Never mind about sanctions – Russia’s export of nuclear products and services is soaring
Russia’s state nuclear energy company Rosatom expects its exports to have
increased by 15% this year, chief executive Alexey Likhachev was quoted as
saying by Russian newspaper Izvestia on Monday. Rosatom’s portfolio of
foreign orders is set to remain stable at $200 billion, “even in the
current geopolitical situation,” Likhachev said.
Supply of Rosatom products and services abroad is expected to top $10 billion this year, the
top executive of Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation said. The rise
in exports this year is due to contracts Rosatom was already implementing,
as well as its supplying of fuel, conversion services, and enriched uranium
products, according to Likhachev.
Rosatom has avoided sanctions since
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because of its importance in the supply chain
of the global nuclear power industry. Yet, many Western governments and
customers have been looking to procure alternative nuclear fuel supply,
where possible, so as not to rely on a Russian state corporation for part
of their energy needs.
Oil Price 26th Dec 2022
Zelensky’s diaspora delegation led by economic hit-woman who led plunder of Ukraine
the conflict with Russia has provided Zelensky with justification to strip 70 percent of Ukraine’s workers of collective bargaining rights and arrest everyone from his political rivals to socialist organizers – a wave of repression
With tens of billions more on the way to Ukraine, the country’s debt to international creditors continues to grow, setting the stage for another crushing wave of austerity after the war. The diaspora operatives I encountered on their way into the Capitol gallery appeared poised to guide the plunder from the comfort of suburban America.
The Grayzone, MAX BLUMENTHAL·DECEMBER 23, 2022 The Grayzone intercepted Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukrainian diaspora delegation outside the US Capitol and encountered Natalie Jaresko, the corporate operative who helped guide Wall Street’s pillaging from Kiev to Puerto Rico. Jaresko indignantly justified Zelensky’s banning of his political rivals as a necessary wartime measure.
Steel fencing and police barricades ringed the perimeter of the US Capitol Building hours ahead of the arrival of Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian president appeared in Washington DC in the early afternoon on December 21, 2022, emerging from a US military jet clad in an olive drab sweatshirt and cargo pants, and charged with a singular mission:
convince Congress and the Biden administration to send his government more than the whopping $45 billion in military and humanitarian aid it had already allocated for 2023.
Just outside the police barricades, at the eastern side of the Capitol grounds, as a demonstration by a small but dedicated group of antiwar activists wound down, a group of around 20 Ukrainians in dark business attire gathered for a photo. They were on their way into the Capitol, where they were to function as Zelensky’s personal cheering section, representing the Ukrainian diaspora before a nationally televised audience.
I approached members of the delegation to challenge them on Zelensky’s lobbying push and the planned expansion of the NATO proxy war he is leading against Russia. My questions were met with a torrent of worn-out talking points about Ukraine’s crusade to defend democracy, accusations that Moscow was sponsoring my reporting, and a complaint that $45 billion in US aid was too little.
Several of the Ukrainian delegates I encountered on the way into the US Capitol happened to have played significant roles in the transformation of Ukraine from a neutral state into a hyper-militarized vassal of the US and the IMF.
The most voluble among them, acting as a de facto spokesperson for the group, was Natalie Jaresko. A Ukrainian-American financial industry operative, Jaresko presided over several IMF austerity packages and the rampant privatization of Ukraine’s economy as the country’s Minister of Finance in its post-coup government.
The economic hit-woman
In our exchange, Jaresko unabashedly defended Zelensky’s outlawing of 11 opposition political parties, his banning of opposition media, and his plans to blacklist the Russian wing of the Orthodox Church. “It’s martial law!” Jaresko exclaimed, justifying Kiev’s authoritarian crackdown as a necessary wartime measure.
Jaresko has seen the corruption and de-democratization of Ukraine from within. She helped open up the country’s economy to Western multinationals after being appointed to the Foreign Investors Advisory Council of Victor Yuschenko, a neoliberal president who gained power thanks to the “Orange Revolution” backed by US intelligence and Western-aligned oligarchs George Soros and Boris Berisovsky in 2005.
Under Yuschenko’s reign, Ukraine’s government officially heroized the World War Two-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. During our exchange, Jaresko deflected when asked if she supported Bandera. However, her brother, John, has presided over the construction of a memorial in Bloomingdale, New Jersey to “Heroes of Ukraine” including World War Two-era Nazi collaborators, according to researcher Moss Robeson.
Nine years later, following the Euromaidan coup also engineered by Washington, Jaresko rose to Minister of Finance. She was granted Ukrainian citizenship on the day of her appointment.
