Sizewell nuclear investment may prove radioactive
Alistair Osborne, Tuesday September 19 2023
Don’t all rush at once. The government is giving private punters
“their first chance to come forward and qualify to invest in Sizewell
C” — the £30 billion-plus nuke, offering guaranteed cost overruns,
prettily located on a Suffolk flood plain. How’s it their first chance? The government’s adviser, Barclays, has been trying to drum up support
for this project for more than a year.
And what’s all this stuff about
qualifying? Ministers really aren’t that fussed where the money comes
from, as long as it’s not from the likes of China, Russia, Iran or the
home of Kim Jong-un’s exploding ballistic missiles.
That the government is desperate for someone to stick a few quid into Sizewell has been clear for yonks. So it’s a bit odd to find new energy secretary Claire Coutinho
making such a hoo-ha about “opening applications for partners to register
their interest” or demanding that they have “experience in delivering
major infrastructure projects”.
Indeed, as pointless announcements go, it
looks up there with the endless relaunches by her predecessor Grant Shapps
of Great British Nuclear: an organisation so far as useful as his Great
British Railways, which still seems to be stuck in a siding.
The key question? What sort of return would investors require and for what risk?
There’s talk that the government its trying to thrash out a price with
potential funders including Brookfield, Stonepeak and Abu Dhabi’s
Mubadala and that Coutinho’s formal process will enable her to harden
things up.
But getting a decision looks tricky when campaigners have just
won leave to appeal the decision to build Sizewell. And, unless it comes up
with giveaway terms, it’s hard to see how the government won’t end up
having to fund most of the equity itself. Investors know how easy it is to
get burnt with nuclear fuel.
Times 19th Sept 2023
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/investment-that-may-prove-radioactive-qrwz35cst
Nuclear bomb test veterans relaunch legal action
By Dominic Casciani, 20 Sept 23, BBC News
Veterans of the UK’s nuclear weapons tests are attempting to relaunch a battle for compensation a decade after being legally blocked from suing the government.
Campaigners say newly discovered documents suggest nuclear chiefs may have known the men suffered radioactive damage.
More than 22,000 personnel worked on detonations in Australia and the South Pacific in the 1950s and 1960s.
Campaigners believe personnel suffered cancers and had children with birth defects because of radiation……
In 2012, the Supreme Court narrowly ruled that more than 1,000 veterans could not sue the Ministry of Defence because they had run out of time to bring their case.
But recently found documents suggest the military have long held documents detailing blood and urine tests from personnel.
One of the documents seen by the campaign shows concerns about a pilot’s blood after he had been flying scientific instruments through mushroom clouds.
The men and their families now plan to take the Ministry of Defence to court because they believe there could be thousands more such records.
If the records exist and prove military chiefs suspected radiation damage, that could lead to a last attempt at getting compensation.
‘Guinea Pigs’
Eric Barton, 82, of the “Labrats” campaign group, said British personnel had been treated like guinea pigs.
He suffered cancer and received compensation from the American military because he had witnessed six test denotations of its bombs. But friends who witnessed British bombs have not received any money at all…………………………………………………………………………………………………………. more https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66869017
Campaigners win permission to appeal against Sizewell C Nuclear Power Station ruling
Campaigners have won permission for another hearing to
challenge the go ahead to build Sizewell C Nuclear Power Station on the
issue of a permanent water supply and because of public interest in the
development.
Court of Appeal judge Lord Justice Coulson says the Together
Against Sizewell C Limited (TASC) arguments around the need for a
desalination plant on the Suffolk Coast should be looked at again.
He has given TASC permission to appeal against Mr Justice Holgate’s refusal in
the High Court of their judicial review of then Business Secretary Kwasi
Kwarteng’s decision to give development consent to the 3.2 gigawatt power
station. The judge said that, given Mr Kwarteng gave permission for the
power station against the advice of the planning Examining Authority, and
because of TASC’s range of arguments about the need for a water supply,
the appeal had “a real prospect of success”.
