Chernobyl anniversary offers a bleak look at what may await other Ukrainian nuclear plants
A huge steel and concrete sarcophagus covers the site of the meltdown. Under its dome, called the New Safe Confinement, lie 200 tons of lava-like nuclear fuel, 30 tons of highly contaminated dust and 16 tons of uranium and plutonium that continue to release high levels of radiation.
April 26, 2023 by Charles Digges https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2023-04-chernobyl-anniversar
A little over a year ago, Russian troops abandoned Chernobyl after briefly occupying it during the grim opening days of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The takeover of the site where the world’s worst nuclear disaster happened thirty-seven years ago this week offered a preview of the reckless disregard for nuclear safety that has characterized so much of this war.
While the site has been left to Ukraine to painstakingly restore since the Russian withdrawal on March 31, 2022, the new anniversary of the Chernobyl plant’s original disaster on April 26, 1986, leaves lingering questions about what, exactly, the world can do when Ukraine’s nuclear infrastructure — or indeed any nuclear infrastructure — is attacked by a hostile neighbor.
The answer, at this point? Not much — aside from trying to pick up the pieces after the damage is already done.
As it stands, the Chernobyl exclusion zone is still dotted with mines planted by Russian troops when they rolled into the territory, churning up clouds of radioactive dust with hundreds of heavily armored vehicles. The mines have made treacherous any efforts to restore the territory.
Russian troops also dug trenches and set fires in an area known as the Red Forest — a gnarled expanse of irradiated trees — and scorched, according to NASA, some 14,000 hectares of land, filling the air with so much radioactive smoke that it was unsafe for firefighters to quell the blazes.
All the while, hundreds of Chernobyl employees — who oversee the site’s sprawling network of spent fuel storage facilities as well as the enormous efforts to dismantle the radioactive remnants of the exploded No. 4 reactor — were held hostage onsite, prevented from rotating out at the end of their shifts. Five workers were kidnapped and nine were killed, according to The Washington Post.
Those who remained said later that they had tried to keep the Russians from the most dangerous areas within the plant’s territory. But in what many called the worst situation they have seen in the decades since the initial disaster, Chernobyl’s power was cut by fighting, leaving them to rely on diesel generators for nearly a week to support the critical work of circulating water to cool spent nuclear fuel.
The damage the Russian soldiers did wasn’t purely technical. Doors to offices were ripped off hinges, windows smashed, walls spray-painted with graffiti.
“The poop was the icing on the cake,” Aleksander Barsukov, deputy director of the Chernobyl Ecocenter, which keeps samples of radioactive material collected from all over the world, told The Wall Street Journal after the Russian retreat.
By the time Russian troops pulled back from the plant on March 31, 2022 — amid reports of possible radiation poisoning among their ranks — Chernobyl’s technicians had been held at literal gunpoint at their workstations for more than a month.
During the retreat, according to Ukrainian accounts, Russian soldiers ransacked the site and took anything that looked valuable, looting more than 1,000 computers, and spiriting away dosimeters, software, lab tools, firefighting equipment — and in some cases even household appliances — piling them in stolen Ukrainian trucks.
“Whatever they didn’t steal, they broke,” Chernobyl Information Director Vitaly Medved told the BBC at the time.
Russian soldiers then brazenly mailed much of the booty home from across the Belarusian border. They also made off with radioactive instruments used to calibrate personal dosimeters for Chernobyl staff — substances that can cause radiation burns if handled improperly.
According to the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, which has financed much of Chernobyl’s cleanup work since the original 1986 disaster, the Russian Army’s destructive adventure in the world’s most famous radioactive wasteland will cost some €100 million to repair.
The four RBMK reactors at the enormous nuclear station in Chernobyl no longer produce power, but before the invasion nearly 6,000 workers monitored the lasting effects of the disastrous meltdown that took place in 1986, as well oversaw as processing spent nuclear fuel from other plants in Ukraine. In the days before the invasion, all but a few hundred employees were evacuated.
Located just a few miles from the Belarusian border, Chernobyl was one of the first places occupied by Russian troops. Yevhen Kramarenko, the director of the exclusion zone — the 2,6000-square-kilometer area where radiation levels remain high and public access is limited — told The Washington Post that on the first day of the invasion, a Russian general presented himself as the new leader of the station, and introduced employees from Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation.
