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“It is unacceptable that the EDF tariff reform is being adopted quietly, to the detriment of the users”

With electricity bills reaching record highs and 7 million people facing
energy poverty, it’s time to acknowledge the failure of a model. Twenty
years of brutal energy sector liberalization have failed to bring about
either lower prices or the investment promised by private operators in
exchange for regulated access to historical nuclear electricity (ARENH).

Created in 2011 to allow alternative suppliers to purchase EDF’s nuclear
production at a fixed and highly advantageous price, this mechanism was
supposed to generate sustainably competitive offers. On the contrary, it
has led to instability, private rent-seeking, industrial fragmentation, and
debt for EDF.

Le Monde 29th Oct 2025,
https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2025/10/29/il-est-inacceptable-que-la-reforme-des-tarifs-d-edf-soit-adoptee-discretement-au-detriment-des-usagers_6650111_3232.html

November 5, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, France | Leave a comment

Ministry of Defence still unclear on cost of RAF nuclear jet plan, MPs say

“Making short-term cost decisions is famously inadvisable if you’re a homeowner with a leaky roof, let alone if one is running a complex fighter jet programme – and yet such decisions have been rife in the management of the F-35.”

Sir Keir Starmer announced at the Nato summit in June that the UK would purchase 12 F-35A jets

Christopher McKeon, Friday 31 October 2025

Ministers still do not know when RAF jets will be able to carry nuclear weapons or how much the project will cost, the Commons spending watchdog has found.

In a report published on Friday, the influential Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had still not set out how much it would cost to operate new F-35A jets.

Sir Keir Starmer announced at the Nato summit in June that the UK would purchase 12 of the jets, which could join the alliance’s airborne nuclear mission.

The committee said the project was still “at an early stage”, with the MoD “starting to understand” the requirements of being certified for the Nato nuclear mission.

The MoD told the committee that the F-35As were “20 per cent to 25 per cent cheaper” than the F-35Bs currently operated by the RAF and Royal Navy “and slightly cheaper to support”.

But with the additional training and personnel required to join the nuclear mission, the committee said it was a “reasonable assumption that this may end up proving more expensive”.

The MPs added that the MoD had yet to set out how long it would take to make the necessary arrangements for equipping the jets with nuclear weapons.

The F-35 is the most advanced fighter jet the UK has ever possessed, and the MoD expects the overall programme to cost £57 billion over its 56-year lifespan.

That figure is already triple the original estimate, but the committee said it did not include the costs of personnel, infrastructure and fuel, with the National Audit Office (NAO) suggesting an overall cost of £71 billion.

In July, the NAO issued a wide-ranging criticism of the F-35 programme, saying its return on investment had been “disappointing” and its capability remained below the MoD’s expectations.

The watchdog also criticised severe personnel shortages and “short-term affordability decisions” that hindered the delivery of the aircraft and its full capabilities.

On Friday, the PAC reiterated many of these findings, accusing the MoD of “a pattern of short-term decision-making” that had led to increased costs.

The committee cited delays to investment in a facility to test the jet’s stealth capability, which saved £82 million in 2024-25 but added an extra £16 million to the overall cost; and delayed investment in infrastructure at 809 Naval Air Squadron until 2029, which both reduced capability and added almost £100 million in extra costs.

MPs also found the MoD had miscalculated the number of engineers needed per plane, as it had failed to take into account staff taking leave or performing other tasks.

And they questioned the department’s intention to declare the F-35 to be at full operating capability by the end of the year, despite still not having a missile to attack ground targets from a safe distance.

Committee chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: “Making short-term cost decisions is famously inadvisable if you’re a homeowner with a leaky roof, let alone if one is running a complex fighter jet programme – and yet such decisions have been rife in the management of the F-35.”

He added that the MoD had been “worryingly slow” to learn “basic lessons” from the project, and described its appraisal of the F-35’s overall cost as “unrealistic”.

Sir Geoffrey said: “The F-35 is the best fighter jet this nation has ever possessed. If it is to be wielded in the manner in which it deserves, the MoD must root out the short-termism, complacency and miscalculation in the programme identified in our report………………………….https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/raf-fighter-jets-f35a-nato-b2855616.html

November 5, 2025 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Officials launch investigation after hazardous incident at shut-down nuclear plant: ‘Deeply concerning’

A government investigation got underway after radioactive water leaked from Scotland’s Dounreay nuclear site. In June 2024, NRS alerted the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) to “a potential leak of radioactively contaminated water from a carbon bed filter on the Dounreay site,” an agency spokesperson described, according to The National, a Scottish paper.
SEPA later confirmed a “small leak” that released different radioactive
substances, including Caesium-137 and alpha-emitting radionuclides. While NRS reported no increase in groundwater radioactivity downstream of the event, SEPA found the company had breached regulations and ordered a full review of its monitoring systems.

The Cool Down 29th Oct 2025, https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/dounreay-nuclear-site-radioactive-water-leak/

November 5, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Starmer,Macron, Merz…3 unwise leaders degrading their economies while destroying Ukraine.

President Trump has largely ceased supplying weapons directly to Ukraine. But he’s cool about goosing US weapons builders’ profits by selling them to Europe’s Big 3 so they can take over squandering their treasure on an impossible, quixotic effort to defeat Russia.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL ,1 Nov 25

 The UK’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz are wildly unpopular. Starmer has the best approval rating at 13% followed by Macron at 11%. Merz is nearly invisible at 5%.

There are several reasons but likely tops is their insistence on continuing the lost US/NATO proxy war against Russia destroying Ukraine for nearly 4 years.