Leigh Day 18th Sept 2023
Time to arrest deployment of nuclear weapons in Constable’s County, Nuclear Free Local Authorities tell Ministers
Time to Arrest deployment of nuclear weapons in Constable’s County, NFLA
tell Ministers. In advance of a National Day of Action (23 September)
called by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament to protest against the
return of US nuclear weapons to Britain, the Chair of the Nuclear Free
Local Authorities has written to the Foreign and Defence Secretaries
calling on them to refuse the United States authorities permission to base
B61-12 guided nuclear bombs at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.
NFLA 19th Sept 2023
Cooling system at Zaporizhzhya stabilised – but military action in the area continues
In its Update 183 on the Ukraine situation International Atomic
Energy Agency director general Rafael Grossi announced that Zaporizhzhya
Nuclear Power Plant has been drilling more wells at the site as part of
efforts to find new sources of cooling water following the destruction of
the downstream Kakhovka dam more than three months ago.
ZNPP has built
another two groundwater wells to supply the sprinkler ponds that cool the
six reactors and spent fuel, bringing the total of new wells to nine.
Together they pump around 200 cubic metres of water per hour into the
sprinkler ponds, representing most of the cooling needs of the six shutdown
reactors.
The remainder of the water comes from the drainage system and
clean water that is periodically discharged from the plant’s chemical
water treatment facility. The IAEA has been informed that the water supply
situation will be assessed after a tenth well has been constructed to see
if more will be needed.
The Ukrainian Morale in the Battlefield: A Snapshot
Pepe Escobar. September 19, 2023 https://strategic-culture.su/news/2023/09/19/the-ukrainian-morale-in-the-battlefield-a-snapshot/
It’s now firmly established that the Ukrainian counter-offensive turned out to be the feeder of a bloody meat grinder of astonishing proportions
Of every 100 people who joined Ukrainian units last Fall, months before the counter-offensive, only 10 to 20 remain. The rest are dead, wounded or incapacitated. These stats were confirmed by the online publication Poltavashchyna.
It’s quite enlightening to check the following snapshot of the Ukrainian frontlines only five months ago, in Spring, slightly before the start of the counter-offensive. The data was leaked by Ukrainians. The authenticity of the documents has been fully confirmed.
This is a report prepared by the temporary acting commander of the 2nd mechanized battalion of military unit A4007, Captain Dmytro Bilyi. He is reporting directly to the commander of the military unit.
Bilyi says that between April 19 and 20, 2023, he as temporary acting commander as well as other officers have concluded that the 2nd battalion had reached critically low morale and psychological conditions.
The battalion had also suffered numerous sanitary and irretrievable losses. Most soldiers refused to perform combat missions. The level of morale in different companies was evaluated as ranging between 20% and 42%.
( Report supplied on the original – in Ukrainian)
This is a list of soldiers from military unit A7097 who have voluntarily left a position called “Sadik”. Translation: the Ukrainians lost control over this strong point, Sadik, because of these guys. Among them there is a Captain, Mykhailo Shabunin.
(List supplied on original)
This is another report about a group of soldiers who have “voluntarily” abandoned the battlefield. (List supplied on original)
This is an urgent report on the critically low level of combat readiness of the 5th company of the 2nd battalion. The staffing of the company fell to 60% – and the unit needs to be withdrawn from the frontline. ( List supplied on original)
This is the personal data of 10 servicemen that left. So relatives and friends can actually get some info about soldiers. (provided on original)
This is an urgent report by Major Dmytro Hnatyuk, commander of the 2nd batallion on massive “voluntary” withdrawing of firing positions Yaremche, Dakh, Derevo, Polohy, Halych.
Hnatyuk managed to get some 10 soldiers to return to their positions. The rest didn’t.
What next?
The documents above paint a clear picture of what was going on in the frontlines back in April. The situation now may be even more dire. The Ukrainians already started their counteroffensive with very low morale. No wonder the actual results were catastrophic.
And yet none of that should elicit complacency. There’s a feeling that as it stands all’s quiet in the Donbass front. Not really. Ukrainians continue to assault Russian positions with maniacal persistence. After all they dispose of infinite numbers of infantry – faithful to Kiev’s “logic” of war to the last Ukrainian.
The Kiev machine is now being retooled, and new units are being prepared. Russians did destroy an astonishing number of Western weaponry, but Kiev’s forces are not depleted – yet.
