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The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Chinese-led nuclear company pretending that Sizewell project is a ‘fait accompli’ – no, it is far from it.

BANNG 1020, The Blackwater Against New Nuclear Group (BANNG) has learned that GNSL, the Chinese-led company seeking to build a mammoth new nuclear power station at Bradwell, is preparing to launch its pre-application public consultation for planning permission later this year.

This will be long before detailed discussions with the nuclear regulators are concluded. There are major issues and challenges still to be confronted. ‘It seems that the Chinese developers are taking a risk in trying to present the public and politicians with an apparent ‘fait accompli’ well before major design
and environmental hurdles have been crossed’ said Prof. Andy Blowers,
Chair of BANNG.

GNSL greeted the announcement that the Generic Design
Assessment (GDA) for Bradwell B had begun Step 4 as a major milestone,
clearing the path for deployment of Chinese nuclear technology in Britain.

That is far from the case. Moving to Step 4 in the GDA is like reaching a
hurdle, not passing a milestone. It is at this stage that all the tricky
issues facing the Bradwell B project must be confronted, including the
cooling system, site suitability, security, coastal defence, impacts on
marine and terrestrial environments and so on.

Step 4 is a long and intensive process between the developer and the independent regulators, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and the Environment Agency (EA). It is not expected to be concluded for another two years. A pre-application should follow, not overlap, Step 4 of the GDA.

https://www.banng.info/news/press-release-18th-february-2020/

February 20, 2020 Posted by | politics, spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Don’t lets get “emotional” about nuclear-caused deformities, illnesses, deaths..

February 18, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, psychology - mental health, social effects, spinbuster | Leave a comment

The global grip of the nuclear money cartel

C.H.W.
ChrisWinsYesPositively@dispostable.com
185.207.139.2  The reality is that the true facts on radiation toxicity have been carefully obfuscated for ages by all nations profiteering handsomely from nuclear energy, medical radiation, and nuclear weaponry, such as the US, France, Russia, India, or Japan.The conventional medical-dental industries and the nuclear-military industries (=the radiation cartel) have been, for well over half a century , perpetually lying about, and minimizing, the true toxicity of ionizing radiation (e.g resorting to false sneaky comparisons between radiation exposure from sunlight or an airplane flight to a dental or medical x-ray or the exposure to nuclear fallout, etc. to deliberately deceive the unwitting public) to avoid culpability for the huge number of deaths and injuries that they’re responsible for (discussed and well referenced in the book “The Mammogram Myth” by Rolf Hefti).

The official accounts on the Chernobyl debacle, as an example, range from a few dozen to a few hundred people who ended up dead while independent analyses (conducted by people NOT tied to the corrupt corporate mainstream “science” syndicate) estimated the death toll in the tens to hundreds of thousands (in some cases approaching a million) of deceased people (and the radiation cartel-induced massacre is continuing).

The distortions and disinformation about the alleged safety of (low dose) radiation or the purported lack of much harm to people, whether from medical x-rays or fallout from disaster sites such as Chernobyl or Fukushima, continues to this day. The real danger and damage caused by Chernobyl and Fukushima are much higher than the officialdom wants the public to believe.

You can recognize the global grip of this powerful big money cartel by the ominous absence in the reporting of the allied corporate mass media (the mainstream fake news media) about the ongoing severe disaster at Fukushima, or by any of the solid proofs about the frauds this criminal evil cartel is involved in. You can find out more about that from Dr. Chris Busby, Dr. Helen Caldicott and others who are not tied to the corrupt radiation cartel

February 16, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Correcting Anti-Renewable Energy Propaganda

Correcting Anti-Renewable Energy Propaganda, Clean Technica  B1 By Georg Nitsche, 12 Feb 20, In 1989, pro-nuclear lobbyists claimed that wind power couldn’t even provide 1% of Germany’s electricity. A few years later, pro-nuclear lobbyists ran ads in German newspapers, claiming that renewables wouldn’t be able to meet 4% of German electricity demand.

After the renewable energy revolution took off, in 2015, the pro-nuclear power “Breakthrough Institute” published an article claiming solar would be limited to 10–20% and wind to 25–35% of a power system’s electricity.

In 2017, German (pro-nuclear power) economist Hans-Werner Sinn tweeted that more than 50% wind and solar would hardly be possible. And in 2018, Carnegie Science reported a study claiming that “wind and solar could meet most but not all U.S. electricity needs.” According to one of the authors, their research indicates that “huge amounts of storage” or natural gas would need to supplement solar and wind power.

From a pro-renewable perspective, this is encouraging. The claims about the limits of renewable energy have moved from “not even 1% of electricity” to “most but not all of the electricity.” And yet, the anti-renewables message has always been the same: renewables will lead to a dead end.

In order to underscore their point, anti-renewable energy propagandists now publish incorrect cost figures that claim a fully renewable electric grid would be unaffordable or way more expensive than other options, such as, you guessed it, nuclear power. Continue reading →

February 13, 2020 Posted by | renewable, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Davos conference – an expensive exercise in corporate spin

Andrew Allison 26 Jan 2020 The Davos conference will never produce an original idea that is helpful to the majority of people on the planet.

John Ralston Saul described Davos as follows:<< DAVOS (THE ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM) Tucked away into the Swiss Alps, a consecrated temple of tomorrow’s conventional wisdom for political and business leaders.

Once a year in the depths of winter two thousand businessmen, academics, politicians and civil servants gather there under the gaze of three hundred journalists. The consultants speak up in hope of winning clients. Politicians attempt to impress lenders. Businessmen glad-hand like salt-tax collectors, happy to be there and filled with world-saving ideas.

Davos is a slightly ludicrous attempt at something worrying – an international assembly on the corporatist model.

