Russia’s manipulations in supplying Bangladesh with nuclear technology
Derek Abbott Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch Australia,7 Oct 19
I’m at an engineering meeting and got to meet an engineer working on the nuclear program in Bangladesh.
I asked him if Bangladesh had renewables. He said they have a lot.
I then made the point that nuclear is therefore not a good investment as his grid is now in greater need of sources that turn on and off quickly. As nuclear can’t do that, nuclear is not cost effective.
He agreed and said for that reason the Bangladeshi govt would actually never pay upfront for a nuclear station on an economic basis.
He said the nuclear program was a result of a political deal with the Russians.
He said that Pakistan and India have nuclear in the region, so the idea of Bangladesh having a nuclear station is a show of “arm flexing.”
The Russians were pushy and made a deal too hard to resist: The Russians will only charge 1% of the cost per annum for the first 30 years of operation and have agreed to remove all waste and ship it back to Russia.
I said that deal does seem too hard to resist.
I then naively asked why on earth the Russians would go to such lengths at an apparent economic loss to them.
His answer was that Bangladesh is seen as an economically strategic region. Labour costs are lower than India, and it has a very capable workforce with a GDP that is over 5 times (per head) higher than India!
I hadn’t realised that and asked how they are making money. He said that India is no longer the power house of the clothing industry. Due to lower wages, clothes are now made in Bangladesh. All your designer labels you might be wearing come from there and have been rebranded.
There are very strong trade deals between China and Bangladesh, and it his belief that Russia’s “bargain basement” nuclear deal is way of getting a foothold in the region themselves. It is a geopolitical maneuver.
What the Russians giveth with one hand, they’ll probably find a way to taketh with another.
Scrutiny on Britain’s nuclear plans: small modular reactors uncompetitive
UK nuclear: a Golden Egg or Poisoned Chalice? UK nuclear power isunder 
intense scrutiny as costs balloon on the controversial Hinkley Point C station in southwest England
Nuclear company EDF denounced by France’s economy minister as a “state within a state”
Times, 30 Sept 19 President Macron’s economy minister has accused the French state-ownedcompany building Britain’s new nuclear plant of “unacceptable” failings as he threatened sweeping change at the group.
denounced cost overruns and delays in the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear reactor in Somerset and similar projects in Flamanville in Normandy and Olkiluoto in Finland. “We will not accept this drift month after month, year after year,” Mr Le Maire said.
four-year term as chief executive of EDF by Mr Macron in February. Mr Le Maire said that he had ordered an independent audit into the French nuclear industry, which provides about 75 per cent of nation’s electricity, and into the decision to build a new generation of the increasingly questioned European pressurised reactors in Britain, France, Finland and China.
that Hinkley Point C would cost £3 billion more than expected and may not meet its latest launch date of 2025, which is already eight years late.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/2a8ccefa-e2e8-11e9-bc3e-661ff0438ed9
UK energy chief advises that Hinkley Point nuclear project should be scrapped
Telegraph 28th Sept 2019 Scrap Hinkley Point: nuclear plant is expensive and out of date, says Ovo Energy chief, Britain’s next nuclear power plant should be scrapped because it is wastefully expensive and out of date, according to the boss of Ovo Energy. The industry should instead look to the future with ever-cheaper renewable energy, said Stephen Fitzpatrick, the founder and chief executive of the group that will soon be the UK’s second-biggest supplier as Ovo acquires SSE’s consumer business.
“We should just call it a day. I thought at the time the deal was struck at £92.50 per megawatt
hour (MWh), inflation-linked, that it was a bad deal for customers. Unfortunately the technology, the design it is based on, is unproven,” he said. “Looking at the cost for customers of renewables, solar, and wind, the cost just keeps coming down. The cost for nuclear keeps going up.
It strikes me that this does not represent value for money for consumers, never more so than this week when the cost went up by £2.9bn.” The Hinkley Point C reactor will cost up to £22.5bn to build as costs keep rising above initial plans.
Mr Fitzpatrick would prefer the industry to invest in restructuring the energy network to handle more renewables, including the variable supply of wind and solar. This could be handled in
part with a “smart network” using batteries to handle shifting supply and demand.
