Britain’s nuclear future in trouble, aging reactors, and not enough money without China’s help
Britain’s Nuclear Future Uncertain as Relations With China Fray, https://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/britains-nuclear-future-uncertain-as-relations-with-china-fray Rachel Morison and William Mathis, Bloomberg) 8 July 20, — Britain’s fraying relationship with China has the potential to undo a decade of mixed efforts to keep nuclear power flowing as an aging generation of plants drop out of service.
Once the heart of the U.K.’s energy plans, nuclear has been sidelined by spiraling costs and cheaper renewables. It also finds itself at the center of a diplomatic row spanning trade and human rights that threatens to undermine how the sector is financed.
Relations between China and the U.K. have been strained as the row over Huawei Technologies Co. intensified. When sweeping new national security laws were introduced in Hong Kong Prime Minister Boris Johnson offered its citizens the right to live and work in Britain.
China warned the U.K. Monday it’ll face “consequences” if it chooses to be a “hostile partner” after it emerged the government is planning to phase out the company’s equipment in the U.K.’s 5G telecommunications networks.
For nuclear, the sticking point has become the once-feted relationship with China General Nuclear Power Corp. that’s supposed to deliver the next generation of large nuclear plants. That link has come into sharp focus as the U.K. scrambles to find a funding model for projects that aren’t getting any cheaper.
Without CGN, its money and its technology, the U.K. will be left with a huge funding gap that other investors don’t seem willing to fill. It’ll also leave the country’s nuclear plans in disarray.
Equity funding for nuclear power stations is very difficult for private actors,” said Rob Gross, director of the U.K. Energy Research Centre. The risks are significant, timescales long and individual projects are very large. That’s why governments have always played a role in nuclear power, he said.
CGN’s involvement in Britain’s nuclear industry started in 2016 when a deal was signed with Electricite de France SA to cooperate on a trio of reactors totaling 8.7 gigawatts starting with Hinkley Point C in southwest England.
Nuclear remains important for the British government but it’s becoming increasingly pushed to the margins of energy policy as cheaper wind and solar have taken center stage.
Nuclear power has traditionally been seen as a low-carbon way of supplementing renewables — and as such a key part of the future energy mix envisioned in a net zero world.
Losing nuclear power probably wouldn’t pose a threat to the U.K.’s ability to generate enough power. The gap could be filled by gas, batteries or small modular reactors that can provide back-up to renewable energy and keep the lights on.
The sector is also important to the country as a way of building a large, skilled workforce and creating a supply chain using British companies.
False Starts
In 2017, ministers envisioned building 18 gigawatts of new projects but one by one each project folded, unable to negotiate the financing, leaving just EDF and CGN.
The government’s offer in 2018 to Hitachi to take a third of the equity at the Wylfa nuclear project wasn’t enough to keep the company interested.
How best to finance the technology, which costs billions, has become the latest hump in the road for policymakers. The Hinkley Point reactors – expected to start producing power by 2025 – have been hit by delays and cost overruns.
“The precise funding model for nuclear is up to the government to decide,” an EDF spokesman said.
That project will now cost as much as 22.5 billion pounds ($28.1 billion), taking into account inflation, and the guaranteed price of power is significantly higher than the latest round of offshore wind projects. Sizewell-C, still in the planning process, is slated to cost 20 billion pounds.
EDF is struggling and can’t afford to finance Sizewell on its own. The utility has cut costs and jobs, and pared investments setting out a plan to divest at least 10 billion euros of assets from 2015 to 2020 to help fund its share of Hinkley Point.
* CGN’s investment is in the planning and development stage only for Sizewell whereas it is involved in the construction of Hinkley.
The industry favors paying for the massive projects through a Regulated Asset Base model, a proven success on other infrastructure projects. The previous Conservative government was thought to back the financing option but the idea looks to be losing traction.
“If the Chinese pull out, then Sizewell will still go ahead but EDF will be unable to take on another major project,” Elchin Mammadov, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, said “So, Bradwell will be dead or put on hold for another decade.”
The debate has gone quiet following a consultation on the RAB model which closed in October.
