What reports got wrong about China’s ‘sunken nuclear submarine’
Western news organizations often miss crucial context—and even the real news—about Chinese military modernization.
Defense One, By J. Michael Dahm and Peter W. Singer 4 Oct 24
The purported sinking of a Chinese nuclear submarine at a Wuhan shipyard pier is the latest example of Western reporting on military developments in China that overlooks important details and context, or even takes the wrong lessons from the fragments of stories they tell.
The incident, which took place in June, drew some mention the following month on social media and even in the defense press, but it went viral after a Sept. 26 report in the Wall Street Journal touched off coverage from Fox News to CBS. What apparently lit up the U.S. media landscape were the assertions, attributed to unnamed U.S. defense officials, that the submarine was nuclear-powered. Many of the subsequent reports suggested that the incident revealed safety concerns about a new class of PLA Navy nuclear submarine and a serious setback for China’s military modernization.
These are mischaracterizations. Moreover, the reporting actually buried the lead. The shipyard accident tells us very little about the future of PLA naval modernization, but the submarine itself does.
The afflicted boat was said to be a “Type 041 Zhou-class submarine” powered by a nuclear reactor. But tracing that claim to its origins reveals the importance of context and of using varied sources………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The point is that a preponderance of public sourcing indicates there is far more uncertainty about the ship itself than the headlines would have it. Indeed, there is nothing in the available reporting that indicates an actual nuclear incident. The satellite photos showed four crane barges that may have been deployed to raise a sunken object, but no nuclear-response efforts were detected. This was not Chernobyl.
……………………………….. This story also underlines a larger problem in Western media reporting on China’s military in recent years: too often, it swings between two extremes that portray the PLA as either comically inept or ten feet tall……………………………………
…………… The issues in U.S.-China security are of growing domestic interest and political importance, especially during an election season. As such, it is ever more vital that mass media reporting on PLA capabilities avoids the temptation to hunt for “clicks” and “eyeballs” and instead seeks out the details and context necessary to fully understand the implications of China’s military modernization.
J. Michael Dahm is a Senior Associate with BluePath Labs, a Senior Fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, and a Lecturer in International Affairs at the George Washington University.
P.W. Singer is a best-selling author of such books on war and technology as Wired for War, Ghost Fleet, and Burn-In; senior fellow at New America; and co-founder of Useful Fiction, a strategic narratives company. https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2024/10/chinas-sunken-nuclear-sub-was-likely-nothing-sort/400001/
Pentagon “goes to school” -William Hartung, The Battle for the Soul of American Science
“……………………………………………. Hartung, a Pentagon expert, has focused on this strange reality of ours: no matter how many wars the United States loses, it only pours yet more taxpayer dollars into the Pentagon budget and into the coffers of those giant weapons-making companies of the military-industrial-congressional complex.
September 29, 2024, Tomgram
………………………………………………… Yet, after all these years, what couldn’t be more striking today is that, in the same spirit as those older pieces, Hartung focuses (as he so often has) on a different aspect entirely of the Pentagon’s distinctly over-funded world, one that, amid all the news coverage in this country, gets little or no attention: how the Pentagon, as he puts it, “goes to school” to enlist American science in the battle to create yet more horrific weaponry.
Pentagon expert William Hartung first wandered into TomDispatch in March 2008, less than seven years after this country’s Global War(s) on Terror were launched, full-scale disasters that were already costing the American taxpayer a fortune and a half — or perhaps, given the subject, all too literally an arm and a leg. As he wrote then, “How much, for instance, does one week of George Bush’s wars cost? Glad you asked. If we consider the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan together — which we might as well do, since we and our children and grandchildren will be paying for them together into the distant future — a conservative, single-week estimate comes to $3.5 billion. Remember, that’s per week! By contrast, the whole international community spends less than $400 million per year on the International Atomic Energy Agency, the primary institution for monitoring and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons; that’s less than one day’s worth of war costs.”
Only $650 million or so of that weekly sum, he estimated, was “spent on people.” So, he wondered, “where does the other nearly $3 billion go?” The answer he offered then: “It goes for goods and services, from tanks and fighter planes to fuel and food. Most of this money ends up in the hands of private companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and the former Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root.” And knowing about that expense of $3.5 billion a week “and counting” on America’s wars, he added sarcastically, “Doesn’t that make you feel safer?”
Ever since then, Hartung, a Pentagon expert, has focused on this strange reality of ours: no matter how many wars the United States loses, it only pours yet more taxpayer dollars into the Pentagon budget and into the coffers of those giant weapons-making companies of the military-industrial-congressional complex. Even the titles of a few of his pieces over the years catch the grim spirit of his all-too-striking analysis: “There’s No Business Like the Arms Business, Weapons ‘R’ Us (But You’d Never Know It)” (July 2016); “The Urge to Splurge, Why Is It So Hard to Reduce the Pentagon Budget?” (October 2016); “The American Way of War Is a Budget-Breaker, Never Has a Society Spent More for Less” (May 2017); “Merger Mania, The Military-Industrial Complex on Steroids” (July 2019); “America Dominant Again (in Arms Sales), And Again… and Again… And Again” (May 2021); “Fueling the Warfare State, America’s $1.4 Trillion ‘National Security’ Budget Makes Us Ever Less Safe” (July 2022); “Spending Unlimited, The Pentagon’s Budget Follies Come at a High Price” (March 2024).
And of course, that’s just a small dip into the pieces he’s written for TomDispatch. Yet, after all these years, what couldn’t be more striking today is that, in the same spirit as those older pieces, Hartung focuses (as he so often has) on a different aspect entirely of the Pentagon’s distinctly over-funded world, one that, amid all the news coverage in this country, gets little or no attention: how the Pentagon, as he puts it, “goes to school” to enlist American science in the battle to create yet more horrific weaponry. And so it goes, again and again and again. Tom
The Pentagon Goes to School. The Battle for the Soul of American Science. Bringing the Militarization of University Research Back to Earth
The divestment campaigns launched last spring by students protesting Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza brought the issue of the militarization of American higher education back into the spotlight.
Of course, financial ties between the Pentagon and American universities are nothing new. As Stuart Leslie has pointed out in his seminal book on the topic, The Cold War and American Science, “In the decade following World War II, the Department of Defense (DOD) became the biggest patron of American science.” Admittedly, as civilian institutions like the National Institutes of Health grew larger, the Pentagon’s share of federal research and development did decline, but it still remained a source of billions of dollars in funding for university research.
And now, Pentagon-funded research is once again on the rise, driven by the DOD’s recent focus on developing new technologies like weapons driven by artificial intelligence (AI). Combine that with an intensifying drive to recruit engineering graduates and the forging of partnerships between professors and weapons firms and you have a situation in which many talented technical types could spend their entire careers serving the needs of the warfare state. The only way to head off such a Brave New World would be greater public pushback against the military conquest (so to speak) of America’s research and security agendas, in part through resistance by scientists and engineers whose skills are so essential to building the next generation of high-tech weaponry.
The Pentagon Goes to School
Yes, the Pentagon’s funding of universities is indeed rising once again and it goes well beyond the usual suspects like MIT or Johns Hopkins University. In 2022, the most recent year for which full data is available, 14 universities received at least — and brace yourself for this — $100 million in Pentagon funding, from Johns Hopkins’s astonishing $1.4 billion (no, that is not a typo!) to Colorado State’s impressive $100 million. And here’s a surprise: two of the universities with the most extensive connections to our weaponry of the future are in Texas: the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) and Texas A&M.
In 2020, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and former Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy appeared onstage at a UT-Austin ceremony to commemorate the creation of a robotics lab there, part of a new partnership between the Army Futures Command and the school. “This is ground zero for us in our research for the weapons systems we’re going to develop for decades to come,” said McCarthy.
