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Nimbys. Naysayers. Traitors. Children take note, why learn oracy when insults will do?

Catherine Bennett, Guardian,  9th Feb 2025

Keir Starmer’s rhetoric against green campaigners appears to have taken a playground turn.

Before the last election, in what was billed as his “most personal interview yet”, Keir Starmer said: “I’m not in the habit of bandying insults around”. It was once part of his appeal, or meant to be, that his speech was polite, even to the point of colourless, in contrast to the ugly gibberish streaming out of Boris Johnson, then Liz Truss. When the Tories went low, Starmer went sorrowful headteacher. “I don’t think Boris Johnson is a bad man,” he said in one speech, “I think he is a trivial man.”

His favourite word, these days, is “nimbys”. Starmer uses it so freely he’s personally breathed new life into the original acronym (“not in my back yard”), revealing along the way its largely unexplored potential to create national disharmony. Why restrict such a genius jibe to arguments about ring roads and executive homes?

Last week’s headlines about his plan for nuclear power expansion – typically, “Starmer to ‘push past nimbyism’ in pledge to expand nuclear power sites” – are only the latest in which Starmer demonstrates how any opposition to any scheme with environmental consequences can be represented, by a skilled litigator like himself, as nimbyism: purely selfish, irrational and against the common good. Unlike the visionary tech overlords such as Google, Meta and Amazon, which Starmer invited, in the same speech, to profit, with their data centres, from the UK nimbys’ certain defeat. His government’s pro-nuclear press release featured praise from similarly patriotic, non-nimby-infested corporations, such as EDF and Microsoft.

It is thanks to Starmer we now understand that Greenpeace and other environmental campaigners – actually anyone with questions about, for instance, the disposal of nuclear waste – are essentially indistinguishable from other varieties of nimby he has been insulting for a while, so as to trivialise in advance any disquiet about Labour’s plans to tear up planning regulations.

Look beyond the acronym’s “back yard” element: now any non-local objection to 150 infrastructure projects, all evidently beyond criticism, also identifies a person as, in his eyes, the enemy of his “working people”.

…………………………..“There are countless more examples of Nimbys and zealots gumming up the legal system,” he wrote, “often for their own ideological blindspots to stop the Government building the infrastructure the country needs.” Anti-growth traitors, the lot of them. “They want to win for themselves,” Starmer raved, “not for the country.”………………………………………..

 For prominent Tory idealists, there must be validation in Starmer’s promise to fulfil their dreams, never properly realised, of humbling environmentalists and trashing planning restrictions (in places where they don’t live). Not forgetting the satisfaction of seeing Starmer recycle, for Labour, their exact same phrases, sometimes wearing the same accessories – hard hats and hi-vis jackets – for the benefit of vanity photographers recently declassified as a Tory outrage.

Since it can’t be plagiarism, only shared passion can explain why Starmer and David Cameron have phrased their ambitions in identical terms, in wanting, say, a “bonfire of red tape” (Starmer 2024; Cameron 2014). Starmer thinks regulations are “suffocating” (likewise Cameron); Starmer says “we are the builders” (ditto George Osborne); Starmer wants to end “dithering” (Cameron, “cut through the dither”); Starmer declares Britain “open for business” (Cameron, same, 2012); Starmer confronts those “talking our country down” (so did Cameron, 2011).

To judge by their interchangeable expressions of annoyance, hostility to environmental protections is also common ground for Reeves and Osborne. For him, they placed “ridiculous costs on British businesses”; for her, they make “delivering major infrastructure in our country far too expensive”. In 2012, the vice-president of the RSPB, Britain’s largest nature conservation charity, called Osborne “a bloody idiot”.

…………………………The teaching of “oracy” in schools was once a priority for Starmer. Confident speaking, he said, gives “an inner belief to make your case in any environment”. Whatever explains his recent change in style, the debacle is not without educational value. Kids, if you go in for name-calling, offensive misrepresentation and unconvincing assertions of your superior judgement, the finest voice coach may struggle to transform it into persuasive oracy. Even when, as with Starmer’s nimbys, your targets were, only months ago, your friends. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/09/nimbys-naysayers-traitors-children-take-note-why-learn-oracy-when-insults-will-do

February 12, 2025 Posted by | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Opposition mounts to planned nuclear plant as Starmer confirms new policy of ‘Build, baby, build’

Martin Shipton Nation Cymru 9th Feb 2025

Opposition to a proposed nuclear energy plant in Bridgend is mounting, with the local Green Party saying it is “unnecessary, unwanted and unsafe”.

But doubts about the proposal come as Keir Starmer confirmed that the UK Government intends to change the planning system to make it easier for such projects to go ahead.

An American-owned company called Last Energy intends to build the SMR (small modular reactor) plant next to the River Llynfi, just to the north of Bridgend.

The Green Party argues that If the development goes ahead, it will be funded by venture capitalists who are not likely to be citizens of Wales. The nuclear power plant will operate for profit, as a private enterprise.

Untested

A party spokesperson said: “It is based on a new design which if built will be the first of its kind. So the design is untested in the real world. Locals, including Green Party members, have several credible reasons for concern.

“The Green Party questions the need for a nuclear power plant, when Wales has the natural resources required to produce all its energy from a mixture of solar power, onshore and off-shore wind generation.

“It is true that people need secure energy supplies which can be quickly restored, and that Wales needs investment in improving the grid infrastructure. But nuclear power is not the solution to Wales’ energy needs.

