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Another university infiltrated by the nuclear industry – University of Derby and Rolls Royce

 Rolls-Royce Submarines announced plans recently to open a new academy
dedicated to nuclear training within the city. The academy forms part of
their Rolls-Royce Submarines’ plans to boost nuclear capability in the UK
and create a pipeline for nurturing talent.

In partnership with the
University of Derby, the site will create 200 new apprenticeships every
year for at least the next 10 years. The academy is set to open in
September 2022. The Council’s iHub – managed by Connect Derby – will
become the home of the new academy, taking centre-stage at the
manufacturing-focused innovation and technology site, Infinity Park. Derby City Council

26th May 2022 https://www.derby.gov.uk/news/2022/may/ihub-rolls-royce-nuclear-skills-academy/

May 28, 2022 Posted by | Education, UK | Leave a comment

Chinese involvement is entrenched in Britain’s nuclear power plans

  In this week’s Gossage Gossip, our columnist discusses whether the
UK’s recent ban on China’s involvement in nuclear power came a little
too late. It has become clear that, for national security reasons
safeguarding the electricity system, the Government has decided to minimise
the amount of direct Chinese involvement in new nuclear construction. While
China was originally welcomed with open arms, the idea now is to kick the
Chinese out from their projected 40% funding of Sizewell C, and block
entirely the concept of a 100% Chinese reactor at Bradwell B.

But might this be a case of shutting the stable doors well after the horses have
bolted? For instance, it seems that the special constabulary force who
police Britain’s 10 civil nuclear sites do so using surveillance cameras
produced by a Chinese state-backed firm called Hikvision. This firm has
been sanctioned under export and investment restrictions by the US
government and is implicated in human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Due to the
sensitivity of their work, unlike regular British police forces, frontline
officers may be routinely armed. But it won’t stop their every move being
monitored by the camera manufacturers.

A major worry regarding Sizewell C
is reliable accessibility to copious amounts of cooling water, a growing
problem in dry East Anglia. The local supplier, Essex and Suffolk Water,
are statutorily bound to provide water on demand to all households – but
has no such obligations for non-residential establishments. All they can
offer is ‘best endeavours’ to supply. And who owns this water company?
Step forward Li-Ka Shing. His company, CK Group, also owns UK Power
Networks, just about the largest electricity distribution company in
Britain. Li-Ka Shing happens to be not just one of the richest men in
China, but also an industrialist known to be very close to President Xi.
Prospective constructor Electricité de France has been instructed to cost
out just how much more heavy dependence upon desalination of North Sea
water will add to their overheads, already upwards of £21 billion.

 

 Electrical Review 26th May 2022

Is a China ban from UK nuclear power too little, too late?

May 28, 2022 Posted by | politics international, UK | Leave a comment

Security issues at UK’s civil nuclear facilities have reached highest level in 14 years

The number of formal reports documenting security issues at the UK’s
civil nuclear facilities has hit its highest level in at least 12 years
amid a decline in inspections, the Guardian can reveal. Experts said the
news raised concerns about the regulator’s capacity to cope with a
planned expansion in the sector. A total of 456 incident notification forms
documenting security issues at UK nuclear facilities were submitted to the
Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) over 2021, according to information
obtained by the Guardian and the investigative journalism organisation
Point Source. This is 30% higher than the 320 reports filed during the
whole of 2020 and more than double the 213 reports that were filed in 2018.

 Guardian 26th May 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/26/security-warnings-at-uk-nuclear-energy-facilities-hit-12-year-high

May 28, 2022 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

Pretense in UK that Wylfa and other new nuclear stations are affordable – investors are staying away in droves.

A new Wylfa will cost between £14 and £17bn to build and won’t be up
and running until the 2030s, the UK Government have been told. Sources told
the Times newspaper that the 2.3-gigawatt plant would take six years to
build, on top of a lengthy planning and regulatory process, meaning that it
would not be operational until the early years of the next decade.


Westinghouse and Bechtel, the reactor maker and engineering group, are
hoping to win UK Government backing for their plan to build two reactors at
Wylfa on Anglesey. Their AP1000 reactor design has already completed
initial safety approval for use in Britain. However, Bechtel were hoping to
secure £20m from the UK Government before being able to provide a full
breakdown of the total costs of the project. Ivan Baldwin, head of the UK
civil nuclear market for Bechtel, told the Times that this taxpayer funding
would enable the developer to “provide to the government an estimated
project cost” and “to determine the optimum construction schedule at
the site”.

Hitachi, of Japan, currently own the rights to the Wylfa site
after giving up on their own plans to build a nuclear power plant there.