RAB likely wouldn’t transfer enough risk from the project’s backers — EDF and CGN. The government would have to offer some kinds of guarantee on the project in order to get private investors to finance it.
One option would be for the government to take either a majority or minority stake in Sizewell C..
I wouldn’t be surprised if what is adopted is either a model with many of the characteristics of RAB, or potentially consideration of a more direct stake. This is about reducing the cost of capital.” said Tom Greatrex, chief executive officer of the Nuclear Industry Association.
But despite the long delays, there’s no indication that the government’s made up its mind how it will proceed.
“We are currently considering responses to inform the best approach to the financing of future nuclear projects,” a spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy said.
As much as 80% of electricity will be produced from low carbon sources by 2030, according to scenarios modeled by the U.K.’s Committee on Climate Change.
“With all but one of the nuclear fleet set to retire by 2030, and uncertainty over the scale of the new build program, it is likely that more electricity from renewable sources will be needed,” said Jonathan Marshall, head of analysis at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.
U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams announces opposition to nuclear testing, hopes to extend compensation for downwinders
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McAdams announces opposition to nuclear testing, hopes to extend compensation for downwinders https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2020/07/07/rmw-mcadams-announces-opposition-to-nuclear-testing-hopes-to-extend-compensation-for-downwinders/#.XwZb3CgzbIU
by Ryne Williams, July 7, 2020 ST. GEORGE —
U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams, D-Utah, announced Monday that he would be sponsoring an extension of the Radiation Exposure Control Act as well as opposing the possibility of more explosive nuclear weapons testing in the United States. McAdams said that next year’s House spending bill covering the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration would prohibit the use of money to prepare or conduct any nuclear testing. The RECA act was originally passed in 1990 and compensated people who are known as “downwinders,” those who worked on the sites of the nuclear testing and the Uranium Miners, Millers and Ore Transporters. The act covered nine counties in Utah as well as areas of Arizona and Nevada, where the nuclear testing took place. “In Utah, we’ve seen increases in certain types of cancers — myeloma, thyroid cancer, breast cancer — much of that is due to some of this nuclear weapons testing that happened in Nevada,” McAdams said in a Facebook live video. “RECA, the compensation act, is set to expire in 2022. The impacts are still here, so this would extend it through 2045, so those people who are impacted can receive compensation. Nothing is going to replace the loss of life or a cancer diagnosis, but at the very least, for the harm caused by our government, they should receive some compensation to help pay their medical bills, lost of income and other things.” A press release from McAdams mentioned the Trump Administration’s recent announcement of plans to resume nuclear testing. Dickson also spoke out about the issue with the congressman at Monday’s press conference. “People are still getting sick, their cancers are coming back,” Dickson said. “We are living with health consequences that haven’t gone away. The way I view it is we were all deemed expendable. They killed their own in the name of national security, and it’s so important for us to tell our stories and have these opportunities, or they die with us.” |
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EU lawmakers ban nuclear from green transition fund, leave loophole for gas
EU lawmakers ban nuclear from green transition fund, leave loophole for gas https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-eu-transitionfund/eu-lawmakers-ban-nuclear-from-green-transition-fund-leave-loophole-for-gas-idUSKBN2472HN
By Kate Abnett and Marine Strauss, 8 July 20,
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union leaders are split over which fuels deserve support from the bloc’s flagship green energy fund, after lawmakers on Monday called for rules that could allow the money to be spent on some fossil gas projects.
The European Commission wants to launch a 40 billion euro ($45 billion) Just Transition Fund using cash from the bloc’s coronavirus recovery fund and its budget for 2021-27, to help carbon-intensive regions launch green industries and retrain workers currently in polluting sectors.
All EU member states agreed last week that the new fund should exclude nuclear and fossil fuels projects, including natural gas projects – a position also shared by the EU Commission.
But on Monday a committee of lawmakers leading talks on the issue in the European Parliament broke ranks. They said that while nuclear energy projects should not be eligible, some fossil gas projects could get just transition funding.
The committee voted in favour of requiring green finance rules to be applied to funding of gas projects – which would effectively exclude such projects. But they also said the EU Commission could make exemptions to this rule and approve some gas projects that don’t meet the green criteria.