Last year we learned that corporations don’t want to pay tax. This year we learned that don’t want to do anything that might impact on short-term profits, so they ignore all appeals to limit CO2 emissions. In short, we cannot expect anything from Davos “except business as usual”, until crises occur, and they propagate to the point where they threaten short-term profits.

January 27, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Yesterday the nuclear nations pushed the fantasy of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

William Sanford. 25 January 2020
Faux News “The Five” tried to push the Safe SMR Narrative just yesterday. Complete nonsense on the Climate Crisis shows how doubling down on stupid (and old) technology is a last resort effort to preserve their doomed industry.

Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany all announced increased rates of decommissioning. Add Spain, Italy, as USA continues to hide, censor, and deflect the TRUTH. The IAEA playbook directly from Vienna …and the worst part is many “climate activists” actually buy into the false narrative that nuclear energy is “carbon free.”

The ‘Nuclear Cycle’ uses huge amounts of gas/diesel. From pulling uranium out of the ground to enrichment, use, removal, dry cask ops, and delivery to a repository, LOTS of petroleum. And NO, nuke plants DO NOT RUN on their own power. 1.7 !illion cancers annually worldwide AS A direct result of nuclear power plants directly from the IAEA/NRC.

January 25, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, spinbuster | 1 Comment

Debunking James Hansen’s claims in favour of nuclear power

John Wayne squares off against Jim Hansen, Medium,  Albert Bates, 11 Jan 2020    “……. I greatly admire James Hansen …….  What annoys me, however, about Hansen, then and now, is his insistence, in utter disregard of best science, that nuclear energy can somehow save humanity from climate change because it is clean, safe, too cheap to meter and besides all that, is carbon-free. I watched with pity more than scorn when he took his time to repeat this nonsense at the recent UN climate conference in Madrid. He mounted fallacy upon fallacy in a pyramid of lies that had been heard since the 1940s coming from the Atomic Energy Commission, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, International Atomic Energy Agency and others in thrall to the atomic devil.
Of course all of those assertions by Hansen are utter nonsense. It just goes to show that being a good climate scientist doesn’t automatically give you a doctorate in health physics. I was blessed to have met many of the world’s preeminent health physicists in the 1970s and 1980s while representing atomic victims in battles for fair compensation and writing my fifth book, Climate in Crisis: The Greenhouse Effect and What We Can Do. ………
So, when James Hansen ignorantly opines that there were no radiation fatalities from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima and that the new generation of thorium metal reactors is inherently safe, I try to not gag ……..
 Comparing effluent to effluent, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has reported that emissions from presently licensed facilities produced under normal operating conditions will cause 1.7 million cancers and birth defects in the world population, barring accidents. That several-hundred page report was summarized in the Federal Register in 1979 (46 Fed. Reg. 39580). However, it excluded consideration of health effects from tritium, Tc-99, C-13 and 14 and other radionuclide emissions that were too inaccurate to estimate, they said.
By too inaccurate they meant that tritium is easily incorporated into water, and so passes through living cells very easily, and carbon is the building block of organic chemistry, inseparable from life, so if one were to try to measure their impact inside the human body, the mortality and morbidity rates would need to be raised orders of magnitude higher than 1.7 million. This could make nuclear power unacceptable so, for reasons having to do with their institutional DNA, the NRC was not going to do that……….
It is not difficult to debunk Thorium-141’s popular mythology using simple physics, as Drs. Arjun Makhijani and Helen Caldicott have, because thorium is not a naturally fissionable element and so must first be mixed with enriched Uranium-235 or Plutonium-239 before it can be fissioned under controlled conditions to make steam for a power plant. To do that mixing, never mind the reacting, is a dangerous, deadly, polluting and extremely expensive process generating loads of long-lasting and unrecoverable poisons. After reaction, the thorium blend leaves dangerous wastes like U-232, a potent high-energy gamma emitter that can penetrate one meter of concrete and will have to be kept safely out of our air, food, and water forever.
……… Officially, TMI caused no immediate deaths. But unofficial investigations and lawsuits claimed there were above-average rates of cancer and birth defects in the surrounding area. Anecdotal evidence among the local human population has been devastating.    Hansen would say that anecdotal evidence is not science, but when public health agencies are prohibited from doing the scientific studies that does not equate with no effects. We know from anecdotal evidence that large numbers of Pennsylvanians suffered skin sores and lesions that erupted while they were out of doors as the fallout rained down on them. Many quickly developed large, visible tumors, breathing problems, and a metallic taste in their mouths that matched that experienced by victims of Hiroshima, or who were exposed to nuclear tests in the South Pacific, Ukraine, Kazakstan, and Nevada.
Approximately 2 million people in the immediate area were exposed to doses that were sub-lethal for early exposure, but the latent genetic effects have been calculated, by Gofman among others, to cause life-shortening in the global population for perhaps one million people. Moreover, there is reason to suspect the doses those estimates are based upon were much lower than what may have actually occurred and gone unreported. Entire bee hives expired immediately after the accident, along with a disappearance of birds, many of whom were found scattered dead on the ground. A rash of malformed pets were born and stillborn, including kittens that could not walk and a dog with no eyes. Reproductive rates among the region’s cows and horses plummeted. The state and federal governments did nothing to track the health histories of the region’s residents. Instead, they significantly understated the scale of the release and the magnitude of the exposures, as later peer reviewed studies showed.
A National Institute of Health study in 1998 found “Results support the hypothesis that radiation doses are related to increased cancer incidence around TMI.”
Harvey Wasserman, writing for Common Dreams, said: “Meanwhile, the death toll from America’s worst industrial catastrophe continues to rise. More than ever, it is shrouded in official lies and desecrated by a reactor-pushing “renaissance” hell-bent on repeating the nightmare on an even larger scale.”
 ……….one thing for certain that can never be said of nuclear energy is that it is carbon neutral. Once you take into account the entire nuclear fuel cycle from exploration and mining, shipment of ores from Africa and China, milling, enrichment to fuel grade (enough gas and coal energy goes into that to power Australia), power generation, fuel removal and waste disposal, the fossil fuel footprint is so enormous as to be well beyond any suggestion of carbon neutrality.
[Here follows a long discussion on Marie curie, and then on John Wayne]
……… Declassified health physics reports from the Manhattan Project indicate that the senior scientists believed at least as early as 1945 that:

