France wants to label nuclear as “green”. Germany will have none of it
Paris, Berlin divided over nuclear’s recognition as green energy https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/france-and-germany-divided-over-nuclears-inclusion-in-eus-green-investment-label/ By Cécile Barbière | EURACTIV.fr | translated by Daniel Eck 27 Nov 19, Disagreement on the inclusion of nuclear power in the EU’s upcoming green finance taxonomy has revived long-standing divisions between France and Germany over the energy transition. EURACTIV France reports.
Franco-German relations have already been strained by French President Emmanuel Macron’s radical comments on NATO’s “brain death,” which attracted strong rebukes in Berlin.
Now, the European Commission’s proposed taxonomy for sustainable finance has emerged as a new bone of contention.
Tabled in 2018, the EU taxonomy aims to determine which economic activities can benefit from a sustainable finance label at European level. The objective is to give clear indications to investors so they can redirect their financing towards environmentally-friendly sectors.
Six pre-defined environmental objectives must be met in order to obtain the label. If any technology seriously undermines one of those goals, it is automatically disqualified.
It is because of this double level of control that nuclear energy failed to win the green label in the European Parliament, until the Council representing EU member states voted to reinstate it in September.
Although nuclear energy largely meets the low-carbon emissions objective, “it was not possible to include nuclear power because there is no scientific evidence for waste treatment. This means that the sector does not meet both requirements,” explained Jochen Krimphoff, WWF’s deputy director for green finance.
Since the beginning of the negotiations on the EU’s taxonomy, France has been pushing to reintroduce nuclear power, much to Germany’s dismay.
“France will advocate that nuclear energy should be part of this eco-label,” said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire at the conference to replenish the Green Fund at the end of October.
“We cannot succeed in the ecological transition, and we cannot achieve our goal in terms of combating global warming without nuclear energy,” the French minister said.
Although nuclear energy largely meets the low-carbon emissions objective, “it was not possible to include nuclear power because there is no scientific evidence for waste treatment. This means that the sector does not meet both requirements,” explained Jochen Krimphoff, WWF’s deputy director for green finance.
Since the beginning of the negotiations on the EU’s taxonomy, France has been pushing to reintroduce nuclear power, much to Germany’s dismay.
“France will advocate that nuclear energy should be part of this eco-label,” said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire at the conference to replenish the Green Fund at the end of October.
“We cannot succeed in the ecological transition, and we cannot achieve our goal in terms of combating global warming without nuclear energy,” the French minister said.
The move is all the more surprising given France’s rather progressive positions on the taxonomy. For example, Paris has, like the Commission and Parliament, been calling for the taxonomy to enter into force as early as 2020, while the Council has advocated for implementation in 2023.
For its part, Germany would not be opposed to labeling gas as green. This could be at the risk of a deal that would see both gas and nuclear power re-entering the scheme.
Hungary wants EU to weaken nuclear licensing rules, as it wants to expand Rosatom nuclear project
Hungary makes EU bid to soften nuclear licensing rules to ease Paks expansion, BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary has submitted draft legislation to the European Commission to amend the country’s nuclear safety protocols to custom-fit a 12 billion euro Russian-led nuclear plant expansion project that it wants to speed up, eight sources told Reuters. Marton Dunai, 27 Nov 19,
The EU review was confirmed by an EU official requesting anonymity, as well as several Hungarian government sources. Eight sources, including high-ranking government officials, confirmed the plan.
Hungary wants to expand its 2-gigawatt Paks nuclear power plant with two Russian-made VVER reactors, each with a capacity of 1.2 gigawatts.
The project, awarded in 2014 without a tender to nuclear giant Rosatom, an arm of the Russian government, is often cited as a sign of exceptionally warm ties between Hungarian premier Viktor Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a connection that has unnerved Western allies.
However, Rosatom struggled to meet EU and Hungarian safety criteria, delaying the project by several years, and the Russian and Hungarian governments now want to accelerate it.
Under the proposed new rules, license applications to build the reactor hole and surrounding insulating slurry wall could be considered before the entire project receives the green light – a break with prior protocol, which only allowed partial licenses to be considered once the construction license was granted.
Hungary’s top official in charge of energy policy, Technology Ministry State Secretary Peter Kaderjak, confirmed to Reuters the government was working with the European Commission to recast nuclear power plant construction rules.
Kaderjak called the Paks 2 project “the cornerstone of Hungary’s energy and climate strategy”.
“We are seeking ways to cut the project execution time as short as possible, fully respecting nuclear safety,” he said. “That explains this draft amendment.”
RISKY MOVE
The modification carries risks and makes the project much more difficult to abandon or modify as the framework, literally, will be set in stone, according to seven sources with knowledge of the matter who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
But the move could help the Hungarian government in its haggling with Moscow to modify the current build-and-finance package. Hungary wants to extend the current payment start date of 2026, which was fixed when the project was first conceived.
Russia wants to avoid paying delay penalties – by putting off the completion deadline to about 2029 and by having Hungary ease regulatory hurdles such as this one, these sources said.
The changes will appear in a government decree called the Nuclear Safety Regulations once the European Commission’s nuclear arm, the Euratom Supply Agency, approves the changes.
An EU source also confirmed the Commission was assessing draft legislation against the EU’s latest Nuclear Safety Directive, adding it had three months to make recommendations, a deadline that is not yet up.
“In this framework, the Hungarian authorities have made several such notifications to the Commission in recent years,” the EU source told Reuters. “The latest of these notifications was received this year and is currently being assessed.”
Asked about the changes, the HAEA told Reuters that reactor hole and slurry wall work, and some equipment that takes a long time to manufacture, may undergo the licensing process parallel with the evaluation of the construction license application.
“Licenses cannot be granted before the construction license is issued – except for work on soil solidification, soil removal, and the water insulation work to section off the work area, especially the slurry wall permits.”