President Trump has largely ceased supplying weapons directly to Ukraine. But he’s cool about goosing US weapons builders’ profits by selling them to Europe’s Big 3 so they can take over squandering their treasure on an impossible, quixotic effort to defeat Russia. Trump, a realist on the war Biden made inevitable, wants out, not only on funding the war, but on endlessly funding Europe’s paranoia about a reconstituted Soviet empire. This is one foreign policy Trump is getting right.

Starmer, Macron and Merz are degrading their economies as they reduce critically needed social spending on the commons to fund a wildly unpopular war. No wonder far right, nationalistic political movements are nipping at their heels and may soon send them packing.

Europe has a pittance of America’s wealth to fund continuation of the war. Yet, the Starmer, Macron, Merz trio endlessly bleat that Ukraine can prevail, even get back its massive lost territory now forever part of Russia, if only they provide Ukraine more, more, more. They fear monger that Russia will come for them next unless they’re defeated in Ukraine. No responsible historian, political scientist or retired diplomat (without a job to protect) would support that delusional view.

Two things are certain. The economies and political stability of the UK, France, and Germany are being severely undermined by their leaders’ refusal to negotiate the war’s end, acknowledging Russia’s valid security concerns. Second, Ukraine descends deeper into failed state status, losing more cannon fodder and territory, every day the war grinds on.

What is not certain if Starmer, Macron and Merz do not come to their senses, is whether nuclear confrontation between Russia and NATO can be avoided. All 3 need to be forced to watch ‘Forrest Gump’ to learn that ‘Stupid is as stupid does.     

November 4, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Stealing $140 billion in Russian assets won’t change the outcome of the war in Ukraine.

while the determination of Ukraine to fight is unquestionable, the emotional belief in the west that this will overcome the enormous social and economic challenges the country faces in an extended attritional war with Russia is wildly misplaced.

A full 180 degree change in diplomatic course by Europe would require an acceptance that the war against Russia was unwinnable, and that Russia’s underlying concerns – namely Ukrainian neutrality – would finally have to be accepted as a political reality.

Better for EU leaders to accept this now although, of course, they won’t.

Ian Proud. Nov 01, 2025, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/stealing-140-billion-in-russian-assets?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=177688104&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Caught between a rock and a hard place, European leaders continue to deny the obvious realities of the dire situation in Ukraine, which will only worsen over time. Yet I see no evidence of any willingness to change course, despite the obvious political hazard they face and the increasingly grim forecast for Europe and for Ukraine should they continue to push an unwinnable war.

The war in Ukraine is now entirely dependent on the ability of European states to pay for it at a cost of at least $50bn per year, on the basis of Ukraine’s latest budget estimate for the 2026 fiscal year. Ukraine itself is bankrupt and has no access to other sources of external capital, beyond that provided by the governments sponsoring the ongoing war.

That then brings the conversation back to the expropriation of $140bn in assets currently frozen in Belgium which the Commission would like to use for a reconstruction loan. The term ‘reconstruction loan’ is itself disingenuous, on the basis that any expropriated Russian assets would not be used for reconstruction, but rather to fund the Ukrainian war effort. Indeed. Chancellor Merz of Germany recently suggested that the fund could allow Ukraine to keep fighting for another three years.

The most likely scenario, in the terrible eventuality that war in Ukraine did continue for another three years is that the Russian armed forces would almost certainly swallow up the whole of the Donbass region – comprising Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. This – Ukraine’s departure from the Donbas – appears to be the basis of President Putin’s conditions for ending the war now, together with a Ukrainian declaration of neutrality and giving up any NATO aspirations. More likely, the Russian Armed forces might also capture additional swathes of land in Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts, and also in Dnipropetrovsk, where they have made recent incursions.

So, there is a strong likelihood, at the currently slow pace of the war effort in which Russia claims small pieces of land on a weekly basis, that three years from now Ukraine would have to settle for a peace that was even more disadvantageous to it than that which is available now, having lost more land, together with potentially hundreds of thousands of troops killed or injured.

Logically, European policymakers would be able to look into the future to see this grim predicament with clear eyes and encourage Zelensky to settle for peace now.

But European policy is driven by two key considerations. Firstly, an emotional belief that an extended war might so weaken Russia that President Putin was forced to settle on unfavourable terms. The idea of a strategic defeat of Russia – which is often spoken by European politicians – however, doesn’t bear serious scrutiny.

Russia doesn’t face the same considerable social and financial challenges that Ukraine faces. Its population is much larger and a wider conscription of men into the Armed forces has not been needed – Russia can recruit sufficient new soldiers to fight and, indeed, has increased the size of its army since 2022. Ukraine continues to resort to forced mobilisation of men over the age of 25, often using extreme tactics that involve busifying young men against their will from the streets.

Critically, Russia could likely continue to prosecute the war on the current slow tempo for an extended period of time without the need for a wider mobilisation of young men, which may prove politically unpopular for President Putin domestically. Yet, the longer the war continues, Ukraine will come under increasing pressure, including from western allies, to deepen its mobilisation to capture young men below the age of 25 to shore up its heavily depleted armed forces on the front line.

There has been considerable resistance to this so far within Ukraine. Mobilising young men above the age of 22 would prove unpopular for President Zelensky but it would also worsen Ukraine’s already catastrophic demographic challenge: 40% of the working age population has already been lost, either through migration or through death on the front line and that number will continue to go south, the longer the war carries on.

Russia’s financial position is considerably stronger than Ukraine’s. It has very low levels of debt at around 15% of GDP and maintains a healthy current account surplus, despite a narrowing of the balance in the second quarter of 2025. Even if Europe expropriates its frozen assets, Russia still has a generous and growing stock of foreign exchange reserves to draw upon, which recently topped $700bn for the first time.