The full legislative assembly will vote in September on whether or not to approve the rules. Once the assembly has agreed its position, talks will start with the EU Commission and national governments in the EU Council on the final terms of the funding.
Gas emits roughly 50% less CO2 than coal when burned in power plants, but it is not a “zero-carbon” fuel and is associated with leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Can Hunterston nuclear power station restart? Are UK tax-payers to pay billions for new nuclear?
Times 5th July 2020, A high-stakes game of chance is being played at Hunterston B nuclear power
station on the west coast of Scotland. Engineers from the French giant EDF and safety experts from the Office for Nuclear Regulation are trying to work out if and when the plant’s two reactors can be restarted.
Forty-four years of hard use have not been kind to the plant’s graphite core — a vast chunk of carbon riddled with cracks that weighs the same as 110 double-decker buses. While the regulator and EDF insist that, with careful supervision, a cracked graphite core is nothing to worry about, it
is a symptom of its advancing years.
Hunterston, like the rest of EDF’s nuclear power stations around the UK, is on borrowed time. Seven nuclear stations capable of supplying about a sixth of the UK’s power needs will shut during the next decade. Unless ministers leap into action, the country that opened the first industrial-scale nuclear power station in 1956 at Calder Hall, Cumbria, will be left with just one replacement plant, Hinkley Point C on the Somerset coast, which is under construction.
The government faces difficult decisions: what next in its race to eliminate carbon emissions by 2050? A boom in renewable power has offered the beguiling prospect that wind and solar, combined with storage such as big batteries and hydrogen, could fill the void. A report from the National Infrastructure Commission has suggested that commercially unproven technologies, such as hydrogen generation, could negate the need for more nuclear power and be “substantially cheaper”.
With half an eye on this utopian future, successive governments have tried to persuade European
power giants such as Germany’s RWE and Eon, and Japan’s Toshiba and Hitachi, to pump cash into new reactors. However, one by one, those companies have dropped out, leaving just a handful of options remaining.
EDF and China General Nuclear (CGN) — both backed by their governments — are building the £22bn Hinkley plant. Without a state support package, EDF will struggle to build the planned Sizewell C in Suffolk. That would leave CGN as the only developer capable of going it alone without UK taxpayer support. ……
The prime minister’s adviser Dominic Cummings is thought to be a fan of small nuclear power stations, and Boris Johnson hinted about a role for nuclear last week………. Taxpayers are about
to find out whether billions of pounds will be pumped into nuclear power……
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/atomic-quandary-for-ministers-after-years-of-dallying-over-nuclear-power-dzsc2s25l
European Commission demands that Romania adopt a nation radioactive waste management programme
Radioactive waste: Commission calls on ROMANIA to enact correctly EU law in this field act, Media Romania News Agency , July 3, 2020
The Commission has decided to send reasoned opinions to Bulgaria, Denmark, Greece, Lithuania, Poland and Romania for failing to adopt a national programme for radioactive waste management compliant with the requirements of the Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste Directive (Council Directive 2011/70/Euratom), and has also sent another reasoned opinion to Romania for failing to transpose correctly certain requirements of the same Directive. ….
The Directive establishes a Community framework for ensuring the responsible and safe management of spent fuel and radioactive waste to ensure a high level of safety and avoid imposing undue burdens on future generations. In particular, it requires Member States to draw up and implement national programmes for the management of all spent fuel and radioactive waste generated on their territory, from generation to disposal.
The aim is to protect workers and the general public from the dangers arising from ionising radiation. Member States were required to transpose the Directive by 23 August 2013 and to notify their national programmes for the first time to the Commission by 23 August 2015. The Member States concerned have three months to act. Otherwise, the Commission may decide to refer these cases to the Court of Justice of the EU. https://www.actmedia.eu/daily/radioactive-waste-commission-calls-on-romania-to-enact-correctly-eu-law-in-this-field/87391
Long process ahead, if Estonia to get nuclear power – at least 15 years
Environment ministry: If Estonia gets nuclear power plant, not before 2035, ERR News, 3 July 20, Estonia’s first nuclear power plant would not start operating before 2035, according to a memorandum from the Ministry of the Environment (Keskkonnaministeerium), which the government will discuss later this summer.