“If you think about the £39/MWh that was achieved at the last auction for offshore wind, and when Hinkley Point goes live it is going to be about £100 more per MWh some time in the late 2020s,” he said. “If we make smart decisions and focus on value for money and what is best for the end consumer, I am quite sure we can keep costs [of decarbonising thenetwork] under control.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/09/28/scrap-hinkley-point-nuclear-plant-expensive-date-says-ovo-energy/
Nuclear waste is piling up – governments need to stop dithering and take action
Nuclear waste is piling up – governments need to stop dithering and take action https://theconversation.com/nuclear-waste-is-piling-up-governments-need-to-stop-dithering-and-take-action-123977 Claire Corkhill
Research Fellow in nuclear waste disposal, University of SheffieldSeptember 26, 2019 The UK government has launched a process to find a volunteer community who would be willing to host a £12 billion geological disposal facility for nuclear waste. It’s about time – the initiative comes after seven decades of successive governments putting the decision off. The situation is similar in many other countries, with dangerous nuclear material being stored unsafely because of political inaction.
In the UK, nuclear waste is currently kept in safe but high-maintenance conditions, with some canisters deteriorating, at Sellafield in Cumbria. This is costing tax payers £3 billion per year.
The new geological disposal facility is a vast underground bunker, to be buried around 500m below the Earth’s surface. It is intended to safely store approximately one Wembley Stadium’s worth of highly radioactive waste that has been generated over the past 70 years. Here, it will be isolated from the biosphere – and human populations – for the 100,000 years it will take for the radioactivity to decay to safe levels.
Radioactive waste is generated from nuclear energy, military uses and also the extensive use of isotopes in medicine. The most highly radioactive portion comes from spent nuclear fuel – the used uranium fuel from inside nuclear reactors and the materials produced through recycling of spent nuclear fuel. The latter includes fission products that are transformed to glass and plutonium (which is currently neither a resource nor a waste).
These materials contain radioactive isotopes that have half-lives (the amount of time taken for half of the radioactivity to decay) of tens to hundreds of thousands of years. This means any storage solution must be extremely long-lived. That’s a significant challenge – the oldest known man-made materials are of the order of several thousands of years old.
The principle of geological disposal of nuclear waste is to use multiple barriers, much like a set of Russian Dolls. This makes it possible to contain the waste and prevent it from meeting with groundwater which would start to dissolve it – releasing radioactive materials to the environment. Engineered barriers are intended to contain the waste until most of the radioactivity has decayed.
If the disposal vaults are dug in a good, impermeable rock (such as clay or mudstone), the geology provides a natural barrier that will isolate the waste from the biosphere. This will reduce the likelihood of human intrusion into the facility. Being several hundreds of metres below the ground, there will also be long transport pathways to delay any significant migration of radioactive materials from the waste to the biosphere until far into the future.
International issue
The UK is not the only country opting for this solution. In Finland, construction of the Onkalo facility has already begun. A licence application has even been made to start disposing of spent nuclear fuel.
But progress in other nations has stalled: in France protesters surround the disposal facility in the village of Bure, while in Sweden, the Environmental Court has rejected the construction licence for a facility near the coastal town of Forsmark, due to safety concerns over the corrosion resistance of copper canisters.
In the USA, senators are suing the Federal Government for not building a disposal facility. The lack of a disposal facility has meant that thousands of metric tonnes of spent nuclear fuel, have built up – stored temporarily in dry casks at sites across the country.
The controversy is expected to extend to the UK’s new geological disposal siting process. Recent media articles have criticised the idea that see all areas of the UK – including national parks – could be suitable to host a facility. A previous siting process, launched in 2003, failed to find a site. Although two local authorities from near the Sellafield site came forward, Cumbria County Council was able to veto the vote.
The government hopes that new communities will step forward in this second process. It has proposed an incentive package offering communities £1m per year for having discussions about hosting the facility. This will increase to £2.5m per year when geological investigations are undertaken.
But environmentalists are likely to object, as they fear a better storage facility will only lead to more nuclear power stations. And indeed, Oliver Eden, former parliamentary undersecretary for energy under Theresa May’s government between 2017-2019, highlighted the disposal facility as being “the key to the future of the UK’s new nuclear build programme … providing a safe and secure way to dispose of the waste new nuclear reactors produce.”
Whatever the outcome of the current siting process, something must be done about nuclear waste. Leaving it for our grandchildren to deal with is simply not fair. What’s more, we can’t assume that future civilisations will be able to keep it safe.
The first step on the road to a solution is to initiate a public conversation about what we should do with the world’s most dangerous materials in the long term. If you are interested, a good first step could be to watch the video above and start discussing the topic with your friends, family and local authorities.
