door into government posts, but so many former DoD officials and top-level military officers have long spun in the opposite direction ……….
Le Monde 15th April 2019For several weeks, EDF’s management and the executive have been
preparing a plan to separate nuclear activities from the rest of the group.
A high-risk issue for the government.
Le Monde 15th April 2019 The CGT secretary of the EDF works council, François Dos Santos, protested against the government’s desire to divide the group into two separate
subsidiaries.
Times 16th April 2019 A row erupted in France yesterday after it emerged that EDF’s board will discuss plans to renationalise the group’s nuclear activities and split them from the rest of its business. Unions reacted with anger to what they depicted as the first step towards the dismantling of the energy group that is building Britain’s new reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset.
The board is due to review the restructuring plan next month before presenting it to senior managers and union representatives in June, according to a source. The scheme involves the creation of a parent company to run the group’s 58 reactors in France, as well as new ones that it may build.
This part of the group could be renationalised, rolling back the partial privatisation of EDF in 2004, which left the state with an 83.7 per cent stake. Most of the rest of the group’s activities then would be placed in a subsidiary that would continue to seek private investors under the plan, which has been codenamed Project Hercules, according to the newspaper Le Parisien.
People close to President Macron, who has the final say, claim that he broadly supports the idea, but may backtrack if the price of compensating shareholders proves to be beyond the means of France’s hard-pressed state budget. A fierce union reaction also could prompt him to retreat,
commentators said.
Although a source insisted that the restructuring would have no direct impact on Hinkley Point, it is likely to create short-term uncertainty for EDF Energy, the group’s British division.
EDF is struggling to meet the cost of renovating its ageing French nuclear fleet, which is estimated at between €55 billion and €75 billion. In addition, the group, which has a debt of €33 billion, is facing several other difficulties, not least that it is committed to funding two thirds of the estimated £22.3 billion cost of the new-generation European pressurised reactors being built at Hinkley Point.
A similar reactor at Flamanville in northern France was meant to cost €3 billion and come on stream in 2012. The reactor is still not operating and the budget has reached €10.9 billion. Last week, it emerged that experts had advised that EDF should repair faulty weldings at Flamanville, which would add hundreds of millions of euros to the bill and lead to a further delay.
AARP foreshadows opposition to Ohio nuclear subsidies, Energy News Network BY John Funk 17 Apr 19
The group hasn’t taken a formal position on a bill introduced Friday, but recently told lawmakers it would oppose “any legislation” to prop up nuclear plants
AARP Ohio informed top Republican lawmakers before they introduced a bill subsidizing old nuclear and certain coal power plants that the organization would aggressively fight to defeat such legislation.
In a letter sent to House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, a day before he unveiled House Bill 6 last week, AARP state director Barbara Sykes wrote that AARP would strongly oppose “any legislation” imposing a customer surcharge to subsidize the nuclear plants.
“AARP Ohio, on behalf of its 1.5 million members and families, strongly opposes any surcharge or tax on utility customers in our state that would serve to subsidize the for-profit nuclear power industry,” she wrote………
GOP leaders have said the legislation would raise about $300 million per year from customers. While they maintain customer bills would initially be lower, clean energy advocates say the proposal will cost ratepayers more in the long run by defunding energy efficiency and clean energy measures.
An initial hearing on the legislation was held Tuesday before the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Another round of hearings begin Wednesday before the Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Generation.
Tuesday’s hearing began a day after lawyers for FirstEnergy Solutions asked a federal bankruptcy court in Akron for permission for an additional 90 days to file a plan of reorganization. The company sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Mar. 31. The court rejected the company’s first plan because it included reference to a deal absolving parent company FirstEnergy from any future liabilities for environmental problems caused by its power plants.https://energynews.us/2019/04/16/midwest/aarp-foreshadows-opposition-to-ohio-nuclear-subsidies/
In a Time of Cheap Fossil Fuels, Nuclear Power Companies Are Seeking — and Getting — Big Subsidies
Illinois and New York have approved hundreds of millions of dollars in clean-energy incentives for nuclear power companies. New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland could be next. Pro Publica by Talia Buford, April 17, 19“……….It would be a “safety net” for the company’s nuclear operations in New Jersey, Izzo said. ([Ralph Izzo, chairman, president and CEO of energy company PSEG] It would not, he emphasized, be “a bailout.”