The memorandum “Possibilities for the Deployment of Nuclear Energy in Estonia” (“Tuumaenergia kasutuselevõtmise võimalused Eestis”) describes a process of at which would take at least 15 years which would follow the government agreeing to a nuclear power plant. Estonia is starting this process almost from scratch.
The first proposal of the memorandum signed by Minister of the Environment Rene Koka calls for the establishment of an inter-ministerial working group on nuclear energy in order to form publicly agreed positions on the possibility of introducing nuclear energy in Estonia.
…….. The memorandum states it is important to determine society’s support for nuclear energy as soon as possible and to avoid problems caused by poor communication. Holding a referendum on this issue should also be discussed….
The memorandum lists the main risks and describes possibilities to mitigate them. These include problems with the introduction of new technology, the possibility of an emergency, concerns about the production and supply of nuclear fuel, financial and nuclear liability, radioactive waste management, lack of know-how and specialists, public involvement and communication.
……Finally, there are political risks.
If a referendum is held on the construction of a nuclear power plant and if the public vote against it, the ability to initiative nuclear energy projects in Estonia will be ruled out for a very long time, and Estonia’s energy policy may change with the change of government,
But there is also a broader, international view that Estonia’s neighbors, such as Sweden and Lithuania, who have themselves decided to abandon nuclear energy, or Russia, who may not want a nuclear power plant built in Estonia for geopolitical reasons if US technology is introduced…….. https://news.err.ee/1109118/environment-ministry-if-estonia-gets-nuclear-power-plant-not-before-203
Boris Johnson pledges to get ‘big nuclear things’ done in message to Copeland mayor
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Boris Johnson pledges to get ‘big nuclear things’ done in message to Copeland mayor
By Liam Waite @imliamwaiteSports reporter We’re going to get massive things done and we’re going to get big, big nuclear things done as well.”Mr Starkie said he was “delighted” to receive the welcome and felt the message on nuclear made the future seem “bright”….. https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/18557769.boris-johnson-pledges-get-big-nuclear-things-done-message-copeland-mayor/
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UK Labour says state-owned Chinese firm CGN should be excluded from Hinkley nuclear project
Labour Questions ‘Aggressive’ China’s Involvement In UK 5G And Nuclear Energy Deals
Shadow foreign secretary signals tougher stance on Huawei and Hinckley Point amid Hong Kong crisis. Huffington Post, By Rachel Wearmouth, 2 July 20 China’s involvement in the UK’s 5G network and nuclear energy programme should be questioned after “aggressive” actions towards the UK, Labour has said.
Nandy said the UK should dump the 5G deal and said state-owned Chinese firm CGN should also be excluded from plans to finance nuclear energy plant Hinckley Point, in Somerset.
Speaking to Times Radio presenter John Pienaar, Nandy said: “We need far greater strategic independence from China, which means that we need to have home-grown alternatives for our 5G network and our nuclear power.”
She went on to say: “I don’t think we should be handing over large chunks of our energy infrastructure, especially our nuclear energy infrastructure, to a country that’s behaved in such an aggressive way towards the UK and the people of Hong Kong in recent weeks.” …………. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/bar-aggressive-china-from-5g-and-nuclear-energy-deals-in-uk-says-labour_uk_5efcb53bc5b612083c55d19e?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAATQSZ7H9fv_HgI3hWPha0plWMLUzrUnPUbrBmIuuNrwU_Rjr1Nt
France’s EDF in a financial pickle over huge costs of UK’s Hinkley C nuclear project
Dave Toke’s Blog 27th June 2020, The chickens are coming home to roost for EDF for their questionable decision to go ahead with building Hinkley C -a decision they took despite the lack of certainty over whether they would get enough backing from the British Government.
Originally EDF was publicised as being offered UK Treasury loan guarantees that had been widely touted as a vital basis for building Hinkley C. But now the French Financial Markets Regulator has
sanctioned EDF for not flagging up how conditional such loan guarantees were. These loan guarantees have never materialised.
