Times 9th Dec 2018 Something that would once have been unthinkable took another step towards
becoming reality last month just 40 miles east of London on the Essex
coast.
Britain’s nuclear watchdog nudged a Chinese reactor a step closer
to being allowed to operate in the UK, sending it through the “initial
high-level scrutiny” phase. It will eventually be built at
Bradwell-on-Sea. Much tougher hurdles lie ahead, but regulators have so far
been able to find no reason to block China General Nuclear’s HPR1000.
This is the dilemma facing Britain — one that has been thrown into stark
relief by the events of the past week. The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the
chief financial officer of telecoms giant Huawei, means all that must be
seen through a different lens. The daughter of Huawei’s founder was
arrested in Canada at the behest of the US authorities and faces charges of
fraud and breaching US sanctions on Iran.
However, the tone on Chinese investment in Britain has now changed and recalls the words of Theresa
May’s former adviser Nick Timothy in 2015, when he said the government was
“selling our national security to China”. A deep-seated suspicion of
Huawei at GCHQ has finally surfaced as open hostility, while,
coincidentally, BT is removing Huawei technology from its 4G mobile
network. Yet all this looks remarkably like shutting the stable door after
the horse has bolted. If there was a time to reject Chinese investment, it
was 20 years ago.
Now, with ministers reliant on Chinese cash to fund a
significant slice of our future power needs, do they dare bite the hand
that feeds? Plus, in a post-Brexit world, a trade deal with China is meant
to top the priority list. For all the braggadocio, I suspect there will be
much soothing talk between London and Beijing in the months ahead. Does the
government really think it can put the Chinese dragon back in the bottle?
And can it afford to?
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6cfdbf12-fafc-11e8-9a07-72ebead02362
December 10, 2018
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Reeves calls for clarity for nuclear in ‘no deal’ Brexit scenario https://utilityweek.co.uk/reeves-calls-clarity-nuclear-no-deal-brexit-scenario/ David Blackman , 7 Dec 18 Rachel Reeves has urged the government to provide greater clarity about its plans for civil nuclear power if the UK leaves the EU without a withdrawal deal.
The chair of the House of Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee has written to Richard Harrington, who has responsibility for the nuclear industry in his portfolio as minister for busiUK
In the letter, Reeves acknowledges indications of progress on the civil nuclear relationship between the EU and the UK regarding issues like safeguards and trading arrangements.
The government passed a bill last year outlining plans to create a new safeguarding regime for nuclear material and labour once the UK has to leave its existing arrangements under the Euratom treaty.
The letter seeks more detail on the plans that the government is making to ensure that the civil nuclear sector can continue to function after next March if parliament has been unable to secure a broader separation agreement and whether a side-deal with Euratom is being pursued.
She also quizzes Harrington on whether the UK has received any signals from Euratom about whether it will be possible to maintain the “close association” that the government has said it wanted with the EU-wide nuclear co-operation arrangement.
Reeves also asks whether the government has made any arrangements to overcome possible hitches in the nuclear new build programme if the upcoming migration white paper inhibits the inflow of the migrant labour which has been “essential” for such projects.
Reeves said: “In the event of no deal and no transition period, the ongoing operation of the UK’s nuclear power stations could be put at risk. The government needs to spell out what it is doing to ensure that nuclear power stations continue to function from 29 March 2019 and whether it will seek a separate deal with Euratom in these circumstances.
“The government also needs to be clearer about its plans to facilitate the building of construction of major facilities such as Hinkley Point C if restrictions on migrant labour are introduced in the future.”