On Thursday, regulators in New Jersey are scheduled to decide whether PSEG has shown that it needs the subsidies, which would be paid for through a surcharge on all customer bills in the state. If the Board of Public Utilities approves the requests, New Jersey would join two other states, Illinois and New York, in giving nuclear power plants hundreds of millions of dollars in order to stay competitive in the wholesale energy market.
The campaign for the subsidies took to the pages of the state’s largest newspaper, The Star-Ledger, this week. A full-page ad on Monday signed by the employees of the Salem and Hope Creek plants, and another on Tuesday, signed by eight former New Jersey governors, praised the subsidy plan and warned of the consequences of not acting.
………..In recent years, the nuclear power industry has ramped up efforts to cultivate influence with legislators and alliances with environmentalists.
The industry’s gains thus far haven’t been easy, or cheap.
In New Jersey, PSEG spent nearly $4 million over the course of 2017 and 2018 lobbying the Legislature on the nuclear subsidies. By comparison, groups lobbying on marijuana legalization, the other big issue of the last two legislative sessions, spent $1.7 million, according to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission………
In each state, the push for subsidies has come after warnings that the plants would have to close. But critics of the programs say that in many instances, the plants are profitable, and the companies are using scare tactics to bully legislators into subsidizing shareholder profits.
“They rattled their saber many times,” said Abe Scarr, state director of Illinois Public Interest Research Group, a consumer organization that opposed the subsidies. “Regardless of whether it was a bluff or not, certainly their threats were a ploy to build pressure on Illinois decision makers.”
Threatening to close plants in the name of shareholder profits is a tactic Stefanie Brand, director of the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel, a state-appointed advocate for utility customers, said she hadn’t seen before.
China goes all-in on home grown tech in push for nuclear dominance, David Stanway, SHANGHAI (Reuters)17 Apr 19 – China plans to gamble on the bulk deployment of its untested “Hualong One” nuclear reactor, squeezing out foreign designs, as it resumes a long-delayed nuclear program aimed at meeting its clean energy goals, government and industry officials said.
China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, was once seen as a “shop window” for big nuclear developers to show off new technologies, with Beijing embarking on a program to build plants based on designs from France, the United States, Russia and Canada.
But after years of construction delays, overseas models such as Westinghouse’s AP1000 and France’s “Evolutionary Pressurised Reactor” (EPR) are now set to lose out in favor of new localized technologies, industry experts and officials said.
……….Though China has yet to complete its first Hualong One, officials are confident it will not encounter the delays suffered by rivals, and say it can compete on safety and cost.
Beijing has already decided to use the Hualong One for its first newly commissioned nuclear project in three years, set to begin construction later this year at Zhangzhou, a site originally earmarked for the AP1000. [nL3N2152KM]
……… EDF, France’s state-run utility, which helped build the EPR project at Taishan in Guangdong province, declined to comment. Westinghouse, now owned by Brookfield after entering bankruptcy restructuring, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Rosatom forges more links with nuclear newcomers,17 April 2019 Rosatom and its subsidiaries have this week signed a number of agreements with countries planning to introduce nuclear power to their energy mix, including Azerbaijan, Congo, Cuba, Ethiopia, Serbia and Uzbekistan. The documents were signed during the XI International Forum Atomexpo 2019 that the Russian state nuclear corporation is holding in Sochi. It also signed an agreement with established nuclear power country China. ………http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rosatom-forges-more-links-with-nuclear-newcomers
Lowman S. Henry: Exelon and the death of competitive energy markets, The Phoenix, By Lowman S. Henry Columnist, Apr 17, 2019,
Exelon, the hugely profitable energy company, wants a bailout. Taxpayers can pay all $500 million at once, or take advantage of a convenient monthly payment plan in the form of higher electric bills. Either way Exelon wants you to pay for their under-performing nuclear power plants.
