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During Canada’s leaders’ debate, Carney praised a nuclear firm he bought while at Brookfield

Investment fund co-headed by Liberal leader acquired 51% of Westinghouse in 2023

Daniel Leblanc · CBC News ·Apr 17, 2025 

During the first leaders’ debate on Wednesday, Liberal Leader Mark Carney praised nuclear energy and named two companies in the sector with which he did business during his tenure at Brookfield Asset Management.

In 2023, Brookfield formed a partnership with uranium mining firm Cameco to purchase the Westinghouse Electric Company. Brookfield Asset Management acquired 51 per cent of Westinghouse while Cameco got the rest, according to a news release.

The purchase was made within the Brookfield Global Transition Fund, an investment fund that was co-headed by Carney at the time. He was an executive at Brookfield Asset Management from 2020 until early 2025, when he entered politics and became leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister of Canada.

During Wednesday’s French-language leaders’ debate, Carney praised nuclear energy in response to a question from host Patrice Roy. In Canada, nuclear energy falls within the jurisdiction of the federal government, which invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the sector earlier this year.

“It’s a great opportunity,” responded Carney, adding it’s up to the provinces to decide whether or not to invest in nuclear power.

“We have a great advantage here in Canada. We have uranium, that’s one of the advantages. We have major nuclear companies including CANDU, Westinghouse and Cameco,” he said.

Carney then began talking about “small” modular reactor technology in which several firms including Westinghouse are active, but he was interrupted. 

According to documents made public by Brookfield Asset Management, as of Dec. 31, Carney had stock options in the firm worth $6.8 million US.

Carney has repeatedly explained that he co-operated with the ethics commissioner when he entered politics to establish a blind trust to hold all of his assets except cash and his personal real estate holdings. In addition, Carney established anti-conflict of interest screens as prime minister to avoid intervening in matters affecting Brookfield.

Carney facing calls for more transparency

Political scientist Geneviève Tellier said she wonders whether some of Carney’s assets are still linked to his time at Brookfield, adding a clear answer should be provided before the federal election on April 28.

“To directly mention companies in a leaders’ debate, when he perhaps has interests in these companies or has benefited from these companies, I think that raises major ethical questions,” the University of Ottawa professor said. 

“I understand the law does not require it, but morally and for the sake of transparency, we should have more information.”…………………………………

In a written statement issued Thursday, Conservative MP Michael Barrett criticized the Liberal leader’s failure to disclose whether or not he has an ongoing financial interest in Brookfield.

According to the Conservatives, Carney’s response during the debate was designed to “promote” nuclear energy and Westinghouse.

“If Westinghouse was to rake in billions of Canadian tax dollars, Mark Carney would almost certainly benefit financially,” Barrett said.

“[He] should come clean now and disclose all his assets and conflicts of interest before Canadians go to vote. If Carney has done nothing wrong and has nothing to hide, he should have no problem doing so.” https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/during-leaders-debate-carney-praised-a-nuclear-firm-he-bought-while-at-brookfield-1.7513169

April 19, 2025 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

DOGE’s staff firing fiasco at the nuclear weapon agency means everything but efficiency

Bulletin, By Stephen Young | April 16, 2025

According to a recent press report, the Energy Department has identified 8,500 employees who are “nonessential” and therefore vulnerable to being laid off by Elon Musk’s chainsaw-welding wrecking crew known as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Of those 8,500 employees, 500 work in the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the agency responsible for maintaining the US nuclear weapons stockpile. This follows on from a chaotic period in February, when 177 NNSA employees were summarily fired by DOGE. Following a bipartisan uproar, DOGE reversed course, rehiring all but about 27 of the staff who had been laid off.

The media coverage of those forced-then-reversed departures was extensive, with the Washington Post and the New York Times each reporting later the details of the Trump administration operation. But all the coverage, including the latest news, misses two important aspects of this debacle.

Creating chaos in an agency responsible for the safety and security of nuclear weapons is already concerning; the early DOGE firing plan and any new layoffs are very inefficient ways to save taxpayers’ money. According to DOGE, the average salary of the Energy Department’s staff, including the NNSA, is $116,739. If the 500 “nonessential” employees are laid off and all those initially let go were not rehired, it would save approximately $79 million—or about one-third of a percent of the NNSA’s $25 billion budget.

More important, the United States could save tens to hundreds of billions of dollars if it had a sensible and sustainable nuclear modernization plan rather than one that seeks to replace every single weapon in the arsenal—and even create new ones. Such a plan would also have the benefit of removing fuel from the nuclear arms race that President Donald Trump himself has decried.

New security environment. Right now, the NNSA is in the middle of an unnecessary multi-billion-dollar effort to build new and expanded facilities that will produce plutonium pits for new nuclear weapons—the first being made since the end of the Cold War.

The push for new pits usually relies on two arguments—neither of which makes much sense even as they ignore the very high economic, environmental, and geopolitical risks of the path the United States is taking.

First, supporters of new nuclear weapons argue that, as plutonium pits age, they will stop working as expected. In the early 2000s, pit lifetime was estimated at 45 to 60 years. Given that pit production stopped in 1989, that estimate could be a cause for concern, if true. Fortunately, pit lifetime estimates were significantly updated in 2007, when JASON, the federal government’s independent science advisory committee, concluded that most plutonium pits “have credible minimum lifetimes in excess of 100 years as regards aging of plutonium” and that “those with assessed minimum lifetimes of 100 years or less have clear mitigation paths.”

In 2014, Congress passed legislation mandating pit production “driven by the requirement to hedge against technical and geopolitical risk and not solely by the needs of life extension programs.” The law called for demonstrating the capacity to make 80 pits per year by 2027. The “technical” risk highlighted appears tied to pit lifetime—an argument thoroughly refuted by JASON’s reassuring conclusions.

The geopolitical risk perception is more complicated………………………………………………………………………………………………….

DOGE’s arbitrary cuts in NNSA staffing were an ill-informed and very poor choice. The US government could save vastly more money by reconsidering the bloated defense programs that the NNSA is responsible for executing compared to the relatively insignificant savings from the haphazard elimination of staff critical for national security.

The NNSA firing debacle questions whether DOGE is serious about reducing wasteful government programs and promoting efficiency. But if Congress and the Trump administration are, they could easily find tens of billions of dollars to save from the NNSA budget so no more taxpayer is used for a new nuclear arms race that the president has said he does not want. https://thebulletin.org/2025/04/doges-staff-firing-fiasco-at-the-nuclear-weapon-agency-means-everything-but-efficiency/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Behind%20the%20US-Iran%20talks&utm_campaign=20250417%20Thursday%20Newsletter

April 19, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Canada’s Liberal energy plan: more corporate, less climate?

