Nuclear will happen, Fin 24, Dec 10 2017 Dewald van RensburgJohannesburg-South Africa would procure several thousand megawatts of new nuclear power generation capacity, new Energy Minister David Mahlobo declared this week.
He would not say exactly how much, but seemingly intends for nuclear to be 20% of the local power supply by 2030……..
This will result in anything between R25 billion and R50 billion more being spent per year on power in South Africa by 2030 – compared with what would happen under a “least cost” strategy involving no new nuclear and no new coal stations, said Bischof-Niemz.
The wide range is due to the question mark over the cost of nuclear.
Having 20% of power come from nuclear was always the plan and was never really up for consultation, Mahlobo said this week.
On Tuesday, he subjected nongovernmental organisations to a two-hour lecture, and then proceeded to give journalists almost the same lecture at a bizarre and hastily arranged energy indaba on Thursday.
This apparent repudiation of South Africa’s existing system for planning energy investments was presented as obvious and uncontested.
Everyone else just misunderstood South Africa’s energy policy, said the former security minister who inherited the energy portfolio after President Jacob Zuma’s Cabinet reshuffle last month.
Mahlobo used the indaba to quietly announce that the long-awaited Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) had already been approved by Cabinet and that there would be no more consultations on it.
This was not said in the main plenary attended by more than 700 people, but told to journalists at a press conference afterwards that was mostly attended by Mahlobo’s staff, who applauded his answers to the journalists’ questions…….
The official programme was a strange mishmash of presentations and then parallel “commissions” to separately discuss coal, renewable energy, gas, liquid fuels and nuclear.
In the commission on renewable energy, the room was awkwardly silent when moderator Nelisiwe Magubane started the session by instructing everyone that “this is not a platform to discuss the IRP”.
There were chuckles and sighs in the room.
When she asked why no one had any questions, there were murmurs: “They’re all about the IRP!”
When a delegate pointed out that the IRP was central to the discussion, Magubane said that it could not be discussed because “the minister had a meeting with civil society and indicated this is not part of the consultation on the IRP”.
At this point, no one in the room knew that Cabinet had already approved the IRP and precluded any further consultations anyway.
Cabinet spokesperson Phumla Williams confirmed this, and said it was not mentioned in the normal Cabinet statement issued this week because it was felt that Mahlobo should announce it.
The news turns the long battle around energy policy on its head and will almost certainly lead to a new court challenge from environmental groups, which earlier this year succeeded in getting the old decision to procure 9 600MW of nuclear scrapped in court.
Up to now, the expectation had been that a new draft IRP would be produced and offer various options and scenarios for future power investments, followed by extensive public consultations.
Not so, said Mahlobo.
According to the minister, the original IRP of 2010 is still in effect and the apportionment of power sources set in 2010 remains the target.
All that will have changed from the original 2010 IRP is the overall forecast of national power demand, Mahlobo said.
This has two major effects – it demotes renewables back down to 9% of the mix and promotes nuclear back up to 20%.
Modelling done early this year with the latest technology costs created a “least cost” outcome that excludes nuclear and massively scales up renewables, which have become far cheaper in recent years……
A draft IRP released late last year was pilloried for setting arbitrary limits on renewables, which had the effect of putting nuclear back into the energy mix the mathematical model proposes.
The department of energy has since refused to provide documentation on how it modelled the cost of nuclear or to justify its limits on renewables, fuelling speculation that the IRP was being rigged to facilitate a nuclear deal.
“Nuclear, we are going to do it,” Mahlobo told journalists.
Times 8th Dec 2017.Hitachi could stop funding the development of a new nuclear plant on
Anglesey unless the government agrees a viable financial support package by
the middle of next year, the head of the project has warned.
Duncan Hawthorne, chief executive of the Horizon venture, said that its Japanese
owners had already spent £2 billion and would not keep “throwing a
bottomless pit of cash at a project without some certainty it can get to a
successful conclusion”.
Horizon is in talks with the UK and Japanese governments about possible direct state funding for its proposed plant at
Wylfa Newydd. Ministers appeared yesterday to move closer to agreeing
direct funding as the Nuclear Industry Council, a joint industry-government
body that is co-chaired by Richard Harrington, the energy minister,
recommended looking at models including the government taking an equity
stake in projects.
The National Audit Office has said that such models
could significantly reduce the cost to consumers compared with Hinkley
Point C, Britain’s first new plant in a generation. In further nuclear
industry developments yesterday The Nuclear Industry Council set targets
for reducing the costs to consumers of nuclear plants by up to 30 per cent
by 2030. The head of the Nugen venture developing reactors in Cumbria said
that its proposed acquisition from Toshiba by South Korea’s Kepco, which
plans to use its own reactor design, could delay its first power until
2030.
