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Russia speeds up removal of piled up nuclear fuel assemblies at Andreyeva Bay

Bellona 18th June 2018 , The pace of cleanup at a major Cold War dump for spent nuclear submarine
fuel in Northwest Russia is going faster than planned, officials with
Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom have said, with efforts racing
ahead twice as rapidly as initially thought possible.

Still, Rosatom has elected not to revise its deadline for removing decades of piled up nuclear
fuel assemblies at Andreyeva Bay, a Soviet era submarine maintenance base,
whose proximity to Europe made it a lighting rod for international
environmental concern. On Thursday, Anatoly Grigoryev, who heads up
Rostom’s international technical programs, told the Interfax newswire
that technicians had shipped away a load of fuel that was expected to take
a year to remove in only six months.
http://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2018-06-andreyeva-bay-nuclear-fuel-removal-going-faster-than-planned-rosatom-says

June 27, 2018 Posted by | Russia, wastes | Leave a comment

Iran expects Europe’s package to save nuclear deal by end of June: Araqchi

 Press TV, Jun 23, 2018   A senior Iranian nuclear negotiator says the Islamic Republic expects the European Union to put forward by the end of June its package of proposals to save a multilateral nuclear agreement between Tehran and the P5+1 group of countries from which the US has withdrawn.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Saturday that the three European signatories of the nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the EU had promised to offer a package of practical steps that would fulfill Iran’s demands, including on oil sales, payments for its oil and transportation………

Since the US president pulled Washington out of the historic nuclear deal, European countries have been scrambling to ensure that Iran gets enough economic benefits to persuade it to stay in the deal. The remaining parties have vowed to stay in the accord.http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/06/23/565876/Araqchi-Europe-JCPOA-package

June 25, 2018 Posted by | EUROPE, Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

With climate change, it’s unwise for UK to build Hinkley Point C, as sea levels are rising

Weatherwatch: the nuclear option and rising levels of anxiety   Danger of coastal flooding might make sensible people think twice about building houses in vulnerable places, let alone nuclear power stations, Guardian,  https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/22/weatherwatch-the-nuclear-option-and-rising-levels-of-anxiety  Paul Brown,

Back in 2012 a document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the Environment Agency was warning that 12 out of the UK’s 19 nuclear sites were in danger of coastal flooding and erosion because of climate change. Among them was Hinkley Point in Somerset, one of the eight proposed sites for new nuclear power stations around the coasts.That was before the increasing volume of melting of the Greenland ice capwas properly understood and when most experts thought there was no net melting in the Antarctic.

Melting ice sheets are hastening sea level rise, satellite data confirms
Satellite measurements released earlier this month and other recent observations of how warmer seas are eroding ice shelves and glaciers have removed uncertainty.

Estimates of sea level rise in the next 50 years have gone up from less than 30cm to more than a metre, well within the lifespan of the nuclear stations the UK government has planned.

The extra coastal erosion and threat of storm surges that this increase in sea level will bring to our shores might make sensible people think twice about siting any buildings in vulnerable places, let alone nuclear power stations.

So far, however, the government has yet to respond and is pressing ahead with its plans.

June 25, 2018 Posted by | climate change, politics, UK | 1 Comment

Scrap Trident or risk a “nuclear annihilation abyss”- former nuclear sub commander warns UK govt

Former nuclear sub commander pleads with Government to scrap Trident or risk a “nuclear annihilation abyss”, Sunday Herald, Rob Edwards, 24 June 18

TRIDENT must be scrapped to prevent humanity tipping “over the edge into a nuclear annihilation abyss”, a former nuclear submarine commander has said.

In a significant move, Rob Forsyth, who commanded nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered submarines in the 1970s for the Royal Navy, now thinks that Westminster’s case for keeping Trident on the Clyde is practically, legally and morally indefensible.

The notion that the UK has an independent nuclear deterrent is “no more than national hubris” and conventional military capability is being “sacrificed” to preserve Trident, he said.

Forsyth retired from the Royal Navy in 1980 to pursue a career in industry, but from 1972-74 he was second in command on the nuclear-armed Polaris submarine, HMS Repulse, for four patrols, one of which he was in charge of because the commander was ill.

He was promoted to commander in 1974, and captained the nuclear-powered but conventionally-armed hunter-killer submarine, HMS Sceptre, from 1977-79. Now 78, he lives in North Oxfordshire.

In a recent critique of the UK’s nuclear weapons policy for the latest issue of the defence magazine, Warships International Fleet Review, Forsyth revealed that before his first Polaris patrol in 1972, he formally discussed and agreed with his commanding officer that firing nuclear missiles in response to a nuclear attack was lawful. However, according to Forsyth the policy has since changed so that the UK no longer rules out a nuclear first strike. Westminster’s policy was now “deliberate uncertainty as to when and how the UK’s nuclear missiles would be used”, he said.