Through her new post, Jaresko assumed control of Datagroup, the company that oversees Ukraine’s telecom sector. As former investment executive Tim Duff recounted, Jaresko “immediately proceeded to squeeze her competitor, the owner of Datagroup, out of business using the kind of foreign currency loan debt scam favored by Mafia hoods and economic hitmen employed by the CIA.”
While in Kiev, steering the government alongside a cadre of Ukrainian-American operatives, Jaresko grumbled about her salary while angling for opportunities to supplement it. In a withering analysis of her financial self-dealing, the late investigative journalist Robert Parry found that Jaresko “collected $1.77 million in bonuses from a U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund where her annual compensation was supposed to be limited to $150,000”
As Jaresko lapped up praise from Beltway corporate media, the NATO-sponsored Atlantic Council that employed her as a visiting fellow acknowledged that under her watch, “the average monthly wage in Ukraine is only $194, an inflation rate of 55 percent is decimating citizens’ purchasing power, and a painful IMF-mandated austerity program involving sweeping cuts to social programs is being implemented.”
In 2017, Jaresko was rewarded with an appointment and $625,000 salary as director of Promesa, the unelected US board charged with restructuring Puerto Rico’s debt – and which average Puerto Ricans refer to derisively as “La Junta.” Jaresko resigned rom her position this April after leaving Puerto Rico’s economy firmly in the hands of Wall Street creditors.
The all-encompassing shock therapy that Jaresko prescribed from Puerto Rico to Ukraine was only possible thanks to society-wide disasters. In San Juan, it was Hurricane Maria that placed neoliberal capitalism on overdrive; in Kiev, it was a coup and a proxy war. Indeed, the conflict with Russia has provided Zelensky with justification to strip 70 percent of Ukraine’s workers of collective bargaining rights and arrest everyone from his political rivals to socialist organizers – a wave of repression that Jaresko explicitly justified in her exchange with me.
The Ukrainian president accompanied his Pinochet-style crackdown with an appeal this October at the NYSE Stock Exchange for multinational corporations to deepen their exploitation of his country’s economy and resources. As The Grayzone’s Alex Rubinstein reported, Zelensky’s foreign investment initiative plastered the word “deregulation” across the homepage of its website.
The diaspora lobbyist
As I challenged the Ukrainian delegation on the nearly $100 billion of military aid the US has forked over to Kiev, a bespectacled middle-aged man interjected, demanding to know why I supposedly supported an “unprovoked” assault on an “innocent people.”
I countered that I opposed the Ukrainian military’s 8-year-long attack on the ethnic Russian population of Donetsk and Lugansk, where thousands had been killed before the Russian military ever entered Ukraine in February 2022. I then asked the indignant character if he also opposed the shelling of civilians in the eastern republics.
His reply came in the form of a firm “no!”
That person turns out to be a member of the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe named Orest Deychakiwsky. His commission is charged with monitoring Ukrainian compliance with OSCE commitments, including those Kiev made – and relentlessly violated –– to the Minsk Accords. As former German Chancellor Angela Merkel confessed this December, Ukraine’s Western backers used the Minsk Accords as a stalling tactic to prepare it for military conflict with Russia………………………………..
“We’re gonna send a lot more!”
With tens of billions more on the way to Ukraine, the country’s debt to international creditors continues to grow, setting the stage for another crushing wave of austerity after the war. The diaspora operatives I encountered on their way into the Capitol gallery appeared poised to guide the plunder from the comfort of suburban America.
In the meantime, lawmakers from both parties can hardly contain their exuberance for expanding the proxy war. As one of the energy industry’s favorite senators, Democrat Joe Manchin, exclaimed when I asked him on a sidewalk outside the Capitol about the billions in military aid on the way to Ukraine, “We’re gonna send a lot more. I’m all in!” https://thegrayzone.com/2022/12/23/zelenskys-diaspora-hit-woman-ukraine/
Highland campaigners ‘disturbed and disappointed’ to learn 15 radioactive particles discovered near Dounreay
Campaigners have expressed their disappointment in learning that 15
radioactive particles were discovered near Dounreay earlier this year. The
particles were found between February and March on the Dounreay shoreline
and Sandside beach, with 73% of them being described as “significant”.
Highlands Against Nuclear Transport (HANT) and the Scottish Nuclear Free
Local Authorities (NFLA) claim this information was spread through the
press rather than properly shared at a meeting of the Dounreay Stakeholder
Group. Both groups have joined forces to seek answers from Dounreay bosses
and to dispel “sketchy” and “incomplete” information.