Russia’s military industrial complex continues to outperform western suppliers in the production of military equipment and munitions. In the currently unlikely event that Russia started to fall into the red in terms of its trade – what commentators in the west refer to as destroying Russia’s war economy – it would still have considerable scope to borrow from non-western lenders, given the strength of its links with the developing world, aided by the emergence of BRICS.

Ukraine is functionally bankrupt because it is unable to borrow from western capital markets, on account of its decision to pause all debt payments. With debt expected to reach 110% in 2025, even before consideration of any loan backed by frozen Russian assets, it depends entirely on handouts from the west. Ukraine’s trade balance has continued to worsen throughout the war, reinforcing its dependence on capital injections from the west to keep its foreign exchange reserves in the black.

So while the determination of Ukraine to fight is unquestionable, the emotional belief in the west that this will overcome the enormous social and economic challenges the country faces in an extended attritional war with Russia is wildly misplaced.

So, let’s look at the rational explanation for Europe’s continued willingness to prolong the fight in Ukraine. The uncomfortable truth is that Europe’s political leaders have boxed themselves into this position because of a hard boiled determination not to concede to Russia’s demands in any peace negotiations. Indeed, there is a steadfast and immovable objection to talking to Russia at all, which has been growing since 2014.

However, across much of Europe, the political arithmetic is turning against the pro-war establishment with nationalist, anti-war parties gaining ground in Central Europe, Germany, France, Britain and even in Poland. And despite positive overtures made by President Trump towards negotiation with President Putin, Trumpophobia provides another brake on the European political establishment shifting its position.

So, changing course now and entering into direct negotiations with Russia would have potentially catastrophic consequences, politically, for European leaders, which they must surely be aware of. A full 180 degree change in diplomatic course by Europe would require an acceptance that the war against Russia was unwinnable, and that Russia’s underlying concerns – namely Ukrainian neutrality – would finally have to be accepted as a political reality.

On this basis, European politicians would face the prospect of explaining to their increasingly sceptical voters that their strategy of defeating Russia had failed, having spent four years of war saying at all times that it would eventually succeed. And that would lead potentially to internationalist governments falling across Europe starting in two years when Poland and France will again go to the polls, and in 2029 when the British and German governments will face the voters.

There are deeper issues too. An end of war would accelerate the process of admitting Ukraine into the European Union with potentially disastrous consequences for the whole financial basis of Europe. The European Commission will face the prospect of accepting that a two-tier Europe is inevitable, admitting Ukraine as a member without the financial benefits received by existing member states; for probably understandable reasons, this would cause widespread resentment within Ukraine itself, having sacrificed so much blood to become European, precipitating widespread internal dissent and possibly conflict in a disgruntled country with an army of almost one million. Alternatively, the European Commission would need to redraw its budget and face huge resistance from existing Member States, who would lose billions of Euros each year in subsidies to Ukraine.

Caught between hoping for a strategic defeat of Russia which any rational observe can see is unlikely, and accepting the failure of their policy, causing a widespread loss of power and huge economic and political turmoil, Europe’s leaders are choosing to keep calm and carry on. If they had any sense, the likes of Von der Leyen, Merz, Starmer or Macron would change tack and pin their hopes on explaining away their failure before the political tide in Europe evicts them all from power. But I see no signs of them having the political acumen to do that. So we will continue to sit and wait, while storm clouds grow ever darker over Europe.

November 4, 2025 Posted by | EUROPE, politics | Leave a comment

EDF’s plan to decommission Hinkley Point B approved despite regulator’s concerns

31 Oct, 2025 By Tom Pashby

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has approved EDF’s plans for the
decommissioning of its Hinkley Point B nuclear power station, despite
wide-ranging concerns raised by organisations, including the Environment
Agency, which regulates the nuclear sector.

 New Civil Engineer 31st Oct 2025, https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/edfs-plan-to-decommission-hinkley-point-b-approved-despite-regulators-concerns-31-10-2025/

November 4, 2025 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste removal under way at silo.

“Because the removal of the waste had not been planned when the building was opened, engineers had to retrofit an exit route for it.“

COMMENT. Doesn’t that tell you everything about the stupidity of the men who design the nuclear industry?

Jonny Manning, Local Democracy Reporting Service, 1 Nov 25, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgvq930vwpo

Seventy tonnes of radioactive waste have been removed from a nuclear site’s most hazardous building.

Teams at Sellafield in Cumbria have removed the waste from the Magnox Swarf Storage Silos with the company saying it has placed it into safe storage.

The work began in 2022 after two decades of preparation, because when the building was constructed in the 1960s no-one had considered how the waste would be removed.

Sellafield’s head of legacy silos Phil Reeve said so much waste had been removed that a 7m (23ft) crater had been dug in the middle of the pile.

However, the crater presents a risk of the waste around the edges collapsing inwards.

To fix the issue, Sellafield has created its own version of a garden rake – a 1.4 tonne machine which uses its stainless steel arms to pull the nuclear waste into the centre.

“It’s a big moment to see it successfully deployed in an active environment for the first time,” said Mr Reeve.

“It allows us to crack on with confidence.”

Because the removal of the waste had not been planned when the building was opened, engineers had to retrofit an exit route for it.

This involved assembling huge retrieval machines on top of the building’s 22 waste compartments.

One machine is currently up and running with another two set to start soon.

But while work is well under way, the Sellafield team still has about 10,000 tonnes of waste to remove.

November 3, 2025 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Remediation work through £4.6bn Sellafield framework

US engineering and technology firm Amentum and a joint venture of Altrad
Support Services and Atkins Réalis will deliver remediation work at the
Sellafield nuclear power station over the next 15 years. The two bidders
were named for Lot 1 of a £4.6bn Decommissioning and Nuclear Waste
Partnership (DNWP) framework, which covers four lots. Procured by
Sellafield Ltd, the agreement will see chosen contractors support
high-hazard risk reduction programmes at the Cumbrian plant.