“I believe that at the time when they came,” Kramarenko told the paper, “they planned to be there permanently, they planned to take control for a long time.”
A sign of things to come?
Even before the occupation, the Chernobyl station had a post-apocalyptic air. It is situated in a dense forest, swarming with mosquitoes and gnats. Pripyat, the city where employees lived before the disaster, now stands empty and is being reconquered by nature.
A huge steel and concrete sarcophagus covers the site of the meltdown. Under its dome, called the New Safe Confinement, lie 200 tons of lava-like nuclear fuel, 30 tons of highly contaminated dust and 16 tons of uranium and plutonium that continue to release high levels of radiation.
Yet while Rosatom may have failed to keep hold of Chernobyl, the same cannot be said about Ukraine’s embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant — Europe’s largest such facility — which once supplied a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity.
Since October of 2022, Moscow claims that it now controls the plant — a claim not honored by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Association, to say nothing of Kyiv.
From then on, Rosatom has begun flooding the Zaporizhzhia plant with Russian staff that it has transferred from its own Kalinin nuclear plant, 545 kilometers across the front to the northeast.
But while Russia asserts the six-reactor facility has been taken over as a protective measure, there is little to suggest that the joining of Russian and Ukrainian workforces is going smoothly. Only about 2,000 Ukrainian staff members still work at the plant, out of 11,000 before the war.
Indeed, much of Rosatom’s effort to assert itself at the plant has involved arresting and torturing Ukrainian workers opposed to the occupation as it toils to link Zaporizhzhia with the Russian electricity grid.
The plant, which lies on the south side of the Dnipro River next to the nuclear plant’s home city of Enerhodar, is on the front line of the war. Ukrainian troops are just a few of kilometers to the north, on the far bank of the Dnipro, while Russians are holed up in the power plant.Anxieties are high that the area could see renewed fighting in any Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Ukraine accuses the Russians of using the plant as a shield, hoping that the danger of causing a nuclear accident will keep Ukrainian soldiers from firing on them — the first time an atomic reactor has been put in such a position.
“They know Ukrainian troops would not dare to fire back. The nuclear power plant is a perfect hiding place from Ukrainian artillery,” Oleksiy Melnychuk, a former worker at the plant who fled from Enerhodar last July to Ukrainian-held territory, told Politico.eu. The Russians in turn accuse the Ukrainians of ignoring safety protocols and firing on areas near the plant.
The IAEA has inspectors on site and has been trying to walk a diplomatic tightrope to establish a non-military safety zone around the plant. While Moscow says it is keen to do so, Kyiv is leery of any step that could lend legitimacy to the Russian occupation.
Late last month, IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi dropped the idea, and instead is now pushing for both sides to take steps to ensure that the plant isn’t attacked.
Over the last year, four of the station’s six VVER reactors have been put into a cold shutdown to minimize the risk of an accident, while two have been restarted to produce low levels of power to keep the plant operational. The facility needs access to electricity to ensure reactor cooling and other safety functions. However, its links to the Ukrainian grid have been cut six times since last March, forcing the ZNPP to rely on diesel-powered generators for emergency backup power — a situation that IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has referred to as “rolling the dice.”
“And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out,” he added.
Still, even as events deteriorate, there is little the world can do but watch.
Even Grossi — who heads the world’s most respected nuclear power diplomacy body — has admitted as much. During a meeting of the IAEA’s 35-member board of governors last month, Grossi castigated his colleagues for “complacency” after the latest spate of airstrikes had again cut off Zaporizhzhia’s access to grid electricity.
“What are we doing to prevent this [from] happening?“ a flabbergasted Grossi asked the board. ”We are the IAEA, we are meant to care about nuclear safety.”
Even so, aspirations of pushing out the Russians among plant workers remain high.
“We still hope de-occupation is possible,” Melnychuk told Politico.eu. “You can’t even imagine how ready we all are to return and let our colleagues, working under tremendous pressure and fear, to finally have some rest.”
Unfortunately, the state of Chernobyl offers the clearest glimpse of what they may find if — or when — that time comes.
Survivors of Britain’s Cold War radiation experiments to have their stories recorded
Survivors of Britain’s Cold War radiation experiments are to have their
life stories recorded and stored in the British Library. The £250,000
scheme will lead to a documentary and resources to teach A-level students
about the Cold War and the impact the weapons testing programme had on the
men who took part in it, and their families.