The government announced a fresh review into ways of financing small
nuclear reactors, and £4 million funding for feasibility studies into
other early-stage technologies. Mr Hawthorne acknowledged that the government as a whole was yet to be convinced on the idea of direct financing, with the Treasury concerned about anything that would put a
plant on its balance sheet, but said time was running out. He told The
Times: “We have been saying we need to have some confidence that the basis
of a transaction exists and we need to see some documentary evidence of
that. By the middle of 2018, we need to have something tangible to show to
our shareholders that allows them to keep funding.” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/hitachi-will-stop-anglesey-nuclear-plant-funds-without-deal-mbjzk6jj2
Christie’s Last-Minute Nuclear Bailout Plans for New Jersey NRDC December 08, 2017Dale BrykIn the latest move to ram through a multibillion-dollar subsidy package for the state’s (currently thriving) nuclear plants, outgoing Governor Chris Christie is signaling that he won’t consider legislation that includes provisions to protect taxpayers and preserve New Jersey’s ability to continue to grow its clean energy businesses. If the New Jersey Legislature passes a bill to subsidize those plants before Gov.-elect Phil Murphy takes office on January 16, it will not protect consumers, employees, communities or the environment.
That’s not good for New Jersey.
There is broad support for keeping two plants open—Salem and Hope Creek, both in Salem County. The only question is whether we need to do this now—without a deliberate, thoughtful and transparent plan that narrowly tailors any financial support; truly protects workers and communities; and avoids hamstringing Governor-elect Murphy’s ambitious clean energy agenda.
Citizens across the state are up in arms. The NRDC Action Fund has engaged over 10,000 constituents; Environment New Jersey, Environmental Defense Fund and AARP members are also out in force. People are horrified at the secretive process. It is December 8, and we haven’t seen a bill. Yet Christie—who currently enjoys the lowest approval rating of any sitting U.S. governor—and PSEG seem to be moving forward in full force to secure this bailout in hopes that everyone is distracted with holiday festivities. A frequent snicker at Monday’s hearing, without a bill to even discuss: “We could all go to Washington if we wanted to be treated so shabbily.”
Reported substance is even worse
The substance is even worse than the process. To recap, the proposal—as it is well understood by insiders, since only those writing the legislative language have seen it—is a standalone subsidy for existing nuclear plants. PSEG set out a few particulars at the hearing:
The subsidy will cost consumers about $400 million per year;
The state regulator—the Board of Public Utilities—will review the company’s claim that the plants require a subsidy to continue operation;
The board will adjust the subsidy to reflect increased revenue to the plants should New Jersey join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, as Governor-elect Murphy has pledged; and
While women are leading the resistance, the halls of power in D.C. and states across the country lag pathetically behind. We saw this perhaps most vividly when Trump gathered an all-male group of politicians at the White House to discuss his efforts to gut women’s health care. In a single photograph, the gross underrepresentation of women’s voices in government and on issues directly impacting their lives was crystal clear.
And it was exactly that photograph — and the utterly out-of-sync gender dynamics it laid bare — that stuck in our minds this month as we sat in a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Trump’s unrestrained power to wage nuclear war. A committee with a 20:1 male-to-female ratio heard testimony from three men on whether one man should have total, unchecked power to start a nuclear war and blow up the planet. This is a system that, as Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) said, “boggles the rational mind.”
Apparently, the Senate has a one-woman limit when it comes to foreign policy.
To read the full article at Teen Vogue, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/women-leaders-arent-making-enough-foreign-policy-decisions-and-its-a-problem
An environmental activist from Northern California has announced his candidacy for governor and his top campaign platform is to break up the troubled state utilities commission.
Michael Shellenberger, founder of the pro-nuclear group Environmental Progress, said Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Public Utilities Commission are responsible for creating some of the highest energy rates in the United States.
He also blames Brown and the utility regulators he appointed for the “corrupt” deal that assigned customers $3.3 billion in costs related to the premature shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear plant and said he wants to secure a cleaner energy future by promoting nuclear power.
Shellenberger listed eight key pledges he said would lower energy costs, reduce poverty, improve education and promote cleaner sources of power. His first pledge is: “Break up the corrupt California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), release secret emails and prosecute the criminals.”
The commission was the subject of a criminal investigation by former Attorney General Kamala Harris, although it’s unclear where the probe stands under her successor, Xavier Becerra. The investigation centered on emails showing potentially improper communications between regulators and the utility companies they are supposed to oversee. San Diego consumer attorney Mike Aguirre has a number of lawsuits against the commission, including one demanding release of more emails.
A resident of Berkeley, Shellenberger is the founder and president of Environmental Progress, a nonprofit group that advocates for nuclear power across the country and world. The group is committed to preserving the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant on California’s central coast that has been scheduled for closure.
A resident of Berkeley, Shellenberger is the founder and president of Environmental Progress, a nonprofit group that advocates for nuclear power across the country and world. The group is committed to preserving the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant on California’s central coast that has been scheduled for closure.
2 Dec 17, WASHINGTON — The pressure is off South Carolina’s congressional delegation to extend a federal tax deadline for the country’s nuclear power industry following the cancellation of two unfinished reactors at V.C. Summer station.
As Republicans advance a tax overhaul bill in Congress, the likelihood of federal lawmakers passing tax credits for a new generation of nuclear power plants has diminished alongside South Carolina’s failed $9 billion energy project.
