The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit and the Town of Amherstburg will be starting Potassium Iodide pill distribution in the primary zone near the nuclear generating station.
Residents in the zone, 16.1 km from Enrico Fermi 2 Nuclear Generating Station (Fermi 2), will begin getting the pills on May 7.
KI pills block the thyroid from absorbing radioactive iodine which may be released during a nuclear incident.
In the very unlikely event of a nuclear emergency, KI pills would help to prevent the long term development of thyroid cancer.
Residents that live within the primary zone and on Boblo Island will be receiving letters this week with details inviting them to pick up free KI pills for their home and ask any questions they may have.
The health unit says if you do not receive a letter inviting you to pick up KI pills, your home does not fall within the primary zone.
Residents living within the secondary zone will have an opportunity to receive pills for their home in the near future.
KI pills are only to be taken if instructed by the Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario. They should be stored in a safe, dry, and accessible place along with your 72-hour emergency kit.
Health unit officials say the risk has not changed at Fermi 2, however what has changed is the regulatory framework for Canadian nuclear installations.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has mandated that all residents within the primary zone of a nuclear installation have KI pills available in their homes.
While Fermi 2 is not regulated by the CNSC, health unit and town officials want the residents living within the primary zone of Fermi 2 to be as prepared as all other Canadian residents.
For more information on KI pills and KI distribution, please visit www.wechu.org/KI or call 519-258-2146 ext.
Kent Online 23rd April 2018 , Romney Marsh could become the country’s first nuclear waste site.
Folkestone & Hythe District Council (FHDC) has asked the Government for
more information on its Geological Disposal Facility (GDF). The proposal,
to build a radioactive waste site the size of 22 Wembley Stadiums up to
1,000m underground in the UK, is currently out to consultation with
councils. http://www.kentonline.co.uk/romney-marsh/news/kent-to-house-nuclear-waste-site-181715/
Kilkenny People 23rd April 2018, Kilkenny County Council’s ‘concern’ over Hinkley Point nuclear power
expansion. Local councillors last week agreed to write a ‘statement of
concern’ regarding the expansion of the nuclear power plant at Hinkley
Point in Somerset, England.
Cllr Malcolm Noonan and Tomas Breathnach raised
the matter at the monthly meeting of Kilkenny County Council. Cllr Noonan
noted that Tuesday was the cut-off for submissions, in what he described as
a ‘very limited’ consultation process.
BBC 25th April 2018 , Plans to remove every scrap of radioactive waste from a former nuclear
plant are under review, it has emerged. The former Trawsfynydd site in
Gwynedd has been undergoing decommissioning since it ended generation in
1991.
Originally, the power station was due to be left in a state of “care
and repair” by 2030 and finally cleared entirely by the 2090s. But the
review could see the remaining structures continue to be removed and
low-risk waste left on site. The details were revealed in presentations to
the Snowdonia National Park Authority by the body responsible for
cleaning-up the UK’s old nuclear plants.
At the moment, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) plans to mothball the Trawsfynydd site by
about 2029, leaving any existing radioactive material there to decay
naturally over time, before clearing everything. But the park authority was
told that a case is now being developed for continuous decommissioning and
for some low-level radioactive waste to be left there permanently.
Officials said the concrete reactor buildings were decaying structurally,
and work should get underway to remove them. But a suggestion that
low-level radioactive waste might remain on site has been met with
criticism by some in the anti-nuclear lobby.
Robat Idris, from the campaign group People Against Wylfa B, told BBC Radio Cymru: “Once again, we are
seeing the nuclear industry changing what they say about this process.
“Originally, the promise was that they would clear the entire site of
radioactive material, but now it looks like they are considering keeping
some of that material there for a very long time, if indeed they will
remove it at all. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-43898737
The strategy of the desperate is to downplay and dismiss. A major nuclear disaster is more than just an inconvenient truth for an industry that doesn’t want you to know it kills people. As a result, when a serious nuclear accident happens — arguably always preventable and therefore not strictly an accident — there is a scramble to present the event as largely insignificant.