Not to be outdone, Texas A&M is quietly becoming the Pentagon’s base for research on hypersonics — weapons expected to travel five times the speed of sound. Equipped with a kilometer-long tunnel for testing hypersonic missiles, that school’s University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics is explicitly dedicated to outpacing America’s global rivals in the development of that next generation military technology. Texas A&M is also part of the team that runs the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the (in)famous New Mexico facility where the first nuclear weapons were developed and tested as part of the Manhattan Project under the direction of Robert Oppenheimer.
Other major players include Carnegie Mellon University, a center for Army research on the applications of AI, and Stanford University, which serves as a feeder to California’s Silicon Valley firms of all types. That school also runs the Technology Transfer for Defense (TT4D) Program aimed at transitioning academic technologies from the lab to the marketplace and exploring the potential military applications of emerging technology products.
In addition, the Pentagon is working aggressively to bring new universities into the fold. In January 2023, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the creation of a defense-funded research center at Howard University, the first of its kind at a historically black college.
Given the campus Gaza demonstrations of last spring, perhaps you also won’t be surprised to learn that the recent surge in Pentagon spending faces increasing criticism from students and faculty alike. Targets of protest include the Lavender program, which has used AI to multiply the number of targets the Israeli armed forces can hit in a given time frame. But beyond focusing on companies enabling Israel’s war effort, current activists are also looking at the broader role of their universities in the all-American war system.
For example, at Indiana University research on ties to companies fueling the killings in Gaza grew into a study of the larger role of universities in supporting the military system as a whole. Student activists found that the most important connection involved that university’s ties to the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division, whose mission is “to provide acquisition, engineering… and technical support for sensors, electronics, electronic warfare, and special warfare weapons.” In response, student activists have launched a “Keep Crane Off Campus” campaign.
A Science of Death or for Life?
Graduating science and engineering students increasingly face a moral dilemma about whether they want to put their skills to work developing instruments of death. Journalist Indigo Olivier captured that conflict in a series of interviews with graduating engineering students. She quotes one at the University of West Florida who strongly opposes doing weapons work this way: “When it comes to engineering, we do have a responsibility… Every tool can be a weapon… I don’t really feel like I need to be putting my gifts to make more bombs.”
By contrast, Cameron Davis, a 2021 computer engineering graduate from Georgia Tech, told Olivier about the dilemma faced by so many graduating engineers: “A lot of people that I talk to aren’t 100% comfortable working on defense contracts, working on things that are basically going to kill people.” But he went on to say that the high pay at weapons firms “drives a lot of your moral disagreements with defense away.”
The choice faced by today’s science and engineering graduates is nothing new. The use of science for military ends has a long history in the United States. But there have also been numerous examples of scientists who resisted dangerous or seemingly unworkable military schemes……………………………………………………………………………………………
Scientists have also played a leading role in pressing for nuclear arms control and disarmament, founding organizations like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1945), the Federation of American Scientists (1945), the global Pugwash movement (1957), the Council for a Livable World (1962), and the Union of Concerned Scientists (1969). To this day, all of them continue to work to curb the threat of a nuclear war that could destroy this planet as a livable place for humanity.
A central figure in this movement was Joseph Rotblat, the only scientist to resign from the Manhattan Project over moral qualms about the potential impact of the atomic bomb. In 1957, he helped organize the founding meeting of the Pugwash Conference, an international organization devoted to the control and ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. In some respects Pugwash was a forerunner of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which successfully pressed for the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in January 2021.
Enabling Endless War and Widespread Torture
The social sciences also have a long, conflicted history of ties to the Pentagon and the military services. Two prominent examples from earlier in this century were the Pentagon’s Human Terrain Program (HTS) and the role of psychologists in crafting torture programs associated with the Global War on Terror, launched after the 9/11 attacks with the invasion of Afghanistan.
………………………………………………An even more controversial use of social scientists in the service of the war machine was the role of psychologists as advisors to the CIA’s torture programs at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba, and other of that agency’s “black sites.” ……………………………………………………………
today, resistance to the militarization of science has extended to the growing use of artificial intelligence and other emerging military technologies. For example, in 2018, there was a huge protest movement at Google when employees learned that the company was working on Project Maven, a communications network designed to enable more accurate drone strikes. More than 4,000 Google scientists and engineers signed a letter to company leadership calling for them to steer clear of military work, dozens resigned over the issue, and the protests had a distinct effect on the company. That year, Google announced that it would not renew its Project Maven contract, and pledged that it “will not design or deploy AI” for weapons.
Unfortunately, the lure of military funding was simply too strong. Just a few years after those Project Maven protests, Google again began doing work for the Pentagon,…………………………………….
The Future of American Science
……………………………………………………………………The stakes are particularly high now, given the ongoing rush to develop AI-driven weaponry and other emerging technologies that pose the risk of everything from unintended slaughter due to system malfunctions to making war more likely, given the (at least theoretical) ability to limit casualties for the attacking side. In short, turning back the flood of funding for military research and weaponry from the Pentagon and key venture capital firms will be a difficult undertaking. After all, AI is already performing a wide range of military and civilian tasks. Banning it altogether may no longer be a realistic goal, but putting guardrails around its military use might still be.
Such efforts are, in fact, already underway. The International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) has called for an international dialogue on “the pressing dangers that these systems pose to peace and international security and to civilians.”………………………………….
The Future of Life Institute has underscored the severity of the risk, noting that “more than half of AI experts believe there is a one in ten chance this technology will cause our extinction.”
Instead of listening almost exclusively to happy talk about the military value of AI by individuals and organizations that stand to profit from its adoption, isn’t it time to begin paying attention to the skeptics, while holding back on the deployment of emerging military technologies until there is a national conversation about what they can and can’t accomplish, with scientists playing a central role in bringing the debate back to earth?
https://tomdispatch.com/the-pentagon-goes-to-school/
“Peaceful” and war-making nuclear industries get together in tertiary education
The University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC)
and Holtec, the USA’s largest nuclear components exporter, have entered a
formal partnership to collaborate on SMRs and large-scale nuclear and
fusion in the civil and defence sectors.
Earlier this week, the two
organisations signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for ‘Cooperation
on Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Technology’ at the AMRC’s facility in
Sheffield.
Machinery Market 24th Sept 2024 https://www.machinery-market.co.uk/news/38159/SMRs-and-large-scale-nuclear-and-fusion-collaboration
More nuclear reactors? Denying the risks, IAEA’s Grossi promotes unrealistic nuclear power plans
Beyond Nuclear, By M.V. Ramana and Jixiang Wang, 22 Sept 24
Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Director General, has been busy over the last few years. The media has often reported on his efforts to highlight “the risk of a major nuclear accident” at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Grossi has also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin twice to discuss the situation at Zaporizhzhia, arguing that a “severe nuclear accident…would recognize no borders” and “we must do everything possible to prevent” such an accident.
But Grossi has also simultaneously been increasing the risk of accidents, albeit inadvertently, by calling for building more nuclear reactors. This advocacy takes many forms. He has written op-eds in prominent outlets like Foreign Affairs. He has been trying to canvas countries to start nuclear power programs. For example, in March 2024. he went to Baghdad and committed to working with Iraq to help build a nuclear reactor “for peaceful purposes”. And as a way to deal with the unaffordable costs of nuclear reactors, he has pushed the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to provide funding for building nuclear plants.
None of this make sense. When viewed as investment advice to banks, Grossi’s promotion of nuclear power does not meet the laugh threshold. According to Grossi, the banks’ lack of funding for nuclear energy is “out of date, out of step with what is happening”. But it is Grossi’s advocacy that is out of step with happening to nuclear energy in the real world.
When nuclear energy is evaluated through how much it contributes to the world’s electricity production, the technology has been declining continuously for over 25 years, from 17.5 percent in 1996 down to 9.2 percent in 2022. For reasons discussed later, this trend will likely continue. In other words, the importance of nuclear energy is diminishing. Investing more money into a technology that some scholars argue is “destined for decline” makes little sense.
