French nuclear attack submarine patrolling South China Sea
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French Nuclear Attack Boat Patrolled South China Sea https://news.usni.org/2021/02/10/french-nuclear-attack-boat-patrolled-south-china-sea
By: Xavier Vavasseur, February 10, 2021 A French Navy Rubis-class nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) patrolled the South China Sea, the French minister of armed forces announced in a series of tweets.
French armed forces minister Florence Parly called the patrol “a striking proof of the capacity of our French Navy to deploy far and for a long time in connection with our Australian, American and Japanese strategic partners.” On Monday night, Parly shed some light on the current deployment of Rubis-class SSN FS Emeraude (S604) to the Pacific region. In a series of messages on Twitter, she said: “Since September, a nuclear attack submarine (SSN Émeraude) and a support vessel (BSAM Seine) have sailed up to 15,000 km from the coasts of mainland France in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. This extraordinary patrol has just completed a passage in the South China Sea. A striking proof of the capacity of our French Navy to deploy far and for a long time in connection with our Australian, American and Japanese strategic partners. Why such a mission? To enrich our knowledge of this area and to affirm that international law is the only rule that is valid, whatever the sea in which we sail. Nation of the Indo-Pacific (~ 2 million inhabitants), France has the 2nd largest exclusive economic zone in the world (11 million km2 of which 9 are in the Indo-Pacific). We intend to protect our sovereignty and our interests.” Naval News first reported about Emeraude’s mission to the Pacific when it stopped over in Australia. The submarine then visited the U.S. naval base in Guam and participated in an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) exercise with the U.S. Navy and JMSDF. Following an exercise with the Indonesian Navy Emeraude will likely be joining the French carrier strike group which is set to depart this week for the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf region. |
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The dangers and uncertainties in Andra’s radioactive waste disposal project in Bure (Meuse)
Le Monde 5th Jan 2021, Environmentalists and unionists combine against the radioactive waste landfill project in Bure (Meuse). In a forum at the ”World”, they stated their concern at the dangers and uncertainties of the project. Their opinion is bolstered by a recent statement issued on January 13 by the Environmental Austhority, which stressed the uncertainties surrouding the waste disposal plan.Vigorous opposition has never ceased to alert the public, since 1987, to the immense risks of the geological disposal of radioactive waste. The opinion of the Environmental Authority corroborates what thousands of citizens, elected officials and independent scientists have been denouncing for years, without being truly heard.
Unprecedented number of France’s nuclear reactors to go offline, and strikes continue.
From Feb. 6, six French reactors will have started 2021 maintenance, with five more to come this month, an unprecedented 11 reactors starting maintenance before March.
Reactors set for 10-year overhauls in 2021…………
S&P Global Platts Analytics assumes February output to average around 46 GW, a new record low for that month, before recovering above last year’s monthly averages………
wo strikes, an incident at Paluel and a return to milder and at times windy weather affected nuclear output in the second half of January.
Strikes continue
Another 24-hour strike was scheduled to start Feb. 9 at 2000 GMT, EDF said on its transparency website Feb. 4.
EDF workers are protesting against planned restructuring of the French state-owned utility, splitting nuclear and other operations.
Ongoing discussions with the European Commission about the details of the planned reform of the ARENH price mechanism have delayed a first presentation of those plans envisaged in January.
EDF currently has to sell 100 TWh of nuclear generation at Eur42/MWh to domestic suppliers.
The reform aims to lift prices as well as volumes………. https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/020521-french-nuclear-retreats-from-12-month-high-amid-early-start-to-2021-maintenance
Unusually damaging Mw 4.9 earthquake near several French nuclear reactors
industrial region that hosts several operating nuclear power plants.
about 1 km. Here we use far-field seismological observations to
demonstrate that the rupture properties are consistent with those commonly
observed for large deeper earthquakes.
sensors in the fault vicinity, we perform numerical predictions of the
ground acceleration on a virtual array of near-fault stations. These
predictions are in agreement with independent quantitative estimations of
ground acceleration from in-situ observations of displaced objects. Both
numerical and in-situ analyses converge toward estimates of an exceptional
level of ground acceleration in the fault vicinity, that locally exceeded
gravity, and explain the unexpectedly significant damage.