“. . . the genetic effect has no threshold and exposure is not only cumulative in the individual, but in succeeding generations. On this basis, there would be no tolerance dose, but rather an acceptable injury-limit.”[Parker, H.M., Instrument ation and Radiation Protection (March, 1947), Health Physics, 38:957,970, June 1980]

and:

“Even sub-tolerance radiations produce certain biological changes (cosmic rays are supposed to have some biological effects), so tolerance radiation is not what one strives to get but the maximum permissible dose.”[Morgan, K.Z., The Responsibilities of Health Physics, The Scientific Monthly, 93 (August 1946); reprinted in Health Physics 38:949–952, June 1980.]

The question of what percentage of the population can be acceptably damaged came first to the attention of the AEC at a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Biology and Medicine on January 16–19,1957. At this meeting the AEC advisors determined that a 20 percent increase in the rate of bone cancers and birth defects nationwide would be an “acceptable” effect of U.S. nuclear weapons testing activities. These scientists also acknowledged at this time that the long-term genetic effects were totally unknown.

The historical record indicates that prominent radiologists, health physicists, and geneticists of the time recognized even at the outset of America’s atomic power program that any large population exposure to even very minute amounts of ionizing radiation could create lingering public health problems and genetic damage, and these scientists went to some lengths, including sacrificing their own illustrious careers, to express their views publicly. [ long list of references given here]

[ discusses Fukushima]

….. atmospheric physicists should not opine on health physics. There is no dose of radiation below which there is not a negative biological effect. Indeed, there is a “superlinear” ratio of dose to effect at low doses, because doses that do not kill a cell cause genetic damage that is a larger health threat than dead cells, so humans and animals exposed to low doses are at greater health risk than those exposed to higher doses.

While there are hundreds of different radioactive isotopes within a nuclear reactor, the isotope Cesium-137 is easily measured and has become a standard by which to calculate impacts. During the two-day accident, 18 quadrillion becquerels of cesium were released into the Pacific (18 with 15 zeros). A typical abdominal or pelvic CT scan (the most often performed) is 14–18 thousandths of a becquerel, so during the accident the cesium dose to the environment was the same as about 1 quintillion (1 with 18 zeros) CT scans (repeated every second, continuously, for the next 300 to 600 years). Depending on the type of scan and the age and sex of the patient, a single CT scan will produce 1 cancer for 150 to 3300 exposures, or a median risk of 10 cancers per becquerel (or seivert).  [table here on original]

By that calculation, the cesium released during the Fukushima accident was capable of causing roughly 10 quadrillion cancers, but with one important difference.
When you receive radiation treatment like a CT-scan it is sudden and one-off. One second. The technician presses the button and it is on and then off. There is no danger from the machine when it is off. When radioactive elements like cesium-137 (and remember that is just one of hundreds of elements in a nuclear reactor) are released to the environment, there is no off-switch. Thus, the cesium released during the Fukushima accident is capable of roughly 10 quadrillion cancers per second. Inhaling or ingesting it can kill a person, a dolphin or a seagull, but then as the individual’s body decomposes after death — as bacteria, worms and fungi eat away the flesh and bone — the isotope goes back into the food chain to strike another individual, and another, and so on. The danger is limited only by the isotope’s half-life — the time it takes to decay to a harmless element, which for cesium-137 is 30.17 years. Scientists generally use 10 or 20 half-lives to bracket safety concerns, so for cesium 137, “safe” levels arrive in 302 to 604  years (around year 2322 to year 2624), admittedly an imperfect measurement since any residue, no matter how microscopic, may still be lethal, as we have known since before the Manhattan Project. Cesium is one of 256 radionuclides released during Fukushima, so we would need to calculate quantities, biological effectiveness, and the decay time of each of those to get the full health picture. Other isotopes in the Fukushima fuel include Uranium-235, with a half-life of 704 million years, and Uranium-238, with a half-life of 4.47 billion years, or longer than the age of the Earth.
At Fukushima, the end of the accident was not the end of the story. In 2013, 30 billion becquerels of cesium-137 were still flowing into the ocean every day from the damaged and leaking reactor cores. That is 300 billion cancer doses per second of man-made cesium added every day, or 109.5 trillion cancer doses per second added every year. To stop this assault on ocean life, and our own, over the next 5 years the owner of the plant constructed more than 1000 tanks to hold contaminated water away from the ocean. In September 2019, the Japanese government announced that more than one million tons were in storage but that space would run out by the summer of 2022 so it planned to begin releasing those billions of bequerels to the ocean again.

Swimmers and sailors who plan to compete in open water events at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics might want to think about that, as might any who fish those waters or consume the catch.

What happens to ocean creatures who ingest radionuclides from leaking nuclear power plants is not very different from what happened to John Wayne, his sons and his co-stars. As the isotopes decay within the body of a dolphin or a coral polyp they send microscopic bullets hurling through DNA chains, causing tumors, sicknesses, defective offspring and death for untold generations. The chance that a single mutation will produce a beneficial result are less than one in a million. Radioactivity is, for practical purposes, forever, as we can see just by looking up at our Sun, a benevolent nuclear reactor providing us energy from the relatively safe distance of 93 million miles.