December 8, 2018
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ENDS Report 3rd Dec 2018 , Government confirms it will fund post-Brexit nuclear regime. The nuclear
industry will not have to fund the creation of a new safeguards regime
after Brexit, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
has confirmed.
https://www.endsreport.com/article/61622/government-confirms-it-will-fund-post-brexit-nuclear-regime
December 6, 2018
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50% in nuclear industry: Energy plan for 2030 is ‘unrealistic’ http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201812050032.html, By NORIYOSHI OHTSUKI/ Senior Staff Writer, December 5, 2018 Half of companies in the nuclear industry doubt the government’s goal of having nuclear power account for 20 to 22 percent of Japan’s energy supply by fiscal 2030, according to a survey.The reasons for their skepticism relate mainly to difficulties restarting or building reactors under stricter safety measures taken after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
The survey was conducted in June and July by the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, whose members include electric power companies that operate nuclear plants.
The forum contacted 365 companies in the nuclear industry, such as equipment manufacturers, and received responses from 254, or 70 percent.
According to the results, 50 percent of the companies said the government’s nuclear energy goal for fiscal 2030 is “unachievable,” compared with only 10 percent that said it is “achievable.” Forty percent said the attainability is “unknown.”
An estimated 30 reactors must be operating to reach the target, but the resumption of reactor operations has been slow since all of them were shut down after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
“Only nine reactors were restarted in the more than seven years after the accident in Fukushima,” Akio Takahashi, president of the forum and former senior official at Tokyo Electric Power Co., said at a news conference. “I guess respondents think it’s difficult (to achieve the goal) given the current pace (of the restarts).”
Tougher nuclear safety standards were set after the Fukushima disaster, forcing utilities to spend more on upgrading their reactors or keeping aging units operational.
Asked why they thought the government’s nuclear goal was unrealistic, 48 percent of the companies said, “There are no plans in sight to build or replace nuclear reactors.”
Thirty-three percent cited the delays in restarting idle reactors, while 16 percent said, “No progress can be seen in regaining trust from the public.”
December 6, 2018
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Backstory: Macron To Close Multiple Nuclear Reactors, But Why Now? https://cleantechnica.com/2018/11/30/backstory-macron-to-close-multiple-nuclear-reactors-but-why-now/?fbclid=IwAR0tO9BXT4FaNEuhnwexaC6cf4V6jj6cJLnQeiZPdA91t7SrrmL5n7xtRHg November 30th, 2018 by Michael Barnard
President Emmanuel Macron of France depressed nuclear executives globally in late November 2018, announcing the planned retirement of 14 of 58 reactors by 2035. This was still less than was promised in his election campaign, but represents a major internal political battle, as well as a major change of France’s circumstances.
This has been an emerging story for several years.
France did a better job than most of building nuclear plants. They picked a single design and built a bunch of them over a relatively concentrated 20 years from about 1978 onward. It was a massive, state-funded, state-managed energy infrastructure initiative at a scale rarely seen. They dodged a bunch of the mistakes of other geographies somewhat by accident. They aren’t subject to earthquakes or tsunamis. They kept the technology highly standard. They developed a skilled workforce for building them and rewarded them well.
But the last nuclear reactor went live almost 20 years ago, the oldest ones are at end-of-life, and the skilled workforce only knows how to maintain and operate existing reactors now, not build new ones. The current President of France, Macron, used to be the Minister of Industry. He’s stated publicly that even he couldn’t find out how much the build-out actually cost, with the clear assertion that a bunch of actual costs were hidden.
“Nobody knows the total cost for nuclear energy,” he said. “I was minister for industry and I could not tell you.”
And France had to build nuclear to be load-following due to its over-reliance on a more usually inflexible form of generation. Nuclear is good for baseload up to 30–40%, but when it has to be turned on and off it gets a lot more expensive very quickly. France has the good fortune to have been able to export a lot of electricity to the rest of the EU for several years, but the energy mix on the continent is strongly favoring more flexible forms of generation.
And now, a few things have changed in the decades since France made its huge bet on nuclear generation in the Messmer Plan in 1974.
Renewables are dirt cheap, with Lazard’s latest figures bringing them in at 3–6 times cheaper than new nuclear. (Amusingly, Lazard still labels wind and solar as ‘alternative energy‘.) Europe is a leading geography for wind and solar, so skilled trades and supply chains all exist. Europe’s grid has strengthened and expanded over the past 30 years, so the need for a country to go it alone has diminished substantially.