“As was proved in the December 2024 storm, we desperately need improvements to our energy resilience – such as the ability to restore power after severe climate events, and this should be the focus of any energy investment.

“Do locals want a nuclear power plant in Bridgend? Last Energy has hosted two community consultations, one in Bettws and one in Pencoed. Debra Cooper, the Green Party Chair for Bridgend, attended both events and asked how the locals had been invited to these meetings, given that many were unaware that they were taking place.

“The speaker gave a vague reply that Facebook had been used, and that Last Energy had outsourced the invitations. More consultation events are planned, and we demand that Last Energy genuinely seeks to invite the community to their consultations.

“Is nuclear power safe? The risk of nuclear leaks from the onsite nuclear waste storage is not acceptable.

“Who will pay for future nuclear waste storage? There is a risk that no other region of the UK will be willing to store the nuclear waste, and that this area will become a long term nuclear waste storage site. The consequences of accidental leakage and terrorist targeting have not been fully considered.”

Nuclear waste

Brian Jones, CND Cymru Vice Chair, said: ““Last Energy, despite having never built a nuclear reactor, is proposing to build four nuclear reactors near Bridgend which, like all nuclear reactors, will produce nuclear waste which needs to be safely contained and monitored for thousands of years. Nuclear power stations have consistently cost more and taken longer to build than originally proposed.”

Tony Cooke, who leads on Wales energy policy development for the Green Party, said: “Green Party policy is clearly opposed to any new nuclear power stations. The developers haven’t actually built any to their proposed design and they don’t have a design licensed by the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation which would be required.  Their website claims more than 300 are operating globally – but this is misleading – there are more than 300 pressurised water reactors), but PWR refers to a generic ‘family’ approach to design – not a specific one.  Licensing is not likely to be quick.  (years not months)

“The developers are presumably targeting an ex coal fired power station site because it has a now unused grid connection. These are valuable, given the time lag in getting new grid connections.  The site should be prioritised for battery storage, which is needed and complements renewable generation.  Because of the small scale of the proposal it is in the powers of the local authority to reject it.  We should lobby for them to do so.”

Planning approvals

Richard Outram, secretary of the Britain / Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities group said:  “Nuclear energy can never be 100% safe and is never ‘clean’ whatever the industry claims. Last Energy has a long way to go before securing the necessary regulatory or planning approvals to begin its project by 2027. The Office for Nuclear Regulation said this was ‘very ambitious’. And Last Energy does not even appear to have any working reactors – just mock ups! Nuclear at Bridgend would be more Lost Energy – renewables are the future.”

Last Energy says it hopes the pressurised water reactors will supply power to “mid-size manufacturers throughout the region, providing 24/7 baseload power and putting the local economy on a path toward industrial decarbonisation”.

It says the project will not need taxpayer cash, with the company estimating it would be making a £300m investment, £30m of which would benefit the local economy, excluding business rates collected by Bridgend County Borough Council. It also expects to create at least 100 local full-time jobs.

Last Energy UK CEO Michael Jenner said: “Last Energy’s Llynfi project will not only transform a vacant coal site into a hub for clean energy production, it will also create economic opportunity for companies throughout South Wales.

“The benefits of nuclear power speak for themselves, so our focus must be on delivering those benefits on time and on budget. Last Energy’s emphasis on mass-manufacturability allows us to deliver significantly smaller plants in under 24 months with purely private financing.

“We look forward to engaging with the public, meeting local suppliers, and being an active partner in south Wales’ path towards energy security and industrial decarbonisation.”

Nato

In June 2024, Last Energy announced it was working with Nato to research opportunities for the future deployment of micro-nuclear power technologies at military installations.

The partnership between Last Energy and Nato Energy Security Centre of Excellence (Ensec Coe) will see the two parties research military applications for the micro-reactors and look into potential deployment.

In October 2024, independent nuclear experts told New Civil Engineer magazine that SMRs could be used to produce weapons-grade material, but various practical, legal and moral challenges made this unlikely to be done in reality.

On February 6 Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to “build baby build”, as he announced plans to make it easier to construct mini nuclear power stations in England and Wales.

He told the BBC the government was going to “take on the blockers” and change planning rules so new reactors could be built in more parts of the country.

Sir Keir said he wanted the country to return to being “one of the world leaders on nuclear”, helping to create thousands of highly skilled jobs and boosting economic growth. https://nation.cymru/news/opposition-mounts-to-planned-nuclear-plant-as-starmer-confirms-new-policy-of-build-baby-build/

February 12, 2025 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

CND Cymru warns against Starmer’s ‘anti-democratic’ push for mini-nuclear reactors

 Morning Star 7th Feb 2025 https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/cnd-cymru-warns-against-starmers-anti-democratic-push-mini-nuclear-reactors

CND CYMRU has blasted Sir Keir Starmer’s “anti-democratic” push to put nuclear reactors in communities without consultation.

The Prime Minister announced planning reforms this week that will see “archaic” rules slashed to allow more power plants approved across England and Wales.

Clearing a path for so-called small modular reactors (SMRs) to be built for the first time, the government said growth will be prioritised ahead of so-called Nimbys.

A set list of eight sites where mini-nuclear power stations can be included in planning rules and the expiry date on nuclear planning rules will be scrapped.

