Grayson files ‘Nuclear Sanity Act’ in response to Trump remarks :DEC 29 2016 12:HTTP://WWW.FOX35ORLANDO.COM/NEWS/226096159-STORYWASHINGTON DC (WOFL FOX 35) – Florida Congressman Alan Grayson has filed the Nuclear Sanity Act in response to growing concern over President-elect Trump’s recent series of “Bomb, Baby, Bomb” pro-nuke mad libs.
The bill requires approval by the Secretaries of Defense and State before the U.S. launches nuclear war, unless U.S. territory is under attack by a foreign military. “We need to take the nuclear football out of Trump’s hands, before he fumbles it,” Grayson said.
This bill was filed on the heels of Trump’s bizarre call for U.S. nuclear expansion and statements that the U.S. will “outmatch” and “outlast” any nuclear adversary.
“What part of the phrase ‘mutual assured destruction’ does Trump not get?” Grayson said.
Neither the Constitution nor the U.S. Code currently curbs the President’s ability to launch nuclear weapons.
“We need to place someone or something between Donald Trump’s impulses and Armageddon. When it comes to demonstrating Trump’s recklessness, we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Grayson said.
“If any finger rests on the nuclear button, it shouldn’t be Trump’s extended middle one.”
Donald Trump’s New Nuclear Instability, Democracy Now DECEMBER 29, 2016 BY AMY GOODMAN & DENIS MOYNIHAN
President-elect Donald Trump exploded a half-century of U.S. nuclear-arms policy in a single tweet last week: “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” With that one vague message, Donald Trump, who hasn’t even taken office yet, may have started a new arms race.
Trump’s statement set off alarms around the world, necessitating a cadre of his inner circle to flood the airwaves with now-routine attempts to explain what their boss “really meant.”
On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow confronted former Trump campaign manager and newly appointed Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway about the shocking tweet:
Maddow: “He’s saying we’re going to expand our nuclear capability.”
Conway: “He’s not necessarily saying that —”
Maddow: “… He did literally say we need to expand our nuclear capability —”
Conway: “…What he’s saying is…we need to expand our nuclear capability, really our nuclear readiness, our capability to be ready for those who also have nuclear weapons.”
The next morning, during a commercial break on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe,” Trump spoke by phone with Mika Brzezinski, as she and her co-host Joe Scarborough sat in pajamas on the Christmas-themed TV set. The call was not broadcast, but when the show came back from the break, Brzezinski quoted Trump as saying, “Let it be an arms race … we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
Minutes after that aired, Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA, told us on the “Democracy Now!” news hour: “Every day, Trump says something that makes us worried, but this may be the most terrifying yet. A nuclear-arms race is the last thing that the world needs. I think about climate change. I think about economic inequality. I think about all of these major threats that we’re facing as a country and as a world. Why would we add on top of that a totally manufactured, unnecessary threat?”………
Climate deniers, conspiracists and one-percenters: Trump’s cabinet of characters
The president-elect plans to surround himself with enemies of the environment, billions of dollars in net worth and people who are against their own agencies, Guardian, Tom McCarthy, 30 Dec 16, Barack Obama’s original cabinet was chockablock with historic firsts. The first African American attorney general. The first Nobel laureate upon appointment. The first female homeland security secretary, and the first African American to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Donald Trump’s cabinet, if confirmed, also would advance multiple historic firsts. It would be the first cabinet of multiple billionaires. It would be the first cabinet to give pride of place to climate deniers. It would be the first cabinet whose members want to eliminate their own agencies. And it would raise the bar – a lot – for conspiracy theorists.
Before Trump’s team faces closer scrutiny from Congress in January, here’s your guide to understanding how these four categories define many of Trump’s major nominees and advisers.
Climate deniers and enemies
These nominees would lead the four most important agencies in combatting climate change.