The EU was founded in 1993 and France is an integral part of it, and that has two impacts. The first is that France’s energy independence policy that was part of the impetus for a massive nuclear fleet looks archaic in context of modern politics and economics. The second is that EU regulations forbid destabilizingly large governmental subsidies for energy, something which the Hinkley plant in the EU had to fight through. As Macron’s experience shows, it’s actually impossible for anyone to figure out how much any nuclear plant actually cost due to budget fudging. This last is true globally, by the way.
French attempts to build next-generation reactors are failing in multiple locations in France and elsewhere. The cost and budget overruns and construction failures are staggering.
And Chernobyl and Fukushima both happened since the French nuclear build-out began. Public support diminished substantially after those events, one on the same continent and one a world away.
France receives a greater percentage of its electricity from nuclear than any country in the world, at 72% close to 50% more than its nearest ‘competitor’, Slovakia. And it will diminish over the coming decades. Its last-built reactor will reach end-of-life in 2040 or so. It’s unlikely that it will be replaced. And it’s unlikely that more than a fraction of the aging reactors will be refurbished at all.
Wind, solar, a continent-scale grid, and open economic borders all contributed to the death of the French nuclear dream. It’s time for France to wake up and join the future, and it has. It voted in Macron, a politician who promised to reduce France’s nuclear fleet. He fought the entrenched bureaucracy and EDF, and while the new plans are slower than the promised ones, they are the right plans on a pragmatic timeline.
December 3, 2018
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IAfrica 29th Nov 2018 , Yesterday, the Portfolio Committee on Energy (PCE) delivered its report on
the Department of Energy’s (DoE) Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), to Parliament.
According to the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI), Parliament has once again failed to act in the people’s best interest, stating that it found “no persuasive arguments against nuclear”. In the report – which was based on the public hearings on the IRP, held in October – the PCE was in no doubt that “nuclear technology is the cleanest, safest and cheapest technology.”
However, SAFCEI’s Energy Justice Coordinator, Vainola Makan says that during the public hearings, various issues with nuclear, were mentioned. Says Makan, “Over and above the high costs of building a nuclear power plant – which are often marred by delays and related cost overruns – there are further costs associated with maintaining and securing the plant, as well as dealing with waste.”
Makan, who recently held SAFCEI’s People’s Power Learning Fest says, “We are learning that none of the current nuclear waste disposal solutions are real solutions, because the radioactive waste will always be there, and it will always be a risk to all things living in the areas where they are buried. At Koeberg, for example, the concentration of high-level radioactive wastecontinues to increase, and there is still no clear plan for dealing with it.”
https://www.iafrica.com/public-outcry-at-disappointing-energy-planning-report-on-nuclear-to-parliament/
December 3, 2018
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The Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed, How US military spending keeps rising even as the Pentagon flunks its audit. The Nation , By Dave Lindorff, NOVEMBER 27, 2018 In November 15, Ernst & Young and other private firms that were hired to audit the Pentagon announced that they could not complete the job. Congress had ordered an independent audit of the Department of Defense, the government’s largest discretionary cost center—the Pentagon receives 54 cents out of every dollar in federal appropriations—after the Pentagon failed for decades to audit itself. The firms concluded, however, that the DoD’s financial records were riddled with so many bookkeeping deficiencies, irregularities, and errors that a reliable audit was simply impossible………..
Now, a Nation investigation has uncovered an explanation for the Pentagon’s foot-dragging: For decades, the DoD’s leaders and accountants have been perpetrating a gigantic, unconstitutional accounting fraud, deliberately cooking the books to mislead the Congress and drive the DoD’s budgets ever higher, regardless of military necessity. DoD has literally been making up numbers in its annual financial reports to Congress—representing trillions of dollars’ worth of seemingly nonexistent transactions—knowing that Congress would rely on those misleading reports when deciding how much money to give the DoD the following year, according to government records and interviews with current and former DoD officials, congressional sources, and independent experts.