When analyzing Grossi’s advice to these development banks, one should remember what these institutions are supposed to do. The World Bank’s mission is “to end extreme poverty and boost prosperity on a livable planet”. And the Asian Development Bank has a similar mission, with a regional focus on Asia and the Pacific. The World Bank’s mission, in particular, mentions the multiple, intertwined crises we are confronting and emphasizes both the need for “affordable energy” and how quickly these crises should be addressed, stating “time is of the essence”. Nuclear energy fails on both counts.
Expensive and Slow
Electricity from nuclear reactors is costly and does not provide affordable energy, especially when compared to other low-carbon, renewable sources of energy. During the same period mentioned earlier, the share of all electricity generated by modern renewables has risen from just over 1 percent of in 1996 to 15.9 percent in 2023. Today, it is utility-scale solar photovoltaic power that provides the least costly option for generating electricity plants in many countries. This is why, in 2020, the International Energy Agency dubbed solar “the new king of the world’s electricity markets”. Money spent on nuclear reactors by banks would only divert funds away from investing in renewables and associated technologies and infrastructures.
Nuclear reactors have also almost never been on time. An astonishing 89 percent of all reactors that were connected to the grid between 2020 and 2022 were delayed………………………………..
That is not all. Around the world, 92 nuclear projects have been cancelled or suspended, usually after hundreds of millions, if not billions, have been spent. In the United States, the latest such cancellation was a project involving a small modular reactor from NuScale that the company advertised as “smaller, safer, and cheaper”
Necessary Conditions for Nuclear Power
It is not as though development banks have not considered nuclear energy. Back in 1959, the World Bank did invest in a nuclear project in Italy, based on a set of conditions, most importantly the unavailability of other cost-competitive alternatives. That project was not a success. More important for the present discussion is that with the reduced cost and increasing availability of solar and wind power, nuclear power no longer meets these conditions to be cost-effective.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB), too, undertook an analysis of various technologies and published an Energy Policy paper in 2009 that highlighted a number of barriers confronting nuclear power development, including “public concerns related to nuclear proliferation, waste management, safety issues, high investment costs, long lead times, and commercial acceptability of new technologies”. Thanks to these concerns, the paper declared that “ADB will maintain its current policy of non-involvement in the financing of nuclear power generation”. None of these barriers have disappeared.
………………………………………Fukushima served as a reminder that the nature of nuclear technology ensures “the inevitability of accidents”.
The Unlearned Lessons of Zaporizhzhia
A different route to a severe nuclear accident is on display at the Zaporizhzhia power plant—and Grossi has been eloquent about how such an accident will “have ripples and reverberations all over the world”. But instead of considering Zaporizhzhia as a wake-up call to reflect on whether the world should continue to build more nuclear power plants, Grossi has taken recourse to advocating for five principles of nuclear safety and security. Unfortunately for him these rules are unlikely to be widely accepted—as evidenced by the many attacks on the Zaporizhzhia plant.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Grossi’s silence about this risk should be troubling at the best of times. But it is particularly inexcusable when he is, in parallel, emphasizing the risks of suffer a major accident at the Zaporizhzhia power plant. When he went to Iraq recently, he actively downplayed the legitimate concerns in that country thanks to its nuclear reactors being bombed by Israel and the United States. Grossi’s prescription is to simply call for “turning the page on this complex past”. Can he genuinely and credibly assure Iraq that such an attack will not happen again?
The deeper problem is a conflict of interest. As the head of the International Atomic Energy, Rafael Grossi, like his predecessors, tasked with two separate objectives: “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world” and to “ensure, so far as it is able, that assistance provided by it or at its request or under its supervision or control is not used in such a way as to further any military purpose”. The case for promoting nuclear energy was never very strong and has completely collapsed in recent years. It is past time to simply abandon the first objective and focus on the second. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/09/22/more-nuclear-reactors/
Nuclear waste group spends £4,600 on logo to show it IS listening to Theddlethorpe views.
A probe has revealed that a group connected to plans
for an underground nuclear waste dump in Theddlethorpe spent £4,600 on a
new logo to demonstrate it is listening to residents’ views. The logo, with
two speech bubbles, signifying a conversation, has been created for the
Theddlethorpe GDF Community Partnership, which has been set up to help
locals understand why a GDF (geological disposal facility) might be
suitable for the area.
The former gas terminal at Theddlethorpe has been
identified as one of several potential locations in England for the dumping
of nuclear waste by the government agency, Nuclear Waste Services (NWS). It
would be stored beneath up to 1,000 metres of solid rock until its
radioactivity naturally decays.
Lincolnshire World 20th Sept 2024
https://www.lincolnshireworld.com/news/people/nuclear-waste-group-spends-ps4600-on-logo-to-show-it-is-listening-to-theddlethorpe-views-4790584
‘The Genocide Gentry’: Weapon Execs Sit on Boards of Universities, Institutions
“This research provides a view into just how embedded the corporate, profit-fueled war machine is in our higher education and cultural institutions,” said one campaigner.
Brett Wilkins, Sep 18, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/news/u-s-universities-weapons-companies
A trio of human rights groups on Wednesday announced a new interactive initiative exposing what the coalition is calling a “Genocide Gentry” of weapons company executives and board members and “54 museums, cultural organizations, universities, and colleges that currently host these individuals on their boards or in other prominent roles.”
The coalition—which consists of the Adalah Justice Project, LittleSis, and Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE)—published a map and database detailing the “educational and cultural ties to board members of six defense corporations” amid Israel’s ongoing annihilation of Gaza, for which the U.S.-backed country is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
” Israel has destroyed every university in Gaza and nearly 200 cultural heritage sites since October 2023, using bombs and weapons manufactured by the companies included in the Genocide Gentry research,” the coalition said. “As of April, these attacks have killed more than 5,479 students and 261 teachers and destroyed or critically damaged nearly 90% of all school buildings in Gaza.”
“Universities across the country including the likes of Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Southern California, and New York University have remained largely silent on Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza,” the groups added. “Behind closed doors, these same universities are hosting executives and board members of the companies manufacturing the weapons used in these attacks as board members, trustees, and fellows.”
Members of the Genocide Gentry include:
- Jeh Johnson, Lockheed Martin board of directors: Johnson is currently a Columbia University trustee, and sits on the board of directors at MetLife and U.S. Steel. Columbia University notably shut down student protests demanding divestment from weapons companies like Lockheed Martin.
- Brian C. Rogers, RTX board of directors: Rogers is currently a trustee of the Harvard Management Company, tasked with managing the $50 billion endowment. Notably Harvard administrators have cracked down on students demanding divestment from weapons companies like RTX, formerly Raytheon.
- Catherine B. Reynolds, General Dynamics board of directors: Reynolds is a trustee of the Kennedy Center and sponsors a fellowship at New York University, which has also cracked down on anti-genocide protests and recently enacted a policy equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
“Students on university campuses across the country have not only been demanding divestment, but transparency,” said Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project. “Transparency about their institutions’ investments, partnerships, donors, and decision-makers, and their connections to individuals and companies directly enabling and profiting off war and genocide.”
“This research helps provide some of this transparency by illuminating just how embedded the interests of the weapons industry are within our institutions, so we can begin chipping away at the power and influence that they wield,” she added.
ACRE campaign director Ramah Kudaimi noted that “as part of its genocide since October 2023, Israel has targeted universities and cultural centers across Gaza, destroying campuses, museums, libraries, and more.”
“That this is all backed by the United States means U.S. educational and cultural institutions have a responsibility to consider what their role is in helping end these war crimes, and that starts with reconsidering their connections with the weapons companies profiting from the destruction,” Kudaimi said.
Munira Lokhandwala, director of the Tech and Training program at LittleSis, said: “This research provides a view into just how embedded the corporate, profit-fueled war machine is in our higher education and cultural institutions. Through this research, we show how the defense industry shapes and influences our civic and cultural institutions, and as a result, their silence around war and genocide.”
“We must ask our institutions: What role are you playing in whitewashing war and destruction by inviting those who profit from manufacturing weapons onto your boards and into your galas?” she added.