Winnipeg Free Press, By: Anne Lindsey,  Apr. 16, 2025

In this “flag-waving” moment, where the U.S. government is threatening our sovereignty and economic well-being, it now appears the federal election is the Liberals’ to lose.

Amid the hype and adulation for Liberal Leader Mark Carney, however, the Liberals are promoting ideas that merit a closer look. Not least their plan to “make Canada the world’s leading energy superpower” announced in Calgary on April 9.

On the surface, it looks like the perfect recipe for self-reliance in energy and building a stronger Canada. It’s an industrial development strategy meant to exploit our natural mineral resources, build needed infrastructure and create jobs.

But what kind of energy and infrastructure?  The plan includes many welcome and essential commitments to reducing emissions: investment in zero-emission vehicles, developing battery and smart grid technologies, reducing methane, and references to our “clean energy advantage.”…………..

The “clean energy advantage” is not well defined…………………..

Why? Nuclear is a controversial energy technology, for good reason. It seems inevitable that nuclear power will play a starring role in Canada’s energy future but not one the Liberals want to highlight.

Nuclear’s proponents might be winning the semantic battle branding it as “clean,” despite its routine operations releasing a cocktail of radioactive substances, its waste products containing among the most dangerous elements on the planet, and its inextricable link to the manufacture and proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Federal Liberals (and for that matter, Conservatives) have always been pro-nuclear, even though no nuclear plants have been built in Canada for decades. The annual federal expenditure on Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Limited is more than $1 billion, due in no small part to the massive liabilities of managing nuclear waste. Tax credits for nuclear companies already abound.


Just this year, in the month of March alone, the current Liberal government committed another nearly half a billion dollars to a variety of nuclear projects across the country. The plan may not talk, but money does.

Mark Carney himself, a former UN special envoy on climate change and finance, has said there is “no path to net zero without nuclear.” In 2022, he joined Brookfield Asset Management, a firm holding both renewable energy and nuclear portfolios that, together with uranium giant Cameco, purchased bankrupt reactor company Westinghouse, under his watch. No question that Carney has a strong pro-nuclear bent.

More nuclear energy is an inappropriate climate action response, for at least two reasons. First, reactors take decades to be licensed, constructed and connected to the grid. And that’s a luxury we can’t afford.

Business as usual while waiting for nuclear power to get online means we surpass the tipping points of global warming, a scenario we must avoid.

Second, nuclear is the costliest way to generate electricity. Studies by organizations from the Ontario Clean Air Alliance to Lazard show that nuclear is not competitive with renewable alternatives which continue to drop in price. As governments fund nuclear, there is a massive lost opportunity cost for developing cheaper and readily available renewable energy.

Nuclear is too slow and too expensive to address climate change. The IPCC shows nuclear to be inefficient in reducing emissions. This is not an ideological perspective. It is fact.

Besides, “new generation” reactors being touted in Canada (such as GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300) carry a massive political liability, given current world events: most are American designs and all require enriched uranium fuel fabricated outside Canada.

Hardly a prescription for self-sufficiency. It’s a bit mysterious why “nuclear” does not appear in Liberal election plans while getting so much government (Liberal and Conservative) attention and money — unless we recognize the essential role of civilian nuclear infrastructure in maintaining weapons of mass destruction. Canada was instrumental in building the first atomic bombs and remains central to today’s U.S. defence/weapons supply chains for critical minerals, including uranium. Let’s keep that in mind as leaders negotiate trade and tariffs.

Canada should define itself not by becoming an “energy superpower” in the conventional and nuclear sense, but by disengaging from the defence industrial complex. We should use our critical minerals, ingenuity and workforce to pursue a decentralized, affordable, locally based renewable energy infrastructure leaning heavily into building and transportation efficiencies. We need to work together with Indigenous and remote communities, fully understand environmental and social impacts of developments and create smart grid interconnections that allow for maximum flexibility in energy sharing within Canada.

Anne Lindsey volunteers with the No Nukes MB campaign of the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition and has been monitoring nuclear waste since the 1980s. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2025/04/16/the-liberal-energy-plan-more-corporate-less-climate


April 19, 2025 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

The Conservative Argument Against Nuclear Power in Japan

It has been said that nuclear power stations are like nuclear weapons directed at your own country. I couldn’t agree more.

Getting rid of these “nuclear weapons directed at our own country” will not require huge defense spending or difficult diplomatic negotiations. All that is required is the ability to look square at the facts, and a conservative mindset determined to protect our rich and productive land and pass it on to the next generation.

Higuchi Hideak,  Apr 15, 2025, https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01111/

A Devastating Loss of Territory

“Conservatism is essentially realism. A conservatism that refuses to confront reality is as worthless as a progressivism without ideals.”

This is how I opened my Hoshu no tame no genpatsu nyūmon (Nuclear Power: An Introduction for Conservatives), which came out last summer. In the book, I tried to bring attention to the contradictions inherent in the policies of the Liberal Democratic Party: a party that claims to support conservative values and uphold the ideals of patriotism but nevertheless advocates that Japan should continue or increase its reliance on nuclear power, even in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster.

In the book, I made three main points. First, nuclear power is fundamentally incompatible with conservatism and patriotism. Second, nuclear power stations are inherently vulnerable to earthquakes, for structural reasons. And third, nuclear power stations are also vulnerable from a national security perspective.

The disaster at the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in March 2011 led to the evacuation of more than 150,000 people. More than 20,000 are still not able to return to their homes even today. And the state of emergency declared shortly after the disaster has still not been lifted, 14 years later.

In Fukushima Prefecture, evacuation orders are still in effect across more than 300 square kilometers, in what the government has designated as “closed to inhabitation indefinitely.” This is in spite of the fact that the annual safety limits for radiation exposure among the general population were lifted from 1 millisievert to 20 millisieverts. An area of more than 300 square kilometers—equivalent to the size of Nagoya, one of Japan’s key economic centers—is still effectively under evacuation orders. The country has effectively lost territory 50 times larger than the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture, controversially claimed by China and the frequent focus of national security anxiety. As if this weren’t bad enough, more than 300 young people have been diagnosed with childhood thyroid cancer, a condition that would normally be expected to affect only around one in a million. Many of these have been serious cases requiring invasive surgery.

When I sat as presiding judge in the case brought before the Fukui District Court to stop the planned reactivation of the Ōi Nuclear Power Station, operated by the Kansai Electric Power Company, the argument put forward by the Liberal Democratic Party (then newly returned to power) and the business lobby was that shutting down nuclear plants would force Japan to import vast amounts of oil and natural gas to fuel thermal power stations. This would result in a massive outflow of the nation’s wealth and lead to national impoverishment.