Dylan Morgan from People Against Wylfa B (PAWB) responded to the
announcement to say that Boris Johnson was just “shooting from the
hip”. “All his bluster about possible new nuclear reactors displays an
astounding level of economic and environmental illiteracy,” he said.
“Firstly, where is the strong economy coming out of Covid and post
Brexit? No nuclear companies will go it alone and invest heavily in
building new nuclear reactors.

“As in the case of Rolls Royce and their
modular reactor which isn’t small at all at 475 MW, bigger than the old
Magnox reactors at Trawsfynydd, they want government public handouts for
designing the reactors, more astronomic handouts financed through our
already vastly inflated electricity bills to construct these radiotoxic
monstrosities, and then even more handouts for an agreed price for
electricity produced, and last but not at all least, the massive
decommissioning costs over thousands of years of reactors and all the
problems with storage of hazardous nuclear wastes.

“There is little wonder that no corporations have come forward in droves to get a nuclear
renaissance much promised from the Blair/Brown era going. “Labelling
Wylfa and Trawsfynydd as possible new sites for this most dangerous, dirty,
radiotoxic, health-threatening and expensive technology is an insult to the
people of Wales. “It is the totally wrong path to tread and it may be the
case that Johnson will not be in office for too long to realise his madcap
nuclear ambitions.”

 Nation Cymru 24th May 2022
 https://nation.cymru/news/new-wylfa-will-cost-14-17bn-to-build-and-wont-be-ready-until-2030s/

New Wylfa will cost £14-17bn to build and won’t be ready until 2030s

May 26, 2022 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Leaked emails expose UK Home Secretary Priti Patel’s connection to MI6-style ‘research and influence operation’AND to extraditing Julian Assange

British Home Secretary Priti Patel is due to imminently decide on whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is extradited to the US, where he faces life imprisonment for journalistic activities.

Patel sat on the advisory council of the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society think tank alongside Lord James Arbuthnot – a former Conservative Minister of Defence whose wife, Lady Emma Arbuthnot, made two key rulings against Assange in 2018, before being forced to step aside due to a “perception of bias.”

it is safe to assume the intelligence cabal bringing its influence to bear on Patel would strongly favor his extradition to the US.

The GRAYZONE, KIT KLARENBERG·MAY 18, 2022,

A deeply anti-democratic MI6-linked cabal’s apparent influence on Priti Patel raises serious questions about her fitness to rule on Julian Assange’s extradition to the US.

  • Cabal now managing MI6-inspired “research and influence operation” 
  • Effort may be funded by intelligence agency actors
  • British Home Secretary implicated in plot
  • Green advocates and perceived Chinese agents targeted
  • Home Office infiltrated by cabal’s civil service mole
  • Cabal seeks to seize power over energy policy and “displace” government minister
Continue reading →

May 23, 2022 Posted by | civil liberties, politics, UK | Leave a comment

Hinkley Point C – costs soar, delays again. UK govt’s big bet on nuclear is backfiring

The risks to the government’s plans to build another eight nuclear power
plants have been underlined by the latest wave of ballooning costs and
delays at Hinkley Point C. EDF, which is constructing the 3,200MW reactor
in Somerset, has warned that estimated costs have jumped to between £25
billion and £26 billion, while the power station will not now start
producing electricity until June 2027 at the earliest.

The revised estimates are £3 billion higher than the previous cost projections in
January last year, which were in turn well ahead of the group’s initial
£18 billion forecast when the project was approved in 2016.

Hinkley is Britain’s first new nuclear plant in decades. It is expected to power six
million homes, with the government guaranteeing that consumers pay an
index-linked £92.50 per megawatt hour, in 2012 prices, for its
electricity. Construction costs are being met by EDF and its junior partner
in the project, CGN of China.

Critics seized on the latest overruns to
point out the risks to Boris Johnson’s blueprint for another 24 gigawatts
of new nuclear power by 2050. The Stop Sizewell C lobby group pointed out
that, while EDF and CGN are on the hook for Hinkley’s “rocketing
costs”, a proposed new financing model would see consumers paying upfront
via higher bills for cost overruns.

“The £20 billion estimate for
Sizewell C is already two years out of date, with zero chance of it being
delivered at that cost,” it said, noting that the risk of spiralling
costs would “fall on consumers”. Doug Parr, Greenpeace’s UK policy
director, said: “The government’s big bet on nuclear is backfiring with
every extra billion added to the bill”. He advocated investment in
offshore wind instead. Costs at the prototype for Hinkley, the Flamanville
plant in France, have rocketed from €3.3 billion to €12.7 billion.
Construction is running more than a decade late. 

