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Anti nuclear activists break into France’s Tricastin nuclear station

Reuters 21st Feb 2020. Activists from Greenpeace broke into the Tricastin nuclear power plant in southern France in order to demand its closure, the environmental pressure group said on Friday. “Some 50 Greenpeace activists gained access to several points at the Tricastin nuclear power plant this morning,” said Greenpeace spokeswoman Cecile Genot. “We are protesting and drawing attention to an aging nuclear power plant that is dangerous and should be shut down.” Officials for French state-controlled power group EDF, which runs Tricastin, had no immediate comment on the situation.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-edf-nuclearpower-greenpeace/greenpeace-activists-break-into-edfs-tricastin-nuclear-power-plant-in-france-idUSKBN20F0WB?rpc=401&

February 22, 2020 Posted by | France, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

Nuclear Energy Agency’s “pretend transparency”

February 22, 2020 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

France starts out on the path to withdraw from nuclear energy

February 22, 2020 Posted by | France, politics | Leave a comment

Bavaria’s renewable capacity growing as nuclear plant shutdown boosts power imports

February 22, 2020 Posted by | Germany, renewable | Leave a comment

France shuts down Fessenheim reactor in first phase of retreat from nuclear power

France to shut down oldest nuclear plant in energy re-planning drive, https://www.france24.com/en/20200219-france-to-shut-down-oldest-nuclear-plant-fessenheim-in-energy-re-planning-drive  French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said on Wednesday that the Fessenheim nuclear reactor, on the border with Germany, will be shut down at the end of June, with one of its reactors to be closed this weekend.
A statement on Wednesday called the decision “the first phase” of France’s energy strategy set out in 2018 by President Emmanuel Macron. The plan calls for a re-balancing of nuclear-produced energy and electricity derived from renewable sources. Coal plants are to be closed by 2022 to reduce greenhouse gases, the statement said.

Reactor No. 1 will be halted on Saturday and the entire complex will come to a halt on June 30, the statement said.

Germany has long called for the plant, France’s oldest, to be shut down. It is the first nuclear complex to be closed under Macron’s plan.
France depends more on nuclear energy than any other country, getting about three-quarters of its electricity from the plants. Macron said in 2018, outlining France’s energy strategy for the next 30 years, that 14 nuclear reactors out of the 58 now running at 19 plants would be shut down by 2035. France would cap the amount of electricity it derives from nuclear plants at 50% by then.

February 20, 2020 Posted by | France, politics | Leave a comment

Algeria and French Polynesia suffer from France’s 30 years of nuclear bomb testing

Questions Remain as France Marks 60 Years Since Nuclear Tests, VOA,  19 Feb 20, This month, France marks the 60th anniversary of nuclear weapons tests that made the country one of the world’s first nuclear powers. But critics claim more than 30 years of testing in Algeria and French Polynesia left many suffering from the effects of harmful radiation.On February 13, 1960, France held its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Sahara desert. “Hurray for France,” then-French President Charles de Gaulle wrote at the time.

But Jean-Claude Hervieux has other memories. He joined the French testing efforts in Algeria as an electrician. He remembers a nuclear test in 1962 that did not go according to plan.

Radioactive dust and rock escaped from underground. Hervieux and others observing the testing ran for shelter. Two French ministers were among them. The group washed themselves in a military housing area to decontaminate.

France held more than 200 nuclear tests until a later president, Jacques Chirac, ended testing in 1996. Most tests took place in French Polynesia. But 17 took place in Algeria between 1960 and 1966, ending four years after Algeria’s independence from France.

Brahim Oumansour is a North Africa expert at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris. He said, “It’s part of the whole issue of decolonization and Algerians in general asking for recognition of colonization crimes.” He added that official recognition and financial compensation for the Algerian tests could cost millions of dollars.

Hervieux spent 10 years working on nuclear test areas in Algeria and later French Polynesia. Now 80 and living in France’s Lyon area, he says he is physically fine. But he used to receive some questionable radioactive testing results from the French government……

France’s nuclear compensation commission, CIVEN, said more than 1,600 claims have been filed under a 2010 French law that finally recognized health problems related to the testing.