CND Cymru national secretary Dylan Lewis-Rowlands said: “If the proposals from Westminster are to be believed, then not only could plans similar to this pop up anywhere in Wales or England, but could also be pushed through against community will from the UK government.”

CND Cymru vice-chairman Brian Jones added: “This is not just a question of nuclear development, but of democracy.

“The intention of this move by Starmer seems to be something that the nuclear power and weapons industry has only dreamt of before — the ability to ignore communities wishes and focus their vast lobbying budgets on getting central government to allow them to build wherever they want, without opposition.

“It is fundamentally putting profit before people and planet, and turning Britain into a nuclear power test site for SMRs. It is, in one word, anti-democratic.”

Concerns were also raised regarding the intention of these proposals to power AI datacentres, with Mr Lewis-Rowlands warning: “The industry always try and co-opt any reason to push development and secure the lucrative government money that allows them to pay their shareholders.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer (centre) and Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband (right) meet staff at the new decontamination and decommissioning lab during a visit to Springfields (Preston Lab), National Nuclear Laboratory facility in Preston, Lancashire, as the Government is pledging to create thousands of highly skilled jobs by reforming planning rules to make it easier to build new nuclear reactors. Picture date: Thursday February 6, 2025

February 12, 2025 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

Prioritizing nuclear power and natural gas over renewable energy is a risky move for Ontario’s energy future

Norman W. Park, The Conversation, 11 Feb 25

The demand for electricity is growing rapidly as the world transitions from fossil fuels to low carbon-emitting forms of energy. However, making this transition will be difficult.

Ontario is projected to require 75 per cent more electricity by 2050, spurred by increasing demand from the industrial sector, data centres, electric vehicle (EV) adoption and households, according to the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO).

To meet this demand, Ontario Energy Minister Stephen Lecce has proposed transforming the province into an “energy superpower” by aggressively expanding nuclear energy and natural gas while cutting support for wind and solar renewable energy.

This plan was spelled out in a policy directive from Lecce instructing the IESO to consider bids from all energy sources, opening the door to allow bids from natural gas and nuclear energy.

This is a departure from previous policies. Previously, under former Energy Minister Todd Smith, the IESO had stipulated bids for the electrical grid should only be from wind, solar, hydro or biomass.

The Ontario government should reconsider these plans. Non-renewable energy sources are costly, rely on new, expensive technologies, ignore the harm to human health and ignore the consequences for global warming.

Expanding nuclear

A central pillar of the Ontario government’s energy plan is the aggressive expansion of nuclear power. The province has committed to refurbishing 14 CANDU reactors at Bruce, Darlington and Pickering, and has proposed constructing new reactors at Bruce.

Ontario is also the first jurisdiction in the world to contractually build a BWRX–300 small modular reactor project at Darlington, despite not knowing its projected cost.

The cost of this small modular reactor may be much higher than similarly sized solar, wind and natural gas projects. This is unsurprising, given that the costs of nuclear projects are often much higher than projected.

Ontario encountered a similar issue when the Darlington nuclear generating station was constructed. The actual costs of nuclear projects were more than double projected costs and took almost six years longer to complete than projected.

Given these historical challenges and uncertainties, the province’s push for nuclear expansion is a cause for concern.

Opposition to wind and solar

Despite significant cost reductions in utility-scale wind and solar farms, which makes them less expensive than nuclear and fossil fuels in many parts of the world, Ontario’s recent policy directive reduced support for these non-emitting renewable energy sources…………………………………………………………..

Reconsidering Ontario’s energy transition

Ontario’s energy transition must involve supplying more energy to an expanding electrical grid while ensuring it remains reliable and resilient. The current government’s plans to turn the province into an “energy superpower” will commit Ontario to decades of costly expenditures and relies on unproven new technologies.

The government’s proposal to increase natural gas to supply the electricity grid and new buildings will increase the risk of premature death and serious illness to Ontarians and will increase greenhouse gas emission, undermining efforts to combat global warming.

Lecce should reconsider his current policy directive to the IESO. Future bids for the electrical grid should instead be evaluated for their impacts on the health of Ontario residents and climate change.

Ontario’s energy policies should also be guided by knowledgeable experts outside of government, rather than solely by politicians. Establishing a blue-ribbon committee comprising energy scientists and environmental specialists would provide needed oversight and ensure the province’s energy strategy is cost-effective, technologically sound and aligned with climate goals.

Ontario has an opportunity to lead by example in balancing energy needs with environmental and health priorities.  https://theconversation.com/prioritizing-nuclear-power-and-natural-gas-over-renewable-energy-is-a-risky-move-for-ontarios-energy-future-246289

February 12, 2025 Posted by | Canada, ENERGY | Leave a comment

Kansai Electric to ship more spent nuclear fuel to France

Fukui  Japan Times 9th Feb 2025 https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/02/09/japan/japan-more-spent-nuke-fuel-to-france/

Kansai Electric Power is working to double the amount of spent nuclear fuel it will ship to France, increasing it by about 200 tons, informed sources said.

The move comes as Fukui Prefecture, home to several nuclear plants, urges Kansai Electric to address shrinking storage capacity for spent nuclear fuel, the sources said.

In 2023, Kansai Electric announced a plan to ship about 200 tons of the fuel from its Takahama plant in Fukui to France starting in fiscal 2027. Based on the Japanese government’s policy, the spent fuel will be used for research on technology to reprocess uranium-plutonium mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel.