Dr Chris Hill, one of the academics leading the project, said: “It’s about furthering their story, embedding it deeper in the public consciousness and confronting what is a
very problematic part of Britain’s history.”
Mirror 27th April 2023
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/nuclear-heroes-win-250000-documentary-29833221
France to participate in Russian Rosatom’s Hungary nuclear power plant project.
Hungary: France ready to participate in Russian Rosatom’s nuclear power
plant project. The executive gave the green light to Framatome to take part
in the construction of two new reactors at the Paks power plant, arguing
that the nuclear industry is not targeted by international sanctions
against Russia.
Le Monde 27th April 2023.
Russia is preparing to defend Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant
According to British intelligence, Russian occupying forces in Ukraine have
built defensive positions at the reactors of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power
plant (NPP) in Enerhodar. By reinforcing their positions, the Russians are
preparing for a counterattack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. At the same
time, their actions increase the probability of damage to security systems.
The UK Ministry of Defence’s Twitter account published a satellite image on
April 27 showing the occupiers’ defensive positions at the Zaporizhzhia
NPP.
Emerging Europe 27th April 2023
EDF Q1 revenues rise but nuclear output declines
PARIS, April 28 (Reuters) more https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-says-q1-revenues-rise-nuclear-output-down-2023-04-28/ Reporting by Benjamin Mallet, editing by Silvia Aloisi – French nuclear power giant EDF (EDF.PA) said first-quarter like-for-like sales rose by 34.6% to 47.8 billion euros ($52.64 billion) thanks to higher electricity and gas prices, though it reported a fall in nuclear output due to reactor outages and strikes in France.
Reporting by Benjamin Mallet, editing by Silvia Aloisi
“This decrease is explained by a lower nuclear fleet availability, mainly due to outages for the controls and repairs on the pipes affected by the stress corrosion phenomenon, and to the impacts of social movements,” EDF said in a statement.
The group, which is in the process of being fully nationalised, confirmed its estimate of nuclear output in France for 2023 in a range of 300-330TWh.
Nuclear production fell to a 34-year low last year due to a record number of reactor outages at EDF, turning France into a net importer of electricity for the first time since 1980.
Will the West turn Ukraine into a nuclear battlefield?
Stuart Dyson died in 2008 at the age of 39…….. his cancer was later recognized in a court of law as having been caused by exposure to depleted uranium. In a landmark 2009 ruling, jurors at the Smethwick Council House in the UK found that Dyson’s cancer had resulted from DU accumulating in his body, and in particular his internal organs.
While the UK’s decision to send depleted uranium shells is unlikely to turn the tide, it will have a lasting, potentially devastating, impact.
APRIL 26, 2023 byJoshua Frank
It’s sure to be a blood-soaked spring in Ukraine. Russia’s winter offensive fell far short of Vladimir Putin’s objectives, leaving little doubt that the West’s conveyor belt of weaponry has aided Ukraine’s defenses. Cease-fire negotiations have never truly begun, while NATO has only strengthened its forces thanks to Finland’s new membership (with Sweden soon likely to follow). Still, tens of thousands of people have perished; whole villages, even cities, have been reduced to rubble; millions of Ukrainians have poured into Poland and elsewhere; while Russia’s brutish invasion rages on with no end in sight.
The hope, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is that the Western allies will continue to furnish money, tanks, missiles, and everything else his battered country needs to fend off Putin’s forces. The war will be won, according to Zelensky, not through backroom compromises but on the battlefield with guns and ammo.
“I appeal to you and the world with these most simple and yet important words,” he said to a joint session of Great Britain’s parliament in February. “Combat aircraft for Ukraine, wings for freedom.”
The United Kingdom, which has committed well over $2 billion in assistance to Ukraine, has so far refused to ship fighter jets there but has promised to supply more weaponry, including tank shells made with depleted uranium (DU), also known as “radioactive bullets.” A by-product of uranium enrichment, DU is a very dense and radioactive metal that, when housed in small torpedo-like munitions, can pierce thickly armored tanks and other vehicles.
Reacting to the British announcement, Putin ominously said he would “respond accordingly” if the Ukrainians begin blasting off rounds of DU.