Experts estimate the reactor hole to be several hundred meters wide and several hundred meters long, up to 100 meters deep, surrounded by a concrete slurry wall more than a meter thick. This phase alone could take a year or more to execute.
The changes are designed to save time so once the overall construction license is issued work can begin on the power plant buildings.
But experts warned the slurry wall and reactor hole could cost hundreds of millions of euros, and hastening them carries risk: if the HAEA find faults with the overall design, it may require changes that conflict with the concrete already poured, causing a potential cost spike and long delay.
“Even with these permits Paks 2 carries responsibility for any work it executes, as the ongoing construction licensing process could influence all other licensing,” the HAEA said.
Reporting by Marton Dunai; Editing by Dale Hudson 9full story) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-nuclearpower-exclusive/exclusive-hungary-makes-eu-bid-to-soften-nuclear-licensing-rules-to-ease-paks-expansion-idUSKBN1Y01WQ
Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon’s outspoken opposition to use of nuclear weapons
We don’t make the world safer by making it more dangerous first.
We [the UK] should lead the way by scrapping nuclear weapons and investing that money in our communities and our public services.
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The consequences of this position should be made clear. The only time nuclear weapons have been used in war was the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US at the end of the second world war. The atomic bombs killed tens of thousands instantly. Radiation sickness killed many more. The first bomb destroyed five square miles of Hiroshima. No country has launched a nuclear attack since, but the world shortly afterwards entered a dangerous arms race. The nuclear weapons around today dwarf the bombs dropped in Japan. The death toll from a modern nuclear strike would not be counted in the tens of thousands, but in the millions. There is a theory – and it is one I fundamentally disagree with – that nuclear weapons make us safer, as no country would pick a fight with a nuclear power. But even those who buy into the idea of mutually assured destruction should balk at the casual way in which political discourse on this topic has developed. If a mainstream politician unblinkingly said that they would use chemical weapons against civilians there would be uproar. If a self-proclaimed candidate for prime minister boasted that they would commit war crimes, it would be a national scandal. Nuclear weapons should be seen no differently – but a dated cold war mentality is used to cloak these weapons of mass destruction in respectability. Their potential for death and destruction deserve better than trigger-happy bravado. It’s time that nuclear advocates spelt out the reality of what their position means. In 1961, despite public protests, the first US Polaris submarine sailed into Holy Loch in Argyll. By the end of that decade the UK had launched its own nuclear fleet, with four Polaris submarines based at Faslane. For 50 years nuclear submarines have been operational less than 30 miles from Glasgow, Scotland’s main population centre. Like many other Scots, I’ve always been appalled that Britain’s nuclear arsenal has been kept in my backyard. And I’ve always been astounded that UK government after UK government has paid the enormous cost of maintaining these dangerous weapons while children grow up in poverty in their shadow. I joined the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament even before I joined the SNP. I don’t just want a Scotland free of nuclear weapons – I want a world free of nuclear weapons. But I have always felt that the only way to get nuclear weapons off the Clyde is for Scotland to become independent. This election campaign proves my point. Swinson is not alone in racing to embrace nuclear weapons to prove her leadership. Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time supporter of the CND, is now fully signed up to renewing Trident. While I have my differences with Corbyn, on this issue I believe that, in his heart of hearts, he still feels the same as I do. Yet, in attempting to become prime minister, the Labour leader feels the need to sell out his principled opposition to Trident and promise to keep it on the Clyde. The UK government has slashed conventional defence personnel and left Scotland without the defence capabilities that a maritime nation actually needs. We would be better protected, with more jobs, without Trident. Labour’s position is now that it supports a world free of nuclear weapons – but that the route there is to renew the missiles we already have. Like mutually assured destruction before it, this theory of multilateral disarmament relies on a massive leap of logic. We don’t make the world safer by making it more dangerous first. The cold war showed that developing nuclear weapons encourages an endless escalation, with status-obsessed powers demanding bigger and more destructive stockpiles. Even the progress made since the 1980s has proven to be built on unsteady ground. This year the US and Russia both withdrew from a key nuclear treaty, banning intermediate-range missiles. The last thing we need is a new arms race. The UK has an opportunity to show real, global leadership. It’s not enough to wait for other countries to see the error of their ways while spending tens of billions on new weapons for ourselves – with one estimate putting the lifetime cost of a new generation of Trident missiles at £200bn. We should lead the way by scrapping nuclear weapons and investing that money in our communities and our public services. The fact that the Westminster parties are united in their opposition to this approach will only confirm to many Scots that independence is the only way to scrap Trident once and for all. My message is simple – the overwhelming majority of countries the world over do not have nuclear weapons. We do not need nuclear weapons. And we should never, ever use nuclear weapons. |
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Studies on Chernobyl nuclear disaster show that it’s relevant today, and for the future
DOES CHERNOBYL STILL MATTER? https://www.publicbooks.org/does-chernobyl-still-matter/ 11.22.2019 BY GABRIELLE HECHT Since it first announced electricity “too cheap to meter,” in the 1950s, the nuclear industry has promised bountiful futures powered by a peaceful—and safe—atom. Design principles, the industry claims, limit the chances of core damage to one incident every 50,000 reactor-years of operation. History, however, has delivered a different verdict: together, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the three Fukushima reactors represent five meltdowns in only 100 reactor-years. What lessons do these accidents hold for the future of nuclear power?
Each meltdown has impelled design, operational, and regulatory changes, increasing the cost of nuclear power. Today, says the industry, the technology is safer and more vital than ever. No other source of electricity can offer so much baseload power with so few carbon emissions. But who can make money when a single US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspection costs $360,000?
For the current US administration, the remedy for waning profits lies in cutting inspection hours. In a July 2019 proposal, which drew heavily on nuclear industry recommendations, the NRC also suggested crediting utility self-assessments as “inspections” and discontinuing press releases about problems of “low to moderate safety or security significance.” Translation: fewer inspections, less transparency, and weaker environmental and health oversight at the nation’s nuclear power plants.
