Reuters 20th April 2018, Belgium will double the area of its North Sea waters made available to
offshore wind parks after 2020, the government announced on Friday, as part
of its exit strategy from nuclear power. The country has four offshore wind
parks that produce 871 megawatts of power and wants to increase that
capacity to 2.2 gigawatts by 2020 and to 4 gigawatts by 2030. After 2020,
the government plans to designate a new, 221-square-kilometre (85 square
miles) area near French waters. https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-belgium-renewables/belgium-to-double-offshore-wind-energy-capacity-as-it-exits-nuclear-power-idUKKBN1HR1U3?rpc=401&
Energy Live News 19th April 2018 ,The boss of ROSATOM in Europe has told ELN the future for nuclear power is
all about communication. Andrey Rozhdestvin was very open and direct when I
spoke to him earlier this week in Madrid, where the Russian nuclear giant
ROSATOM was launching its partnership with National Geographic, sponsoring
a series of new wildlife documentaries.
It’s one its ways of trying to trigger public dialogue on the issue of nuclear power. ROSATOM says the
documentaries will be talking about how to tackle climate change and they
of course believe nuclear energy, which is carbon-free generation, is part
of the answer. https://www.energylivenews.com/2018/04/19/talk-to-the-people-says-russian-nuclear-chief/
For the past 20 years, French nuclear waste agency Andra has tested the stability of the clay of the northeastern village to see if it could hold radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years.
Andra is preparing a formal request for next year to build the 25 billion euro ($31 billion) facility to hold waste from the reactors of state-owned utility EDF.
French nuclear regulator ASN has already said the plan is sound and deep geological storage is the safest way to protect future generations from radioactive waste.
But a police van at the main square is testimony to rising tensions and demonstrations that have at times blocked the area where Andra wants to dig.
“Life will become unbearable here with the nuclear waste and all the demonstrators,” said Bure mayor Gerard Antoine, who breeds beef cattle.
Antoine approved the installation of Andra research facilities two decades ago but said he now regrets that decision and would say no if he were asked today.
Hundreds of demonstrators who built a camp nearby were kicked out by police in February but say they are there for the long run and will fight the project until the government changes its plans.
“We are heading straight for … a nuclear disaster, that’s why we’re against it,” said Jean-Marc Fleury, a local elected official with an environmentalist party.
Police are maintaining a heavy presence while protesters have regrouped in and around a house in the Bure village centre.
The future Cigeo site is designed to cover an area of 600 hectares and have 250 kilometres of underground galleries where nuclear waste would be buried in huge rust-proof cylinders.
DEEP BURIAL
Andra, which carried out research work via a research laboratory 500 metres underground, wants to start work on the site in 2022 and complete it by 2030.
“We’re not going to do deep burial of (nuclear) waste if we had any doubt that it would leak or contaminate the environment,” said Andra spokesman Mathieu Saint Louis.
“The ultimate goal with an underground installation such as this one is precisely to protect ourselves from the danger of (nuclear) waste.”
For now, spent fuel from French nuclear reactors is stored in pools next to the reactors before it is shipped to state-owned nuclear fuel group Orano’s recycling plant in La Hague, western France.
But La Hague is not designed for long-term storage and France does not have a solution 40 years after investing heavily in nuclear energy. Other countries that use nuclear power face the same problem.
The Bure site is designed so that nuclear waste could be retrieved for the first 100 years if scientists find a better solution than burying it. Otherwise, the underground galleries will be permanently sealed with concrete.
Anti-nuclear activists say deep geological storage does not offer perfect guarantees against radiation leakage in ground water. They want the waste moved to underground facilities that are just a few metres deep, to monitor it better. Writing by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Ingrid Melander and Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Hundreds of lawmakers from Germany, France, and Britain have called on their counterparts in the U.S. Congress to support the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, calling it a “major diplomatic breakthrough.”
The initiative came as U.S. President Donald Trump has set a May 12 deadline to either improve or scrap the deal providing Iran with relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its atomic program.
“We were able to impose unprecedented scrutiny on the Iranian nuclear program, dismantle most of their nuclear enrichment facilities, and drastically diminish the danger of a nuclear arms race,” reads a statement signed by some 500 MPs from the German, British, and French national parliaments and posted online on April 19.
Britain, Germany, and France are signatories to the nuclear accord, along with the United States, China, and Russia.
Trump accuses Tehran of violating the spirit of the agreement and has called on European powers to “fix” what he says are the “terrible flaws” of the agreement. He wants new restrictions to be imposed on Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs.
“It is the U.S.’s and Europe’s interest to prevent nuclear proliferation in a volatile region and to maintain the transatlantic partnership as a reliable and credible driving force of world politics,” the European lawmakers said.