 Ground Engineering 3rd Nov 2025. https://www.geplus.co.uk/news/pair-bag-remediation-work-through-4-6bn-sellafield-framework-03-11-2025/

November 3, 2025 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s nuclear testing order sparks pushback from Russia, China and the UN.

SBS World News, 31 Oct 25

Trump said the Pentagon will immediately resume testing the US nuclear arsenal on an “equal basis” with other nuclear powers.

United States President Donald Trump has landed back in the US after a surprise directive to begin nuclear weapons testing that has raised the spectre of renewed superpower tensions.

Trump announced the order on social media, just as he was entering a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday.

It came days after Russia declared it had tested nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered cruise missiles and sea drones.

The blunt statement from Trump, who boasts frequently about being a “peace” president, left much unanswered.

Chiefly, it was unclear whether he meant testing weapons systems or actually conducting test explosions — something the US has not done since 1992.

“Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Trump also said that the US has more nuclear weapons than any other country and that he had achieved this in his first term as president.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in its latest annual report that Russia possesses 5,489 nuclear warheads, compared to 5,177 for the United States and 600 for China.

In his post, Trump said — minutes ahead of his meeting with Xi — that China was expected to “be even within 5 years”, without substantiating the claim.

China, Russia express concerns

In response to Trump’s announcement, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun urged the US to “earnestly abide” by a global nuclear testing ban.

Russia questioned whether Trump was well-informed about its activities.

“President Trump mentioned in his statement that other countries are engaged in testing nuclear weapons. Until now, we didn’t know that anyone was testing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Russia’s recent weapons drills “cannot in any way be interpreted as a nuclear test”, Peskov said. “We hope that the information was conveyed correctly to President Trump.”

Peskov then implied that Russia would conduct its own live warhead tests if Trump did it first.

“If someone departs from the moratorium, Russia will act accordingly,” Peskov said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that if any country tests a nuclear weapon, then Russia will do so too.

Both countries observe a de facto moratorium on testing nuclear warheads, though Russia and the United States do regularly run military drills involving nuclear-capable systems.

The US has been a signatory since 1996 to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bans all atomic test explosions, whether for military or civilian purposes.

United Nations secretary-general António Guterres said through his deputy spokesman that “nuclear testing can never be permitted under any circumstances”………………………………………… https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/trump-nuclear-testing-order-pushback/a21zghnl1

November 1, 2025 Posted by | China, politics international, Russia, USA | Leave a comment

How Russia is risking nuclear catastrophe with attempts to syphon power from Ukraine’s biggest plant

The exiled mayor of Enerhodar, close to Zaporizhzhia, reveals his fear of an ecological catastrophe

Sam Kiley, In Zaporizhzhia, Wednesday 29 October 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-ukraine-russia-war-b2855001.html

Europe’s biggest nuclear reactor has become a battlefield in Ukraine’s defence against Russian invaders as they risk a catastrophic meltdown in its efforts to connect it to Moscow’s national grid.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), which has six reactors, was captured by Russian troops early in the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It has remained a dangerous potential flashpoint for a nuclear disaster ever since.

Fighting and bombardments by both sides of the complex and the power station itself, which has been entirely occupied by Russian forces who base troops in its buildings, have forced the “cold shutdown” of the reactors.

This means that its nuclear material is not used to generate power but needs to be constantly cooled.

The fighting cut electricity from Ukraine, meaning that the cooling system had to rely entirely on diesel generators and a skeleton staff for a month.

Regular power was only restored in the last week, after the longest period the ZNPP had been disconnected from electricity to drive its cooling systems.

Russia needs to cut the Ukrainian power link in order to install its connection into the Russian network – a long-stated ambition.

“The Russian Federation is putting in its power line, but elements of it have been successfully damaged by Ukraine,” explained Mykhailo Shuster, nuclear expert and former director of procurement at Energoatom – Ukraine’s nuclear power agency.

“Russia is now at a high level of readiness, and to connect it, the power supply from Ukraine must be interrupted.”

It is unclear whether Russia has been able to connect the Ukrainian plant to its own network during the 30-day outage. If it did so, it would then have to install converter stations to synchronise the two grids.

But the power cuts to the cooling systems, combined with the near collapse of the water supplies there after Russia blew up the Kakhova Dam – the main water source for the ZNPP – is causing jitters among local leaders.

The exiled mayor of the now-occupied Enerhodar, the town next to Zaporizhzhia, told The Independent he fears nuclear fallout could melt into the groundwater around the plant, contaminate the Dnipro River and eventually the Black Sea.

“Kakhovka Dam is destroyed; there is nothing to cool it with – even if they miraculously restore the equipment in the future,” he said.

“Worst case scenario: the water will eventually evaporate from the cooling pond, and there will be nothing to cool nuclear fuel.”

“It can melt the concrete and go into the groundwater,” Dmytro Orlov added from his office in Zaporizhzhia. Mayor Orlov runs humanitarian programmes for the thousands of people, mostly nuclear power workers, who fled the advancing Russians from his town to safety here.

The mayor recalled the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which remains the worst nuclear disaster in history.

“The estimated amount of nuclear fuel there is about 10 times more than in Chernobyl,” he warned.

A small team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Authority regularly inspects the power station and has reported military training and explosions in and around the facility.

Russian artillery and mortars have been seen shelling and bombing Ukrainian towns and villages on the opposite bank of the Dnipro.