Essentially, EDF is now continuing to build Hinkley C using money borrowed on its own balance
sheets – borrowings which are much more costly than UK Government backed guarantees and which reduce its own (EDF) profitability.
The Finance Officer of EDF actually resigned at the time EDF decided to go ahead with building Hinkley C. Of course all this is happening at the same time when we are being asked to believe that the next EPR (at Sizewell C) is going to be delivered at low cost to the consumer if the risk of building the plant is transferred from EDF to the British taxpayer and consumer!
This is the so-called RAB mechanism, something that could well just turn out to be an
almost unlimited cash facility for EDF to park their financial black hole in the centre of British finances (as well as those of the French).
https://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.com/2020/06/edf-sanctioned-by-french-regulators-for.html
Donald Trump intervenes in Wylfa nuclear project discussions
North Wales Live 28th June 2020, Donald Trump is understood to have intervened in discussions about the next generation of nuclear power on Anglesey. According to reports, the US
president’s administration has warned Hitachi, the company behind the site,
not to sell it on to the Chinese government. The intervention is a sign of
escalating tensions between the Americans and the Chinese, according to the
Times. It reports today that the White House is heaping pressure on Hitachi
– which is a Japanese-owned company – not to sell on its interest into the
site to Beijing.
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/donald-trump-intervenes-anglesey-nuclear-18502362
Hungary to apply for nuclear plant expansion licence
Hungary to apply for nuclear plant expansion licence on Tuesday, BUDAPEST, June 29 (Reuters) – Hungary will on Tuesday submit licensing paperwork to the state atomic agency to expand its sole nuclear power plant and fast-track the first phase of its construction, the earth works at the reactor site, the government said on Monday.
Hungary is planning to double the capacity of its 2-gigawatt Paks nuclear power plant with two Russian-made VVER reactors.
The project, awarded in 2014 without a tender to Russian state nuclear giant Rosatom, is often cited as a sign of the exceptionally warm ties between Hungarian premier Viktor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a connection that has unnerved Western allies.
Budapest has requested and received European Union approval for the fast-track process which will allow it to start construction at the site in January 2021, Minister Janos Suli, who is in charge of the expansion, told parliament.
In response to a question from an opposition lawmaker, he denied sweetening the process for Russia. ……..
Experts have warned that approval for the reactor hole, a massive project to remove 8 million cubic metres of earth and build a 2,500 metre (8,200 ft) concrete wall more than a metre thick, could make the project much more difficult to abandon……https://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL8N2E62VR
Sizewell nuclear plant – untried, costly, environmentally damaging, and no electricity for 10 years or more!
the government is exploring novel ways in which to lay the burden for financing a dangerous and costly nuclear venture on you, the consumer.
‘The Sizewell C plans are an insult to the people of Suffolk’ https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/pete-wilkinson-together-against-sizewell-c-campaign-1-6718925 27 June 2020, Pete Wilkinson, Together Against Sizewell C
Chairman of Together Against Sizewell C, Pete Wilkinson, has described it is a “battle for the soul and integrity of East Suffolk”. Here he explains why he is opposing the nuclear project.
Anyone new to Suffolk, ignorant of EDF’s nuclear plans, would be forgiven for laughing out loud.
An untried reactor, labelled ‘technically complicated to construct’ by its own designers, a cost of £20billion-plus, taking at least 10 years to build, producing waste which is not only lethal to living tissue but which remains so for thousands of years and for which there is no agreed or proven disposal or management route, to be built in the middle of a community of 5,000, which will not produce electricity for at least 10 years by which time its output will be redundant to needs, built on an eroding coast? Yeah, sure: pull the other one.
You really couldn’t make it up.
Yet this is what residents up and down the East Suffolk are facing. They have been led to believe that the destruction of their environment on a massive scale, the compulsory purchases, the roads, the workers’ campuses, the borrow pits, the huge water demand in the driest county is inevitable – and to make the best of it.