Lawmakers from the Palmetto State, who pushed the nuclear tax credits as recently as June, still believe that the incentives are good national policy but admit they now aren’t as much of a priority for the state, which continues to reel from the project’s collapse. …..
The tax credits, which would shrink the final cost of new nuclear reactors by billions of dollars once they are completed, were included in the massive tax bill that passed the House in November. But the incentives were left out of the Senate’s partnering tax legislation…….
At this point, Georgia is the only state likely to benefit from the proposed tax credits. Thirty states have nuclear power plants in operation, but few are discussing plans to construct new ones…….
U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman, R-Rock Hill, whose district includes V.C. Summer, said the project’s cancellation should serve as a “wake-up call” for other states that consider similar efforts in the future.
“The silver lining is it’s making people aware of oversight of a project like this,” Norman said. “It’s making people aware in government not to let the power companies off the hook.”
Another positive, Norman said, is that the energy vacuum creates more need for other sources of energy he has supported, such as solar. ……
The failure of South Carolina’s project also provides ammunition to longtime critics of the nuclear industry more broadly, such as U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who was the only House member to speak out against the tax credit extension when it came up for a House vote earlier this year and now expressed vindication.
“The nuclear industry is always asking for one handout after another and then they bail out,” Doggett said. “It’s a ripoff, and it’s tragic that the ratepayers in South Carolina end up picking up the cost.”
The nuclear industry will clinch a multi-billion pound lifeline from South Korea this week alongside a government rescue deal.
Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) is expected to say it will join the beleaguered consortium behind Europe’s largest new nuclear plant at Moorside in Cumbria to help prop up the £15bn project. The early agreement will kick-start the process of securing final approvals from nuclear regulators and company bosses before a final decision is made early next year.
The Nugeneration consortium was plunged into chaos this summer as Toshiba, the project’s lead developer, faced financial ruin due to its troubled Westinghouse nuclear business which had planned to build the Moorside reactor. It was then left scrambling to find new project partners as French energy giant Engie abandoned Nugen after Westinghouse crashed into bankruptcy proceedings in the US.
Alongside the injection of Korean capital into the UK, Business Secretary Greg Clark is expected to underline government support for the sector in a flurry of pledges. Industry sources said it would be the Government’s “most ambitious and complex sector deal” undertaken to date.
The lifeline comes shortly after Mr Clark held talks with South Korea’s trade minister last month in which the pair signed a memorandum to strengthen plans to collaborate on new nuclear projects. The agreement was kept under wraps ahead of this week’s package of policies which will form the building blocks of a landmark sector deal for the industry in 2018.
There is likely to be “significant funding” to rescue Britain’s world-leading Culham Centre for Fusion Energy near Oxford, which many feared would be forced to close in the wake of Brexit. Government will also break its silence over plans to develop small-modular nuclear reactors, or “mini-nukes”. Ministers hope the package of support measures could help reduce nuclear construction costs by between 20pc and 30pc, while cutting the cost of decommissioning by a fifth.
Business Report 29th Nov 2017, A court challenge to block the South African government from rushing
through a nuclear procurement deal was postponed on Wednesday after Energy
Minister David Mahlobo agreed to follow proper process.
Earthlife Africa Johannesburg (ELA-JHB) and the Southern African Faith Communities’
Environment Institute (SAFCEI) in April won a Cape Town high order stating
that nuclear procurment would not be legal without involving the National
Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) and public participation. “SAFCEI
and ELA came back to court to ask the minsiter of Energy and Eskom to agree
to abide by the court ruling we got in April which said that they may not
procure nuclear energy without proper process and that includes involving
all of us – public participation – in the decision-making process,” SAFCEI
executive director Francesca de Gasparis said. https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/energy/ngos-take-on-sa-energy-minister-on-nuclear-power-12194414
Is Saudi Arabia also amongst the terrorists? The News, Nigeria Dec 1 2017 By Owei Lakemfa.
I am fascinated by Saudi Arabia. It does not care what others say or think. It simply pursues its own goals and policies, submitting to no other than its master, the United States of America. To it, women are legally inferior to men and no amount of human or women rights campaigns will change that………
When I was in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Governing Body, there were constant complaints against Saudi Arabia violating all known labour laws against migrant workers. They simply sack or deport tens of thousands especially Indians, Filipinos, Ethiopians and Pakistanis, without paying them backlog of salaries. In one operation, after rounding up migrant workers for deportation without salaries, the Saudis simply forgot them for days, leaving them stranded without water or food.
Many do not sanction capital punishment, but for the Saudis, it is a way of life. A human being can be beheaded for a sundry of reasons including murder, treason, espionage and rape. But there are others like apostasy and blasphemy. If you are an atheist, and so disclose, your head is severed. It is difficult to prove sorcery and witchcraft, but if a person is in possession of talisman, according to the Saudis, he is guilty, and is a candidate for execution. Execution is primarily, beheading with a sword called SULTHAN and the most infamous star in that art is Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, who described his first execution in 1998: “The criminal was tied and blindfolded. With one stroke of the sword I severed his head. It rolled metres away…People are amazed how fast [the sword] can separate the head from the body.”……….
the Israeli Energy Minister, Yuval Steinitz disclosed that Israel had held covert meetings with Saudi Arabia on how to jointly fight Iran. There is no love lost between Saudi Arabia which sees itself as the custodian of the Sunni Movement, and Iran which sees itself as the guardian of the Shiite Movement. So can this be the policy of ‘My enemy’s enemy, is my friend’? It should come as a surprise that a Muslim country is working out an alliance with a Jewish state to attack a sister Muslim country.