Russia’s deadly explosion in August has awakened Russians to the nuclear danger
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Blast, Radiation Unnerve Russians Living Near Test Site Deadly August explosion during missile trial was wake-up call; ‘We’re worried it could happen again’ WSJ, By Ann M. Simmons The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 25, 2019 SEVERODVINSK, Russia—For decades, the Russian military conducted trials at a restricted site near this northern city, testing missiles that Moscow loaded onto Cold War-era submarines. Residents paid little heed for years. That changed on Aug. 8, when an explosion during a missile test killed at least seven people and caused radiation levels to spike in the area around Severodvinsk. U.S. officials said the explosion confirmed that Russia is endeavoring to develop high-grade specialized nuclear weapons, as Moscow makes fresh efforts to produce a new generation of arms capable of overcoming U.S. defense systems. University student Alexandra Volkova closed all her windows when she heard about the blast hours after it occurred, but is afraid she acted too late. “I’m not sure if I have been exposed to radiation,” the 22-year-old said. “I’m not sure whether it’s a serious problem. I’m not sure whether I should have taken some iodide.”……… Russian President Vladimir Putin said the incident occurred during the test of a “promising weapons system” and praised the personnel who perished as national heroes.
The demise in August of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty lifted decades-old constraints on Russia and the U.S. on developing nuclear and conventional ground-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 300 to 3,400 miles.
It is now unclear whether a parallel accord, New START, which limits U.S. and Russian long-range nuclear arms, will be renewed when it expires in 2021. The Kremlin hasn’t named the weapon that was being tested in the explosion in an area called Nyonoksa, which a CIA report declassified in 2013 described as a prominent weapons testing site. Experts believe the explosion resulted from Russia’s failed test of its nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile, known as Skyfall, which it started developing in the 2000s. Mr. Putin unveiled the weapon last year in a slick animated video, showcasing a guided missile gliding untracked over oceans and circumventing air-defense systems. The Kremlin has described the missile as virtually unstoppable, with potentially unlimited range and an unpredictable flight pattern. Little is publicly known about it. Matt Korda, a research associate for the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said it wouldn’t be an overstatement to describe it as “a kind of flying Chernobyl,” referring to the 1986 nuclear accident at this Soviet nuclear power plant.
If completed, Skyfall would be an “unshielded nuclear reactor that’s essentially just flying around pumping out radiation,” Mr. Korda said. The accident sowed concerns among residents around Severodvinsk, home to a naval base and around 183,000 people. “As far as we knew, there was never any nuclear testing here and there had never been any accidents with radiation involved,” said Oleg Mandrykin, a businessman and environmental activist in the city. “People died because of this explosion, because of high exposure to radiation,” he said. “Now people here are worried because they just don’t understand what happened.” Russian authorities’ Soviet-era style secrecy in the aftermath of the explosion exacerbated fears. A notice on the Severodvinsk city website announcing a spike in radiation levels following the blast was quickly deleted. An initial order for residents of Nyonoksa to evacuate was canceled. And at least four Russian monitoring stations designed to detect nuclear radiation were switched off soon after the blast, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization said. Authorities in Severodvinsk, where foreigners still need official permission to visit, didn’t respond to requests for comment on the statements following the incident and accusations that officials are deceiving the public about the severity of the radiation and the current risk. https://www.wsj.com/articles/blast-radiation-unnerve-russians-living-near-test-site-11569403801
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Britain’s nuclear power future might be ended, with Hinkley Point C’s escalating costs
EDF Energy says that “challenging ground conditions” mean costs could be £2.9 billion higher, taking the total bill to £22.9 billion. This might seem only of interest to EDF shareholders, given the controversial subsidy deal for the plant means consumers are protected from cost overruns.
But the potential significance of this is much bigger – it could cast a cloud over the UK’s hopes of a new wave of nuclear power plants. Ministers want more nuclear power in the energy mix alongside renewables, to meet carbon targets and provide continuous electricity supply.
Two Japanese companies have already pulled out of plans to build new nuclear plants in the UK, leaving EDF Energy’s designs for a second one at Sizewell in Suffolk as the main option. But the government’s proposed financial model for Sizewell C is very different to the one agreed for Hinkley. Unlike that deal, the “regulated asset base” (RAB) model under consultation for future plants would see consumers paying through energy bills while power stations are still being built.
The main trade-off with the RAB deal was that loading more construction risk onto consumers should make it cheaper to raise funds and therefore cheaper electricity, says Jonathan Marshall at non-profit the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit.