Stuart Dyson survived his deployment in the first Gulf War of 1991, where he served as a lance corporal with Britain’s Royal Pioneer Corps. His task in Kuwait was simple enough: he was to help clean up “dirty” tanks after they had seen battle. Many of the machines he spent hours scrubbing down had carried and fired depleted uranium shells used to penetrate and disable Iraq’s T-72 tanks, better known as the Lions of Babylon.
Dyson spent five months in that war zone, ensuring American and British tanks were cleaned, armed, and ready for battle. When the war ended, he returned home, hoping to put his time in the Gulf War behind him. He found a decent job, married, and had children. Yet his health deteriorated rapidly and he came to believe that his military service was to blame. Like so many others who had served in that conflict, Dyson suffered from a mysterious and debilitating illness that came to be known as Gulf War Syndrome.
After Dyson suffered years of peculiar ailments, ranging from headaches to dizziness and muscle tremors, doctors discovered that he had a severe case of colon cancer, which rapidly spread to his spleen and liver. The prognosis was bleak and, after a short battle, his body finally gave up. Stuart Dyson died in 2008 at the age of 39.
His saga is unique, not because he was the only veteran of the first Gulf War to die of such a cancer at a young age, but because his cancer was later recognized in a court of law as having been caused by exposure to depleted uranium. In a landmark 2009 ruling, jurors at the Smethwick Council House in the UK found that Dyson’s cancer had resulted from DU accumulating in his body, and in particular his internal organs……………………………………………………………………………………
Both Russia and the U.S. have reasons for using DU, since each has piles of the stuff sitting around with nowhere to put it. Decades of manufacturing nuclear weapons have created a mountain of radioactive waste. In the U.S., more than 500,000 tons of depleted-uranium waste has built up since the Manhattan Project first created atomic weaponry, much of it in Hanford, Washington, the country’s main plutonium production site. As I investigated in my book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, Hanford is now a cesspool of radioactive and chemical waste, representing the most expensive environmental clean-up project in history with an estimated price tag of $677 billion………………………………………………………….
Of course, we’ve known about the dangers of uranium for decades, which makes it all the more mind-boggling to see a renewed push for increased mining of that radioactive ore to generate nuclear power. The only way to ensure that uranium doesn’t poison or kill anyone is to leave it right where it’s always been: in the ground. Sadly, even if you were to do so now, there would still be tons of depleted uranium with nowhere to go. A 2016 estimate put the world’s mountain of DU waste at more than one million tons (each equal to 2,000 pounds).
So why isn’t depleted uranium banned? That’s a question antinuclear activists have been asking for years. It’s often met with government claims that DU isn’t anywhere near as bad as its peacenik critics allege. In fact, the U.S. government has had a tough time even acknowledging that Gulf War Syndrome exists. A Government Accountability Office report released in 2017 found that the Veterans Affairs Department had denied more than 80% of all Gulf War illness claims by veterans. Downplaying DU’s role, in other words, comes with the terrain.
“The use of DU in weapons should be prohibited,” maintains Ray Acheson, an organizer for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and author of Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy. “While some governments argue there is no definitive proof its use in weapons causes harm, it is clear from numerous investigations that its use in munitions in Iraq and other places has caused impacts on the health of civilians as well as military personnel exposed to it, and that it has caused long-term environmental damage, including groundwater contamination. Its use in weapons is arguably in violation of international law, human rights, and environmental protection and should be banned in order to ensure it is not used again.”
If the grisly legacy of the American use of depleted uranium tells us anything, it’s that those DU shells the British are supplying to Ukraine (and the ones the Russians may also be using there) will have a radioactive impact that will linger in that country for years to come, with debilitating, potentially fatal, consequences. It will, in a sense, be part of a global atomic war that shows no sign of ending. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/04/26/will-the-west-turn-ukraine-into-a-nuclear-battlefield/
Remembering Chornobyl — Beyond Nuclear
In 2018, host Libbe HaLevy recorded a special edition of Nuclear Hotseat, focused on the aftermath of the April 26, 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster. This week, the episode is being replayed. Sadly, none of this information goes out of date. The program featured: Bonnie Kouneva, a 15-year-old living in Communist Bulgaria when the Chornobyl disaster began,…
Remembering Chornobyl — Beyond Nuclear
In 2018, host Libbe HaLevy recorded a special edition of Nuclear Hotseat, focused on the aftermath of the April 26, 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster. This week, the episode is being replayed. Sadly, none of this information goes out of date. The program featured:
- Bonnie Kouneva, a 15-year-old living in Communist Bulgaria when the Chornobyl disaster began, but no one knew about it because the Soviet Union said nothing to its people. On May 1, May Day, only five days after it began, Bulgarian citizens were “encouraged” by the Soviet hierarchy to attend all-day celebrations of the communist state – outdoors, in the rain – at the exact time the worst of Chornobyl’s radiation was directly overhead. Here, she paints the picture of the impact of that radiation rainout and lets us know the result of this devastating experience on her life.