Even that radiation will kill a number of us, but far fewer than would die if, by some devilish plan or panic response, we follow Dr. Hansen’s advice. https://medium.com/@albertbates/john-wayne-squares-off-against-jim-hansen-42a258b2260d

January 21, 2020 Posted by | Reference, spinbuster, thorium | Leave a comment

Legal action against Orano’s lying advertising about nuclear power solving climate change

 

Reporterre 16th Jan 2020  The Sortir du nuclear network is filing a complaint against an Orano advertising campaign, which presents nuclear energy as a solution against climate change. A false statement intended to boost investments in a declining sector, denounces the association.

https://reporterre.net/Le-nucleaire-bon-pour-le-climat-Orano-poursuivi-pour-publicite-mensongere

January 18, 2020 Posted by | France, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Busting the false claims of the thorium nuclear lobby

Fact-check: Five claims about thorium made by Andrew Yang, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , By John Krzyzaniak, Nicholas R. Brown, December 18, 2019   Andrew Yang, like many of the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls, has an ambitious plan to wean America off of fossil fuels. Unlike many of the other candidates, however, a key piece of his plan to address climate change involves harnessing nuclear power—in particular thorium. According to Yang, thorium is “superior to uranium on many levels.” But Yang isn’t alone; thorium boosters have been extolling its supposed virtues for years.

Do the claims about thorium actually hold up? The Bulletin reached out to Nicholas R. Brown, an associate professor in the department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of Tennessee, to examine five common claims about thorium and next-generation nuclear reactors. Brown’s responses are below.

…….. the public has good reason to be skeptical that thorium can or should play any role in the future.

Claim: Thorium reactors would be more economical than traditional uranium reactors, particularly because thorium is more abundant than uranium, has more energy potential than uranium, and doesn’t have to be enriched.

False. Although thorium is more abundant than uranium, the cost of uranium is a small fraction of the overall cost of nuclear energy. Nuclear energy economics are driven by the capital cost of the plant, and building a power plant with a thorium reactor is no cheaper than building a power plant with a uranium reactor. Further, using thorium in existing reactors is technically possible, but it would not provide any clear commercial benefit and would require other new infrastructure.

Additionally, there is technically no such thing as a thorium reactor. Thorium has no isotopes that readily fission to produce energy. So thorium is not usable as a fuel directly, but is instead a fertile nucleus that can be converted to uranium in a reactor. Only after conversion to uranium does thorium become useful as a nuclear fuel. So, even for a reactor that would use thorium within its fuel cycle, most energy produced would actually come from uranium fissions.

Claim: Next generation thorium reactors would be safer than current reactors.

True but misleading.……. the benefits are a function of the inherent safety in the next-generation designs, not the utilization of thorium.

Claim: The waste from thorium reactors would be easier to deal with than waste from today’s uranium reactors.

False. A comprehensive study from the US Energy Department in 2014 found that waste from thorium-uranium fuel cycles has similar radioactivity at 100 years to uranium-plutonium fuel cycles, and actually has higher waste radioactivity at 100,000 years.

Claim: Thorium would be more proliferation-resistant than current reactors—you can’t make nuclear weapons out of it.

False. A 2012 study funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration found that the byproducts of a thorium fuel cycle, in particular uranium 233, can potentially be attractive material for making nuclear weapons. A 2012 study published in Nature from the University of Cambridge also concluded that thorium fuel cycles pose significant proliferation risks…

https://thebulletin.org/2019/12/fact-check-five-claims-about-thorium-made-by-andrew-yang/

December 21, 2019 Posted by | spinbuster, thorium | Leave a comment

Australian Parliamentary Report uses dodgy and incorrect nuclear information

House Of Reps Report Supports Nuclear – But Only If Everyone Is Into It  https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/nuclear-energy-australia/   December 19, 2019 by Ronald Brakels  Last Friday the House Of Representatives released a report on nuclear energy in Australia.  They said it’s a good idea — provided everyone is cool with it.Australia.  They said it’s a good idea — provided everyone is cool with it.

The report is called:

“Not without your approval: a way forward for nuclear technology in Australia”

It gives the country three recommendations :

  1. Consider using nuclear power.
  2. Gather information to support the future use of nuclear power.
  3. End or partially lift the moratorium that prohibits building nuclear reactors.
  4.  
  5. \While nuclear is a low-emissions source of energy,  .I don’t agree with these recommendations because:
  1. There is no point considering nuclear power here until one of the countries that have been using it for decades gets it right and starts building reactors that supply energy at a lower cost than renewables.
  2. There is no point paying people to study nuclear energy until other countries with existing nuclear industries show it can make economic sense.  If it never manages to pay for itself, the research will be a waste.   If it does pay for itself then the cost effective reactors may be very different from existing ones and the effort will, again, have been wasted.
  3. We live in a country where the government is always going to require you to get permission before you can build a nuclear reactor, so saying the magic words, “The moratorium is lifted!” makes no practical difference.  But I figure we may as well say the magic words just to make it clear the reason we don’t have nuclear power isn’t because they haven’t been uttered.

The problem with this report is not that the House of Representatives committee and I have a difference of opinion.  The problem is, only someone who has been whacked on the head with a graphite rod could look at the problems new nuclear power is experiencing around the world today and recommend Australia go ahead with it.

The problems have nothing to do with safety, nuclear waste, or security.  These issues are irrelevant because nuclear power can not pay for itself.  If it can’t do that, there is no point in worrying about the other issues and it is painfully clear new nuclear power makes no economic sense when renewables are now cheaper than coal power and continuing to fall in cost.

In the United Kingdom — the nuclear power possessing nation that is, embarrassingly, most similar to our own — they will pay 22 cents per kilowatt-hour for electrical energy from the under-construction Hinkley C reactors.  That’s three times its average cost in the Australian National Electricity Market this year and fives times its average price in 2015.

