Mirror 22nd April 2018, Survivor of Britain’s nuclear tests lost all his teeth, had thyroid tumour
and wife suffered two stillbirths – and he was one of ‘lucky’ ones
EXCLUSIVE: Sixty years ago on Christmas Island, these army veterans had to
put their hands over their eyes as a nuke 100 times more powerful than
Hiroshima was set off – and more than half their unit died of cancer. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/survivor-britains-nuclear-tests-lost-12409628
GHOST TOWN , What was the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, did radiation cause animal mutations and is it safe to go there now? Thirty-two years ago, one of four reactors at Chernobyl exploded in the worst nuclear disaster in human history leaving behind a barren town frozen in time, The Sun UK, By Holly Christodoulou24th April 2018
An alarm bellowed out at the nuclear plant on April 26, 1986, as workers looked on in horror at the control panels signalling a major meltdown in the number four reactor.
The safety switches had been switched off in the early hours to test the turbine but the reactor overheated and generated a blast the equivalent of 500 nuclear bombs.
The reactor’s roof was blown off and a plume of radioactive material was blasted into the atmosphere.
As air was sucked into the shattered reactor, it ignited flammable carbon monoxide gas causing a fire which burned for nine days.
The catastrophe released at least 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Soviet authorities waited 24 hours before evacuating the nearby town of Pripyat – giving the 50,000 residents just three hours to leave their homes.
After the accident traces of radioactive deposits were found in Belarus where poisonous rain damaged plants and caused animal mutations.
But the devastating impact was also felt in Scandinavia, Switzerland, Greece, Italy, France and the UK.
An 18-mile radius known as the “Exclusion Zone” was set up around the reactor following the disaster.
How many people died in Chernobyl?
At least 31 people died in the accident – including two who were killed at the scene and more who passed away a few months later from Acute Radiation Syndrome.
The actual death toll is hard to predict as mortality rates have been hidden by propaganda and reports were lost when the Soviet Union broke up.
In 2005, the World Health Organisation revealed a total of 4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure.
About 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer have been seen since the disaster – mainly in people who were children or teenagers at the time.
Did the Chernobyl radiation cause animal mutations?
Farmers noticed an increase in genetic abnormalities in farm animals immediately after the disaster.
This spiked again in 1990 when around 400 deformed animals were born – sparking fears the sarcophagus, which covers the reactor.
Some animals were born with extra limbs, abnormal colouring and a smaller size.
Animals that remained in the exclusion zone became radioactive – including as many as 400 wolves, which is the highest density wolf population on the entire planet.
The Eurasian lynx – once believed to have disappeared from Europe – thrived in Chernobyl as there were no humans to run them out.
Birds were also affected by radiation, with barn swallows having deformed beaks, albinism and even smaller brains.
GDF Watch 22nd April 2018, Nobody is disputing her personal abilities or competence, but the
appointment of Lorraine Baldry as the new Chair of Sellafield Limited
raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest within the geological
disposal programme.
Baldry was also recently appointed Chair of the
Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Council. The Council is an
independent group of experts who advise RWM, the GDF delivery body, on how
to best progress the geological disposal programme.
RWM is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) — Sellafield
Limited is also a wholly-owned subsidiary of the NDA. This means Baldry
will be advising RWM on geological disposal, while also running the company
which currently owns most of the waste destined for geological disposal and
has a very vested interest in the GDF.
Dave Toke’s Blog 20th April 2018,This week’s story about problems with pipe welding at the French nuclear
plant being built at Flamanville could spell the end for the Hinkley C
nuclear project.
Treasury backed loan guarantees to build Hinkley C have
been linked to a target date for commissioning of the Flamanville plant of
the end of 2020. Yet the current target date of completion by the end of
2019 has been thrown in doubt by the freshly announced problems.
The main focus of attention of this problem for Hinkley has simply been that the
design of the Flamanville plant – the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) –
is the same as that to be built at Hinkley C and that the engineering
problems bode ill for the British scheme.