Speaking to the Sunday Herald, Forsyth pointed out that the UK Governmenthad attempted to stay within the law by adding riders exempting nuclear weapons from the international Geneva Conventions preventing the use of weapons of mass destruction. “This deeply shocked me,” he said.

“Trident is no longer a weapon of last resort to be used in extreme circumstances such as defence of the homeland. Present policy includes potential first use against rogue states if they ever used chemical or biological weapons against troops in the field. The general public are not aware of this.”

Forsyth pointed out that Trident is very dependent on shared US facilities. “I cannot conceive Britain would ever fire its Trident missiles without the Americans’ political support and, if they so wished, I am fully confident they would find a way to frustrate the UK,” he said.

“The Government assertion that the UK operates an independent deterrent is no more than national hubris.”

Some £2 billion a year is spent on ensuring that one of the four Trident submarines based at Faslane on Gareloch is always on patrol to ensure a Continuous at Sea Deterrent (CASD), he said, adding: “The UK’s conventional war-fighting capability is being sacrificed to preserve its nuclear one. Some serious questions need to be asked and answered by the national political and military leadership about not only the affordability of CASD, but also its necessity at all and/or – if it is retained – the moral context of its use.”

He called for CASD to be abandoned because “there is no threat that justifies such an aggressive posture at present”, and said the UK “should offer to cancel the Dreadnought submarine programme as a significant bargaining tool in multilateral negotiations.”

Forsyth also argued that the UK should stop ignoring the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons agreed by 122 countries in July 2017. “This would demonstrate to the rest of the world that the UK is taking multilateral disarmament seriously – for the first time in more than two decades,” he said.

He criticised Prime Minister Theresa May for suggesting in 2016 that anyone who failed to support Trident was a traitor. “I would suggest that is far from being the case,” he said.

“This patriot – who has served at the coal face of the at-sea deterrent – is merely asking the UK’s leaders to start thinking hard about the nation’s strategic choices and introduce some bold moves. The UK would be showing true global leadership at a time when the whole of humanity could so easily topple over the edge into a nuclear annihilation abyss.”

Forsyth told the Sunday Herald how he had come to change his mind about nuclear weapons. “Since commanding a nuclear missile capable submarine the 1970s I have thought hard and learnt much about Britain’s role today as a nuclear-armed nation,” he said.

“What I have found out has convinced me that we now ought to rethink whether we need a nuclear deterrent. We should make clear we will not fire first, take Trident submarines off continuous patrol and be prepared to trade in our nuclear weapons as our contribution to multilateral disarmament.”

Last week more than 40 campaigners under the banner of Trident Ploughshares chained themselves to the railings outside the Houses of Parliament in London. They demanded that the UK Government sign the nuclear ban treaty to to get rid of “these horrific weapons” and “denuclearise the world”…….. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16310498.Former_nuclear_sub_commander_pleads_with_Government_to_scrap_Trident_or_risk_a__quot_nuclear_annihilation_abyss_quot_/

June 25, 2018 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How the British government struck such a terrible deal as Hinkley Point C nuclear power project

Hinkley Point: the ‘dreadful deal’ behind the world’s most  expensive power plant Building Britain’s first new nuclear reactor since 1995 will cost twice as much as the 2012 Olympics – and by the time it is finished, nuclear power could be a thing of the past. How could the government strike such a bad deal? Guardian, By Holly Watt, 21 Dec 17, Hinkley Point, on the Somerset coast, is the biggest building site in Europe. ……

the irony of Hinkley Point C is that by the time it eventually starts working, it may have become obsolete. Nuclear power is facing existential problems around the world, as the cost of renewable energies fall and their popularity grows. “The maths doesn’t work,” says Tom Burke, former environmental policy adviser to BP and visiting professor at both Imperial and University Colleges. “Nuclear simply doesn’t make sense any more.”

The story of Hinkley Point C is that of a chain of decisions, taken by dozens of people over almost four decades, which might have made sense in isolation, but today result in an almost unfathomable scramble of policies and ambitions. Promises have been made and broken, policies have been adopted then dropped then adopted again. The one thing that has been consistent is the projected cost, which has rocketed ever upwards. But if so many people have come to believe that Hinkley Point C is fundamentally flawed, the question remains: how did we get to this point, where billions of pounds have been sunk into a project that seems less and less appealing with every year that passes?

……… By the end of 2003, all government policy indicated that Hinkley Point C would never be built, and there was no prospect of any other new nuclear power plants. It seemed certain that nuclear had no future in Britain – which is why, when the government performed a volte-face three years later, so many onlookers were astonished. “Without any obvious change in the world, by 2006, the position in government had been completely reversed,” MacKerron told me. “Nuclear power had become extremely beneficial, important and not uneconomic.”

One thing that had happened in the intervening years was a PR blitz by the nuclear industry, which had deployed scores of lobbyists, including former politicians such as the former energy minister Brian Wilson, to push the idea of a “nuclear renaissance” in the UK. Between 2003 and 2006, says Andrew Stirling, professor of science and technology policy at Sussex University, “Britain saw the beginnings of a massive pro-nuclear lobbying and PR campaign that continues to this day.”