Saudi Arabia does not waste time rolling out its military might to achieve political goals. For this, it invaded Bahrain in 1994, and when there was a popular revolt against the Al-Khalifa Monarchy, Saudi Arabia on March 14, 2011, again invaded Bahrain and crushed the protests.
But it is in Yemen Saudi Arabia has most displayed it its military prowess. There had been an uprising against the government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. A combination of Houthi rebels and Yemeni military loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, had removed Hadi. An angry Saudi Arabia fell on Yemen bombing large parts into near extinction. Everything is game to the Saudi bombers which first obliterated schools and hospitals then turned its fury on any gathering; markets, weddings, even funerals. It also imposed a blockade. Over 12,000 Yemeni civilians have been killed. 3.3 million children and nursing mothers are suffering from acute malnutrition, and cholera is rampant, yet Saudi Arabia and its allies will not relent. The cemeteries are over flowing so much that a good foreign investment in Yemen would be the building of new cemeteries.
Nobody is talking about crimes against humanity because the Saudis have powerful friends in the United Nations and “international community’ Many want a slice of the huge Saudi arms budget. When American President Donald Trump visited Riyadh this May, he smiled home with a $350 Billion arms contract for his country. With this, it was not difficult to get America endorse Saudi Arabia’s illegal blockade and sanctions against tiny Qatar who was told to either accept a 13-Point Saudi Demand including the closure of Al Jazeera, or face annihilation………. http://thenewsnigeria.com.ng/2017/12/is-saudi-arabia-also-amongst-the-terrorists/
North Korea celebrates becoming a nuclear state with huge rally and firework display
Troops cheered, laughed and smiled as a beautiful firework display lit up Kim Il-Sung Square in Pyongyang
North Korea is celebrating the declaration by dictator Kim Jong-Un that the Stalinist state is a nuclear power
It comes after the dramatic launch of the long-range Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday
By Iain Burns Daily Mail. UK,
Thousands of North Korean soldiers have appeared at a rally today to celebrate after dictator Kim Jong-Un declared the Stalinist regime a nuclear power.
Troops cheered, laughed and smiled as a huge firework display lit up Kim Il-Sung Square in Pyongyang following the successful test of the Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile on Tuesday.
State media reported that North Korea‘s leader Kim Jong-Un had declared the country had achieved the ‘historic cause’ of becoming a nuclear state on November 29……..
The Pentagon said the test missile traveled about 620 miles and landed within 200 nautical miles of Japan’s coast.
In a broadcast on state TV, North Korea said the missile reached an altitude of around 2,780 miles – more than 10 times the height of the international space station – and flew 600 miles during its 53 minute flight.
North Korea deliberately fires its missile on a near-vertical trajectory to artificially limit the range.
Questions on outlook for nuclear plants by Tom Johnson, NJ SPOTLIGHT
In what is likely to be the opening salvo of a nasty legislative battle, lawmakers are to convene early next week to discuss how to prevent New Jersey’s nuclear plants from shutting down prematurely.
The bigger question is whether they also are planning to act on a yet-to-be-introduced bill that some say could provide billions of dollars in ratepayer subsidies to Public Service Enterprise Group over the next decade.
The Senate Environment and Energy Committee and Assembly Telecommunications and Utilities Committee plan to hold a rare joint session Monday on economic challenges facing nuclear power plants, an issue that is splintering the energy sector not only in New Jersey but in Washington and elsewhere.
News of the joint hearing this week jolted a coalition opposed to efforts to prop up nuclear units. They fear the proceedings foreshadows a legislative initiative to award lucrative financial incentives to PSEG and Exelon (a co-owner of two of the plants) during the lame-duck session, which ends early in January.
“We’ve seen this special-interest strategy before on bad bills,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, an opponent of subsidies to nuclear plants. “It’s how a bad bill gets passed in a lame-duck session.”………
New Jersey would not be the first state to financially back nuclear power plants. Both New York and Illinois have approved ratepayer subsidies to keep nuclear units operating in those states. In the former, the subsidies amount to nearly $1 billion over two years.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is pushing a plan to bail out coal and nuclear units before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is supposed to act on the proposal within two weeks.
Despite promising to “drain the swamp” of vested interests and lobbyists, it became clear Trump was intent on refilling it with figures and ideas from the well-established network of conservative and neoliberal think-tanks.
Last month, Trump thanked one of those groups personally, with an address to the Heritage Foundation’s annual meeting.
But those think tanks, and the people who lead and run them, have strong links to another influential group that has been trying to bend governments around the world to a particular ideology for almost 70 years.
The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) was established in 1947 by economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek — a man considered by many to be the godfather of modern free market thinking.