- Dr. Timothy Mousseau, an evolutionary biologist and faculty member of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina. Since 1999, Professor Mousseau and his collaborators have explored the ecological, genetic and evolutionary consequences of low-dose radiation in populations of plants, animals and people inhabiting the Chornobyl region of Ukraine and Belarus.
- The late Dr. Janette Sherman edited the the English translation of the groundbreaking work, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment by Alexei Yablokov, Vassily B. Nesterenko, and Alexey V. Nesterenko. Dr. Sherman and I spoke about this book for NH #97 on April 23, 2013. She passed away on November 20, 2019.
- Dr. Alexei Yablokov was environmental advisor to Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the Gorbachev administration, as well as a co-founder of Greenpeace, Russia. His book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, compiled and translated into English more than 5,000 separate scientific reports on Chornobylthat completely contradict the World Health Organization’s report, which undermined the seriousness of the accident. Dr. Yablakov died in January, 2017.
Click on the title to receive a free pdf of the entire book.
UK Gave Ukraine Thousands of Shells, Including Depleted Uranium Rounds
MOSCOW (Sputnik) 25 Apr 23, – The United Kingdom has provided Ukraine with thousands of shells for the donated Challenger 2 main battle tanks, UK minister for armed forces James Heappey said on Tuesday.
“We have sent thousands of rounds of Challenger 2 ammunition to Ukraine, including depleted uranium armour-piercing rounds,” he said in a written answer to a parliamentary query.
Heappey did not give an estimate of the number of depleted uranium rounds fired by the Ukrainian armed forces, citing operational security reasons.
The minister also admitted that the UK was not monitoring the locations from where these rounds were fired and added that his country was not obligated to help Ukraine clear up the depleted uranium rounds post-conflict.
…………………… Such shells were actively used by NATO forces in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion, as well as in Yugoslavia during the 1999 bombing campaign. It resulted in massive contamination and raging cancer rates across the affected nations – as well as in some NATO troops. https://sputnikglobe.com/20230425/uk-gave-ukraine-thousands-of-shells-including-depleted-uranium-rounds-1109828799.html
Remembering Chernobyl as nuclear danger grows with attacks in the Zaporizhzhia region
The explosion of a nuclear reactor put Chernobyl on the map in 1986 for the
worst reasons. It is still considered the most serious nuclear accident in
history.
The memories are vivid 37 years later and fears of a new nuclear
accident are more pressing since Russia attacked Ukraine. Ukraine has 15
nuclear power plants, but it is Zaporizhzhia that is focusing attention.
Despite appeals from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), there
are daily reports of attacks in the region. Interviewed by Euronews, a
former head of the IAEA believes that we are more exposed to danger today
than in 1986.
Euro News 26th April 2023
BBC launches 7 part series on Fukushima nuclear disaster
BBC World Service has launched a new seven-part drama series exploring the
2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in
Japan.
Radio Today 25th April 2023
UK replacing its Nuclear Warhead Programme – at what cost?
Replacing the UK’s nuclear deterrent: The Warhead Programme. In February
2020, the Government confirmed the existence of a programme to replace the
UK’s nuclear warhead. What stage is the programme at and how much is it
expected to cost?
UK House of Commons 25th Feb 2023
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9777/
Ukraine’s nuclear power plants are still a source of nightmares years after the Chornobyl disaster
CNBC, APR 26 2023
- It’s been 37 years since the disastrous and deadly explosion at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union.
- The disaster in 1986 is still considered the world’s worst ever nuclear disaster.
- Ukraine’s nuclear power plants are still a source of concern as the war continues.