While Australia’s wholesale electricity prices are unusually high at the moment, they are not going to get three miles high on this island.  Thanks to the decreasing cost of renewable energy they are expected to trend downwards from their current high of one-third the cost of new nuclear energy in the UK.

Britain’s not the only place where new nuclear power is extremely expensive.  A similar price is required for it to be constructed in the US.  There have also been huge cost overruns building reactors in other countries, which include France and Finn’s land.  Because Australia doesn’t have an existing nuclear power industry it could be even more expensive here and, last time I checked, we didn’t have any magic pixie dust we could sprinkle on nuclear energy projects to make them cheaper or on our politicians to make them smarter.

To me, it seems this report is an expensive face-saving measure by Parliamentary supporters of nuclear power.  It makes no sense for this country given the current and decreasing cost of renewable energy, but they’re not willing to admit that.  They instead want to pretend nuclear power is a great idea for us but the reason it’s not going ahead is because it’s unpopular.  Hence the title, “Not without your approval”.  In other words, they are saying the Australian people aren’t smart enough to know a good thing when they see it and that’s the only reason why we’re not building nuclear reactors.

Well, I say screw you House of Representatives Standing Committee on Energy and the Environment and the plutonium powered pony you rode in on.  I felt that looking into nuclear power once again was a waste of time, but if you had investigated it and said

“Nuclear power is far too expensive to make sense for Australia.  If this changes and new reactors overseas produce electricity at a lower cost than renewables we can look into it again, but until that happens, forget about it.”

Then at least we’d know the system works.  We would be able to see that Parliamentary committees are able to look at the bleeding obvious and interpret it correctly.  But instead, they only looked at information they liked while avoiding asking the obvious question of — are modern reactors making enough money to cover the cost of their construction and operation?  Rather than do this, they took bits and pieces they picked from around the obvious question, turned them this way and that, and squinted until they were able to announce that it looked good — but the punters wouldn’t appreciate it and they’re the reason why we can’t have nice things.

They did this rather than admit what has been obvious for years now, that new nuclear will not pay for itself in Australia and, given the decreasing cost of renewable energy, it looks impossible for current nuclear designs to ever pay for themselves here.

By choosing to protect their egos rather than admit they were wrong, the nuclear energy supporters have sullied Parliament’s good…  well, they’ve sullied Parliament’s name.  I don’t expect anything run by humans to be perfect, but I really think we need a turn around in the ratio of sullying to pride inducing Parliamentary moments.

It’s A Long Report

The report is 214 pages.  It could have been a lot shorter.  I could have gotten it down to something like:

“Given that:

  1. The UK will be pay around 22 cents per kilowatt-hour in today’s money for electricity from the Hinkley C nuclear power plant, and…
  2. In the United States new nuclear capacity requires a similar price to proceed and nuclear plants have been abandoned while under construction because it became clear they would never pay for themselves.
  3. Australia has no advantages in building nuclear power stations while having the disadvantage of no existing nuclear power industry.

It is therefore not reasonable to believe we can build nuclear generating capacity for less than what it costs in the UK or USA.  Until reactors are built overseas that produce electricity at a cost that is competitive in Australia, the subject does not merit further consideration.

 

Additionally, given that:

  1. New reactors under construction in France and Finland have had long delays and are far over budget, indicating the high cost of new nuclear capacity is not confined to English speaking countries, and…
  2. No organization is offering to or wants to build a nuclear power station in Australia at a price we would find anywhere close to acceptable.The idea of nuclear power in Australia should be abandoned and only reviewed if there are major improvements in its economic viability.”That’s under 214 words while having the advantage of being correct.  The House of Representatives committee used 214 pages to come to the wrong conclusion.  But arriving at the right conclusion can’t be easy if you have no ability to smell bullshit in your own research.

  3. One Solar Panel Does Not Cause 0.8 Tonnes Of CO2 Emissions

    Take a look at this table included in the report, taken from a publication that advocates nuclear power:

Casually looking at that you might think CO2 emissions for both nuclear energy and solar PV are pretty low.  But if we stop for one minute and use basic mathematical ability that’s available to anyone who doesn’t have to take their socks off to count to 20, then we can see that a Parliamentary committee saw fit to include a table in an official report that gives ridiculous results.

Looking at their minimum figure for Solar PV (Utility scale), I see they are claiming a large solar farm will result in at least 18 grams of CO2 emissions per kilowatt-hour generated.  While generating electricity from PV doesn’t result in any emissions, they are involved in the manufacture of solar panels, so they aren’t completely emissions-free.  However, they are a lot bloody closer to emission free than this table suggests.

These days a typical standard sized solar panel is around 300 watts.  In a solar farm in Australia on a fixed mount it will generate around 12,300 kilowatt-hours over 25 years.  This means they are saying the solar panel will result in a minimum of 222 kilograms of CO2 emissions.  If we use their maximum figure it will result in 2.22 tonnes of CO2, all for a panel that weighs about 18 kilograms.   So they are saying manufacturing and installing one solar panel results in emissions equal to burning 80-800 or more kilograms of coal.

Jinko Solar, the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer, has a figure from 2017 of just 2.19 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour generated by a solar farm.  As this has been decreasing year by year it will be even lower now.  However, this is just for the solar panel and doesn’t include emissions from the construction of its ground mount or inverter, so I’ll double it to 4.4 grams.  This means the actual emissions per kilowatt-hour are probably less than the best figure on the table and more than 40 times less than the worst figure.  Even if we triple the Jinko figure it still comes to less than their median emissions for nuclear energy and less than 4% of their maximum figure for PV.

It’s clear the committee had no ability to detect figures that were bullshit — or they simply didn’t care.

