Slovakia delays nuclear plant expansion under pressure from Austria, DW, 8 May 19, Amid complaints from Austria, Slovakia has decided to push back the long-awaited opening of two new nuclear reactors. Activists claim to have evidence that the reactors’ safety structures are damaged and could fail……..
The plant is located some 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Austria’s border. For decades, Austria’s politicians and activists have been trying to cancel the plans to add two more nuclear reactors to the facility, citing safety concerns. In April this year, environmental watchdog Global 2000 said construction had major flaws. They also cited photos and testimonies which allegedly showed the reactors’ protective containment structure was damaged and could fail in case of an earthquake or a serious accident.
Another reason for concern is that the reactors were originally built to Soviet-style designs, and then modified with Western elements. The two new reactors were originally projected to start work in 2012 and 2013, but the project was repeatedly delayed……..
Austria has been urging the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEO) to send its experts to inspect the site. However, this will only happen if Slovakia invites the inspectors to the Mochovce plant.
Following the announcement on Monday, Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said it was a “step in the right direction.”
Irish Times 6th May 2019 In the quagmire of Brexit there is little to commend the UK government’s approach. This is in stark contrast with its clarity and leadership on climate change. It is the first national parliament to declare an “environmental and climate emergency”.
It has not only committed to “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the climate change committee in Westminster has set out how this can be achieved. Net zero means, in effect, eliminating its carbon footprint in a dramatically transformed economy built on sustainability with a near absence of fossil fuels.
Ireland has some way to go before it could commit to such a course, but a Government report due in the coming weeks must show a similar level of intent, and include a roadmap to reduce the shocking levels of Irish emissions. Declaring an emergency may seem like tokenism but it injects urgency into consideration of the best course to take. Wicklow County
Council was the first Irish local authority to declare a “biodiversity and climate change emergency”.
The Government should endorse a similar vote in our national parliament and introduce binding legislation on revised targets.
Irish Times 6th May 2019 In the quagmire of Brexit there is little to commend the UK government’s approach. This is in stark contrast with its clarity and leadership on climate change. It is the first national parliament to declare an “environmental and climate emergency”.
It has not only committed to “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the climate change committee in Westminster has set out how this can be achieved. Net zero means, in effect, eliminating its carbon footprint in a dramatically transformed economy built on sustainability with a near absence of fossil fuels.
Ireland has some way to go before it could commit to such a course, but a Government report due in the coming weeks must show a similar level of intent, and include a roadmap to reduce the shocking levels of Irish emissions. Declaring an emergency may seem like tokenism but it injects urgency into consideration of the best course to take. Wicklow County
Council was the first Irish local authority to declare a “biodiversity and climate change emergency”.
The Government should endorse a similar vote in our national parliament and introduce binding legislation on
revised targets.
Chernobyl Isn’t a Story About an Accident—It’s a Story About Endless Impact
Four decades later, the Russian nuclear disaster—now the subject of an HBO miniseries—is still reverberating, The Ringer, By Michael Baumann May 6, 2019 “……….. an immense tradition of fiction about nuclear war or radiological mayhem. But somewhat paradoxically, a nuclear disaster, in and of itself, doesn’t make for particularly interesting television or film. You can’t fight radiation the way you can fire, or hide from it like you can a tornado. In the trailer for HBO’s Chernobyl miniseries, which premieres Monday night, Jared Harris’s Valery Legasov compares a radioactive atom to a bullet. Indeed, radiation kills instantly, though the process of dying from radiation poisoning can take anywhere from days to decades. By the time a nuclear accident happens, there’s nothing to do but limit the damage it causes.