Many myths are quickly put about, usually centered on how few people immediately died, a completely misleading statistic since nuclear power plant disasters do not usually kill people instantly. But over the long-term, their legacy is indeed both considerable and often deadly.
In the newest edition of our periodic Thunderbird newsletter, we look at the facts about the Chernobyl disaster — and touch on one welcome piece of fiction in the form of a novel.
The disparities over the death count are used to downplay and even dismiss the terrible and long-lasting after effects of Chernobyl. But focusing only on fatalities also serves to diminish the disaster’s impact. It can take years before fatal illnesses triggered by a nuclear accident take hold. This creates a challenge in calculating just who eventually died due to the accident and who suffered non-fatal consequences.
Exposure to ionizing radiation released by a nuclear power plant (and not just from accidents but every day) can cause serious non-fatal illnesses as well. These should not be discounted. Arguably, neither should post accident psychological trauma.
All the populations affected by Chernobyl have been inadequately studied and monitored — whether they lived inside the former Soviet Union or elsewhere in Europe where the radioactive plume also contaminated lands and people.
The Chernobyl liquidators are a group most often cited as they were dispatched to the stricken nuclear plant in the immediate aftermath, as well as for at least the subsequent two years, to manage and endeavor to “clean up” the disaster. They included military as well as civilian personnel such as firefighters, nuclear plant workers and other skilled professionals. More information is still emerging on their fate and that of their descendants.
It is generally accepted that there were about 800,000 liquidators but only a small portion of them were subject to medical examinations. By 1992 it was estimated that 70,000 liquidators were invalids and 13,000 had died. These estimates rose to 50,000 then to 100,000 deaths among liquidators in 2006. By 2010, Yablokov et al. estimated a death toll of 112,000 to 125,000 liquidators.
Even the Russian authorities admit findings of liquidators aging prematurely, with a higher than average number having developed various forms of cancer, leukemia, somatic and neurological problems, psychiatric illnesses and cataracts. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found a statistically significant increase in leukemia among Russian liquidators who were in service at Chernobyl in 1986 and 1987.
There are similar findings among general populations although, again, these have been hard to track. While countless numbers may have eventually died from Chernobyl-related illnesses, equal or even greater numbers likely survived and were forced to live with debilitating and chronic medical conditions as well as psychological trauma.
The widely debunked 2003-2005 Chernobyl Forum accounting is the record most often quoted, and yet it is utterly compromised. It was produced by the nuclear promoting International Atomic Energy Agency, which ignored its own data that indicated there would be 9,000 future fatal cancers in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. The IAEA instead claimed there would be no more than 4,000. Both numbers are gross underestimations.
The report focused only on the most heavily exposed areas in making its predictions. It ignored the much larger populations in the affected countries as a whole, and in the rest of the world, who have been exposed to lower but chronic levels of radiation from Chernobyl.
The later TORCH Report exposed the flaws in the Chernobyl Forum as did IPPNW in its own report. TORCH predicts at least 30,000 and maybe as many as 60,000 excess cancer deaths worldwide due to the accident. An analysis of 5,000 Russian studies, by the late Soviet scientist, Alexey Yablokov and colleagues, puts the number of premature deaths due to Chernobyl as likely to soar as high as one million people.
In other studies, elevated rates of thyroid cancer were discovered in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, particularly among children, where the preventive pill, potassium-iodide (KI), was not distributed. In Poland, where KI was distributed, incidences were extremely low.
Outside the former Soviet Union, impacts were also significant with about 40% of Europe’s land surface radiologically contaminated.
Dr. Wladimir Wertelecki, a physician and geneticist, discovered, alarmingly, that the negative health effects caused by Chernobyl did not stop with those exposed directly. His research, focused in Polissia, Ukraine, noted birth defects and other health disturbances among not only those who were adults at the time of the Chernobyl disaster, but their children who were in utero at the time and, most disturbingly, their later offspring.
Pierre Flor-Henry in his research, even found medical changes resulting from apparent psychological responses. He noted that schizophrenia and chronic fatigue syndrome among a high percentage of liquidators were accompanied by organic changes in the brain. This suggested that various neurological and psychological illnesses could be caused by exposure to radiation levels between 0.15 and 0.5 sieverts.