The cause, costs, and consequences of the 1986 Chernobyl accident loom large in these battles. Was Chernobyl a fluke, the result of faulty technology and a corrupt political system? Or did it signal a fundamentally flawed technological system, one that would never live up to expectations?
Even simple questions are subject to debate. How long did the disaster last? Who were the victims, and how many were there? What did they experience? Which branches of science help us understand the damage? Whom should we trust? Such questions are tackled, with markedly different results, in Serhii Plokhy’s Chernobyl, Adam Higginbotham’s Midnight in Chernobyl, Kate Brown’s Manual for Survival, and HBO’s Chernobyl (created by Craig Mazin).
Serhii Plokhy’s book and Craig Mazin’s miniseries, both entitled Chernobyl, focus primarily on the accident and its immediate aftermath. Both build on the standard plotline embraced by nuclear advocates.
In this narrative, Soviet love of monumental grandeur—or “gigantomania”—led to the selection and construction of Chernobyl’s RBMK1 design: an enormous 1000-megawatt reactor, powered by low-enriched uranium fuel, moderated by graphite, and cooled by water. The utterly unique RBMK had fundamental design flaws, hidden by corrupt state apparatchiks obsessed with secrecy, prestige, and productivism. Operators made inexcusable errors. The accident was inevitable. But the inevitability, Plokhy and Mazin affirm, was purely Soviet.
Plokhy gives more backstory. The enormous scale of Soviet industrialization put huge strains on supply chains, resulting in shoddy construction. Some of the men in charge had no nuclear background. The pressure to meet production quotas—and the dire consequences of failure—led bureaucrats and engineers to cut corners.
For both Plokhy and Mazin, these conditions at Chernobyl came to a head during a long-delayed safety test. When the moment to launch the test finally arrived, shortly before midnight on April 25, 1986, there was confusion about how to proceed. The plant’s deputy chief engineer, Anatolii Diatlov, who did have extensive nuclear experience, believed he knew better than the woefully incomplete manuals. He pushed operators to violate the poorly written test protocol. (Disappointingly, Mazin’s miniseries portrays Diatlov more as a deranged bully than as someone with meaningful operational knowledge.)
The reactor did not cooperate: its power plummeted, then shot back up. Operators tried to reinsert the control rods. The manual didn’t mention that the RBMK could behave counterintuitively: in other reactor models, inserting control rods would slow down the fission reaction, but in the RBMK—especially under that night’s operating conditions—inserting the rods actually increased the reactivity. Steam pressure and temperature skyrocketed. The reactor exploded, shearing off its 2000-ton lid. Uranium, graphite, and a suite of radionuclides flew out of the core and splattered around the site. The remaining graphite in the core caught fire.
At first, plant managers didn’t believe that the core had actually exploded. In the USSR—as elsewhere—the impossibility of a reactor explosion underwrote visions of atomic bounty. Nor did managers believe the initial radiation readings, which exceeded their dosimeters’ detection limits. Their disbelief exacerbated and prolonged the harm, exposing many more people to much more radiation than they might have otherwise received. Firefighters lacked protection against radiation; the evacuation of the neighboring town of Pripyat was dangerously delayed; May Day parades proceeded as planned. Anxious to blame human operators—instead of faulty technology or (Lenin forbid!) a broken political system—the state put the plant’s three top managers on trial, in June 1987, their guilt predetermined.
Mazin’s miniseries follows a few central characters. Most really existed, though the script takes considerable liberties. The actions of the one made-up character, a Belarusian nuclear physicist, completely defy credibility. But hey, it’s TV. Dramatic convention dictates that viewers must care about the characters to care about the story. Familiar Cold War tropes are on full display: defective design, craven bureaucrats, and a corrupt, secrecy-obsessed political system. A few anonymous heroes also appear: firefighters, divers, miners, and others who risked their lives to limit the damage.
Nuclear advocates—many of whom believe that Chernobyl was a fluke, one whose lessons actually improved the industry’s long-term viability—object to the unrealistically gory hospital scenes portraying acute radiation sickness. But these advocates should feel appeased by the closing frames, which ignore the long-term damage caused by the accident.
Instead, the miniseries skates over post-1987 events in a few quick captions. The managers went to prison, a scientist committed suicide, people were evacuated. Yes, controversy persists over the number of casualties (31? That was the official Soviet number. How about 4,000? That’s the number issued by the Chernobyl Forum, an entity that includes representatives from the World Health Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and other international organizations. As for the 41,000 cancers suggested by a study published in the International Journal of Cancer—that number isn’t even mentioned). But all is under control now, thanks to the new confinement structure that will keep the area “safe” for a hundred years. Mazin himself insists that the show isn’t antinuclear.
Instead, the miniseries skates over post-1987 events in a few quick captions. The managers went to prison, a scientist committed suicide, people were evacuated. Yes, controversy persists over the number of casualties (31? That was the official Soviet number. How about 4,000? That’s the number issued by the Chernobyl Forum, an entity that includes representatives from the World Health Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and other international organizations. As for the 41,000 cancers suggested by a study published in the International Journal of Cancer—that number isn’t even mentioned). But all is under control now, thanks to the new confinement structure that will keep the area “safe” for a hundred years. Mazin himself insists that the show isn’t antinuclear.
Plokhy also addresses the accident’s role in the breakup of the USSR. In 2006, Mikhail Gorbachev famously speculated that “the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.” Plokhy delivers details. Ukrainian dissidents trained their writerly gaze on Chernobyl, vividly describing the damage. Street demonstrations depicted the accident and its coverup as “embodiments of Moscow’s eco-imperialism.” This vision spread and morphed, animating protests in Belarus—also severely contaminated by the accident—and elsewhere. Chernobyl served as Exhibit A for why the republics should shed the Soviet yoke.