Through the media and advertising campaigns, key messages were hammered home. Renewables were intermittent and unreliable. Overseas gas imports were politically vulnerable. “Green” nuclear was the only plausible way to hit carbon dioxide reduction targets. Keith Parker, who was then chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA), told the New Statesman that the 2005 election became a particular focus for swaying opinions. “It gave us a good chance to raise the profile of nuclear power,” he said. In the months leading up to the election, a series of talks was organised at exclusive venues such as the Army & Navy Club on Pall Mall and St Stephen’s Club in Queen Anne’s Gate. Industry leaders and experts came together to explain the benefits of nuclear to politicians and energy journalists. The NIA (which is now chaired by John Hutton) took on the role of managing the influential all-party parliamentary group – an informal grouping of politicians – on nuclear energy.

In July 2006, the government U-turn arrived in the form of a new policy paper, The Energy Challenge, which declared that new nuclear power stations would be necessary to help Britain reduce its carbon emissions and to ensure an uninterrupted, affordable supply of energy well into the future.

Greenpeace launched a legal challenge, claiming that the consultation process behind the government’s recommendation had been totally inadequate. The judge presiding over the case agreed, and in February 2007 ruled that the process had been “misleading”, “very seriously flawed” and “procedurally unfair”. Blair accepted the ruling, but stated that “this won’t affect the policy at all”.

Andrew Stirling believes that there was a crucial, largely unspoken, reason for the government’s rediscovered passion for nuclear: without a civil nuclear industry, a nation cannot sustain military nuclear capabilities. In other words, no new nuclear power plants would spell the end of Trident. “The only countries in the world that are currently looking at large-scale civil power newbuild programmes are countries that have nuclear submarines, or have an expressed aim of acquiring them,” Stirling told me.

Building nuclear submarines is a ferociously complicated business. It requires the kind of institutional memory and technical expertise that can easily disappear without practice. This, in theory, is where the civil nuclear industry comes in. If new nuclear power plants are being built, then the skills and capacity required by the military will be maintained. “It looks to be the case that the government is knowingly engineering an environment in which electricity consumers cross-subsidise this branch of military security,” Stirling told me.

In May 2007, the government published a paper titled “Meeting the energy challenge: a White Paper on energy”, which reaffirmed its enthusiasm for nuclear and declared that there had been “significant changes in the economics of nuclear power”. In contrast to the late 1980s, the government claimed it was now being approached by “some energy companies expressing a strong interest in investing in new nuclear power stations”.

When Gordon Brown took over from Blair in June 2007, the shift to nuclear proceeded apace. As it happened, the new prime minister’s brother, Andrew, was then the communications director for EDF, though a spokesman for Gordon Brown told me that at no point while he was prime minister “did he ever discuss energy policy with Andrew Brown”.

In January 2008, the announcement came. A new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK was given formal backing by the government. “It was one of the most exciting days in my ministerial life,” says Hutton. “Ministers do lots of important things all the time, but there are probably those moments in your ministerial career when you sit back and think: ‘Actually, this is going to have an intergenerational effect. This is going to affect the country 50, 60, 70 years after I’ve gone.’”

The development at the top of the list was Hinkley Point C……….

With no real plan B after the private sector had lost interest in Hinkley Point, the government suddenly found itself in a weak negotiating position. “They perhaps didn’t foresee that only one developer, EDF, was prepared to go ahead,” said MacKerron. “So by definition, they were a bit over a barrel.”

In September 2008, British Energy was sold to EDF. After months of long and difficult negotiations between EDF and a team of civil servants representing the UK’s interests in British Energy, and an earlier failed bid, the French company paid £12.5bn to take over eight UK nuclear power plants. It also announced its plan to develop four new power stations.

These days, EDF looks like an unlikely white knight. The market value of the company has collapsed, from more than €150bn (£132bn) in 2008 to roughly €30bn (£26bn) today, and the French nuclear industry is facing an existential crisis.

…….. The financial deal that EDF struck with the British in October 2013 to fund the project – which, in Magnin’s words, amounts to the British taxpayer funding France’s energy needs – remains one of the most controversial elements of the Hinkley deal.

Given its commitment to building Hinkley Point C, the government had no choice but to make EDF an offer that was too good to resist. It offered to guarantee EDF a fixed price for each unit of energy produced at Hinkley for its first 35 years of operation. In 2012, the guaranteed price – known as the “strike price” – was set at £92.50 per megawatt hour (MWh), which would then rise with inflation. (One MWh is roughly equivalent to the electricity used by around 330 homes in one hour.)

This means that if the wholesale price of electricity across the country falls below £92.50, EDF will receive an extra payment from the consumer as a “top-up” to fill the gap. This will be added to electricity bills around the country – even if you aren’t receiving electricity from Hinkley Point C, you will still be making a payment to EDF. ……..