But the more delays and over-runs there are, it will add to concerns that consumers will be left to pick up an ever-increasing bill, he says. “Consumer groups and others that are against the new framework are going to point to the delays at Hinkley as evidence that billpayers will be liable to pay more than planned to bring new power stations online.”……
What are the alternatives? Some nuclear proponents think small modular reactors could do the job. But the technology for commercial ones is still years off and analysis suggests they could even be more costly than conventional large ones……. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2217725-could-rising-costs-at-hinkley-point-c-end-the-uks-nuclear-ambitions/
Sizewell C nuclear plan puts iconic British nature reserve in danger
The battle of nature versus nuclear: will Sizewell C destroy Minsmere nature reserve? Sophie Atherton Telegraph 22nd Sept 2019 Almost anywhere you walk at the RSPB’s Minsmere nature reserve, you get a view of the Sizewell nuclear power stations. They are a curiously ambivalent landmark, a somewhat menacing presence on the skyline, but also lending a moody, sci-fi edge to the landscape – especially on grey days when the dome of Sizewell B seems to appear and disappear depending on the passing clouds. It’s impossible not to notice the industrial behemoths, but because Minsmere is such a carnival of wildlife, you can, to a degree, ignore them. For now.
However, French energy company EDF and partner China General Nuclear Power Corporation want to build a nuclear power station to the north of the two already there.
Almost anywhere you walk at the RSPB’s Minsmere nature reserve, you get a view of the Sizewell nuclear power stations. EDF and partner China General Nuclear Power Corporation want to build a nuclear power station to the north of the two already there. Construction is due to start in 2021 and
going on for 10 to 12 years. “The plans EDF have shared have tried to indicate that the visual impact won’t be that great because of this bank of woodland,” says Rowlands, gesturing to a line of trees beyond the water overlooked by the Island Mere bird hide. “We’re trying to ascertain what
that means in reality.
I think at Hinkley – which they are modelling this station on – it’s something like 56 cranes at the peak of the construction but what does that look like – and even if the visual is somewhat obscured,
how does the noise travel? How does that affect the wildlife if it becomes more noisy?” The RSPB feels that EDF’s plans for Sizewell C throw up as many questions as answers and is concerned about the lack of information on the environmental impact of such a huge construction project so close to sites that are internationally renowned for their wildlife importance.
As well as the power station itself, building it requires new roads (for the daily journeys of hundreds of HGV lorries), a new rail link, a double-deck car park for 1,500 vehicles and several three and four-storey accommodation blocks providing 2,400 bed spaces for workers.
That’s merely a flavour, rather than an exhaustive list, of what will happen to this Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty – on supposedly protected land – if Sizewell C goes ahead. One of the things that makes Minsmere so remarkable is that it has such a variety of different habitats. Some nature reserves are predominantly one type of landscape, but Minsmere has everything. The fate
of its reed beds, wet grassland, scrapes and lagoons, woodland, heath, vegetated shingle and beyond that the sea, along with all the thousands of species that live there, are all inextricably interconnected.
It is like a microcosm of the whole of the UK’s ecology. If one part is damaged, the whole will be affected as creatures and plants lose the conditions and then the food they need to survive.
Nuclear power is supposed to be a part of the UK’s plans for phasing out fossil fuels and moving to sustainable, eco-friendly, renewable energy sources. But if a new power station threatens to destroy the very things we are trying to protect, we have to consider carefully where to put it.
The latest stage of the Sizewell C public consultation closes on Sept 27. Details of how to respond can be found at sizewellc.co.uk
Ever cheaper wind energy a big threat to UK’s nuclear white elephants
Times 21st Sept 2019, Alistair Osborne: Who wouldn’t prefer clean energy from Dogger than, say, Hinkley Point C: the £20 billion nuclear disaster in leafy Somerset?
The latest round of offshore wind contracts is quite a moment. For the first time, it looks like being subsidy-free. Companies have agreed to build 5.5 gigawatts of new capacity, enough to power almost seven million homes, for a guaranteed price of as little as £39.65 per megawatt hour – in 2012 prices. Compare that to the price for when the turbines start whirring in 2023-24, also in 2012 money: £48.13/MWh. In short, clean energy without any extra cost to the consumer.
In just five years, wind has blown the competition away. It was only in 2014 that Dong Energy, now Orsted, signed up to build the 1,200MW Hornsea 1 project at a strike price of £140/MWh.