Press & Journal 20th Dec 2022
Trawsfynydd as a nuclear waste dump?
Low levels of radioactive waste could be buried at the site of a former
nuclear power station, under new plans. Magnox, owner of the Trawsfynydd
site in Gwynedd, said it was considering burying some of the waste below
ground and capping it with concrete. The company described the proposal as
“unordinary” and said it was one of two options being looked at.
Anti-nuclear group Cadno said it would cause “serious safety issues” and
wants the waste stored safely above ground. Trawsfynydd stopped generating
electricity in 1991 after operating for 25 years and is in the long process
of being decommissioned.
BBC 23rd Dec 2022
Ukraine: * Congress as War Prop * Christmas Truce
FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu
Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. His books include Foundations of World Order (Duke University Press).
Following Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech to Congress, Boyle said today: “As after 9/11 when Congress gave Bush the AUMF (which is scandalously still in effect), Congress now is acting as a rubber stamp for perpetual funding for war against Russia.” (See below.)
Boyle pointed to a host of legal and other major problems with the U.S. approach including: “The posture of Biden and the Congress plays directly into the Russian narrative: They are at war with NATO. This escalates the risks of nuclear war.
“This is fueled by absurd historical analogies with Churchill, FDR, and the Battle of the Bulge. This is manufacturing consent for war against Russia.
“The just-announced ‘Patriot missiles’ to Ukraine are not only defensive as many have claimed. They are a step to establishing a No Fly Zone over all of Ukraine including Crimea and Donbass as well as over parts of Western Russia itself. Existentially dangerous.”
Rev. GRAYLAN HAGLER, gshagler@verizon.net, @Graylanhagler
Hagler is pastor emeritus, Plymouth United Church of Christ, Washington, D.C. and a senior advisor to the Fellowship of Reconciliation, USA. He is one of 1000 religious leaders calling for a Christmas truce in Ukraine, see video.
The Wall Street Journal reports: “The spending bill unveiled Tuesday includes an additional $44.9 billion in aid to help Ukraine and North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.” Spending so far totals $100 billion. Meanwhile, AP reports: “Millions to lose Medicaid coverage under Congress’ plan.” The Washington Post reports: “Handmade blankets for homeless crafted with ‘love’ come to Capitol Hill.”
How Ukraine’s Jewish president Zelensky made peace with neo-Nazi paramilitaries on front lines of war with Russia
In its bid to deflect from the influence of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine, US media has found its most effective PR tool in the figure of Zelensky, a former TV star and comedian from a Jewish background. It is a role the actor-turned-politician has eagerly assumed.
But as we will see, Zelensky has not only ceded ground to the neo-Nazis in his midst, he has entrusted them with a front line role in his country’s war against pro-Russian and Russian forces.
The Grayzone, ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN AND MAX BLUMENTHAL·MARCH 4, 2022
While Western media deploys Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jewish heritage to refute accusations of Nazi influence in Ukraine, the president has ceded to neo-Nazi forces and now depends on them as front line fighters.
Back in October 2019, as the war in eastern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Zolote, a town situated firmly in the “gray zone” of Donbas, where over 14,000 had been killed, mostly on the pro-Russian side. There, the president encountered the hardened veterans of extreme right paramilitary units keeping up the fight against separatists just a few miles away.
Elected on a platform of de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.
In a face-to-face confrontation with militants from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation,” Zelensky encountered a wall of obstinacy.
With appeals for disengagement from the frontlines firmly rejected, Zelensky melted down on camera. “I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons,” Zelensky implored the fighters.
Once video of the stormy confrontation spread across Ukrainian social media channels, Zelensky became the target of an angry backlash.
Andriy Biletsky, the proudly fascist Azov Battalion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen”, vowed to bring thousands of fighters to Zolote if Zelensky pressed any further. Meanwhile, a parliamentarian from the party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko openly fantasized about Zelensky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.
Though Zelensky achieved a minor disengagement, the neo-Nazi paramilitaries escalated their “No Capitulation” campaign. And within months, fighting began to heat up again in Zolote, sparking a new cycle of violations of the Minsk Agreement.
By this point, Azov had been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military and its street vigilante wing, known as the National Corps, was deployed across the country under the watch of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, and alongside the National Police. In December 2021, Zelensky would be seen delivering a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascistic Right Sector in a ceremony in Ukraine’s parliament.
A full-scale conflict with Russia was approaching, and the distance between Zelensky and the extremist paramilitaries was closing fast.