There was quite a lot of expectation that after the failed counter-offensive Kiev would negotiate. That won’t happen. The Hegemon won’t allow it. So the “counter-offensive”, 2.0 or whatever, will continue. Kiev’s forces are getting ready for renewed action before the Summer of 2024. So Russia better get its own devastating offensive rolling – sooner rather than later.
Never forget: the Hegemon’s Plan A is yet another Forever War. There’s no Plan B.
UK’s Sizewell Nuclear Investors to Face Security Checks
1\Investors in the UK’s next nuclear power plant, Sizewell C, will face
“strict national security checks” by the government, after the state
last year bought out a Chinese company’s stake in the project.
Britain opened the private investment process on Monday for the 3.2 gigawatt
nuclear power plant that’s being built by Electricite de France SA.
Companies will have to demonstrate that they meet key criteria before
starting negotiations on Sizewell C, including experience in delivering
major infrastructure projects, according to a statement.
The UK is particularly sensitive about which countries it allows into its nuclear
infrastructure. The administration last year took over China General
Nuclear Power Corp.’s stake in EDF’s Sizewell project following
concerns over national security.
Still, being too picky may make it
difficult to get investors for the projects that need billions of dollars
of spending, and also brings the risk of cost overruns and delays.
Bloomberg 18th Sept 2023
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/uk-s-sizewell-nuclear-investors-to-face-security-checks-1.1972837
New York Times exposes Zelensky lie about Donbass missile strike
Rt.com 20 Sept 23
An investigation contradicts the Ukrainian president’s claim that a Russian attack killed civilians the same day as a visit by the US secretary of state
A New York Times investigation ‘strongly suggested’ on Monday that Ukrainian forces were responsible for a deadly missile strike at a Donbass market, on the day US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the country.
The incident on September 6 in the Kiev-controlled Donbass city of Konstantinovka killed at least 15 civilians and injured scores of others.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky immediately accused Russia of launching the strike and claimed that any “attempts to deal with anything Russian” meant turning a blind eye to “the audacity of evil.” Many Western media outlets and some governments endorsed his statement.
The NYT said evidence pointed to a “tragic mishap” involving a Ukrainian anti-air Buk missile that apparently veered off course. The newspaper analyzed missile fragments, satellite imagery, witness accounts, and social media posts to come to the conclusion. It noted that Ukrainian authorities tried to prevent journalists from accessing the impact site…………………..
The missile was apparently one of the two fired by Ukrainian forces from the outskirts of the town of Druzhkovka some 15 km to the northwest of Konstantinovka, NYT reported. The projectile was likely a 9M38 model used by the Buk system, the newspaper concluded based on forensic evidence. Considering the short distance from the presumed launch point, it probably crashed with much of its fuel unspent, and the subsequent explosion left scorch marks at the scene.
Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia mentioned the incident in a speech last week, suggesting that Kiev may have orchestrated it deliberately to coincide with Blinken’s visit. He added that as the evidence clearly contradicts Zelensky’s accusation, “the Kiev regime and its sponsors are trying to hush up this story and keep it off radar.”
The Ukrainian president similarly attributed to Russia a missile strike in Poland which killed two farmers last November. He urged “collective action” in retaliation, but Warsaw said it was most likely a projectile fired by a Ukrainian S-300 air defense system that caused the deaths.
At least one Kiev official has been forced to resign after attributing a strike to Ukrainian forces that his government had pinned on Russia. Aleksey Arestovich quit his post as an advisor to the president in January, amid pressure over an interview in which he suggested that an apartment block in the city of Dnepr was hit by a Ukrainian interceptor rather than a Russian cruise missile.
The Russian military has maintained since the start of the conflict that it only targets military objectives in its operations. https://www.rt.com/russia/583187-konstantinovka-missile-nyt-investigation/
—
Sizewell C seeks outside investment as Together Against Sizewell C Limited (TASC) granted permission to appeal against the project
Andy Mayer, chief executive officer of the Institute of Economic Affairs,
said: “There is a sensible objection to Sizewell C, that the underlying
EPR technology is junk, resulting in projects that run over-time and
over-budget, and when built are riddled with corrosion … outside
investors would be mad to back Sizewell. If built, it will be late and
obsolete. Even if there is regulatory reform, limiting the legal power of
objectors, rival solutions will be advantaged.”