At the Takahama plant, about 90% of the spent fuel storage capacity has already been used, and that amount is expected to reach the upper limit in about three years.

About 200 tons of spent fuel will be generated if the No. 1 to No. 4 reactors at the plant are operated for about three years. Kansai Electric has restarted all of its seven nuclear reactors.

The company initially planned to send spent fuel mainly to a reprocessing plant to be built in Aomori Prefecture, but the completion of the facility has been postponed.

Last September, the company notified Fukui Gov. Tatsuji Sugimoto of its intention to review the plan, and said that it would halt three reactors in the prefecture if it fails to come up with a proposal that can win the understanding of officials there by the end of fiscal 2024.

February 12, 2025 Posted by | France, Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

America’s nuclear gamble: The dangerous push to resume atmospheric testing

Experts warn of catastrophic fallout as calls grow to restart nuclear weapons tests abandoned since 1963.

By Karl Grossman, February 10, 2025

“The United States may need to restart explosive nuclear weapons testing,” declared Robert Peters, research fellow for nuclear deterrence and missile defense at The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing organization close to the Trump administration, in a lengthy report last month.  Issued on January 15, it was titled: “America Must Prepare to Test Nuclear Weapons.”

Peters stated that “the President may order the above-ground testing of a nuclear weapon….And while the United States leaving the [Nuclear] Test Ban Treaty may not be optimal and may indeed have negative downstream effects, doing so may be necessary to stave off further adversary escalation.”

There has not been a nuclear weapon tested above-ground in the United States since 1962, Peters said. That was a year before the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 was signed by the U.S., Soviet Union and United Kingdom. It prohibits nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, underwater or in outer space. It allowed underground tests as long as they didn’t result in “radioactive debris to be present outside the territorial limits of the state under whose jurisdiction or control” the test was conducted.

“Resuming atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons would be disastrous,” says Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. He cited the “lessons learned from above-ground nuclear weapons testing—the radioactive fall-out that harmed many people, especially infants and children.”

Testimony by a co-founder of the Radiation and Public Health Project, the late Dr. Ernest Sternglass, a physicist, before the then Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, was instrumental in President John F. Kennedy signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963. 

As President Kennedy said in a 1963 national address: “This treaty can be a step towards freeing the world from the fears and dangers of radioactive fallout.” He said that “over the years the number and the yield of weapons tested have rapidly increased and so have the radioactive hazards from such testing. Continued unrestricted testing by the nuclear powers, joined in time by other nations which may be less adept in limiting pollution, will increasingly contaminate the air that all of us must breathe.” Kennedy spoke of “children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs” as a result.

The Heritage Foundation’s 900-page publication “Project 2025” is the “governing agenda” for the Trump administration, writes Susan Caskie, executive editor of the magazine The Week, in its current issue. “Many of its authors and contributors,” she noted, are now members of the administration, some appointed to “even Cabinet posts.” …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Are we, if there is a return to atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, to go back to the years of radioactive fallout—and the resulting health impacts? And, as Kennedy stated, “children and grandchildren with cancer in their bones, with leukemia in their blood, or with poison in their lungs.”  more https://www.nationofchange.org/2025/02/10/americas-nuclear-gamble-the-dangerous-push-to-resume-atmospheric-testing/

February 12, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Sam Altman’s Fusion Power Startup Is Eyeing Trump’s $500 Billion AIPlay.

Few energy startups are better positioned to cash in on Stargate than
Helion, which has raised major funding from the AI initiative’s leaders,
and signed a contract with another. Sam Altman announced the $500 billion
Stargate initiative at the White House last month, with a plan to build the
world’s largest AI infrastructure project.

Stargate, the $500 billion effort to secure American AI supremacy for perpetuity backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SoftBank founder Masa Son, among others, will require a
gargantuan amount of energy to power it. As it happens, Altman and Son are
backing a startup that says it can provide it. It’s a fusion energy
company called Helion that recently raised $425 million in a funding round
backed by SoftBank. Prior to that it banked $375 million from Altman, who
serves as Helion’s chairman. It was the single largest investment check
the AI billionaire has written so far. And Microsoft, a Stargate partner,
was the first company to contract with Helion for a fusion power plant by
2028 — a timeline that has some physicists skeptical.

 Forbes 5th Feb 2025 https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2025/02/05/stargate-sam-altman-fusion-helion/

 

February 12, 2025 Posted by | technology | Leave a comment

Can the nuclear industry find a better way to build?

The sector is hopeful that using copies of established reactors can help keep costs down and
prevent delays for new projects.

On a construction site sitting behind the
beach at Sizewell, on England’s East Anglian coast, mountains of soil
make it hard to see two small, blue signs. These indicate the spots where,
in the middle of the next decade, two nuclear reactors should start
generating enough energy to power 6mn homes.

The extraordinary thing about
the 900-acre site is not its scale but that it has an identical twin —
for reasons that reveal a lot about the latest thinking on building nuclear
power stations. The new Sizewell C plant has been designed to be as close
as possible a copy of Hinkley Point C, a project 280 miles away on the
other side of the country. Building there started in 2016, eight years
before that at Sizewell.

The replication is part of a push across Europe and North America to tackle what Bent Flyvbjerg, an academic studying project management, calls the nuclear power industry’s “negative learning” problem. More simply: for an industry that has become infamous
for massive cost overruns and endless delays, maybe the solution is just to
build exact copies of established reactors.

