France to close 14 nuclear reactors by 2035 an all coal-fired power plants by 2022, The Local 28 Nov 18President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday that France would shut down 14 of the country’s 58 nuclear reactors currently in operation by 2035, of which between four and six will be closed by 2030.
The total includes the previously announced shutdown of France’s two oldest reactors in Fessenheim, eastern France, which Macron said was now set for summer 2020.
He also announced that France would close its remaining four coal-fired power plants by 2022 as part of the country’s anti-pollution efforts……
Macron said France would aim to triple its wind power electricity output by 2030, and increase solar energy output fivefold in that period.
He added that he would ask French electricity giant EDF to study the feasibility of more next-generation EPR nuclear reactors, but will wait until
2021 before deciding whether to proceed with construction.
Gareth Porter 28 Nov 18 The accidental revelation in mid-November that U.S. federal prosecutors had secretly filed charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange underlines the determination of the Trump administration to end Assange’s asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been staying since 2012.
Behind the revelation of those secret charges for supposedly threatening U.S. national security is a murky story of a political ploy by the Ecuadorian and British governments to create a phony rationale for ousting Assange from the embassy. The two regimes agreed to base their plan on the claim that Assange was conspiring to flee to Russia. Continue reading →
Sellafield: Europe’s most radioactively contaminated site
Inside Sellafield’s death zone with the nuclear clean-up robots,By Theo Leggett, Business correspondent, BBC News, 27 November 2018
The Thorp nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield, Cumbria, has recycled its final batch of reactor fuel. But it leaves behind a hugely toxic legacy for future generations to deal with. So how will it be made safe?
Thorp still looks almost new; a giant structure of cavernous halls, deep blue-tinged cooling ponds and giant lifting cranes, imposing in fresh yellow paint.
But now the complex process of decontaminating and dismantling begins.
It is a dangerous job that will take decades to complete and require a great deal of engineering ingenuity and state-of-the-art technology – some of which hasn’t even been invented yet.
This is why.
Five sieverts of radiation is considered a lethal dose for humans. Inside the Head End Shear Cave, where nuclear fuel rods were extracted from their casings and cut into pieces before being dissolved in heated nitric acid, the radiation level is 280 sieverts per hour.
We can only peer through leaded glass more than a metre thick at the inside of the steel-lined cell, which gleams under eerie, yellow-tinged lighting.
This is a place only robots can go.
They will begin the first stage of decommissioning – the post-operative clean-out – removing machinery and debris……….. Cleaning up other parts of the plant will also need robots and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).
Some will need to be developed from scratch, while others can be adapted from systems already used in other industries, such as oil and gas, car manufacturing and even the space sector……..
The site in Cumbria contains a number of other redundant facilities, some dating back to the 1950s and many of them heavily contaminated, which are currently being decommissioned………
Remote submarines have explored and begun cleaning up old storage ponds. Other remote machines are being used to take cameras deep inside decaying bunkers, filled with radioactive debris.
The job of developing machines like these is shared with a large network of specialist companies, many of them based in Cumbria itself. They form part of a growing decommissioning industry within the UK, as the country grapples with the legacy of its first era of nuclear power.
The NDA believes that these companies can use what they learn at Sellafield, and other plants, to attract further business from overseas……..https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46301596
Russia says it’s planning for the US to deploy nuclear weapons to Europe after ban treaty abandoned, Business Insider, Andrew Osborn and Tom Balmforth, Reuters, 26 Nov 18
Russia and the United States have both accused each other of violating a Cold-war era arms treaty that prohibits short- and intermediate-range nuclear weapons within Europe.
President Donald Trump has threatened to quit the treaty, pointing to Russian violations, but National Security Advisor John Bolton has said the US is a long way from discussing new nuclear weapons deployments to Europe.
Russia said on Monday that despite US promises, it is still planning for the US to deploy new nuclear missiles.
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Monday it was planning for a U.S. deployment of new nuclear missiles in Europe following Washington’s planned withdrawal from a landmark Cold war-era arms control treaty despite the United States denying it has such plans.
