Safety fears : the problem of Britain’s ageing nuclear submarines
A British nuclear submarine has broken the record for the longest patrol at
sea as safety fears grow over the Royal Navy’s ageing fleet. The
Vanguard-class vessel returned to the Faslane naval base in Scotland on
Monday encrusted with barnacles and covered in slime after a gruelling tour
understood to have lasted more than six months.
Naval experts have raised concerns that the long patrols result in immense physical strain on the vessels and take a psychological toll on the crews. The UK has four
Vanguard-class submarines, which are armed with up to eight Trident
ballistic missiles carrying Britain’s nuclear warheads. At least one
submarine is on patrol at all times to maintain a continuous at-sea
deterrent. The fleet has been effectively reduced to two functioning
vessels, HMS Vigilant and HMS Vengeance, owing to repair works on the other
two.
Times 12th Sept 2023
Huge nuclear lobbying aimed at British Parliament
The Nuclear Industry Association will host the third Nuclear Week in
Parliament (NWiP) between the 11th and 13th of September 2023. In January
2023, the rescheduled week saw hundreds of Parliamentarians and industry
representatives engage in various events.
Back in its annual September slot, this year’s NWiP will be packed with multiple events and receptions, plus opportunities for NIA members to hold their complementary meetings.
The week will focus on engaging with Parliamentarians on various topics,
including new build, Advanced Nuclear Technologies, and the fuel cycle.
This will build on our Summer Conference, due to be held in the Concorde
Conference Centre in Manchester on Wednesday, 14 June 2023.
Nuclear Industry Association (accessed) 13th Sept 2023
https://www.niauk.org/nuclear-week-in-parliament-2023-sponsorship-opportunities/
Nuclear Free Local Authorities back councillor’s call to preserve bunker as museum to folly of nuclear war
The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities is backing the recent call of
an Oldham Councillor for the preservation of the town’s nuclear bunker in
the name of peace. In January 2016, at a time when North Korea was testing
nuclear weapons, the Mirror newspaper posed a question of its readership:
‘Where are the best places in the UK to survive nuclear war?’ with the
surprising number one answer being the northern town of Oldham. Why?
Because when the new municipal Civic Centre was built, designers Cecil
Howitt and Partners built a bunker of reinforced concrete and brick beneath
it.
NFLA 12th Sept 2023
Nuclear Free Local Authorities’ plea to new Energy Secretary: ‘Don’t make Sizewell C Suffolk’s nightmare.’
The UK / Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities have written to the new Secretary of State for Energy Claire Continho MP asking her not to make Sizewell C ‘Suffolk’s nightmare’.
Ms Continho replaced Grant Shapps after the former Energy Secretary was sent to Defence following the resignation of Ben Wallace. She was only elected to Parliament in December 2019 for the safe Conservative seat of East Surrey and is largely unknown having previously saved in only a very junior ministerial post. With a background in banking, the new Energy Secretary does however have close connections with the Prime Minister having been an advisor and then a parliamentary aide to Rishi Sunak when he was at the Treasury, and a leading figure in Mr Sunak’s leadership campaign team.
Energy represents a massive promotion for Ms Continho, but it is a complex brief. In his letter the Chair of the NFLAs Councillor Lawrence O’Neill outlines why Sizewell C, and indeed the whole new nuclear programme, should not go ahead and urges the Secretary of State to ‘take up the offer made by local campaigners to visit the site and speak to local people about their serious concerns about this costly and foolhardy project’.
The NFLAs are also backing the campaign initiated by Stop Sizewell C to deprive the nuclear monster of private sector investment by lobbying pension funds. In this vein, we have previously contacted pension funds and last month we wrote also to the Chief Executive of Centrica, a previous commercial investor in nuclear plants, asking him to refrain from backing the project.
With recent unwelcome news of a further £300 million of government funding being awarded for preparatory works at Sizewell C, the campaign feels that ‘it is time to scale up’ the pensions campaign and is asking for public support. A bespoke platform has been developed featuring almost 70 pension funds, www.stopsizewellc.org/goodpension which is now backed by a short animated video voiced by Fiona Turnbull https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LjV_WbyWkUsGf7ClwPuinU_Dq_sY7NZ9/edit .
Stop Sizewell C is asking campaign supporters who make pension contributions or receive pensions to write to their fund managers urging them NOT to invest in Sizewell C. However, the most pressing priority is to expand the reach of the campaign so Stop Sizewell C is asking supporters to raise awareness of it by sharing the links on their social media accounts.
The links to the latest pensions campaign post are:
Twitter/X – https://twitter.com/StopSizewellC/status/1699788799654637820?s=20
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cw5KbW6s6wq/
Facebook – https://fb.watch/mVA8OdaiP7/
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7105240738447114240
Councillor O’Neill added: “Sizewell C can be seen as many-headed like the mythical hydra; many of the heads represent a possible financial investment. It we can cut off the heads we can kill the monster!”