After raking in billions in “stranded costs” as Pennsylvania transitioned into a competitive energy market, Exelon now finds several of its nuclear power plants unable to compete economically with cheaper and abundant natural gas in the generation of electricity. Having thus benefited from free markets, the energy giant wants a return to government subsidies after having failed to adjust to changing market conditions.
Exelon has deployed an army of lobbyists in Harrisburg to spin the yarn that closing two of their nuclear plants would somehow endanger the region’s electricity supply. Were that true, of course, the plants would be making money and a bailout would not be necessary.
One of the plants is the damaged Three Mile Island facility south of the state capital. Forty years ago disaster was narrowly averted when there was an uncontrolled meltdown in one of its reactors. The plant has been operating at partial capacity ever since, contributing to its economic inefficiency.
Aside from being unprofitable and home to a damaged reactor, TMI as it is commonly known poses a security risk. Harrisburg International Airport lies literally in the shadow of the TMI cooling towers. In an age of heightened concern over terrorist attacks such proximity to an airport renders the facility vulnerable. Thus its closing might be a blessing in disguise.
Exelon has been pressuring state lawmakers for a $500 million infusion (bail-out) of taxpayer dollars to allow it to keep TMI and the Beaver Valley nuclear plant in western Pennsylvania open. The company is apparently unwilling to dip into its own profits to do this, and with a cash-strapped state budget legislators appear unwilling or unable to dish out the requested corporate welfare…….
Brittany Crocker, Knoxville News Sentine April 12, 2019 Sick and injured Cold War nuclear workers are likely to see delays in their health care claims because the Department of Labor has added dozens of steps to the process, according to a home care provider that helps the workers.
The program provides medical care to former nuclear and uranium mine workers who were exposed to radiation and other toxic substances without their knowledge was established by Congress in 2000.
New rule changes to the program — called the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program — will increase the nine-step home health care preauthorization process to 36 steps, said Emily Baker, a spokeswoman for Professional Case Management, a home care provider for nuclear and uranium workers. Those additional steps could add two months to the process, she said.
Baker said the changes also prevent health care providers from helping patients submit the paperwork.
The Department of Labor has not responded to requests made Thursday and Friday for information regarding the purpose of the changes.
Professional Case Management sued the Department of Labor last month to try to stop the changes from going into effect, and more than 2,000 wrote and called the Department to protest the changes, according to the provider.
“These sick people can’t navigate all this red tape,” said Harry Williams, a 73-year-old former Oak Ridge nuclear security officer who helped lobby for the program’s creation.
“We’re old and dying and sick and they expect us to accurately fill out and navigate all these forms and send them to the right places by ourselves. It’s wrong to put these workers through that after all we sacrificed.”
Williams, a military veteran, went to work in 1976 at the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Oak Ridge because it offered good pay and benefits.
He stayed there until 1994, when he moved to the Y-12 National Security Complex. Two years later he had to go on disability.
“I never realized I was being poisoned all the time I was working in Oak Ridge,” he said. “If someone had told me how hazardous it was I never would have worked there.
Harris has chronic beryllium disease, an incurable illness common among nuclear workers who inhaled dust or fumes of beryllium, a material that was commonly used at Y-12 and less often at K-25.
Harris said he developed heart disease, asthma, sinusitis and hypothyroidism because of the disease.
He has diabetes, has had six heart attacks, and has brain lesions he believes are also related to his work at the Oak Ridge nuclear sites. “I’m fortunate because I’ve never smoked or drank and have stayed fairly active with this illness, but I’ve been sick for a long time,” Harris said.
Liberation 11th April 2019The Flamanville EPR risks a new catastrophic delay for EDF. The group ofexperts of the Nuclear Safety Authority considers that the electrician must
“repair” eight large defective welds on the Flamanville reactor. The work
could last until 2022 at the risk of ruining the reputation of the EPR,
which is already years behind schedule.