Russia is keen to dissuade U.S. President Donald Trump from carrying out a threat for Washington to quit the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty which eliminated both countries’ land-based short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe.
Times 25th Nov 2018, The Met Office warns tomorrow that climate change and rising sea levels will threaten more than 1.5m homes, turn farmland into marsh and wash away beaches by the end of the century. Its UK Climate Projections report
forecasts that the seas around Britain are likely to increase by 3-4ft by 2100, inundating low-lying land, putting 1.7m homes at risk and destroying many holiday beaches.
Some coastal towns may have to be abandoned because the huge cost of sea defences will make them “unviable”. Many stretches of prime, low-lying farmland could also be lost, with the lowest, such as Romney Marsh in Kent, the Somerset Levels and parts of Essex facing near-permanent inundation.
In some areas the impacts could reach far inland. Much of the farmland between King’s Lynn in Norfolk and Cambridge,
for example, would lie below the new sea level and so be at risk of turning to marsh. Across the UK, such a rise would leave 100,000 coastal properties at risk from wave erosion, with another 100,000 sited on seaside cliffs at risk from landslips. Up to 1.7m homes would face flooding, according to a recent report from the Committee on Climate Change.
The Met Officeprojections are the culmination of a three-year project commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. The aim is to help policymakers prepare transport, power and other infrastructure for what is
likely to be the fastest change in climate humanity has experienced. Those changes are driven by greenhouse gas emissions, currently equivalent to 50bn tons of CO2 a year. About 1bn tons come from the UK, when imports and
aviation are included. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f90ee99a-f025-11e8-9fcf-225198b37f0e
Russia rewrites nuclear rule book to fire first, The Times, 23 Nov 18 President Putin would have the power to launch nuclear first strikes under plans approved by the Russian parliament.
Senators in the Federation Council, the upper house, have recommended tearing up the military doctrine that forbids initial use of weapons of mass destruction. It comes after Mr Putin said that Moscow would retaliate if the United States withdrew from a landmark Cold War missile treaty.
Russia
The revision would allow the president to order nuclear strikes in response to enemy use of conventional weapons, a significant departure from the military doctrine that prohibits first use unless Russia is threatened by weapons of mass destruction or if its “very existence is in jeopardy” ……. (subscribers only) https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russia-rewrites-nuclear-rule-book-to-fire-first-r9gg2mpqm
There are strong parallels between THORP and the proposed £20bn Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant. Powerful arguments were put forward against the construction of both plants, but the Government and the Nuclear Industry continued to stubbornly pursue these massively expensive and dangerous projects.
NuClear News, December 2018, The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) says while the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and Sellafield Limited have made progress with reducing delays and expected cost overruns on 14 major projects at Sellafield, with a combined lifetime cost estimate of £6 billion, there is still a long way to go.
Most major projects at Sellafield are still significantly delayed, with expected combined cost overruns of £913 million. The NDA has not systematically reviewed why these projects keep running into difficulties, or analysed properly the constraints it says prevent them from making faster progress.
Until this work is completed, the Committee will remain sceptical about the long-term strategy to decommission Sellafield. And despite this Committee’s recommendation nearly five years ago, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has still not decided what to do with the plutonium stockpile currently stored at Sellafield.
Given the scale and unique challenges at Sellafield, the NDA must have a firm grip of the work that takes place on the site. This was not the case with the NDA’s recently failed contract to decommission its Magnox sites.
PAC Deputy Chair, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP said:
“The Government’s oversight of the NDA’s performance could and should be much better, particularly on projects at Sellafield that cost a considerable amount of public money. BEIS needs to seriously get a grip on its oversight of nuclear decommissioning in this country.”
The Committee’s findings make yet more dreary reading for the UK taxpayer says Cumbrians
Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (CORE). The costs described as ‘a misuse of public funds’
by a spokesman for the report’s authors the Government’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
The PAC report pulls few punches in its criticism of the way the NDA is managing many of the
major projects needed to clean up Sellafield.