City AM 19th Sept 2023 https://www.cityam.com/sizewell-c-seeks-outside-investment-as-tasc-granted-permission-to-appeal/
Court of Appeal gives permission for appeal of Sizewell C Nuclear Power station ruling
September 18, 2023
The Court of Appeal has given permission for an appeal of the High Court’s
decision to dismiss a challenge brought over development consent for the
Sizewell C Nuclear Power Station.
Local Government Lawyer 18th Sept 2023
Andreyeva Bay cleanup slows to a snail’s pace since invasion of Ukraine
https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2023-09-andreyeva-bay-cleanup-slows-to-a-snails-pace-since-invasion-of-ukraine 18 Sept 23 Charles Digges
In 2017, Russia began a landmark project ridding one of its most dangerous Cold War relics of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. The effort to clean up Andreyeva Bay — a submarine base near Murmansk uniquely positioned to contaminate the Barents Sea — was the culmination of a years-long and often strained cooperative effort between Moscow and numerous European nations, chief among them Norway and the United Kingdom.
The outbreak of war in Ukraine in February 2022 disrupted that progress and drained the project of millions in international funding as European nations suspended their contributions in protest of Moscow’s invasion.
In the early days of the war, officials with Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, insisted they would continue Andreyeva Bay’s cleanup without international assistance, though it was unclear on what funding that would be done.
It wasn’t until Rosatom’s annual conference convened in Murmansk this past July that any news of how these projects were progressing saw the light of day. But even then, the audience a was select one. Bellona — which had attended the annual Rosatom meeting in prewar times — has only viewed the conference presentations in written form.
In fact, none of Rosatom’s former international partners whose funding has driven the Andreyeva Bay project — nations like Norway, France, the United Kingdom and others from Europe— were invited. Instead, the international delegation consisted primarily of countries like Belarus, Kirgizstan, Uzbekistan and others from the Moscow-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States.
“Most of these countries don’t know anything about the Arctic,” said Bellona’s Alexander Nikitin, who is a former member of Rosatom’s Public Council, which was disbanded when the invasion began. “They were invited so the organizers could call the event ‘international.’”
As it turns out, Rosatom hasn’t made any significant progress on the cleanup since the war estranged it from its primary international partners. The problems that remained at the Andreyeva Bay site before war broke out are the same problems Rosatom is addressing now. And where the cleanup was forecast to be completed by 2028 before the Ukraine invasion, current projections by Rosatom officials put the completion date much later.
The disruption to Andreyeva Bay and other cleanup projects threatens to turn back the clock on more than two decades of environmental progress in Northwest Russia.
History
Throughout the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States built more than 400 nuclear submarines, assuring each superpower the ability to fire nuclear missiles from sea even after their land-based silos had been decimated by a first strike. The fjords and coastlines around Murmansk adjacent to Norway became the hub of the Soviet Northern Fleet, and a dumping ground for radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
After the Iron Curtain was drawn back, the disturbing scale of this legacy came to light. It was revealed that a storage building at Andreyeva Bay — the now notorious Building No 5 — had leaked some 600,000 metric tons of irradiated water into the Barents Sea from a nuclear fuel storage pool in 1982. The site contained 22,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies pulled from more than 100 subs, many kept in rusted containers stored in the open air.
This slow-motion nuclear disaster continued to unfold in near secrecy until Bellona brought it to international attention in 1996, when it published a groundbreaking report on Northwest Russia’s nuclear woes.
Fearing contamination, Norway spearheaded a sweeping cleanup effort with other Western nations. Combined they spent more than $1 billion to dismantle 197 decommissioned Soviet nuclear subs that rusted dockside, still loaded with spent nuclear fuel. One thousand Arctic navigation beacons powered by strontium batteries were replaced, many with solar powered units provided by the Norwegians.
Then, six years ago, the first batches of spent nuclear fuel began their journey away from Andreyeva Bay to safer storage — a process meant to continue for another decade thereafter. By 2021, more than half of the spent fuel assemblies had been removed. Later that year, damaged spent fuel fragments lying at the bottom of Building No 5’s storage pools had also been extracted. Real progress was being made.
