Blackwater Against New Nuclear Group (BANNG), 29 Mar 18, BANNG despairs at the lack of mention of potentially serious problems atBradwell B cheerleading event hosted by Maldon District Council.
Reports in the local press of Maldon District Council playing host to the recent
annual meeting of the New Nuclear Local Authority Group (NNLAG) have been
met with amazement by the Blackwater Against New Nuclear Group (BANNG).
The location was chosen because of the proposals for a new nuclear power
station and the meeting included a visit to the proposed Bradwell B site.
Stephen Speed of the Civil Nuclear and Resilience Directorate at the
Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and John
Devine from the Department for International Trade attended the meeting.
‘Not a whisper of the environmental problems at this utterly quite
unacceptable site is contained in the media reports – but they do talk of
the huge potential envisioned for the region from a new nuclear power
station. It is as if gold dust is being rained down on innocent citizens
and wildlife and landscape.
But it is gold dust that could quickly turn to
radioactive rain, polluted air, contaminated land and radioactive
discharges into the Blackwater estuary’, said BANNG’s Chair, Professor
Andy Blowers. ‘No word is spoken that this massive engine of radioactive
risk with its inevitable cargo of spent fuel and dangerous radioactive
wastes will be left on the site for way over a century.
And what will the territory be like then – if it exists at all? ‘No mention is made of the
fact that the site is only designated until 2025. Beyond that there is no
site at Bradwell. The site does not exist. So, to overcome this, the
Government is busily undertaking a deceptive consultation on siting
criteria, re-running the same ideas of a decade ago when Bradwell was
deemed a potentially suitable site for new nuclear development that could
be operational by 2025 – of course, it will not be.
If Bradwell was a poor site then, it is an impossible one now. And the case for nuclear
energy has, in the meantime, all but disappeared. By the time the Chinese
could build their reactors at Bradwell, a new nuclear power station will be
as dead as a dodo.
‘It’s scandalous that BEIS which is running the
consultation should be supporting this latest jamboree. It gives
credibility to the project, suggesting it is a foregone conclusion. But it
is not and the Government should insist it is neutral as to whether the
site should be designated. ‘BANNG and its supporters feel badly let down
by the biased approach being taken. Essex County and Maldon District
Councils appear to have totally ignored the fact that Colchester Borough
and West Mersea Town Councils do not support the new power station.
The environmental, public health, security and safety issues and the
indefinite, long-term storage on-site of radioactive wastes are not
mentioned – yet the public is overwhelmingly opposed to the project on
these grounds.’ BANNG has set out the case against the project in its
response to the consultation on siting criteria (see BANNG Paper 34 at banng.info) and will shortly be meeting with the developers, EDF and China
General Nuclear Power Corporation. https://www.banng.info/category/news/
Is China losing interest in nuclear power? China Dialogue Feng Hao 19.03.2018 Slowing demand for electricity and competition from renewables have halted new reactor approvals.Globally, the outlook for new, large nuclear reactors is gloomy, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook. A lot of countries have backed away from nuclear power in recent years due to concerns over public safety, cost and the complex challenge of getting plants built.
This year, five reactors are expected to come online in China, with the IEA predicting that by 2030 the country will overtake the United States as the world’s biggest generator of nuclear power.
Pushing nuclear
Increasingly, China’s decision to move ahead with new nuclear seems at odds with other countries that are abandoning the technology in favour of other low carbon options, such as wind and solar.
Xu Jiangfeng is a researcher at the Planning Research Centre of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s Research Institute. He told chinadialogue that the government’s concern with energy security has resulted in a diverse mix of energy resources and technologies being pursued, including nuclear……….
Approvals freeze
Policymakers may cite various strategic reasons for backing nuclear power but there is a question mark hanging over the sector’s future growth.
China has 20 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity under construction but plans for additional capacity are being delayed. A 2020 target of 58 gigawatts of installed nuclear capacity now looks out of reach.