The IEA has found that nuclear
plants delivered since 2000 in the US and Europe were on average eight
years late and cost two-and-a-half times their original budget. The UK
government on Thursday announced planning reforms intended to make it
easier to build nuclear plants quickly and cheaply. Tom Burke, founder of
E3G, a London-based clean energy consultancy, is far more sceptical, saying
the information from the countries claiming better records lacks
credibility. “Where the publicly available information is reliable — if
you look at what happened in Finland, the United States and the United
Kingdom — people have not built reactors to time and budget, ever,”
Burke says.  EDF has said UK regulations meant there were 7,000 changes to
the design for Hinkley Point from that at Flamanville — although the
UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation has disputed the figure.

Many developers’ hopes are hanging on a new breed of reactors — small
modular reactors. The devices are intended to be small enough to
mass-produce on a highly standardised basis in the controlled environment
of a factory. They will then be taken to power station sites for
installation. Most SMRs will have a capacity below 300MW, less than 10 per
cent of the 3.2GW capacity at Sizewell C, and will be far smaller.

Yet sceptics such as E3G’s Burke are far from convinced. Asked if he thinks
steady orders and standardisation can bring the sector’s costs under
control, Burke replies: “I think that’s one of the biggest ‘ifs’
I’ve ever seen.”

 FT 10th Feb 2025
https://www.ft.com/content/5e563e3f-575d-4a90-bd46-4d0a3083f707

February 12, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Sizewell C campaigners slammed “clueless” Government

By Dominic Bareham,  East Anglian Daily Times 9th Feb 2025

Campaigners opposed to the new Sizewell C nuclear power station have slammed prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s backing for nuclear energy as “appalling”.

On Thursday, the Labour leader pledged to “build, baby, build” as part of an effort to create thousands of highly skilled jobs and boost economic growth in the UK.

This included plans to “fast forward on nuclear” by tackling “blockers” and changing planning rules so more reactors could be built in more parts of the country.

But Jenny Kirtley, chair of action group Together Against Sizewell C (TASC), said: “Starmer’s statement is appalling, full of soundbites fuelled by the pro-nuclear lobbyists – many of whom already have their ‘snouts in the trough’ – spouted by a clueless government blaming ‘blockers’ to divert attention away from the evidence that nuclear is not cheap, quick to deploy, homegrown, nor clean.”

In response to the prime minister’s suggestion that legal actions brought by campaign groups had delayed construction projects, she said Sizewell C had not been blocked by campaigners, but by “incompetent planning”.

In particular, she highlighted locating the reactor on a “fast eroding coastline” and in the UK’s driest, most drought-prone region with “no guaranteed sustainable supply of mains water”.

Instead, she said the UK government should be looking to develop renewable energy.

She added: “With renewables, we already have technologies that are cheaper, quicker to deploy and cleaner than nuclear, yet Labour favours slow nuclear, meaning that fossil fuels will burn for longer.”……………………….. https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/24919434.sizewell-c-campaigners-slammed-clueless-government/

February 12, 2025 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

Labour’s growth policy is fantasy fiction

 Richard J Murphy, Tax Research 9th Feb 2025 

Labour is promising growth based on carbon capture and storage, new nuclear power stations and sustainable flying, and none of them are known to work. They’re gambling on economic fantasies.

Labour’s economic policies are increasingly based upon fantasy. I wish I didn’t have to say that, but let me explain.

Labour says it’s going to deliver economic growth in the UK, and at the same time, it’s going to deliver net zero. I don’t believe them. On the basis of their policies, I think they’re talking utter rubbish, and their ideas are based upon economic fantasies.

There are three issues that illustrate this point, and I’m going to try and keep them as simple as possible.

Those three issues are carbon capture and storage, which they are planning to use to control the emissions of big business and therefore achieve net zero, and nuclear power, which is based upon the idea that there can be a new series of at least ten nuclear power stations built in the UK, and a third runway for Heathrow.

Let’s run through those. Carbon capture and storage was announced first of these three, so perhaps I will pick it for that reason.

Carbon capture and storage is a relatively simple idea. What it says is that we don’t have to stop industry from producing carbon, which we all know is polluting the atmosphere and, therefore, creating climate change. Instead, we capture the carbon that is created by business in its industrial processes, and then store it underground, in the case of the UK, almost certainly in the old oil and gas fields under the North Sea. There’s just one little problem with this idea: nobody’s actually done it. ……………………………………………………………

What else could he have done with that money? He could have talked about putting insulation into UK houses and cutting the demand for energy.

He could have literally talked about putting solar panels on the roofs of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of households.

But no, he didn’t want to do that. He instead wants to undertake an economic fantasy; something that has not been proven to be possible, is what he’s choosing over actual deliverables that would create jobs in streets throughout the UK, for real people in the UK, in every constituency in the UK, and which would work. This is what I mean by economic fantasy.

And the nuclear program, to which he has also signed up, which is supposedly going to deliver clean energy from ten new nuclear power stations, is just as fantastical as is carbon capture and storage. The reason why is that these are all based upon a technology created by Rolls Royce called the Small Modular Reactor. And absolutely nobody has any idea whether they will work or not. The technology is, once again, totally unproven. But we are apparently going to have ten of them.

Will they work? Who knows.

How will the waste be managed? Who knows.