By September 2017, the guaranteed price for the 1,386MW Hornsea 2 was down to £57.50. And now it’s 30 per cent cheaper again: a dizzying drop that drives home two things.
First, that Britain, blessed with a nice bit of breeze, leads the world in offshore wind: by next year it’ll have 10GW of installed capacity. Second, that the more you build, the cheaper it gets.
If only the same thing could be said for nuclear power. The strike price for Hinkley Point, in the same 2012 money, is a rapacious £92.50/MWh: a socking bribe to get France’s EDF and its Chinese partner to build the thing. It’s set to rip off consumers for 35 years. Naturally, it’s at least eight years late: now shooting for operations in 2025, not 2017. Its French prototype in Flamanville, where building costs have more than trebled to €10.9 billion, is at least ten years late. Oh, and its welding’s dodgy, too.
And nuclear’s not even green: it comes with a vast clean-up bill. True, it brings baseload energy that wind can’t yet match. But storage technology is advancing all the time.
So why’s the government persisting with last century tech that comes at a radioactive price? Yes, offshorewind might endanger a seabird that’s forgotten its specs. But, luckily, it’s a bigger threat to another species: nuclear white elephants.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/597b8770-dbdf-11e9-9cfd-b79996a387b0
New nuclear weapons that could make continents uninhabitable
Russia’s New Nuclear Weapon Could Make America Uninhabitable, The National Interest•September 20, 2019
Each of the submarine’s sixteen R-30 Bulava (“Mace”) missiles typically carries six 150-kiloton nuclear warheads designed to split apart to hit separate targets. This means one Borei can rain seventy-two nuclear warheads ten times more destructive than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima on cities and military bases over 5,800 miles away. ……..
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An SSBN’s primary purpose is to remain undetected long enough to unleash its terrifying firepower—a strategy made easier thanks to their nuclear reactors allowing them remain submerged for months at a time. [ and they say that small nuclear reactors have nothing to do with nuclear weapons!] ……..
However, the Borei represents only half of the Russian Navy’s future sea-based nuclear deterrence force. The other half will come from a unique fleet of four Khaborovsk-class submarines each carrying six nuclear-powered Poseidon drone-torpedoes designed to swim across oceanic distances to blast coastal cities and naval bases with megaton-yield warheads. Moscow, it seems, would like a little more redundancy in its ability to end civilization as we know it in the event of a nuclear conflict. Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing, and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring. This first appeared in June 2019 and is being republished due to reader interest. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-new-nuclear-weapon-could-make-america-uninhabitable-82051  |
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faulty parts found in a number of France’s nuclear reactors
10% of French Nuclear Reactors Have Potentially Faulty Parts Installed as Fukushima Fears Persist https://sputniknews.com/europe/201909181076832892-10-of-french-nuclear-reactors-have-potentially-faulty-parts-installed-as-fukushima-fears-persist/
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by Tim Korso Most European states have taken a course to reduce to zero the use of nuclear plants since the disaster at the Japanese plant Fukushima in 2011 that led to the contamination of nearby land and sea.
Six (around 10% of the total amount) of nuclear reactors in France are using parts that had “manufacturing deviations” Electricite de France (EDF) SA, the country’s biggest power supplier reported. The irregularities were found in 16 steam generators used on nuclear power plants in Blayais, Bugey, Fessenheim, Dampierre-en-Burly, and Paluel. At the same time, EDF stated that the issue is not a pressing one and doesn’t require immediate attention. The report comes in line with an ongoing programme of reactor checks in France following the discovery of carbon-content irregularities in the steel produced by Le Creusot Forge in 2016, which made the metal weaker than usual. The checks led to the temporary suspension of numerous reactors, and a spike in energy prices both in France and in nearby states due to the former’s need to import energy to cover the deficit. Some European states have even announced their intention of completely phasing out the use of nuclear energy, gradually shutting down existing nuclear plants and aborting the construction of newer ones following the 2011 disaster at the Japanese plant Fukushima, which left significant patches of land and sea contaminated. The incident happened after the plant was hit by a powerful tsunami that knocked out its power and left reactors without cooling systems. Three countries, namely Belgium, Switzerland and Germany, are planning to eventually switch to renewable energy sources, while using gas in the transitional period. France, however, despite initially considering such option decided to keep its nuclear industry. Still, Paris opted for a reduction of its portion in the country’s energy generation from over 70% down to 50% by 2035. |
Iodine tablets for 2.2 million people in France