The National Energy Administration did not approve any new nuclear plants between 2016 and 2017. In 2017, only three new reactors started operating.
Reasons for the shift, according to Shi, include mixed attitudes towards new nuclear power within government, and the over-supply that’s affecting China’s power generation sector.
As China’s economic growth has eased, so too has the growth in electricity demand. In 2015, electricity consumption rose just 0.5%, the lowest in 40 years.
“Work out supply and demand and you can see that the market is unable to absorb any more nuclear power,” Kang Junjie, chief engineer with Dongdian Wanwei Technology (Beijing) told chinadialogue.
This leaves little room for expansion of electricity generation, meaning fierce competition between nuclear, solar, wind and hydropower. Globally, solar and wind are replacing nuclear power as the first choice for new power generation. This is true in China, too.
Cost is a key factor: the earlier nuclear power plants are now in the mid-to-late stages of their lifecycle, with operational and maintenance costs rising, according to Kang Junjie. Meanwhile, renewables are in the ascendant, with costs continuing to fall.
John Bolton’s Radical Views on North Korea, The president’s new national-security adviser doesn’t seem to think the current strategy is likely to work.The Atlantic, Joshua Roberts / Reuters URI FRIEDMAN, MAR 23, 2018, The Trump administration’s plan for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program currently consists of two main components: an international campaign of economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure against the Kim regime, plus direct nuclear talks this spring between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. The president’s new national-security adviser, John Bolton, doesn’t seem to believe that either of these approaches is likely to work.
Bolton is instead one of the most prominent proponents of a radical idea, which some hardline U.S. officials in Congress and the White House have refused to rule out but have not recommended with Bolton-like conviction: striking North Korea now, and risking the most destructive war in living memory, to prevent it from threatening the United States with nuclear weapons later.
……….. Once ensconced in his West Wing office, Bolton could surprise everyone and become a convert to a North Korea policy of pressure and engagement. But Bolton’s firm belief in the purifying power of regime change, his confidence in the efficacy of war and distrust of measures short of war, suggest he’s more likely to steer the Trump administration in an even more hardline direction. And that doesn’t just apply to North Korea. Bolton has asserted that Iran “is nearly as imminent” a threat because the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal has given the Iranians access to money to purchase nuclear hardware from North Korea. What’s at stake in North Korea and Iran, he claims, is nothing less than whether nuclear weapons become “commonplace” throughout the world. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/john-bolton-north-korea/556370/
Trump’s new top security adviser wants to bomb Iran and tear up the nuclear deal, Business Insider BEN BRIMELOW, MAR 24, 2018,
Former US ambassador to the UN and noted foreign policy hawk John Bolton has been selected by President Donald Trump to become his newest national security advisor.
Bolton has expressed extremely hawkish views on Iran, including advocating for direct military action against the country and the tearing up of the nuclear deal on multiple occasions.
Because of his hawkish views, some consider Bolton’s appointment a betrayal of Trump’s base, since he campaigned on a platform of non-intervention.
John Bolton: We Must Bomb Iran Now
Newly appointed national security advisor John Bolton is perhaps the most hawkish, andpotentially “dangerous,” person that will be in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Bolton, who served as the US ambassador to the UN under former President George W. Bush, tried to distance himself from his previous comments after the announcement of the new position – but if the past is any indication, he will likely continue to be a major defence hawk.
Yes, John Bolton Really Is That Dangerous, NYT By THE EDITORIAL BOARD, MARCH 23, 2018
The good thing about John Bolton, President Trump’s new national security adviser, is that he says what he thinks.
The bad thing is what he thinks.
There are few people more likely than Mr. Bolton is to lead the country into war. His selection is a decision that is as alarming as any Mr. Trump has made. His selection, along with the nomination of the hard-line C.I.A. director, Mike Pompeo, as secretary of state, shows the degree to which Mr. Trump is indulging his worst nationalistic instincts.