“If the DOD were being honest, they would go to Congress and say, ‘All these proposed budgets we’ve been presenting to you are a bunch of garbage,’ ” said Jack Armstrong, who spent more than five years in the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General as a supervisory director of audits before retiring in 2011.
The fraud works like this. When the DoD submits its annual budget requests to Congress, it sends along the prior year’s financial reports, which contain fabricated numbers. The fabricated numbers disguise the fact that the DoD does not always spend all of the money Congress allocates in a given year. However, instead of returning such unspent funds to the US Treasury, as the law requires, the Pentagon sometimes launders and shifts such moneys to other parts of the DoD’s budget.
Veteran Pentagon staffers say that this practice violates Article I Section 9 of the US Constitution, which stipulates that
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
Among the laundering tactics the Pentagon uses: So-called “one-year money”—funds that Congress intends to be spent in a single fiscal year—gets shifted into a pool of five-year money. This maneuver exploits the fact that federal law does not require the return of unspent “five-year money” during that five-year allocation period.
The phony numbers are referred to inside the Pentagon as “plugs,” as in plugging a hole, said current and former officials. “Nippering,” a reference to a sharp-nosed tool used to snip off bits of wire or metal, is Pentagon slang for shifting money from its congressionally authorized purpose to a different purpose. Such nippering can be repeated multiple times “until the funds become virtually untraceable,” says one Pentagon-budgeting veteran who insisted on anonymity in order to keep his job as a lobbyist at the Pentagon.
The plugs can be staggering in size. In fiscal year 2015, for example, Congress appropriated $122 billion for the US Army. Yet DoD financial records for the Army’s 2015 budget included a whopping $6.5 trillion (yes, trillion) in plugs. Most of these plugs “lack[ed] supporting documentation,” in the bland phrasing of the department’s internal watchdog, the Office of Inspector General. In other words, there were no ledger entries or receipts to back up how that $6.5 trillion supposedly was spent. Indeed, more than 16,000 records that might reveal either the source or the destination of some of that $6.5 trillion had been “removed,” the inspector general’s office reported.
In this way, the DoD propels US military spending higher year after year, even when the country is not fighting any major wars, says Franklin “Chuck” Spinney, a former Pentagon whistle-blower. Spinney’s revelations to Congress and the news media about wildly inflated Pentagon spending helped spark public outrage in the 1980s. “They’re making up the numbers and then just asking for more money each year,” Spinney told The Nation. The funds the Pentagon has been amassing over the years through its bogus bookkeeping maneuvers “could easily be as much as $100 billion,” Spinney estimated.
Indeed, Congress appropriated a record amount—$716 billion—for the DoD in the current fiscal year of 2019. That was up $24 billion from fiscal year 2018’s $692 billion, which itself was up $6 billion from fiscal year 2017’s $686 billion. Such largesse is what drives US military spending higher than the next ten highest-spending countries combined, added Spinney. Meanwhile, the closest thing to a full-scale war the United States is currently fighting is in Afghanistan, where approximately 15,000 US troops are deployed—only 2.8 percent as many as were in Vietnam at the height of that war…………
As things stand, no one knows for sure how the biggest single-line item in the US federal budget is actually being spent. What’s more, Congress as a whole has shown little interest in investigating this epic scandal. The absurdly huge plugs never even get asked about at Armed Services and Budget Committee hearings.
One interested party has taken action—but it is action that’s likely to perpetuate the fraud. The normally obscure Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board sets the accounting standards for all federal agencies. Earlier this year, the board proposed a new guideline saying that agencies that operate classified programs should be permitted to falsify figures in financial statements and shift the accounting of funds to conceal the agency’s classified operations. (No government agency operates more classified programs than the Department of Defense, which includes the National Security Agency.) The new guideline became effective on October 4, just in time for this year’s end-of-year financial statements.