In short, instead of using taxpayers’ money to fund a state subsidy for EDF, the government negotiated a deal whereby the electricity consumer foots the bill. Given that almost every taxpayer in the UK is an electricity consumer, the distinction is largely academic. …….

The deal looks particularly bad when compared with the current cost of renewable energy. As Hinkley’s pricetag keeps rising, the cost of energy keeps falling. And, as a recent report from the public accounts committee pointed out, although energy costs are falling, this just drives up the top-up payment to EDF. “No one was protecting the interests of energy consumers in doing the deal,” the report noted.

In December 2013, the European commission decided that the payments to EDF were so big that they could distort the electricity price across the whole of Europe, and launched an investigation into the deal. The resulting document, published in 2014, can be read as a 33,000-word attempt by the EU to save the UK from its own poor negotiating.

The commission raised several issues………

In 2012, as it was preparing to negotiate the strike price with EDF, the government hired the consultancy firm LeighFisher to assess construction costs for Hinkley. The higher the cost estimated by LeighFisher, the higher the strike price for EDF.

However, as the National Audit Office pointed out in June 2017, LeighFisher is owned by Jacobs Engineering Group. And at the same time that LeighFisher was assessing Hinkley Point construction costs, Jacobs was working for EDF, with some of its staff seconded to the French company. The National Audit Office points out that Jacobs staff were having “input” into LeighFisher’s cost verification exercise.

In short, a division of a company employed by EDF was advising the UK government how much to pay EDF.

……. Hinkley Point C will be the third nuclear reactor to be built on this site. These days, its oldest brother, Hinkley Point A, which began operating in 1965 and was decommissioned in 2000, is dilapidated, with large holes gaping in its blue walls. Hinkley Point B, which began operating in 1976 and is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2023, stands 300 metres to its right – an anonymous grey hulk, disappearing against the sky, as steam from its huge chimneys floods into the clouds………

“My grandchildren will be paying for this,” Allan Jeffery from Stop Hinkley told me, as we walked around the outer boundary of the site earlier this year.

The government estimates that the Hinkley top-up payments will cost consumers around £30bn over the course of the 35-year contract. One of the few figures on a comparable scale is the Brexit divorce bill.

The story of Hinkley point contains another echo of – or perhaps a warning for – the Brexit negotiations. With Hinkley, even though the UK’s position got steadily worse, at no point did the government seriously try to force the terms of the deal. It simply couldn’t, because it had backed itself into a corner.

……. The stakes of the Hinkley deal were also high for both China and France, and neither country gave an inch. When it came to the crunch, the UK’s negotiators had to take the deal they were offered. “The issue now is that nobody has a good exit strategy,” says Prof Steve Thomas. “I think everyone wants out. But there are penalties to pay now, and there is the humiliation of 10 wasted years.”……..https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/dec/21/hinkley-point-c-dreadful-deal-behind-worlds-most-expensive-power-plant

June 25, 2018 Posted by | politics, Reference, UK | Leave a comment

Britain’s wind energy programmes have proved to be cheaper and better climate policy, as against nuclear

Dave Toke’s Blog 22nd June 2018,  The Climate Change Act has been celebrating its 10th anniversary, but there
is surprisingly little to celebrate in the earlier advice of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC). The CCC is the body created to advise the Government on the achievement of the carbon reduction commitments (80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050).

You would expect the advice of the CCC to speed the Government’s low carbon programme, but in the crucial aspect of
electricity supply policy it has (in the past) actually damaged it! Looking back on its past, it looks like the Committee gave completely the wrong advice to the Government, advice which, alas, they still seem to be following now. In particular, in the ‘Renewable Energy Review’ issued in 2011 (which I criticised at the time), the CCC, urged the Government to cut
back the targets for offshore wind and instead focus on nuclear power.

They told the Government not to be put off by the Fukushima disaster that had happened earlier that year. According to the Times Report on May 9th 2011 ”The Committee on Climate Change says heavy reliance on offshore wind could result in unacceptable increases in fuel bills.’ David Kennedy, the then Chief Executive of CCC said that ‘Nuclear looks like it will be the lowest cost for the next decade or two’. Indeed the Review stated that nuclear power was currently ‘the most cost effective of the low carbon technologies’.That conclusion, given the cost of onshore wind, was highly challengable at the time, especially as given the existing record of nuclear power plant that had been built in the UK and the roll-out of
onshore wind.