On May 21, 2014, the court handed down its verdict. Even if shutting down the plant did lead to a trade deficit, the court rejected the idea that this would represent a loss of national wealth. True national wealth, the court held, consists of rich and productive land—a place where people can put down roots and make a living. The risk of losing this, and being unable to recover it, would represent a more serious loss of national wealth. Compare the arguments of the LDP and economic business lobby with the decision of the Fukui District Court. Which represents true conservatism, unafraid to look squarely at the facts about nuclear disasters? Which best represents the true spirit of patriotism?

Disaster Caused by a Power Failure

Let’s consider a few of the characteristics of nuclear power stations. First, they must be continuously monitored and supplied with a constant flow of water to cool the reactor. Second, if the supply of electricity or water is interrupted, there is the risk of an immediate meltdown. A serious accident could potentially mean the end of Japan as a nation.

The accident at Fukushima Daiichi came perilously close to rendering much of the eastern part of Japan uninhabitable. Yoshida Masao, the director in charge at the time, feared that radioactive fallout would contaminate all of eastern Japan when it looked as though the containment building at the Unit 2 reactor would rupture after venting became impossible. The chair of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission also expected it would be necessary to evacuate the population from a 250-kilometer radius of the plant, including Tokyo.

The accident at Fukushima did not happen because the reactor was damaged directly by the earthquake or tsunami. The initial earthquake interrupted the external supply of electricity, and the tsunami that followed cut off the emergency supply as well. Essentially, a power failure made it impossible to cool the reactor, and this was enough to trigger a catastrophe.

These characteristics mean that the resilience of nuclear power stations depends not on how physically robust the reactors and containment buildings are, but on the dependability of the electricity supplied to them. Nuclear power plants in Japan are designed to be able to withstand seismic activity between 600 to 1,000 gals (a gal being a unit of acceleration used in gravimetry to measure the local impact of an earthquake). But earthquakes over 1,000 gals are not unusual in Japan, and some have exceeded 4,000 gals. For this reason, some construction companies build housing that is designed to withstand seismic shocks up to 5,000 gals.

There are only 17 fully constructed nuclear power stations across the country. Six earthquakes exceeding the safety standards have already occurred at four of these: Onagawa, Shika, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, and Fukushima Daiichi (twice each at Onagawa and Shika). Japan experiences more earthquakes than any other country on earth. Although the country accounts for just 0.3% of the world’s landmass, more than 10% of all the world’s earthquakes happen here. Despite the inherent dangers, there are 54 nuclear reactors along the coasts, around 10% of the world’s total.

Since it is impossible to forecast what scale of earthquake might hit a given site in an earthquake-prone country like Japan, construction companies operate on the principle that houses should be able to withstand seismic events equivalent to the strongest earthquake on record in the past.

The government ratified the Seventh Strategic Energy Plan at a cabinet meeting in February this year. This latest iteration of the plan removed references to an ambition to reduce the country’s dependence on nuclear power as much as possible, and signaled a clear intention to restore nuclear power to a more prominent position in the country’s energy strategy. Despite this, the seismic planning standards for nuclear power stations still assume that it is possible to accurately predict the maximum size of any earthquake that will hit in the future by analyzing past seismic data and running a site assessment of local geotechnical conditions. Whose position demonstrates better scientific judgement and a more realistic assessment of the facts—the government’s or the construction companies’?

Why Europe’s Biggest Nuclear Power Plant Fell into the Hands of the Enemy

TEPCO was a huge company, with annual revenue of around ¥5 trillion and a profit margin of 5%, meaning the company was making ¥250 billion every year. But the economic damages from the Fukushima accident came to at least ¥25 trillion, equivalent to 100 years in revenue for the company. What can we say about an approach to electricity generation in which a single accident can wipe out a century’s worth of revenue and essentially bankrupt a huge company like TEPCO? It is an energy source that is not just cost-ineffective but unsustainable.

For example, it is estimated that if an accident on a similar scale happened at the Tōkai Daini Nuclear Power Station in Ibaraki Prefecture, it would cause damage worth ¥660 trillion (compared to the national government budget of ¥110 trillion). As head of the Fukushima plant, Yoshida was resigned to losing the containment building of the unit 2 reactor to an explosion. He was saved by a “miracle” when a weakness somewhere in the structure of the building allowed pressure to escape and a rupture was avoided. Without this lucky intervention, it is estimated that the economic damages might have reached ¥2.4 quadrillion.

These figures make clear that the problem of nuclear power is not merely an energy issue. It has profound implications for national survival, and should be regarded as a national security priority. Russia’s war in Ukraine has provided a stark reminder of the seriousness of this threat. The Zaporizhzhia station on the Dnieper River is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. A threat from Russia to attack it was enough to persuade Ukraine to hand over the plant to Russian control. If the plant really had been attacked, it might have caused a crisis with the potential to lay waste to large parts of Eastern Europe.

It has been said that nuclear power stations are like nuclear weapons directed at your own country. I couldn’t agree more. And in Japan we have 54 of these reactors bristling our shores, all but unprotected against earthquakes, potential enemies, and terrorist attacks. The LDP government mocks those who oppose Japan’s holding the offensive capability to attack enemy bases and argue for an exclusively defense-oriented posture as indulging in “flower garden” thinking. At the same time, the party is blind to the fact that nuclear power stations represent this country’s biggest national defense vulnerability.

Getting rid of these “nuclear weapons directed at our own country” will not require huge defense spending or difficult diplomatic negotiations. All that is required is the ability to look square at the facts, and a conservative mindset determined to protect our rich and productive land and pass it on to the next generation.

In my previous books and articles, I addressed the legal issues involved in nuclear power. In my Nuclear Power: An Introduction for Conservatives, I made clear that my own political stance is conservative. I was prepared for a backlash from progressives, who make up the bulk of the antinuclear movement, but in fact I received no pushback from that quarter all. In fact, I was taken aback by the resounding support I received.

Most of the criticism came from supposed conservatives who were apparently determined to discredit my sincere intentions and grumbled that it was unseemly for a former judge to be sticking his nose into politics. On Amazon, my reviews were flooded with apparently coordinated personal attacks and slander. But I am still convinced that true and fair-minded conservatives will understand my true intentions.

Geologists acknowledge that it is simply not possible to accurately predict earthquakes with today’s science. A huge earthquake could strike tomorrow, causing a catastrophe at one of the nation’s nuclear power stations that could wipe out or render inhabitable large parts of the country. My aim is simply to make as many people as possible aware of this terrifying fact.

(Originally written in Japanese. )



April 18, 2025 Posted by | Japan, politics, Reference | Leave a comment

Germany: One exit and back? The role of nuclear power in the Merz coalition.