Scott Pruitt, EPA Oklahoma state attorney general Pruitt wrote in a May 2016 editorial in the National Review that there was a climate change “debate” that was “far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged …” He was part of a “secretive alliance” with fossil fuel companies to fight Obama administration environmental regulations, according to 2014 New York Times reporting.
Ryan Zinke, Department of the Interior Congressman from Montana
In a 2014 interview, Zinke blamed the buildup of greenhouse gases on volcanoes. “I’m a conservationist, but when there’s a volcano in the Philippines that erupts and produces more CO2 than humans have produced in 200 years – is CO2 really the problem?”
Rick Perry, Department of Energy
Former Texas governor
Perry wrote in a 2010 book that “we have been experiencing a cooling trend”. “I don’t believe that we have the settled science,” he said in a 2014 interview, continuing: “Calling CO2 a pollutant is doing a disservice the country, and I believe a disservice to the world … I’m not a scientist.”
Mike Pompeo, CIA Congressman from Kansas
Pompeo has used congressional hearings to grandstand against “what you all call climate change today”. He told CSPAN in 2013: “There are scientists who think lots of different things about climate change. There’s some who think we’re warming, there’s some who think we’re cooling, there’s some who think that the last 16 years have shown a pretty stable climate environment.”
Rex Tillerson, secretary of state
CEO of ExxonMobil
Tillerson pays lip service to “risks of climate change” but runs the world’s biggest non-state oil and gas extraction company. Likewise, he has said ExxonMobil favors a climate tax and supports the Paris climate accords but has not backedthose statements with action.
One-percenters
Trump’s billionaire cabinet could be the wealthiest administration ever. At least six appointees have net worths estimated in the nine figures. Collectively, they have more money than a third of American households combined, according to a Quartz calculation………
Divided loyalties
A noticeable Trump innovation in picking a cabinet: appointing leaders who have said they would like to destroy the agencies they’re supposed to lead. A variation is appointing leaders whose careers have undercut the agencies they’re supposed to lead.
Rick Perry
Perry famously suffered a memory lapse during a presidential debate in trying to name the Department of Energy as one of three federal agencies he would eliminate if elected. “Oops,” he said. Perry’s background in nuclear issues, which is the energy department’s main charge, appears to be limited to an effort to privatize the disposal of radioactive waste in Texas. Perry’s two immediate predecessors in the job were both nuclear physicists.
Scott Pruitt
Pruitt has been involved in multiple lawsuits against the EPA. He is currently part of a legal action waged by 28 states against the EPA to halt the Clean Power Plan, an effort by Obama’s administration to curb greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. Pruitt has said the American people “are tired of seeing billions of dollars drained from our economy due to unnecessary EPA regulations”, and he boasted on his LinkedIn page that he was “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda”………
Conspiracists
Trump traffics in conspiracy theories and fake news – Barack Obama was born outside the US and sympathizes with terrorists, the election was rigged, Hillary Clinton is a criminal – so it’s only proper that his cabinet should too. Here are the three Trump nominees in competition for the tinfoil hat trophy.
Ben Carson, Department of Housing and Urban Development
Could Donald Trump help unleash nuclear catastrophe with a single tweet?, Canberra Times, Greg Sargent , 27 Dec 16, Donald Trump’s alarming tweet about his desire to “greatly strengthen and expand” the “nuclear capability” of the US unleashed a frenzy of media efforts to try to divine his actual policy intentions. It forced some of his advisers into tortured claims that Trump didn’t say what he actually said, even as others simultaneously insisted that Trump did meaningfully put other countries on notice that if he deems them to be challenging our supremacy, they will face an arms race.
But perhaps the most worrisome thing about Trump’s nuclear tweet is not the intention to break with decades of international disarmament efforts that it may have signalled, though that’s frightening enough on its own. Rather, it’s that he saw fit to tweet about nuclear weapons at all.
As we prepare for President Trump to take near-unchecked control of our nuclear machinery, his nuclear tweet is best seen as a window into his temperament. Trump still does not appreciate that every word he utters carries tremendous weight and could have dramatic, untold, far-reaching, unpredictable consequences – something that is especially true in the nuclear arena. Or, perhaps worse, Trump may be entirely indifferent to this fact.