So here’s the situation: We have a Pentagon budget that a former DOD internal-audit supervisor, Jack Armstrong, bluntly labels “garbage.” We have a Congress unable to evaluate each new fiscal year’s proposed Pentagon budget because it cannot know how much money was actually spent during prior years. And we have a Department of Defense that gives only lip service to fixing any of this. Why should it? The status quo has been generating ever-higher DoD budgets for decades, not to mention bigger profits for Boeing, Lockheed, and other military contractors.
The losers in this situation are everyone else. The Pentagon’s accounting fraud diverts many billions of dollars that could be devoted to other national needs: health care, education, job creation, climate action, infrastructure modernization, and more. Indeed, the Pentagon’s accounting fraud amounts to theft on a grand scale—theft not only from America’s taxpayers, but also from the nation’s well-being and its future……… https://www.thenation.com/article/pentagon-audit-budget-fraud/
December 1, 2018
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Will Congress Stop the Endless Wars? Mike Ludwig, Truthout, November 30, 2018 Lawmakers in both parties had plenty of reasons to advance a Senate resolution this week that would end the United States’ participation in Yemen’s bloody civil war. Death is rapidly spreading across Yemen, where the Saudi-led coalition fighting against Houthi rebels is blocking the flow of food and aid, leaving up to
14 million people on the brink of the world’s worst famine in over a century. Bombs made in the US have been found alongside dead civilians.Then there is President Trump, who appears all too eager to defend the Saudi royal family, even after his own intelligence agents
concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman was likely behind the brutal killing and dismemberment of Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who introduced the resolution back in February, said the legislation is certainly about addressing famine, bloodshed and Trump’s troubling embrace of Saudi monarchs. It’s also about Congress reasserting its constitutional authority over when and where the US makes war overseas. This has major implications for the peace movement, which is calling on Sanders to become a leading voice against US militarism.
The US military supplies the Saudi coalition with military equipment, intelligence and targeting assistance, and only recently agreed to stop refueling the Saudi warplanes bombarding Yemen. Congress never authorized participation in the civil war, even as the Obama administration began leveraging military assistance to the Saudis back in 2015. Speaking on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Sanders made this clear as he urged his colleagues to bring the resolution out of committee.
“It is a vote … that says that the United States Senate respects the Constitution … and understands that the issue of war making, of going to war, putting young men and women’s lives at stake, is something determined by the US Congress, not the president of the United States,” Sanders said.
The Senate voted 63-37 to advance the resolution on Wednesday, just months after tabling the measure with a solid majority that included several Democrats. The resolution invokes the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which compels the president to remove US forces from overseas military operations that are not authorized by Congress. A vote to pass the legislation is expected next week, and the antiwar movement now has a hard-fought victory in its sights.
“It’s enormous. This is the first time in the Senate’s history that they have ever gotten this far in invoking the War Powers Resolution,” said Hassan El-Tayyab, a peace activist and co-director of Just Foreign Policy who lobbied Congress on Yemen, in an interview.
The Constitution places the power to declare war with Congress, not the White House, but Congress has not declared war since World War II. From Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, a succession of presidents led US troops into major foreign wars and a long list of other conflicts, rapidly expanding the size of the military and the power of the Oval Office along the way. Each time, these presidents sidestepped Congress. Today, the US has an estimated 800 military bases outside the 50 states, and US troops have regularly engaged in military operations in a long list of countries across the world. ……… https://truthout.org/articles/will-congress-stop-the-endless-wars/
December 1, 2018
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Senate Advances War Powers Resolution to End US Complicity in Saudi Assault on Yemen https://portside.org/2018-11-28/senate-advances-war-powers-resolution-end-us-complicity-saudi-assault-yemen
“Today’s victory is a testament to the power of grassroots activism across the country to bring about change. This vote sets a historic precedent for future action Congress can take to reclaim its constitutional authority over war.”