Renewable Energy Increases The Cost Of Nuclear

Here is section 1.50 of the report:

Committee notes on renewable energy

I note the committee has failed to understand the economics of nuclear power if they think it works well with solar and wind energy.  This is because if a nuclear power station produces half the energy its capable of, it almost doubles the cost of that energy.  This is due to nuclear fuel being very cheap1 per kilowatt-hour, so very little money is saved by ramping down, while nearly all other costs remain the same.

This means nuclear power, which is already too expensive when operated in the most economical way — almost continuously at full normal power — becomes even more expensive when used in a grid with a significant amount of solar energy and/or wind power capacity.  Australia already has more than enough to adversely affect the economics of nuclear energy and, even if we approve and build a nuclear power station in one quarter the average time it has taken overseas this century, things will be much worse for its economics by the time it’s complete.

They Don’t Even Know Who Buys Our Coal

The report suggests South Korea could build nuclear power plants for us at low cost.  It’s a very strange conclusion because South Korea is the third largest importer of Australian coal.  You’d think if they could build nuclear reactors cheaply they wouldn’t get nearly three times as much energy from flammable rocks:

If you try breathing the air in South Korea you’ll soon wish they could build nuclear reactors at a lower cost than coal power, but unfortunately they can’t, and — as I’ve probably mentioned in other articles — Australia can build renewable generating capacity that supplies electricity at a lower cost than new coal power.  This includes the cost of firming the renewable energy so supply is always available.

It is amazing we have a Parliament dominated by a party obsessed with coal, but this committee can’t even get their head around the fact that the country that imports more of our coal per capita than any other nation isn’t likely to be in possession of the secret of cheaper than coal nuclear power.

Smaller Is Not Cheaper

Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are suggested in the report as a way of making nuclear power economically viable.  The problem with this is they cost more per kilowatt than large ones.  This fact should not be a surprise to anyone.  The engineers who designed the large nuclear reactors in the world today are not idiots who are currently slapping their foreheads, saying, “I’m so stupid!  If only I had thought of making them smaller instead of bigger!”  Modern reactors are very large to keep their cost per kilowatt down.  Going small has the opposite effect.

That small reactors are not cheap is made obvious by the fact Britain, which has the longest history of nuclear power generation of any country, decided to power their new aircraft carriers with kerosene and diesel rather than small nuclear reactors because of they are so expensive.  This is despite the alternative being expensive oil products rather than much cheaper solar and wind energy.

An advantage given for SMRs is they will supposedly suffer from fewer cost overruns.  But that sales pitch is not enough to make nuclear energy economically attractive — pay for a more expensive product so you’ll have less of a chance of unpleasant surprise expenses down the line.2

They Want Money Wasted On More Reports

The report suggests we get people to write another report on how much nuclear power will cost here:

But I have a different suggestion.  A much cheaper one.  We just wait for another country to build and operate a nuclear power plant at a low enough cost that would be competitive in Australia.  Then we can look into it.

Better yet, to make sure they aren’t exaggerating how cheap their nuclear power is, we say:

“Hey, budget nuclear energy guys, how would you like to build a nuclear power station in Australia?  We give you nothing, but you get the market price for whatever electricity you sell.”

If they say, “nyet” or “bu shi” or “piss off” then we can suspect it’s not as cheap as they’re making it out to be.

If they say, “yes” then we can talk about how they’ll be required to insure it for a reasonable amount based on the costs of nuclear accidents that have occurred in the past.  While nuclear power is very safe, there must have been at least one or two minor little upsets.

Everyone Has To Love Nuclear Energy

The report says that social acceptance of nuclear power is necessary for it to go ahead.  So it’s not going to go ahead because that’s not going to happen.  Nuclear energy has turned out to be an economic disaster overseas, we have much cheaper alternatives, and now that I think about it there have been one or two major nuclear accidents overseas that have left a bad impression.

There was a problem with a nuclear power station in Fukushima, Japan.  The Japanese Government estimated the cost at around $270 billion dollars.  As our government is currently willing to spend around $4.5 million to save an Australian life through public health and safety measures, if we lost that amount of money it would represent around 60,000 Australian lives that potentially could have been saved with it.

Since nuclear power — at the costs we see overseas — is only going to increase electricity bills, and we have far cheaper ways to reduce emissions that are quicker to deploy, and because Australians aren’t in love with a very very small chance of a nuclear accident that has a very high cost, there will never be acceptance for nuclear power in this country.  Not in its current form.  But be sure to let me know when a DeLorean compatible Mr Fusion becomes available.

I’m guessing the entire section on social acceptance is only in the report so when nuclear power doesn’t get built, its supporters can say, “It’s the fault of normal Australians for not believing in the nuclear economic viability fairy hard enough”, rather than admit they themselves were wrong.

The Moratorium Means Nothing

Currently there is a moratorium on nuclear power in Australia.  This means you’re not allowed to build it without special permission from the government.  Well, guess what?  In this country you are never going to be allowed to build a nuclear reactor without permission from the government.  That’s just the way it is.  I know it’s a terrible infringement of our right to build nuclear reactors in our backyards and squash courts.  But on the other hand, it does support our right not to live next door to someone who’s building a nuclear reactor in their backyard, so I could go either way on this one.

The report suggests scrapping the moratorium or partially lifting it.  I’m not sure what partially lifting it means.  Maybe you have to ask for permission but you don’t have to say pretty please or maybe it just means they won’t be too worried if you have an eye patch, a cool scar, and introduce yourself as “The Jackal”.

Because the moratorium doesn’t really mean anything, there may not be any harm in lifting it and shutting up a few idiots who think the only reason nuclear power isn’t currently under construction in this country is because the government hasn’t muttered the magic words, “The moratorium is lifted!”  So they may as well say moratorium leviosa and be done with it.