Arms control experts I spoke with suggested that Trump’s willingness to tweet about nuclear weapons raises the possibility of Trump doing the same as president – and more to the point, the possibility of him doing so amid some species of international crisis or escalation………
As we prepare for President Trump to take near-unchecked control of our nuclear machinery, his nuclear tweet is best seen as a window into his temperament. Trump still does not appreciate that every word he utters carries tremendous weight and could have dramatic, untold, far-reaching, unpredictable consequences – something that is especially true in the nuclear arena. Or, perhaps worse, Trump may be entirely indifferent to this fact.
Arms control experts I spoke with suggested that Trump’s willingness to tweet about nuclear weapons raises the possibility of Trump doing the same as president – and more to the point, the possibility of him doing so amid some species of international crisis or escalation……
Bernie Sanders urges Congress to stop Donald Trump launching nuclear arms raceDemocrat speaks out after President-elect appears to reverse decade’s-old policy of disarmament, The Independent, Charlotte England@charlottenglandSaturday 24 December 2016Bernie Sanders has urged Congress to stop Donald Trump launching a Cold War-style nuclear arms race.
“It’s a miracle a nuclear weapon hasn’t been used in war since 1945,” the VermontSenator said in a post on Twitter. “Congress can’t allow the Tweeter in Chief to start a nuclear arms race.”
Earlier on Friday, the US President-elect was asked to clarify the meaning behind an ambiguous tweet in an interview with MSNBC. “Let it be an arms race,” he is reported to have told co-host Mika Brzezinski,in a telephone call……..
Laicie Heeley, a nuclear expert at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan anti-nuclear proliferation think-tank in Washington, told AFP news agency it was “reckless” for Mr Trump to tweet on the topic without offering details.
“To make such a loaded statement without context or follow-up is irresponsible at best,” she said.
“We could be talking about a return to the Cold War here, when the threat of a nuclear catastrophe was very real,“ she said. ”Russian rhetoric is already moving in that direction. It wouldn’t take a lot to bring us back there.”
Minutes after Mr Trump’s follow up remarks were reported on MSNBC, his secretary Sean Spicer said in several television interviews that there would be no arms race because the President-elect would make sure that other countries trying to step up their nuclear capabilities, such as Russia and China, would decide not to participate.
Trump claims NBC ‘purposely’ misquoted nuclear comments, Politico, By CRISTIANO LIMA, 12/24/16
President-elect Donald Trump claimed Saturday that NBC News “purposely” misquoted his call for an expansion of the U.S. nuclear program earlier this week, despite reports to the contrary.
Trump on Thursday said the United States “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” Saturday he accused NBC of intentionally leaving out the latter, more measure portion of his statements……..
NBC News’ initial report covering Trump’s comments on nuclear expansion, however, cited his comments in full. And the Thursday broadcast of NBC’s “Nightly News with Lester Holt” displayed his comments in their entirety.
Trump’s claim of dishonesty in media coverage has been a calling card of his ascendance to the White House. Since winning the presidency, Trump has repeatedly attacked the media, broadly accusing them of inciting violence against him, singling out individual reporters and blasting the press as “crooked.”……http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/donald-trump-nbc-nuclear-232960
A tense new battle over nuclear arms erupts between Donald Trump and his staff, WP By Philip BumpDecember 23It began, it seems, with a speech from Vladimir Putin on Thursday, during which the Russian president argued that his country’s nuclear arsenal needed to be upgraded. In short order a tense two-day stand-off began — between Donald Trump and the communications staffers on his transition team.
Trump weighs in.
Trump’s initial comment about nuclear proliferation was clear in its intent if vague in its boundaries.
“The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability” is not subtle, implying that as president Trump aims to match whatever it is that Russia does. That, as we pointed out on Thursday, means a new nuclear arms race, contravening decades of American foreign policy.