This February 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukrainian territory on a stated mission to “demilitarize and denazify” the country, US media embarked on a mission of its own: to deny the power of neo-Nazi paramilitaries over the country’s military and political sphere. As the US government-funded National Public Radio insisted, “Putin’s language [about denazification] is offensive and factually wrong.”
In its bid to deflect from the influence of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine, US media has found its most effective PR tool in the figure of Zelensky, a former TV star and comedian from a Jewish background. It is a role the actor-turned-politician has eagerly assumed.
But as we will see, Zelensky has not only ceded ground to the neo-Nazis in his midst, he has entrusted them with a front line role in his country’s war against pro-Russian and Russian forces.
The president’s Jewishness as Western media PR device
Hours before President Putin’s February 24 speech declaring denazification as the goal of Russian operations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “asked how a people who lost eight million of its citizens fighting Nazis could support Nazism,” according to the BBC.
Raised in a non-religious Jewish family in the Soviet Union during the 1980’s, Zelensky has downplayed his heritage in the past. “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he joked during a 2019 interview in which he declined to go into further detail about his religious background.
Today, as Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion, Zelensky is no longer ashamed to broadcast his Jewishness. “How could I be a Nazi?” he wondered aloud during a public address. For a US media engaged in an all-out information war against Russia, the president’s Jewish background has become an essential public relations tool.
A few examples of the US media’s deployment of Zelensky as a shield against allegations of rampant Nazism in Ukraine are below (see mash-up above [on original] for video ): ………………………………….
Behind the corporate media spin lies the complex and increasingly close relationship Zelensky’s administration has enjoyed with the neo-Nazi forces invested with key military and political posts by the Ukrainian state, and the power these open fascists have enjoyed since Washington installed a Western-aligned regime through a coup in 2014.
In fact, Zelensky’s top financial backer, the Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, has been a key benefactor of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and other extremists militias.
Backed by Zelensky’s top financier, neo-Nazi militants unleash a wave of intimidation
Incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, the Azov Battalion is considered the most ideologically zealous and militarily motivated unit fighting pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region.
With Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel insignia on the uniforms of its fighters, who have been photographed with Nazi SS symbols on their helmets, Azov “is known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology…[and] is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing US-based white supremacy organizations,” according to an FBI indictment of several US white nationalists that traveled to Kiev to train with Azov.
Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian energy baron of Jewish heritage, has been a top funder of Azov since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions, and has deployed them as a personal thug squad to protect his financial interests.
In 2019, Kolomoisky emerged as the top backer of Zelensky’s presidential bid. Though Zelensky made anti-corruption the signature issue of his campaign, the Pandora Papers exposed him and members of his inner circle stashing large payments from Kolomoisky in a shadowy web of offshore accounts.
When Zelensky took office in May 2019, the Azov Battalion maintained de facto control of the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol and its surrounding villages. As Open Democracy noted, “Azov has certainly established political control of the streets in Mariupol. To maintain this control, they have to react violently, even if not officially, to any public event which diverges sufficiently from their political agenda.”
Attacks by Azov in Mariupol have included assaults on “feminists and liberals” marching on International Women’s Day among other incidents……………………………
Zelensky failed to rein in neo-Nazis, wound up collaborating with them
Following his failed attempt to demobilize neo-Nazi militants in the town of Zolote in October 2019, Zelensky called the fighters to the table, telling reporters “I met with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there – the National Corps, Azov, and everyone else.”
A few seats away from the Jewish president was Yehven Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang.
During the Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” that ousted Ukraine’s elected president in 2014, C14 activists took over Kiev’s city hall and plastered its walls with neo-Nazi insignia before taking shelter in the Canadian embassy.
As the former youth wing of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, C14 appears to draw its name from the infamous 14 words of US neo-Nazi leader David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”………………………………………………..
Throughout 2019, Zelensky and his administration deepened their ties with ultra-nationalist elements across Ukraine…………………………………………………………
In November 2021, one of Ukraine’s most prominent ultra-nationalist militiamen, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yarosh is an avowed follower of the Nazi collaborator Bandera who led Right Sector from 2013 to 2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine…………………………………….
Ukrainian state-backed neo-Nazi leader flaunts influence on the eve of war with Russia
On February 5, 2022, only days before full-scale war with Russia erupted, Yevhen Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 delivered a stem-winding public address in Kiev intended to highlight the influence his organization and others like it enjoyed over Ukrainian politics………………………………….