It’s not as if nuclear power is going to be built in this country one way or the other.  Supporters will soon discover no one’s lining up to build reactors even with our current high wholesale electricity prices.  The only way they will get built is with very substantial subsidies and the government is too busy trying to keep coal power afloat while Australia burns to waste its energy subsidising nuclear.

December 19, 2019 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, spinbuster | Leave a comment

France’s EDF company is trying to ‘restore trust’ in the nuclear industry

EDF unveils plan to ‘restore trust’ in French nuclear industry, Move comes as utility’s next-generation plant is beset by ballooning costs and delays, 

Michael Pooler in Paris , Ft.com, 13 Dec 19,
EDF has drawn up a plan to “restore trust” in France’s nuclear power industry after a government-commissioned report lambasted failings at the energy group’s troubled flagship nuclear project. The state-backed company said it would spend €100m on measures including a skills programme, a scheme for selecting suppliers and initiatives to improve project management and industrial standards. This came after the French government, which owns 84 per cent of EDF, gave the utility a month to draw up a scheme to fix problems at Flamanville after the flagship project stumbled into delays and cost overruns.
  A government-commissioned report into the failings at Flamanville, published in October, also pointed to a loss of skills in France’s nuclear sector. “We want to restore more trust in the ability of the French nuclear industry to deliver according to its objectives, in terms of cost, time and schedule,” said EDF’s chairman and chief executive Jean-Bernard Lévy.  ……
Flamanville is considered a litmus test for next-generation European Pressurised Reactor technology, which supporters say will be a bigger, safer and more efficient type of nuclear plant. But the plant’s construction, which was supposed to last four-and-a-half years, is now expected to take 15 years to complete at about four times its originally projected cost of €3.3bn. This follows problems such as faulty weldings. Once a leader in atomic power, France will not decide whether to build more EPRs until Flamanville is up and running.
  To address the sector-wide issues identified in October’s damning report, EDF will seek to change how risks are shared with suppliers and set up a college dedicated to “nuclear disciplines” where there are shortages, such as welding. ……

EDF’s plans come during a turbulent period for the group. Not only is it under fire for delays at another planned EPR site in the UK, but it is heading towards a corporate reorganisation.
This would create a government-owned mother company, EDF Bleu, containing its nuclear and hydroelectric assets. Bleu’s main subsidiary, EDF Vert, will house renewable energy, networks and services businesses, and will have a stock market listing. Under an energy planning law enacted this year, France must reduce its share of electricity produced by nuclear from 72 per cent to 50 per cent by 2035, with the rest coming from renewables. However, new atomic power stations may need to be built to replace ageing facilities, which will also need investment for retrofitting and maintenance. ….https://www.ft.com/content/9a33d12a-1da5-11ea-97df-cc63de1d73f4

December 14, 2019 Posted by | France, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Global nuclear lobby gears up for nuclear propaganda via social media

Unique IAEA Gathering Highlights Social Media’s Role in Nuclear Stakeholder Involvement. Matt Fisher, IAEA Department of Nuclear Energy  5 Dec 19, More than 120 participants from 66 countries will gather in Vienna next week at the IAEA Technical Meeting on Using Social Media for Public Communication and Stakeholder Involvement for Nuclear Programmes. The input received during the meeting will be used to update the recently revamped Nuclear Communicator’s Toolbox.

The first-of-a-kind meeting, which runs from 9 to 13 December, will examine the evolving landscape of social media and social networking sites (SNS), including social media strategies, SNS as communication and engagement tools, policies for employees and tackling misinformation. It will include a group exercise in which participants formulate a social media plan to address a hypothetical scenario requiring prompt action.

“Social media has become an essential component of public outreach as it allows for rapid, straightforward engagement with a wide variety of stakeholders,” said the IAEA’s Masahiro Tachibana, the event’s scientific secretary. “Many nuclear organizations are using social media to deliver updates on their activities and to engage the public on important issues. The high number of participants demonstrates the broad interest in sharing experiences and identifying ways to further optimize the use of this communication tool.”

As the use of social media worldwide continues to grow, so too does its potential impact. More than 3.4 billion people are using social media in 2019, an increase of approximately 10% from 2018, according to the Global State of Digital in 2019 report……..

Mike Mueller, a Senior Digital Content Strategist at the US Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, said social media efforts over the last two years have helped his office to triple its web traffic and reach more than 2 million people every month. “Social media has been instrumental in helping us meet our mission to inform the public on the facts about nuclear energy,” said Mueller, who will take part in the meeting.  ….https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/unique-iaea-gathering-highlights-social-medias-role-in-nuclear-stakeholder-involvement

December 7, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Further debunking of the conspiracy nonsense about a nuclear explosion in the South China Sea

A nuclear detonation in the South China Sea? No, more Twitter conspiracy nonsense, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Matt Field, November 25, 2019  The Twitter account @IndoPac_Info pushes out news at a relentless pace; it’s a seemingly good feed to follow for those interested in military issues in Asia. By Friday afternoon last week, the account had posted dozens of tweets over a 36-hour-or-so period linking to stories from outlets such as Reuters and Foreign Policy on topics ranging from US naval activity in contested waters to Pentagon drone policy. Oh yeah, and then there was the one about a nuclear detonation in the South China Sea.

The big news that China had perhaps exploded a tactical nuclear weapon in the ocean originated with a man labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a former federal convict, white supremacist, and FBI informant named Hal Turner. Turner posted the story on his website and touted the supposed scoop further on his nighttime AM radio show, attributing the information to military sources. On Friday, a Pentagon spokesperson called Turner’s article “silly fiction.” And the man behind @IndoPac_Info himself—he describes himself as a Spanish man living in Vietnam—now seems to agree. “Without further evidence or independent corroboration of Hal Turner’s article, it may not be credible at this point,” he tweeted. “Apologies.”