His team pushes back.
Not so fast, though. On Thursday afternoon, transition spokesman Jason Miller sent out a statement about Trump’s declaration.
“President-elect Trump was referring to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the critical need to prevent it—particularly to and among terrorist organizations and unstable and rogue regimes,” Miller wrote in an email to The Post. “He has also emphasized the need to improve and modernize our deterrent capability as a vital way to pursue peace through strength.”
“[T]he threat of nuclear proliferation and the critical need to prevent it” is language that comports with existing policy — but it does not comport with what Trump himself said. The word “expand” is hard to avoid, but in the spirit of generosity one might allow that the president-elect misspoke on Twitter.
Trump suggests he meant what he said.
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday, co-host Mika Brzezinski reported on a conversation she’d had directly with Trump.
CO-HOST JOE SCARBOROUGH: The president-elect told you what?
BRZEZINSKI: “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass.”
SCARBOROUGH: “And outlast them all.”
BRZEZINSKI: “And outlast them all.”
SCARBOROUGH: OK. You can put that down as breaking news.
The conversation continued with the question of whether Trump was simply posturing in order to seem unpredictable. The Post’s David Ignatius, who was part of that discussion, noted that it was more likely that Trump was reverting to his old pattern: Being criticized for something he’d said and then doubling down on it in response.
The transition team assures us he didn’t mean what he said.
The conversation moved to NBC proper, where “Today” show host Matt Lauer spoke with Sean Spicer, recently identified as the incoming White House press secretary………
Trump Welcomes Nuclear Arms Race: “We Will Outmatch Them at Every Pass”, Slate 23 Dec 16 By Daniel Politi President-elect Donald Trump is doubling down on a statement that alarmed non-proliferation experts around the globe, essentially saying he’s cool with a nuclear arms race. “Let it be an arms race,” Trump told MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski when she asked him to clarify comments about expanding the country’s nuclear weapons capabilities. In the off-air conversation with the co-host of Morning Joe, the president-elect expressed confidence that the United States would come out on top anyway so there’s nothing to fear. “We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all,” Trump reportedly said.
Trump’s statement came a day after the president-elect shocked the world by writing on Twitter that the United States “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”…….
Donald Trump Says U.S. Should ‘Greatly’ Expand Nuclear Arsenal
The New York Times agrees there seems to be little doubt that at least based off on Trump’s statements, the president-elect seems willing to “restart the costly and dangerous Cold War-era nuclear weapons competition between the United States and the old Soviet Union.”……
The Russian leader said that his country’s military is stronger than any potential aggressor, even if he recognized the United States has a larger military. “Of course the U.S. has more missiles, submarines and aircraft carriers, but what we say is that we are stronger than any aggressor, and this is the case,” he said, adding that Russia has weapons that can penetrate U.S. defense systems.http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/12/23/trump_welcomes_nuclear_arms_race_confident_we_will_outmatch_them_at_every.html
Nuclear arms expert: There’s a huge contradiction in Trump’s thinking on nuclear arms, Business Insider ALEX LOCKIE DEC 24, 2016 On Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”
But as Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, told Business Insider, there’s a huge contradiction in Trump’s recent thinking on defence projects.
“Trump may be open to expanding the number of nuclear weapons in the arsenal, building new weapons, increasing the role of nuclear weapons in US policy,” Reif told Business Insider in an interview, despite the fact that the US’s nuclear arms are already “second to none.”
However, the US’s current path towards modernising US nuclear weapons will already cost a whopping $1 trillion dollars. Though it’s not yet clear whether Trump means actually building more or different types of nuclear weapons, he also recently seemed to shun another potentially trillion-dollar US defence project that’s already well underway.
“One of the interesting contradictions here is that his tweet suggests that he is going to move full steam ahead with the current nuclear modernisation plan, but we’ve also heard him express concerns about the F-35 program, saying maybe we need to stop it,” said Reif.