The site currently receives some £2bn of public money every year and, over the next 100+ years
of decommissioning is expected to cost a total of £91bn. In a slight but revealing departure from
the pattern of previous reports, PAC raises the spectre of the UK’s plutonium stockpile (40% of
the world’s global stock) and the latest thinking by Government on its long-term plutonium
management options. CORE says an update on its plutonium plans is currently being finalised
by the NDA and could be published soon.
The PAC report reveals the following:
Major projects are expected to cost over £900 million more than originally budgeted and be subjected to delays of over 13 years.
The NDA has cancelled three projects since 2012 after spending £586 million of taxpayers’ money on them.
Two of the above projects – the silo direct encapsulation project and the box transfer facility were cancelled after the NDA projected a combined cost increase of £2.1 billion and a combined delay of nine years
. The NDA’s programme to deal with the plutonium stockpile in the near term is late and its costs are increasing.
The concerning discovery last year (NAO report 20.6.18) that some plutonium canisters have been decaying faster than expected is made worse by the fact that the NDA’s project to repackage these canisters is at least two years late and expected to cost over £1.5 billion, £1 billion more than it first expected
. The series of contingency arrangements to manage these decaying canisters are shortterm fixes for a long-term problem and BEIS has yet to set out clearly what its strategy is and the associated costs to the taxpayer.
BEIS has still not decided between the two plutonium management options available – its long-term storage prior to final disposal as waste in a geological disposal facility (GDF) that has yet to be located or constructed, or its reuse as fuel in new nuclear power stations – but has told the PAC Committee that ‘it is not comfortable with any of the potential options for managing plutonium other than disposing it in the GDF’ (2)
Meanwhile the controversial Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) at Sellafield has started work on processing its final batch of waste fuel after operating for only 24 years. (3) THORP opened in 1994 to reprocess spent fuel from the UK’s newer reactors – like Hinkley Point B – and overseas customers. Reprocessing is a chemical process which separates out plutonium and unused uranium from spent nuclear fuel.
There are strong parallels between THORP and the proposed £20bn Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant. Powerful arguments were put forward against the construction of both plants, but the Government and the Nuclear Industry continued to stubbornly pursue these massively expensive and dangerous projects. This Stop Hinkley Campaign briefing asks whether there are any lessons we can learn from the THORP experience to help us to evaluate the merits of continuing to build Hinkley Point C.
Currently, the ground-works for Hinkley Point C aren’t even finished so, in theory, it should be straightforward not to go ahead with the project, if it looks like full construction and operation would be a mistake. In fact not going ahead with the plant could save electricity consumers between £27bn and £50bn over the 35 years that the plant would have operated. (4)
The construction of THORP was very controversial and was the subject of a Public Inquiry in 1977, which ran for one hundred days. It was argued that the Inquiry would be a way of rationally weighing up all the evidence in order to come up with the correct decision on whether or not to give the plant the go-ahead. However, Professor Brian Wynne has argued that the Inquiry was in fact a charade, meant only to give the impression of rational decision making. (5)
At the Inquiry it was argued that THORP would be needed to supply plutonium for a new type of reactor – the Fast Breeder Reactor. Justice Parker, the Inquiry Inspector, concluded that THORP should go ahead and the Government agreed. It was built in the 1980s and switched on in the 1990s. Within a week of THORP starting up, the prototype Fast Reactor at Dounreay in the north of Scotland was shut down – ending the whole UK Fast Breeder programme. (6)
By 1992 the original rationale for THORP had all but disappeared before it even opened so the Government decided to commission the consulting firm Touche Ross to examine the financial implications of THORP’s operation or abandonment. It concluded that the economic benefit of operating THORP versus not operating it were £1.81bn for BNFL and £950m for the UK (7). In 1994, after a long and agonised debate, the Government decided to allow the plant to operate and the first waste spent fuel was ‘sheared’ – the outer cladding taken off – as the first step in the reprocessing process, in March of that year (8).