French parliamentarians nominate Julian Assange for Nobel Peace Prize
A Nobel Peace Prize for Julian Assange! https://melenchon.fr/2021/01/28/un-prix-nobel-de-la-paix-pour-julien-assange/ Thursday 28 January 2021, I decided to nominate journalist Julian Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize, as I have the power to do as a parliamentarian. Julian Assange is a hero of freedom. The WikiLeaks initiative has raised awareness of war crimes and serious human rights abuses. It is right that the peoples of the world express their gratitude to him.
- Several other rebellious parliamentarians will share this process with me. I thus continue my fight for Assange’s freedom. After going to see him in London in 2012, after having held a videoconference meeting with him in 2013, I asked for political asylum in France in 2019 then 2020. At the time, the Minister of Justice Dupont- Moretti made the same request. Julian Assange served France, including revealing the spying on three Presidents by the United States.
- I call on all French parliamentarians to in turn commit to having the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Julian Assange.
Use of illegal workers at France’s Flamanville nuclear site.
Mediapart 14th Jan 2021, After having exhausted all possible remedies, Bouygues is definitively convicted of having used on a large scale undeclared employees on the site of the EPR of Flamanville (Manche).
In a judgment delivered Tuesday, January 12, the Court of Cassation rejected the requests of the
French public works giant and two of its satellites. Through them, Bouygueshad illegally employed at least 460 Romanian and Polish workers between 2008 and 2012, on this site of the new generation reactor, essential for EDF (owner of the site) and Areva (which ensures the construction).
Acrimed 29th Jan 2021
https://www.acrimed.org/EPR-de-Flamanville-la-condamnation-de-Bouygues
Should France extend the life of its oldest nuclear reactors?
Le Monde 22nd Jan 2021, Should France extend the life of its oldest nuclear reactors? It is the
will of the government and EDF, which postponed to 2035 the drop in the
share of atoms in electricity production. The Nuclear Safety Authority
(ASN) launched a consultation in December 2020 to regulate this possible
extension of the reactors . For Bernard Laponche, nuclear physicist, former
member of the Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission and
co-founder of the association of scientists Global Chance, EDF does not
have the capacity to ensure these improvements necessary for safety on
time. He calls for the early closure of some reactors in order to continue
to ensure the proper functioning of others.
EDF collapses on the stock market amid difficult negotiations in Brussels.
Le Monde 25th Jan 2021, EDF collapses on the stock market amid difficult negotiations in Brussels.
The French group is engaged in a vast reorganization project, contested by the company’s unions. EDF is the largest nuclear operator in Europe and one of the main electricity producers in the world, but a few lines were enough to make its value skid on the stock market on Monday January 25.
In an article published on the BFM Business website on Monday morning, the channel said that negotiations between Paris and Brussels on one of the key points of the French nuclear reform are failing. In a few minutes, the group’s action collapsed and lost up to 18% in the afternoon to close at -15%.
A day of tumbling stopped at the last minute by an intervention from Bercy, who did everything to deny the failure of the negotiations. To understand this dark day for the company, we must return to the very subject of negotiations. For months, France has been pleading with the
European Commission for a reform of the complex system which requires EDF to resell part of its production to its competitors. Set up in 2011, this mechanism called “regulated access to historic nuclear electricity” (Arenh) forces the energy company to resell a quarter of its nuclear
production at a fixed price – this tariff is set at 42 euros per megawatt hour.
Investigation of Algerians affected by France’s nuclear bomb tests
Le Monde 20th Jan 2021, At the heart of Franco-Algerian memory: the fight against those irradiated from the Sahara. This January 20, historian Benjamin Stora submits to the
President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, his report on Franco-Algerian memory. The nuclear tests carried out until 1966 in the Sahara are one of the disputes between the two countries. Investigation.