After power was restored, IAEA director general Mario Grossi said: “What was once virtually unimaginable – a nuclear power plant regularly losing off-site power – has unfortunately become a common occurrence during this devastating war. However, this was the most challenging loss of power event we have experienced so far.

“There is still much work to do to further reduce the risks of a nuclear accident.”

November 1, 2025 Posted by | Russia, safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Escalating nuclear waste disposal cost leads senior MP to demand ‘coherent’ plan.

The escalating costs of the geological disposal facility (GDF) have led the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chair to demand that the government produce a “coherent plan” to manage the country’s nuclear waste legacy

29 Oct, 2025 By Tom Pashby
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/escalating-nuclear-waste-disposal-cost-leads-senior-mp-to-demand-coherent-plan-29-10-2025/

A GDF represents a monumental undertaking, consisting of an engineered vault placed between 200m and 1km underground, covering an area of approximately 1km2 on the surface. This facility is designed to safely contain nuclear waste while allowing it to decay over thousands of years, thereby reducing its radioactivity and associated hazards.

PAC chair Geoffrey Clifton-Brown’s comments were made in reaction to the revelation that the total life cost of the GDF is up to £15bn more than the sum listed in the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority’s (Nista’s) recent annual report. Nista is a government body and works with the Cabinet Office and Treasury and its August 2025 report published figures from Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), the government body responsible for the GDF, showing the GDF as having a whole life cost of from £20bn to £53.3bn.

However, Nista’s Infrastructure Pipeline dashboard lists the GDF’s CapEx (capital expenditure) range for new infrastructure in 2024/2025 prices as being from £26.2bn to £68.7bn, with the top end being slightly over £15bn higher than the figure published in the annual report.

A government source explained to NCE earlier that the discrepancy is because the figures published in Nista’s annual report was based on 2017/2018 prices, meaning the effects of long-term inflation were not accounted for.

Criticism has previously been levied at High Speed 2 (HS2) because of its use of historic pricing figures to reduce the impact of inflation on budget projects and make the total cost of the project appear to be lower than it would end up being.

Government must have coherent plan to manage nuclear waste – senior MP

The House of Commons PAC is one of the most active and powerful select committees in Parliament, able to formally request that the National Audit Office carry out investigations into government projects.

Nuclear decommissioning is a key area of focus for the Committee because of the high total costs, which will hit the public purse into the far future. Sellafield is seen as the government’s flagship project within the wider nuclear decommissioning programme.

The scale of future nuclear decommissioning is clear in the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority: Annual Report and Accounts 2024 to 2025, which says: “the discounted best estimate of the future costs of the decommissioning mission of £110.1bn”. This is a £5bn increase on the previous year.

October 31, 2025 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear power in Scotland would have same problems as fossil fuels

NUCLEAR power has the “same fundamental challenges” as fossil fuels, international experts have said, as they criticised the UK Government’s embrace of the nuclear industry.

 Four academics, from the UK and the US,
argued that costs for nuclear power are “huge” and “rising” and
that “significant delays” in getting projects online are the norm.

They also described how in the space of a year nuclear “adds as much net
global power capacity as renewables add every two days”, and criticised
the drive by Labour ministers to deregulate the industry. The group of
academics includes Amory Lovins and Professor Mark Jacobsen, from the
University of Stanford, Professor Stephen Thomas, from the University of
Greenwich, and Dr Paul Dorfman, Bennett Scholar at the University of
Sussex.

In a joint statement, published in The National, they say that Ed
Miliband’s plans to assess Scottish sites for nuclear projects and Keir
Starmer’s plans to usher in a “golden age of nuclear” with Donald
Trump are hampered by a “few awkward facts”. They said: “The reason
is simple. Nuclear costs are huge, rising, and significant delays are the
norm.

 The National 29th Oct 2025,
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25579222.nuclear-power-scotland-problems-fossil-fuels/

October 31, 2025 Posted by | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

The anti-Russia, pre-SMO, Timeline of Which Legacy Media Won’t Speak

timeline of events leading up to the commencement in February 2022 of Russia’s Special Military Operation

Eva Karene Bartlett, Oct 28, 2025, https://evakarenebartlett.substack.com/p/the-anti-russia-pre-smo-timeline?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3046064&post_id=177345476&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Very useful written timeline of events leading up to the commencement in February 2022 of Russia’s Special Military Operation.

Jacques Baud discussed much of this (see bottom of this post), but this written account is worth bookmarking.

Alan Watson:

“Vladimir Putin did not wake up on 24 February 2022 and decide, “I think I’ll invade eastern Ukraine today,” nor was the US campaign to expand NATO into Ukraine a last-minute maneuver. (US State Department documents show Ukraine’s future membership was discussed as early as 1994.)

9 Feb 1990: In a deal approved by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, as a quid pro quo for accepting German reunification within NATO, Secretary of State James Baker pledged that NATO would not expand “one inch to the east.”

US, European and German leaders made explicit assurances to Gorbachev against any future eastward NATO expansion. Gorbachev understood the assurances as a “binding agreement.” Subsequently, Soviet leaders made decisions on that basis and acted on them – withdrawing the Red Army from Germany and dissolving the Warsaw Pact.

12 March 1999: Clinton is president. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland became members of NATO. A weakened post-Soviet Russia, led by Boris Yeltsin, controlled by a cabal of Oligarchs, could do nothing to prevent it. Powerless, Yeltsin was said to be “infuriated” with “his friend Bill Clinton…”

29 March 2004: George W. Bush is president. Seven more Eastern European countries join NATO: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia – largest wave of NATO enlargement ever.

April 2008: At the Bucharest NATO summit, George W. Bush announced that Ukraine and Georgia are on an “immediate path to NATO.” Bill Burns, ambassador to Russia, sent a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Across the board,” he wrote, the Russian political class told him, “Ukraine is the reddest of red lines” – “Nyet means nyet.”