Another raison dêtre for THORP was quickly found, with construction work of the Sellafield MOX Plant beginning a few weeks later in April 1994. This was meant to produce plutonium fuel for ordinary reactors rather than Fast Breeders. The Sellafield MOX Plant was expected to generate £400m; instead it cost £2.2 Billion.
THORP was originally expected to reprocess 7,000 tonnes of spent fuel in its first ten years of operation. By the time it closes it will probably have reprocessed around 9,300 tonnes of spent fuel. If the plant had been working to its design capacity it should have completed 9,300 tonnes ten years ago in 2008 (9). THORP’s throughput was never reliable, nor to specification
The cost of building THORP steadily rose from £300m at the time of the public inquiry in 1977 to £1.8bn on completion in 1992. With the additional cost of associated facilities this figure rose to £2.8bn. The operator at the time – British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) received advance payments from its customers of £1.6bn which largely covered the construction costs. The net result, according to BNFL was that over the first ten years the income would not only cover all building operating and future decommissioning costs, but would produce a profit of £500m. One economic analysis in 1993 pointed out that at a projected profit of only £50m per year, the economics of the project looked extremely vulnerable to unforeseen events, and British electricity consumers would be paying £1.7bn more than necessary to have British spent fuel reprocessed at THORP (10). This analysis turned out to be prophetic – there have certainly been plenty of unforeseen events since 1994. With THORP operating around a decade behind schedule, any notional profit originally expected must have long since been completely wiped out.
A report for the Government by management consultants Arthur D Little predicted in 2001 that the Sellafield MOX Plant would earn the UK more than £200m in foreign currency by exporting MOX fuel to Japan and several other countries. After the plant opened it was plagued by production problems due to its faulty design and layout. Instead of producing 120 tonnes of MOX a year, it managed less than 14 tonnes in eight years. The plant was closed in August 2011. (11) The plant is thought to have cost British taxpayers about £2.2bn in capital, operating and decommissioning costs since it was built. An internal report concluded that the facility was “not fit for purpose” and its performance over a decade was “very poor”. (12)
The economics of THORP and subsequently the Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) depended on the constructors and operators being able to build and operate the facilities according to the specification. But nuclear facilities being built in the west have suffered from delays and almost always tended to have large cost overruns. Recent ones have ALL suffered horrendous cost overruns – in the USA (4), France (1) and Finland (1). Yet otherwise sensible, financial analysts have, in the past produced reports to justify building facilities at Sellafield and Hinkley which seem to ignore this fact and assume construction and operation will proceed precisely on target.
The prospects of avoiding a Sellafield-scale financial disaster with Hinkley Point C do not look good. As Emeritus Professor Steve Thomas has pointed out: “Hinkley Point C would use a technology unproven in operation – the EPR – which has run into appalling problems of cost & time overruns in the 3 projects using it. It would be supplied by Areva NP, which is in financial collapse and might not be saveable and has been found to be falsifying quality control records for safety critical items of equipment for up to 50 years – a bizarre situation.”
EDF’s EDF seeks to charge customers upfront for UK nuclear plants, Ft.com , 23 Nov 18, Financing scheme modelled on London’s ‘super sewer’ aims to cut cost of power from reactorsJonathan Ford in London NOVEMBER 22, 2018 EDF is pushing a plan to finance nuclear investment in Britain that it claims would cut the cost of power from new reactors to levels competitive with gas and renewable energy. The French state-backed power utility wants to use a technique commonly used in utilities such as water, airports and power distribution. This allows companies to charge customers upfront for new infrastructure. It is being used in the £4.2bn project to build a “super sewer” under London’s river Thames. But the mechanism has never been tried for a project as technically complicated and lengthy as a nuclear power station, which can take a decade to build. This and other challenges mean any gains are not assured.