A nuclear meltdown is not only more alien and irresistible than a natural disaster, it’s entirely anthropogenic. Fires, storms, and earthquakes occurred before industrialized society and will continue to occur after it ends. They can be written off on some level as acts of God, even when they’re caused, intensified, or exacerbated by human carelessness or malfeasance. Not so with a nuclear meltdown; nothing like it exists in nature. It doesn’t matter that nuclear power plants have a better safety record than fossil fuel power plants for the same reason it doesn’t matter that air travel is safer than driving: The deaths in those accidents are caused by something we all know humans weren’t designed to do. ………
even as the international cleanup effort enters its fourth decade, and even after the Ukrainian government opened the 30-kilometer quarantine zone to tourists, the legacy of the initial cover-up continues. Legasov, the chemist who led the Chernobyl investigation, took his own life on the second anniversary of the accident, leaving behind more questions than answers. In 1999, Belarusian physician Yury Bandazhevsky was sentenced to eight years in prison, supposedly for taking bribes from parents of prospective students—he says the Belarusian government was trying to stop and discredit his research into the health effects of the Chernobyl disaster. …….. https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/5/6/18530653/chernobyl-hbo-miniseries-nuclear-accident
Kids who lived near the Chernobyl site have increased instances of thyroid cancer, and adults who helped with the reactor cleanup are more at risk of developing leukemia.
Press and Journal 4th May 2019 Highland Green MSP John Finnie has expressed concern after three quartersof a ton of highly enriched uranium was transported from Dounreay in
Caithness to America. He said: “The appropriate place for dangerous
material is secure storage and supervision by highly trained staff where it
was created, not transportation.
“Whilst pleased that this risky has been completed without incident, that we know of. “But before the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic pat themselves on the back, they need to
reflect on the dangers they put communities in. “As was evidenced when a
ship which was transporting nuclear material in the Moray Firth went on
fire. As with oil and gas reserves, the message regarding nuclear waste has
to be ‘keep it in the ground’.”
Trump, Putin discuss nuclear weapons and Venezuela in phone call, Aljazeera, 3 May 19,
US President Donald Trump tweets he ‘had a long and very good’ phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke for more than an hour on Friday, discussing the possibility of a new nuclear accord, North Korean denuclearisation, Ukraine and the political situation in Venezuela, the White House said.
“Had a long and very good conversation with President Putin of Russia,” Trump said in a post on Twitter, noting they had discussed trade, Venezuela, Ukraine, North Korea, nuclear arms and Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential campaign.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters that the call was an “overall positive conversation”…….
Putin told Trump that any external interference in Venezuela’s internal business undermines the prospects of a political end to the crisis, the Kremlin said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by phone on Wednesday that further “aggressive steps” in Venezuela would be fraught with the gravest consequences, the Russian ministry said…….
New START treaty
Sanders told reporters Trump and Putin talked about the possibility of a new multilateral nuclear accord between the US, Russia and China, or an extension of the current US-Russia strategic nuclear treaty.
She did not say which arms control agreement Trump and Putin discussed, but the Russian state news agency Tass reported that they talked about the New START treaty, the last major arms-control treaty remaining between the US and Russia.
The 2011 New START treaty expires in February 2021 but can be extended for five years if both sides agree. Without the agreement, it could be harder to gauge each other’s intentions, arms control advocates say.
The New START treaty required the US and Russia to cut their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 1,550, the lowest level in decades, and limit delivery systems – land- and submarine-based missiles and nuclear-capable bombers.
It also includes extensive transparency measures requiring each side to allow the other to carry out 10 inspections of strategic nuclear bases each year; give 48 hours notice before new missiles covered by the treaty leave their factories; and provide notifications before ballistic missile launches.
Trump has called the New START treaty a “bad deal” and “one-sided”.
“They discussed a nuclear agreement, both new and extended, and the possibility of having conversations with China on that as well,” Sanders said.
The Kremlin said the two sides confirmed they intended to “activate dialogue in various spheres, including strategic security”.
Trump earlier pulled the plug on a decades-old nuclear arms treaty with Russia. Trump accused Moscow of violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with “impunity” by deploying missiles banned by the pact. Moscow denies violating it and has accused Washington of being in non-compliance……
North Korea
Trump also raised with Putin the issue of getting North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes. Trump has met twice with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but Kim has yet to agree to a disarmament deal.
Sanders said Trump mentioned several times “the need and importance of Russia stepping up and continuing to put pressure on North Korea to denuclearize.” The Kremlin said both leaders highlighted the need to pursue denuclearisation of the region.