Sizewell C now: from farce to drama
To ensure that the terrain of the site is strong enough to withstand the pressures and forces of such a mammoth construction and future climate change challenges, ground anchor trials have been ordered. The results of these trials are not yet known, but that has not deterred the Office of Nuclear Regulation from issuing a nuclear site licence.
Construction of Sizewell C is already under way in Suffolk. The promise is for cheap, clean and safe energy, but what is the reality?
by Peter Wilkinson, 17 September 2024, https://eastangliabylines.co.uk/energy/sizewell-c-now-from-farce-to-drama/
As time passes and the land is prepared for the Sizewell C development, the impact of this massive undertaking is finally and painfully revealing itself to residents.
Sizewell C: here we go again
Vegetation has disappeared from large tracts of land. A 100-year-old forest has been felled. Huge lay-down areas are being created to store the equipment required for construction work. The presence of large numbers of aggregate tipper lorries on the small roads around the site has become routine. Footpaths have been closed. Deer have been driven out of their traditional habitat and wander bemused onto roads. Worker campuses are appearing and already, some workers have been charged with driving offences, causing one resident who has seen it all before – and worse – during the construction of Sizewell B to comment, “And so it begins”.
EDF is stamping its imprint all over East Suffolk, making its intentions crystal clear. The trickle of inconvenience will quickly become the intolerability of an invasion of workers, noise, industrialisation and disruption over the next few years.
How do we define ‘safe’ when it comes to nuclear power?
Nuclear power is often cited as being ‘safe’. A quick search of the internet will disabuse anyone of that view. Many reported accidents are trivial, but some are significant and bring with them the contradiction of the term ‘safe’. It is difficult to quantify or qualify the level of safety we can expect from the operation of nuclear power plants, largely because the regulatory authorities – let alone the mere mortals in the communities who are required to host these nuclear facilities – are unaware precisely what those impacts are in relation to exposure to radioactivity.
The Environment Agency itself cannot give a figure on the volume of uranium dust particles that are routinely, and with regulatory knowledge, discharged from an operating nuclear power station and, therefore, cannot – or will not – calculate the associated health impact. These potentially lethal specks of alpha-radiation-emitting dust are dismissed by the regulators as ‘insignificant’. Their presence in the atmosphere and in the sea, however – from accidents such as Chernobyl, Fukushima, Windscale in the 1950s, from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing as well as from the routine operation of nuclear facilities – cannot be denied.
Future risks and threats
The more conventional aspects of threats to our safety presented by nuclear power plants should concern us too. At Sizewell, for example, the site is considered to be too small to accommodate the planned twin EPR reactor development and is also highly vulnerable to rising sea levels and storm surges. So great is this threat, that the entire site is to be surrounded by a curtain wall 14 metres high, requiring foundations 50 metres deep – deep enough to prevent sea water ingress from below as well as solid enough to resist another ‘Beast from the East’ as experienced in 2018.
To ensure that the terrain of the site is strong enough to withstand the pressures and forces of such a mammoth construction and future climate change challenges, ground anchor trials have been ordered. The results of these trials are not yet known, but that has not deterred the Office of Nuclear Regulation from issuing a nuclear site licence.
Sizewell C, like all nuclear plants, needs a daily supply of potable water (rather than salt water from the sea). Sizewell C needs an average of 2.2 million litres a day. Suffolk is the driest county in the country and dramatic reductions in domestic requirements have been suggested as ways in which to balance supply and demand, leaving the fate of water supply in the area uncertain and possibly at the mercy of energy-intensive, polluting and chemicals-reliant desalination plants.
Spent fuel
All nuclear plants are required to host nuclear fuel once it has been ‘spent’ or ‘fissioned’ in the reactor core. It emerges as intensely hot and lethally radioactive and is required to be stored for years in what is effectively an on-site swimming pool before being transferred – in the case of Sizewell B spent fuel – to an on-site dry fuel store where it awaits the identification, construction and transfer to a ‘geological disposal facility’.
EDF/SZC Co estimate that the amount of spent fuel generated by Sizewell C’s two EPR reactors over their lifetimes of a notional 60 years will amount to around 4,000 tonnes. The radioactivity associated with that fuel is unimaginable. As we have seen in the Ukraine with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, in times of conflict the temptation for an adversary to ‘weaponise’ nuclear facilities is difficult to resist. The aspiration for the UK to treble its nuclear-generated electricity output will require, in addition to proposed ‘gigawatt-sized’ Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, the deployment of up to 50 ‘small modular reactors’ around the country, each of which is capable of being weaponised.
The hidden nuclear agenda
From the difficulty of crossing roads clogged with construction traffic, to the threat posed by a catastrophic accidental or malicious failure of nuclear containment, the impact of transforming Suffolk’s heritage coast to the energy coast without so much as a public debate about the wisdom or desirability of such a colossal change, is already arriving in many forms.
The questionable stability of the terrain upon which the development is designed to stand, and the need to renew the electricity grid pylon network – characterised by National Grid Electricity Transmission as being from “Norwich to Tilbury to reinforce the high voltage power network in East Anglia between the existing substations at Norwich Main in Norfolk, Bramford in Suffolk, and Tilbury in Essex” – add to the level of anxiety and uncertainty many express about the future of their county.
The actual justification for Sizewell C – not the one used by government of energy security – is to ensure the maintenance of the skills base, the material and the supply chain for Trident renewal. And the purpose of Trident is to maintain our security by threatening the murder of tens of thousands of men, women and children we will never meet.
We have to question what sort of world we are knowingly allowing to be created for future generations. And we have to question what right the government has to ignore what Keir Starmer recently said would be applied across all government departments – ‘a duty of candour’. But perhaps he has already forgotten he said that, or wishes he had not.
Postscript
On the afternoon of Friday 30 August, a popular time to release unwelcome news with the weekend approaching, the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero announced that the government had allocated a further £5.5bn to the investment-averse Sizewell C (SZC) project, taking the total of public money sunk into this scheme to £8bn at a time when the new Labour administration is claiming a lack of public finances with which to help millions of pensioners and children with benefits to keep them warm and fed.
The UK government deserves an award for the biggest load of nuclear propaganda BS yet!
“to safeguard and celebrate the
history and cultural heritage of the nuclear industry”
will also support
future nuclear developments
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has published the first ever
nuclear heritage vision and strategy. The NDA is the organisation
responsible for decommissioning the UK’s legacy nuclear sites, sites and
facilities. It said the purpose of the nuclear heritage vision and
strategy, published on 12 September, is “to safeguard and celebrate the
history and cultural heritage of the nuclear industry”. Among the
strategy’s aims will be the collection of learnings to improve planning
of decommissioning activities and reduce risks. This will also support
future nuclear developments such as new nuclear builds, research and
development, long term decommissioning programmes and a Geological Disposal
Facility (GDF).
New Civil Engineer 16th Sept 2024,
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/inaugural-nuclear-heritage-strategy-to-support-decommissioning-planning-and-new-nuclear-builds-16-09-2024/
Welcome to Planet Vogtle! The Lessons of Georgia’s Nuclear Boondoggle
The ADVANCE Act greases the tracks by eliminating regulatory barriers, essentially transforming the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from a safety watchdog into an industry booster. It curtails the licensing process, downgrades health and safety standards, and promotes the export of nuclear technology. The U.S. can now compete with Russia and China to spread “nuclear waste factories” like Vogtle around the globe.
Jul 1, 2024, https://www.stephenwing.com/blog/2024/07/01/welcome-to-planet-vogtle-the-lessons-of-georgias-nuclear-boondoggle/
A global race is on to see who will host the next nuclear disaster, and as always the U.S.A. is determined to take the lead. On June 18 the Senate passed the so-called ADVANCE Act, pledging billions of taxpayer dollars to the most expensive, inefficient, and toxic form of energy ever devised. Thanks to the $37 billion expansion of Plant Vogtle, Georgia Power ratepayers like me know what that means: record-breaking profits for utility companies, record-breaking power bills for the rest of us.