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France will give out free iodine tablets to around 2.2 million people living close to nuclear plants to help protect them from radiation in case of an acciden https://eutoday.net/news/environment/2019/france-to-distribute-out-free-iodine-tablets-to-2-2-million-peoplet, Euronews reports. The country’s nuclear regulator agency ASN said on Tuesday people living within 10-20 kilometres from one of EDF’s 19 nuclear plants, as well as some 200,000 institutions including schools, will receive a letter in the incoming days informing them they can pick up the tablets from the nearest pharmacy. Previously, France distributed iodine tablets to people living within a 10 kilometre radius from a nuclear plant but has now decided to widen the radius. During nuclear accidents, radioactive iodine is released into the atmosphere that when inhaled or swallowed by the thyroid gland can cause cancer in later years. When the thyroid gland is saturated with stable iodine, it no longer absorbs the radioactive iodine. ASN said that in case of a nuclear accident, people should seek shelter in buildings and not go pick up their children from school. France is the world’s most nuclear-reliant nation, with three-quarters of its electricity produced by state-owned EDF’s 58 nuclear reactors in 19 plants spread all over the country. |
Dramatic rise in the risk of a US-Russia nuclear war, which would kill mega millions
US-Russia nuclear war would kill 34 million people within hours and is increasingly likely, Princeton study concludes, Independent UK, Risk of catastrophic conflict has risen ‘dramatically in the past two years’, academics warn Jon Sharman. 18 Sep 19, More than 90 million people would be killed or injured in a nuclear war between the US and Russia if a conventional conflict went too far, according to a new simulation created by researchers.
Such a scenario has become “dramatically” more plausible in the last two years because the two countries have dropped support for arms-control measures, according to a team from Princeton University.
The simulation, the result of a study at Princeton‘s Science and Global Security programme (SGS), suggests 34 million people would be killed and 57 million injured in the first hours of an all-out nuclear conflagration – not counting those left ill by fallout and other long-term problems.
In the animation, electronic trails of ballistic missiles arc across the screen, before blossoming into a carpet of white discs.
Worldwide destruction would include the nuclear incineration of Europe, which the Princeton scientists claimed could be brought about by the escalation of a conventional war between Russia and Nato………. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-russia-nuclear-war-trump-putin-simulation-europe-nato-a9109116.html
Strong environmental case to scrap Bradwell B new nuclear build
Mersea Island Courier 16th Sept 2019, Native oysters at risk from new nuclear build. Graham Farley of Mersea Island Environmental Alliance (MIEA) shares why marine life in the
Blackwater Estuary will be at risk if the Bradwell B nuclear new-build goes
ahead.
CHINA General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) and EDF Energy are currently
circulating updates on the proposed Bradwell new-build nuclear project. In
their article they say that members of the public have a chance to win a
photographic competition or even submit their happy memories associated
with the original Bradwell Magnox Station!
My memories of the Bradwell Magnox station include: radioactive leaks, record fines, more leaks and attempts to cover up a catalogue of failures including the failed FED
dumping of radioactive waste in our estuary.
Unsurprisingly, there are no mentions of climate change and environmental protection in their
literature. It was assumed that with the decreasing cost of green energy,
spiralling costs of new nuclear projects and collapse of other UK proposed
nuclear builds that Bradwell would be shelved.
However, this isn’t so, as we have a copy of a Marine Licence application from July this year to
survey the estuary, which confirms that the project is still moving
forward. This document confirms the power station “will likely operate
with cooling water abstracted from the Blackwater Estuary”.
The case I’m making to stop the nuclear new build at Bradwell is environmental:
the Blackwater Estuary is one of the most important wildlife habitats in
the country, therefore safeguarding and preserving this habitat for future
generations is a priority! We must protect of the delicate ecology of the
mud flats, salt marsh and the shallow estuary with its many international
environmental protections and UK Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) status.
Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) see Revenue Asset Base (RAB) financial model as a danger to UK’s public purse
NFLA 16th Sept 2019, The Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) publishes today its response to
the UK Government consultation on the Revenue Asset Base (RAB) financial
model being proposed to assist the funding of new nuclear reactors.
NFLA see this new model as a real risk to the public purse, providing
preferential treatment to new nuclear over renewable energy investment, is
overly complicated to implement at a time when the ‘climate emergency’
calls for more straightforward and realisable schemes like energy
efficiency and decentralised energy solutions instead.
1 This Month
1 June Webinar – The High Cost of Nuclear Power – Register
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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