Only about one-third have met the requirements needed to receive financial benefits. The requirements include about 24 possible radiation-related cancers. Almost all the claims came from France and French Polynesia. Of the 51 claims from Algeria, only one has been compensated…. https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/questions-remain-as-france-marks-60-years-since-nuclear-tests-/5287541.html

February 20, 2020 Posted by | France, health, legal, OCEANIA | Leave a comment

Chinese-led nuclear company pretending that Sizewell project is a ‘fait accompli’ – no, it is far from it.

BANNG 1020, The Blackwater Against New Nuclear Group (BANNG) has learned that GNSL, the Chinese-led company seeking to build a mammoth new nuclear power station at Bradwell, is preparing to launch its pre-application public consultation for planning permission later this year.

This will be long before detailed discussions with the nuclear regulators are concluded. There are major issues and challenges still to be confronted. ‘It seems that the Chinese developers are taking a risk in trying to present the public and politicians with an apparent ‘fait accompli’ well before major design
and environmental hurdles have been crossed’ said Prof. Andy Blowers,
Chair of BANNG.

GNSL greeted the announcement that the Generic Design
Assessment (GDA) for Bradwell B had begun Step 4 as a major milestone,
clearing the path for deployment of Chinese nuclear technology in Britain.

That is far from the case. Moving to Step 4 in the GDA is like reaching a
hurdle, not passing a milestone. It is at this stage that all the tricky
issues facing the Bradwell B project must be confronted, including the
cooling system, site suitability, security, coastal defence, impacts on
marine and terrestrial environments and so on.

Step 4 is a long and intensive process between the developer and the independent regulators, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) and the Environment Agency (EA). It is not expected to be concluded for another two years. A pre-application should follow, not overlap, Step 4 of the GDA.

https://www.banng.info/news/press-release-18th-february-2020/

February 20, 2020 Posted by | politics, spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

UK’s new nuclear projects headed to be submerged due to climate change?

Speeding Sea Level Rise Threatens Nuclear Plants https://www.ecowatch.com/sea-level-rise-nuclear-plants-2645160125.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2   Climate News Network, Feb. 15, 2020  By Paul Brown

The latest science shows how the pace of sea level rise is speeding up, fueling fears that not only millions of homes will be under threat, but that vulnerable installations like docks and power plants will be overwhelmed by the waves.

New research using satellite data over a 30-year period shows that around the year 2000 sea level rise was 2mm a year, by 2010 it was 3mm and now it is at 4mm, with the pace of change still increasing.

The calculations were made by a research student, Tadea Veng, at the Technical University of Denmark, which has a special interest in Greenland, where the icecap is melting fast. That, combined with accelerating melting in Antarctica and further warming of the oceans, is raising sea levels across the globe.

The report coincides with a European Environment Agency (EEA) study whose maps show large areas of the shorelines of countries with coastlines on the North Sea will go under water unless heavily defended against sea level rise.

Based on the maps, newspapers like The Guardian in London have predicted that more than half of one key UK east coast provincial port — Hull — will be swamped. Ironically, Hull is the base for making giant wind turbine blades for use in the North Sea.

The argument about how much the sea level will rise this century has been raging in scientific circles since the 1990s. At the start, predictions of sea level rise took into account only two possible causes: the expansion of seawater as it warmed, and the melting of mountain glaciers away from the poles.

In the early Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports back then, the melting of the polar ice caps was not included, because scientists could not agree whether greater snowfall on the top of the ice caps in winter might balance out summer melting. Many of them also thought Antarctica would not melt at all, or not for centuries, because it was too cold.

Both the extra snow theory and the “too cold to melt” idea have now been discounted. In Antarctica this is partly because the sea has warmed up so much that it is melting the glaciers’ ice from beneath — something the scientists had not foreseen.

Alarm about sea level rise elsewhere has been increasing outside the scientific community, partly because many nuclear power plants are on coasts. Even those that are nearing the end of their working lives will be radio-active for another century, and many have highly dangerous spent fuel on site in storage ponds with no disposal route organized.

Perhaps most alarmed are British residents, whose government is currently planning a number of new seaside nuclear stations in low-lying coastal areas. Some will be under water this century according to the EEA, particularly one planned for Sizewell in eastern England. 

The agency’s report says estimates of sea level rise by 2100 vary, with an upper limit of one meter generally accepted, but up to 2.5 meters predicted by some scientists. The latest research by Danish scientists suggests judiciously that with the speed of sea level rise continuing to accelerate, it is impossible to be sure.