Lavish federal subsidies under the last four presidents and a grandiose “nuclear renaissance” P.R. campaign have failed to reverse decades of decline for nuclear energy. No surprise – it’s an obsolete, dangerous, and financially untenable technology that no private investor or insurance carrier will touch.
Now, like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, what Naomi Klein calls “disaster capitalism” comes galloping to the rescue. A rare bipartisan consensus hails “clean, safe nuclear energy” as the answer to climate change. The 93-page ADVANCE Act – cleverly concealed within the 3-page Fire Grants & Safety Act – delivers the entire wish list of the nuclear industry. Only Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey voted “no.” Liberal icon Sheldon Whitehouse actually helped to draft the legislation.
Calling nuclear power “clean” and “safe” would be laughable if it weren’t such a grim joke. Radioactive contamination plagues it at every step, from carcinogenic uranium mining to routine radionuclide releases at every operating reactor to the mounting backlog of radioactive waste. “Disposal” is a euphemism; the waste will remain deadly to life for tens of thousands of years, longer than the entire history of civilization, with no safe storage option in sight.
Expecting nukes to help slow global warming is equally deluded. The two new reactors at Plant Vogtle – the nation’s first since the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979 – took 15 years to construct, double the original estimate. We would have to build 1,400 more within ten years to noticeably impact the pace of climate change. Developing untested technologies such as “Small Modular Nuclear Reactors” will take decades longer.
Electricity as a Byproduct of Profit
The ADVANCE Act greases the tracks by eliminating regulatory barriers, essentially transforming the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from a safety watchdog into an industry booster. It curtails the licensing process, downgrades health and safety standards, and promotes the export of nuclear technology. The U.S. can now compete with Russia and China to spread “nuclear waste factories” like Vogtle around the globe.
Not that the NRC ever seriously hindered the industry it is charged to regulate. The new legislation comes amid a nationwide rush to extend the licensing of nuclear plants from their estimated safe lifespan of 40 years to 60, 80, even 100 years, despite the proven tendency of radioactivity to “embrittle” the concrete that shields us from exposure.
Though media coverage of the ADVANCE Act was largely clueless, several outlets quoted a statement by Ed Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists: “Make no mistake: This is not about making the reactor licensing process more efficient, but about weakening safety and security oversight across the board, a longstanding industry goal.”
The only reason utilities are pushing nukes – and the only reason they ever did – is profit. Ever since Eisenhower heralded “the peaceful atom” and the industry promised energy “too cheap to meter,” nuclear power has depended entirely on government subsidies to survive. By far the most costly way to generate electricity, it’s also the most profitable, since We the Taxpayers cover most of the costs, from uranium mining and enrichment to managing nuclear waste to the uninsurable consequences of catastrophic accidents.
Betting on nukes not only wastes irrecoverable time and money; it pre-empts real solutions. Investing the same tax dollars in renewables like solar and wind, energy-efficient retrofits, and upgrading the power grid would displace far more carbon emissions. Renewables already provide more electricity globally than nukes, are far cheaper per kilowatt-hour, and can be expanded much more rapidly while generating exponentially more jobs.
Not to mention sidestepping the risk of another Fukushima, Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island. Factor in the escalating threats of extreme weather and terrorism, declining safety standards, and the industry’s eagerness to sell its radioactive snake-oil to developing nations, and the odds of another deadly meltdown somewhere in the world approach the threshold of inevitability – maybe right here in my home state.
Georgia’s Plant Vogtle: A Cautionary Tale
On the eve of Georgia Power’s triumphant ribbon-cutting for its new reactors, six environmental and consumer groups released “Plant Vogtle: The True Cost of Nuclear Power in the United States,” a 35-page report exposing the political maneuvering and cynical profiteering that made the project a “success.”
The story begins in 2009, when most U.S. utilities had abandoned the “nuclear renaissance” due to plunging natural gas prices, zero growth in energy consumption, and the astronomical cost of nuclear fission. Despite federal loan guarantees, no one was investing – until the Georgia General Assembly solved the problem with a bill allowing Georgia Power (a subsidiary of Southern Company) to charge customers a monthly fee to finance two additional reactors at Plant Vogtle, near Augusta.
Georgia Power’s sales had been flat for two decades and its generating capacity was nearly three times the reserves recommended by the federal agency in charge of our national grid. So why would the company build two expensive, unnecessary new reactors? And why would Georgia’s elected utility regulators, the Public Service Commission, allow it?
“By all appearances,” the report explains, “the Georgia PSC is deep in regulatory capture, a phenomenon where a regulator prioritizes the interests of the companies it regulates (like Georgia Power) over the public good. . . .
Since Georgia Power is a monopoly and operates outside of a competitive business market, it can shift risks and costs onto customers if regulator or legislative bodies enable it. That is exactly what the Georgia PSC did.”
Adding as much as 10% to a typical power bill, the fees raised over $4 billion – 88% of it from residential customers, small businesses, even public schools, and only 11% from major industries, thanks to some canny lobbying. The average household ended up paying about $1,000 up-front to subsidize the reactors. The U.S. Treasury contributed a $12 billion low-interest loan, and the rest of the up-front cost came from other lenders. But Georgia law guarantees that ratepayers must cover loan repayment along with Georgia Power’s other costs – which the PSC repeatedly approved as the budget jumped from an initial $14 billion to $21, then $27 billion.
In effect, ratepayers and taxpayers were forced to shoulder the entire investment, while the profits go to Southern Company shareholders.
Milking a Corporate Monopoly to the Max
That same year, South Carolina authorized a similar customer fee to expand its VC Summer plant. Both projects were contracted to Westinghouse. Construction began in 2013, but according to the report, “Cost overruns at both reactor sites began immediately, and by early 2017 were so extreme that Westinghouse declared bankruptcy.” In South Carolina, an investigation led to criminal charges against Westinghouse and utility executives, four of whom went to prison and paid steep fines “for lying about the costs and progress of the project.”
“Similar behavior by Westinghouse and Georgia Power/Southern Company officials occurred in Georgia,” the report goes on, “but there has been no accountability. . . . Commissioners repeatedly accepted Georgia Power’s budget and schedule forecasts in defiance of documented evidence from the Commission’s own staff and consultants that they were materially inaccurate for over ten years.” The Commissioners also praised the company and nuclear power itself with evangelical fervor, violating state regulations that require neutrality in upholding the public interest.
The two reactors ultimately cost over $36.85 billion, making Vogtle “the most expensive power plant ever built on Earth.” But because the PSC approved an exceptionally high rate of “return on equity” (ROE), every cost overrun and construction delay only bolstered Georgia Power’s profits. “Georgia Power was making substantially greater profits from Vogtle 3 and 4’s delay than if it had finished on schedule,” the report says. “Indeed, commissioners allowed Georgia Power to amass a record $17 billion in profits between 2009 and 2023, while allowing $20 billion in cost overruns for Vogtle 3 and 4.”
In December 2023, the PSC voted to saddle ratepayers with $11.1 billion in cost overruns, often caused by shoddy workmanship, inept management, or poor design. Vogtle-related rate increases will eventually total 23.7% – “in stark contrast,” the report points out, “to claims Georgia Power made in 2016 that completing Vogtle units would put ‘downward pressure on rates.’ . . . It is very likely Georgians will soon be paying the highest power bills in the nation due to Plant Vogtle.”
The report’s conclusion illuminates the fraudulent premises of the ADVANCE Act:
“Fossil fuels and uranium are burned to boil water to produce steam to generate electricity which produces large amounts of waste heat. Renewable energy not only does not produce waste heat, but is more than twice as efficient as steam generated power, thus fossil fuel and nuclear energy can be replaced by less than half as much clean, renewable energy . . .”
“Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and South Dakota produced over 60% of their electricity from renewables in 2023, and ten countries generated 60 to 90% of their electricity from renewables in 2022 including Scotland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Guatemala, among others. California’s output from wind, water and solar power exceeded demand for 30 of 38 days early in 2024 . . .”
“Investments in a clean energy transition would save substantial amounts of ratepayer money, and would quickly meet the reduced greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets the world needs to address the climate crisis. Yet these investments are not made as they are not as profitable for monopoly utilities seeking to maximize profits. . . . An immense transfer of wealth is taking place from the people of Georgia to a rich, powerful monopoly whose only motivation is to maximize profits.”
Don’t let your state be taken in by scammers in suits! Download the full report here.
Don’t Be Bamboozled by Nuclear Power
by Prerna Gupta, https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/09/13/dont-be-bamboozled-by-nuclear-power/
In the face of a complex and urgent problem like climate change, it’s tempting to believe in simple solutions. Just as detox teas or diet pills claim to solve health issues that truly require lifestyle changes, nuclear energy has been marketed as a quick fix for the socio-political problem that climate change is. It’s presented as an essential part of the climate solution, yet, like many health fads, it is both ineffective and harmful. Today, nuclear energy is being pushed in the form of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)—touted as the latest technological miracle.
Jan Haaken’s latest documentary, Atomic Bamboozle, pulls back the curtain on this techno-fantasy, revealing SMRs for what they truly are: old wine in a new bottle. Haaken, a seasoned filmmaker who has tackled climate action in her recent Necessity films, unravels the fantastic narrative surrounding SMR propaganda through humor, expert testimony, and a rich history of grassroots resistance.
Haaken intersperses the industry’s lofty claims with a systematic critique from nuclear expert M. V. Ramana, who debunks the promises of SMRs. Despite their high-tech veneer, these reactors are burdened by the same issues that have long plagued the nuclear industry: exorbitant costs, proliferation risks, risk of catastrophic accidents, and the unresolved nightmare of nuclear waste. The arguments presented concisely here are expanded upon in Ramana’s recent book, Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change, which offers a comprehensive critique, demonstrating that nuclear energy is neither a desirable nor feasible solution to the climate crisis.
Haaken then draws our attention to the troubled legacy of nuclear power through the resistance to the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant and the ongoing pollution at the Hanford Site. Voices like Lloyd Marbet, a key figure in the Trojan resistance, highlight the dangers inherent in nuclear projects and the struggle to hold industry accountable. Marbet recalls the safety issues surrounding Trojan, such as cracks in its steam generators and the mounting costs required to address them—which eventually led to its shutdown. Meanwhile, First Nations advocates like Cathy Sampson-Kruse and Dr. Russell Jim emphasize the environmental devastation caused by the Hanford Site. The Yakama Nation, along with other activists, have been fighting tirelessly to protect their land and the Columbia River from contamination, underscoring the toxic legacy that still requires cleanup decades later.
Haaken expertly contrasts these real-world examples of nuclear disasters with the glossy, futuristic promises of SMRs as a “clean, green” energy source. This juxtaposition slices through the propaganda and traces the roots of the narrative back to the “Atoms for Peace” program. After the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this initiative sought to rebrand nuclear technology as a “friend” to humanity – presenting nuclear power as a powerful genie that could be safely contained within the walls of a reactor. However, the nuclear industry’s legacy of pollution, which will take thousands of years to clean up, and catastrophic accidents like Fukushima demonstrate that this reassuring image is far from reality.
One of the most dangerous effects of technological quick fixes is their ability to obscure the power dynamics underlying climate issues. Big corporations and influential individuals hide behind technological solutions, deflecting attention from the required changes to a system that disproportionately benefits them. Haaken, therefore, makes a point to focus on billionaires like Bill Gates, who are promoting SMRs. In the video clip shown in the documentary Gates awkwardly plays down the issue of nuclear safety, while Ramana reveals a deeper irony: despite Gates’ immense wealth, even he relies on public funding to push forward these risky projects. Investors seem reluctant to gamble their own money on unproven technologies like SMRs, raising serious doubts about their viability.
This brings Haaken’s sharp yet accessible critique of nuclear energy to its full conclusion, succinctly captured in the film’s title—Atomic Bamboozle. The title itself exposes the latest SMR trend for what it truly is: a sales trick designed to siphon off your tax dollars, peddling an overpriced technology through confusing jargon and false promises.
The Sierra Club Grassroots Network Nuclear Free Team is concluding its first Nuclear-free Film Series with the powerful independent film, ATOMIC BAMBOOZLE: THE FALSE PROMISE OF A NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE. As political pressure mounts in the US to meet net zero carbon goals, the nuclear power industry makes its case for a nuclear “renaissance.” This documentary by NECESSITY Director Jan Haaken follows activists as they expose the true costs of the new small nuclear reactor designs.
Why fans of nuclear are a problem today
… not because they will succeed, but because they will fail
Jérôme à Paris, Aug 25, 2024,
https://jeromeaparis.substack.com/p/why-fans-of-nuclear-are-a-problem
Nuclear energy has been great. In many places, it has produced relatively cheap electricity and (although we did not care about that when it was built) it is largely carbon-free. It still works, but it is simply no longer competitive against available alternatives, and it is going to be increasingly difficult to integrate in a system that is inexorably dominated by solar energy during the day and other renewables. (see for instance this recent academic study). In any case, it is not financeable, and given the large amounts required for each plant, they will struggle to get built, even with large-scale state support.
If a few nuclear plants could easily be built on budget and on time in a given system, it would not be an issue, but the problem is that (i) a lot of the energy of its proponents is directed at maligning renewable energy, presenting it as unserious and insufficient (arguments of the “you can’t do vital surgery if there’s no wind” type which ignore how grids work), and (ii) more importantly, nuclear swallows an incredible volume of political capital that could better be used for other purposes, like energy efficiency, upgrading the grid or reducing fossil fuel use outside the electricity sector.
Politicians like these very large, multi-billion-euro projects that seem to solve an issue in one go, and can be forcefully and visibly decided by a handful of large-ego persons like themselves. They don’t understand (or hate) the very decentralized and uncontrollable nature of renewable energy systems, that require complex rules and don’t give them the same publicisable impact on things. Nuclear provides a concentrated nexus of jobs, TV opportunities, and VIP meetings with big stakes. So they are easily convinced by proponents that this is what is needed.
And thus we get endlessly repeating “decisions” to build new nuclear plants, to be executed over the next 20 or 40 years, and which increasingly resemble fusion energy – always 20 years away. This is because the underlying arithmetic unfortunately no longer works, and nobody is actually willing to sink the billions, or pay the inflated tariffs, that are required to get the plants of the ground – and that’s before delays and cost overruns hit (and obviously nobody sane will agree to be responsible for these in advance).
If nuclear made sense, Microsoft or Amazon or Rio Tinto would finance the construction of a few plants to feed their ever growing appetite for reliable carbon-free energy… In reality, despite all the high-powered attention, ridiculously few new nuclear plants are being built compared to new renewables, even in China. Nuclear is at best irrelevant and at worst a distraction…
This would be harmless if it did not occupy the limited time that senior politicians have to spend on the topic of energy, and get them to spend their political capital on these projects that end up going nowhere. It also means that they don’t understand what is actually happening in the energy sector in the meantime, and don’t work on the new policies that are needed to make sure that ongoing (unstoppable) transition to renewables is done more smartly and efficiently.
Nuclear proponents do understand the energy system a bit better, and they certainly see that renewables are eating their lunch (typified by the switch in discourse, beyond the “it’s ugly” and ‘what do you do when there’s no wind” arguments, from “it’s too small to matter” to “it cannot do 100% on its own”) and thus they need to attack and criticise renewables to make it appear that nuclear is still necessary or relevant.
In that – continuing to denigrate renewables, and capturing too much political attention, nuclear proponents achieve only one thing – slowing down the transition to renewables, and making it more expensive than it could be because regulatory changes are not made. They have effectively become the useful idiots of the fossil fuels industry which they still occasionally claim to fight.