That is right, but it is rather worse than this. The commercial issue is that if the French plant is not
commercially operating by the end of 2020 then it seems the Treasury will
not be able to give loan guarantees for the scheme.
According to the analyst Professor Steve Thomas, the rules agreed between the European
Commission and the British Government stipulate that ”until Flamanville 3
was in commercial service, there would be a cap on the guaranteed loans
effectively meaning funding would be primarily through equity’. http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/problems-with-french-nuclear-plant.html
Iran nuclear deal: Macron urges Trump to stick with 2015 accord http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43858040, 23 Apr 18 French President Emmanuel Macron has urged his US counterpart, Donald Trump, to stick with the Iran nuclear deal, saying there is no better option.
He was speaking to Fox News ahead of a three-day state visit to the US starting on Monday.
Mr Trump has threatened to abandon the deal, which limits Iran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief, unless it is toughened up.
He has until 12 May to decide whether to restore US sanctions against Iran.
Correspondents say such a move would effectively kill the landmark agreement between Iran and six major western powers.
The two leaders are expected to address the issue when Mr Trump hosts Mr Macron this week.
Mr Macron told Fox News he had no “plan B” for the deal if the US decided to restore sanctions, and said the US should stay in the agreement as long as there was no better option.
“Let’s present this framework because it’s better than the sort of North Korean-type situation.”
He said the two leaders had “a very special relationship” and he wanted to address ballistic missiles as part of the deal – a key demand of the US president – as well as work to contain Iran’s influence in the region.
President Trump is also demanding that signatories to the deal agree permanent restrictions on Iran’s uranium enrichment. Under the current deal they are set to expire in 2025.
He has put pressure on his European co-signatories to address these issues before the 12 May deadline, when he needs to decide whether to sign a waiver giving sanctions relief to Iran.
Under US law, passed during the Obama administration, the president needs to sign these waivers every 120-180 days acknowledging Iran’s compliance with the deal.
When Mr Trump signed the last one, in January, he said it was a “last chance” to change the accord, before the US withdraws.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warned on Saturday that his country was prepared to resume its nuclear programme “at much greater speed”, if the US withdrew from the accord.
Mr Macron also appealed to the US president not to pull troops out of Syria after the final defeat of so-called Islamic State, saying that would “leave the floor” to Iran and Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
Revealed: new cracks at Hunterston nuclear reactor raise radiation accident fears, Herald Scotland, Rob Edwards , 23 Apr 18
NEW cracks have been discovered in one of Scotland’s ageing nuclear reactors, raising radiation safety fears and resulting in a prolonged shutdown, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
Checks have detected fresh cracks in the graphite core of a reactor at Hunterston B in North Ayrshire. The reactor was taken offline on March 9, but is not now due to restart until May 1 at the earliest, more than a month later than originally planned.
The UK Government safety watchdog, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), is assessing whether the cracks render the reactor too dangerous to fire up. Its operator, EDF Energy, insists it will reopen, but critics say it should stay shut.
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.
But bombardment by intense radiation over decades causes the blocks to start cracking. If they fail, experts say, nuclear fuel could overheat, melt down and leak radioactivity in a major accident.
Both the ONR and EDF told the Sunday Herald that new cracks had been found at Hunterston reactor number three during inspections in recent weeks, but they wouldn’t say how many, or how significant they were.
“We are currently assessing the safety case submitted by EDF after a planned outage identified a number of cracks in the graphite blocks that make up reactor three’s core,” said an ONR spokesman.
“Before we grant permission to EDF to restart reactor three we will require that an adequate safety case justifying further operation has been made. ONR has to formally permission the restart of the reactor.”
The ONR’s decision was still “a number of weeks” away, he added. “We will publish the justification behind our decision once it has been made.”
According to EDF’s website, Hunterston reactor three was originally due back online on March 30 after a “graphite inspection outage”. But this has been repeatedly postponed to April 6, April 19, April 24 and now May 1.