Mont Pelerin Society Membership List
Some scholars have described it as the “neoliberal thought collective” with its ideas heavily influencing the political administrations of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US, and many world leaders since.
DeSmog has obtained a 2013 Mont Pelerin Society membership list, showing the group continues to boast influential members including former judges, former country leaders, wealthy industrialists, academics and think tank operatives in 62 countries from Argentina to Zimbabwe.
According to the Mont Pelerin Society, its members “see danger in the expansion of government, not least in state welfare, in the power of trade unions and business monopoly, and in the continuing threat and reality of inflation.”
Members continue to meet at annual conferences and regional meetings, often held in appealing locations. The next meeting will be held in Sweden’s capital, Stockholm.
High profile members include former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, petrochemical billionaire Charles Koch and former Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus.
When Donald Trump won the election, one of the first people appointed onto his transition team was the Heritage Foundation’s Ed Feulner. Feulner joined MPS in 1972 – the year before he joined fellow Republican Paul Weyrich to start the Heritage Foundation.
Feulner was also president of MPS from 1996 to 1998 and has previously served as MPS treasurer.
In October, Trump gave a keynote address to the Heritage Foundation’s annual President’s Club Meeting.
“Heritage has been instrumental in providing the Trump administration with sound policies and experts who now serve in key government positions,” wrote Feulner in an email announcing Trump’s appearance………
Heritage, a conservative libertarian think tank, was also described by Politico as Trump’s “shadow transition team” as its fellows and staffers took up roles for the president.
In February, New Republic wrote how the Heritage Foundation was shaping Trump’s administration and was set to play a “key role in steering domestic policy” for the coming years.
MPS is also heavily linked with the Atlas Network — a co-ordinating group of more than 460 think tanks and operatives in 96 countries.
Atlas president Alejandro Chafuen joined MPS in 2010 and the current chair of Atlas, Linda Whetsone, is the daughter of the network’s founder, Sir Antony Fisher.
DeSmog’s analysis of Mont Pelerin Society’s membership shows scores of members who are affiliated with the same network of think tanks that have fought against policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
When Trump is gutting environmental regulations, pulling out of international climate agreements and pledging to cut welfare support and social security, it starts to look a lot like the world MPS members have been pushing for over decades.
MacLean found what George Monbiot calls the “missing link” that helps to explain the radicalisation of governments from the US to the UK and beyond. In an abandoned building on the campus of George Mason University, MacLean found the paper trail of the life’s work of James McGill Buchanan, including confidential letters with Charles Koch that confirm millions of Koch’s dollars flowed to GMU in support of Buchanan’s work.
Buchanan — who was a member and past-president of the Mont Pelerin Society — developed a strategy along with MPSmember Charles Koch and other elite industrialists to construct a network of neoliberal think tanks that, as MacLean writes and documents, have infected democracies with radical right wing policy ideas designed to shield and benefit the wealthy elite, and to disempower the majority of citizens.
Buchanan served on the advisory board of the Exxon- and Koch-funded Independent Institute, and as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute, which Charles Koch co-founded with Murray Rothbard and Edward Crane. Crane is a long-standing member of MPS, and Rothbard is credited as having suggested to Charles Koch that he study the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and to view government as “our enemy.”
White House May Share Nuclear Power Technology With Saudi Arabia, The overture follows an intense and secretive lobbying push involving Michael Flynn, Tom Barrack, Rick Gates and even Iran-Contra figure Robert McFarlane. Pro Publica by Isaac Arnsdorf, The Trump administration is holding talks on providing nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia — a move that critics say could upend decades of U.S. policy and lead to an arms race in the Middle East.
The Saudi government wants nuclear power to free up more oil for export, but current and former American officials suspect the country’s leaders also want to keep up with the enrichment capabilities of their rival, Iran.
Saudi Arabia needs approval from the U.S. in order to receive sensitive American technology. Past negotiations broke down because the Saudi government wouldn’t commit to certain safeguards against eventually using the technology for weapons.
Now the Trump administration has reopened those talks and might not insist on the same precautions. At a Senate hearing on Nov. 28, Christopher Ford, the National Security Council’s senior director for weapons of mass destruction and counterproliferation, disclosed that the U.S. is discussing the issue with the Saudi government. He called the safeguards a “desired outcome” but didn’t commit to them.
Abandoning the safeguards would set up a showdown with powerful skeptics in Congress. “It could be a hell of a fight,” one senior Democratic congressional aide said.
The idea of sharing nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia took an unlikely path to the highest levels of government. An eccentric inventor and a murky group of retired military brass — most of them with plenty of medals but no experience in commercial nuclear energy — have peddled various incarnations of the plan for years.
Many U.S. officials didn’t think the idea was serious, reputable or in the national interest. “It smelled so bad I said I never wanted to be anywhere close to that,” one former White House official said. But the proponents persisted, and finally found an opening in the chaotic early days of the Trump administration, when advisers Michael Flynn and Tom Barrack championed the idea……
In 2008, the Saudi government made a nonbinding commitment not to pursue enrichment and reprocessing. They then entered negotiations with the U.S. for a pact on peaceful nuclear cooperation, known as a 123 agreement, after a section of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. A 123 agreement is a prerequisite for receiving American technology.