And, to conclude, a fun fact that seems ignored by most: France has lost more annual kWh from nuclear than Germany since 2011, which closed its plants. Maybe the blame for weakening the nuclear case should go to France rather than Germany?
Global disappointment with the most promising energy: ‘The dream is dead’, and we are in ‘big trouble’
by D. García, 08/23/2024 https://www.ecoticias.com/en/fusion-nuclear-energy-dream-dead/5728/?fbclid=IwY2xjawE2PiVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHfSEEnp1jh9NKYg3N-pZe7YOq421dNO7fCN7ZZKAeigI3n1uZOiemR-I-Q_aem_ePp32l88aWrmHEcGwyKikg
Renewable sources are expanding across the country, but there is a ‘silent enemy’ that is eating away at some of this progress, and that is nuclear energy. Experts have believed for years that they can make it clean and safe, which we simply call a pipe dream. Recently, a prestigious media outlet such as The Guardian collected the opinions of several experts under the reflection ‘The dream is dead’. What has happened so that optimism has turned into global pessimism? A discovery about reactors has left everyone in shock.
It was a promising, non-renewable energy: Now, it’s a dead dream, according to experts
Nuclear fusion, a dream of obtaining a virtually inexhaustible and pollution-free energy, has remained an appealing goal for science and politics for a long time. Still, recent problems and accumulating issues caused some analysts to announce that nuclear fusion as a near-term energy source is indeed dead.
A major dream in energy generation circles has been nuclear fusion – the process that drives the sun and stars. Fusion reactions in which hydrogen atoms are combined to form helium have no complicated, long-lived radioactive waste or greenhouse gases as a by-product. But to maintain controlled fusion on Earth, it has been identified as one of the greatest scientific feats ever.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor is the largest fusion experiment in the world, and the project has experienced the problems with time and over budget. Initially designed to start operations in 2025, the current schedule of ITER has now been delayed, and it is not expected that full fusion operations will commence until the 2050s.
Key figures to understanding why this is a global disappointment: We are losing energy at GW-scale
The dominoes began to tumble and affect the overall nuclear energy industry because of the failures of fusion research. While fusion remains experimental, traditional fission-based nuclear power has been on a downward trend in many parts of the world:
- Worldwide nuclear energy generation has been on the downtrend, with a record in 2006, and Nuclear electricity generation was reduced by 4% between 2019 and 2020.
- Nuclear power’s contribution to the world’s electricity mix has gone down from a peak of roughly 17%. It went from 5% in 1996 to slightly above 10% in the recent past.
- Nuclear power’s contribution to electricity generation in the United States has been steady at approximately 20 percent, but the operating reactors are fewer than before, with 93 as compared to 104 in 2012 and 2021.
What’s the reason why nuclear energy is declining? Beyond the fusion process
The nuclear energy sector in America is facing significant challenges:
- Aging Infrastructure: A majority of the nuclear plants in the United States are either already, or on the verge of, expiring their permits granted for 40 years of utilization.
- Economic Challenges: Nuclear power is unable to compete with relatively cheaper sources such as natural gas and renewable forms of energy. Some of the plants have been shut down before time due to unfavorable market conditions.
- Public Perception: Public opinion remains a core issue of discussion since safety, management of waste and probabilities of the occurrence of an accident cannot be fully overlooked when producing nuclear energy.
- Policy Uncertainty: It is stated that energy policy lacks a long-term vision, which resulted in no clear inspiration for the new nuclear projects.
Is America facing the same situation? Not, here is worse
Several U.S. states have experienced significant losses in nuclear energy capacity:
- California: All nuclear power will vanish in the state following the shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2013 and the planned Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in 2025.
- Massachusetts: The last operating nuclear power plant in Massachusetts shut down operations in 2019, and the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station has been off.
- New York: While some efforts had been made to carry forward the Indian Point Energy Center, it was extensively shut down in 2021, thus lowering New York’s nuclear power.
- Pennsylvania: The Three Mile Island plant shut down in 2019, and other plants in the state are also facing financial issues.
Who knows if nuclear fusion energy in America will become a more established source than ever (as Trump said last week) or if it will remain a memory, something like Natrium, Bill Gates’ extravagant invention to resurrect a source that many still believe will be the future. Will we ever “break the dream” and go for a 100% clean and renewable industry? Yes, but without sources with the potential to pollute entire ecosystems for millennia.
Nuclear power on the prairies is a green smokescreen.
By M. V. Ramana & Quinn Goranson, August 19th 2024, Canada’s National Observer https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/08/19/opinion/nuclear-power-prairies-green-smokescree
On April 2, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith declared on X (formerly Twitter) “we are encouraged and optimistic about the role small modular reactors (SMRs) can play” in the province’s plans to “achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.”
SMRs, for those who haven’t heard this buzzword, are theoretical nuclear reactor designs that aim to produce smaller amounts of electricity compared to the current reactor fleet in Canada. The dream of using small reactors to produce nuclear power dates back to the 1950s — and so has their record of failing commercially.
That optimism about SMRs will be costing taxpayers at least $600,000, which will fund the company, X-Energy’s research “into the possibility of integrating small modular reactors (SMRs) into Alberta’s electric grid.” This is on top of the $7 million offered by Alberta’s government in September 2023 to oil and gas producer Cenovus Energy to study how SMRs could be used in the oil sands.
Last August, Saskatchewan’s Crown Investments Corporation provided $479,000 to prepare local companies to take part in developing SMRs. Alberta and Saskatchewan also have a Memorandum of Understanding to “advance the development of nuclear power generation in support of both provinces’ need for affordable, reliable and sustainable electricity grids by 2050”.
What is odd about Alberta and Saskatchewan’s talk about carbon neutrality and sustainability is that, after Nunavut, these two provinces are most reliant on fossil fuels for their electricity; as of 2022, Alberta derived 81 per cent of its power from these sources; Saskatchewan was at 79 percent. In both provinces, emissions have increased more than 50 per cent above 1990 levels.
It would appear neither province is particularly interested in addressing climate change, but that is not surprising given their commitment to the fossil fuel industry. Globally, that industry has long obstructed transitioning to low-carbon energy sources, so as to continue profiting from their polluting activities.
Canadian companies have played their part too. Cenovus Energy, the beneficiary of the $7 million from Alberta, is among the four largest Canadian oil and gas companies that “demonstrate negative climate policy engagement,” and advocate for provincial government investment in offshore oil and gas development. It is also a part of the Pathways Alliance that academic scholars charge with greenwashing, in part because of its plans to use a problematic technology, carbon capture and storage, to achieve “net-zero emissions from oilsands operations by 2050.”
Carbon capture and storage is just one of the unproven technologies that the fossil fuel industry and its supporters use as part of their “climate pledges and green advertising.” Nuclear energy is another — especially when it involves new designs such as SMRs that have never been deployed in North America, or have failed commercially.
X-energy, the company that is to receive $600,000, is using a technology that has been tried out in Germany and the United States with no success. The last high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor built in the United States was shut down within a decade, producing, on average, only 15 per cent of what it could theoretically produce.
Even if one were to ignore these past failures, building nuclear reactors is slow and usually delayed. In Finland, construction of the Olkiluoto-3 reactor started in 2005, but it was first connected to the grid in 2022, a thirteen-year delay from the anticipated 2009.
Construction of Argentina’s CAREM small modular reactor started in February 2014 but it is not expected to start operating till at least the “end of 2027,” and most likely later. Both Finland and Argentina have established nuclear industries. Neither Alberta nor Saskatchewan possess any legislative capacity to regulate a nuclear industry.
What Alberta and Saskatchewan are indulging in through all these announcements and funding for small modular nuclear reactors is an obstructionist tactic to slow down the transition away from fossil fuels. Discussing nuclear technology shifts attention from present and projected GHG emissions, while enabling a ramp-up of fossil fuel reliance in the medium-term and delaying climate action into the long-term.