Progress since the beginning of the war
Since the beginning of the war, however, the tempo of removing spent fuel assemblies has nearly ground to a halt. If 2017, the first year of the removal, saw 18 batches of spent fuel transported away from the site, then in 2022, according to various reports, only two batches left Andreyeva Bay.
The disposition of solid radioactive waste at the site, which includes solid waste inside the storage buildings, also remains unclear and appears to have slowed considerably as a result of the war. As of 2022, some 9,500 cubic meters of it — or roughly 51 percent of the entire legacy waste at the site — remained in place. This waste was scheduled to depart for other storage bases, such as the Gremikha site, by 2026. Now, that’s schedule may be unrealistic.
About half of Andreyeva Bay’s infrastructure— structures like Building No 5 and Building No 3-A, to which spent fuel in Building No 5 was rushed after the 1982 leak — remains irradiated and in need of safe rehabilitation or dismantlement. But since the schedule for removing solid waste from these structures has been pushed back from 2026 to sometime in the 2030s, dates for the completion of the dismantlement are likewise unclear.
Should that ever get done, what’s left of Building No 5 will present other problems. On the whole, the building itself represents some 15,300 tons of low- to medium level radioactive waste. The two options for dealing with this are to demolish the building and bury the debris in a radioactive waste storage facility, or encasing it in a sarcophagus, not unlike the one used at Chernobyl. As with the other issues at Andreyeva Bay, no real prospective conclusion date for disposing of Building No 5 has been discussed since the outbreak of war.
This is the first in a series of articles examining the state of nuclear cleanup in Russia since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. charles@bellona.no
The risk that nuclear weapons could be used is tremendous – Finnish President on war in Ukraine
He also spoke in favour of cautious policy of such states as the US and Germany concerning supplying Ukraine with some kinds of armament, mainly for the attacks on Russia-occupied Crimea.
Yahoo News Ukrainska Pravda, Mon, September 18, 2023
Finnish President Sauli Niinistö warns Europe to be cautious concerning the risk of escalation of the full-scale Russian war against Ukraine.
Source: Niinistö expressed this opinion in an interview for The New York Times, as reported by European Pravda
Niinistö thinks that the war against Ukraine will last a long time and even though Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a “wake-up call” for Europe and NATO, now this fact is being gradually forgotten.
“We’re in a very sensitive situation. Even small things can change matters a great deal and unfortunately for the worse. That is the risk of such large-scale warfare. The risk that nuclear weapons could be used is tremendous,” Niinistö said.
He also spoke in favour of cautious policy of such states as the US and Germany concerning supplying Ukraine with some kinds of armament, mainly for the attacks on Russia-occupied Crimea………………………….. more https://news.yahoo.com/risk-nuclear-weapons-could-used-144000584.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAExkFb73zWCbee9AK_vuFm2BTmp0kiQDmDUXiBzV6qklzWqYIFsX_LXu9LAxNrBCYBq1jiKFYYNtTql41UYxMkGOceFZGslm7ZB2DP56ACiY6zTGQry2jsKbYix7589Hu54kZpAcm6jfdeJQDJs1JEs77sAiMK0vhn8GH6AyXa6s
Kiev orders closure of Christian churches
https://www.rt.com/russia/583031-kiev-orthodox-church-crackdown/ 17 Sept 23
Ukrainian Orthodox Church property is being seized over “ties to Moscow”
Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko on Friday ordered the closure of 74 churches belonging to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), citing its alleged “direct ties” to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Klitschko’s decree is similar to that used to seize the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, or Monastery of the Caves, which Ukrainian police stormed last month. The world-famous holy site, which is nearly 1,000 years old, was handed over to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, a rival organization set up by the government in 2018.
The Lavra is technically state property but the church administered it under a 2013 agreement, which Kiev declared null and void earlier this year, claiming that the UOC violated it by having ties to “enemy nation” Russia. Ukrainian courts rejected the UOC’s appeals.
The newly sequestered sites may be handed over to the OCU or the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which is in communion with Rome, or could even be demolished as “illegal objects” given the government’s annulment of lease and use contracts.
Back in March, President Vladimir Zelensky called the seizure of the Lavra “a move to strengthen our spiritual independence” and accused the UOC of being a tool of Russia. A third of Ukraine’s regions have outrightly banned the UOC so far.