The talks stalled a few years later because the Saudi government backed away from its pledge not to pursue enrichment and reprocessing, according to current and former officials. “They wouldn’t commit, and it was a sticking point,” said Max Bergmann, a former special assistant to the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security at the time those negotiations occurred……..
The Obama administration held firm with the Saudis because it’s one thing to cap nuclear technology where it already exists, but it’s longstanding U.S. policy not to spread the technology to new countries. As Saudi Arabia and Iran — ideological and religious opponents — increasingly squared off in a battle for political sway in the Middle East, Republicans argued that the Obama administration had it backwards: It was enshrining hostile Iran’s ability to enrich uranium while denying the same to America’s ally Saudi Arabia.
One such critic of Obama’s Iran policy was Michael Flynn, a lieutenant general who was forced out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014. Flynn quickly took up a variety of consulting assignments and joined some corporate boards. One of the former was an advisory position for a company called ACU Strategic Partners, which, according to a later financial disclosure, paid Flynn more than $5,000.
Flynn was one of many retired military officers whom ACU recruited. ACU’s chief was a man named Alex Copson, who is most often described in press accounts as a “colorful British-American dealmaker.” Copson reportedly made a fortune inventing a piece of diving equipment, may or may not have been a bass player in the band Iron Butterfly, and has been touting wildly ambitious nuclear-power plans since the 1980s. (He didn’t answer repeated requests for comment.)
By 2015, Copson was telling people he had a group of U.S., European, Arab and Russian companies that would build as many as 40 nuclear reactors in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Copson’s company pitched the Obama administration, but officials figured he didn’t really have the backers he claimed. “They would say ‘We have Rolls-Royce on board,’ and then someone would ask Rolls-Royce and they would say, ‘No, we took a meeting and nothing happened,’” recalled a then-White House official.
In his role with ACU, Flynn flew to Egypt to convince officials there to hold off on a Russian offer (this one unrelated to ACU) to build nuclear power plants. Flynn tried to persuade the Egyptian government to consider Copson’s proposal instead, according to documents released by Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Flynn also tried to persuade the Israeli government to support the plan and spoke at a conference in Saudi Arabia. (The trip would later present legal problems for Flynn because he didn’t report contacts with foreign officials on his application to renew his security clearance, according to Cummings. Cummings referred the information to Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Trump’s associates and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Flynn’s lawyer declined to comment.)
Copson’s outfit eventually splintered. A retired admiral named Michael Hewitt, who was to head up the security services part of the project, struck out on his own in mid-2016. Flynn went with him.
Hewitt’s new company is called IP3 International, which is short for “International Peace Power & Prosperity.” IP3 signed up other prominent national security alumni including Gens. Keith Alexander, Jack Keane and James Cartwright, former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, Bush Homeland Security adviser Fran Townsend, and Reagan National Security adviser Robert “Bud” McFarlane.
IP3’s idea was a variation on ACU’s. Hewitt swapped out one notional foreign partner for another (Russia was out, China was in), then later shifted to an all-American approach. That idea resonated with the U.S. nuclear-construction industry, which never recovered from the Three Mile Island disaster in the 1970s and was looking to new markets overseas.
But nuclear exports are tightly controlled because the technology is potentially so dangerous. A 123 agreement is only the first step for a foreign country that wants to employ U.S. nuclear-power technology. In addition, the Energy Department has to approve the transfer of technology related to nuclear reactors and fuel. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses reactor equipment, and the Commerce Department reviews exports for equipment throughout the rest of the power plant.
IP3 — whose sole project to date is the Saudi nuclear plan — never went through those normal channels. Instead, the company went straight to the top.
At the start of the Trump administration, IP3 found an ally in Tom Barrack, the new president’s close friend and informal adviser and an ultra-wealthy investor in his own right. During the campaign, Barrack wrote a series of white papers proposing a new approach to the Middle East in which economic cooperation would theoretically reduce the conditions for breeding terrorism and lead to improved relations.
Barrack wasn’t familiar with nuclear power as an option for the Middle East until he heard from Bud McFarlane. McFarlane, 80, is most remembered for his role in the defining scandal of the Reagan years: secretly selling arms to Iran and using the money to support Nicaraguan rebels. He pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress but was pardoned by George H.W. Bush.
Nevertheless, Barrack was dazzled by McFarlane and his IP3 colleagues. “I was like a kid in a candy shop — these guys were all generals and admirals,” Barrack said in an interview. “They found an advocate in me in saying I was keen on trying to establish a realignment of U.S. business interests with the Gulf’s business interests.”
McFarlane followed up the meeting by emailing Flynn in late January, according to six people who read the message or were told about it. McFarlane attached two documents. One outlined IP3’s plan, describing it as consistent with Trump’s philosophy. The second was a draft memo for the president to sign that would officially endorse the plan and instruct his cabinet secretaries to implement it. Barrack would take charge of the project as the interagency coordinator. Barrack had discussions about becoming ambassador to Egypt or a special envoy to the Middle East but never committed to such a role. (McFarlane disputed that account but repeatedly declined to specify any inaccuracies. IP3 declined to comment on the memos.)