They wrote that abandoning the accord would result “in another source of devastating conflict in the Middle East and beyond,” would “diminish the value of any promises or threats made by our countries,” and would damage “our credibility as international partners in negotiation, and more generally, to diplomacy as a tool to achieve peace and ensure security.”
“We therefore urge you to stand by the coalition we have formed to keep Iran‘s nuclear threat at bay,” they added.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will both travel to Washington next week on separate official visits, in part to convince Trump not to pull the United States out of the nuclear deal with Iran.
Ostap Semerak called for international help to stop a potential “radiation catastrophe” as the United States also expressed concern over the mine and a key water facility in eastern Ukraine that has temporarily shut down after five workers were shot.
Soviet specialists conducted the underground explosion to free trapped gas at the YunKom mine in Yenakieve, 55km northeast of what is now the militant stronghold of Donetsk, and pumps have kept the blast zone relatively dry ever since.
Separatist officials insist that pumping and special monitoring are no longer necessary, however, citing local and Russian experts who say radioactivity levels in the mine are normal, and that flooding it would pose no threat of contamination to the Donbas region’s water table.
“What the militants are playing at is nothing other than terrorism and political blackmail,” Mr Semerak told members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
“Our joint task with international partners is to prevent a second Chernobyl in Donbas,” he said, referring to the atomic power station north of Kiev that exploded in April 1986, showering much of northern Europe with radiation
Drinking water
Earlier this week US state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert wrote on Twitter: “Plans by Russian proxies to flood the abandoned YunKom coal mine… could threaten drinking water of thousands of Ukrainians in Russia-controlled eastern Ukraine. We urge Russia and its proxy authorities to act responsibly.”
Four years of fighting in Donbas have killed more than 10,300 people, displaced 1.6 million and ravaged an industrial region of mines, metal works and chemical plants, creating the potential for a long legacy of environmental problems.
“Any present destabilisation of the mine via flooding could release up to 500 cubic metres of radiation-contaminated mine waters into the ground water table,” the OSCE said.
The conflict frequently disrupts water supplies through Soviet-built canals and pipes that criss-cross the front line, and which workers take considerable risks to maintain and repair after damage by shelling.
Under fire
The Donetsk water filtration plant, which sits right on the frontline, shut down again on Wednesday after five employees were wounded when their bus came under fire the previous day.
Hundreds of thousands of people in government and militia-held territory receive water from the plant, which is often struck by shells despite the presence there of chlorine and other hazardous chemicals.
“The chlorine is being washed out so it doesn’t stay in the pipes. They are halting the pumping station,” said Alexander Yevdokimov, acting head of the Donbas Water company. “It doesn’t mean we have shut it down forever, but we simply need security guarantees for our employees.”
Ms Nauert said the US urged “all forces to withdraw from positions around the Donetsk filtration station and other critical civilian infrastructure”.
BBC forced to deny reporting outbreak of nuclear war after fake news clip goes viral Telegraph UK, Will Horner
The BBC was last night forced to distance itself from a fake news clip reporting the outbreak of nuclear war after a video purporting to show hostilities between Russia and Nato was widely circulated online.
The three-minute clip, which appears to be set in the BBC News studio and uses the BBC logo, features a British presenter claiming armed conflict has broken out in the Baltic after a Russian aircraft was shot down.
It features footage of Russian naval ships launching cruise missiles, nuclear mushroom clouds, and shows the Queen being evacuated from Buckingham Palace.
“This video clip claiming to be a BBC news report about NATO and Russia has been circulating widely… We’d like to make absolutely clear that it’s a fake and does not come from the BBC,” the corporation said on Twitter.
The clip is a shortened version of an hour-long video that has been uploaded to YouTube several times since 2016 with the disclaimer that it is a “fictional dramatization.”
It began widely circulating on social media, particularly WhatsApp, after it was edited and re-uploaded to YouTube on Monday without that disclaimer.
The video also features a new ending purporting to be a “nuclear attack warning” with the logos of the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office.
The presenter of the video told The Daily Telegraph he was employed by Benchmarking Assessment Group, an Irish talent headhunting company, to shoot the video that would be used as a “psychometric test” to see how “their clients react in a disaster scenario”.
“From the original YouTube posting it says very clearly that it is fictional. You’d have to be an idiot to believe it anyway, it doesn’t even look like a genuine BBC news report. It was never meant to,” said Mark Ryes, a British voice actor……..
Nuclear Ban 17th April 2018, In advance of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee which
meets in Geneva from April 23rd over 30 UK civil society organisations have
co-signed a letter to Boris Johnson, challenging the government to take its
disarmament responsibilities seriously and in particular to participate in
the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). http://www.nuclearban.scot/challenge-to-uk-to-participate-in-nuke-ban-treaty/
World War 3 IMMINENT! Scared ex-Soviet general warns NUCLEAR war is INEVITABLE
A SCARED former Russian army general issued a harrowing warning that a nuclear war is “inevitable” and it is an “illusion” if leaders feel they can control a military conflict between the US and Russia. Express UKBy THOMAS HUNT, Apr 17, 2018 Former Russian general: Use of nuclear weapons is inevitable
Evgeny Buzhinskiy, a retired Lieutenant-General, claimed the Cold War was rather comfortable in comparison to the current conflict and the West should be prepared because Vladimir Putin “will not accept defeat” if World War 3 started.