Nevertheless, the IAEA and the World Health Organization (WHO), given their supposedly august credentials, are cited as the bodies of record on post-Chernobyl fatalities and health impacts. But there is a fundamental reason why the WHO cannot be trusted.
On May 28, 1959, the WHO made an agreement with the IAEA that would effectively gag the agency on any nuclear issue from that day forth. The agreement gave the IAEA a veto on any actions by the WHO that relate in any way to nuclear power. The IAEA’s stated mission is to “accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world.” So clearly, there is a major conflict of interest at work here.
Not only people but animals — both wild and domestic — have been harmed by the Chernobyl disaster. This damage is likely permanent as it has been passed down through generations via DNA. The research by Dr. Timothy Mousseau finds birds around Chernobyl with low to zero sperm counts, cataracts, diminished brain size and truncated longevity. Stray dogs continue to proliferate around the Chernobyl nuclear site. Wild boars in Europe remain too radioactive to eat. Insects have mutated and micro-organisms have disappeared.
There are some bright and hopeful signs however. Much humanitarian work has gone on over the decades to bring relief to those suffering the Chernobyl after-effects. The disaster — and the subsequent one at Fukushima — changed the minds of the leaders in power at the time, Mikhail Gorbachev and Naoto Kan. These men now advocate for an end to the use of nuclear power. Several countries renounced nuclear power in the wake of these disasters or reinforced their policies to phase out nuclear and turn to renewables.
And there is even some welcome fiction about Chernobyl, in the form of a searingly beautiful and haunting first novel by Irish writer Darragh McKeon. We encourage you to read All That Is Solid Melts Into Air for a vivid account of the very real characters he portrays living through the Chernobyl ordeal.
When a deadly nuclear power plant accident spreads radiation across the world, you can’t take it back. That contamination, from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, hit neighboring Belarus the hardest. Not only those living there at the time, but children born since, have suffered the health effects of exposure to long-lasting radioactive fallout.
The long-term solution, of course, is to rid the world of nuclear power plants, ensuring that no one need suffer from their deadly poison again. But in the short-term, solutions are also needed to help those suffering today. That is where Linda Walker stepped in.
Linda started her charity Chernobyl Children’s Project UK in 1995, inspired by Chernobyl Children International, founded in 1991 in Ireland by Adi Roche. Linda quickly realized that in addition to bringing children from Chernobyl-affected areas to the UK for so-called “radiation vacations,” something more was needed. She decided that her group needed to be active on the ground as well, in particular in Belarus. She has been traveling to the country on a frequent basis ever since.
CCP(UK) began with just two local groups — in Glossopdale, Derbyshire and Littleborough, Lancashire. In the summer of 1995, the first group of children arrived for a holiday. Before that, however, money was raised to send a reconditioned and aid-laden ambulance to Belarus — the first of many to follow. By the end of the year, CCP(UK) had also sent a 40-foot trailer packed with humanitarian aid to Belarus.
By 1997, Linda’s work had already received such recognition in Belarus that she was made a member of the Order of Franciska Skarina, one of the country’s highest awards. She was one of the first foreigners to receive it and accepted it on behalf of everyone involved with the work of CCP(UK).
There was much more to come. Under Linda’s leadership, CCP(UK) has supported children’s hospices; trained orphanage staff; and routinely delivered ambulances and humanitarian aid to Belarus. CCP (UK) runs a foster care training program which has helped to get children out of the orphanages and into local families; and organizes a major program of educational visits to the UK, supported by the Department for International Development and UNICEF.
CCP UK) has worked closely with Zhuravichi Boarding Home for children with disabilities, providing them with toys, wheelchairs and mobility aids, taking their children for an annual holiday within the country and encouraging the authorities to improve the children’s education and care.
In 2000 CCP(UK) set up a home for four young adults with physical disabilities who had grown up at Zhuravichi; two years later CCP(UK) established a foster family home in Rogachev for five young children they had taken from Zhuravichi; and in 2004 Linda and her team opened the Mayflower Centre in Gomel. This is the first 24-hour respite care centre in Belarus and supports many families with severely disabled children, so they can continue to care for them at home. CCP(UK) has worked for many years with an association of such families in Rogachev and helped them, with support from the British Embassy in Minsk, to set up a Centre for their children.