Why is Westminster Abbey about to hold a bizarre thanksgiving for Britain’s nuclear weapons? https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/nuclear-weapons-westminster-abbey-cnd-bruce-kent-church-a8893106.html– 1 May 19
We are told that nuclear weapons and their deterrent effect have kept the peace. What peace? Bruce Kent@CNDuk There is to be a ceremony at Westminster Abbey on 3 May in celebration of 50 years of submarine nuclear weaponry. Two hundred Anglican clerics have publicly condemned the service – in their view it should not go ahead because it is at odds with church policy to “work tirelessly” for a world free of nuclear weapons.
I think they’re right and the Abbey has got this very wrong. These submarines are nuclear weapon submarines. Their crews, trained to obey orders, are ready to fire missiles whose warheads will bring destruction to faraway places and people far beyond the scale of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
My opposition to potential war crimes of this magnitude will motivate me to join a vigil outside the Abbey. I do not blame the sailors. The history of nuclear weaponry has been from the beginning one of deceit.
We were, and are, told that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the only way to end the Second World War. Not true. The Japanese leadership, ready to surrender, were looking for one guarantee – that the position of the Emperor would not be challenged in any surrender settlement and that he would not be prosecuted. That was just what was given by General MacArthur but only after the bombs were dropped. Why were they dropped then? As a warning to the Soviets and to see if they “worked”? Probably.
We are never told about the few scientists, like Professor Joseph Rotblat, then in Los Alamos, who refused to continue to work on the bomb once he knew how it was to be used. He was sent back to Britain in 1944 in disgrace.
Not many church voices in this country were raised in opposition at the use of these bombs. One was that of Cuthbert Thickness, the Dean of St Albans Abbey. When he was supposed to have rung the bells in thanksgiving, he said in August 1945 “I cannot honestly give thanks to God for an event brought about by the wrong use of force, by an act of wholesale indiscriminate massacre, different in kind over all other acts of open warfare hitherto, however brutal and hideous.”
There were however strong military voices in opposition, to which little attention has been paid. General Eisenhower for instance had this to say: “Japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender with minimum loss of face. It was not necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
We are told now that nuclear weapons and deterrence have kept the peace. What peace?
The list of post-1945 wars runs to several pages and the global military budget is nearly $2tn. If this claim means we have not had a nuclear war then I think we should listen to Robert McNamara, erstwhile US secretary of defense, who said, late in life, that we were saved not by our good judgement but by “good luck”. He had in mind the many accidents and misunderstandings which have dogged our nuclear weapon world.
In 1968 we signed up to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and promised in “good faith” to work for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
Yet almost 50 years later we are now spending over £200bn on yet another nuclear weapons system (also entirely dependent on a regular loan of US missiles) to replace Trident.
Surely it is time to start spending our billions not on weapons of mass murder but on our NHS, pensions, welfare and real peace-making initiatives, here and abroad.
There is now a UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons just waiting for more signatory states to give it the force of law. Britain should sign it and lead the world towards a nuclear-free future.
In these dangerous times, when the threat of nuclear war is growing rather than receding, a thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey for the so-called nuclear “deterrent” is the last thing we need.
UK Defence Journal 30th April 2019 , A new report has warned that the UK’s nuclear weapons programme could cost £172bn between now and 2070, and suggests the government should
review the UK’s possession of nuclear weapons. The report, published
today by the Nuclear Information Service (NIS), states that the UK must
make a choice in the near future: increase the overall defence budget,
reduce spending on conventional weapons in order to fund nuclear weapons,
or reducing spending on/scrapping the nuclear weapons programme. NIS also
argues that the UK should work to “achieving a nuclear free world”, and
must “re-examine” the case for nuclear disarmament.