Mr. Bolton, in particular, believes the United States can do what it wants without regard to international law, treaties or the political commitments of previous administrations.
He has argued for attacking North Korea to neutralize the threat of its nuclear weapons, which could set off a horrific war costing tens of thousands of lives. At the same time, he has disparaged diplomatic efforts, including the talks planned in late May between Mr. Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. He not only wants to abrogate the six-party deal that, since 2015, has significantly limited Iran’s nuclear program; he has called for bombing Iran instead. He has also maligned the United Nations and other multilateral conventions, as Mr. Trump has done, favoring unilateral solutions.
Over a 30-year career in which he served three Republican presidents, including as United Nations ambassador and the State Department’s top arms control official, Mr. Bolton has largely disdained diplomacy and arms control in favor of military solutions; no one worked harder to blow up the 1994 agreement under which North Korea’s plutonium program was frozen for nearly eight years in exchange for heavy fuel oil and other assistance. The collapse of that agreement helped bring us to the crisis today, where North Korea is believed to have 20 or more nuclear weapons. ……….
Mr. Bolton is certain to accelerate American alienation from its allies and the rest of the world. Congress may not be able to stop his appointment, but it should speak out against it and reassert its responsibilities under the Constitution to authorize when the nation goes to war.https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/john-bolton-trump-national-security-adviser.html
Environmental Research Web 24th March 2018, Dave Elliott: Nuclear plants are designed to run flat out, in part to
recoup their large construction costs. Their output can be varied a bit,
but this entails thermal stresses and potential safety issues with the
build up of active Xenon gas that is released when fission reactions are
reduced. It needs time to decay. That limits how often and how quickly the
plant can be ramped down and then back up- so as to match changes in energy
demand (‘load following’) and the varying output of renewables.
So basically nuclear plants are inflexible. So do they have any role for
balancing variable renewables? Renewables will continue to expand of
course- by 2035 there might be 45GW.
But just in case you though that balancing some of that with nuclear might be possible in future, the
Hinkley nuclear EPR plant is not scheduled to load follow. And it seems
unlikely if any of the other proposed new large nuclear plants (Wylfa,
Olbury, Moorside, Sizewell, Bradwell) would do – it would undermine their
already precarious economics. Though as now, they may be added to the
capacity market, to be there for background support, if that makes any
sense. A more cynical view is that, as now, this inclusion is just a way to
provide nuclear with an extra subsidy, which, like the rest of the
contracted capacity, is paid for by a surcharge on consumers bills. http://blog.environmentalresearchweb.org/2018/03/24/can-nuclear-be-use-to-balance-renewables/
Reuters 21st March 2018, U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill on Wednesday to ensure that countries
striking deals with Washington on sharing nuclear power technology abandon
fuel-making activities that could be altered to make material for nuclear
weapons. U.S. Representatives Ilea Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, and Brad
Sherman, a Democrat, introduced the bill as officials from Saudi Arabia
work with the administration of President Donald Trump on a deal that could
relax safeguards on nuclear proliferation. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-nuclearpower/u-s-lawmakers-launch-bill-bolstering-nuclear-proliferation-safeguards-idUSKBN1GX2YB
BBC 20th March 2018, The government has been defeated twice in the House of Lords over its plans for nuclear co-operation after Brexit. Peers voted by 265 to 194 to insist the UK should not withdraw from the European nuclear agreement, Euratom, until a replacement deal is in place. They also backed a plan requiring the UK to report to Parliament regularly on its future arrangements with Euratom.
MPs are likely to try and overturn the changes to the Nuclear Safeguards Bill when it returns to the Commons. Euratom, an association which is legally separate from the EU but governed by the EU’s institutions, covers issues such as the transport of radioactive materials, including those used in medical treatments, or in nuclear power stations.