Whereas the deployment of renewable energy has soared ahead, despite the best efforts of many in the Conservatives to block it, nuclear power plans set out in 2010 have proved to be fantasy. And, of course, offshore wind costs have tumbled rapidly making the CCC’s earlier pronouncements looking especially silly.
http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.com/2018/06/how-committee-on-climate-change-gave.html

June 25, 2018 Posted by | renewable, UK | Leave a comment

Scotland’s Youth Peace Academy running 3 day programme to train activists

The National 22nd June 2018 , A FULLY funded three-day training programme is giving young people the
chance to become top activists on nuclear disarmament. The Youth Peace
Academy is inviting 18 to 30-years-olds residing in Scotland to take part
in a packed training programme. Participants will learn about nuclear
weapons, lobbying, writing press releases, fundraising tools and more.
Peace Education Scotland’s Flavia Tudoreanu helped come up with the idea
after attending a similar event in Berlin. She said: “We thought it would
be really good to bring to Scotland.
http://www.thenational.scot/news/16306981.Young_Scots_offered_training_in_anti-nuclear_activism/

June 25, 2018 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

French nuclear corporation EDF hedges its bets: now starting 2 renewable energy programmes

Renews 22nd June 2018 Energy giant EDF is celebrating a UK double after cutting the ribbon on two
renewables projects this week. The company’s chairman and chief executive
Jean-Bernard Levy was present for the official opening of both the 41.5MW
Blyth offshore wind farm off the Northumberland coast and the 49MW West
Burton B battery storage facility.

The Blyth project (pictured) features
five MHI Vestas V164-8.0MW turbines optimised to 8.3MW. The West Burton B
facility will operate within the new frequency control system to be
deployed across the UK to improve national grid stability. Levy said:
“These two innovative projects demonstrate our expertise in renewable
energies and electricity storage. They contribute greatly to
decarbonisation of the energy mix in the UK, our second largest market
after France.”
http://renews.biz/111572/edf-celebrates-uk-one-two/

June 25, 2018 Posted by | France, renewable | Leave a comment

Nuclear decommissioning in the UK

Decommissioning    NO2Nuclear Power. Safe Energy Journal  78 The UK government has launched a consultation on the future regulation of nuclear sites in the final stages of decommissioning and clean-up. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said the consultation seeks to enable a “more flexible approach that can optimise waste management, thereby realising environmental benefits and reducing costs”.

Of the 36 nuclear sites located across England, Wales and Scotland, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is responsible for the decommissioning and clean-up of 17. Other sites to be decommissioned in the future include the operational nuclear power stations owned by EDF Energy, and other nuclear sites in the nuclear fuel cycle, reprocessing, waste management, pharmaceutical and research sectors.

 In the UK, the Nuclear Installations Act 1965 (NIA65) provides the legal framework for nuclear safety and nuclear third-party liability and sets out a system of regulatory control based on a robust licensing process administered by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR). Under this regime, a site operator is required to have a licence to use a site for specified activities such as the operation of nuclear power stations. In addition to the nuclear site licensing regime, the NIA65 requires that financial provision is in place to meet claims in the event of a nuclear incident, as required under international law on nuclear third-party liability.

The consultation proposals include changing the NIA65 to allow licensees to exit the licensing regime once the site has reached internationally agreed standards and nuclear safety and security matters have been fully resolved. After the licence has been ended, the site would be regulated by the relevant environment agency and the Health and Safety Executive, in the same way that non-nuclear industrial sites undergoing clean-up for radioactive or other contamination are regulated.

 Proposals for further clean-up would be assessed by the relevant environment agency under the Radioactive Substances Regulations.  BEIS said this process would enable the site operator to work with the community to establish the “most appropriate” end-state for the site and would result in improved waste management and other environmental benefits.

BEIS proposes to implement two recent decisions by the OECD Steering Committee for Nuclear Energy concerning the exclusion of certain sites from the nuclear third-party regime when the main nuclear hazards have been removed and the risks to the public are small. It also proposes to tighten the licence surrender process to require a licensee to apply to ONR to surrender the licence, and to strengthen requirements for ONR to consult with HSE when the licence is surrendered or varied. (1)

The Government says the main reasons for change are:

  • nuclear third party liability currently continues beyond the point at which it is no longer required. The UK has not yet implemented the decisions of the OECD Steering Committee for Nuclear Energy concerning the exclusion of certain sites from the nuclear liability regime;
  • site operators wishing to exit the NIA65 licensing regime are required to clean-up the site in a way that does not allow them to balance the overall safety and environmental risks and this may result in unnecessary costs; and
  • · disposal facilities for radioactive waste located on nuclear licensed sites remain subject to nuclear licensing. Such sites are also regulated by the environment agencies. This is considered dual regulation which is unnecessary after nuclear safety matters have been resolved.

The UK Government Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published a discussion paper on the regulation of nuclear sites in the final stages of decommissioning and cleanup in November 2016. The NFLA responded here:

http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2016/12/Rad_Waste_Brfg_66_Delicensing_nuclear_sites.pdf

This response concluded that:

There is a danger that what is being proposed will simply be seen as turning nuclear sites into nuclear dumps as a way of saving money.

The concept of “optimisation” which is decided by the operator and regulators making value judgements needs to be replaced with the concept of the Best Practicable Environmental Option which uses a systematic consultative and decision making procedure.

Any part of a nuclear site upon which it is proposed to allow unrestricted use must be able to show that doses to members of the public will be of the order of 0.01mSv or less per year. Using a risk factor in conjunction with probability of receiving a dose is too flexible and unacceptable.