When did anyone ask YOU, resident of East Suffolk, if you wanted your tranquil, culturally rich and peaceful rural environment urbanised and anonymised, requiring six new roundabouts on the A12 and up to 1,000 vehicle movements a day along our country roads to ferry the material required for our own white elephantine carbuncle on our heritage coast, light, noise and dust pollution 24 hours a day, seven days a week or a decade of accommodating 4,000 workers? Of course you were not asked. They knew the answer. The new nuclear policy has not been subjected to anything like forensic public or Parliamentary scrutiny.
Democratic deficit runs through all aspects of this programme like the letters in a stick of rock and is presented by its advocates as ‘inevitable’. The National Policy Statement process renders what government calls ‘national infrastructure projects of over-riding importance’ inviolate, untouchable and – yes – inevitable unless the planning authorities have the courage or unless the Secretary of State has the guts to do what they should – throw the EDF plans out as an insult to the people of Suffolk. Sizewell C is important to no-one other than EDF.
But just how ‘over-riding’ is the need for Sizewell C? The French-made film, ‘The Nuclear Trap’ makes it clear that Hinkley C in Somerset and Sizewell C are more critical to the survival of the French nuclear industry than they are to providing electricity to UK consumers.
There has been a huge reduction in electricity demand since 2013 – over 16% – making earlier predictions of an increase of 15% by 2020 an overestimation of more than 30%.
Renewables out-compete nuclear on every front – cost, waste, jobs, CO2 and time for deployment. If ever Sizewell was built, it would be at least a decade, probably more like 15 years given the history of cost and time over-runs of its flagship plant at Flamanville, before it turned one kilowatt hour of electricity.
In 15 years, we will – one can only hope – have grown out of our obsession with nuclear and invested at suitably high levels in realising the huge job potential in micro-technology, decentralisation, efficiency and conservation of energy, and look back on our nuclear infatuation with a shake of the head.
The current National Policy Statement which covers the nuclear component of the energy policy, EN6, is entirely unfit for purpose as it gives policy authority only to those nuclear plants which can be deployed before 2025 – i.e. not, Hinkley, not Sizewell and not Bradwell, none of which will be generating electricity by that date.
Therefore the EN6 policy document is null and void. Its replacement is still undergoing review and will depend heavily on the financing arrangements the government can agree to in order to remove the need for EDF to fork out for it.
Instead, the government is exploring novel ways in which to lay the burden for financing a dangerous and costly nuclear venture on you, the consumer.
So much for ‘no subsidy’ nuclear, but in policy terms, it is legally questionable for Hinkley C to continue to be built, for Sizewell C’s planning application to be submitted or for CGN/EDF to consult on plans to build Bradwell B when there is no policy architecture to justify and legitimise any of this work or progress.
EN6 has fallen as a legitimate policy statement for new nuclear build but that does not seem to have any effect on the way the French and Chinese backers of new nuclear in the UK are required to act nor the complacency and indifference with which the government seems to take these gaping legal inconsistencies.
The waste problem that nuclear generates is probably the most intractable. In the 15 years of the existence of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, it has failed to secure a site, a volunteer community or to satisfactorily solve many of the dozens of technical and engineering problems associated with burying 500,000 cubic metres of legacy waste while ensuring that the estimated 78,000,000 units of radioactivity remain underground.
While new build waste such as that from Sizewell C is likely to be less bulky, its high burn up in the reactor means that it will be far hotter than even Sizewell B’s waste and will generate much more radioactivity – up to five times that contained in the legacy waste. How can any government or industry knowingly embark on a development programme which will create such a mountain of waste when a repository for its safe disposal is still more a matter of hope over expectation?
The only legacy Sizewell C will leave for Suffolk is a degraded environment and a radioactive waste mountain which future generations will have to deal with. Please tell your councillor to vote to remove the support for Sizewell C at the full council meeting on July 7, please write to the planning inspector to voice your concerns and please urge your MP to tell the Secretary of State to put EDF’s planning application where it belongs – in the bin.
Ukraine declassifies Chernobyl nuclear disaster documents
Ukraine declassifies Chernobyl nuclear disaster documents https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/119019/ukraine-declassifies-chernobyl-documents/
The archives, published in a book edited by the Ukrainian secret service, SBU, give an overview of the various construction errors, accidents and emergency interruptions at the plant between 1971 and the day of the disaster.