The recuperative holiday program for children quickly expanded from Glossopdale and Littleborough to sites around the UK. At first the program was available only to healthy children, but Linda and her team quickly saw the benefits to two children who participated who were in remission from cancer. From then on, children were also invited for recuperative holidays from the Children in Trouble Minsk-based charity which supports the families of children with cancer.
Willing to learn at every step, Linda then recognized that some children who had been ill, but were now well enough to travel to her UK program, were too young to go abroad alone. So in 1997 a new CCP(UK) initiative was established that allowed the children’s mothers to travel with them. Linda saw that these mothers had also been through a highly stressful time as their children fought cancer, and were almost if not as much in need of a holiday as the children. The mothers dubbed this the “Dream Come True” program.
Linda and her colleague also recognized that older children are even more refreshed and rejuvenated by her recuperation vacations. She noted that when children fall ill in their early teens, by the time they are well enough to travel, there are few charities willing to invite them. So CCP(UK) stepped in to accommodate youngsters up to 20 years old as well. For the last 20 years 18 teenagers in remission from cancer have visited the UK every year.
Today, all the children CCP brings to the UK are in remission from cancer.
Linda also saw opportunity for similar respites within Belarus itself. In 1998 she arranged for 50 children from Zhuravichi Boarding Home and 50 from Garadyets Special School who had never had the chance of a holiday before, to travel across the country to a Holiday Camp at Neman, a beautiful site on the Polish border, near to Grodno.
To support this now annual effort, Linda has encouraged specialists to lend their services, sending medical students, physiotherapists, teachers, early years workers and many others who have raised their own air fares and then given two weeks of hard work.
In a March 30, 2006 article in The Guardian, marking the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, Linda reminded readers that more needs to be done to address the dreadful legacy left by the nuclear catastrophe.
“Regular visitors to Belarus cannot fail to be aware of the many health problems which, even today, seem to be more acute in the contaminated parts of the country,” she wrote. “Twenty years on, young parents are giving birth to babies with disabilities or genetic disorders, or who develop serious diseases in their early months. But as far as we know, no research is being conducted into these issues.”
That same year, Linda was awarded a well-deserved MBE.
Linda Walker has not only called out the problems of Chernobyl. She has come up with practical and meaningful solutions to at least alleviate some of the suffering. In doing so, she has drawn on-going attention to the terrible ravages of nuclear energy and the ever more urgent need to abolish it.
For more, see the Chernobyl Children’s Project UK website.
Two Long Island sisters who were exposed to radiation at Chernobyl in 1986 are urging others exposed to get checked for various types of cancer.
In 1986, Rebecca Sanders and Jennifer Fogarty were in western Germany with their father, who was in the military when Chernobyl exploded. Both were exposed to radiation.
The sisters want to get the word out that those who were exposed to radiation in 1986 should still be checked.
Sanders is now fighting stage 4 bladder cancer and Fogarty has thyroid disease.
Fogarty says that the military did not alert people who lived there at the time of the accident.
“They did not tell us anything for 10 days, and then after that it was martial law for 30 days where we had to stay inside. We could still go to school, and then after the 30 days, we were cleared to be outside and we were told we would be OK and we’re not,” says Sanders.
Fogarty says she and her sister want everyone to know that if they were in western Europe in 1986 when Chernobyl exploded, they are at very high risk of thyroid and or bladder cancer. She says that both are curable, but people need to get checked and treated.
Fogarty says there are many studies done in Germany that show a link between the Chernobyl incident and people getting sick.
Thursday marks the 32nd anniversary of Chernobyl, the world’s worst nuclear accident.
Trump, Macron call for ‘new’ nuclear deal with Iran US President Donald Trump and French counterpart Emmanuel Macron called for a “new” deal with Iran Tuesday, looking beyond divisions over a landmark nuclear accord that now hangs in the balance. SBS News 25 Apr 18 Trump pilloried a three-year old agreement designed to curb Iran’s nuclear program as “insane” and “ridiculous”, despite European pleas for him not to walk away from the accord.