April 14, 2025, by Joachim Wille Note, abbreviation, background, and translation – Dieter Kaufmann, Working Group Against Nuclear Facilities, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

“SMRs will hardly be able to produce electricity more cheaply than conventional new nuclear power plants, unless thousands of them are mass-produced, which is not at all foreseeable.”

Although desired by some members of the Merz coalition, there will be no comeback for nuclear power plants. Joachim Wille philosophizes about the reasons.

Berlin – For a while, it looked as if the future Merz coalition would reverse the shutdown of the most recently shut-down nuclear power plants. The CDU/CSU, by far the largest partner, pushed for reversing the phase-out. The paper from the grand coalition’s “Energy and Climate” exploratory group stated – colored in the CDU/CSU blue – the CDU/CSU’s wish: “Nuclear energy can play a significant role, particularly with regard to climate goals and security of supply.”

Union backtracks on nuclear power: Coalition agreement seals Germany’s nuclear phase-out

But the coalition agreement recently presented by Merz and his colleagues no longer mentions any of this. This is an unmistakable signal: Germany is sticking to its nuclear phase-out, which was initiated in 2011 by CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel after the Fukushima disaster.

And this despite the fact that the public image of nuclear power has turned positive. The last three nuclear power plants in Germany were shut down two years ago. Today, however, according to a survey, a narrow majority of Germans (55 percent) support a return to nuclear energy, while 36 percent oppose it.

In politics, the CDU/CSU could have seen its pro-nuclear stance vindicated. It wanted to investigate whether the recently shut-down reactors could still be reactivated, and possibly even build new mini-reactors, as well as invest more money in the promising future of nuclear fusion. In the current representative Verivox survey, almost a third of respondents (32 percent) favor building new nuclear power plants, while another 22 percent would like to see only the most recently decommissioned plants brought back online.

After the Fukushima disaster: The Bundestag in Berlin voted in 2011 to shut down nuclear power plants

The phase-out of nuclear power, which at its peak provided around a third of the electricity consumed in Germany, was finally sealed by the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. In 2011, the Bundestag passed a cross-party resolution to gradually shut down the 17 nuclear power plants still in operation at the time.

After the reactor meltdowns in Japan, which rendered an entire region uninhabitable, there was a consensus: the “residual risk” of even Western nuclear technology is too great, and a phase-out is necessary. Ultimately, safety calculations showed that even with nuclear power plants made in Germany, serious accidents with radioactive contamination of large areas in the surrounding area, including entire cities, could not be ruled out.

Polls at the time showed high levels of support for the decision pushed forward by Merkel. The physicist’s legendary utterance when she saw the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear power plants on TV was legendary: “That’s it.”

Note: In 2011 polls, over 80 percent of the German population wanted to shut down all nuclear power plants after Fukushima


After the end of the Merkel era: The Union included plans for a return to nuclear power in coalition negotiations

After the end of the Merkel era, the remaining nuclear fans in the Union felt they had the upper hand again. It also looked as if they had a good chance of prevailing in the negotiations with the SPD. In particular, their demand for an “assessment of whether … a resumption of operation of the most recently shut-down nuclear power plants is still possible at a reasonable technical and financial cost,” as stated in the energy policymakers’ paper, seemed to have a good chance of success.

But there is no mention of this in the coalition agreement. Only fusion research plays a role here. “Our goal is: The world’s first fusion reactor should be located in Germany,” it states. However, the time perspective here is two or more decades. So, have Klingbeil’s Social Democrats, who have been pushing for a phase-out since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, prevailed with their course against the CDU/CSU’s nuclear fans?

The energy industry doubts the CDU/CSU’s plan to reactivate nuclear power plants.

The most recent election platform clearly stated: “Nuclear power has been shut down in Germany, and that’s a good thing.” The anti-nuclear NGO “ausgestrahlt” sees it this way, accusing the SPD of having “burst the Union’s nuclear soap bubbles.” In fact, it’s at least as likely that the Union leaders realistically assessed the problems of the nuclear power renaissance. The dismantling of the nuclear power plants is already well advanced, and restarting them would be extremely expensive and very time-consuming due to the need for new permits.

A return to nuclear power is hardly possible: Nuclear power plant operators have closed their chapter.

In addition, the three current nuclear power plant operators, EnBW, PreussenElektra, and RWE, have practically closed the chapter on nuclear power. None of them would voluntarily take the entrepreneurial risk of reversing the decommissioning process. Before the start of the grand coalition negotiations, the line was clear. EnBW’s nuclear power chief Jörg Michels said: “The decommissioning status of our five nuclear power plants is, in practical terms, irreversible.”

PreussenElektra stated that it was not “engaged in such thought experiments.” RWE CEO Markus Krebber stated: “We are past the point in this country where we should bring decommissioned nuclear power plants back online.”

Estimates by the nuclear power plant service provider Nukem show how expensive the restart would have been. He estimates the cost of repairing the six reactors shut down between 2021 and 2023 at one to three billion euros per nuclear power plant, depending on how far the decommissioning has progressed.  This would therefore involve a sum of ten billion euros or more, which would likely have had to come from the federal budget in Berlin.

Nukem CEO Thomas Seipolt told bild.de that he sees “a realistic possibility of a comeback for nuclear power” by 2030 and is therefore making a corresponding offer to the future German government. For his company, which specializes in the decommissioning of nuclear power plants and the management of nuclear waste, such a renaissance of nuclear power would have been extremely lucrative. But the fact remains: Despite the federal government’s €500 billion special fund for infrastructure and climate protection, such a massive cash injection for the nuclear power plant operators would have been virtually impossible to implement.

Further arguments against nuclear power: Green electricity now dominates the electricity market

But other arguments may have slowed the nuclear renaissance. “A return to nuclear power doesn’t fit in a market increasingly dominated by green electricity,” said Christoph Pistner, nuclear power expert at the Öko-Institut, to the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper. The share of renewables in the grid is growing rapidly; currently, it’s already 60 percent, and according to current plans, it’s expected to reach around 80 percent by 2030 and even 100 percent by 2035.

The same applies, by the way, to the mini-nuclear power plants (Small Nuclear Reactors) proposed by the CDU/CSU, which, according to Pistner’s estimates, could not be ready for series production and built until the mid-2030s at the earliest. And: “As things stand today, SMRs will hardly be able to produce electricity more cheaply than conventional new nuclear power plants, unless thousands of them are mass-produced, which is not at all foreseeable.”