After Reactor 4 of the Soviet nuclear plant at Chernobyl exploded, a no-go zone was set up around the area due to the risk of radiation.
The biggest nuclear disaster in History caused the deaths of thousands of people, while tens of thousands had to be displaced.
On Sunday, a new fire occurred in the red zone around the plant, which is about three hectares in area. The Ukrainian authorities said on Monday that the fire had, for the most part, been put out.
In early April, a forest fire fed by gusty winds and unusually dry weather had broken out around the abandoned nuclear plant.
By the time it was brought under control in mid-May, about 11,500 hectares had been destroyed.
France’s old Fessenheim nuclear reactor to finally shut down- the first of many
France’s oldest nuclear reactor to finally shut down,Guardian,
Environmentalists have welcomed news that the 43-year-old Fessenheim reactor will close, nine years after it was first planned, Agence France-Presse, 28 June 20,
France’s oldest nuclear power plant will shut down on Tuesday after four decades in operation, to the delight of environmental activists who have long warned of contamination risks, but stoking worry for the local economy.
The Fessenheim plant, opened in 1977 and already three years over its projected 40-year life span, became a target for anti-nuclear campaigners after the catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima in Japan in 2011.
Despite a pledge by then-president Francois Hollande just months after the Fukushima disaster to close Fessenheim – on the Rhine river near France’s eastern border with Germany and Switzerland – it was not until 2018 that his successor Emmanuel Macron gave the final green light.
Run by state-owned energy company EDF, one of Fessenheim’s two reactors was disconnected in February.
The second is to be taken off line early on Tuesday, but it will be several months before the reactors have cooled enough for the used fuel to be removed.
That process should be completed by 2023, and the plant is not expected to be fully dismantled before 2040 at the earliest. …..
More will follow, with only 294 people needed on site for the fuel removal process until 2023, and about 60 after that for the final disassembly. ……
There is no legal limit on the life span of French nuclear power stations, but the EDF had envisaged a 40-year ceiling for all second-generation reactors, which use pressurised water technology.
France’s ASN nuclear safety authority has said reactors can be operated beyond 40 years only if ambitious safety improvements are undertaken.
In the 1990s and 2000s, several safety failures were reported at Fessenheim, including an electrical fault, cracks in a reactor cover, a chemistry error, water pollution, a fuel leak, and non-lethal radioactive contamination of workers.
In 2007, the same year a Swiss study found that seismic risks in the Alsace region had been underestimated during construction, the ASN denounced a “lack of rigour” in EDF’s operation of the plant.
Without Fessenheim, France will still have 56 pressurised water reactors at 18 nuclear plants generating some 70% of its electricity. Only the US, with 98, has more reactors, but France is by far the world’s biggest consumer of nuclear energy.
In January, the French government said it would shut 12 more reactors nearing or exceeding the 40-year limit by 2035, when nuclear power should represent just 50% of the country’s energy mix in favour of renewable sources.
At the same time, the EDF is racing to get its first next-generation reactor running by 2022 – 10 years behind schedule – and more may be in the pipeline…….https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/28/frances-oldest-nuclear-reactor-to-finally-shut-down
New Zealand stood up to the nuclear bullies- the Rainbow Warrior story
NZ gained ‘international creds’ as nuclear-free nation with Rainbow Warrior bombing, says author, Asia Pacific Report
New Zealand established its credentials as an independent small nation after the fatal bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985, says an author and academic who spent weeks on the vessel shortly before it was attacked.
On 10 July 1985, the Rainbow Warrior was sunk at an Auckland wharf by two bombs planted on the hull of the ship by French secret agents.
The event is often referred to as the first act of terrorism in New Zealand.
LISTEN: The Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan Crime NZ interview with David Robie
WATCH: Eyes of Fire archival videos
READ: The Eyes of Fire book
Two French agents planted two explosives on the ship while it was berthed at Marsden wharf, the second explosion killing Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.
Dr David Robie, who is an AUT professor of journalism and communication studies, as well as the director of the university’s Pacific Media Centre, had spent more than 10 weeks on the ship as a journalist covering its nuclear rescue mission in the Pacific.