If you’re hoping for clear technical explanations, however, you’ll be disappointed. A stunning error mars the first few pages: Plokhy declares that each RBMK produced 1 million megawatts of electricity. This is off by a factor of 1,000. Typo? No, because he doubles down in the next sentence, affirming that the station produced 29 billion megawatts of electricity in 1985. He gets the orders of magnitude right later on, but these early missteps undermine reader confidence. Muddled technical descriptions and uninformative diagrams add to the confusion.
Readers seeking to understand the technology should turn instead to journalist Adam Higginbotham’s Midnight in Chernobyl. He uses global nuclear history to illuminate Soviet efforts to manage the Chernobyl crisis. By comparing the crisis to reactor accidents elsewhere, Higginbotham shows that deep vulnerabilities are widespread. Plokhy’s engineers and managers seem bumbling, verging on incompetent. Higginbotham’s more nuanced portrayal reflects how complex engineering projects of all types necessitate informed improvisation. The three-dimensional world doesn’t faithfully obey manuals. Adjustments are always required.
Higginbotham and Plokhy differ most starkly in their treatment of Soviet reactor choice. In the1960s, technocrats weighed the RBMK design against the VVER,2 the Soviet version of a pressurized light water reactor similar to those sold by Westinghouse and used in the United States. For Plokhy, it’s simple. The VVER was “safe.” The RBMK was not, but its size and cost appealed to Soviet productivism.
Higginbotham, however, wisely relies on Sonja Schmid’s pathbreaking Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry (2015) to show that reactor safety isn’t a yes-no proposition. Plutonium-producing reactors similar to the Soviet RBMK (albeit half its size) existed in North America and Western Europe. Like nine of its French cousins, the RBMK could be refueled while continuing to operate. This presented significant advantages: light water reactors had to shut down for refueling, which entailed several weeks of outage. Even the risks presented by RBMK design vulnerabilities seemed manageable. “Nuclear experts elsewhere considered the RBMK design neither technologically novel nor particularly worrisome,” Schmid writes, noting that “what we consider good and safe always depends on context.” In the Soviet context, “selecting the RBMK made very good sense.”
Neither Schmid nor Higginbotham absolves the Soviet technopolitical system. The specific circumstances that led to Chernobyl’s explosions might not recur. But, as sociologist Charles Perrow has been arguing since his 1983 book Normal Accidents, highly complex technological systems create unpredictable situations, which inevitably lead to system failures. The question is not whether an accident of Chernobyl’s gravity can happen elsewhere, but how to prepare for the consequences when it does.
That’s one of the questions Kate Brown considers in Manual for Survival. Offering a wealth of new information and analysis, Brown speeds past the reactor explosion. Instead, she focuses on dozens of previously untold stories about how people coped with their newly radioactive lives.
Brown’s protagonists include women who worked at a wool factory fed by contaminated sheep and butchers ordered to grade meat according to radioactivity. Ukraine, we learn, kept serving as the Soviet breadbasket, despite food radiation levels that exceeded norms. The concentrations of radionuclides were biomagnified by receptive organisms and ecologies, such as mushrooms, wild boar, and the Pripyat Marshes. Defying expectations, some foods, over time, have even become more contaminated.
Brown’s descriptions add historical flesh to arguments first developed by Olga Kuchinskaya, in her 2014 book on Belarus’s Chernobyl experience, The Politics of Invisibility: Public Knowledge about Radiation Health Effects after Chernobyl.
Since the first studies of bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, science on the biological effects of radiation exposure has been subject to controversy. Like all scientific work, these early survivor studies had limitations. Exposure estimates were unreliable.
The largest study began data collection five years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts, so it didn’t include people who died or moved between 1945 and 1950. Another problem lies in the applicability of these studies. Bomb exposures, such as those in Japan, mostly consist of high, external doses from one big blast. Yet postwar exposures have mainly consisted of low doses, delivered steadily over a long period. They often involve internal exposures—such as inhalation of radioactive particles or consumption of irradiated food—which can be deadlier.
Irrespective of their limitations, however, the findings of these survivor studies have served as the basis for establishing regulatory limits for all types of radiation exposures. Critics argue that extrapolating from the Japan data underestimates low-dose effects: If you’ve already decided that the only possible health effects are the ones you’ve already found, surely you’re missing something? Among other limitations, studies of external gamma radiation exposures cannot illuminate the long-term health effects of inhaling radioactive alpha particles.
Brown injects the work of Dr. Angelina Gus’kova into this story. Gus’kova started treating radiation-induced illnesses in the 1950s, while working at the top-secret Mayak plutonium plant (where the radioactive spills from a 1957 accident continue to contaminate people, land, and water). A neurologist, Gus’kova made observations that extended beyond the narrow cancer focus of most Western practitioners who studied the health effects of radiation exposure. Her patients displayed a wide range of symptoms, which Gus’kova and her colleagues dubbed “chronic radiation syndrome.” Not that they neglected cancer: a 40-year study of 1.5 million people who lived near Mayak found significantly higher cancer and death rates than those reported in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Soviet rubric of “chronic radiation syndrome” did not exist in the West. Yet Gus’kova’s findings did align with those of dissident scientists in the US and the UK. Thomas Mancuso, for example, was pushed out of the US Atomic Energy Commission because he refused to give the Hanford plutonium plant a clean bill of health after finding that workers there sustained high rates of cardiovascular disease, immune system damage, and other illnesses.
Alice Stewart, meanwhile, was shunned by the British establishment after her 1956 research showed that x-raying pregnant women increased the risk of cancer and leukemia in their children by 50 percent. Over the years, these and other scientists whose data challenged the findings of American and European nuclear establishments found themselves sidelined and defunded.
In tandem with perestroika, Chernobyl opened communication between Soviet and Western nuclear experts, engendering what Brown calls an “unholy alliance.” In 1990, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sent a mission to Belarus and Ukraine to assess radiation damage. Belarusian scientists reported rising rates of many diseases in contaminated areas. Nevertheless, the IAEA team rejected radiation as a possible cause. Such correlations didn’t appear in Western data.