Any waste left on-site much be concentrated and contained in a monitorable, retrievable store.

Former nuclear operators should remain liable for any future unexpected events and should also be liable to pay for any regulatory effort in perpetuity.

 These earlier proposals appear to allow for the unrestricted use of sites which may have nuclear waste buried and which could be capable of administering doses of up to 20mSv/yr if human intrusion occurs.

The HSE Criterion for De-Licensing Nuclear Sites (2005) says the Basic Safety Standards Directive (Euratom 96/29) allows member states to exempt a practice where appropriate and without further consideration if doses to members of the public are of the order of 0.01mSv or less per year. HSE is of the view that this dose limit broadly equates to a risk of 10-6 ‘as well as being consistent with other legislation and international advice relating to the radiological protection of the public. The environment agencies Guidance on Requirements for Authorisation (GRA) on Near Surface Disposal Facilities for Solid Radioactive Waste (Near Surface GRA) says that a risk level of 10-6 per year is equivalent to a calculated dose of around 0.02mSv/yr, where the probability of receiving the dose is one.

The consultation is open until 3rd July, and is available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/the-regulation-of-nuclear-sites-in-the-final-stagesof-decommissioning-and-clean-up        http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/SafeEnergyNo78.pdf

June 23, 2018 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to spend billions stabilising plutonium canisters

Power Technology 21st June 2018 , NDA to spend billions stabilising plutonium canisters. The National Audit Office (NAO) has released a report detailing the unstable condition of highly dangerous plutonium canisters at the Sellafield nuclear plant, said to be “decaying faster than anticipated”.

The report, titled ‘Progress with reducing risk at Sellafield’ warns that if these canisters were to leak it would prove an “intolerable risk” – a label defined by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) as a situation where reducing the risk “becomes the overriding factor”, taking precedence over matters of cost and requiring immediate action.

The NDA has refused to comment on the number of canisters affected, though it has said it is only a “small proportion” of their total number. The UK houses 40% of global civil plutonium, the majority of which is stored at the Sellafield site in Cumbria, itself overseen by the NDA. The substance is a by-product of nuclear fuel reprocessing and the site’s abundant stock has led the NDA to label Sellafield its most hazardous facility.

The new report shows Sellafield, which opened in 2012, to have ‘unsuitable’ containers for storing plutonium. The NAO has proposed the canisters be repackaged through the store retreatment plant (SRP) facility, though until this facility is ready the NDA is recommended to place the more unstable canisters in extra layers of packaging. In response to these measures, the NDA has announced its decision to pledge a further £1bn on these packaging canisters, and £1.5bn on building a new facility to house the plutonium.
https://www.power-technology.com/news/nda-spend-billions-stabilising-plutonium-canisters/

 

June 23, 2018 Posted by | - plutonium, UK | Leave a comment

France’s Minister Hulot slams Nuclear power and the pro nuclear push by EDF

Le Monde 21st June 2018 [Machine Translation] Nuclear: Hulot puts pressure on EDF. In an interview on Franceinfo, the Minister of the ecological and solidarity transition considered that the French group was in a “drift” because of its too much attachment to the nuclear power.

While France is in the middle of a discussion on its energetic roadmap, Nicolas Hulot did not mince his words, Thursday on Franceinfo . “One of the reasons why EDF is in trouble is that, in particular, the nuclear industry, sorry to say , takes us into a drift,” said the Minister of ecological transition and solidarity. Mr. Hulot has been criticizing nuclear power in good standing.

“It is clear that the cost of energy made with nuclear power is increasing because we have not
necessarily provisioned a number of things, at the same time that the cost of renewable energy is falling” stressed the minister. EDF’s financial situation remains difficult: the group suffers from low electricity prices on the market, losing tens of thousands of customers a month and has suffered from the shutdowns of many nuclear plants in recent years.
Contacted, the EDF group did not wish to react to the Minister’s statements.
https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2018/06/21/nucleaire-hulot-met-la-pression-sur-edf_5318946_3234.html

June 23, 2018 Posted by | France, politics | Leave a comment

The nuclear industry has co-opted academia in Cumbria


In Cumbria 21st June 2018, More needs to be done to ensure communities not only see but feel the benefits of investment in Cumbria’s nuclear sector, industry figures have been told. Rick Wylie, the Samuel Lindow Academic Director for the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) based at Westlakes Science and Technology Park, laid down the challenge at the third warm-up arm-up event to September’s Cumbria Nuclear Conference, hosted by Carlisle MP John Stevenson.

Mr Wylie stressed the important work the nuclear industry had already done to support communities and the aspirations of young people and adults, by supporting projects such as the new Whitehaven Academy and Well Whitehaven. But, in a speech at Castle Green Hotel in Kendal on Thursday night, he said: “Nuclear investment needs to have wider public value. It is not just about money, it is about ensuring people not just see but feel the benefits of it.