Times 20th May 2022 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant-to-open-a-decade-late-9vsk6w9zx

May 23, 2022 Posted by | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

£3 billion more, 1 year longer: EDF Energy announces latest price hike and further delay at Hinkley Point C

£3 billion more, 1 year longer: EDF Energy announces latest price hike
and further delay at Hinkley Point C. Whilst news that yet another civil
nuclear power plant is to be delivered still further over-budget and still
further behind schedule may be ‘par for the course’, the Nuclear Free
Local Authorities still find EDF’s latest pronouncement that Hinkley
Point C will cost £3 billion more and take one year longer to build
shocking.

In a media release yesterday (Thursday 19 May), the French parent
of UK nuclear operator, EDF Energy, conceded that, on their latest
estimate, Hinkley Point C will now cost £25 to 26 billion to build and
become operational no earlier than July 2027.

EDF last updated its Hinkley
Point construction schedule in January 2021, when it stated the plant would
be delayed by a further six months to June 2026 with the cost rising by an
additional half billion pounds to £22 billion to 23 billion. NFLA Chair
Councillor David Blackburn commented: “EDF Energy have blamed COVID and
the Ukraine conflict for the price hike and the delay, but Hinkley Point C
was already way over budget and way behind schedule before either of these
calamities occurred. For the simple reality is that nuclear costs too much
and takes too long”.

 NFLA 20th May 2022

£3 billion more, 1 year longer: EDF Energy announces latest price hike and further delay at Hinkley Point C

May 23, 2022 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

UK Ministers taking the public for fools, as they tout grandiose and delusional nuclear power schemes

 Betting on the French will not keep Britain’s lights on, EDF’s latest
Hinkley Point delay shows PM’s nuclear ambitions are divorced from
reality.

It is testament to the sheer incompetence of France’s
state-backed utility EDF that Hinkley Point C has become Britain’s most
radioactive construction project and it hasn’t even been built yet. In
fact, one wonders if it ever will be at this rate after yet more delays and
cost overruns.

For critics of atomic energy, Hinkley Point is the gift that
keeps on giving. For the rest of the country it remains laughably elusive.
After repeated setbacks, Britain’s first new plant in three decades was
already scheduled to be nine years overdue and £7bn over budget having
been pushed back to 2026, while estimated build costs had rocketed to
£23bn.

And now? An announcement from EDF, snuck out at 10pm on Thursday
night, reveals that the project has been delayed by another year at best,
and will cost a further £3bn, with Covid the excruciatingly predictable
excuse being provided. It is the fourth time that EDF has had to revise the
timetable and budget since construction began in October 2016.

At this point, any suggestion that the Prime Minister’s recently announced
ambition to build 24 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity, equivalent to
another six Hinkleys, each costing £20bn, have any chance of being
realised should be banished. Ministers are taking us for fools with these
grandiose yet delusional schemes.

Like so many of this Government’s plans
to transform important areas of the economy, Britain’s nuclear ambitions
are totally divorced from reality, and will remain so while we continue to
depend on the same unreliable partner with a risible track record of
delivering on its promises.

But it is in France where the major red flags can be found. EDF’s flagship Flamanville plant in
Normandy, which is being built using the same European Pressurised Reactors
(EPR) that are set to be deployed at Hinkley, was originally meant to come
on line in 2009. Instead, it won’t be ready until 2023, nearly a decade and
a half later than originally planned, and is £10bn over budget after costs
quadrupled from initial estimates in 2004.

Yet Flamanville is just one of
many plants where EDF is experiencing problems. The company has been forced
to launch a programme of checks on its entire fleet of 56 nuclear reactors
after the discovery of corrosion caused outages at some. A total of 12 are
offline, exacerbating a perilous financial squeeze as it prepares to
spearhead Emmanuel Macron’s plans to put nuclear power at the heart of
his country’s pursuit of carbon neutrality by 2050. And yet, incredibly,
EDF harbours ambitions to build another plant in the UK, at Sizewell C in
Suffolk.

 Telegraph 21st May 2022

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/05/21/betting-french-will-not-keep-britains-lights/

May 23, 2022 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

UK’s energy policy (for a nuclear ”renaissance”) ignores the fastest and most cost-effective measure – SAVING ENERGY

Andrew Warrant: Energy policy is big news again. Initially, because fuel
prices are rocketing, and set to rise even more this autumn. Plus the
invasion of Ukraine has precipitated a determination to minimise the amount
of gas and oil purchased in future from Russia. These two factors have
prompted Prime Minister Boris Johnson to devise a new energy security
strategy.

Published last month, its reception was uniformly dismissive. Not
so much because of the energy supply sources it concentrated upon but
mainly because it entirely omitted any serious consideration of the policy
area deemed most capable of providing swift cost-effective solutions.
Saving energy.