Instead, the IAEA teams used dose estimates provided by distant Moscow colleagues and ignored local Belarusian and Ukrainian descriptions of people’s actual consumption habits, which included significant amounts of contaminated food and milk. The IAEA assessments neglected the internal exposures resulting from this consumption. Yet these assessments now serve as international reference points. “Underestimating Chernobyl damage,” Brown warns, “has left humans unprepared for the next disaster.”
For some, hope springs eternal. In 2017, Chernobyl’s “New Safe Confinement” finally became operational, after two decades of design and construction. This $1.7 billion structure aims to contain the spread of radioactive rubble while workers inside dismantle the reactor and its crumbling sarcophagus. Ownership was transferred from the builders of the structure to the Ukrainian government in July 2019.
At the transfer ceremony, newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a tourism development plan for the radioactive exclusion zone, including a “green corridor” through which tourists could travel to gawk at the remains of Soviet hubris. “Until now, Chernobyl was a negative part of Ukraine’s brand,” declared Zelensky, who was nine years old when the reactor exploded. “It’s time to change.” (Zelensky further demonstrated his dedication to “branding” two weeks after this ceremony, when he emphasized his recent stay in a Trump hotel during his now-infamous phone conversation with the US president.)
Change also seems possible to Plokhy, who optimistically predicts that new reactor designs will be “cheaper, safer, and ecologically cleaner.” But Allison Macfarlane, who chaired the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission under Obama, recently noted that these “new” options are actually “repackaged designs from 70 years ago.” They still produce significant quantities of highly radioactive, long-lived waste.
Meanwhile, regulators in France—the world’s most nuclear nation—are taking the opposite approach from the United States’ NRC. Rather than rolling back oversight, France is intensifying inspections of their aging reactor fleet. After four decades of operation, many French reactors have begun to leak and crack. Keeping them operational will cost at least $61 billion. Despite the phenomenal cost, there are many who believe such an investment in the nuclear future is worthwhile.
Brown is far less sanguine about our nuclear future. Predictably, she has been denounced for believing marginal scientists and relying too heavily on anecdotal evidence. She does occasionally go overboard in suggesting conspiracy. Cover-ups clearly occurred on many occasions, but sometimes people were just sticking to their beliefs, trapped by their institutional and disciplinary lenses. Brown’s absence of nuance on this point matters, because the banality of ignorance—its complicity in all forms of knowledge production—can be more dangerous than deliberate lies: more systemic, harder to detect and combat.
Overall, though, Brown is on the right track. Many modes of scientific inquiry aren’t equipped to address our most urgent questions. Clear causal chains are a laboratory ideal. The real world brims with confounding variables. Some scientists studying Chernobyl’s “exclusion zone”—the region officially declared uninhabitable due to contamination—are trying new techniques to grapple with this reality. Tim Mousseau and Anders Møller, for example, collect data on the zone in its ecological entirety, rather than focusing on single organisms. Their findings belie romantic tales of wildlife resurgence (such as the one offered up by a 2011 PBS special on the radioactive wolves of Chernobyl). They too have met resistance.
How, then, can we harness the immense power of scientific analysis while also acknowledging its limitations? The nuclear establishment is quick to lump its opponents together with climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers. Some may deserve that. But much dissident science is well executed. So how do we, the lay public, tell the difference? How can dissent and uncertainty serve, not as a block to action, but as a call?
One way: we can refuse to see Chernobyl and its kin as discrete events of limited duration. Brown, for example, treats Chernobyl as an acceleration of planetary-scale contamination that began with the atomic arms race.
Let’s be clear: the contamination continues. After the triple meltdown at Fukushima, scientists found highly radioactive, cesium-rich microparticles in Tokyo, 150 miles south of the accident site. When inhaled, such particles remain in human lungs, where their decay continues to release radioactivity for decades. Contaminants from future accidents will, in turn, accrete on the radioactive residues of their predecessors.
And, we might add, on the ocean floor. The Russian state-run firm Rosatom recently announced the inauguration of its first floating reactor, towed across the melting Arctic to serve a community in Siberia: yet another manifestation of how climate change favors nuclear development. Rosatom is currently negotiating contracts for reactors (floating and otherwise) in some 30 countries, from Belarus to Bangladesh, Egypt to South Africa.
Threatened, the US nuclear industry sees Russian expansion as “another reason that the United States should maintain global leadership in nuclear technology exports.” And so we hurtle forward: rolling back oversight, acceleration unchecked.
This article was commissioned by Caitlin Zaloom.
UK’s embarrassing, expensive, intractable trouble with dead nuclear submarines
Key point: Britain isn’t the only nation that has problems disposing of nuclear warships. When you need to dispose of an old car, you can take it to a junkyard.
But what do you do with a nuclear submarine whose reactor can make people glow in a most unpleasant way?
Britain has retired twenty nuclear submarines since 1980. None have been disposed of, and nine still contain radioactive fuel in their reactors, according to an audit by Britain’s National Audit Office. These subs spent an average of twenty-six years on active service—and nineteen years out of service.
“Because of this, the Department [Ministry of Defense] now stores twice as many submarines as it operates, with seven of them having been in storage for longer than they were in service,” the audit states.
Even worse is the price tag. Britain has spent 500 million pounds ($646.4 million) maintaining those decommissioned subs between 1980 and 2017. Full disposal of a nuclear sub would cost 96 million pounds ($112.1 million). As a result, the total cost for disposing of the Royal Navy’s ten active subs and twenty retired vessels would be 7.5 billion pounds ($9.7 billion), NAO calculated…….
The plan is to begin defueling subs, beginning with HMS Swiftsure, in 2023. But even then, the Ministry of Defense will have to deal with different subs that have different disposal requirements. “At present, the Department does not have a fully developed plan to dispose of Vanguard, Astute and Dreadnought-class submarines, which have different types of nuclear reactor,” NAO pointed out. “For the Vanguard and Astute-class it has identified suitable dock space which, if used, will need to be maintained.”