Cold War exhibition tries to airbrush Britain’s dark history of nuclear testing, The Conversation, Sue Rabbitt Roff, Researcher, Social History/Tutor in Medical Education, University of Dundee, May 2, 2019 A new exhibition about the Cold War recently opened at the UK National Archives at Kew in south-west London. Protect and Survive: Britain’s Cold War Revealed seeks to tell the story of how the years of high nuclear tensions affected the UK, from spy paranoia to civil defence posters to communications at the heart of government. …..
an extremely important facet of Britain’s Cold War has been almost entirely airbrushed from the story. There is barely anything in the exhibition about the 45 atomic and nuclear weapons detonations carried out by the British: 12 in Australia from 1952-57, nine in the central Pacific in 1957-58, and a further 24 alongside the Americans in the Nevada desert until as recently as 1991. The effects on the health of all this testing on indigenous people and some 22,000 British servicemen who were sent as observers is still being researched.
The Cold War exhibition includes three photos showing the atmospheric effect of the 1952 detonation off the Montebello Islands off north-western Australia. There is one additional picture of the hydrogen bomb that was exploded near Christmas Island in May 1957, the first of the central Pacific series, which persuaded the US to resume nuclear collaboration with the UK. And that’s about it. Worse, the exhibition includes a map of the global impact of the nuclear era in which the test locations in Australia are obscured by lettering – not least Maralinga, an important Aboriginal area in which seven detonations took place.
Files under review
My understanding is that decisions about the content of the exhibition were finalised late last year. Interestingly, this was around the same time as the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the public body with ultimate responsibility for the UK’s nuclear legacy withdrew recordsfrom the National Archives relating to 1950s nuclear weapons tests that had been declassified decades ago, pending a “security review” by the Ministry of Defence and Atomic Weapons Establishment. Specialists in this field have long complained about the many files concerning British testing that have remained secret, which makes the withdrawal of declassified files all the more unsettling………
Remembrance, The omissions at the London Cold War exhibition are a reminder about the UK’s low-key approach to its weapons testing history. The story doesn’t only need to be properly told at this exhibition, it needs a permanent public space. Yet no existing museum dedicated to Britain’s wars is interested in giving it house room – not even the records and memorabilia of all the military personnel sent to observe the tests. A number of years ago I was quietly told while walking down a corridor in one major institution not to offer it my own records because “they will end up in the skip”.
His comments, and those out of the foreign ministry, were relatively upbeat. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, was a lot less hopeful, saying that he doesn’t think Trump’s proposal was at all serious, and that Russia and China had already talked on the matter.
There is hope on all three sides for a deal that could cut the increasingly exorbitant cost of nuclear arms modernization, while ensuring that all sides retain a deterrent force that makes nuclear exchanges unlikely. At the same time, Trump has long talks of arms races as though he was eager for them, so his sudden suggestion of talks is being viewed with more than a little suspicion.Jason DitzApril 28, 2019
Trump’s talk of three-way nuclear deals emerged last week, and Ushakov says Russia will definitely take part, if-talks ever emerge. At the same time, he said that existing nuclear deals should be more closely respected.
His comments, and those out of the foreign ministry, were relatively upbeat. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, was a lot less hopeful, saying that he doesn’t think Trump’s proposal was at all serious, and that Russia and China had already talked on the matter.
There is hope on all three sides for a deal that could cut the increasingly exorbitant cost of nuclear arms modernization, while ensuring that all sides retain a deterrent force that makes nuclear exchanges unlikely. At the same time, Trump has long talks of arms races as though he was eager for them, so his sudden suggestion of talks is being viewed with more than a little suspicion.
It continues to amaze me, the way that Australia props up its uneconomic research nuclear reactor. Why not move fully to particle accelerators, producing medical isotopes with no nuclear waste?
The JEEP II research reactor at Kjeller near Oslo has been shut for scheduled maintenance since last December and corrosion was found on several important safety components during an inspection.
The institute said it would be too costly to repair the reactor.
“The board of directors has decided, based on an overall assessment, that the reactor will not be restarted. IFE will consequently initiate work to prepare the decommissioning of the reactor,” the institute said in a statement.
Nuclear fuel and heavy water have been already removed, meaning that the reactor poses no danger to the environment, it added.
The rector, some 20 kilometres away from Oslo, has been used by researchers in physics, materials, cancer medicine, renewable energy and nuclear disarmament since starting operations in 1967, the IFE said.
In June 2018, Norway’s research reactor in Halden was shut down after 60 years of operation.