Instead, Trump eyed a “grand bargain” that would also limit Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for militant groups across the Middle East.
“I think we will have a great shot at doing a much bigger, maybe, deal,” said Trump, stressing that any new accord would have to be built on “solid foundations.”………
Macron, visiting Washington on a landmark state visit, admitted after meeting Trump that he did not know whether the US president would walk away from the nuclear deal when a May 12 decision deadline comes up.
“I can say that we have had very frank discussions on that, just the two of us,” Macron told a joint press conference with Trump at his side.
Putting on a brave face, he said he wished “for now to work on a new deal with Iran” of which the nuclear accord could be one part.
Trump — true to his background in reality TV — teased his looming decision.
…… Neither Trump nor Macron indicated what Iran would get in return for concessions on its ballistic programs or activities in the Middle East.Iran, meanwhile, has warned it will ramp up enrichment activities if Trump walks away from the accord, prompting Trump to issue a blunt warning.
FT 23rd April 2018 , Nick Butler: In the rapidly changing global energy environment nothing is
sacred, no business model is beyond challenge and no company is safe. The
latest business being forced to rethink and restructure is the French state
group Electricité de France.
EDF has become a symbol of technical weakness
and French decline. But, as with so much else in France since the arrival
of an ambitious president who feels no need to defend decisions of the
past, change is becoming possible.
For all its problems the company could be reborn as a successful player in the new energy economy. But where would
that leave nuclear power? The continuing transformation of the global
energy market is not just about climate change and the move to a lower
carbon economy. It is also about the advance of new technology, the
changing geography of the energy market in favour of Asia and, above all,
the move from a time of scarcity and energy insecurity to an age of plenty.
Nuclear costs remain too high, private investors sensibly run away from the
construction risks involved and, crucially, there are alternatives. Wind
and solar costs have fallen dramatically. In many markets they are now half
the cost per megawatt hour of large-scale new nuclear.
The prospect of commercially viable techniques of grid-level storage opens the way for an
even bigger shift. If the challenges of intermittency can be overcome and
the need for subsidies removed or much reduced, wind and solar can become
the natural economic choice for energy supply.
At last, EDF appears to be recognising reality. There is much discussion of the company being divided
in two, with the legacy nuclear assets held by the French government and
the rest of the business, including a major new division called EDF
Energies Nouvelle, being allowed to operate on proper commercial terms in
the open market, under new management.
The company is also pulling back from further investment in new nuclear. UK chief executive Simone Rossi has
for the first time talked about the possibility of the company dropping its
interest in the next prospective nuclear venture at Sizewell in Suffolk. To
go ahead, he said, would require a new financial deal.
In the absence of enthusiastic private investors that can only mean funding from the French
or British governments – and Mr Rossi should not hold his breath for that
given the state of public finances in both countries. If EDF steps out of
the new nuclear business, it will be the end of European involvement in the
sector. With nuclear power in the US also in real trouble that leaves
Japan, Korea and China as the main players. Such is the tough logic of
globalisation. https://www.ft.com/content/39f30854-4001-11e8-803a-295c97e6fd0b
Mirror 22nd April 2018, Survivor of Britain’s nuclear tests lost all his teeth, had thyroid tumour
and wife suffered two stillbirths – and he was one of ‘lucky’ ones
EXCLUSIVE: Sixty years ago on Christmas Island, these army veterans had to
put their hands over their eyes as a nuke 100 times more powerful than
Hiroshima was set off – and more than half their unit died of cancer. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/survivor-britains-nuclear-tests-lost-12409628
GHOST TOWN , What was the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, did radiation cause animal mutations and is it safe to go there now? Thirty-two years ago, one of four reactors at Chernobyl exploded in the worst nuclear disaster in human history leaving behind a barren town frozen in time, The Sun UK, By Holly Christodoulou24th April 2018
An alarm bellowed out at the nuclear plant on April 26, 1986, as workers looked on in horror at the control panels signalling a major meltdown in the number four reactor.