What will be the cost from managing the waste from ten new nuclear power stations? Who knows? But I do know that the cost of clearing the first ever nuclear establishment in Scotland – Dounreay – a tiny little reactor built in the 1950s, has recently been increased from £2 billion to £8 billion, and it won’t be clean for another century as yet, which actually means nobody knows when or if it will ever happen.

So, this isn’t clean energy. It is actually about creating long-term, dangerous waste that we don’t know how to manage and at what cost. And yet, Labour is pursuing it because this is another economic fantasy on its part. Growth is apparently all that matters. The fact that we might destroy significant parts of the countryside that can never be used again as a consequence of doing so is neither here nor there.

And then we come to Heathrow………………………………………………………………………..

So, what is Labour up to here? They are living with the most extraordinary short-term thinking, which is totally based upon fantasy because Heathrow Airport hasn’t actually asked for a third runway yet, Rolls Royce hasn’t proved that their reactors work as yet, and absolutely nobody on the planet knows whether carbon capture and storage work as yet. But Labour is putting all its faith into these unproven situations to supposedly create the economic growth which is going to let us have nurses and education and everything else.

They could, of course, do something else. They could, of course, simply fund nurses and education and whatever else it is, because they have the power to do so because they create the money in this country and direct how it is used. Instead, they want to play games of economic fantasy.

And I don’t trust them for that reason.

These are dangerous games. They should not be being pursued.

They are playing with our planet.

They’re putting lives at risk.

They’re putting futures at risk.

They aren’t going to deliver growth, and they are threatening the well-being of generations to come. They’re dangerous people, and I really don’t think they deserve to be in office. https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/02/09/labours-growth-policy-is-fantasy-fiction/

February 11, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

‘Build baby build’, says PM as he sets out nuclear plan

 BBC 6th Feb 2025, Hafsa Khalil. BBC News, Becky Morton, Political reporter,  
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c805mjxe2y9o

Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to “build baby build”, as he announced plans to make it easier to construct mini nuclear power stations in England and Wales.

The prime minister told the BBC the government was going to “take on the blockers” and change planning rules so new reactors could be built in more parts of the country.

Sir Keir said he wanted the country to return to being “one of the world leaders on nuclear”, helping to create thousands of highly skilled jobs and boosting economic growth.

Unions and business groups welcomed the move, but some environmentalists criticised the government, saying it had “swallowed nuclear industry spin whole”.

Currently, progress building nuclear power stations in the UK can be slow – to get from planning to “power on” can take nearly 20 years.

Speaking on a visit to the UK National Nuclear Laboratory in Lancashire, Sir Keir said the process was too long and that changes announced by the government would speed it up.

Asked by the BBC’s Chris Mason if “build baby build” was his mantra like US President Donald Trump’s “drill baby drill”, Sir Keir said: “I say build baby build. I say we’re going to take on the blockers so that we can build.”

He said the government had already changed the rules to allow onshore wind farms and was now acting to ensure “we can fast forward on nuclear”.

Pressed over whether people who live near nuclear infrastructure could get money off their electricity bills, the prime minister said while this was not part of the announcement the government had already backed the idea of benefits for local communities hosting energy infrastructure.

In the 1990s, nuclear power generated about 25% of the UK’s electricity but that figure has fallen to around 15%, with no new power stations built since then and many of the country’s ageing reactors due to be decommissioned over the next decade.

Mini nuclear power stations – or small modular reactors (SMRs) – are smaller and cheaper than traditional nuclear power plants, and produce much less power.

However, while there are some 80 different designs under development globally, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the concept has yet to be proven commercially.

The plans announced on Thursday mark the first time SMRs will be included in planning rules. A list of the only places a nuclear reactor could be built – made up of just eight sites – will also be scrapped.

Sir Keir said the plans would improve the country’s energy security by increasing the supply of clean, homegrown power.

He added that Britain had been “held hostage” by Russian President Vladimir Putin for “too long”, which has resulted in energy prices “skyrocketing at his whims”.

The process of choosing to loosen rules on where nuclear reactors could be built began under Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government with a consultation in January 2024.

Ministers said Britain is considered one of the world’s most expensive countries in which to build nuclear power, and a new Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce will be established to speed up the approval of new reactor designs and stream line how developers engage with regulators.

Conservative shadow energy secretary Andrew Bowie said it was “about time” Labour followed his party’s lead in recognising the benefits “of stable, reliable, baseload nuclear power”.

But Doug Parr, policy director of Greenpeace UK, claimed the government had not applied “so much as a pinch of critical scrutiny or asking for a sprinkling of evidence”.

“The Labour government has swallowed [the] nuclear industry spin whole,” he said, adding: “They present as fact things which are merely optimistic conjecture on small nuclear reactor cost, speed of delivery and safety.”

While the overall cost of nuclear power is comparable with other forms of energy, nuclear plants are extremely expensive to build.

The head of the Nuclear Industry Association, Tom Greatrex, said the changes would give investors certainty and enable them to get on with building new plants.

Gary Smith, GMB’s general secretary, said the union has repeatedly said “there can be no net zero without new nuclear”.

The previous Conservative government gave the go-ahead for a new nuclear reactor on the Suffolk coast – Sizewell C – in 2022.

The new Labour government committed a further £2.7bn to the project in October but a final decision on its future is not due to come until the spending review later this year.

Two new nuclear reactors are also being built at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, which are due to open in 2030.