1000 Sellafield Ltd. contractors to be balloted for strike by Unite
AROUND 1,000 contractors at Sellafield are being balloted for potential
strike action, after Unite have criticised an ‘unacceptable offer’ from
management. More than 3,000 engineering construction workers nationally,
operating under the National Agreement for Engineering Construction
Industry (NAECI), are being balloted for strike action overpay, Unite, the
UK’s leading union, said on Thursday, September 7. This includes about
1,000 Sellafield Ltd. contractors who the union say conduct critical repair
and maintenance at the site.
Whitehaven News 10th Sept 2023
UK / ‘No Easy Options’ For Disposal Of Plutonium Stockpile, Says Report
“simpler and cheaper to consider it a waste material alongside the other legacies from the nuclear industry, and safely dispose of it.”
NUCNET, bBy David Dalton, 6 September 2023
There are no easy options when it comes to the “unavoidably complex” task of managing the UK’s plutonium stockpile, but more research, development and innovation is needed to underpin any decision, a report says.
The report, prepared by the Dalton Nuclear Institute at Manchester University, calls for a national dialogue led by “trusted voices” and based on a clear view of the government’s thinking of the role, if any, plutonium might play in meeting future UK energy needs.
The stockpile could be used as fuel for existing or future thermal reactors. It could also be combined with the UK’s 100,000 tonne supply of depleted, natural and low-enriched uranium to fuel new fast reactors, which has the potential to power the UK for centuries. Both options could lead to the reduction of the UK’s nuclear legacy burden.
Another option is to dispose of the stockpile in the planned UK deep geological repository.
Professor Clint Sharrad, acting director of the Dalton Nuclear Institute, said while this all sounds promising, successfully delivering such outcomes would take time, money, organisation, and commitment.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a government body, is in the process of repackaging the plutonium stocks, stored at Sellafield in northwest England, into more robust containment.
“Being wary of the current global political and economic climate, it may be that extracting the energy from UK plutonium in the not-too-distant future becomes unnecessarily expensive and political barriers may be too difficult to overcome,” Prof Sharrad said.
“Therefore, it might be simpler and cheaper to consider it a waste material alongside the other legacies from the nuclear industry, and safely dispose of it.”
The stockpile originates from reprocessing spent fuel from the UK’s reactor fleets, plus some material derived from outside the UK….. https://www.nucnet.org/news/no-easy-options-for-disposal-of-uranium-stockpile-says-report-9-3-2023
Today Hinkley C contract would cost £180 per MWh around 3xs the cost of offshore wind
DAVID TOKE, SEP 8, 2023 https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/today-hinkley-c-contract-would-cost
There’s been a lot of talk about how offshore wind has ‘increased’ its costs since the last Government contract auction – but that’s not a patch on nuclear power a la Hinkley C, courtesy of EDF. Capital costs for the project have increased in real (not just inflation) terms by around 50 percent since 2012, and there’s probably a lot worse to come.
The figure of £92.50 per MWh is often mentioned as the price of the contract for Hinkley C, and that is the contract price in 2012 prices. In today’s money using the Government’s preferred CPI calculator that is £124 per MWh – higher even than the currently gas-inflated wholesale power price.
But it is worse, much much worse than that, because Hinkley C’s real, not just inflation-adjusted price, has increased. In 2012 the capital cost was estimated at £16 billion by EDF. Now the capital cost in 2012 prices has risen to around £33 billion in 2023 money or around £24 billion in 2012 money.
That means that if Hinkley C’s contract was set up today at the revised capital cost then the equivalent contract price would be about £138 per MWh in 2012 prices and around £180 per MWh in today’s prices. That is of course if the contract was assessed on the same contract length – 35 years, and on a similar rate of return. The rate of return certainly would not be less since interest rates are a lot higher than they were in 2012.
The estimates published by EDF do not include interest rate charges. They are called ‘overnight’ costs, which in itself is highly ironic since the last thing nuclear power stations are noted for is being built overnight. Their construction takes many years, racking up immense interest charges on the way. If this was a private company they surely would have gone bust by now. The only way that EDF could get themselves into this position is because everybody knows that the French Government will inevitably bail them out.
Of course, as far as Hinkley C costs go, the only way is up. Heaven knows how high they will go! And the Government is going to make electricity consumers pay for the next EDF nuclear disaster at Sizewell C!
So let’s reflect a bit on the apparent horror apparently experienced by the UK Treasury that they might have to offer more than £44 per MWh (at 2012 prices) for offshore wind contracts.