The safety switches had been switched off in the early hours to test the turbine but the reactor overheated and generated a blast the equivalent of 500 nuclear bombs.
The reactor’s roof was blown off and a plume of radioactive material was blasted into the atmosphere.
As air was sucked into the shattered reactor, it ignited flammable carbon monoxide gas causing a fire which burned for nine days.
The catastrophe released at least 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Soviet authorities waited 24 hours before evacuating the nearby town of Pripyat – giving the 50,000 residents just three hours to leave their homes.
After the accident traces of radioactive deposits were found in Belarus where poisonous rain damaged plants and caused animal mutations.
But the devastating impact was also felt in Scandinavia, Switzerland, Greece, Italy, France and the UK.
An 18-mile radius known as the “Exclusion Zone” was set up around the reactor following the disaster.
How many people died in Chernobyl?
At least 31 people died in the accident – including two who were killed at the scene and more who passed away a few months later from Acute Radiation Syndrome.
The actual death toll is hard to predict as mortality rates have been hidden by propaganda and reports were lost when the Soviet Union broke up.
In 2005, the World Health Organisation revealed a total of 4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure.
About 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer have been seen since the disaster – mainly in people who were children or teenagers at the time.
Did the Chernobyl radiation cause animal mutations?
Farmers noticed an increase in genetic abnormalities in farm animals immediately after the disaster.
This spiked again in 1990 when around 400 deformed animals were born – sparking fears the sarcophagus, which covers the reactor.
Some animals were born with extra limbs, abnormal colouring and a smaller size.
Animals that remained in the exclusion zone became radioactive – including as many as 400 wolves, which is the highest density wolf population on the entire planet.
The Eurasian lynx – once believed to have disappeared from Europe – thrived in Chernobyl as there were no humans to run them out.
Birds were also affected by radiation, with barn swallows having deformed beaks, albinism and even smaller brains.
GDF Watch 22nd April 2018, Nobody is disputing her personal abilities or competence, but the
appointment of Lorraine Baldry as the new Chair of Sellafield Limited
raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest within the geological
disposal programme.
Baldry was also recently appointed Chair of the
Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Council. The Council is an
independent group of experts who advise RWM, the GDF delivery body, on how
to best progress the geological disposal programme.
RWM is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) — Sellafield
Limited is also a wholly-owned subsidiary of the NDA. This means Baldry
will be advising RWM on geological disposal, while also running the company
which currently owns most of the waste destined for geological disposal and
has a very vested interest in the GDF.
Dave Toke’s Blog 20th April 2018,This week’s story about problems with pipe welding at the French nuclear
plant being built at Flamanville could spell the end for the Hinkley C
nuclear project.
Treasury backed loan guarantees to build Hinkley C have
been linked to a target date for commissioning of the Flamanville plant of
the end of 2020. Yet the current target date of completion by the end of
2019 has been thrown in doubt by the freshly announced problems.
The main focus of attention of this problem for Hinkley has simply been that the
design of the Flamanville plant – the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) –
is the same as that to be built at Hinkley C and that the engineering
problems bode ill for the British scheme.
That is right, but it is rather worse than this. The commercial issue is that if the French plant is not
commercially operating by the end of 2020 then it seems the Treasury will
not be able to give loan guarantees for the scheme.
According to the analyst Professor Steve Thomas, the rules agreed between the European
Commission and the British Government stipulate that ”until Flamanville 3
was in commercial service, there would be a cap on the guaranteed loans
effectively meaning funding would be primarily through equity’. http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/problems-with-french-nuclear-plant.html
Iran nuclear deal: Macron urges Trump to stick with 2015 accord http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43858040, 23 Apr 18 French President Emmanuel Macron has urged his US counterpart, Donald Trump, to stick with the Iran nuclear deal, saying there is no better option.
He was speaking to Fox News ahead of a three-day state visit to the US starting on Monday.
Mr Trump has threatened to abandon the deal, which limits Iran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief, unless it is toughened up.
He has until 12 May to decide whether to restore US sanctions against Iran.
Correspondents say such a move would effectively kill the landmark agreement between Iran and six major western powers.