February 11, 2025 Posted by | Christina's notes, politics, UK | Leave a comment

NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE: SOLAR REVOLUTION

Sir Jonathon Porritt, 7 Feb 25

So, what was Keir Starmer’s response to news yesterday that not only was 2024 the hottest year ever, but that January 2025 was the hottest January ever – when it had been widely predicted that it would be a lot cooler than January 2024: we’re going to double down on our endlessly recycled nuclear fantasies as the best way of achieving instant economic growth.

At the same time, the once-quite-sensible Ed Miliband was reduced to mouthing growthist inanities: “build, baby, build”.

OMG! What drugs are these pro-nuclear politicians on? Was their mothers’ milk radioactive? Do they really have to regurgitate every last gobbet of the nuclear industry’s manic and mostly dishonest hype?

Here’s what this nuclear growth agenda looks like in reality.

Over the next decade, both the big stuff (another of EDF’s Hinkley Point look-alikes at Sizewell C on the Suffolk coast) and the small stuff (as in the spectacularly over-hyped Small Modular Reactors) will make zero difference to consumers’ energy bills; zero difference to UK energy security; and zero difference to achieving our Net Zero targets . 

During that time, new nuclear’s contribution to economic growth will be marginal at best, non-existent at worst. Sizewell C is may never get a Final Investment Decision – after six years of “best efforts” to sign up investors by both the Tories and Labour. Contrary to what you might think, Small Modular Reactors do not, at the moment, actually exist outside of the fevered brains of the nuclear industry. And even if the investment required, for either big or small, was somehow cobbled together, any new nuclear projects are GUARANTEED to be massively over-budget (good for growth, I agree, but disastrous for taxpayers) and massively delayed.

Which is why, dear Keir and dear Ed, easing planning conditions for new nuclear projects will make literally ZERO difference to achieving any additional economic growth.

To mitigate the despair you might now be feeling, thinking about the nuclear-powered Starmer/ Reeves/ Miliband troika, here’s a quick pick-me-up to end the week on a cheerier note.

Just a week ago, a consortium of financial institutions (led by the World Bank and the African Development Bank) agreed the biggest roll out of solar energy in the continent of Africa’s history: $35 billion in loans (at below-market interest rates) to provide electricity for roughly half of the 600 million Africans who are currently deprived of that basic necessity. And roughly half of that $35 billion will be invested in solar mini-grids at the village level. All to be rolled out over the next five years.

It’s so much easier to stay hopeful when one can deal in reality not fantasy.

February 11, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

UK’s new government taxonomy will greenwash nuclear

It would be easy to miss the oblique reference buried in the document where it states that ‘the government proposes that nuclear energy will be classified as green in any future UK Green Taxonomy’. This proposal will be the subject of a further consultation.

Treasury officials and ministers are looking to officially rebrand nuclear power as ‘green energy’ in their latest taxonomy plan; a move the NFLAs will continue to expose and oppose.

Mirroring moves first made by the European Commission, and mooted by the previous Conservative Government, a consultation has now concluded on whether Ministers should establish a new ‘UK Green Taxonomy’ which is described as a ‘useful tool’ in the UK’s ambition ‘to be the world leader in sustainable finance’.

The consultation document describes a taxonomy as ‘a classification tool which provides its users with a common framework to define which economic activities support climate, environmental or wider sustainability objectives’. In essence, it is a mechanism to judge whether an investment is deemed to be ‘green’; if in the case of energy, the technology is judged ‘green’ financial bodies will be better able to justify investing in it to their share- or bondholders.

It would be easy to miss the oblique reference buried in the document where it states that ‘the government proposes that nuclear energy will be classified as green in any future UK Green Taxonomy’. This proposal will be the subject of a further consultation.


Two years ago, we set out in a letter to then Conservative Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in response to his plans to introduce a similar taxonomy a list ‘of the carbon-intensive and environmentally damaging activities that accompany civil nuclear power projects’:

  • the mining of uranium and its processing and manufacture into fuel rods which leaves ‘behind environmental degradation, radioactive contamination, and chronic ill-health from exposure to that radiation amongst the local workforce and the host community (usually poor and Indigenous)’
  • the construction of a nuclear power plant which ‘requires the employment of vast amounts of concrete, steel and numerous other materials, many years of labour, and many millions of vehicles and personnel movements onto and off site’
  • the operation of a nuclear power station necessitating ‘the transportation of fuel rods, waste, other materials and the labour force onto and off the site; the daily use of millions of gallons of seawater with the deaths of millions of fish; and the employment of its own generated electricity for cooling the plant and any stockpiled radioactive waste’
  • ongoing nuclear operations which lead to ‘the contamination of the environment surrounding the plant, local beaches, the sea, neighbouring water courses and air’

And, above all, after the closure of the nuclear power station, the need to engage in the costly and prolonged decommissioning of the plant, the decontamination of the site, and the management and treatment of the radioactive waste involves processes that are ‘incredibly resource intensive.’

Green, we don’t think so.

February 11, 2025 Posted by | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Would a fallout shelter really protect you in a nuclear blast?

By Elana Spivack,, 9 Feb 25,  https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/would-a-fallout-shelter-really-protect-you-in-a-nuclear-blast

Nuclear bunkers aren’t a foolproof way to stay safe during a nuclear attack. Here’s why.

No other human-made catastrophes can wreak more destruction than a nuclear bomb. Luckily, bomb shelters and bunkers can protect us, right?