But, as Reif points out, the F-35 is part of the US’s overall nuclear modernisation program.
“Later versions of the F-35 will be nuclear capable and replace other fighters and bombers,’ said Reif.
Donald Trump: US must greatly expand nuclear weapons Donald Trump has called for the US to “greatly strengthen and expand” its nuclear arsenal. BBC News 22 Dec 16 The president-elect, who takes office next month, said the US must take such action “until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes”.
He spoke hours after President Vladimir Putin said Russia needs to bolster its military nuclear potential.
The US has 7,100 nuclear weapons and Russia has 7,300, according to the US nonpartisan Arms Control Association. Mr Trump’s announcement, which came via Twitter, was published in a string of several tweets on Thursday morning.
Mr Trump also wrote to criticise a resolution being considered at the UN and to reiterate his vow to “drain the swamp” – a reference to corruption in Washington DC.
His tweet came only hours after President Putin met with his military advisers to recap Russian military activities in 2016………
This is a radical departure from President Obama’s current policy.
Mr Trump has offered no further details on his plans but he has hinted in the past that he favoured an expansion of the nuclear programme.
He was asked in interviews whether he would use weapons of mass destruction against an enemy and he said that it would be an absolute last stance, but he added that he would want to be unpredictable.
In contrast, President Obama has talked of the US commitment to seek peace and security without nuclear weapons.
He has sought to reduce the nation’s arsenal of nearly 5,000 warheads in favour of more special operations forces and precise tactical strikes……. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38410027
Trump Goes Nuclear, But This Time Lockheed, Northrop, Raytheon Rise http://www.investors.com/news/trump-tweets-about-nukes-after-blasting-pentagon-spending/GILLIAN RICH President-elect Donald Trump tweeted about the importance of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to recapitalize, potentially giving defense giants like Lockheed Martin (LMT), Northrop Grumman (NOC), Raytheon (RTN) and Boeing (BA) some hope that he won’t cost-shame them on that piece of the Pentagon budget America’s nuclear triad of air-, land- and sea-based delivery systems is nearing the end of its life span and needs to be replaced. But that won’t come cheaply.
Over the summer, the Air Force released its requests for proposals for intercontinental ballistic missiles to replace Boeing’s aging Minuteman system. The Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent’s estimated cost is $62 billion over 30 years, but a report from the Pentagon’s office of independent cost assessment said the Air Force’s estimate is too low by “billions of dollars,” sources told Bloomberg.
The Air Force is also seeking Long-Range Standoff nuclear cruise missiles to replace Boeing AGM-86B Air-Launched Cruise Missiles. That program’s cost has been estimated at $20 billion-$30 billion.
Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop and Lockheed are expected to bid on the two contracts, and initial contracts could be awarded next year.
Last year, Northrop was awarded a contract to build the B-21 bomber that replaces the Cold War-era Boeing B-52s. The Air Force has put the development-phase cost for the B-21 at $23.5 billion, but analysts have estimated the total acquisition cost at up to $80 billion. The Navy’s program to replace its Ohio-class submarines, which can launch nuclear missiles, will cost the service $100 billion.
Shares of defense contractors reversed higher after early, narrow losses. Lockheed shares edged up 0.1% on the stock market today, Northrop added 0.3%, and Raytheon rose 0.5%. Boeing gained 0.1%. General Dynamics (GD) and Huntington Ingalls (HII), which build submarines, were up 0.3% and 2.1%, respectively.
Nuclear plundering of the public purse – the Sellafield and Moorside billions, Ecologist, Martin Forwood 13th December 2016
“………Largely under-reported by the media, Moorside’s developer NuGen told the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee in early November that it had been calculating how elements of its proposed triple AP1000 reactor site might be carved up to allow the non-nuclear elements of the project to be paid for by the UK Government.
For despite casting its net far and wide in an attempt to drum up the additional finance to meet the clearly under-estimated £15 billion cost of building Moorside, the consortium of Japan’s Toshiba and France’s Engie is clearly struggling to attract support.