Interestingly, the British military gets an exemption when it comes to nuclear waste. “Within the civil nuclear sector, organizations must consider nuclear waste disposal during the design stage of power stations and nuclear infrastructure. The Department does not have a similar obligation.”
Scottish National Party will press Jeremy Corbyn to scrap UK’s nuclear deterrent
Nicola Sturgeon to press Corbyn to scrap UK’s nuclear deterrent
Abandoning Trident would be key issue in SNP support for a minority Labour government, Guardian Severin Carrell Scotland editor
@severincarrell, Mon 25 Nov 2019
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Nicola Sturgeon will press Jeremy Corbyn to scrap the UK’s nuclear deterrent in any talks on Scottish National party support for a minority Labour government. The SNP leader said abandoning Trident would a key issue in any post-election talks with Labour, alongside supporting a second independence referendum, abolishing the universal credit benefits system and devolving immigration policy to Holyrood. In an article for the Guardian Sturgeon attacked Corbyn for abandoning his longstanding opposition to nuclear weapons in favour of supporting Trident and its replacement by a new system, based at Faslane submarine base on the Clyde. “Like many other Scots, I’ve always been appalled that Britain’s nuclear arsenal has been kept in my back yard,” Sturgeon wrote. “Corbyn, a longtime supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, is now fully signed up to renewing Trident. While I have my differences with Jeremy, on this issue – in his heart of hearts – I believe he still feels the same as I do. Yet, in attempting to become prime minister, he feels the need to sell out his principled opposition to Trident and promise to keep them on the Clyde.”….. Corbyn and Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat leader, have both been asked during the election campaign whether they would use nuclear weapons. Corbyn refused to say; Swinson quickly said yes. Corbyn has also repeatedly insisted Labour will not negotiate with other parties to ensure it can govern. …… https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/24/nicola-sturgeon-to-press-corbyn-to-scrap-uks-nuclear-deterrent |
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France’s Flamanville nuclear financial catastrophe gets worse
Le Monde 22nd Nov 2019, Jean-Martin Folz’s report on the construction of the Flamanville EPR, handed out on October 28 , is without appeal for the French nuclear power industry. The financial catastrophe continues to worsen. The project is currently 10 years late and 9 billion euros over budget. He helped engulf Areva, flagship of the French nuclear industry, declared bankrupt in 2016, which owed its salvation to a bailout on public funds of 4.5 billion euros.
It now weighs on the accounts of EDF, a new prime contractor since the
wreck of Areva, which no longer hopes to connect the reactor to the network
before 2022.
Why is the UK government now hiding its nuclear history files?
 Nuclear X-files? Academics baffled as UK govt. pulls docs from national archives https://stockdailydish.com/nuclear-x-files-academics-baffled-as-uk-govt-pulls-docs-from-national-archives/ SDD Contributor on November 22, 2019 Nuclear X-files? Academics baffled as UK govt. pulls docs from national archives Thousands of national archive files on Britain’s atomic and nuclear weapons energy programs have been withdrawn from public view by order of the UK government without any explanation, alarming academics.
Researchers reported that the documents, dating from 1939 to the 1980s, were unexpectedly withdrawn by the National Archives last week. The files relate to, among other subjects, the creation of Britain’s first nuclear bombs and the private papers of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who split the atomic nucleus, Sir John Cockcroft. A spokesperson for the NDA stated that they are “absolutely committed to openness and transparency,” though no reason has been forthcoming, leading to speculation among academics that the files contained previously overlooked sensitive information, which should be withheld from public view. The papers in question are divided into two sections; records of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) and the records of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. The AWE documents concern the development of the UK atomic weapons. Bomb tests, feasibility reports and notes on the theoretical physics of nuclear weapons are all included. Jon Agar, a professor of history of science and technology at University College London, spoke of his ‘alarm’ at the situation to the Guardian. “We would like to know what is going on. We would be alarmed as historians that it has been taken out of public view. “These are important records for understanding the nuclear project in the UK. A couple of days ago a PhD student noticed that everything in the catalogue is coming up as temporarily retained. We are scratching our heads. It is all a bit mysterious.” |
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Putin told bereaved families that nuclear accident scientists were working on an “unparalled”weapon
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PUTIN SAYS SCIENTISTS KILLED IN MYSTERY NUCLEAR BLAST WERE TESTING ‘THE MOST ADVANCED AND UNPARALLELED’ WEAPON, Newsweek, BRENDAN COLE ON 11/22/19 RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN HAS TOLD THE FAMILIES OF THE SCIENTISTS WHO WERE KILLED IN A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION IN THE COUNTRY’S ARCTIC NORTH THEY WERE TESTING AN “UNPARALLELED” WEAPON.There was much speculation about what caused the blast at a test facility in Nyonoksa in the Arkhangelsk region on August 8, which killed at least five people and sparked local fears about increased radiation levels and the secrecy surrounding the incident.