Serious shortcomings in the file on Bure (Meuse) underground nuclear waste storage
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Actu Environnement 19th Jan 2021, In a notice published on January 18, the Environmental Authority (Ae) points to serious shortcomings in the file of the underground radioactive waste storage center (Cigéo) in Bure (Meuse). The opinion relates more particularly to the “very detailed” environmental assessment carried out by Andra as part of the project’s declaration of public utility (DUP) file. T The DUP should make it possible to ensure the land control of the project on a surface of 665 hectares, allowing if necessary expropriations, to carry out the compliance of the town planning documents and to ” legitimize politically ” the realization of the project.
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Radioactive releases from the Golfech nuclear power plant accumulate downstream
20minutes 19th Jan 2021, A study by Criirad, an independent laboratory, shows that radioactive releases from the Golfech nuclear power plant accumulate downstream in the
Garonne. The presence of tritium or carbon 14 in aquatic plants remains
below regulatory standards. For environmental protection associations, the
accumulation of this radioactive waste, whose longevity is important, poses
a problem.
The hidden costs of France’s old, past-their-use-by-date nuclear reactors
Ian Fairlie’s Blog 16th Jan 2021, In early 2019, four French EDF scientists wrote a 22 page report on load following in French nuclear reactors. The English version was first published on April 1 2020 but this has only recently been brought to my attention (ie mid Jan 2021).
This report is instructive and worrying, and requires careful reading. In essence, it discusses how French nuclear engineers have managed to retrofit and configure France’s reactors so that they can follow the diurnal loads increasingly required by France’s electricity needs.
It should be borne in mind that EDF’s 58 nuclear reactors are very old and past their sell-by dates. Most are between 30 and 40 years old with an average age of 33 years in 2018.
Some background is necessary to explain why this report was written. French reactors have been
operating since the 1980s. Since their gross output has usually exceeded French domestic requirements, especially at night, much is exported to France’s neighbours i.e. UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Spain.
Large amounts were until recently also sent to large pumped storage schemes in Switzerland at night. These transfers have been at a considerable financial loss to EDF and the French Treasury as the prices for such supplies are understood to be low. In addition, during the day, France imports significant amounts of electricity- mainly from the renewables in Germany.
https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/french-report-nuclear-power-plant-flexibility-at-edf/
France says Iran is building nuclear weapons capacity, urgent to revive 2015 deal
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France says Iran is building nuclear weapons capacity, urgent to revive 2015 deal, ABC, 17 Jan 21, Iran is in the process of building up its nuclear weapons capacity and it is urgent that Tehran and Washington return to a 2015 nuclear agreement, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has said.
Key points:
Iran has been accelerating its breaches of the nuclear deal and earlier this month started pressing ahead with plans to enrich uranium to 20 per cent fissile strength at its underground Fordow nuclear plant. That is the level Tehran achieved before striking the deal with world powers to contain its disputed nuclear ambitions. The Islamic Republic’s breaches of the nuclear agreement since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States in 2018 and subsequently imposed sanctions on Tehran may complicate efforts by president-elect Joe Biden, who takes office on January 20, to rejoin the pact………. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-17/french-minister-says-iran-is-building-nuclear-weapons-capacity/13064994 |
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Government control over nuclear and radiation information; firing of sociologist Christine Fassert
Le Monde 6th Jan 2021, Nuclear researchers worried after Fukushima specialist fired. The Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) firmly denies having fired sociologist Christine Fassert because of the results of her work.
Is the independence of nuclear social science research weakened? After the dismissal of Christine Fassert by the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), a dozen French and foreign researchers are worried about a “resumption of control” over the production of nuclear knowledge, in a column in the World published Wednesday January 6.
France’s declining nuclear production
Les Echos 4th Jan 2021, Nuclear: EDF production at its lowest for nearly thirty years. The year
2020 was marked by extremely low nuclear production, very slightly above
335 TWh. The impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the maintenance of power
plants and the extent of the work already in progress explain this
situation, which should continue in 2021 and 2022.
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25 June- THE PUKE ON NUKES
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From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
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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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