“If we get killed…we died fighting a holy war”
…………………………………… With fighting underway, Azov’s National Corps gathered hundreds of ordinary civilians, including grandmothers and children, to train in public squares and warehouses from Kharviv to Kiev to Lviv.
On February 27, the official Twitter account of the National Guard of Ukraine posted video of “Azov Fighters” greasing their bullets with pig fat to humiliate Russian Muslim fighters from Chechnya.
…………………… Besides authorizing the release of hardcore criminals to join the battle against Russia, Zelensky has ordered all males of fighting age to remain in the country. Azov militants have proceeded to enforce the policy by brutalizing civilians attempting to flee from the fighting around Mariupol.
According to one Greek resident in Mariupol recently interviewed by a Greek news station, “When you try to leave you run the risk of running into a patrol of the Ukrainian fascists, the Azov Battalion,” he said, adding “they would kill me and are responsible for everything.”
Footage posted online appears to show uniformed members of a fascist Ukrainian militia in Mariupol violently pulling fleeing residents out of their vehicles at gunpoint.
Other video filmed at checkpoints around Mariupol showed Azov fighters shooting and killing civilians attempting to flee.
On March 1, Zelensky replaced the regional administrator of Odessa with Maksym Marchenko, a former commander of the extreme right Aidar Battalion, which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Donbass region.
Meanwhile, as a massive convoy of Russian armored vehicles bore down on Kiev, Yehven Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 posted a video on YouTube from inside a vehicle presumably transporting fighters.
“If we get killed, it’s fucking great because it means we died fighting a holy war,” Karas exclaimed. ”If we survive, it’s going to be even fucking better! That’s why I don’t see a downside to this, only upside!”
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/04/nazis-ukrainian-war-russia/
Zelensky’s ‘Hollywood-style’ US visit a ‘proxy war’ promotion
Rt.com 23 Dec 22
Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, has accused Washington of waging a “proxy war” against Moscow, saying that all the statements and declarations made during Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s visit only further prove that the Biden administration is not interested in a peaceful settlement…………
The ambassador specifically noted the US pledge to supply Kiev with Patriot air defense missiles, warning that such weapons and their crews would be legitimate targets for the Russian military. He also slammed the growing speculation about deliveries of ATACMS missiles and long-range attack drones……
Moscow has repeatedly tried to “appeal to common sense at all levels,” the diplomat said, stressing that shipments of increasingly modern and long-range weapons and other provocative actions by the US and its allies are leading to an escalation, with consequences “impossible to even imagine.” https://www.rt.com/russia/568712-washington-zelensky-ambassador-antonov/
Macron ‘panicking’ as France faces ‘catastrophic’ nuclear energy crisis, expert claims
France is in a catastrophic situation in terms of the vast debt that it owes in nuclear and the existential waste and decommissioning problem that it is facing
A record number of France’s 56 nuclear reactors have gone offline, sparking serious concerns over energy security across the Channel.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1713491/macron-france-nuclear-energy-edf-crisis By JACOB PAUL, Dec 23, 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron is said to be in a “panic” as the issues with France’s ageing nuclear reactors have laid bare the flaws in the country’s energy plans, an expert has told Express.co.uk. Sixteen out France’s 56 nuclear reactors are currently offline due to corrosion and maintenance issues, sending its normal power output levels plummeting in recent months. Prior to these problems, France’s nuclear fleet generated 70 percent of the country’s electricity.
According to Dr Paul Dorfman, a nuclear expert from the University of Sussex, France’s “chickens are coming home to roost” as the decision to rely so heavily on nuclear is appearing to backfire, with further delays to repairs also announced this week.
He said: “France was nuclear power excellence, post-war all buffed up with power – it said it was going to be the top dogs. So it had a vast quantity of nuclear reactors dotted all around France. But what is happening now is that its chickens are coming home to roost.
“EDF (owned by the French state) is 43billion euros in debt, it faces a 100billion euro bill for mandatory safety upgrades, and a significant number of its reactors continue to be offline due to ageing corrosion problems. It also faces a huge decommissioning and waste management bill that is uncosted – they are just beginning to say ‘oh my god’.
“Around a quarter of their reactors are still offline at winter when they really need it. They are even importing power from Germany after being a net exporter. France is panicking about what to do about renewables and insulation.”
But all this could be of concern for Britain, which does rely on some French imports that are sent across the Channel via interconnectors. National Grid has previously warned that if the UK fails to shore up enough energy imports from Europe this winter, it may have to roll out organised blackouts in the “deepest, darkest” nights of the coldest months of the year.
However, while France’s nuclear power issues have sparked concern, Dr Dorfman said the UK is luckier than France in that it is one of the leading players in offshore wind, which could provide a vital lifeline this winter.