22 Feb 2014: Just as the Sochi Winter Olympics were underway, Kiev erupted in violence. State Department official Virginia Nuland boasted that since the 2004-2005 “Orange Revolution,” the US had spent $5 billion on regime change in Ukraine. NATO rooftop snipers killed both protestors and police, forcing Ukraine’s democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country.

2 May 2014: Bussed to Odessa from Kiev, Right Sector thugs carrying baseball bats confront ethnic Russians protesting the coup. When protestors fled into the city’s Trade Unions House, the building was set on fire. Forty-eight people were burned or bludgeoned to death – the Donbass civil war point of no return.

11 Feb 2015: Putin and Ukrainian President Poroshenko meet with French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Belarus to negotiate the Minsk ceasefire accords. The leaders agreed to a deal that would have ended the fighting – granting autonomy to the Russian-speaking Donbass, but successive Ukrainian governments refused to implement the accord.

German Chancellor Merkel later admitted that Minsk was a stall tactic to allow the West to build Ukraine’s army up to NATO standards. [Ed. note – Zelensky also admitted that he lied in his campaign for President, in pledging to uphold the Minsk agreement]

17 Dec 2021: Team Biden rejects Putin’s proposed mutual security accords that would have left a “neutral” Ukraine intact. For years, Russia had tried to convince US administrations that Ukraine was off-limits to NATO membership, but Russian concerns were brushed aside. December 2021, Team Biden insisted, “Russia doesn’t say who can join NATO.”

18 Feb 2022: During the Winter Olympics in China, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) documented that Ukraine had ramped up artillery attacks along the Line of Contact.

(Since the 2014 coup in Kiev, the Armed forces of Ukraine, including the Neo-Nazi Banderites, had killed thousands of ethnic Russians in the Donbass.

19 Feb 2022: Invited to speak at the Munich Security Conference, Ukrainian President Zelensky said, “Ukraine will get and deploy nuclear missiles.”

20 Feb 2022: On CBS 60 Minutes, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba said, “Ukraine will never honor the Minsk cease fire.”

21 Feb 2022: Russia captured a Ukrainian soldier, killed five others as they crossed over the border into Rostov. Russia learned the invasion of Donetsk city was imminent and recognized the breakaway Donbass and Luhansk oblasts as independent republics.

24 Feb 2022: With about 90,000 troops, Russia launched its “Special Military Operation” – not a “full scale invasion.” Citing the UN principle, “Responsibility to Protect,” Russia intervened in the eight-year Donbass civil war after all prospects for diplomacy had failed.

April 2022, week six of the war, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators convened peace talks in Istanbul. Later, Ukrainian diplomat Oleksandr Chalyi recalled, “Putin tried to do everything possible to conclude an agreement…” [The tentative accord would have left a “neutral” #Ukraine intact.]

On 1 April, USAID revealed photographic evidence of a “massacre” in Bucha and financed a press tour featuring US public figures. Problem: Four days earlier at a press conference, the mayor had announced that the Russians had retreated from the city [and he did not report there had been a massacre].

After the Russians voluntarily retreated, the regime scattered bodies in the streets that included both actors in body bags and recently killed “Russian collaborators” from around Bucha – giving an “outraged” Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, who flew unannounced to Kiev, the justification to order Zelensky to “keep fighting.”

If the US, UK and EU continue rejecting Russian proposals for a long term, European wide peace accord – as Putin proposed in December 2021 – the Russian army will continue advancing toward Kharkiv in the north and Odessa on the Black Sea. As Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized: There will be no Minsk III.”

From a September 2024 interview I did with Jacques Baud (former Swiss intelligence & author). In this clip, Jacques lays out the history of events related to Ukraine prior to 2022, prior even to the 2014 coup which brought fascism to power in Ukraine, & how it was the NATO-Ukraine alliance which brought war, not Russia.

Full interview: https://rumble.com/v5fjhrh-jacques-baud-nato-threatened-russia-decades-before-2022.html https://odysee.com/@EvaKareneBartlett:9/JacquesBaudNATOThreatenedRussia:5

October 30, 2025 Posted by | history, Russia, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The UK is at risk of a nuclear attack as the US is set to house nuclear weapons in Suffolk, England, which would make the country a target in a US and Russia war

Emily Malia Mirror UK, GAU Writer, 27 Oct 2025

RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, operated by the United States, is expected to house US/ NATO nuclear weapons in the near future. This development places the UK on the frontline of potential conflict between America and Russia.

The presence of American nuclear weapons on British soil significantly increases the nation’s risk of becoming a target. Military analysts suggest that in the event of war, Lakenheath would likely face strikes before attacks spread to other parts of the country.

Whilst experts acknowledge that nuclear conflict between the US, NATO and Russia would prove devastating globally, it’s crucial to grasp the direct consequences for British towns and cities. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament warns: “A single nuclear strike on any town or city would be catastrophic for the local community and environment, and the radioactive impact would spread much further.

“But a nuclear war would be catastrophic for all humanity, forms of life, and the entire planet. Yet the possibility of nuclear war is the greatest for many decades.”

Casualties

Their report reveals if a Russian warhead, such as an SS-25 or SS-27, were to strike the heart of London, nearly a million people would die. Similarly, a hit on Glasgow could result in 326,000 casualties, while in Cardiff, 196,000 lives would be lost.

The epicentre of the nuclear explosion is believed to reach a staggering temperature of several million degrees centigrade. Consequently, a heat flash would obliterate all human tissue within a 1.5 square mile radius.