The struggle was intensified by the not unexpected news on 8th December that Engie itself has declared that it will pull out of the Moorside and other new-build developments because “it no longer has the resources to finance such expensive projects” and wants to concentrate on renewables instead.
Hoping that the Treasury’s taxpayer cavalry will ride to the rescue, NuGen’s CEO Tom Samson told the House of Lords that one non-nuclear element of the project has been identified by the consortium as the seawater system required to cool Moorside’s reactors.
Exactly how this vital component of reactor operation can be classified by NuGen as a non-nuclear element and thereby qualify for taxpayer support is as incomprehensible as is the further suggestion that major ‘civil works’ such as the removal of excavation spoil, could also qualify for Government largesse.
It’s a telling sign of NuGen’s dire financial straits, and one that will leave tax-paying observers wondering exactly which part it is of the Government’s erstwhile promise – that future developers would shoulder the whole cost of new-build in the UK – that NuGen doesn’t understand or seeks to circumvent in its hour of self-inflicted need.
And now – taxpayer-funded transport infrastructure and powerlines
Then there’s the suggestion of Government assistance in improving the transport infrastructure in the Cumbrian area to help support both the decommissioning operations at Sellafield and the proposed construction site at Moorside.
Leaving aside NuGen’s less than subtle ploy to boost its case for infrastructure improvements by lumping together Moorside and Sellafield decommissioning, local communities will nevertheless know to their frustration that pleas to improve West Cumbria’s chronic road and rail infrastructure have fallen on deaf Government and industry ears for decades.
Even the construction of the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) in the 1980’s and 90’s – a project of similar workforce size to that forecast for Moorside and with similar demands on the local infrastructure – saw no improvements whatsoever made to the outdated transport system.
With Sellafield’s commercial reprocessing operations in their death throes and the site in clean-up mode, it would be morally indefensible for the taxpayer to be expected to step in now to bank roll a Japanese / French private consortium that has clearly bitten off more than it can chew and finds itself short of funding for a project whose timetable and sums increasingly fail to add up.
The very notion that the Treasury should ride to the rescue of NuGen’s vested interest in a new-build project that has considerably less than full public support will be anathema to taxpayers, particularly as they witness hospital and community services in West Cumbria – whose survival is in everyone’s interest – being increasingly starved of Government support.
A thought must be spared too for those facing the double whammy of increased electricity bills as a result of the estimated £2.5 billion cost of connecting Moorside to an upgraded North West Coast grid system – a contentious and hugely disruptive and visually damaging upgrade that National Grid has confirmed again recently would not be necessary if the Moorside project was not on the table.
The government must pull back from this boondoggle project
Time will tell whether the historically apron-stringed – some would say incestuous – relationship between Government and UK Nuclear will come up trumps for NuGen.
But if it doesn’t there will be no public sympathy for a consortium that has walked open-eyed into a remote green field site well documented as being ‘less than optimum’ for new-build in construction, infrastructure and transmission terms.
Nugen has made its bed and should now lie in it or, as the other saying suggests, get out of the Cumbrian kitchen if it can’t stand the financial heat.
Martin Forwood is the Campaign Coordinator of CORE, Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment.
any UK financing would be “off balance sheet” to avoid inflating public debts
The UK’s willingness to consider government involvement reflects a change in thinking since Theresa May replaced David Cameron as prime minister last June. Her enthusiasm for “industrial strategy” — a term enshrined in Mr Clark’s formal job title — has already been widely interpreted as signalling a greater openness to intervention in business affairs.
Public finance sought for Welsh nuclear plant, Hitachi in talks over state funding for Wylfa in Anglesey by: Andrew Ward and Jim Pickard in London, Ft.com, 16 Dec 16
Hitachi is in talks with the Japanese and UK governments about potential state financing for the multibillion-pound nuclear power station it is planning to build in Wales.