International experts believed the explosion involved the Burevestnik nuclear-powered intercontinental cruise missile, which NATO calls the SSC-X-9 Skyfall. In a ceremony at the Kremlin on Thursday for the families of the dead, Putin paid tribute to the efforts of the dead scientists by awarding them the Order of Courage. He said that the scientists were working on “the most advanced and unparalleled technical ideas and solutions, about weapons designed to ensure Russia’s sovereignty and security for decades to come,” in the speech which was broadcast on news channel Russia 24 and picked up by The Moscow Times. “The very fact of possessing these unique technologies is the most important reliable guarantee of peace on the planet today,” he said. Without specifying what kind it was, Putin added, “we will certainly be perfecting this weapon regardless of anything,” he said………. Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom said the scientists had been testing on an offshore platform at the Nyonoksa naval test range in August when a fire broke out and an engine exploded. Radiation levels hit up to 16 times more than normal in the nearest big city, Severodvinsk, around 30 miles away. Many locals were concerned about the lack of transparency about the explosion. Monitoring stations nearby stopped transmitting data and medical staff in Archangelsk complained they were not warned about the radiation contamination risk when they treated workers who were injured in the blast. U.S. intelligence sources told CNBC that the blast happened during an attempt to salvage a lost missile from a previous test. “There was an explosion on one of the vessels involved in the recovery and that caused a reaction in the missile’s nuclear core which lead to the radiation leak,” a source told the news network in August. https://www.newsweek.com/russia-burevestnik-nyonoksa-nuclear-blast-1473481?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=NewsweekTwitter&fbclid=IwAR2NyVzT3bpGhPJIyStIjRc_Ymhkf8FkhnzaYhPfWunFX2h3w-HQb6Un03E |
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France’s government is giving mixed messages on future of nuclear energy
EDF gives Macron little reason to come clean on 
nuclear https://www.ft.com/content/adbe9da6-0ab8-11ea-bb52-34c8d9dc6d84 Problems at a flagship nuclear reactor means French government can take time over future of EDF, BEN HALL , Europe editor NOVEMBER 20 2019
The earthquake that shook the Rhone valley in south-east France last week could have been another financial disaster for energy giant EDF in what has been a bruising year. Its share price has taken a battering over concerns that it will struggle to pay for the upkeep of its ageing fleet of reactors, find money to build new ones and service its €37bn of net debt. The worries have been amplified by further delays and cost overruns at the mammoth nuclear plant it is building on the Normandy coast. The Rhone valley is home to four of the country’s 19 atomic power stations and a nuclear fuel processing facility, all operated by EDF. The tremor was the worst to hit France in 16 years. Three reactors at Cruas had to be shut down until mid-December for mandatory safety checks.
The French government, which owns 83.7 per cent of the company, is giving mixed messages about the way forward. It will not decide whether to build more EPRs until Flamanville is up and running — conveniently after the 2022 presidential election, allowing Emmanuel Macron to avoid the wrath of France’s increasingly powerful environmental movement. But according to Le Monde newspaper, the government has also secretly ordered EDF to draw up a feasibility study for six new EPRs built in pairs.
A Labour government in UK would revive Wylfa nuclear power project
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 Labour commits to lagoon and nuclear plant in manifesto, BBC, 21 November 2019Major Welsh projects including a Swansea Bay tidal lagoon would be built if Labour wins the general election, the party’s manifesto says.
Plans for a lagoon were dropped by UK ministers last year, but there have been efforts to revive such a scheme. Stalled plans for a new nuclear power station on Anglesey would also be revived under Labour, the party says……. Earlier this year, the Japanese firm Hitachi said it was suspending work on the £13bn Wylfa Newydd nuclear power project on Anglesey because of rising costs, after six months of talks with UK ministers about funding for the scheme. Labour’s manifesto states the party will “work with people on the island to maximise its potential for new nuclear energy, alongside investment in renewables”…….. What about Brexit? In his speech in Birmingham, Mr Corbyn said he would negotiate a “sensible” Brexit deal with the EU, that protects manufacturing and Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement. Voters would be able to choose between that deal or staying in the EU in a referendum to be held within six months, he said. Mr Corbyn has refused to say which option he will back, although Welsh Labour leader Mark Drakeford says the party in Wales will campaign to keep the UK in the European Union. Recognising this difference between the two leaders on a key issue, the manifesto states “in Wales the Welsh Labour government will campaign to remain”. https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50490159 |
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UK Labour touts ‘green industrial revolution’, BUT INCLUDES NUCLEAR POWER AS “GREEN”!
 Labour pledges ‘green industrial revolution’ with nuclear power and a digging over of allotment lawsThe environment gets top billing in Labour’s manifesto. The first chapter of their 150 pages of policy pledges is devoted to what Labour are calling a “Green Industrial Revolution”. While they’ve conspicuously dropped a conference pledge of a net zero carbon target by 2030, which most serious analysts warned was impossible to achieve anyway, like the Liberal Democrats and Green Parties they’re planning to borrow big to invest in a low carbon economy. There’s a £250bn “Green Transformation Fund” to massively increase low carbon energy generation, warmer, lower carbon homes and promises to decarbonise heating in buildings — much needed if the UK is going to meet its existing climate change pledges. In a notable departure from Liberal Democrat and Green manifestos, they promise to support nuclear power as a way of ensuring stable electricity supply on a future national grid….. https://www.itv.com/news/2019-11-21/labour-pledges-green-industrial-revolution-with-nuclear-power-and-a-digging-over-of-allotment-laws/ |
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France’s company EDF selling out of USA nuclear plants, Exelon to buy.
EDF Will Bail on Three Nuclear Plants, Exelon Holds the Bag, Power Mag 11/21/2019 | Aaron Larson Exelon Generation said EDF Group—a French integrated electricity company—is exercising a put option to sell its 49.99% interest in the R.E. Ginna, Nine Mile Point, and Calvert Cliffs nuclear energy facilities. The two companies will now begin negotiations for Exelon to acquire full ownership of the plants.
EDF’s involvement in the facilities was through the Constellation Energy Nuclear Group (CENG), a joint venture between it and Constellation Energy, which was negotiated in 2009. Exelon acquired its majority stake in the plants as part of a merger with Constellation Energy, a deal that closed in March 2012.
EDF said the disposal of CENG shares is part of a previously announced non-core-asset disposal plan. The put option could have been exercised by EDF anytime between Jan. 1, 2016, and June 30, 2022. A transaction price will follow from the determination of the fair market value of CENG shares pursuant to the contractual provisions of the put option agreement, EDF said.