………Pete Roche, a nuclear critic and consultant in Edinburgh, warned that EDF’s optimism that the reactor will restart could be misplaced. “Cracks could prevent control rods from being inserted causing the nuclear fuel to overheat, potentially resulting in a nuclear accident,” he said.
It was “all a bit of a gamble”, he argued. “Hunterston is already 42 years old – when it was only expected to operate for 30 or 35 years. It is clearly time to say goodbye to reactor three.”
Expert nuclear engineer John Large also suggested that the reactor should be closed down. “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,” he said.
“All that EDF can do is permanently shut Hunterston, there being no alternative means to remedy this very serious situation.”
……….According to Rita Holmes, a local resident who chairs the Hunterston site stakeholder group, people were worried. “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,” she said.
Reuters 20th April 2018, Belgium will double the area of its North Sea waters made available to
offshore wind parks after 2020, the government announced on Friday, as part
of its exit strategy from nuclear power. The country has four offshore wind
parks that produce 871 megawatts of power and wants to increase that
capacity to 2.2 gigawatts by 2020 and to 4 gigawatts by 2030. After 2020,
the government plans to designate a new, 221-square-kilometre (85 square
miles) area near French waters. https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-belgium-renewables/belgium-to-double-offshore-wind-energy-capacity-as-it-exits-nuclear-power-idUKKBN1HR1U3?rpc=401&
Energy Live News 19th April 2018 ,The boss of ROSATOM in Europe has told ELN the future for nuclear power is
all about communication. Andrey Rozhdestvin was very open and direct when I
spoke to him earlier this week in Madrid, where the Russian nuclear giant
ROSATOM was launching its partnership with National Geographic, sponsoring
a series of new wildlife documentaries.
It’s one its ways of trying to trigger public dialogue on the issue of nuclear power. ROSATOM says the
documentaries will be talking about how to tackle climate change and they
of course believe nuclear energy, which is carbon-free generation, is part
of the answer. https://www.energylivenews.com/2018/04/19/talk-to-the-people-says-russian-nuclear-chief/
For the past 20 years, French nuclear waste agency Andra has tested the stability of the clay of the northeastern village to see if it could hold radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years.
Andra is preparing a formal request for next year to build the 25 billion euro ($31 billion) facility to hold waste from the reactors of state-owned utility EDF.
French nuclear regulator ASN has already said the plan is sound and deep geological storage is the safest way to protect future generations from radioactive waste.
But a police van at the main square is testimony to rising tensions and demonstrations that have at times blocked the area where Andra wants to dig.
“Life will become unbearable here with the nuclear waste and all the demonstrators,” said Bure mayor Gerard Antoine, who breeds beef cattle.
Antoine approved the installation of Andra research facilities two decades ago but said he now regrets that decision and would say no if he were asked today.
Hundreds of demonstrators who built a camp nearby were kicked out by police in February but say they are there for the long run and will fight the project until the government changes its plans.
“We are heading straight for … a nuclear disaster, that’s why we’re against it,” said Jean-Marc Fleury, a local elected official with an environmentalist party.
Police are maintaining a heavy presence while protesters have regrouped in and around a house in the Bure village centre.
The future Cigeo site is designed to cover an area of 600 hectares and have 250 kilometres of underground galleries where nuclear waste would be buried in huge rust-proof cylinders.
DEEP BURIAL
Andra, which carried out research work via a research laboratory 500 metres underground, wants to start work on the site in 2022 and complete it by 2030.
“We’re not going to do deep burial of (nuclear) waste if we had any doubt that it would leak or contaminate the environment,” said Andra spokesman Mathieu Saint Louis.
“The ultimate goal with an underground installation such as this one is precisely to protect ourselves from the danger of (nuclear) waste.”
For now, spent fuel from French nuclear reactors is stored in pools next to the reactors before it is shipped to state-owned nuclear fuel group Orano’s recycling plant in La Hague, western France.