In a historic vote that could “mark the beginning of the end of American complicity” in Saudi Arabia’s mass atrocities in Yemen, the Senate on Wednesday voted to advance Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) Yemen War Powers resolution by an overwhelming margin of 63-37.
“Today’s victory is a testament to the power of grassroots activism across the country to bring about change.”—Diane Randall, Friends Committee on National Legislation
“I’ve been at this for three years, and I am blown away by this,” wrote Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who sponsored the resolution alongside Sanders and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah.). “The Senate just voted, for the first time, to move forward with a debate on ending American involvement in the Yemen war.”
According to Sanders communications director Josh Miller-Lewis, Wednesday marks “the first time the Senate has voted to advance a War Powers resolution.” Every single Democratic senator joined 14 Republicans in voting to move the measure forward.
“Cutting off military aid to Saudi Arabia is the right choice for Yemen, the right choice for our national security, and the right choice for upholding the Constitution,” Paul Kawika Martin, senior director for policy and political affairs at Peace Action, declared in a statement. “Three years ago, the notion of Congress voting to cut off military support for Saudi Arabia would have been politically laughable.”
While applauding the unprecedented rebuke of Saudi Arabia’s vicious, years-long assault on Yemen—which has been carried out with the help of U.S. weaponry and intelligence—anti-war advocates warned that there is still a long road ahead, with debate and a final vote on the measure expected as early as next week.
“Today’s victory is a testament to the power of grassroots activism across the country to bring about change,” said Diane Randall, executive secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). “This vote sets a historic precedent for future action Congress can take to reclaim its constitutional authority over war and end American involvement in wars around the world.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams. Follow him on Twitter: @johnsonjakep
December 1, 2018
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Can Trump abrogate the INF Treaty without Congress? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Walter C. Clemens, November 28, 2018 President Donald Trump wants to withdraw the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed by presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. But can he do so without Congressional approval?
At first glance, it may appear that Trump has the authority to do so, considering that the president has already used his executive powers to pull the United States from the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal.
But those were technically not treaties, but accords. (While definitions vary and are a bit fuzzy, a treaty is generally considered to be a formal written contract between sovereign states, and recognized by international law. In contrast, an accord is viewed as a lesser animal, and because it is not a treaty it does not need Congressional approval………..
if the commitment is indeed a full-fledged, bona fide treaty such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, that leaves the question: Does the White House have the right to flout or void treaties—described by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1823 as the “supreme law of the land”—without approval by one or both houses of Congress? Some members of Congress certainly think that their approval is needed to exit a treaty; when the president warned in July 2018 that he might pull the United States from NATO, founded on a multilateral treaty, several senators said he could expect an extensive fight in Congress.
The question seems to boil down to this: While the Constitution says that the Senate needs to approve a treaty negotiated by the president, it says nothing about pulling out of a treaty. That leaves us with a conundrum: If it takes two branches of government to make a treaty, can the White House alone terminate it?
A problem more difficult than it first looks. The US Constitution provides no clear answers to this question, but the precedents established over more than two centuries suggest that the president may not act alone to abrogate US treaty obligations. …………
The Senate did place explicit restrictions on the president when it approved the INF Treaty in 1988, and the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty in 1991. In each case, the Senate conditioned its consent on an understanding that the original interpretation of each treaty could not be unilaterally altered by the president. …………https://thebulletin.org/2018/11/can-trump-abrogate-the-inf-treaty-without-congress/?utm_source=Bulletin%20Newsletter&utm_medium=iContact%20email&utm_campaign=AbrogateINF
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December 1, 2018
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L’usine Nouvelle 28th Nov 2018 Ongoing reflection on EDF’s structure could lead to the creation of a
public holding company at the head of two major subsidiaries, with the
group’s nuclear fleet on one side and the sale of its production on the
other a group of activities that are most concerned by the energy
transition.