And then Pistner recalled a politically critical aspect: “A return to nuclear energy has the potential to jeopardize the search for a final storage site in Germany.” The search for a final storage site was restarted after the Fukushima nuclear phase-out, which eliminated the previously hotly contested Gorleben site, which proved to be geologically unsuitable. A Gorleben 2.0 would probably be the last thing the Merz grand coalition needs – https://www.fr.de/politik/warum-sich-die-neue-koalition-gegen-eine-atom-rueckkehr-entschied-93684231.html Groko (Grand Coalition) is an abbreviation for grand coalition.


Background: Nuclear phase-out in Germany

The first phase-out of nuclear energy in Germany took place in 2000. As early as 2006, it was clear that the conservative parties (CDU/CSU), also known as the Union, wanted to return to nuclear energy with a new government change in 2009. This happened in 2010. But then Fukushima happened in 2011, and Chancellor Merkel withdrew from nuclear energy after just a few months. The resolution was supported by all parties in the federal parliament in Berlin that the last nuclear power plants would be shut down on December 31, 2022. We would have preferred to phase out nuclear power sooner.

All social groups have prepared for the nuclear phase-out. Then Russia, Putin’s country, invaded Ukraine in February 2022 for the second time since 2014. Natural gas and oil became very expensive. Electricity prices also rose. In addition, half of all nuclear power plants in France were shut down in the winter of 2022/2023 for various reasons. The Union then wanted to re-enter nuclear energy. But it was too late. Nuclear power plant operators in Germany were annoyed. Planning security looks different. Nuclear power plants are not kettles that can be switched on and off.

An agreement was reached with the nuclear power plant operators, and the remaining three nuclear power plants were extended until April 15, 2023, as long as the nuclear fuel still allowed. Certain fuel elements were converted once again in the core area of ​​the three nuclear power plants. Then it was over.

April 18, 2025 Posted by | Germany, politics | Leave a comment

Texas Budget Throws a Lot of Tax Dollars at Unproven Nuclear Technology

The initial $750 million tax dollars invested could swell to $2 billion

 Public Citizen 11th April 2025

AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas House of Representatives gave initial approval early Friday to a state supplemental budget that includes $750 million in taxpayer giveaways to developers of advanced nuclear reactors, putting what could ultimately become a $2 billion bet on unproven technology.

The appropriation is part of House Bill 500 – a supplemental budget bill for the 2026-27 biennium – and directed toward the Texas Nuclear Power Fund. This new program would be created by another bill pending before the Legislature.

The initial $750 million in funds could become a $2 billion cost to taxpayers because of the program’s completion bonuses.

“Lawmakers have various strategies to choose from to fix the grid stability problems exposed by 2021’s Winter Storm Uri,” said Adrian Shelley, Texas director of Public Citizen. “With this budget’s subsidies for unproven nuclear technology, lawmakers are again going with the pricier, much harder-to-implement option that its proponents admit will take years to pay off. It’s a promise that comes with a giant “if” and wastes valuable time in the race to fix the grid’s predicted demand and supply issues.”

Gov. Greg Abbott prioritized nuclear energy at the start of the legislative session. In response, legislators proposed the Texas Nuclear Power Fund to incentivize the development of so-called small modular reactors (SMR). However, the technology is not cost-competitive with other forms of power generation, including wind, solar and fossil fuels. The only publicly traded company in the United States trying to build SMRs has canceled six proposals in Idaho after cost overruns of 250%………..
https://www.citizen.org/news/texas-budget-throws-a-lot-of-tax-dollars-at-unproven-nuclear-technology/

April 14, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Labour leader to improve investment for Sizewell nuclear plant

However, campaign groups opposed to Sizewell C, including Together Against Sizewell C (TASC), have accused the prime minister of ignoring cost and time overruns and the environment impact of the project.

“the prime minister is prepared to pre-empt the spending review – and potentially flout the national pre-election period – by soon announcing that the government will commit billions more in taxpayers’ money to Sizewell C, in a flawed attempt to bolster his growth agenda.”

By Dominic Bareham, 11 April

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is set to give the final go ahead for the Sizewell C nuclear power station at the government’s spending review in the summer.

Reports in the national media suggested the Labour leader would approve investment for the nuclear plant – as well as unveiling plans for small modular reactors (SMR) around the country – before a government spending review in June.

A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) confirmed a decision on whether to proceed would be taken in the spending review and the new plant would play an “important role” in helping the UK achieve energy security.

In July 2022, Kwasi Kwarteng, the then Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, gave the go ahead for the Suffolk coastal plant, which is expected to cost in the region of £20 billion and provide power for six million homes.

Since then, the government has approved various tranches of funding for the project, including £2.7 billion in the autumn budget, in addition to £1.2 billion made available to the project since July last year.

However, campaign groups opposed to Sizewell C, including Together Against Sizewell C (TASC), have accused the prime minister of ignoring cost and time overruns and the environment impact of the project.

………….. a TASC spokesperson said the funding for Sizewell C would have been better spent on renewables.

He said: “It is staggering that Starmer is willing to sacrifice one of the UK’s most biodiverse areas and the precious Suffolk Heritage Coast for an ideological pursuit of growth in the form of new nuclear.

“Few can disagree that nuclear power is costly, potentially dangerous, slow to deploy, capital (not labour) intensive and is not ‘clean,’ condemning future generations to deal with the toxic legacy of thousands of tonnes of spent nuclear fuel.”

Campaigners launch legal challenge against Sizewell C planning decision

Alison Downes, from fellow campaigners Stop Sizewell C, said: “Despite huge pressures on public funding, news reports suggest the prime minister is prepared to pre-empt the spending review – and potentially flout the national pre-election period – by soon announcing that the government will commit billions more in taxpayers’ money to Sizewell C, in a flawed attempt to bolster his growth agenda.

“The reality is that Sizewell C will cost at least £40 billion for less than a thousand long term Suffolk jobs at the station.

“Yet very unpopular cuts are being made to other areas of spending, and even in the energy field that money could be put to better use.

“It could, for example, be used to bolster the Warm Homes Plan, which would lower household bills, reduce energy consumption and create many thousands of sustainable jobs nationwide, improving Labour’s chances of winning the next election.”

April 14, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Keir Starmer set to approve nuclear plant in bid to power up economic growth.

The prime minister is pinning his hopes of economic growth on a major nuclear plant and a series of mini nuclear sites

Archie Mitchell, Political correspondent, Independent 10th April 2025

Sir Keir Starmer is expected to approve a major nuclear power plant alongside a slew of mini reactors in a bid to boost Britain’s stagnant economy.

The prime minister will approve investment for the construction of the Sizewell C nuclear plant in Suffolk before the June spending review, The Times reported, as well as unveiling plans for a fleet of small modular reactors (SMRs) across the UK.