The two leaders are expected to address the issue when Mr Trump hosts Mr Macron this week.
Mr Macron told Fox News he had no “plan B” for the deal if the US decided to restore sanctions, and said the US should stay in the agreement as long as there was no better option.
“Let’s present this framework because it’s better than the sort of North Korean-type situation.”
He said the two leaders had “a very special relationship” and he wanted to address ballistic missiles as part of the deal – a key demand of the US president – as well as work to contain Iran’s influence in the region.
President Trump is also demanding that signatories to the deal agree permanent restrictions on Iran’s uranium enrichment. Under the current deal they are set to expire in 2025.
He has put pressure on his European co-signatories to address these issues before the 12 May deadline, when he needs to decide whether to sign a waiver giving sanctions relief to Iran.
Under US law, passed during the Obama administration, the president needs to sign these waivers every 120-180 days acknowledging Iran’s compliance with the deal.
When Mr Trump signed the last one, in January, he said it was a “last chance” to change the accord, before the US withdraws.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warned on Saturday that his country was prepared to resume its nuclear programme “at much greater speed”, if the US withdrew from the accord.
Mr Macron also appealed to the US president not to pull troops out of Syria after the final defeat of so-called Islamic State, saying that would “leave the floor” to Iran and Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
Revealed: new cracks at Hunterston nuclear reactor raise radiation accident fears, Herald Scotland, Rob Edwards , 23 Apr 18
NEW cracks have been discovered in one of Scotland’s ageing nuclear reactors, raising radiation safety fears and resulting in a prolonged shutdown, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
Checks have detected fresh cracks in the graphite core of a reactor at Hunterston B in North Ayrshire. The reactor was taken offline on March 9, but is not now due to restart until May 1 at the earliest, more than a month later than originally planned.
The UK Government safety watchdog, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), is assessing whether the cracks render the reactor too dangerous to fire up. Its operator, EDF Energy, insists it will reopen, but critics say it should stay shut.
The integrity of the thousands of graphite blocks that make up the reactor core is vital to nuclear safety. They ensure that the reactor can be cooled and safely shut down in an emergency.
But bombardment by intense radiation over decades causes the blocks to start cracking. If they fail, experts say, nuclear fuel could overheat, melt down and leak radioactivity in a major accident.
Both the ONR and EDF told the Sunday Herald that new cracks had been found at Hunterston reactor number three during inspections in recent weeks, but they wouldn’t say how many, or how significant they were.
“We are currently assessing the safety case submitted by EDF after a planned outage identified a number of cracks in the graphite blocks that make up reactor three’s core,” said an ONR spokesman.
“Before we grant permission to EDF to restart reactor three we will require that an adequate safety case justifying further operation has been made. ONR has to formally permission the restart of the reactor.”
The ONR’s decision was still “a number of weeks” away, he added. “We will publish the justification behind our decision once it has been made.”
According to EDF’s website, Hunterston reactor three was originally due back online on March 30 after a “graphite inspection outage”. But this has been repeatedly postponed to April 6, April 19, April 24 and now May 1.
………Pete Roche, a nuclear critic and consultant in Edinburgh, warned that EDF’s optimism that the reactor will restart could be misplaced. “Cracks could prevent control rods from being inserted causing the nuclear fuel to overheat, potentially resulting in a nuclear accident,” he said.
It was “all a bit of a gamble”, he argued. “Hunterston is already 42 years old – when it was only expected to operate for 30 or 35 years. It is clearly time to say goodbye to reactor three.”
Expert nuclear engineer John Large also suggested that the reactor should be closed down. “The core at Hunterston may now be in such a poor structural state that its collapse during a relatively modest earthquake could result in a nuclear fuel meltdown and significant radioactive release,” he said.
“All that EDF can do is permanently shut Hunterston, there being no alternative means to remedy this very serious situation.”
……….According to Rita Holmes, a local resident who chairs the Hunterston site stakeholder group, people were worried. “The local communities are unhappy that the reactor has any cracks, and certainly not happy that one with a growing number of cracks could be allowed to continue generation,” she said.
nuclear-news 