EDF could be reorganized into three blocks, with a central
public holding company controlling two major subsidiaries, one dedicated to
nuclear power and the other to energy transition. The aim would be to
secure the financing and operation of the group’s power stations by
protecting them from the vagaries of the market, which would amount to
making nuclear power an “essential asset” for France, in particular to
justify the operation. to the European Commission.
December 1, 2018
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FT 28th Nov 2018, If you think Britain has a tough job replacing its ageing fleet of nuclear
reactors, spare a thought for France. The world champion of atomic energy
is approaching a cliff edge in its electricity production.
The bulk of its fleet of 58 nuclear reactors was built in a remarkable 15-year burst of
construction in the 1980s and 1990s. France has not brought on stream a new
reactor for 20 years. Even if the lives of its plants were extended from 40
to 60 years, in itself an expensive proposition, 75 per cent of its nuclear
generating capacity would be gone by 2050.
The French government’s 10-year energy plan unveiled on Tuesday by President Emmanuel Macron was supposed
to set a clear framework allowing EDF, the monopoly nuclear operator, to modernise its fleet and for renewables to take a bigger slice of electricity production.
In the end, Mr Macron deferred many of the hard choices – but it was still a good result for EDF. One of the big choices was how quickly to scale back nuclear, which accounted for 71 per cent of electricity generation last year.
Environmentalists want faster decommissioning of older plants to encourage renewables. Some experts say
plants should be taken offline sooner rather than later, to avoid leaving EDF with the monumental task of decommissioning scores of them at the same time.
https://www.ft.com/content/c7421fbe-f326-11e8-9623-d7f9881e729f
December 1, 2018
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World Nuclear News 29th Nov 2018, The start of regular electricity generation at the Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) EPR has been pushed back by a further four months and is now expected to begin
in January 2020, Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) announced
today.
Last month, the plant’s supplier – the Areva-Siemens consortium –
announced it wanted to update the schedule for completing the unit as
commissioning tests were taking longer than planned. TVO said it has been
informed by the Areva-Siemens consortium that fuel will now be loaded into
the reactor core in June 2019, with grid connection to take place next
October, and the start of regular electricity generation scheduled for
January 2020.
Under the previous schedule provided by the plant supplier in
June this year, fuel loading was expected in January 2019, grid connection
in May and the start of regular electricity production in September.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/New-delay-in-start-up-of-Finnish-EPR
December 1, 2018
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The Crown Prince May Build Himself a Nuclear Kingdom https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/crown-prince-may-build-himself-nuclear-kingdom-37292 The Trump administration should keep a close eye on Saudi Arabia’s nuclear connections and activities. by Ronen Dangoor, 28 Nov 18
The horrific murder of Jamal Khashoggi shed light on the reckless and dangerous decisionmaking process of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MbS). In addition to the latest crisis The New York Times recently published a story about how the prince’s closest security personnel sought to hire private foreign companies to assassinate senior Iranian officials—an act that could have trigger a regional military conflict. This conduct follows a string of other bizarre events in the last few months, initiated by MbS.
The crown prince has demonstrated arrogant, cruel, amateur and capricious behavior. His aggression has been left almost unmonitored by checks and balances inside the Saudi hierarchy. Indeed, MbS has constrained all his potential rivals and has taken full controlof Saudi Arabia’s security and intelligence bodies. As the Khashoggi scandal has proven—such power enables dictators to secretly execute dangerous operations. In parallel, he managed to become the darling of the West after he initiated economic reforms and launched his so called modern 2030 vision .