Flynn, now on the receiving end of IP3’s lobbying, told his staff to put together a formal proposal to present to Trump for his signature, according to current and former officials.
The seeming end run sparked alarm. National Security Council staff brought the proposal to the attention of the agency’s lawyers, five people said, because they were concerned about the plan and how it was being advanced. Ordinarily, before presenting such a sensitive proposal to the president, NSC staff would consult with experts throughout government about practical and legal concerns. Bypassing those procedures raised the risks that private interests might use the White House to their own advantage, former officials said. “Circumventing that process has the ability not only to invite decisions that aren’t fully vetted but that are potentially unwise and have the potential to put our interests and our people at risk,” said Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and NSC spokesman.
Even after those concerns were raised, Derek Harvey, then the NSC’s senior director for the Middle East, continued discussing the IP3 proposal with Barrack and his representative, Rick Gates, according to two people. Gates, a longtime associate of former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, worked for Barrack on Trump’s inaugural committee and then for Barrack’s investment company, Colony NorthStar.
By then, Barrack was no longer considering a government position. Instead, he and Gates were seeking investment ideas based on the administration’s Middle East policy. Barrack pondered the notion, for example, of buying a piece of Westinghouse, the bankrupt U.S. manufacturer of nuclear reactors. (Harvey, now on the staff of the House intelligence committee, declined to comment through a spokesman. In October, Mueller charged Manafort and Gates with 12 counts including conspiracy against the U.S., unregistered foreign lobbying, and money laundering. They both pleaded not guilty. Gates’ spokesman didn’t answer requests for comment.)
Ultimately, it wasn’t the NSC staff’s concerns that stalled IP3’s momentum. Rather, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior aide tasked with reviving a Middle East peace process, wanted to table the nuclear question in favor of simpler alliance-building measures with the Saudis, centered on Trump’s visit in May, according to a person familiar with the discussions. (A spokesperson for Kushner, asked for comment, had not provided one at the time this article was published; we’ll update the article if he provides one later.)
In recent months, the proposal has stirred back to life as the Saudi government kicked off a formal process to solicit bids for their first reactors. In October, the Saudis sent a request for information to the U.S., France, South Korea, Russia and China — the strongest signal yet that they’re serious about nuclear power.
The Saudi solicitation also gave IP3 the problem its solution was searching for. The company pivoted again, narrowing its pitch to organizing a consortium of U.S. companies to compete for the Saudi tender. IP3 won’t say which companies it has signed up. IP3 also won’t discuss the fees it hopes to receive if it were part of a Saudi nuclear plan, but it’s vying to supply cyber and physical site security for the plants. “IP3 has communicated its strategy to multiple government entities and policy makers in both the Obama and Trump administrations,” the company said in a statement. “We view these meetings and any documents relating to them as private, and we won’t discuss them.”
The Saudi steps lit a fire under administration officials. Leading the charge is Rick Perry, the energy secretary who famously proposed eliminating the department and then admitted he didn’t understand its function. (It includes dealing with nuclear power and weapons.) Perry had also heard IP3’s pitch, a person familiar with the situation said. In September, Perry met with Saudi delegates to an international atomic energy conference and discussed energy cooperation, according to a photo posted on his Facebook page. Perry’s spokeswoman didn’t answer requests for comment.
Other steps followed. Soon after, a senior State Department official flew to Riyadh to restart formal 123 negotiations, according to an industry source. (A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment.) In November, Energy and State Department officials joined a commercial delegation to Abu Dhabi led by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s main lobby in Washington. Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Edward McGinnis said the administration wants to revitalize the U.S. nuclear energy industry, including by pursuing exports to Saudi Arabia. The Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration and the Energy Department are organizing another industry visit in December to meet with Saudi officials, according to a notice obtained by ProPublica. And in the days before Thanksgiving, senior U.S. officials from several agencies met at the White House to discuss the policy, according to current and former officials.
The Trump administration hasn’t stated a position on whether it will let the Saudis have enrichment and reprocessing technology. An NSC spokesman declined to comment. But administration officials have begun sounding out advisers on how Congress might react to a deal that gives the Saudis enrichment and reprocessing, a person familiar with the discussions said.
Senators have started demanding answers. At the Nov. 28 hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ford, the NSC nonproliferation official who has been nominated to lead the State Department’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, testified that preliminary talks with the Saudis are underway but declined to discuss the details in public. As noted, Ford wouldn’t commit to barring the Saudi government from obtaining enrichment and reprocessing technology. “It remains U.S. policy, as it has been for some time, to seek the strongest possible nonproliferation protections in every instance,” he told the senators. “It is not a legal requirement. It is a desired outcome.” Ford added that the Iran deal makes it harder to insist on limiting other countries’ capabilities.