With capital-intensive, long-life assets such as sewers and power transmission networks, financing represents a substantial chunk of the overall cost that needs to be recovered ………
Why nuclear revival is struggling to take hold EDF’s proposal comes at a time when Britain’s much touted nuclear renaissance is in danger of shorting out. The first deal — which will see the French group and its Chinese partners build a £20bn station at Hinkley Point in Somerset — was struck in 2016 at a guaranteed strike price of £92.50 per megawatt hour (MWh) in 2012 prices, indexed for 35 years and worth about £105 in current terms. Heavily criticised for being excessive, it was at least similar in headline terms to the prices required for renewables, nuclear’s main zero carbon competitor. However, renewable costs have since fallen sharply, with some deals for offshore wind farms being signed for as little as £55-60 per MWh with 15 year contracts. ……….
Observers agree that RAB financing could potentially secure substantial reductions in nuclear power costs. “While it should always be cheaper for the state to finance nuclear construction directly, this would clearly lower the prices from the Hinkley approach,” said Dieter Helm, a professor of energy policy at Oxford university
But it has prompted concerns about the equity of the structure. “What RAB financing does is transfer project risks to customers, who are least well placed to bear them,” said Martin Blaiklock, an infrastructure expert who likens the technique to “being forced to pay for a meal at a restaurant before the restaurant has even been built, let alone served any food”.
Will consumers benefit? Consumers who paid up front for five to 10 years would run the risk that if the reactor were delayed, over-budget or ultimately not commissioned, the power savings would not materialise and they might suffer a total loss. Nuclear has a poor record for delivering on time and to cost. Two projects in Europe using the same technology, at Olkiluoto in Finland and Flamanville in France, are running 10 and six years late respectively. Both are about three times over budget. EDF has yet to prove that its EPR reactor design can even generate electricity at commercial scale.
There are also legal question marks over whether the technique would be deemed an illegitimate subsidy under state-aid rules. “A nuclear power station isn’t like a sewer, a monopoly infrastructure asset,” said Peter Atherton, analyst at consultants Cornwall Energy. “It competes with other private sector generators, which means legally it could be shades of grey.” Lower costs may be necessary to get nuclear back on track, but most observers think they are not sufficient. “Ultimately it comes down to whether you strategically think as a nation you should do nuclear,” says Prof Helm. “But if you do think you need it, then clearly it’s right to seek to do it at the lowest cost.” https://www.ft.com/content/f9a96304-e980-11e8-885c-e64da4c0f981
Managing Radioactive Waste Update NuClear News December 2018 A meeting planned for December between NGOs and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s Radioactive Waste Management Ltd (NDA/RWM) has been postponed until February 2019 due to a delay in BEIS announcing the next steps in the Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) process (originally scheduled for November 2018). Brexit is most likely to blame for this delay. (1)
Writing on the GDF Watch website before the cancellation, Roy Payne said “there’s no doubting the commitment in Whitehall to try and finalise GDF siting policy before Christmas. But if you ask about timing, you get the same silent stoic smiles revealing the lack of certainty across Whitehall about getting Ministerial decisions on anything at the moment”. He says it’s likely that it will be many months after the policy is launched before we see any sign of active community participation. (2)
The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) which advises BEIS on dealing with nuclear waste, has recently published a paper in response to calls during the most recent consultation exercise to select a site for a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) based on the ‘best geology’
CoRWM says RWM, the UK’s delivery body for a GDF, has developed generic environmental safety cases (gESC) for the three rock types: hard rocks (metamorphic and igneous rocks), soft rocks (clays and mudstones) and evaporites (salt deposits). CoRWM says the recognition that three very different rock types can provide for a safe GDF highlights the difficulty associated with selecting a ‘best’ geology as each rock type have their own advantages and disadvantages. For example, from the technical assessment carried out to support CoRWM’s initial work:
“Strong indurated1 rocks can provide repository concepts at depth that could provide long pathways and isolation from human intrusion. Weak indurated rocks could provide hydrogeological isolation but be constrained by depth limitations. Evaporites could provide hydrogeological isolation and low gas permeability. Excavations of some evaporites would be difficult to maintain over long time periods.”