Now add Saudi’s long history of nuclear ambitions to the mix. For years, Saudi officials have warned that Saudi Arabia will not curb its nuclear ambitions if it will sense a threat to its national security, or if Iran advances in its nuclear program. Rumors were that Pakistan was obliged to provide the Saudis a ready-for-use nuclear weapon if and when the time comes. Things only got more complicated once the nuclear agreement (JCPOA) with Iran was signed in 2015, practically legitimizing Iran’s rights to maintain and develop its uranium enrichment capabilities. At the beginning of November 2018, the crown prince participated in the opening ceremony marking the launch of construction of Riyadh’s first research reactor . It’s still early days and only a symbolic act—the Saudis lack knowhow, technicians, infrastructure and academic expertise—but the country has both enough ambition and funds to advance anyway. Shortly after that the Saudi energy minister said the kingdom launches uranium exploration program.
Over the last decade, purchasing sixteen nuclear power reactors—later scaled back to two reactors—plus uranium enrichment capabilities preferably from the United States, has
featured prominently on the Saudi agenda. The official rationale is the country’s future needs to supply energy —with self-sufficient nuclear materials. While having enrichment capabilities can serve to counterbalance Iran, it may also constitute a future military nuclear program. During previous negotiations with Saudi officials, the Obama administration insisted that Saudi Arabia must comply with the “ gold standard ,” reflective of the conditions imposed on the UAE when it agreed to buy U.S. reactors in 2009. This standard requires a commitment not to enrich uranium or to produce plutonium as a strict condition for any agreement to sell nuclear reactors. According to current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Trump administration has maintained this policy . In an interview with CBS in March 2018, MbS maintained that “without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we would follow suit as soon as possible.”
Following the murder of Khashoggi, Senate members urged the Trump administration to curb any intention to sell nuclear reactors to the Saudi regime. This move is certainly necessary, but not nearly enough. An American refusal to his demands can push the prince to seek an alternative option elsewhere, with producers that will be all too happy to assist—for the right price.
Much of MbS’s current conduct lies parallel to previous experience with three other Middle East tyrants: former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Libya’s leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. These cynical dictators have a common denominator in their infinite ambitions, which ultimately led them to secretly promote a nuclear weapons program. They all relied heavily on their security systems in initiating these plans. Libya and Syria had no sufficient nuclear infrastructure, so they bought a turnkey nuclear project from Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan Network, and in the Syrian case from North Korea .
The Saudi nuclear issue has placed a challenge before the administration. If the prince is successful in surviving the current crisis, then that could prompt him to make even riskier decisions, including taking the nuclear path. Much like in Iraq, Libya and Syria, all the necessary components for that are now in place: A de facto dictator with delusions of grandeur and poor judgment, full control over the security services, unlimited funds for the purpose, a national sense of isolation, an acute threat, and a long-term nuclear vision. As Iran seems to be complying with the JCPOA, a Saudi move could instigate a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. To avoid this, the Trump administration should warn and restrict the Saudi heir. It should also keep a very close eye on Saudi Arabia’s nuclear connections and activities.
Ronen Dangoor is the former deputy head of the research and analysis division at the Israeli prime minister’s office.
November 29, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, Saudi Arabia, weapons and war |
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France to close 14 nuclear reactors by 2035 an all coal-fired power plants by 2022, The Local 28 Nov 18 President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday that France would shut down 14 of the country’s 58 nuclear reactors currently in operation by 2035, of which between four and six will be closed by 2030.
The total includes the previously announced shutdown of France’s two oldest reactors in Fessenheim, eastern France, which Macron said was now set for summer 2020.
He also announced that France would close its remaining four coal-fired power plants by 2022 as part of the country’s anti-pollution efforts……
Macron said France would aim to triple its wind power electricity output by 2030, and increase solar energy output fivefold in that period.
He added that he would ask French electricity giant EDF to study the feasibility of more next-generation EPR nuclear reactors, but will wait until
2021 before deciding whether to proceed with construction.
EDF has been building the first EPR reactor at Flamanville along the Atlantic coast of northwest France — originally set to go online in 2012 — but the project has been plagued by technical problems and budget overruns. https://www.thelocal.fr/20181127/france-to-close-14-nuclear-reactors-by-2035
November 29, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
France, politics |
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