He said: “The UK has seriously thought about renewables in the last few years, without any question. But there have been problems with onshore wind and legislation issues. There also problems with the legislation for solar, but offshore wind has helped enormously. But the UK hasn’t really considered about the lowest hanging through which is energy efficiency and insulation.”
When asked whether the UK is lucky that it has not copied the French model, Dr Dorfman responded: “We are hugely lucky. France is in a catastrophic situation in terms of the vast debt that it owes in nuclear and the existential waste and decommissioning problem that it is facing…The UK is certainly in a better position in terms of offshore windpower, but it needs to get its act together in terms of allowing much greater onshore wind and much greater solar…and all the things that make up a balanced energy portfolio.
“France is not going to change, the reactors are not going to get any younger. Rumour has it, the corrosion issues have been known about for years. Because it takes so long to build reactors, you can’t expect new builds to happen within a decade or two decades.
“Nobody knows what is going to happen with Russia. All we know amongst all this mess is that renewables cost between a quarter and a fifth less than nuclear and that the vast majority of all new power additions worldwide is renewables.”
This comes as analysis by leading renewable energy trade bodies revealed that low carbon power reportedly met more than half of the UK’s electricity needs over the past two months. Renewable UK, the Nuclear Industry Association found that between the end of October and December 18, clean energy sources like wind and solar provided 40 percent of the country’s electricity, while nuclear power plants accounted for 14 percent of demand.
The power that came from both offshore and onshore wind turbines alone generated more than half of Britain’s low carbon power output over the period, while nuclear supplied 27 percent.
European NATO members should reduce reliance on US – Macron
https://www.rt.com/news/568736-european-nato-reliance-macron/ 23 Dec 22, The countries should bolster their own defense to become less dependent on both the bloc and Washington, the French president says.
French President Emmanuel Macron has said European NATO members should become more autonomous and less dependent on the US-led alliance regarding their own security. He made the remarks late Wednesday, as he spoke to reporters in Paris after returning from a summit in Amman, Jordan.
“An alliance isn’t something I should depend on. It’s something that I should choose, something I work with,” Macron stated. “We must rethink our strategic autonomy.”
Macron identified “technology and defense capabilities” as areas in which European nations should seek to reduce their dependence on the alliance, and the US in particular. He added, however, that member states should not endeavor to break away from the bloc or develop an alternative to it.
“There is no European security architecture without strategic autonomy, inside NATO and with NATO, but not dependent on NATO,” he said.
Macron also touched upon the ongoing hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, in which the latter has received wide-ranging Western support. While reiterating his support for the “absolute defense of Ukraine,” he said once again that Moscow’s security concerns should be also addressed.
“When I speak of guarantees, I’m talking about all of these countries, for us, but also for Russia,” Macron stated. “This means that one of the essential points we must address – as President Putin has always said – is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.”
In recent weeks, the French president has repeatedly said that the conflict must eventually end with negotiations, which should yield security guarantees for everyone, including Russia. This stance triggered a barrage of criticism from Ukraine and some EU nations, with Poland, Slovakia, and the Baltic states openly opposing Macron’s suggestion.
Russia has signaled on several occasions that it is ready to talk with Ukraine – and the West as a whole – while insisting that its own interests must be taken into account if negotiations are to occur. Moscow has blamed the lack of diplomatic efforts to end the conflict on Kiev. On Wednesday, the head of Russia’s Federation Council, Valentina Matvienko, said there is “no background for negotiations to take place in the near future: There is nothing [to discuss] and with no one.”
Senior officials in Kiev have repeatedly issued belligerent statements, with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky pledging to re-capture the former Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye – which joined Russia in early October – as well as Crimea, which broke away from Kiev in 2014. Zelensky has even ‘banned’ himself from negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Campaign groups want answers on increase in radioactive particles found onDounreay foreshore.
Highlands Against Nuclear Transport (HANT) and the
Nuclear Free Local Authorities Scottish Forum have written to site managing
director Mark Rouse and Nicole Paterson, the chief executive of the
Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa). The campaigners claim the
information about the particles is “sketchy, incomplete and out-of-date”
and want the Dounreay Stakeholder Group (DSG) and the local and national
press to receive regular reports about their detection and retrieval.
John O’Groat Journal 22nd Dec 2022
In a blow to France’s electricity supply, EDF extends maintenance at nuclear reactors
Electricite de France SA extended maintenance halts at two nuclear
reactors by more than four months, adding a strain on power supplies in
France and neighbouring countries.