Sizewell C is expected to be up and running in 2035 and will provide 7 per cent of Britain’s energy demand at a cost of £20 billion……………………

Sizewell C is yet to be signed off by the government.

A decision on whether to give Sizewell C the green light has formed part of the government’s upcoming spending review, but Sir Keir has been bringing announcements forward in response to Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The PM has been desperately trying to spur on growth amid fears the US president’s trade war will cause Britain’s economy to stagnate and force further cuts in the autumn Budget.

EDF, the French energy giant that owns and runs Britain’s nuclear fleet, and the government, which has committed £6 billion so far, were the first backers of the project.

But they have been trying to raise billions more from prospective investors, including British Gas owner Centrica.

The government in January was forced to deny reports the expected costs of Sizewell C had spiralled to £40bn due to inflation and the knock-on effects of delays at Hinkley Point C.

Whitehall sources told The Independent the government is hugely supportive of Sizewell C, but that an announcement on its approval and funding would not come before June.

Sources told The Times Sir Keir wants to make a “nuclear moment” by combining the approval of Sizewell C with an announcement on a generation of SMRs.

The government has been running a competition to develop the reactors, which are potentially cheaper, much faster to build and easier to deploy, with Rolls-Royce and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy the frontrunners. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/starmer-nuclear-growth-trump-tariffs-b2730868.html

April 13, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Walt Zlotow: Trump, Hegseth off by nearly 1 trillion on national security budget

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 11 Apr 25 https://theaimn.net/trump-hegseth-off-by-nearly-1-trillion-on-national-security-budget/

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is applauding Trump’s boast to push through America’s first trillion dollar defense budget.

“Thank you Mr. President! COMING SOON: the first TRILLION dollar [Defense Department] budget.” Hegseth was echoing boss Trump who chortled “Nobody’s seen anything like it. We have to build out military, and we’re very cost-conscious, but the military is something we have to build, and we have to be strong,”

Trump’s defense policy and these quotes epitomize America’s decline as a peaceful, caring nation. Spending that trillion on militarism and warfare worldwide while Trump’s oligarchs are slashing a trillion from the social safety net is putting America into a death spiral from which it may never recover.

But they should really be high-fiving a national security budget that will be approaching $2 trillion based on Trump’s defense agenda.

That’s because the current defense budget under the National Defense Authorization Act of $900 billion just funds the Pentagon. When factoring in the Department of Veterans Affairs, special operations, Homeland Security and the national security share of US debt interest, the total for Fiscal ‘25 national security approaches $1.8 trillion. Regarding special ops, Trump’s failed month long Yemen bombing to stop their resistance to US enabled Israeli genocide in Gaza has already passed a billion bucks.

Current wars US supports in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iraq and possible upcoming wars in Iran and China, don’t come cheap. Add in cost of over 750 bases in 80 countries hosting over 150,000 military personnel puts the approaching $2 trillion dollar cost in perspective.

Spending all that treasure on national offense (nope, not defense), becomes problematical when Trump is pushing thru trillion dollar tax cuts for his oligarch buddies.

What to do? Of Course, send in oligarch clown Musk to cut a trillion or more from everything that makes life livable for Joe Sixpack.

It is no surprise Trump plans to ravage the social safety net to spend $2 trillion on worldwide military adventurism while giving $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years mainly to those who don’t need them.

But do Trump and Hegseth have to brag about it?

April 12, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Belarus should reinstate its nuclear-weapon-free status, NGOs urge at the Human Rights Council

Geneva, April 8, 2025, https://www.unfoldzero.org/belarus-should-revive-its-nuclear-weapon-free-status-ngos-urge-at-the-human-rights-council/

Belarus should reinstate its constitutional status as a nuclear-weapon-free country, return the nuclear weapons deployed in its territory to Russia, and revive its earlier proposal for the establishment of a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central and Eastern Europe, according to a submission made to the Human Rights Council in Geneva by a group of seven non-governmental organizations. The submission was made as part of the Universal Periodic Review of Belarus’ adherence to its human rights obligations under international law.

“The threat of nuclear war has increased markedly through conflicts involving nuclear armed and allied states, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine”  according to the submitting organizations which include Aotearoa  Lawyers for Peace (New Zealand), Basel Peace Office (Switzerland), Citizens for Global Solutions (USA), International Centre for Civil Initiatives “Our House” (Belarus), World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy (Netherlands/International, World Future Council (Germany/International), and Youth Fusion (Czech Republic/International). “The Russian nuclear weapons recently deployed in Belarus – Iskander-M short-range nuclear missiles and free-fall nuclear bombs deliverable by Belarussian SU-30 fighter-attack planes – elevate this threat.”

Belarus, and other nuclear armed and allied States, should adhere to the commitment they made at the UN Summit of the Future last September to make “every effort to avert the danger of such a war, bearing in mind that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”  

Further, the organizations remind Belarus of the 2018 UN Human Rights Committee affirmation that “The threat or use of weapons of mass destruction, in particular nuclear weapons, which are indiscriminate in effect and are of a nature to cause destruction of human life on a catastrophic scale, is incompatible with respect for the right to life and may amount to a crime under international law.”  This declaration strengthened the general prohibition against the threat or use of nuclear weapons affirmed by the International Court of Justice in 1996.

“The deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus, which President Lukashenko has said that he is ready to use without hesitation in case of aggression against Belarus is in direct violation of international law,” says Rebecca Shoot, Executive Director of Citizens for Global Solutions. “This violation is particularly alarming when the threat of nuclear conflict has never been greater, according to the Bureau of Atomic Scientists. The actions of States at this critical moment are all that stands against a cataclysmic threat to humanity and the planet.”

In the early 1990s, a newly independent Belarus took some exemplary actions for peace and disarmament: relinquishing all nuclear weapons that were remaining on its territory following the break-up of the Soviet Union, acceding to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear State, and adopting a constitution that confirmed Belarus as a “neutral, nuclear-weapon-free country” with a foreign policy based on the “non-use of force or the threat of force, the inviolability of frontiers and the peaceful settlement of disputes.”

“The recent reversal by Belarus of these important actions is cause for alarm, increases regional tensions and elevates the risk of nuclear war threatening our collective future,” says Alyn Ware, Director of Basel Peace Office. “We call on Belarus not only to reinstate its status as a nuclear-weapon-free nation, but also to support adoption of no-first-use policies and replacement of nuclear deterrence with common security to help build a shared future based on peace rather than the spectre of nuclear war.”

“The land of Belarus once chose to silence the hum of nuclear warheads and listen instead to the quiet breath of its forests, lakes and swamps,” says Olga Karatch, founder and director of the International Centre for Civil Initiatives – Our House. “It is time to remember that promise of peace.”