Health and safety concerns raised with Dounreay management
Some trade union and safety representatives have no confidence in the
management at Dounreay and have raised health and safety concerns at the
site.
A number of employees told the John O’Groat Journal that they are
also worried over how issues on the well-being of staff were being
addressed. “There are numerous cases of staff members off due to
work-related stress – some as a result of bullying and harassment,” said
one worker. “Concerns have been raised but do not appear to be addressed.
“Dounreay has said that ‘our workers are out greatest asset’, but from the
conversations I’ve had with people across site, this is not believed.”
Another employee stated: “This has been an ongoing issue for years. It is
hard to prove in many cases and has been dealt with in some instances.
Safety reps have been involved in meetings on this topic along with the
chairman of the Trade Union Co-ordinating Committee.”
John O’Groat Journal 8th Sept 2023
UK and Japan’s governments funding research on problem of nuclear waste
Two projects have been awarded a share of £1 million, delivered by the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK
Research and Innovation (UKRI), to address challenges in: radioactive waste
treatment, packaging, and storage; remote handling, robotic, and autonomous
systems in decommissioning; environmental behaviour of radionuclide release
and management of risk and degraded infrastructure.
The UK-Japan Civil Nuclear Research programme is a partnership between UKRI and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The research
projects are being led by academics at the universities of Strathclyde and
Sheffield.
UK Research & Innovation 8th Sept 2023
https://www.ukri.org/news/uk-japan-partnership-to-develop-new-tech-for-nuclear-waste-disposal/
Unite urges employer to pay a fair wage and avoid nuclear plant shutdown
Unite urges employer to pay a fair wage and avoid nuclear plant shutdown.
Electricians who certify tools for use in nuclear power stations are taking
strike action.
Unite, the country’s leading trade union, announced today
(Wednesday 6 September) that its members at Altrad Babcock Ltd are taking
strike action following a dismal pay offer from the employer. Electricians
at Altrad Babcock, based in Tipton in the West Midlands, are responsible
for certifying that electrical tools are safe to use in nuclear facilities
across the country. Yet this safety-critical role is not being valued by
the employer, with some members earning as little as £13.62 per hour.
Unite 6th Sept 2023
Russia linked hackers hit UK Ministry of Defence as security secrets leaked
Russian hackers suspected to have leaked sensitive UK military and defence
material on the dark web including information about nuclear submarine base
and chemical weapons lab. Sensitive military and defence material has been
stolen by suspected Russian hackers and leaked on to the internet.
Thousands of pages of data about the HMNB Clyde nuclear submarine base,
Porton Down chemical weapons lab and a GCHQ listening post are understood
to have been posted on to the dark web after the hack. Information about a
specialist cyber defence site and some of Britain’s high-security prisons
was also stolen in the raid on Zaun, a provider of fences for maximum
security sites.
Daily Mail 4th Sept 2023
Russia linked hackers hit UK Ministry of Defence as security secrets
leaked. Hackers targeted the database of a firm which handles the security
for some of Britain’s most secretive sites – including a nuclear submarine
base and a chemical weapon lab.
Mirror 2nd Sept 2023
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/russia-linked-hackers-hit-uk-30850139
Hinkley Point C Nuclear Station will need daily 4,200 Olympic swimming pools’ amount of cooling water.
Hinkley Point C nuclear power station will keep itself cool by drawing in
and flushing out enough water to fill 4,200 Olympic swimming pools – every
day. To do this, it needs 5.5 miles (8.8 kilometers) of tunnels located
nearly 100 feet (30 meters) underneath the Bristol Channel, which has the
second highest tidal range in the world. …………..These are the first nuclear qualified tunnels to be designed in the U.K.,” says Jacobs’ HPC Marine Works Project Manager Steve Marshall.
“They will have the capacity to transfer 2.7 billion U.S. gallons (10.4 million cubic meters) of coolingwater a day. “There is a blueprint for building reactors but marine works
to deliver the cooling water can never be exactly the same because we’re
always dealing with different geology and tidal ranges,” he explains.
“Added to this we have the nuclear safety aspect and the need to build
structures that are capable of doing their jobs for an 85-year design life
with very little maintenance. They also have to be capable of withstanding
a 1-in-10,000 year earthquake and extreme waves in the stormiest sea
conditions.”
Market Screener 1st Sept 2023
A bottomless pit of public money for the UK government’s nuclear vanity project
In response to Nuclear Minister, Andrew Bowie’s announcement of an
additional £341m government support for the Sizewell C project, TASC
deputy Chair, Pete Wilkinson, said “There seems to be a bottomless pit of
public money when it comes to funding Sizewell C, so besotted is the
government with this already redundant nuclear vanity project.