The restart of EDF’s Penly-2 unit has
been delayed from Jan. 29 until June 11 while its Golfech-1 unit has been
pushed back to June 11 from Feb. 18, the utility said Monday in a message
on RTE’s transparency website.
The halt of the Chattenom-3 reactor is
prolonged by one month until March 26, and the restart of Civaux-2 is
postponed by more than a month until Feb. 19.
Longer-than-planned
maintenance halts and repairs of unexpected pipe cracks are curtailing
EDF’s nuclear output and turning France into a power importer when it’s
normally a key exporter.
The nation’s grid operator has warned of a
potential electricity shortfall in colder months as heating demand rises
while the utility grapples with the reactor repairs. EDF announced on
Friday the delayed the startup of a new nuclear reactor in western France
by several months into 2024 due to extended work. That project is already
more than a decade late.
Bloomberg 19th Dec 2022
Kremlin: “US & Russia On The Brink Of A Direct Clash” In Ukraine
BY TYLER DURDEN, https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/kremlin-us-russia-brink-direct-clash-ukraine 19 Dec 22
The Kremlin is urgently calling on Washington to avoid further escalation over its support to Ukraine’s military, on the same day that President Vladimir Putin made a rare state visit to neighboring Belarus, amid growing fears that Belarusian armed forces could enter the fighting in Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Monday that the United States’ “dangerous and short-sighted policy” has put it “on the brink of a direct clash” with Moscow, according to state media reports.
“It is the US’ desire to maintain American hegemony at all costs… as well as its arrogant unwillingness to engage in a serious dialogue on security guarantees” that led to the current crisis, she continued, in reference to Moscow’s last February pre-invasion appeal for “guarantees” that Ukraine would not enter NATO.
State media described the sharp words as a necessary reaction to US State Department Spokesman Ned Price’s recently placing sole blame on Moscow for the rapid deterioration in US-Russia relations. Price had characterized the current state of relations as “unstable and unpredictable”.
Zakharova continued in the Monday remarks: “After the high-profile fiasco in Afghanistan, America is increasingly drawn into a new conflict, not only supporting the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev financially and with weapons, but also increasing its military presence on the ground.” While not specifying the precise accusation regarding a US “presence on the ground” – this could be a reference to recent widespread reporting that US intelligence has expanded its role in helping the Ukrainians, especially with things like targeting.
“This is a dangerous and short-sighted policy that puts the US and Russia on the brink of a direct clash,” the FM spokesperson said further. “For its part, Moscow urges the Joe Biden administration to soberly assess the situation and not to unleash a spiral of dangerous escalation. We hope that they will hear us in Washington, though there is no reason for optimism so far.”
This month has witnessed multiple bombshell revelations concerning the Pentagon and US intelligence’s deepening role in Ukraine, including the following:
The White House is mulling the transfer of Patriot missiles to Ukraine.- The Pentagon is expanding its “on the ground” program of small troop units seeking to monitor and account for US arms transfers.
- Russia is increasingly coming up against US-supplied HIMARS missiles on the battlefield.
- The US has sent an infantry company to Estonia, close to the Russian border for joint drills.
- Calls have grown louder for NATO to “close the skies” over Ukraine, including with the potential transfer of warplanes.
- US intelligence has been assisting Ukrainians with targeting Russian generals.
- The White House has indicated it believes Ukraine’s forces are capable of retaking Crimea, but which would risk a nuclear response.
- Ukraine has increased high-risk attacks inside Russian territory.
Ukraine has also grown bolder in showing off its new American-supplied toys…
All of this and more strongly suggests to two sides are indeed inching toward direct showdown and clash, also as there still appears no appetite for so much as a plan even remotely on the horizon to get Kiev officials to the ceasefire negotiating table with Russia.
As for the ongoing speculation that Belarusian forces could enter the Ukraine conflict in support of Russia, top Russian officials are denying this “option”… for now at least.
Chinese nuclear company still has a stake in UK’s Hinkley Point C project, and approval to build Bradwell project.
Following mounting pressure from Washington, the UK decided to ban Huawei
and other vendors it considered to be a high security risk from its 5G
networks in 2020. In November, after months of prevaricating, the
Government blocked the sale of Newport Wafer Fab, the UK’s largest
semiconductor plant, to Chinese-owned Nexperia.