A report by campaigners who oppose building nuclear power stations on Britain’s vulnerable coast expresses extreme alarm, saying both nuclear regulators and the giant French energy company EDF are too complacent about the problem.

The report said: “Polar ice caps appear to be melting faster than expected, and what is particularly worrying is that the rate of melting seems to be increasing. Some researchers say sea levels could rise by as much as six meters or more by 2100, even if the 2°C Paris target is met.

“But it’s not just the height of the rise in sea level that is important for the protection of nuclear facilities, it’s also the likely increase in storm surges. An increase in sea level of 50cm would mean the storm that used to come every thousand years will now come every 100 years. If you increase that to a meter, then that millennial storm is likely to come once a decade.

Bearing in mind that there will probably be nuclear waste on the Hinkley Point C site [home to the new twin reactors being built by EDF in the West of England] until at least 2150, the question neither the Office of Nuclear Regulation nor EDF seem to be asking is whether further flood protection measures can be put in place fast enough to deal with unexpected and unpredicted storm surges.”

February 18, 2020 Posted by | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

European Pressurised Reactor at Flamanville: nuclear is expensive and it doesn’t work.

France Culture 14th Feb 2020, EPR: nuclear is expensive and it doesn’t work. A kind of modern replica of the Danaïdes barrel, the EPR at Flamanville, in the Manche department, is once again being talked about: between construction delays (delivery scheduled for 2010, “potentially promised” now in 2022) and additional costs ( estimated three billion, we would exceed 12 billion today), is there ultimately a future for what was sold in the late 90s (1998-2000) as
the new wonder of the genre?

https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/superfail/superfail-du-lundi-4-novembre-lepr-le-nucleaire-cest-cher-et-ca-ne-fonctionne-pas

February 18, 2020 Posted by | business and costs, France, politics | Leave a comment

Ultimate Doomsday Weapon: Missiles Powered By Nuclear Reactors

 

February 18, 2020 Posted by | Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Tortuous progress, ever-increasing costs for UK’s Sizewell and Hinkley Point C nuclear projectsy

February 18, 2020 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

Climate change to continue hitting UK with bigger storms

February 18, 2020 Posted by | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

Iran would return to 2015 nuclear agreement if Europe would provides “meaningful” economic benefits

February 18, 2020 Posted by | EUROPE, Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Excess radiation level recorded in Moscow

Belsat 12th Feb 2020, A sensor of the Russian state enterprise Radon, which specializes in  handling radioactive waste, has recorded a 60-fold excess of the radiation background at the construction site of the South-East Chord (multi-lane expressway) in Moscow, the Russian service of Radio Liberty reports.
The sensor recorded 18 microsieverts per hour at a maximum permissible
radiation level of 0.3 microsieverts. Residents of the
Moskvorechye-Saburovo district report that this is the seventh time in
three days, but neither Radon nor the MES have taken any action, claiming
that the sensor works in test mode and there are no actual spikes in
radiation.
Earlier, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin acknowledged the presence
of radioactive waste on the South-Eastern Chord route. The mayor`s office
said that “in the case of the construction of the chord, the city faced a
unique and exceptional problem — radioactive waste, which the Moscow
Polymetal Plant stored in its backyard in the 1950s and 1960s”. At the
same time, the City Hall called the discovered traces of radioactive
contamination “insignificant”.

https://belsat.eu/en/news/excess-radiation-level-recorded-in-moscow/

February 17, 2020 Posted by | environment, radiation, Russia | Leave a comment

French govt considers a “0% nuclear” energy plan: and problems in existing nukes

Europe1 16th Feb 2020, The government is considering a “0% nuclear” energy plan and the Flamanville EPR, still under construction, should open, at best, ten years behind schedule: in the coming years, there will be no shortage of challenges for the first producer electricity in France. If the group
Electricity of France (EDF), will supply “all the sites of Paris 2024 in
renewable energies” , all is not however rosy on the side of the first
electricity supplier in Europe. Several points are to be reviewed on its
copy in the coming years, especially around the construction of new nuclear
power plants in France, including that of Flamanville.

https://www.europe1.fr/economie/epr-de-flamanville-et-part-du-nucleaire-les-defis-dedf-3949806

February 17, 2020 Posted by | France, politics | Leave a comment