Not so for cash-strapped public sector workers though. The £341m recently announced,
taking taxpayer funding over an eye-watering £1.2bn, is apparently
designed to speed up preparations for construction of a plant which has yet
to receive dozens of licences and permits – not the least of which is the
Office for Nuclear Regulation’s permission to build on a site threatened by
climate change impacts – and is still subject to determination of an
outstanding legal challenge.
Put another way, it is public money to be
spent on the destruction of a coast which is designated as an area of
outstanding natural beauty for a project which may still not happen. It
also claims that it will ‘help to drive Putin further out of global
energy markets’, apparently missing the point that uranium supplies –
essential for the mythical nuclear renaissance and already at peak supply –
come largely from Russian-influenced countries, so out of the oil and gas
fire into the uranium frying pan.
As for the ‘rapid expansion of UK
nuclear energy’, the fantasy of 24GW from nuclear, should it ever be
attempted, will be cripplingly expensive and generate a mountain of waste
for which there is no universally acceptable disposal route, in short, a
recipe for future financial and environmental disaster rather than energy
security”
TASC 30th Aug 2023
Anger over claims RAF Lakenheath could host US nuclear weapons
By Stuart Bailey, BBC News 31 Aug 23 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-66657765
Campaigners have urged the government to refuse the US any permission to base nuclear weapons in the UK again.
A US Air Force report showed plans to build a “surety dormitory” at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, which experts said implied a return of nuclear arms.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) said it would be “beyond irresponsible” and put the UK at risk.
The Ministry of Defence and the Pentagon said they would not comment on the location of weapons.
US Air Force budget documents included a justification for a 144-bed dormitory “to house the increase in enlisted personnel as the result of the potential Surety Mission.”
The word “surety” is often used by the US government to refer to the concept of ensuring American nuclear weapons are kept safe and secure.
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS), which first reported the plans, said they “strongly imply” the intention to re-establish nuclear arms at Lakenheath, which hosted them until 2008.
CND general secretary, Kate Hudson, said: “It’s increasingly clear that Lakenheath is once again a vital cog in Washington’s overseas nuclear machine.
“The deployment of the new B61-12 (gravity bombs) to Europe undermines any prospects for global peace and ensures Britain will be a target in a nuclear conflict between the US/NATO and Russia.
“It’s beyond irresponsible that the UK government is allowing this deployment.”
Construction of the $50m (£39.5m) building is due to begin in June 2024 and end in February 2026, the budget report said.
The Ministry of Defence, which owns the site, said it was unable to comment on US spending decisions and capabilities.
Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said: “It is US policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence or absence of nuclear weapons at any general or specific location.”
RAF Lakenheath is home to USAF’s 48th Fighter Wing, which consists of more than 4,000 military members and 1,500 civilians. Control of the base transferred from the RAF to USAF in 1948.
Last year more than 200 people protested outside the base after the US added the UK to a list of nuclear weapons storage site locations in Europe.
Money thrown at Sizewell C to win hearts and minds.
The government has allocated a further £341m to get the Sizewell C
nuclear power station project shovel-ready. The extra money will help
prepare the Sizewell C site in Suffolk for construction, procuring key
components from the project’s supply chain, and expanding its workforce.
It would see activity ramp up at the Suffolk site, supporting continued
preparation works, such as constructing onsite training facilities for
1,500 apprenticeships and further development of the plant’s engineering
design.
The public relations campaign will also be stepped up in a bid to
wins hearts and minds in the Southwold-Aldeburgh area, where opposition to
the project is strong. The government plans “direct investments in the
local community ahead of work starting” to show that having a £35bn
construction project on your doorstep is not necessarily all bad news.
latest £341m tranche follows a £170m allocation last month and builds on
the government’s existing £870m stake in the project to help secure a
final investment decision before the next general election.
The Construction Index 30th Aug 2023
https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/money-thrown-at-sizewell-c-to-win-hearts-and-minds
1 This Month
of the week – THE ONENESS of HUMANITY
25 June- THE PUKE ON NUKES
Thursday, June 25, 2026
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5
From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
26 June – Radiation Trainwreck at the NRC / Join the Protect Better Campaign – https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/4ZlZ5_qLSHGiLSCg8FF6Bg#/registration
1st July – Webinar Waste of Space: The Environmental Harm of Military and Civil Space Activity st July, 7 pm
Report Launch Online: We are seeing an increasing exploitation of space for military and commercial purposes. This must change.
Protect Sazan Island from the Trump family! https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_sazan_island_from_the_trump_family_loc/?bqFCVab&v=174511&cl=22707147157&_checksum=5e9dde668860e8231c33699735e16a1fbf22ab2cb01da50c999fe8732b9775ef&utm_source=email&utm_medium=blast_email&utm_campaign=174511
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
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