CoRWM concludes that geologic attributes or parameters cannot be compared across rock types, and the concept of a site which scores ‘highest’ on all parameters’ simply cannot occur. The different and various roles played by geological settings proposed for GDFs across the world highlight this issue.
CoRWM says it recommended against geological screening in 2014 because the level of knowledge of the geology of much of the UK at the depths under consideration is too rudimentary to support a ‘screening out/in’ process. This position could only be changed by introducing, country-wide, a level of geological investigation, including investigative boreholes. This would clearly be unsupportable on both economic and public acceptability grounds. (3)
Cumbria Trust believes CoRWM’s paper calls into question their independence. They are supposed to act as an independent body, but some of their recent actions suggest to us that they are too close to BEIS and failing to adequately perform their advisory function and to challenge poor decision-making. Cumbria Trust has written to CoRWM expressing its concerns. The letter says:
“We feel that you are using an over-literal interpretation in responding to stakeholder consultation replies which advocated a search for the best geology, by taking this to mean the single best site in England and Wales. While a few stakeholders may have intended that in its very narrowest sense, which is clearly incompatible with voluntarism, we believe that the majority did not. By confining your response to this narrow interpretation, you have missed the opportunity to examine a more realistic and widely-held view. It is quite possible to combine the principle of voluntarism in site selection, which we accept, with some level of geological pre-selection. Cumbria Trust advocates actively seeking volunteers from areas which have promising geology, as recommended by many experts including the Lead Inspector of the Nirex Inquiry, Chris McDonald.”
The Trust also refers to a statement made in 2013 by Professor Yardley, who subsequently became RWM’s Chief Geologist, in which he pointed out that due to the UK’s extensive programme of spent fuel reprocessing there is a significant amount of carbon-14 present in the UK inventory. This poses a particular risk to a GDF project and increases the need for an effective gas barrier to prevent radioactive methane, amongst other gases, from escaping. This is a further reason why a clay host rock may well be preferable for the UK. (4)
1 in a million CoRWM also points out that:
A Geological Disposal Facility must isolate the waste it contains from people and the environment such that the risk levels to individuals that are most susceptible is kept within 1 in 1 million (10-6) into the very distant future. This is assured by developing a Safety Case which models the behaviour of the repository system.
The Environment Agency (EA) has set a limit on the risk that may be caused by the burial of radioactive wastes of 10-6 (i.e. one in a million). (5) However, the NDA Disposability Assessment Report for waste arising from new EPR reactors states:
“…a risk of 5.3 x 10-7 per year for the lifetime arisings of a fleet of six EPR reactors each generating a lifetime total of 900 canisters is calculated” (6)
This is more than half the total risk of 10-6 allowable for a GDF for 9.6GW of new capacity. If the Government succeeds in persuading the nuclear industry to go ahead with 18GW of new capacity clearly this will exceed the risk targets set by the EA.
Two ways round this have been suggested. Firstly there could be two repositories, but although both dumps might share the same access shaft, there would be a sufficient distance between two separate groups of disposal chambers so that you have in effect two dumps giving a potential dose to two different populations.
The second excuse seems to be that if the probability of such an outcome is very low then the Environment Agency may allow a risk higher than 10-6. This kind of ‘make-it-up as you go along’ technique of risk assessment will not go down well with communities surrounding a proposed GDF http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/NuClearNewsNo113.pdf
Belene nuclear power plant will need new EU approval, Emerging Europe, November 23, 2018, Yoan Stanev
The European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy, Miguel Arias Cañete, has said that the commission’s approval for the Belene Nuclear Power Plant project – given more than a decade ago – is no longer valid. As such, Belene must be treated as a new project and must undergo a new assessment by the commission. Mr Cañete was responding to a question raised by a Bulgarian member of the European Parliament, Svetoslav Malinov, of Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria, part of the European People’s Party……..
“In practice, any new investors will have to agree to a project that is not currently approved by the European Commission and will still have to be assessed according to [now more] stringent European criteria after Fukushima,” said Mr Malinov, who added: “no investor will agree to this.”