The government has said it wants to establish a new domestic nuclear regime as well as negotiate a nuclear agreement with the EU once the UK leaves on 29 March 2019. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43476337
Daily Energy Insider 20th March 2018, Energy Secretary Rick Perry testified to a Senate panel on Tuesday about the Trump administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) budget request for fiscal year 2019, a plan that prioritizes nuclear security while making
large cuts to energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.
The budget proposal, a $500 million increase in funds over FY 2017, promotes
innovations like a new Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and
Emergency Response (CESER) and gains for the Office of Fossil Energy.
Investments would be made to strengthen the National Nuclear Security
Administration and modernize the nuclear force, as well as in weapons
activities and advanced computing.
Israel finally admitted it destroyed a Syrian reactor in 2007 — and set off a battle of egos, WP, By Ruth EglashMarch 22 JERUSALEM — Israel’s admission Wednesday that it was behind a mysterious attack on a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria more than a decade ago has caused a storm.
But not in the way one might think.
Within hours of the Israeli military censor permitting local media to publish most of the details of the 2007 air attack on a secret desert facility in northeastern Syria, as well as releasing blurry black-and-white video footage, former political and military leaders went to war over who should be credited for the operation.
In Israel’s eyes, the operation was a resounding success. It prevented its northern neighbor from obtaining nuclear capabilities. Ultimately, it also ensured that the Islamic State militant group would not possess nuclear weapons when it took over the region several years later.
But since Israel’s confirmation of its role in the airstrike, a battle has played out on Israeli television and radio and online, pitting two former Israeli prime ministers, Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak; a former Mossad chief; and a former military intelligence chief against one another.
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman later said he regretted allowing the material to be published.
MP calls for sanctions on nuclear materials trade, Cambrian Newsby Alex Jones – Meirionnydd, Arfon & Dwyfor reporter @alexj_cn alexj@cambrian-news.co.uk
DWYFOR Meirionnydd’s MP has challenged the prime minister about nuclear materials following the suspected attempted murder of a former Russian double agent and his daughter.
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were in Salisbury earlier this month when both were found in a critical condition on a public bench.
It has since transpired that both had been inflicted with a nerve agent which has left both, and a police officer who attended, fighting for their lives.
The incident has sparked a marked decline in UK and Russian relations.
It has been suggested that Russian involvement was “the only plausible explanation” but the Kremlin has denied responsibility.
In a meeting in the House of Commons last week, Theresa May gave an update on the situation, prompting MP Liz Saville Roberts to challenge the Prime Minister regarding trade of nuclear materials with the former Cold War adversary.
Mrs Saville Roberts said: “Alongside many colleagues in the House, I speak on behalf of my party in calling for a robust and immediate response.
“Sources inform us that Russia is the UK’s biggest weapons-grade nuclear substances export market, despite several attempts at a moratorium on depleted uranium by the European Parliament and the United Nations.
“Will the Prime Minister confirm whether the UK is still exporting nuclear substances to Russia?
Nikkei Asian Review 18th March 2018 Another
setback looms for Tokyo’s infrastructure export drive. A Japan-led nuclear
power plant project in Turkey looks to cost more than twice as much as
initially projected, highlighting challenges for Tokyo’s push to export
Japanese infrastructure.
The Japanese and Turkish governments agreed on the
public-private project in 2013. The estimated total cost, pegged at around
2 trillion yen ($18.8 billion at current rates) at the time, has since
ballooned to more than 5 trillion yen, according to sources close to the
matter, due largely to the need to meet tougher safety standards
implemented after the March 2011 meltdowns at Tokyo Electric Power Co.
Holdings’ Fukushima Daiichi plant.
The plan is to build four reactors with
a total output of 4,500 megawatts in the Black Sea coastal city of Sinop,
using Atmea1 reactors Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is developing
with France’s Areva.
Though the goal is to put the first reactor into
service in 2023, in time for Turkey’s centennial, the cost problem could
cause that date to slip.