A laudable course correction, no doubt, but it came after one of @IndoPac_Info’s tweets on the Turner story was retweeted almost 2,000 times. And in an age when online disinformation campaigns like the Russian government effort to sway the 2016 US presidential election are a major feature of public discourse, it’s an open question: Could an online conspiracy theory about nuclear weapons gain traction and have a real-world impact?

The @IndoPac_Info account helped give Turner traction, but as far as impact goes, the radio host’s nuclear story failed to launch, in part because it was so easily debunked.

The idea that a 10 to 20 kiloton explosion, possibly a nuclear one, could have occurred in the busy and contested South China Sea and not been widely observed was laughable to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board chair Bob Rosner. The physicist and former director of the Argonne National Laboratory told Gizmodo, “There is so much surveillance that it would be stunning if no one had noticed that.”……..

Despite Turner’s serious dearth of credibility, he was able to piggyback on @IndoPac_Info’s. That account, after all, is followed, by journalists, academics, and others from reputable organizations like Reuters and the University of Pennsylvania. Indeed, the @IndoPac_Info account user was concerned that he’d helped promote Turner’s wild story. “I was not aware of his record,” he said.

“A follower sent me his story and I went with it.” https://thebulletin.org/2019/11/a-nuclear-detonation-in-the-south-china-sea-no-more-twitter-conspiracy-nonsense/

November 26, 2019 Posted by | China, spinbuster, USA | 1 Comment

A call for John Hopkins University to stop helping nuclear weapons industry

Hopkins must take a stand against its nuclear weapons production,  https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2019/11/hopkins-must-take-a-stand-against-its-nuclear-weapons-production

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD | November 21, 2019 After years of protests from students, the University continues to invest in fossil fuel companies. It has an exclusivity contract with PepsiCo, a company that uses suppliers who violate child labor laws, going against ethical and sustainable business practices. Most recently, the University was slow to end contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the government agency that is responsible for separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The University’s involvement in these contracts has been well publicized and heavily criticized by students and professors alike. Adding to this list of questionable practices is a partnership that is less well-known, but just as problematic: a contract with the U.S. government to take part in nuclear weapons research.

On Nov. 13, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) published a report stating that 49 U.S. universities are complicit in the production of nuclear weapons. The group calls on students and faculty to “demand their universities stop helping to build weapons of mass destruction.”

The report is scathing. It repeatedly mentions Hopkins, highlighting its involvement in creating nuclear weapons for the U.S. ICAN notes that Hopkins receives twice as much funding as any other university from the Department of Defense (DOD) largely because of the work of its renowned Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Created in 1942 for weapons development in World War II, the APL has since served as a technical resource for the U.S. government, developing numerous technologies for air and missile defense, naval warfare, computer security and space science.

In 2017, the APL received a seven year contract with the DOD for $93 million to continue the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center’s strategic partnership. This contributes to the multi-year contract with the agency that is now worth more than $7 billion.

The research involved in this deal is largely classified. On the surface, this seems to contradict the University’s policy against classified research. However, the APL is exempt from this policy, as it is the only part of the University listed as a “non-academic division.”

The University continues to brand itself as an ethical research institution. However, its direct involvement with the development of weapons of mass destruction is contradictory to these actions.

We believe that Hopkins should remove itself from all contracts associated with nuclear weapons. Instead, the APL should focus on research that does not have the same devastating and inhumane implications that nuclear weapons do.

Those who support the University’s work with nuclear weapons may argue that Hopkins receives a high monetary benefit from their partnership with the Department of Defense. They may also claim that Hopkins, which is just one of nearly 50 universities conducting research, can’t make any difference on its own. Even if Hopkins ends the contracts, why would other schools do the same?

These arguments are valid, and we understand the concerns that are associated with terminating the contracts. It is true that Hopkins receives a hefty sum for its involvement with the DOD. According to ICAN, “the funding ceiling for its ongoing contract was extended beyond $7 billion” in 2019.

There is also a turning tide against nuclear weapons development across the world. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, introduced to the United Nations in 2017, bans the development and use of nuclear weapons by signatories. So far, 122 countries have signed on, though the U.S. and most western countries have not. If Hopkins and other reputable institutions take a stand against nuclear weapons development, it will send a sign to the world at large that we want to move on from using these weapons of mass destruction.

Large scale change starts small, and it starts with us. We encourage students to take a stand for what they believe in. As with any other issue, there are multiple ways to tell Hopkins that it’s time for a change. On their website, ICAN outlines three ways that students can speak out. They recommend publicizing the issue, demanding transparency from universities and calling on them to end their work with nuclear weapons.

We know that there’s no guarantee that Hopkins will end its contracts and stop working on nuclear weapons development. But by speaking out, we can initiate the change. Activists who are part of sustainability and pro-peace groups can protest against nuclear weapons production. Students who are majoring in STEM fields can take a stand against working at the associated departments at the APL, and should be aware of the larger implications of any research they are involved in. All students can tell Hopkins that we demand an explanation and that we take issue with the greater mission behind the research.

The University’s mission statement, in part, mentions that its goal is “To educate its students and cultivate their capacity for lifelong learning, to foster independent and original research, and to bring the benefits of discovery to the world.” We hope that the University will refocus its attention on these goals. If Hopkins turns away from nuclear weapons research, other institutions may follow in our path. Making the world a safer place is the best way to bring the benefits of our discovery to everyone.

November 23, 2019 Posted by | business and costs, Education, USA | Leave a comment

To Make the Olympics Look Good Japanese Government Wants Evacuees To Return To Fukushima

 

While Japan might want to make the Olympics look good, – internationally the IAEA , nuclear nations and global nuclear industries want the Olympics to make the nuclear industry look good!

 

November 23, 2019 Posted by | Japan, spinbuster | Leave a comment

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