…….. The facilities consist of the single-unit 576-MW R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant (Figure 1) and the dual-unit 1,907-MW Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station, which are both in upstate New York, and the dual-unit 1,756-MW Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Maryland. The upstate New York plants were under economic pressure and faced possible closure a few years ago, but subsidies approved by the state have kept the units financially viable.
For UK elections, top issue is climate change
Climate crisis topping UK election agenda is ‘unprecedented’ change Environmentalists say such political focus on green issues ‘unthinkable’ just five years ago, Guardian, Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent, Fri 22 Nov 2019 The climate emergency has risen to the top of the UK’s election agenda in a way that would have been “unthinkable” even five years ago, leading environmentalists have said, predicting that it augurs a permanent change in British politics.On Wednesday, Labour took the unprecedented move of putting green issues as the top section of its manifesto, the first time one of the UK’s two major parties has done so. Jeremy Corbyn led the appeal to voters with policies including an £11bn windfall tax on oil and gas companies, a million new jobs in a “green industrial revolution” and commitments on moving to a net-zero carbon economy.“Such focus on climate and the environment would have been almost unthinkable five years ago,” said Shaun Spiers, executive director of the Green Alliance. “Tackling climate change runs through this manifesto in a way that is unprecedented from either of the main parties ahead of a UK general election.”
“It would not have been possible five years ago,” said Tom Burke, chairman of environmental thinktank E3G and former adviser to several governments, who said the move marked a permanent change in British politics, as younger voters in particular were “energised” over the environment. Public anxiety had been fuelled by people seeing extreme weather around the world, and the rise of climate activism in movements such as Extinction Rebellion and the school climate strikes reflected that. “The politicians are following the public on this, not the other way round.”
…….. The Liberal Democrats, while focusing on Brexit, have also made the climate emergency a key priority, promising to generate 80% of the UK’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030, to bring forward to 2045 the deadline for net-zero carbon, and to expand electric vehicles and ban fracking. The Green party wants to spend £100bn a year for the next decade on the climate crisis, replacing high-carbon infrastructure and creating jobs…. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/21/climate-crisis-topping-uk-election-agenda-is-unprecedented-change
EDF’s misleading and deficient safety report on Hunterston nuclear station
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1km emergency zone around cracked reactors will do, says nuclear firm, The Ferret, 22 Nov 19, The power company, EDF Energy, has come under fire for advising that the emergency zone to protect people around its cracked nuclear reactors at Hunterston could be shrunk to a kilometre.The current zone – within which evacuation, sheltering and anti-radiation pills are planned in the event of an accident – is a radius of 2.4 kilometres from the nuclear power station on the Ayrshire coast.
……. Campaigners have criticised EDF’s move, warning that an accident could send a plume of radioactive contamination over Glasgow and Edinburgh. They have called for the emergency zone to be expanded, not contracted. EDF stressed that its advice was that one kilometre was the “minimum” recommended distance. North Ayrshire Council is consulting with local residents before it decides what distance to implement. The Ferret revealed in October that the graphite cores of two ageing nuclear reactors at Hunterston B have begun to crumble as cracks spread and widen. According to the UK government’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), at least 58 fragments and pieces of debris have broken off the graphite bricks that make up the reactor cores. The older reactor, three, has an estimated 377 core cracks and has been shut down since 9 March 2018. ONR is assessing the safety case to decide whether it can be allowed to restart in 2020. Reactor four, which has an estimated 209 cracks, was shut down for over ten months before ONR allowed it to restart in August – but only for four months. EDF is currently planning to shut it down again on 10 December……… EDF accepts, however, that food restrictions may be required over a much wider area. “It is recommended that advice be issued within 24 hours to restrict consumption of leafy green vegetables, milk and water from open sources/rain water in all sectors of the detailed emergency planning zone and downwind of the site to a distance of 43km,” it says. …….Campaigners have previously warned that a serious accident at Hunterston could spread a cloud of radioactive contamination over Glasgow, Edinburgh and the central belt, if the wind was blowing in that direction. It could be like the Chernobyl accident in Ukraine in 1986, they claimed. Radiation consultant, Dr Ian Fairlie, described EDF’s report as “deficient” and “misleading”. The suggested emergency zone was “much too small”, he argued, and there was a “lack of openness and clarity” that would leave local people uncertain what to do in the event of a major accident. He added: “The issue of the pre-distribution of prophylactic potassium iodate tablets is not mentioned. This already occurs in most European countries, and should occur here as well in order to avoid the health consequences of breathing in radioactive iodine which is a gas.” Rita Holmes, who chairs Hunterston’s local stakeholder group, pointed out that at the moment only 13 households close to the plant were given iodine tablets in advance. “It would seem a simple precaution and unwise not to pre-distribute within a wider area,” she told The Ferret. “Despite EDF’s assessment, I hope that our local authority, Ayrshire civil contingencies team and ONR will decide to extend the detailed emergency planning zone and pre-distribute stable iodine to people within a wider area. I certainly don’t expect, given the ageing reactor cores, that the zone would be shrunk.” The 50-strong group of nuclear-free local authorities argued it would be “incongruous” if the emergency zone was reduced, given the deterioration of the Hunterston reactors. “Clear question marks remain over their future operation,” said the group’s policy advisor, Peter Roche. In our view the precautionary principle would suggest a much larger emergency planning zone is drawn to provide greater reassurance to the local population.” Friends of the Earth Scotland pointed out that seven years after the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan in 2011, some areas more than 20 kilometres away were still prohibited zones. “The current Hunterston zone is already very modest in comparison to the very large area which would be affected in the event of a serious accident at the plant,” said the environmental group’s director, Dr Richard Dixon. “With increasing worries about the safety of the reactors at Hunterston now is definitely not the time to reduce the level of protection on offer to the local community,” he argued. “EDF are the last people who should propose what size the exclusion zone should be around their own nuclear sites because it is in their financial and PR interests to make the zone as small as possible.”……..https://theferret.scot/emergency-zone-hunterston-nuclear-reactrors/ |
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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