…………………………………………………………………………..The disaster is still seen as the most serious accident in the history of nuclear power operation although Ukraine has remained heavily dependent on nuclear energy.
Today, its nuclear power plants have once again become a source of nightmares as fears abound for their safety and security amid the relentless fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces.
Ukraine has 15 operable nuclear reactors at four plants that generate about half of its electricity, according to the World Nuclear Association, although since the war started last February, the number of units in operation has changed over time, “with reactors put online and taken offline depending on the situation around the plants and the stability of external power supplies,” the association notes.
Most concerns around the safe functioning of the country’s power plants amid war have centered on the the nuclear power plant located in Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, which also happens to be Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
The Zaporizhzhia plant was occupied early on in the war by Russian forces (when it was attacked in the early hours of March 2 last year, it became the first operating civil nuclear power plant to come under armed attack) and it has repeatedly found itself at the epicenter of fighting since then, with both sides accusing each other of shelling near the facility and risking another potentially catastrophic nuclear accident.
There have been a number of occasions now when shelling near the plant has damaged external power lines to the facility, meaning that Ukrainian workers still running the plant have had to rely on emergency generators for the power needed for reactor cooling and other essential nuclear safety and security functions.
The IAEA’s Director-General Rafael Grossi described the unstable conditions that the plant is forced to operate in as “extremely concerning,” noting that “this is clearly not a sustainable way to operate a major nuclear facility.”
He has often repeated calls for the establishment of a demilitarized zone around the plant but, for now, that remains a distant prospect, although the IAEA was able to convince Russia to allow its inspectors to remain permanently on site to monitor safety at the plant. The IAEA has also sent inspectors to other nuclear facilities in Ukraine………………………………………….. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/26/37-years-after-chornobyl-ukraines-nuclear-plants-are-again-in-danger.html?fbclid=IwAR1LBPuusObwSd5ZQibJVClqi5jlDayFFhvoJjFjyWny6WWP6VXCG-Nlh2k—
Marine deaths prompt calls for investigation and halt into any new nuclear dump tests.
Marine Deaths of harbour porpoise, dolphin, pilot whale, seals
and other protected species following last August’s seismic blasting
looking at the geology of the Irish Sea for a deep sub-sea nuclear dump
have prompted calls for a halt and an investigation.
A legal challenge has been threatened by campaigners against further seismic blasting in the search areas which include the Irish Sea and Allerdale’s Solway Firth area.
The Copeland seismic blasting went ahead for 20 days from the 1st August
2022 despite a petiton of over 50,000 signatures. The testing of the
Copeland Irish Sea area centred off Sellafield was contracted by Nuclear
Waste Services in their quest to find a place to dispose of high level
nuclear wastes in a Geological Disposal Facility.
Environmental Lawyers
Leigh Day acting for Lakes Against Nuclear Dump, a Radiation Free Lakeland
campaign have now written to the Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey and
to the Marine Management Organisation. The letter includes an Appendix of
“Events” beginning with strandings of protected species including dead
seals and harbour porpoise at Drigg on the 8th August and includes deaths
of dolphin, pilot whale and jellyfish (food for protected turtle species).
Radiation Free Lakeland 25th April 2023
Anti nuclear campaign groups in Wales(Dwyfor and Meirionnydd) urge government to invest in energy conservation, NOT dirty nuclear power.
Here is the response on behalf of PAWB, Pobl Atal Wylfa B/People AgainstWylfa B (Ynys Môn and Arfon) and CADNO, Cymdeithas Atal Dinistr NiwclearOesol (Dwyfor and Meirionnydd) to the Welsh Government’s review of renewable energy targets..
Generally, there is much to welcome in the government’s discussion paper.
However, in response to Proposal 1, we would like to see the government
putting more emphasis on reducing the demand for electricity by investing
in a comprehensive insulation and energy conservation programme.
That is vitally important all over Cymru alongside the renewable energy programme.
However, we believe that Welsh Government’s investment in Cwmni Egino to
attempt to get a nuclear energy development at the Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority’a site at Trawsfynydd undermines this aim. Nuclear power is a
dirty, dangerous and extremely expensive technology that is in no way
renewable. Any nuclear development at Trawsfynydd would depend heavily on
carbon fuels in the building process thereby further undermining the aim of
proposal.
PAWB 24th April 2023
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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