Back in 1945, when the United States unleashed two atomic bombs over Hiroshima in Japan, all that was left within a half-mile radius were shadows seared into stone. The aerial bombings claimed up to 200,000 lives, most of whom were civilians………………………………………..

Further afield from the zone of instant devastation, there would be a gradual rise in fatalities among those who endured the initial explosion. Approximately seven miles from the blast site, individuals would sustain lethal burns or even require amputations, while others would be blinded or suffer internal injuries.

Unlike a typical disaster, the mortality rate would be shockingly high as most emergency services would be unable to respond due to their own personnel being killed and equipment destroyed. The sheer number of casualties would simply swamp the UK’s medical resources, with people as far as 11 miles away potentially suffering injuries from shattered windows or structural damage.

The long-term impact

In the ensuing days, even those fortunate enough to survive would now be impacted by the radioactive fallout, with the majority succumbing within a week. This would manifest in various ways, from hair loss to bleeding gums, fever, vomiting, delirium and even internal bleeding.

Those with lower levels of exposure would still face complications, including pregnant women who are at a high risk of miscarriage and birth complications. In addition, long-term effects could include radiation-induced cancers affecting many civilians, up to two decades after the event.

It’s believed that children of those exposed to radiation are statistically more likely to be born with abnormalities and suffer from leukaemia. Aside from public health, nuclear weapons are known to cause severe damage to the environment and climate on an unprecedented scale.

Predictions suggest that in the aftermath of a nuclear war, two billion people could face starvation due to climate disruption and its impact on food production. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/horrifying-number-people-who-could-36139768

October 30, 2025 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Next Nuclear Renaissance?

Will a new wave of nuclear power projects deliver the safe and economical electricity that proponents have long predicted?

CATO Institute, Fall 2025, By Steve Thomas 

Over the past decade, there has been a growing interest in building new nuclear power stations, particularly among policymakers. This comes some two decades after a previously forecast “nuclear renaissance” petered out, having produced few orders, all of which went badly wrong.

This article reviews the previous renaissance: What was promised, what was delivered, and why it failed. It then considers the current claims of a new renaissance led by Small Modular Reactors, forthcoming “Generation IV” designs, new large reactors, and extending the lifetime of existing nuclear plants. Despite the need for clean generation, the growing demand for electricity to power new technologies and global development, and claims of nuclear generation breakthroughs that are either here or soon will be, this new renaissance appears destined for the same failure as the previous ones.

The Last Renaissance

Around the start of this century, there was a great deal of publicity about a new generation of reactors: so-called Generation III+ designs. These would evolve from the existing dominant “Gen III” designs—Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) and Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), collectively known as Light Water Reactors (LWRs)—rather than be radical new designs. There was no clear definition of the characteristics that would qualify a design as Gen III+ rather than just Gen III LWRs. However, Gen III+ was said to incorporate safety advances that would mitigate the risks of incidents like the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island (a Gen II design) and the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown (a Soviet design that used Gen I/II technology). Three Gen III+ designs received the most publicity: the Westinghouse AP1000 (Advanced Passive), the Areva EPR (European Pressurized Water Reactor), and the General Electric ESBWR (Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor).

The narrative was that Gen III designs had become too complex and difficult to build because designers were retrofitting safety features to avoid another Three Mile Island. Gen III+ supposedly went back to the drawing board, rationalizing existing systems and incorporating new safety features, thereby supposedly yielding a cheaper and easier-to-build design. A particular feature of these designs was the use of “passive safety” systems. In an accident situation, these did not require an engineered safety system to be activated by human operators and were not dependent on external sources of power; instead, the reactor would avoid a serious accident by employing natural processes such as convection cooling. These had an intuitive appeal, and a common assumption was that because they were not mechanical systems, they would be cheaper, and because they involved natural processes, they would never fail. Neither assumption is correct.

Another major safety feature resulting from the Chernobyl disaster was a system that, if the core was melting down, prevented the molten core from burning into the surrounding ground and contaminating it. A common approach was a “core-catcher” (already used in a few early reactors) that would be placed underneath the reactor. An alternative, often used for smaller reactors, was a system to flood the core with so much water that it would halt the meltdown.

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, designers attempted to further increase safety by strengthening the reactor shell so it could withstand an aircraft or missile impact. The core-melt and aircraft protection features inevitably tended to increase the size and complexity of the Gen III+ designs.

Nuclear advocates also claimed that the large cost and time overruns of previous plants were caused in part by the high proportion of work carried out on site. To combat this and the additional complexity noted above, designers vowed to rely more on factory-made modules that could be delivered by truck, reducing sitework mostly to “bolting together” the pieces. In practice, there was significant variability between the Gen III+ designs, with the AP1000 and ESBWR relying much more on passive safety and modular construction than the EPR.

What sold these designs to policymakers were some extraordinary claims about construction costs and times. It was claimed that their cost (excluding finance charges; so-called “overnight cost”) would be around $1,500–$2,000 per kilowatt (kW), meaning a large, 1,000-megawatt (MW) reactor would cost $1.5–$2 billion. Construction time would be no more than 48 months. While there were few existing nuclear projects then to compare the new designs with, these projected costs and times were far below the levels then being achieved with existing designs.

These claims convinced the US government, under President George W. Bush, and the UK government, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, to launch large reactor construction programs. As those countries were two of the pioneering users of nuclear power, this appeared to be a strategically important victory for the nuclear industry.

US / In 2002, President Bush announced his Nuclear 2010 program, so-called because it was expected the first reactor under the program would come online in 2010. It was assumed the new nuclear designs would be competitive with other forms of generation,………………………………………..