But La Hague is not designed for long-term storage and France does not have a solution 40 years after investing heavily in nuclear energy. Other countries that use nuclear power face the same problem.
The Bure site is designed so that nuclear waste could be retrieved for the first 100 years if scientists find a better solution than burying it. Otherwise, the underground galleries will be permanently sealed with concrete.
Anti-nuclear activists say deep geological storage does not offer perfect guarantees against radiation leakage in ground water. They want the waste moved to underground facilities that are just a few metres deep, to monitor it better. Writing by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Ingrid Melander and Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Hundreds of lawmakers from Germany, France, and Britain have called on their counterparts in the U.S. Congress to support the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, calling it a “major diplomatic breakthrough.”
The initiative came as U.S. President Donald Trump has set a May 12 deadline to either improve or scrap the deal providing Iran with relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its atomic program.
“We were able to impose unprecedented scrutiny on the Iranian nuclear program, dismantle most of their nuclear enrichment facilities, and drastically diminish the danger of a nuclear arms race,” reads a statement signed by some 500 MPs from the German, British, and French national parliaments and posted online on April 19.
Britain, Germany, and France are signatories to the nuclear accord, along with the United States, China, and Russia.
Trump accuses Tehran of violating the spirit of the agreement and has called on European powers to “fix” what he says are the “terrible flaws” of the agreement. He wants new restrictions to be imposed on Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs.
“It is the U.S.’s and Europe’s interest to prevent nuclear proliferation in a volatile region and to maintain the transatlantic partnership as a reliable and credible driving force of world politics,” the European lawmakers said.
They wrote that abandoning the accord would result “in another source of devastating conflict in the Middle East and beyond,” would “diminish the value of any promises or threats made by our countries,” and would damage “our credibility as international partners in negotiation, and more generally, to diplomacy as a tool to achieve peace and ensure security.”
“We therefore urge you to stand by the coalition we have formed to keep Iran‘s nuclear threat at bay,” they added.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will both travel to Washington next week on separate official visits, in part to convince Trump not to pull the United States out of the nuclear deal with Iran.
Ostap Semerak called for international help to stop a potential “radiation catastrophe” as the United States also expressed concern over the mine and a key water facility in eastern Ukraine that has temporarily shut down after five workers were shot.
Soviet specialists conducted the underground explosion to free trapped gas at the YunKom mine in Yenakieve, 55km northeast of what is now the militant stronghold of Donetsk, and pumps have kept the blast zone relatively dry ever since.
Separatist officials insist that pumping and special monitoring are no longer necessary, however, citing local and Russian experts who say radioactivity levels in the mine are normal, and that flooding it would pose no threat of contamination to the Donbas region’s water table.
“What the militants are playing at is nothing other than terrorism and political blackmail,” Mr Semerak told members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
“Our joint task with international partners is to prevent a second Chernobyl in Donbas,” he said, referring to the atomic power station north of Kiev that exploded in April 1986, showering much of northern Europe with radiation
Drinking water
Earlier this week US state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert wrote on Twitter: “Plans by Russian proxies to flood the abandoned YunKom coal mine… could threaten drinking water of thousands of Ukrainians in Russia-controlled eastern Ukraine. We urge Russia and its proxy authorities to act responsibly.”
Four years of fighting in Donbas have killed more than 10,300 people, displaced 1.6 million and ravaged an industrial region of mines, metal works and chemical plants, creating the potential for a long legacy of environmental problems.
“Any present destabilisation of the mine via flooding could release up to 500 cubic metres of radiation-contaminated mine waters into the ground water table,” the OSCE said.
The conflict frequently disrupts water supplies through Soviet-built canals and pipes that criss-cross the front line, and which workers take considerable risks to maintain and repair after damage by shelling.
Under fire
The Donetsk water filtration plant, which sits right on the frontline, shut down again on Wednesday after five employees were wounded when their bus came under fire the previous day.
Hundreds of thousands of people in government and militia-held territory receive water from the plant, which is often struck by shells despite the presence there of chlorine and other hazardous chemicals.