He wrote about his experience in Eyes of Fire, a book about the last voyage of the first Rainbow Warrior – two other Rainbow Warrior ships have followed.
In 1985, Rongelap atoll villagers in the Marshall Islands asked Greenpeace to help them relocate to a new home at Mejato atoll. Their island had been contaminated by radioactive fallout from US atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.
Environmental journalism
“At the time I was very involved in environmental issues around the Pacific and in those days Greenpeace was very small, a fledgling organisation,” he tells Jesse Mulligan.
“They had a little office in downtown Auckland and Elaine Shaw was the coordinator and she was quite worried that this was going to be a threshold voyage.
“It was probably the first campaign by Greenpeace that was humanitarian, it wasn’t just environmental – to rescue basically the people who had been suffering from nuclear radiation.” ……….
Moruroa protest planned
The US had carried out 67 nuclear tests at the Marshall Islands. France was also carrying out 193 tests in the Pacific and Greenpeace had planned on confronting that situation at Moruroa Atoll after its Marshall Islands rescue effort.
New Zealand had already voiced disapproval of the testing in the region, with then Prime Minister David Lange in 1984 rebuking the French for “arrogantly” continuing the programme in the country’s backyard.
Dr Robie left the ship when it docked in Auckland after the Marshall Islands stage of the mission. Three days after the ship had docked, a birthday celebration was held for Greenpeace campaign organiser Steve Sawyer onboard. The attack happened after the party.
Just before midnight on the evening of 10 July 1985, two explosions ripped through the hull as the ship.
Portuguese crew member Fernando Pereira was killed after returning on board after the first explosion……..
Thirteen foreign agents were involved, operating in three teams. The first team brought in the explosives, the second team would plant these and the third was on stand-by in case anything went wrong with the first two teams.
“A commanding officer kept an overview of the whole operation. I think there was an element of arrogance, the same arrogance as with the testing itself. There was a huge amount of arrogance about taking on an operation like this in a peaceful country – we were allies of France at the time – and it is extraordinary that they assumed they could get away with this outrageous act.”
Two of the spies were caught. Two General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) officers, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were arrested on July 24. Both were charged with murder, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.
Repression of independence movements
“You have to see it within the context of the period of the time,” Dr Robie says.
He says that the French policy of repression against independence movements in New Caledonia and Tahiti, with assassinations of Kanak leaders like Eloi Machoro, needed to be understood to put the Rainbow Warrior attack in perspective. France was bitterly defending its nuclear force de frappe.
“New Zealand was unpopular with the major nuclear powers and there was certainly no sympathy for New Zealand’s position about nuclear testing. So, there wasn’t really any co-operation, even from our closest neighbour, Australia……..
The case was a source of considerable embarrassment to the French government.
“They did pay compensation after arbitration that went on with the New Zealand government and Greenpeace. But justice was never really served… the 10 years were never served, both Prieur and Mafart were part of the negotiations with French government.
NZ was held ‘over a barrel’
“Basically, France had New Zealand over a barrel over trade and the European Union, so compromises were reached and Prieur and Mafart were handed over to France for three years. Essentially house arrest at Hao atoll, the rear base of the French nuclear operations in Polynesia.”
Dr Robie said the rear base was widely regarded as a military “Club Med”.
He says they didn’t even spend three years there, but left for France within the time period.
While the attack was on an international organisation rather than New Zealand itself, most New Zealanders saw it as an attack on the sovereignty of the nation
Dr Robie says it left a long-lasting impression on New Zealanders.
“It was a baptism of fire. It was a loss of innocence when that happened. And in that context, we had stood up as a small nation on being nuclear-free. Something we should have been absolutely proud of, which we were, with all those who campaigned for that at the time. I think that really established our independence, if you like, as a small nation.
“I think we have a lot to contribute to the world in terms of peace-making and we shouldn’t lose track of that. The courage that was shown by this country, standing up to a major nuclear power. We should follow through on that kind of independence of thought.” https://asiapacificreport.nz/2020/06/29/nz-gained-international-creds-as-nuclear-free-nation-with-rainbow-warrior-bombing-says-author/
1 This Month
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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