“Both Norwegian nuclear reactors are now closed and Norway will enter into a new era with decommissioning of the national nuclear programme which was started in 1948,” the IFE said.
Norway has no commercial nuclear reactors, and generates more than 90 percent of its electricity at hydropower plants. (Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis. Editing by Jane Merriman)
Cost of MoD nuclear projects is rocketing The Times, 29 Apr 19, The government’s defence nuclear enterprise will cost 26 per cent more than previously forecast over the next three years, a report says.
The Ministry of Defence is facing a funding gap of up to £14 billion in its ten-year equipment plan. In the report, out tomorrow, the Nuclear Information Service (NIS), a campaign organisation that monitors the nuclear defence industry and promotes transparency, also raises concerns that five upgrade projects within the programme are experiencing financial difficulties. Four upgrade projects have already been scrapped, it says.
The three big upgrade projects for which information is released are rated either “amber/red” or “red”, meaning that delivery of the projects is either under threat or appears impossible.
Times 29th April 2019, Political leaders in Britain are not strong enough to tackle the climate
change crisis, according to one of the country’s leading authorities on the
subject. Lord Stern of Brentford, author of the Stern Review on the cost of
tackling global warming, said that politicians were holding the country
back from making progress on the issue.
“Has the political leadership been
strong enough? No, I don’t think so,” he said. He added that protests by
campaigners such as Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist from
Sweden, and Extinction Rebellion, a group that caused disruption in the
capital last week, would help to build awareness and spur politicians into
action.
“Leadership is absolutely fundamental, but that doesn’t come out of
nowhere, it comes as these pressures build,” he said. Lord Stern, a former
chief economist at the Treasury and the World Bank, is among Britain’s most
respected thinkers on the environmental crisis. In 2006 he published The
Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, which described global
warming as the “greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen”.
He told The Times that policymakers needed to act to avert a catastrophic rise
in global temperatures. If they waited an additional ten to fifteen years
before taking radical steps to reduce carbon emissions, it would be too
late, he said.
By Thomas Gaulkin, April 25, 2019 Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old student whose school strikes have inspired a global youth movement on climate change, has emerged as a chief orator of her generation, enthralling her Instagram peers and world political leaders alike while taking on new and more specific opponents.
That includes the members of Parliament she met with this week in London. Her speech Tuesday to a gathering of British MPs was remarkable, not only for the incongruity of a young Swedish woman giving the UK’s top politicians what for, but also for her focused targeting of the nation’s energy policies. Longer than her usual talks—at some 1,750 words it’s more than double the length of speeches she presented at Davos and the UN climate conference in the fall—the speech eschewed the finely tuned repertoire of scolding that propelled her into newscasts worldwide with persuasive and provocative headline-fodder like “I want you to panic,” “the house is on fire,” “I don’t want your hope,” and so on.
Instead, for her House of Commons speech, as with her address to the EU parliament a week earlier, Thunberg tailored her words to the climate-related failures of the adults in the room. “The UK is … very special,” she told the British MPs. “Not only for its mind-blowing historical carbon debt, but also for its current, very creative carbon accounting.” She then detailed how the UK’s carbon emissions reductions have fallen short (by neglecting emissions from aviation and shipping in estimates, for example). Lambasting the nation’s continued support for fossil fuels, Thunberg does not mince words: “This ongoing irresponsible behavior will no doubt be remembered in history as one of the greatest failures of humankind.”
Thunberg has adjusted her rhetoric to respond to criticism from prominent figures like Theresa May (who was a no-show at a meeting between Thunberg and other UK party leaders), who think the school strikes “waste lesson time.” As for those winning metaphors like the “house on fire,” Thunberg seems confident moving beyond them (“I have said those words before,” she told the EU) to newly relevant and bigger metaphors: “Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.”
It’s worth reading Thunberg’s entire speech, to appreciate both her crisp eloquence on the world’s most complex environmental problem and her satisfying rejection of grown-ups who praise her actions without committing to any themselves.
“Did you hear what I just said?” she asked a few times. “Is my English OK? Is the microphone on? Because I’m beginning to wonder.”
nuclear-news 