“Belene nuclear power plant will never be built, but it still offers the opportunity to steal money from Bulgarian taxpayers. Belene is dead. Why does GERB [Bulgaria’s ruling party] refuse to bury it?” said Mr Malinov.
Will shake-up at London embassy leave Assange out in the cold?, By Claudia Rebaza and Lauren Said-Moorhouse, CNN, November 23, 2018London The Ecuadorian government has removed its ambassador to the UK, sparking speculation over Julian Assange’s future at the diplomatic mission there.
The 47-year-old founder of WikiLeaks moved into the Ecuadorian Embassy in central London in 2012 while wanted for questioning over sexual assault allegations in Sweden. Assange maintained his innocence and claimed the charges were nothing more than an attempt to extradite him to the United States.
Ambassador Carlos Abad Ortiz was forced to leave his post, according to an executive decree signed by Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno and published Wednesday. The envoy had been in charge of the diplomatic mission since 2015 and had been an influential figure regarding Assange’s future.
After the announcement, WikiLeaks said Thursday on Twitter, “All diplomats known to Assange have now been terminated to transferred away from the embassy.”…..
the decision to oust Abad has fueled speculation that Ecuador is looking to push Assange out the door.
Fidel Narvaez, the former consul at the embassy, told CNN that Abad’s removal should be seen as a bad omen for the WikiLeaks founder and his asylum…….
WikiLeaks has been a focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of any links between President Donald Trump’s associates and Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. WikiLeaks posted thousands of emails stolen from Democrats by Russian agents during the election.
The Justice Department investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks dates to at least 2010 when the site posted thousands of files stolen by the former US Army intelligence analyst now known as Chelsea Manning…….
Prague weighs replacement options for nuclear plants, Ft.com, 23 Nov 18
The Czech decision is being watched by neighbours considering investments in reactors “……..
The reactors, which are owned by CEZ, the state-controlled energy group, are due to expire in 2035. Given the long lead time for nuclear projects, government and company officials have spent the past year debating whether — and how — to finance their replacement. With another plant run by CEZ in Temelin, the Dukovany reactors accounted for about two-fifths of Czech energy needs last year, making how to deal with their expiry one of the most important, and potentially one of the most expensive, decisions facing Mr Babis’s government. Analysts estimate that building new reactors would cost at least 100bn Czech koruna (€3.8bn) each — or about a third of CEZ’s market capitalisation.
………,The deliberations in Prague mirror debates elsewhere in central Europe, where the Czech Republic is not alone in considering another bet on nuclear energy Poland has been debating whether to build a nuclear plant of its own, while Vladimir Putin, Russian president, said in September that the Russian state-owned nuclear group Rosatom would soon start construction on two new reactors in Hungary.
Given the huge costs of building new reactors, CEZ’s leadership has been reluctant to embark on such a project without state guarantees, while minority shareholders are opposed to the idea of CEZ building new nuclear plants on its own, as they fear it will hit their dividend payments. ……https://www.ft.com/content/26cced6c-c8be-11e8-86e6-19f5b7134d1c
“I can confirm that there are three scenarios on the table that we are looking at, we are making final adjustments and all will be presented next week,” French Environment Minister Francois de Rugy told France Inter radio, without specifying a date.
The so-called PPE energy plan will lay out France’s energy goals over the next 10 years with the aim of reducing the share of nuclear power in its energy mix to 50 percent from 75 percent by 2035, curb carbon emissions and boost renewables.
French news agency AFP reported on Tuesday, citing government working documents, that the government could shut down up to six nuclear reactors by 2028, including the planned closure of France’s oldest Fessenheim nuclear plant which is scheduled to stop production in 2021, according to one scenario.
It said another six reactors could close by 2035, which could set France on the path to curb nuclear generation by 50 percent.
The second intermediate scenario does not foresee any additional closures beside Fessenheim until 2028, and then 12 reactors would be shutdown between 2028 and 2035, AFP quoted the document saying.