June 23, 2018 Posted by | Education, UK | Leave a comment

The prolonged closure of nuclear reactor 3 at Hunterston B in North Ayrshire, UK

Hunterston B  NO2NuclearPower  22 June 18 THE prolonged closure of reactor 3 at Hunterston B in North Ayrshire is the beginning of the end for seven nuclear power stations in Scotland and England. The reactor is scheduled to stay offline until 17th November according to EDF’s website, but experts doubt whether it will ever restart, and argue that proliferating cracks in other elderly reactors across the country will shorten their expected lives and lead to premature shutdowns. EDF Energy, however, insist that it will be able to reopen the reactor.

 Independent nuclear engineer John Large says extending the life of troubled reactors like the one at Hunterston is “gambling with public safety”. He says the new cracks signal the “death knell” for Hunterston reactor three. “This means that reactor four is doomed to the same fate, followed by similar plants at Hinkley Point and Hartlepool, thereafter progressively followed by other advanced gas-cooled reactors”.

EDF says it has found a total of 39 “keyway root cracks” in the reactor and they are “happening at a slightly higher rate than modelled”. The integrity of the thousands of graphite blocks that make up the reactor core is vital to nuclear safety. They ensure that the reactor can be cooled and safely shut down in an emergency. Large argues that EDF’s decision to keep reactor three closed until the end of the year was prompted by the UK Government’s safety watchdog, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR). “ONR’s doubts about the reactor safety have not been satisfied by this most recent inspection,” he said. “It may simply be a way of saving face and fobbing off the announcement that the plant is to be permanently shut down.”

 Large also highlighted the uncertainties in tracking cracks, which are mostly modelled rather than measured. “There is little that EDF can do to physically resolve this problem,” he said.

Rita Holmes, a local resident who chairs the Hunterston site stakeholder group, argued it would be very difficult for the public to have confidence in the safety of reactor three. “It has had its day and should be allowed to bow out gracefully,” she said. (1) “The local communities are unhappy that the reactor has any cracks, and certainly not happy that one with a growing number of cracks could be allowed to continue generation.”

 If the graphite blocks fail and become misshapen, nuclear fuel could get stuck overheat, melt down and leak radioactivity in a major accident. Cracks could also prevent control rods from being inserted causing the nuclear fuel to overheat, potentially resulting in a nuclear accident. An ONR spokesperson said: “Before we grant permission to EDF to restart reactor three we will require that an adequate safety case justifying further operation.”. John Large said “The core at Hunterston may now be in such a poor structural state that its collapse during a relatively modest earthquake could result in a nuclear fuel meltdown and significant radioactive release.”

 EDF says “We have prepared well for this; we have a £100 million graphite research programme.”” Professor Paul Bowen, a metallurgist from the University of Birmingham who advises the ONR, thought that the body was likely to insist on more frequent inspections rather than reactor closure. “I’m absolutely confident that the regulator will take a very conservative position,” he said. (2)

“The thing which will close (these reactors) down in the end will be the cost of ensuring safety. It is possible to make a safety case for a significant amount of cracked bricks but it takes time and costs money,” said Barry Marsden, professor of nuclear graphite technology at the University of Manchester. (3)

 Local communities should be given a say in the future of Hunterston, according to Green MSP Ross Greer. He says the lack of public consultation has been unacceptable, while highlighting that European law says all ageing nuclear power stations should have an environmental impact assessment. He said: “This is obviously of major safety and economic concern to the local community. Last year I published a report urging the Scottish Government to review safety conditions at the site following earlier reports of cracks and the repeated granting of lifetime extensions to the plant. The local community currently has no say in decisions to extend a plant’s lifetime as an Environmental Impact Assessment with a public consultation is not required. The government must reconsider its position on the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment to accompany decisions on the granting of lifetime extensions to ageing nuclear power stations and commit to a renewed transition plan for North Ayrshire which will prevent the community being left behind, as so many others have been, by the closure of aging power stations.” (4)

A Committee of the Aarhus has just published a report which says the Netherlands “failed to comply” with Aarhus Convention by refusing to organise a public consultation on the 20 year lifetime extension of an old nuclear plant at Borssele. This has important implications for Torness which is due to submit its next Periodic Safety Review to the Office for Nuclear Regulation in January 2019.

(5) Experts estimate the 40% cut in the power station’s output – it normally supplies enough electricity for 1.8m homes – will cost the French state-owned firm £100m-120m in lost revenue. That is small compared with the impact of temporary safety closures at EDF’s French plants, which led profits to fall 16% last year, but it is still a blow the company could do without as it ramps up construction of the £20bn Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset. (6)

As things currently stand the UK’s remaining 8.9 GW of nuclear capacity will close over a 12-year period, starting in 2023. However, rather than wondering if the AGRs could be given further life extensions, questions should now be asked about the supply implications if some, or all, of the AGRs are unable to operate as envisaged, says Anthony Froggatt of Chatham House. With Brexit raising questions about the financing and schedules for some interconnections, government policies slowing down the deployment of onshore renewables despite their tumbling costs, and the existing plans for the closure of the remaining coal stations, urgent consideration must be given to ensure supply, energy efficiency and flexibility from now on.