Government equity, loans and credit guarantees are among the options being explored by the Japanese conglomerate and officials in London and Tokyo, according to people briefed on the matter.
Philip Hammond, UK chancellor, is in Japan this week, and Greg Clark, business secretary, is expected to visit next week, with the Hitachi nuclear project high on the agenda for both.
Following a meeting with government officials and business leaders in Tokyo on Thursday, Mr Hammond that financing for the nuclear power project in Wales could total around £12bn, of which a portion would be contributed by Japan. Negotiations are continuing but bankers indicated the Japanese contribution could be on the order of ¥1tn ($8.5bn).
People involved in the process said talks still “have a long way to go” and it was far from certain that a deal with the two governments would be reached.
One person said that any UK financing would be “off balance sheet” to avoid inflating public debts. This could include the government taking a direct minority stake alongside Hitachi provided it did not bring the whole project on to the Treasury’s books. Japanese government support is likely to come in the form of loans.
UK government officials said they were “looking at options” for how the Wylfa project should be financed.
The UK’s willingness to consider government involvement reflects a change in thinking since Theresa May replaced David Cameron as prime minister last June. Her enthusiasm for “industrial strategy” — a term enshrined in Mr Clark’s formal job title — has already been widely interpreted as signalling a greater openness to intervention in business affairs.
Scientists backing up climate data over fears it could be erased under Donald Trump, ABC News 14 Dec 16Scientists in the United States are making copies of federal climate and environmental data over fears it could be erased under Donald Trump’s administration.
The mass action — being coordinated by the University of Pennsylvania’s Program in the Environmental Humanities (PPEH Lab) — has been dubbed a “data rescue” and has brought together academics from across the country and in neighbouring Canada.
It aims to safeguard data “vulnerable under an administration which denies the fact of ongoing climate change” by storing it on an independent server. Researchers are also collating a spreadsheet of the research they deem to be at risk once the President-elect takes office on January 20.
In a statement, Mr Pruitt was described as “a national leader against the EPA’s job-killing war on coal”.
In a piece for The Washington Post, Holthaus yesterday wrote that archiving climate data was “an extraordinary step to have to take, but we live in an extraordinary moment”.
Bundestag approves nuclear waste deal with industry, DW, 15 Dec 16An overwhelming majority in Germany’s parliament has given the go-ahead for a reponsibility-splitting deal to clean up nuclear waste. It’s the final chapter in a decades-long story. The deal will require four of Germany’s largest energy providers to pay more than 23 billion euros ($24.1 billion) into a state-administered fund to deal with the aftermath of nuclear power in return for legal immunity. The deal was passed with the votes of the ruling coalition of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Green Party by a margin of 581 to 58.
The agreement is the latest step in Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear energy, which was made after the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Addressing the Bundestag before the vote, Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel harkened back to the beginnings of the “no-nukes” movement among private citizens in Denmark, Germany and other parts of Europe in the mid-1970s.
“The stickers with the picture of the sun laughing became a symbol for a successful energy policy,” Gabriel said, promising that Germany would safely dispose of nuclear waste rather than simply exporting it to other parts of the world……..
“The actual costs will be a lot more than the estimates,” DIW Energy Division Director Claudia Kemfert told Deutsche Welle in October, when the details of the arrangement were hammered out. “So the deal only covers a fraction of the actual costs, and society will have to pick up the rest.”
Kemfert said that the power companies had gotten a “free pass,” a sentiment echoed in parliament by the Left Party, which voted against the deal.
“The companies are being released from responsibility with a golden handshake,” said Left Party energy spokeswoman Eva Bulling-Schröter.”The costs are going to go up.”
The issue of lawsuits filed by energy companies against the German government’s nuclear phase-out has yet to be fully resolved. The government will now begin negotiations aimed at ending the various legal actions in return for the clean-up compromise. http://www.dw.com/en/bundestag-approves-nuclear-waste-deal-with-industry/a-36775793
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