Japan views nuclear power as an integral part of
efforts to export infrastructure around the world. As Mitsubishi Heavy and
the others hash out the Turkish project, a group led by Hitachi is putting
the finishing touches on plans to build two nuclear reactors in the U.K.,
on the Welsh coast.
Yet the Fukushima accident still casts long shadows over the nuclear industry, and hurdles are growing higher. Vietnam has
cancelled orders for Japanese nuclear facilities amid financial concerns
and local opposition. Partly because of the rising cost of safety measures,
the financial risks of building nuclear plants abroad have grown too large
for companies alone to bear.
So Japan’s government has stepped in with
public financing and other aid, eager to support infrastructure exports,
which it considers a key economic growth strategy. Pursuing projects abroad
is in effect the only way for such companies as Mitsubishi Heavy and
Hitachi to maintain and profit from their nuclear technologies.
Cortez Masto seeks details on Yucca spending since Trump’s election, The Nevada Independent, Humberto Sanchez , March 19th, 2018 , Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has called on Energy Secretary Rick Perry to provide details on how the White House would spend funds requested for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, as well as how money has been spent since President Donald Trump was elected.
In a letter to Perry dated Monday, Cortez Masto, an opponent of the controversial project, noted that while the president has requested $120 million in both of his fiscal year (FY) 2018 and 2019 budget blueprints, with regard to the Department of Energy (DOE), neither of the budget documents provides a detailed account of how funding will be, or has been, spent.
“The FY 2019 Budget Justification, like the FY 2018 Budget Justification, provides little meaningful information on how DOE would actually spend these funds to participate in U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing activities for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository,” the letter said. “Moreover, neither of these budget documents provide any information on DOE expenditures from the Nuclear Waste Fund for Yucca Mountain activities during FY 2017 and FY2018.”
Cortez Masto wants Perry to disclose what the unobligated balances were in DOE’s Defense Nuclear Waste Disposal and Nuclear Waste Disposal accounts at the beginning of FY 2017, which started on Oct. 1, 2016, as well as for FY 2018.
She also wants to know how much was spent from these accounts during FY 2017 and 2018 for Yucca licensing activities; pension fund and related obligations for retired Yucca Mountain workers; administration of the Nuclear Waste Fund, financial audits; investment guidance; maintenance of records and technical and scientific information, including preservation and security of geologic samples. ……..https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/cortez-masto-seeks-details-on-yucca-spending-since-trumps-election
NGO Safecast co-founder Pieter Franken explains to schoolgirls how to assemble a Geiger counter kit in their classroom in Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture.
Tracking Fukushima’s radiation , https://www.shine.cn/feature/lifestyle/1803181780/Source: AFP Editor: Fu RongBeneath the elegant curves of the roof on the Seirinji Buddhist temple in Japan’s Fukushima region hangs an unlikely adornment: a Geiger counter collecting real-time radiation readings.
The machine is sending data to Safecast, an NGO born after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster that says it has now built the world’s largest radiation dataset, thanks to the efforts of citizen scientists like Seirinji’s priest Sadamaru Okano.
Like many, Okano lost faith in the government after the nuclear meltdown seven years ago.
“The government didn’t tell us the truth, they didn’t tell us the true measures,” he said.
Okano was in a better position than most to doubt the government line, having developed an amateur interest in nuclear technology 20 years earlier after the Chernobyl disaster. To the bemusement of friends and family, he started measuring local radiation levels in 2007.
“The readings were so high, 50 times higher than natural radiation,” he said of the post-disaster data. “I was amazed. The news told us there was nothing, the administration was telling us there was nothing to worry about.”
That dearth of trustworthy information was the genesis of Safecast, said co-founder Pieter Franken, who was in Tokyo with his family when disaster hit. Franken and friends had the idea of gathering data by attaching Geiger counters to cars and driving around.
“Like how Google does Street View, we could do something for radiation in the same way,” he said. “The only problem was that the system to do that didn’t exist and the only way to solve that problem was to go and build it ourselves. So that’s what we did.”