 Onshore and offshore renewables need to be at the heart of the future system. This would be good for the environment and competitiveness, as the last few years have seen a remarkable change in economics of renewable energy and it is now recognized that by 2020 electricity from renewables will be ‘within the fossil fuel-fired cost range, with most at the lower end or undercutting fossil fuels’ and are already significantly lower than the current prices offered for nuclear new build. (7   http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/SafeEnergyNo78.pdf

June 23, 2018 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Continued delays and overspending at the Sellafield nuclear waste clean-up site

Herald 20th June 2018 , Decommissioning the nuclear site at Sellafield faces continued delays and an overspend of up to £913 million, according to an official report. The National Audit Office (NAO) said the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) had improved its performance in delivering major projects at the site in Cumbria. But work is still predicted to be late and to cost more than originally expected, said the spending watchdog. The NDA’s nine major projects were expected to cost an additional 60% of their budget at the design stage in 2015, but this has been reduced to 29%, said the NAO. While this was a substantial improvement, it was still a forecast overspend of
£913 million.

The NAO reported that three projects were cancelled when £586 million had already been spent on them after the NDA said it had
found a better way of delivering the work. It said Sellafield Limited has achieved £470 million in efficiency savings, but added that neither the NDA nor the company knows their make-up and admit that a proportion does not represent genuine efficiency savings.

“The strategic decisions the NDA takes around prioritising activity at Sellafield could be profoundly changed and improved by a better, more evidence-based assessment of these constraints. “The NAO has found that the role of the NDA is unclear and this could put at risk the progress we are now seeing at Sellafield,” the report said. “The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy’s
governance of the NDA is complex and not working as well as it should to support improvements at Sellafield.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16301638.Watchdog_warns_of_delays_and___900m_overspend_in_Sellafield_decommissioning/

June 22, 2018 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Serbian citizens to sue NATO over their cancers due to depleted uranium

Lawsuits against NATO countries to be filed in fall https://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics.php?yyyy=2018&mm=06&dd=18&nav_id=104422  The first lawsuits are expected to be filed in the fall by Serbian citizens suffering from cancer.SOURCE: BETA 

They will sue NATO countries because of the use of depleted uranium during the 1999 bombing of Serbia.

This was announced on Monday President of the Association of Citizens “Depleted Uranium” Sveto Nogo. The lawsuits will be filed individually, he explained.

Speaking at a symposium in the southern town of Nis, dedicated to the consequences of the bombing, Nogo said that there would be no class action lawsuit, but instead those filed by cancer patients and their families.

“NATO countries will be sued for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages. We will launch lawsuits against five countries, and after the symposium, it will be decided which countries those will be,” Nogo said.

He said that working groups will be formed in the coming months to draft the lawsuits and added that the Serbian Bar Association, the Belgrade Bar Association and “partially” the Nis Bar Association all stand behind “the project.”

“There has been an increasing number of cancer patients, and even babies are being born with cancer. We do not recognize ‘force majeure’, and as intellectuals we have no right to keep silent about it,” Nogo said.

The president of the organizing committee of the symposium, Srdjan Aleksic, said that, as far as the future cases that will be conducted before national courts of NATO member states, the most important point for Serbian citizens is that Italian courts have already confirmed the causality between the use of depleted uranium and soldiers falling ill after staying in the territory that came under attack of such weapons in Kosovo and Metohija.

“The soldiers who had cancer and the families of the deceased have been afforded compensation ranging from 200,000 to 500,000 euros by a court in Italy. We will seek the same compensation for our citizens,” Aleksic said.

According to him, it took five years for the Italians to prove in court the causal relationship between bombardment with depleted uranium and cancer, while Serbia is facilitated by their evidence – “and the first verdict should be reached in two years.”

“We appeal for an agreement and amicable resolution, because if Italian citizens have been paid compensation, I do not see any reason for our citizens not to receive it,” Aleksic pointed out.

Domenico Leggero, a member of the Italian commission looking into the consequences of the use of depleted uranium, also spoke at the event to say that all judgments in Italy have been made in favor of the sick soldiers, while the country’s Ministry of Defense has been declared guilty.

“In Italy there have been over 80 cases. The soldiers have been compensated,” Leggero said. He added that the harmful effect of depleted uranium on human health had been proven in Italy as early as in 1987.
Sergei Baburin, who headed Russian Duma’s assistance to Serbia during the 1990s, said that Serbia has waited a long time to file the lawsuits, but that it was still not too late – “because things should not be left as they are, because we will all be complicit in an injustice.”

Baburin said that many people who defended the country have been convicted of crimes – unlike those who bombarded it.

The two-day symposium in Nis gathered about thirty domestic and international experts, in the fields of law, medicine, engineering, atomic physics and ecology.

 

June 20, 2018 Posted by | EUROPE, Legal | Leave a comment

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