“The chlorine is being washed out so it doesn’t stay in the pipes. They are halting the pumping station,” said Alexander Yevdokimov, acting head of the Donbas Water company. “It doesn’t mean we have shut it down forever, but we simply need security guarantees for our employees.”
Ms Nauert said the US urged “all forces to withdraw from positions around the Donetsk filtration station and other critical civilian infrastructure”.
BBC forced to deny reporting outbreak of nuclear war after fake news clip goes viral Telegraph UK, Will Horner
The BBC was last night forced to distance itself from a fake news clip reporting the outbreak of nuclear war after a video purporting to show hostilities between Russia and Nato was widely circulated online.
The three-minute clip, which appears to be set in the BBC News studio and uses the BBC logo, features a British presenter claiming armed conflict has broken out in the Baltic after a Russian aircraft was shot down.
It features footage of Russian naval ships launching cruise missiles, nuclear mushroom clouds, and shows the Queen being evacuated from Buckingham Palace.
“This video clip claiming to be a BBC news report about NATO and Russia has been circulating widely… We’d like to make absolutely clear that it’s a fake and does not come from the BBC,” the corporation said on Twitter.
The clip is a shortened version of an hour-long video that has been uploaded to YouTube several times since 2016 with the disclaimer that it is a “fictional dramatization.”
It began widely circulating on social media, particularly WhatsApp, after it was edited and re-uploaded to YouTube on Monday without that disclaimer.
The video also features a new ending purporting to be a “nuclear attack warning” with the logos of the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office.
The presenter of the video told The Daily Telegraph he was employed by Benchmarking Assessment Group, an Irish talent headhunting company, to shoot the video that would be used as a “psychometric test” to see how “their clients react in a disaster scenario”.
“From the original YouTube posting it says very clearly that it is fictional. You’d have to be an idiot to believe it anyway, it doesn’t even look like a genuine BBC news report. It was never meant to,” said Mark Ryes, a British voice actor……..
Nuclear Ban 17th April 2018, In advance of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee which
meets in Geneva from April 23rd over 30 UK civil society organisations have
co-signed a letter to Boris Johnson, challenging the government to take its
disarmament responsibilities seriously and in particular to participate in
the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). http://www.nuclearban.scot/challenge-to-uk-to-participate-in-nuke-ban-treaty/
World War 3 IMMINENT! Scared ex-Soviet general warns NUCLEAR war is INEVITABLE
A SCARED former Russian army general issued a harrowing warning that a nuclear war is “inevitable” and it is an “illusion” if leaders feel they can control a military conflict between the US and Russia. Express UKBy THOMAS HUNT, Apr 17, 2018 Former Russian general: Use of nuclear weapons is inevitable
Evgeny Buzhinskiy, a retired Lieutenant-General, claimed the Cold War was rather comfortable in comparison to the current conflict and the West should be prepared because Vladimir Putin “will not accept defeat” if World War 3 started.
Speaking to Channel 4 News, he said: “I think it’s worse than the Cold War, which we have been waging for 40 years after the Second World War.
“In the Cold War time I was in the armed forces and I was quite comfortable I’d say.
“There were definite duels and definite red lines – everybody knew what to do.There were no threats, no sanctions, no isolation, no cornering, no nothing.
“There was just ideological confrontation, but people on both sides knew how far they could go.”
The military veteran was then asked by the presenter whether rising tensions could lead to a third world war.
The General responded: “Of course. I repeat, you cannot control military confrontation between Russia and the United States.
Of course Russia cannot wage a war against the United States. For years, economically it cannot.
“In the general purpose forces, we are a bit lagging behind the United States.
“And of course, Russia will no accept any kind of defeat.
“So the involvement of nuclear weapons is inevitable.”
When asked if he is just trying to scare viewers, Mr Buzhinskiy said he was scared for the possible repercussions. He added: “I am scared myself because I have children and I have grandchildren so I am scared for their fate.”