“Russian nuclear weapons deployed in Belarus – along with other nuclear weapons deployed by nuclear-weapon States in Europe and globally – threaten the lives and wellbeing of non-combatants, including youth and future generations” says Ayleen Roy, Core Team Member of Youth Fusion. “Youth in Europe and around the world want to transcend borders, cooperating as friends to build a better future, not as enemies divided by nuclear threats.”

The submission welcomes the proposal for a Central and Eastern Europe Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone which Belarus submitted to the UN General Assembly in 1990. It calls for Belarus to review, revive and reshape such a proposal, which could help in building security guarantees against the threat or use of nuclear weapons in the region.

“Most countries in the global South are part of legally declared Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones (NWFZs),” says Prof. Dr (med) Andreas Nidecker, President of the Basel Peace Office.  “This has helped to build common security and end nuclear threats in these regions. The concept of a European NWFZ could potentially contribute to discussions on security of Belarus, Ukraine and other European nations at this time.”

And the submission calls on Belarus and all other nuclear-reliant States to a replace their reliance on nuclear deterrence with common security. This would include full adherence to the UN Charter and universal acceptance of compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, in order to resolve international conflicts peacefully through law, without recourse to the threat or use of war.

“True security is not built through nuclear arsenals, but through trust, transparency, and international cooperation,” concludes Olga Karatch “Belarus can be a bridge, not a battleground.”

Contact:
Alyn Ware alyn@pnnd.org. Mobile +41 788 912 156. WhatsApp +420 773 638 867  

Read the full submission:
Nuclear weapons policies and practices of Belarus with respect to international human rights law: List of Issues Submission to the UN Human Rights Council during its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the Republic of Belarus.

April 10, 2025 Posted by | Belarus, politics | Leave a comment

£2.7bn more taxpayer funding for Sizewell C confirmed

 

The government has announced that a further £2.7bn of taxpayer cash has made available for Sizewell C, bringing the total to £6.4bn ahead of the final investment decision (FID) on the nuclear power station.

A FID is needed before main construction can start on the planned nuclear power
station in Suffolk. The FID will confirm who is to pay for the construction
and through what model.

As of January, £2.5bn of contracts had already
been agreed for works towards the project. It is expected that the FID
decision, which is not a foregone conclusion, will come at or around the
conclusion of the Spending Review, scheduled for 11 June 2025.

Rumours have swirled around which investors might help with getting the FID over the
line. Centrica chief executive Chris O’Shea said the multinational energy
company’s stake in Sizewell C could be “between 1% or 2% and 50%”,
and EDF has been slowly having its stake in the plant eroded by taxpayer
cash injections while it inputs no further of its own funds.

NCE approached
DESNZ to clarify the status of the previously announced £5.5bn development
expenditure (Devex) scheme, and what the total figure for public investment
in Sizewell C stands at. A DESNZ spokesperson confirmed that the £2.7bn
announced on 4 April is not from the Devex fund. “The government has
committed £3.9bn from the Devex scheme – so £1.6bn is left,” the
spokesperson told NCE. “£8bn has been ringfenced for Sizewell C, and
£6.4bn made available for the project.”

  By Tom Pashby, New Civil Engineer 7th April 2025, https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/2-7bn-more-taxpayer-funding-for-sizewell-c-confirmed-07-04-2025/

April 10, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Federal regulator approves Canada’s first small modular reactor

the commissioners heard concerns from intervenors that GE-Hitachi hadn’t yet finished designing the reactor, raising questions about how its safety could be analyzed properly.

CNSC decisions are particularly vulnerable to challenges from First Nations.

Matthew McClearn,  April 5, 2025, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-federal-regulator-approves-canadas-first-small-modular-reactor/

The federal nuclear safety regulator has authorized construction of an American small modular reactor (SMR) at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Clarington, Ont., a crucial milestone for a project that has garnered worldwide attention.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission granted the license to Ontario Power Generation on Friday for its Darlington New Nuclear Project. OPG has said it will finish building the first 327-megawatt reactor by the end of 2028, and begin supplying electricity to the province’s grid the following year. The reactor’s cost has not been disclosed publicly, but estimates suggest it could be several billion dollars.

“We now await the go-ahead from the Ontario government to proceed,” said OPG spokesperson Neal Kelly.

The Darlington SMR would represent a host of firsts, accompanied by larger risks and anticipated benefits. It would be the only nuclear reactor under construction in the Western hemisphere, and Canada’s first reactor start since the mid-1980s.

It would also represent the first SMR in any G7 country. And it would be the first BWRX-300; utilities in other jurisdictions (including Saskatchewan, the U.S., Poland and Estonia) have announced plans to build reactor fleets based on the same design.

The BWRX-300 is being designed by Wilmington, N.C.-based GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy, a leading American reactor vendor. Its construction would make Canada more reliant on U.S. suppliers for enriched uranium fuel and other critical inputs at a moment when relations between the two countries are rapidly deteriorating.

Yet this has not diminished support from Canadian officials. In a statement Friday, Ontario Energy Minister Stephen Lecce called the license “a historic milestone” for his province and the country.

“Ontario is realizing its potential as a stable democratic energy superpower, and I look forward to sharing next steps for this exciting project in the coming weeks.”

OPG applied for the license in late 2022. During hearings held this fall and winter, the commissioners heard concerns from intervenors that GE-Hitachi hadn’t yet finished designing the reactor, raising questions about how its safety could be analyzed properly.

But the commissioners dismissed this concern, finding OPG had supplied adequate information. They noted that an OPG representative told them the design was 95 per cent done; CNSC staff said in other countries, licenses are typically issued when designs are less than one-third complete.

Intervenors also said that the BWRX-300 lacked two fully independent emergency shutdown systems, because it features two systems that insert the same set of control rods into the reactor. The CNSC’s own staffers confirmed this, but told the Commission the probability both insertion systems would fail was “very low.” The Commission said OPG would have to provide additional information about this at a later date.

In response to concerns from certain First Nations concerning OPG’s and the CNSC’s obligation to engage with them, the CNSC imposed what it calls “regulatory hold points.” The first occurs before construction begins on the reactor building’s foundation, another before OPG can install the reactor’s pressure vessel, and a third before testing and commissioning of the facility can begin. The Commission delegated responsibility for supervising these license conditions to CNSC chief regulatory operations officer Ramzi Jammal.

“The Commission is satisfied that the honour of the Crown has been upheld and that the legal obligation to consult and, where appropriate, accommodate Indigenous interests has been satisfied,” the commissioners wrote in their decision.