Speaking to Channel 4 News, he said: “I think it’s worse than the Cold War, which we have been waging for 40 years after the Second World War.
“In the Cold War time I was in the armed forces and I was quite comfortable I’d say.
“There were definite duels and definite red lines – everybody knew what to do.There were no threats, no sanctions, no isolation, no cornering, no nothing.
“There was just ideological confrontation, but people on both sides knew how far they could go.”
The military veteran was then asked by the presenter whether rising tensions could lead to a third world war.
The General responded: “Of course. I repeat, you cannot control military confrontation between Russia and the United States.
Of course Russia cannot wage a war against the United States. For years, economically it cannot.
“In the general purpose forces, we are a bit lagging behind the United States.
“And of course, Russia will no accept any kind of defeat.
“So the involvement of nuclear weapons is inevitable.”
When asked if he is just trying to scare viewers, Mr Buzhinskiy said he was scared for the possible repercussions. He added: “I am scared myself because I have children and I have grandchildren so I am scared for their fate.”
France’s nuclear plans under pressure, Petroleum Economist, 17 Apr 18
Flaws found at a flagship reactor could curb EDF’s technology export ambitions
Piping weld issues reported at Électricité de France’s Flamanville nuclear reactor project last week threaten to delay similar reactor builds across Finland and the UK, eroding confidence in the technology’s future role in western Europe’s energy mix.
State-owned EDF admitted on 10 April that inspectors had found “quality deviations” on 150 welds in a system used to transport steam to turbines at the Flamanville European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), a third generation pressurised water reactor in northwestern France.
Those inspections were prompted by an initial finding in February that 38 of 66 weldings on a secondary cooling circuit were not in line with standards, which were passed on at the time to France’s Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN).
Because the ASN has already demanded that a study be completed into the initial problems by the second half of 2018, it’s likely the new discovery will exacerbate problems with the long-delayed plant’s timetable and costs—it is seven years behind schedule and €7bn ($8.6bn) over budget.
The impact of the substandard weldings will also likely be felt further afield, particularly on timings for other long-delayed EPRs that the firm is currently building: Hinkley Point C in the UK, and Olkiluoto 3 in Finland.
Construction of the first EPR in Olkiluoto started in 2005 and was initially set to be completed by 2009, but in October 2017, the project was again delayed to May 2019, when it is intended to become western Europe’s first new nuclear power station for 15 years. Meanwhile, construction is slated to start on the 3.2-gigawatt Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset, southwest England, in 2019. The plant was first proposed in 2008 and is expected to take at least a decade to bring online, at a cost of £20.3bn ($28bn).
“Repeated construction delays further undermine the credibility of nuclear power as a viable option for electricity generation in the context of urgency to combat climate change”, Mycle Schneider, lead author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, told Petroleum Economist. “Nuclear power turns out to be not only increasingly expensive, but far too slow to compete with other options.”
Fukushima in focus
Despite the delays, the need to ensure strict standards in a post-Fukushima environment was underlined by an incident last December at China’s Taishan1 reactor, which was constructed by China General Nuclear Power Corporation (GCN) with EDF. Taishan1’s deaerator, which removes oxygen and other gases from boiler feedwater circuits, cracked during performance testing due to defective welding.
Safety issues have loomed over nuclear power’s future in western Europe since the Fukushima accident in Japan in March 2011, when a 9.0-magnitude offshore earthquake triggered a 46-foot tsunami that hit the plant, leading to the leakage of radioactive materials and shutdown of the plant. ……..
On 31 March, the Belgian government confirmed that its future energy strategy included a plan to shut down all nuclear power plants by 2025, and Germany, Spain and Switzerland have also made plans to phase out nuclear power by the 2020s. Even President Emmanuel Macron’s French election campaign included a promise to cut nuclear power generation from 72% to 50%.
“In a strict commercial sense, nuclear power is a tough proposition in western Europe. Unlike emerging economies and regions, demand is flat in the continent,” said Jane Nakano, a senior energy analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “In mature markets it is tough to make a business case for massive projects that require huge upfront investment.” …….http://www.petroleum-economist.com/articles/low-carbon-energy/nuclear/2018/frances-nuclear-plans-under-pressure
Derby Telegraph 16th April 2018 , Why fears have been raised that Derbyshire might end up hosting a nuclear
waste facility. “It was an area suggested for such a facility around 25
years ago.” A geological formation in Derbyshire could be considered for a
nuclear waste facility, it is feared.