Floating the idea of adding futuristic SMR technology into the energy mix is one way to publicly appear to be committed to climate action, without doing anything tangible. Even if SMRs were to be deployed to supply energy in the tar sands, that does not address downstream emissions from burning the extracted fossil fuels.
Relying on new nuclear for emission reductions prevents phasing out fossil fuels at a pace necessary for the scientific consensus in favour of rapid and immediate decarbonization. An obstructionist focus on unproven technologies will not help.
Quinn Goranson is a recent graduate from the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs with a specialization in environment, resources and energy. Goranson has experience working in research for multiple renewable energy organizations, including the CEDAR project, in environmental policy in the public sector, and as an environmental policy consultant internationally.
M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is the author of The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India (Penguin Books, 2012) and “Nuclear is not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change” (Verso Books, 2024).
Nuclear power is a dead end as a climate solution
Many Climate ‘Solutions’ Are Dead Ends Or Niches & Should Be Ignored
Michael Barnard, Climate futurist advising multi-billion dollar funds and firms.
Money, power and influence. The low-carbon transformation that we have started is the path to immense amounts of money, power and influence. Non-solutions and even major problems are being pitched hard as climate wins. Nuclear energy, carbon capture, hydrogen for energy and synthetic fuels should be ignored by most policy makers and serious investors.
Let’s start with nuclear power. Up front, there are a lot of things to like about the technology. It’s low-carbon, low-pollution and safe. Personally, I’m pleased with every nuclear reactor that actually gets attached to the grid. If there weren’t alternatives and serious downsides, I would be all in on the power generation technology.
But there are serious problems for nuclear in the vast majority of countries in the world, and we have to power every country. Wind, solar, transmission and storage are viable in every country, hence their dominance in the short list of climate actions that will work.
Countries have to have some very specific conditions for success for nuclear generation build out, and almost none do in the 21st Century. They have to be at heightened risk of major conflict. They have to have a nuclear weapons strategic requirement, whether a program to build them as with the USA and France historically, or the ability to build them quickly should they become needed as with South Korea. They have to be a big, rich country.
Commercial nuclear generation has to be a national strategy. Federal purse strings have to open wide, and federal governments must have the ability to override local opposition and regulatory hurdles. The federal government has to satisfy 28 major requirements with the International Atomic Energy Agency and establish overlapping circles of physical and cyber defense on the full length of the nuclear fuel supply, use and waste chain.
A single technology and design has to be selected and required for every reactor to enable regulatory, technical and human processes to gain learning experience and more quickly deploy the technology. The nuclear design has to be large, typically gigawatt scale. And the deployment must run its course in 20 to 30 years so that the experienced teams don’t retire, losing their hard-won knowledge.
Every successful deployment of nuclear generation historically has had those characteristics. Without them, nuclear cost and schedule overruns are massive, and the time to approve and build a nuclear power plant is a decade or longer. As global megaproject expert Bent Flyvbjerg’s data set of over 16,000 projects greater than a billion dollars in cost shows, nuclear energy is close to the worst type for cost and schedule overruns, 23rd of 25 categories, with only the Olympics and nuclear waste repositories being worse.
Even then, nuclear power plants are inflexible and so only suitable for 40% or less of annual demand without running into significant challenges. France’s fleet is actually 13% of Europe’s electrical generation and the country trades terawatt hours in all directions annually. Without massive transmission in and out of the country, their cost of electricity and challenges with operations would multiply.
Jurisdictions that can’t commit to dozens of nuclear reactors at the national level and can’t enforce a single reactor design should ignore nuclear entirely.
China is a good natural experiment to consider regarding scaling of nuclear energy versus renewables. It’s had a national strategic nuclear generation program since the 1990s, and wind and solar programs since the mid-2000s. Despite its more centralized planning and authority, renewables have scaled vastly more quickly and are increasing exponentially, while the nuclear program peaked in 2018 and has been slower since.
If China can’t scale nuclear energy as rapidly as wind, solar, transmission and storage, no country can. Equivalent wind and solar generation can be built in a fifth the time for a third the cost with much greater budget and schedule certainty.
Small modular reactors are even worse. They lose the economies of physical size and won’t be able to build enough to achieve economies of manufacturing scale. They are unproven, and first of a kind projects are the highest risk. They require all of the same conditions for success as large scale nuclear. There is no reason to believe claims related to them.
Mechanical carbon capture and sequestration is mostly another subsidy for the fossil fuel industry. Globally, only oil and gas heavy countries are considering it as a reasonable carbon drawdown strategy, and that’s not because it is one. Looking around the world, the majority of countries are sensibly leaning into nature-based drawdown strategies because they scale and work……………………………………………………………….
Hydrogen for energy is another dead end. At present we manufacture about 120 million tons of it, and the process creates as much greenhouse gasses as the entire aviation industry globally. That must be cleaned up. ……………………………… any process which manufactures hydrogen requires a lot of energy
………………………………………. There are powerful and well-funded organizations and individuals attempting to bend our decarbonization journey to their ineffective technologies. They are slowing progress. They are working to create profits for themself at the expense of the planet. Many individuals are well meaning, but simply deluded about the benefits of their favored technology.
Ignore them. The climate crisis and the opportunity are both too great to waste time on clearly poor solutions.
As a reminder, here’s the short list of climate actions that will work:
- Electrify everything
- Overbuild renewable generation
- Build continent-scale electrical grids and markets
- Build pumped hydro and other storage
- Plant a lot of trees
- Change agricultural practices
- Fix concrete, steel and industrial processes
- Price carbon aggressively
- Shut down coal and gas generation aggressively
- Stop financing and subsidies for fossil fuel
- Eliminate HFCs in refrigeration
- Ignore distractions
- Pay attention to motivations
Michael Barnard spends his time projecting scenarios for decarbonization 80 years into the future, and assisting his clients — executives, Boards and investors on several continents — to pick wisely today. ………… mohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbarnard/2023/10/16/many-climate-solutions-are-dead-ends-or-niches–should-be-ignored/?sh=3eb5ba803987 #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Some UK higher education rejoices in the nuclear and military partnership
Nuclear decommissioning centre shares learning with MoD apprentices
An innovative engineering and maintenance centre is forging links with the Ministry of Defence to help share learnings between the nuclear and defence sectors.
Sellafield Ltd Engineering Centre of Excellence in Cleator Moor, hosted degree apprentices from Royal Naval Armaments Depot Coulport in Argyll and Bute, Scotland on Wednesday.
The visit was arranged by the Sellafield Engineering Centre of Excellence team to showcase its pioneering work with robotics, unmanned aerial vehicles, remotely operated vehicles, flight and electrical simulators and VR technology.
Five MoD degree apprentices, all on a five-year programme linked to the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, at Swansea, gained hands-on experience of operating a drone simulator, using VR equipment and a range of other remotely operated technology at the state-of-the-art centre in Cumbria. ………………………………………………………………more https://cumbriacrack.com/2024/07/30/nuclear-decommissioning-centre-shares-learning-with-mod-apprentices/
1 This Month
No Nuclear in Cwm Llynfi! Stop the nuclear power station near Maesteg.
4 August – WEBINAR – Hiroshima & Nagasaki: Nuclear Bombs Never Again
Tuesday, Aug. 4 at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET.
Aug 5, 2026 10:00 AM in Australia/Melbourne
Join the Nuclear Bombs Never Again webinar on August 4th at 5pm Pacific Time / 8pm Eastern Time / 9am Japan Standard Time.
Cross generational voices at the intersection of Japan-Korea-US policy and militarization will share their lived experiences, nuclear impacts in these contexts, anti-war strategies, and actions you can take to advocate for a world with Nuclear Bombs Never Again. This 75-minute event is co-hosted by WILPF US and Korea Peace Now.
22,000+ miles voyaging for nuclear disarmament
and a radiation-free environment https://vfpgoldenruleproject.org/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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