CNSC decisions are particularly vulnerable to challenges from First Nations. In February the Federal Court granted an application from Kebaowek First Nation for a judicial review of the CNSC’s decision to approve construction of a nuclear waste disposal facility at Chalk River Laboratories. Justice Julie Blackhawk found that the commissioners erred when they declined to apply the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and ordered a resumption of consultations.

The CNSC’s authorization applies only to OPG’s first SMR. Since the 1960s, Ontario’s long-standing practice has been to build “four-packs,” power plants with four identical reactors sharing workers and common infrastructure. In 2023, the Ontario government instructed OPG to begin planning for another three BWRX-300s at Darlington.

Over the past several years the utility has cleared and re-graded the site for the first reactor; ongoing excavation has reached 8 metres below ground level. OPG has been installing utilities all four reactors would share, such as water and sewer lines and network cabling.

OPG’s pivot to SMRs means the plant will generate far less power than originally envisioned. Under an earlier plan the site was licensed for up to 4,800 megawatts, whereas the BWRX-300s would possess a quarter of that capacity. (According to rough industry estimates, a single BWRX-300 could meet electricity demand from a city the size of Markham or Vaughan, Ont.)

Also working on the project are AtkinsRealis Group Inc., serving as architect-engineer, and construction giant Aecon Group Inc. Major reactor components are to be built by subcontractors in Ontario: BWX Technologies, for example, is preparing to build its massive pressure vessel at its plant in Cambridge. A 2023 study by the Conference Board of Canada said the four-reactor plant would increase Canada’s GDP by $15.3 billion over 65 years, and support 2,000 jobs.

Promoters, including OPG, have argued that building the first SMR will grant Ontario “first-mover” advantage and allow its nuclear industry to participate in subsequent BWRX-300 constructions worldwide. With numerous U.S. federal officials proclaiming an era of American energy “dominance” and imposing punishing tariffs on allies and trading partners, some observers now doubt this will happen. Mr. Lecce, though, appeared to dismiss that concern in his statement Friday.

“Our government has insisted and successfully negotiated that local Ontario and Canadian businesses must be overwhelmingly used to build SMRs for the world.”

April 7, 2025 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

‘Another significant show of confidence’ in Sizewell C, – making the total of taxpayers’ money going into the project a staggering £6.4bn)

The government has confirmed that £2.7bn promised to the Sizewell C
project in the Autumn Budget is now available. The Department of Energy
Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said the money will be drawn down by the
project company according to spending plans agreed with the government. The
sum – available under what is called the Devex (development expenditure)
scheme -is in addition to £1.2bn which was made available to the project
since July last year. (making the total of taxpayers’ money going into the
project a staggering £6.4bn).

 East Anglian Daily Times 4th April 2025
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/25065158.another-significant-show-confidence-sizewell-c/

April 5, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | 2 Comments

Germany’s  Conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU)  mulls reactivation of nuclear power plants

 Germany’s Conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party is
considering restarting six of the country’s recently deactivated nuclear
power plants. According to newspaper Handelsblatt on April 1, a new working
paper of the CDU’s parliamentary group demanded an investigation on
whether a reactivation of the power stations was technically possible and
economically feasible. If the current owners of the plants in question –
energy companies E.On, RWE and EnBW – were not willing to restart the
reactors themselves, a State-owned enterprise reportedly could take over
ownership of the infrastructure.

 Brussels Signal 2nd April 2025 https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/04/germanys-cdu-mulls-reactivation-of-nuclear-power-plants/

April 5, 2025 Posted by | Germany, politics | Leave a comment

Democracy should not be an April Fools’ Day Joke!


 NFLA 1st April 2025

At a time when, across the Atlantic and in Europe, democracy seems to be increasingly challenged and in peril, the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities finds it incongruous and worrying that undemocratic practices can be discovered nearer to home when it comes to plans to locate a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) in Cumbria.

The GDF would be the eventual repository for Britain’s high-level legacy and future radioactive waste.

Cumberland Council replaced three existing Councils – Allerdale District Council, Copeland District Council and Cumbria County Council – with their powers and resources being subsumed into the new unitary authority.

During the period of the Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition Government, Councils were invited to express an interest in participating in investigations for a site for a deep repository in West Cumbria. After four years of involvement, Cumberland’s predecessor Cumbria County Council vetoed the process, when in January 2013, the Council’s Cabinet voted to withdraw its support.

At that time, Council leader Eddie Martin explained the rationale behind the decision: “Cabinet believes there is sufficient doubt around the suitability of West Cumbria’s geology to put an end now to the uncertainty and worry this is causing for our communities. Cumbria is not the best place geologically in the UK and the government’s efforts need to be focused on disposing of the waste underground in the safest place, not the easiest. Members have remained concerned throughout on the issue of the legal right of withdrawal if we proceed to the next stage.”[i]

The County Council’s decision trumped the continued support for the process shown by the lower Allerdale and Copeland District Councils, and so it effectively ended the process at the time.

In the latest attempt to bring a GDF to Cumbria, Allerdale and Copeland again choose to support Nuclear Waste Services, with both Councils becoming the Relevant Principal Local Authorities which are necessary to keep the process going.

Although the County Council was the biggest amongst the three former Councils merged into the new unitary authority, Cumberland Council ignored its opposition and instead chose to ape the position taken by the two lower district councils; this despite the fact that Nuclear Waste Services had already withdrawn from Allerdale citing ‘insufficient’ suitable geology and that Copeland was only taken into the GDF process by the Council’s Executive of only FOUR senior Councillors, including some holding appointments on the West Cumbria Site Stakeholder Group which are renumerated by Nuclear Waste Services. The whole Council was not asked to agree.

Now campaigners at Radiation Free Lakeland have launched a petition calling on Cumberland Council to convene a belated special meeting of the Full Council where Councillors can debate and then vote upon whether to continue to remain engaged with the process of investigating sites for a GDF in Mid- and South-Copeland and to remain represented on the two Community Partnerships. Should most Councillors vote against engagement and representation, in either Mid- or South-Copeland, then the process in that area would cease and NWS would withdraw.

In the third area under consideration for a GDF, the Theddlethorpe Search Area in Lincolnshire, the Leaders of both Relevant Principal Local Authorities, East Lindsey District Council and Lincolnshire County Council, have recommended to their Executives that they should withdraw. The East Lindsey District Council Executive meets tomorrow (2 April) to decide upon the issue. The decision of Lincolnshire County Council must follow the elections held for that body on 1 May. If both recommendations are accepted and are backed by Councillors on their respective Scrutiny Boards, the process will end. This is what happened at South Holderness where the East Riding of Yorkshire Council overwhelmingly voted to withdraw from the process.

The Radiation Free Lakeland sponsored petition reads:………………………………….. https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/democracy-should-not-be-an-april-fools-day-joke/

April 4, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

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