Moscow has accused Kiev of persecuting the canonical Orthodox church and Washington for tacitly approving Ukraine’s actions. The US State Department, which produces an annual “religious freedom” report, has never commented on Kiev’s campaign against the UOC. The reports published so far contain references only to meetings with representatives of the government-backed OCU.
Pentagon blames Russian e-warfare for failed Ukraine counteroffensive
By Al Mayadeen English, Source: Agencies, 15 Sep 23 https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/pentagon-blames-russian-e-warfare-for-failed-ukraine-counter
The US Military Commander Josh Kozlov reveals that the Pentagon is “taking notes” on the Russian tactics to prepare for future direct hostilities.
The failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive for the past three months has been blamed on Russia’s advanced electronic warfare (EW) capabilities, according to the British Royal United Services Institute and other military expert organizations. However, as revealed by US Military Commander Josh Kozlov, the Pentagon is “taking notes” on the Russian tactics to prepare for any future direct hostilities.
A report by the Financial Times published on Monday said that the NATO member nations are gearing up for what is being billed as the largest military exercises since the Cold War. The drills set for spring, titled “Steadfast Defender,” will involve the participation of the organization’s joint command, alongside approximately 41,000 military personnel. The primary focus of these exercises is to simulate the defense against a hypothetical Russian attack on a NATO member state
A military-focused US media outlet quoted Koslov as saying that during the Air, Space, and Cyber Conference in Maryland.
Koslov, the head of the US Army 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing established two years ago to match rival electronic warfare, stated that both Russia and Ukraine have shown impressive abilities on the ground.
He said: “The agility being displayed by both parties, in the way that they’re executing operations in the spectrum, is awesome,” adding that “Both sides are doing the cat-and-mouse game very, very well… In the future, for us, if we do confront a peer, being agile and being rapid is the key to success in the spectrum”.
Failed Western testing
Russian EW tactics have previously intercepted drones from attacking Russian territory, affected Western targeting systems, and disrupted communications between Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine has been trying to up its game by resorting to desperate measures such as repeatedly asking the West to provide it with weapons while offering its land as a testing range for weapons.
Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said in June that “for the military industry of the world, you can’t invent a better testing ground,” than the battlefield in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s not even handling either the weapons or the Western-provided funds correctly, as Ukrainian authorities have embezzled over 100 billion hryvnias ($2.7 billion) from the state budget through the procurement of overpriced and subpar ammunition, equipment, and air defense weapons, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said last week.
“According to the most conservative estimates, more than 100 billion budget hryvnias were misappropriated,” Azarob said on his official Telegram channel.
Conflating councils with communities causes confusion in nuclear dump areas
The Nuclear Free Local Authorities have written to the senior director at Nuclear Waste Services with responsibility for community engagement in the GDF search areas asking him to make it plain in future that it is only local Councils that can choose to withdraw from plans to developing a nuclear waste dump in their area, rather than local communities.
Councillor David Blackburn, Chair of the NFLAs English Forum, has written to Simon Hughes, Director for Siting and Community Engagement at the NWS, to point out that previous statements made by staff and NWS publications have erroneously claimed that communities can choose to withdraw from the process at any time, when government and company guidance clearly states that it is only higher-level local Councils, which are engaged in the process, and Nuclear Waste Services itself that can do so.
Commenting Councillor Blackburn said: “Current practice conflates councils with communities because the so-called Community Right of Withdrawal can infact only be exercised by councils not by communities. The continued practice of claiming the contrary has led to great frustration amongst residents of the communities effected by the proposals, as it also conveys to the outside world the impression that these residents must be happy with the process or surely they would have exercised their ‘right to withdraw’?”
Councillor Blackburn has asked Mr Hughes to ensure that, in future, company statements and publications convey the true facts. He concluded: “Nuclear Waste Services has stated that it wants an open and honest dialogue with communities and stakeholders. I would suggest that one small step they could take to build trust would be to ensure that in future staff members dealing with the media, addressing public meetings, or publishing online or written materials make plain that it is NOT infact the Community which can exercise the Right to Withdrawal, but rather only the company or the Relevant Principal Local Authorities which can do so.”
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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