The Government is scouring the UK for
a suitable location for a new £12 billion geological disposal facility
(GDF). Cumbria was being lined up to to store an estimated 750,000 cubic
metres of radioactive material produced by 50 years of nuclear power and
defence activity – but its county council rejected the idea in 2013,
forcing the Government to search for a new location.
Now a neighbouring council has discussed hosting the nuclear waste dumping facility in a
sedimentary basin known as the Widmerpool Gulf – which extends across
Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. A response to a Government
package of incentives designed to get communities to agree to ‘host’ a
storage complex has been discussed by Leicestershire County Council,
reports the Leicester Mercury.
Any facility would look to bury waste at least 200 metres below ground somewhere in a geological area which
stretches from the eastern fringes of Derby across the countryside to the
south of Nottingham and on to the west of Melton Mowbray in north
Leicestershire. Leicestershire County Council has said there are no
specific proposals for a GDF in Leicestershire at this stage but it has
asked for further information on the issue from the Department of Business,
Energy and Industrial Strategy.
The council’s head of planning LonekWojtulewicz said: “The underlying principle is these sort of facilities
will only come forward if communities are prepared to accept them.” The
Government has said £1 million a year could be offered to a community
willing to host a GDF rising to £2.5 million as a scheme progresses.
Monitoring stations recorded high levels of a radioactive isotope in the air over most European cities at the beginning of October.
Scientists from France said soon afterwards they thought the source was an accident at a nuclear facility in Russia or Kazakhstan – a suggestion dismissed
Russian President Vladimir Putin warns of global ‘chaos’ if West strikes Syria again, ABC News 16 Apr 18, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that further Western attacks on Syria would bring chaos to world affairs, as Washington prepared to increase pressure on Russia with new economic sanctions.
Key points:
Vladimir Putin said further attacks on Syria will bring “chaos” in world affairs
America accused Russia of blocking attempts to investigate Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities
New sanctions against Russia will target companies linked to Syria
In a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani, Mr Putin and Mr Rouhani agreed the Western strikes had damaged the chances of achieving a political resolution in the seven-year Syria conflict, according to a Kremlin statement.
“Vladimir Putin, in particular, stressed that if such actions committed in violation of the UN Charter continue, then it will inevitably lead to chaos in international relations,” the Kremlin statement said.
Alternatives Economiques 12th April 2018 , [Machine Translation]
EDF has just presented its long-term energy strategy
to the board of directors. While the cost of solar and wind energy is
falling every year – it is already half the price of new nuclear power –
Belgium confirms its exit from that it does not intend to close a
nuclear reactor, except those in Fessenhenuclear power in 2025 and that Portugal has covered in March more than 100% of its electricity needs by renewables ources, EDF defies its main shareholder, the State, and stubbornly in the nuclear everything.
The group confirms , before 2029, jeopardizing its
profitability and viability with surplus electricity that will drive down
sales prices for producers. The programs of control of the energy demand
and the development of renewable energies will lead to a mechanical
reduction of the share of the nuclear energy in the French energy mix”.
Faced with the risk of the “cliff effect”, with the end of life at the same
time many nuclear reactors built at the same time, But EDF does not hear it
that way. In financial difficulties with debt that has almost tripled in
ten years, gross operating surplus to the lowest since 2006 and a wall of
investment coming nearly 160 billion over ten years 1 , the company s
‘Heading into a suicidal strategy: prolonging nuclear reactors as much as
possible. There is no outlet for this generation of electricity while
consumption has been decreasing in France for several years and renewables
are developing? EDF invents the myth of massive exports to neighboring
countries! https://www.alternatives-economiques.fr/anne-bringault/edf-saborde-transition-energetique/000841
Ministry Of Foreign Affairs Lithuania 13th April 2018, The Astravets NPP project in Belarus is being developed in non-compliance
with international standards of environmental and nuclear safety, with
recurrent serious violations, repetitive incidences on the construction
site of Astravets NPP, poor occupational safety culture, lack of competence
and expertise in the project development process on the part of nuclear
safety regulatory authority and organisations in charge of construction
works of Astravets NPP.
The project is accompanied by persistent manipulations with international instruments and public opinion in Belarus
and neighbouring countries.
Lithuania has been raising these concerns ever since 2009 in all competent international organisations (International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Nuclear Safety and Espoo Conventions, Aarhus
and Helsinki Water Conventions, in organisations of the European Union and
European Nuclear Safety Organisation (WENRA, ENSREG), the United Nations
and other organisations). Until now issues regarding safety at the
Astravets NPP raised by Lithuania and possible negative impact on Lithuania
and the entire region, including Belarus, remain unresolved. http://urm.lt/default/en/news/fundamental-problems-of-the-astravets-nuclear-power-plant-under-construction-in-belarus-
nuclear-news 