The truth is that these structures’ ability to shield people from the potent heat and blast of a nuclear bomb varies.

“It all depends on where the bunker is and the quality of the bomb,” Norman Kleiman, an associate professor of environmental health sciences and director of the Radiation Safety Officer Training course at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, told Live Science

According to Kleiman, bomb shelters came about during the Cold War as the U.S. and the Soviet Union hinted at mutually assured destruction by nuclear weapons. Both countries’ governments designed programs to construct shelters in large public buildings, as well as to encourage individuals to build bunkers inside or outside their homes, Kleinman said.

It’s possible that some people marketing these shelters were looking to make a buck amid a crisis. “I’d argue that most of them were being marketed by snake oil salesmen and hucksters,” said Peter Caracappa, executive director of the radiation safety program at Columbia University.

A bomb shelter doesn’t necessarily guarantee safety in the event of a nuclear blast. Its effectiveness comes down to the quality of both the bomb and the shelter.

Modern nuclear weapons are quite different from those of the mid-20th century. Nuclear weapons are much more powerful now, largely because they detonate using a different reaction than they did during World War II and the Cold War. Nuclear bombs in the 1950s had cores made of the radioactive element plutonium or the isotope uranium-235, in which the atoms would split apart in a process called fission, causing a huge explosion. These bombs were a type of nuclear weapon known as atomic bombs, or fission bombs.

“The size of these devices was much smaller, orders of magnitude smaller than current nuclear weapons,” Kleiman said. But now we use bombs that rely on hydrogen fusion to create that boom. These bombs utilize the atomic explosion described merely to trigger a larger, thermonuclear explosion. This explosion can have a blast radius of up to 100 miles (160 kilometers). (For comparison, the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had blast radii of about 1 mile, or 1.6 km.) Between these two nuclear weapons, hydrogen fusion-powered thermonuclear bombs are far more powerful than fission-powered atomic bombs.

“If you are 600 miles [1,000 km] away from a thermonuclear device, maybe a shelter would help you,” Kleiman said. “But if you’re anywhere within that blast radius, the blast, the heat, the explosion — those are going to take you out.”

And then there’s the question of radiation, which is the emission of waves and particles in the wake of the blast. Kleiman said it’s possible to build a bunker to protect you from radiation. The walls must be lined with 3 to 5 feet (0.9 to 1.5 meters) of concrete and steel, as well as lead. This lead is embedded in the shelter’s walls and doorways, so an intact bunker poses little risk of exposure to its occupants.

Moreover, the entrance “has to be kind of zigzaggy,” Kleiman said. Radiation travels in straight lines, so a zigzagging entrance would fend it off.

Capacarra broke down a shelter’s protection ability into three components: It must be effective as a structure to withstand an explosion and weather radiation (which, in part, depends on where it is relative to the explosion), how much material is between you and the radiation the explosion emits, and how well it can keep out fallout material, or the material that’s generated and released in a nuclear explosion.

Lethal radiation persists for days after the explosion, so if you were to survive the initial blast, you would have to stay in the bunker to avoid radioactive fallout. So your shelter would need to not only be equipped with supplies for the time you’d need to stay put — about a week, according to Kleiman — but also ventilate without letting in any radiation. This estimated timeline depends on how far the shelter is from the blast.

However, “that doesn’t mean that it’s safe, it just means that the radiation levels are low enough that you’re not going to die of acute radiation poisoning,” Kleiman continued. He added that cancer is one huge long-term risk of radiation exposure, but that and other consequences may not emerge for decades.

So, while a bunker only a few miles from an explosion wouldn’t be very helpful, a good shelter dozens of miles from a blast could protect inhabitants from radiation for days. “It’s really a question of shielding,” Kleiman said — “shielding from heat, shielding from the blast and shielding from radiation.”

 

February 11, 2025 Posted by | safety | Leave a comment

TASC urge Chief Secretary to the Treasury to cancel Sizewell C.


 Essex TV 5th Feb 2025, https://essex-tv.co.uk/tasc-urge-chief-secretary-to-the-treasury-to-cancel-sizewell-c/

Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) have written the attached letter to Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones, urging government to cancel Sizewell C, saying TASC are “pleased to acknowledge your recent statement to Parliament affirming that you will ”undertake a zero-based review of every pound of public expenditure” as this will enable HM Treasury to carry out a full appraisal of the billions of public funds that the government are sleepwalking into committing to the Sizewell C project”

TASC claim “Sizewell C is a project progressing by stealth, spending money aggressively and at pace, with long lead items being ordered, acting, with taxpayer money, as if a final investment decision has already happened, even though without full financial backing Sizewell C will not be built. There has been no regard to the environmental cost if Sizewell C is not completed.”

TASC took the opportunity to remind Darren Jones of his statement reported in 2022[1] regarding the Sizewell C project “The review will probably conclude that the state can’t take on the capital risk of paying for the majority of the costs of Sizewell C, because private finance was not forthcoming. Nuclear is costly and risky…”

TASC concluded their letter saying, “Sizewell C, is a Boris Johnson vanity project[2] that was recklessly approved by the then Secretary of State, Kwasi Kwarteng, against the recommendation of the five expert planning inspectors”. TASC urge “HM Treasury not to throw more taxpayers’ money at this expensive, risky project that will raise energy bills during its lengthy and problematic construction and announce the cancellation of Sizewell C.”

February 11, 2025 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

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