Within a week, the group had a prototype and got readings that suggested the 20-kilometer exclusion zone declared around the Fukushima plant had no basis in the data, Franken said.
“Evacuees were sent from areas with lower radiation to areas with higher radiation” in some cases, he said.
The zone was eventually redrawn, but for many local residents it was too late to restore trust in the government.
Okano evacuated his mother, wife and son while he stayed with his flock.
A year later, based on his own readings and after decontamination efforts, he brought them back. He learned about Safecast’s efforts and in 2013 installed one of their static counters on his temple.
“I told them: ‘We are measuring the radiation on a daily basis… so if you access the (Safecast) website you can choose (if you think) it’s safe or not’.”
Norio Watanabe has been a Safecast volunteer since 2011. In the days after the disaster evacuees flocked to Koriyama, which was outside the evacuation zone. He assumed his town was safe.
He sent his children away, but stayed behind to look after his mother, a decision he believes may have contributed to his 2015 diagnosis of thyroid cancer.
“As a scientist, I think the chance that it was caused by the Fukushima accident might be 50-50, but in my heart, I think it was likely the cause,” he said.
His thyroid was removed and is now healthy, but Watanabe worries about his students, who he fears “will carry risk with them for the rest of their lives.”
“If there are no people like me who continue to monitor the levels, it will be forgotten.”
Safecast now has around 3,000 devices worldwide and data from 90 countries. Its counters come as a kit that volunteers can buy through third parties and assemble at home.
American Foreign Policy Has A Masculinity Problem, Huffington Post, Lauren Sandler, Columnist 15 Mar 18
Foreign policy has always had a masculinity issue: gender shapes war, gender shapes intervention and gender shapes peacekeeping. In regard to military foreign policy, women and men are divided “always and everywhere,” according to a 2013 Pew Research Center study. Not only are women rarely part of diplomatic negotiations, but a statistical chasm exists where global security is concerned. From drone strikes to nuclear armament, women tend to disagree with men’s support of offensive strategies.
With few exceptions, foreign policy, especially in its highest echelons, is a man’s territory. But even in a realm governed by a formal rotation of masculine superegos, American foreign policy has never been in the hands of such a male id. Last week’s surprise announcement of a meeting by May between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un highlights, yet again, the perils of letting fragile male egos run the world. The prospect of the summit would be comic ― a Trey Parker and Matt Stone musical number ― were millions of lives, and perhaps ultimately the planet itself, not on the line………..
Diplomacy’s masculinity problem is nothing new, though every new Republican leader seems to inject it with fresh testosterone. Consider the Bush Doctrine, which arrived under cover of so much World Trade Center smoke. It sold two wars packaged in unequivocally masculine rhetoric, using the language of strength and dominance to distract from ― in the case of the Iraq War ― a lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction or of Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks. As analysts at the Brookings Institution described Bush’s aggressive “revolution” in foreign policy, “other countries will either follow or get out of the way.” But such rhetoric, and indeed a defense of American manhood itself, led us as surely into the Spanish American War more than a century earlier, according to historian Kristin Hoganson. Stunningly little has changed since that war began, in 1898. ……..
Of course, what makes our situation even more dangerous is that it’s not just Trump who is operating from a place of defensive masculinity. “From the outside, it is easy to underestimate how much of North Korea’s threats and bizarre expressions of aggression reflect its sense of vulnerability and wounded pride,” Evan Osnos wrote in The New Yorker this week. It’s essentially a therapist’s diagnosis of the pain underlying toxic manhood.
We now find ourselves at the mercy of two insecure grown-up boys pretending to be men, who might deploy defensive machismo by any nuclear means necessary. Each is led baldly by fear of failing to be the alpha male. And it’s a zero sum game: There’s only one alpha allowed. Who is going to rule the locker room? And who, when hazed, will punish the world for it? https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-sandler-foreign-policy-trump
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