The final option would also see no additional closures until 2028 after which, only nine reactors would be halted by 2035, which could miss the 50 percent nuclear target.
Jefferies analysts, who have a “buy” rating on the shares of state-controlled utility EDF, said in a research note that two out of the three options seem to favor EDF, which operates all of France’s 58 nuclear reactors.
Even the accelerated nuclear phase-out option appears to offer some protection, via compensation, wrote Jefferies.
Nuclear power station contest winners announced – after project is axed, Architects Journal UK, 21 NOVEMBER, 2018 BY MERLIN FULCHERReiach and Hall Architects and K2 Architects have been named winners of the RIBA’s Moorside contest to provide a visitor centre and workers accommodation for the Cumbrian nuclear power station that was cancelled earlier this month
The contest, launched by the RIBA almost three years ago, sought proposals for the 200ha site’s visitor centre and for a workers’ accommodation campus nearby.
On Monday (19 November) NuGen finally announced Reiach and Hall Architects had won the contest for the workers’ accommodation campus while K2 Architects had been chosen for the visitor centre. Neither project will go-ahead.
A shortlist was revealed in May 2016 but the announcement of winners was postponed. Last year the troubled £10 billion project was placed under review after joint-funder ENGIE withdrew and the reactor manufacturer Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy.
Earlier this month, the project’s sole remaining backer Toshiba announced it had failed to bring its preferred bidder Korea Electric Power Corporation on board and would be winding up its subsidiary NuGen, which had been tasked with delivering the ambitious scheme.
In a statement, NuGen said: ‘Though prizes for the competition itself have been awarded, NuGen had hoped to be able to announce the intention to work with winning entrants, regrettably though as NuGen is the process of being wound up, there will not be the opportunity.
‘NuGen thanks all entrants to the competitions and wishes them the best of success in their future projects.’
………. A separate competition, organised by the Landscape Institute, was also launched in January 2016 to find ‘creative and sustainable’ proposals for the facility’s surroundings but no winner has been announced…
……The two competitions together had a £20,000 prize fund, with the winning architect and landscape architect receiving £5,000 each and a chance to bid for work on the scheme.
Another Nuclear Megaproject Bites The Dust, Oil Price, By Leonard Hyman & William Tilles – Nov 19, 2018,Toshiba, the troubled Japanese electrical and electronics conglomerate and former owner of the bankrupt Westinghouse, Corp., decided last week cancel its Moorside nuclear project in the UK. If completed, this large nuclear power station would have provided about 7 percent of the UK’s electricity needs. Not that this announcement was a surprise.
Toshiba’s announcement follows word of a breakdown in negotiations with prospective buyer, Korea Electric Power (KEPCo). It appears the Koreans, like others, are rethinking their commitment to nuclear energy worldwide.
Absent the cancellation decision, Toshiba is likely to have had trouble financing a project of this magnitude especially given the stress on its finances from its troubled venture into American nuclear construction. The Moorside project in Cumbria will have cost Toshiba over £400 million and management announced it was taking a write off of £125 million. Toshiba described its decision as “economically rational.” Amen to that.
A government spokesperson commented, “All proposed nuclear projects in the UK are led by private sector developers and … this is entirely a commercial decision for Toshiba.” This is an interesting statement. The only UK nuclear construction project currently underway is owned by French and Chinese state controlled entities, financed with liberal debt guarantees provided by the UK government.
But let’s review the UK’s nuclear energy plans. There were at a minimum three large facilities planned. One for Cumbria, the Toshiba NuGen entity, is now cancelled. The Hinkley Point C units, being built by a French and Chinese consortium, are under construction and slated for commercial service in 2025-27. Lastly, Hitachi had a planned nuclear site in Wylfa.
Given the turmoil surrounding new nuclear construction, we have our doubts about the financial viability of Wylfa. This plant would cost at least 20 billion pounds ($26 billion). Press reports indicate government support would be necessary for close to two thirds of that amount. To further encourage developers, a government minister said in June that the government might directly invest 5 billion pounds into the project for a one third ownership share.
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