Sen. Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who led the questioning of Ford on this topic, seemed highly resistant to the idea of the U.S. helping Saudi Arabia get nuclear technology. “If we continue down this pathway,” he said, “then there’s a recipe for disaster which we are absolutely creating ourselves.” Markey also accused the administration of neglecting its statutory obligation to brief the committee on the negotiations. (The White House declined to comment.)
Any agreement, in this case with Saudi Arabia, would not require Senate approval. However, should an agreement be reached, Congress could kill the deal. The two houses would have 90 days to pass a joint resolution disapproving it. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Ben Cardin, suggested they wouldn’t accept a deal that lacked the same protections as the ones in the UAE’s agreement. “If we don’t draw a line in the Middle East, it’s going to be all-out proliferation,” he said. “We need to maintain the UAE’s standards in our 123 agreements. There’s just too many other countries that could start proliferating issues that could be against our national interest.”
Bob Corker, the committee’s chairman, has been a stickler on nonproliferation in the past; he criticized the Obama administration for not being tough enough. Corker isn’t running for reelection and has criticized Trump for being immature and reckless in foreign affairs, so he’s unlikely to shy away from a fight. (A spokesman declined to comment.) “The absence of a consistent policy weakens our nuclear nonproliferation efforts, and sends a mixed message to those nations we seek to prevent from gaining or enhancing such capability,” Corker said at a hearing in 2014. “Which standards can we expect the administration to reach for negotiating new agreements with Jordan or Saudi Arabia?” https://www.propublica.org/article/white-house-may-share-nuclear-power-technology-with-saudi-arabia
Is This The End Of Nuclear Power In The UK?https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Is-This-The-End-Of-Nuclear-Power-In-The-UK.html, By Leonard Hyman & William Tilles – Nov 29, 2017The UK’s ambitious program to build more nuclear generating stations will begin with the massive Hinkley Point units. Yet, in a recent paper, Prof. Steve Thomas, a well-known energy economist in the UK, asked a question that had been on our minds, namely is it “Time to cancel Hinckley?” The timing of the paper and ensuing editorials coincided with record low prices for off-shore wind, £57.50 per MWh to be exact. The Guardiannewspaper editorialized that this figure should “blow away the UK’s nuclear plans.”
First, let’s put the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in context. The UK government first announced its nuclear power expansion program in 2006. The plan was to build five new nuclear generating stations, producing 16 GWs, to be on-line by 2030. The units planned are at Sizewell, Wylfa, Moorside, Oldbury and Hinkley.
At the time the government cited two concerns with respect to the adequacy of national electric power generation. First, that “security of supply (was) jeopardized” and second, that by 2025 there would be a need to replace aging coal-fired and nuclear power generating plants. The ensuing decade was not kind to the assumptions of UK energy planners.
The price of both renewables and natural gas dropped significantly. License extensions could keep most existing nuclear power stations running. And demand for power has fallen below expectations due to moderating economic trends and the dampening impact of conservation measures.
From a UK power generation perspective, the big winners in recent years have been natural gas and renewables. Coal burn has dropped drastically and nuclear has remained stable.
On a price competition basis, the future looks like a race to the bottom between natural gas and the ever-declining costs of wind and solar technology. On a cost basis, the Hinkley guarantee of £92.50 per MWh looks rather steep compared with the £57.50 recent price for off-shore wind.
We can already hear the harrumphing from the pro nuclear contingent. But this to us is the problem of making commercial nuclear technology the Zelig of the energy world. In a world eager for low carbon, base load capacity, nuclear has attempted to re-brand itself as the low carbon option. But in countries facing stagnant or declining electrical demand, the need for new, non-intermittent base load power generating resources is diminishing as well.
And the other low carbon generating resources, renewables, intermittent though they may be, are now much cheaper than new nuclear construction (£57.50 vs £92.50).
At another level, electricity is a commodity. A commodity that we can’t store, but still. And in a commodity business, where the product is wholly undifferentiated, price is the only consideration. Taken in this context, new nuclear is a non-starter.
Feinstein seeks contact with FBI informant in Russia nuclear bribery case, The Hill
BY JOHN SOLOMON – 11/16/17Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has sought access to an undercover informant who helped the FBI chronicle bribery, kickbacks and money laundering inside Moscow’s nuclear industry as part of an Obama-era Russia corruption case.
Heather Sawyer, the general counsel for Feinstein — the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee — sent an email this week to the lawyer for the former FBI informant, William Campbell, seeking to be included in conversations involving the committee.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the committee, secured an agreement with the Justice Department to allow Campbell to talk to Congress about the evidence he gathered for the FBI from 2009 to 2014 when he worked as a consultant for Tenex, a subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned commercial nuclear arm Rosatom.
Campbell’s work led to the indictments of three major players, including Tenex official Vadim Mikerin, a key Russian nuclear figure inside the United States who was sentenced to 48 months in prison in December 2015.
Grassley wants to know what the FBI did with the evidence it first gathered in 2009 that Mikerin and others inside the Russian nuclear industry were engaged in illegal activity.
The GOP chairman also wants to know whether the Obama administration was alerted to the illegal activity before it approved the sale of U.S. uranium assets to Rosatom and made other favorable decisions worth billions of dollars to Russia’s nuclear industry………