It also bought the Chinese
state-owned power group CGN out of its stake in the Sizewell C nuclear
energy project in Suffolk. Under a long-standing deal, CGN, which the US
placed on an export blacklist back in 2019 after Washington accused it of
stealing American know-how for military purposes, invested in Hinkley Point
C power station in Somerset; then Sizewell C, which has just been given the
green light; and is still technically due to be the lead investor at
Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex where it is hoping to instal its own design of
reactor.
The Chinese company still retains a stake in Hinkley Point and
received formal approval for Bradwell from the UK’s nuclear regulator in
February. But there is growing scepticism at Westminster that the Chinese
will ever be able to build on the site.
Telegraph 18th Dec 2022
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/12/18/how-foreign-states-raided-britains-crown-jewels/
Russia building giant dome over Europe’s largest nuclear plant’s spent fuel stores, to shield them from Ukrainian attacks
The structure will shield stores of spent radioactive fuel from Ukrainian attacks.
https://www.rt.com/russia/568415-zaporozhye-nuclear-dome-ukrain 18 Dec 22
Russia is constructing a protective dome over spent radioactive fuel stores at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant as Ukrainian forces continue to target the facility, senior regional official Vladimir Rogov has said.
He took to Telegram on Saturday to post a short video of the work that’s taking place. It showed technicians setting up shields over the tanks that hold spent nuclear fuel.
The dome is designed to protect the storage facilities from shrapnel and improvised explosive devices carried by drones, the official explained, adding that it would be reinforced further at a later period.
Russia’s nuclear energy corporation Rosatom had earlier warned that damage to the spent-fuel containers risks a release of radioactive material into the atmosphere, with unpredictable consequences.
The construction of the dome comes amid continued attacks on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant and the nearby town of Energodar, which Moscow blames on Kiev. Russia has repeatedly said that such strikes could result in a nuclear disaster that would eclipse the 1986 Chernobyl incident and affect many countries in Europe.
Ukraine initially claimed that the Russian military had been hitting the plant itself as part of “false-flag” operations to make Kiev look bad. However, Ukrainian general staff eventually admitted to striking the area around the nuclear facility.
The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which is the largest on the continent, has been under Russian control since February 28. All of the reactors at the facility are currently shut down due to the security situation.
Zaporozhye Region, together with three other former Ukrainian territories – Kherson Region and the People’s Republic of Donetsk and Lugnask – joined Russia in autumn after holding referendums.
Watchdog estimates civilian death toll from Ukrainian attacks on Donbass
https://www.rt.com/news/568395-us-troops-deployed-estonia/ 14 Dec 22, More than 4,500 people have been killed since mid-February, with supplies of NATO weapons resulting in a surge of deaths, observers claim.
Weapons supplied to Ukraine by NATO countries have allowed Kiev’s military to significantly ramp-up attacks on civilian targets in Donbass, a local watchdog has said.
The group claims that over 4,500 civilians have been killed and 4,000 injured since Ukrainian forces escalated shelling in mid-February.
Military terror has escalated beyond all limits after NATO members started supplying weapons to Ukraine,” the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC), a monitoring group that tracks attacks on the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, said on Wednesday.
“We have recorded a four-fold increase in the number of victims among the civilian population,” Natalya Shutkina, a representative from the Donetsk People’s Republic at the JCCC, said as quoted by TASS.
The JCCC held a press conference on Wednesday during which it showed fragments of Western shells and rockets collected after Ukrainian strikes in Donbass and explained the toll these attacks had taken.
Since February 17, 4,527 civilians have been killed, including 154 children, Shutkina stated. Another 4,317 civilians, including 274 children, have been injured, she said, adding that Ukrainian attacks have damaged over 12,000 homes, 128 medical facilities, and 67 sites required for providing basic utilities, such as water and heating.
The record-keeping begins in mid-February when the Donbass republics reported a significant escalation of strikes by Kiev in the lead-up to Russia having recognized the DPR and LPR as sovereign states and pledged to defend them. The two regions have since been incorporated into Russia following referendums in September.
Shutkina pointed out that the weapon systems provided by the US and its allies are supposed to be more accurate than the Soviet-era artillery guns and rocket launchers that Ukraine possessed previously. This leads the JCCC to believe that the Ukrainian attacks on civilian facilities have been intentional rather than being part of indiscriminate strikes, she stressed.
READ MORE: Children injured in Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk – authorities
Darya Morozova, the human rights ombudsman for the DPR, urged international organizations to acknowledge Kiev’s actions, arguing that “if the world community didn’t encourage the Ukrainian leadership with its inaction, the war in Donbass would have stopped a long time ago.” She called on Kiev’s sponsors to stop sending heavy weapons to Ukraine.
1 This Month
of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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