In states with regulated electricity markets, utilities were concerned that regulators might not allow them to recover their costs from consumers if there were time and cost overruns. Most of the other projects were abandoned on these grounds, leaving only two to enter the construction stage: a two-reactor project to join an existing reactor at the V.C. Summer plant in South Carolina, and a two-reactor project to join two existing reactors at the A.W. Vogtle project in Georgia. All four new reactors would be Westinghouse AP1000s.

In those two states, regulators gave clear signals that the utilities would be allowed to recover all their costs. The state governments broke with regulatory practice by passing legislation allowing the utilities to raise rates and start recovering their costs from the date of the investment decision, not the date when the reactors entered service…………………………………………….

Consumers started paying for the reactors in 2009–2010, even though construction didn’t start until 2013. By 2015, both projects were in bad shape, way over time and budget. Westinghouse, then owned by Toshiba of Japan, was required to offer fixed-price terms to complete the projects. Those prices soon proved far too low, and in March 2017 Westinghouse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The whole of Toshiba was reportedly at risk as a result. In August 2017, the V.C. Summer project was abandoned. The A.W. Vogtle project continued, and the first reactor was completed in July 2023 with the second unit following in April 2024, six or seven years behind schedule and at more than double the forecasted cost. There are now no proposals for additional large reactor projects in the United States.

UK / In 2003, a UK Energy White Paper (DTI 2003) concluded there was no case for nuclear power because renewables and energy efficiency measures were cheaper. According to the report, “the current economics of nuclear power make it an unattractive option for new generating capacity and there are also important issues for nuclear waste to be resolved.” Only three years later and despite the lack of evidence that nuclear had become cheaper or that renewables and energy efficiency had become more expensive, Blair reversed the government’s position, claiming nuclear power was “back on the agenda with a vengeance.”

As with the US program, the assumption was that the new designs would be competitive. A key promise that made the program politically acceptable was there would be no public subsidies.  Politicians—even those who were favorable to nuclear—were aware that previous UK nuclear projects had gone badly and the costs of this had fallen on taxpayers and electricity consumers. The energy minister told a Parliamentary Select Committee:

There will be no subsidies, direct or indirect. We are not in the business of subsidizing nuclear energy. No cheques will be written; there will be no sweetheart deals.

This promise of no subsidies remained government policy until 2015, despite it being clear long before then that new nuclear projects were only going forward in anticipation of large public subsidies……………………………………………………………

Three consortia were created, each led by some of the largest European utilities………………………………………………….. As early as 2007, the consortium led by EDF established a leading presence, with the CEO of EDF Energy, Vincent de Rivaz, notoriously claiming that Christmas turkeys in the UK would be cooked using power from the Hinkley Point C EPR in 2017. In 2010, the UK energy secretary still claimed Hinkley would begin generating no later than 2018.

The Final Investment Decision (FID) for Hinkley was not taken until October 2016, when it was expected the two reactors would be completed by October 2025 at an overnight cost of £18 billion (in 2015 pounds sterling, equivalent to $35 billion in today’s dollars). ……………………………………………..In January 2024, EDF issued a new cost and time update—its fifth—with completion now expected to be as late as 2032 at a cost of £35 billion (in 2015 pounds sterling, equivalent to $68.7 billion in today’s dollars). As a result, EDF wrote off €12.9 billion ($14 billion) of its investment in Hinkley Point C in 2023. By 2018, EDF recognized the error it made in accepting the risk of fixing the power price, and it abandoned plans for an EPR station at Sizewell using the Hinkley C financial model. In July 2025, an FID was taken on the Sizewell C project using a different financial model and completion is not expected before 2040.

The effect of the 2011 Fukushima, Japan, nuclear plant disaster, where a tsunami resulted in meltdowns in three reactors, combined with the effect of competition in wholesale and retail markets in electricity meant that European utilities could not justify to their shareholders the building of new reactors. The Horizon and Nugen consortia were sold to reactor vendors Westinghouse and Hitachi–GE, respectively. Those firms did not have the financial strength to take significant ownership stakes in the reactors, but they saw this as an opportunity to sell their reactors on the assumption that investors could later be found. Westinghouse (then planning three AP1000s for the Moorside site) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2017. Hitachi–GE abandoned its two projects (four ABWRs, two each at Wylfa and Oldbury) in 2019 when it became clear that, despite the UK government offering to take a 30 percent stake in the reactors and to provide all the finance, other investors were not forthcoming.

Lessons learned / Thus ended the last nuclear renaissance. Its failure does not determine the outcome of the present attempt, but there are some important lessons that will shape the outcome this time:

  • While governments have always had to play a facilitating role in nuclear power projects, such as providing facilities to deal with the radioactive waste, they were centrally involved in the 2000 renaissance. This trend has continued, and governments are now offering to provide finance, take ownership stakes, offer publicly funded subsidies, and impose power purchase agreements that will insulate the reactors from competitive wholesale electricity markets.
  • Forecasts of construction costs and times made by the nuclear industry must be treated with extreme skepticism. The claim that the new designs would be so cheap they would be able to compete with the cheapest generation option then available—natural gas generation—proved so wide of the mark that other claimed characteristics, such as supplying base-load power and offering low-carbon generation, are now given as the prime justifications for the substantial extra cost of nuclear power over its alternatives.
  • The technical characteristics claimed to give advantages to the Gen III+ designs (such as factory-manufactured modules and passive safety) have not been effective in controlling construction times and costs.
  • The large reactor designs now on offer are the same ones that were offered previously. No fundamentally new designs have started development this century. It is hard to see why these designs that have failed by large margins to meet expectations will now be so much less problematic……………………………………………… https://www.cato.org/regulation/fall-2025/next-nuclear-renaissance#small-modular-reactors

October 30, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, UK, USA | Leave a comment

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