The Times’ editorial was unsparingly contemptuous. The UK
government’s new energy security strategy amounted to “little more than a
glorified press release.” The “eye-catching announcement” of eight
new nuclear power plants offers “no analysis of why Britain had succeeded
in starting construction on just one new reactor in the 16 years since Tony
Blair announced a nuclear renaissance.”

It added: “What is certain isthis new nuclear programme will not bring energy bills down any time soon. if ever. Instead, it will push bills up as the costs of construction are
passed on to consumers. Nor will it do much in the near term to reduce
Britain’s reliance on Russian oil and gas given that it takes at least a
decade to build a nuclear power station.”

While no doubt
well-intentioned, Rishi Sunak’s attempts to alleviate the cost of living –
including through a £150 council tax rebate for most homes and a £200 loan
towards energy bills – have been overly complicated and badly targeted.
And, as Helen Barnard of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has pointed out,
the £2.4bn the Treasury lost cutting fuel duty would have covered the cost
of insulating a third of all social housing in the country.

“Theconsultancy E3G has calculated that new energy efficiency measures could
reduce the heating bills for poorly insulated homes by an average of £500
and end the UK’s dependence on Russian gas (which is admittedly quite
limited) within a year. There is a very revealing explanation for why no
new plans are being proposed. It is that “this is not being imposed on
people and is a gradual transition following the grain of behaviour. The
British people are no-nonsense pragmatists who can make decisions based on
the information.” But if an Englishman’s home really is his castle, then
why did fears for COVID 19 lock everybody inside their castle?

If we want people to support delivery of a collective good like energy security or
climate mitigation, then it is sensible to see it as collective action. And
for Government to lead it. The parallel with the pandemic is spot on.Energy in Buildings and Industry
18th May 2022 https://eibi.co.uk/article/collective-spirit-required-to-ensure-energy-security/

May 23, 2022 Posted by | ENERGY, politics, UK | Leave a comment

UK Home Secretary PRITI PATEL WAS PART OF CIA-LINKED LOBBY GROUP WITH HUSBAND OF ASSANGE JUDGE

Home Secretary Priti Patel, who will soon decide whether to extradite Julian Assange to the US, has been a political adviser to – and been funded by – a right-wing lobby group which has attacked Assange in the British media for a decade. DECLASSIFIED UK, MATT KENNARD, 29 MARCH 2022   

  • Patel sat on advisory council of Henry Jackson Society (HJS) with Lord Arbuthnot, whose wife later made two key legal rulings against Assange
  • Former CIA director James Woolsey has been an HJS patron since 2006
  • HJS has hosted three other ex-CIA directors in London since 2014
  • Patel was paid £2,500 by HJS to fly to Washington for a “security” programme in the US Congress
  • Patel ignores Declassified’s request for clarification of her role in HJS

Priti Patel sat on the Henry Jackson Society’s (HJS) advisory council from around 2013-16, although the exact dates are unclear as neither the HJS nor Patel responded to Declassified’s requests for clarification. 

She has also received funds from the HJS, and was paid £2,500 by the group to visit Washington in March 2013 to attend a “security” programme in the US Congress. 

Patel, who became an MP in 2010 and was appointed Home Secretary in 2019, also hosted an HJS event in parliament soon after she returned from Washington. 

After the UK Supreme Court said this month it was refusing to hear Assange’s appeal of a High Court decision against him, the WikiLeaks founder’s fate now lies in Patel’s hands. He faces life in prison in the US. 

The HJS, which was founded in 2005 and does not disclose its funders, has links to the CIA, the intelligence agency behind the prosecution of Assange and which reportedly developed plans to assassinate him. 

One of the HJS’s international patrons is James Woolsey, CIA director from 1993-95, who was in this role throughout the period Patel was advising the group. Woolsey’s affiliation to the HJS goes back to at least 2006, soon after it was founded. 

In 2014, the group hosted General David Petraeus, CIA director from 2011-12, at a UK parliament meeting from which all media were barred. 

Three years later, in 2017, the HJS organised another event at parliament with General Michael Hayden, CIA director from 2006-9, to “discuss the current state of the American Intelligence Community and its relationships with foreign partners.”

Hayden described “the relationship within the Five Eyes community as strong as ever, despite potential concerns over recent intelligence leaks between members.” Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US.

‘Perception of bias’

During a visit to the UK in July 2020, then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke at a roundtable hosted by the HJS with what the Washington Post referred to as a group of “hawkish” members of the Conservative Party. 

As director of the CIA in 2017, Pompeo had launched a blistering attack on WikiLeaks calling the media organisation a “hostile intelligence service” that makes “common cause with dictators”. 

Pompeo did not provide evidence but added a threat: “To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.”

On the HJS advisory council at the same time as Patel was Lord James Arbuthnot, a former Conservative defence minister. His wife, Lady Emma Arbuthnot, was Westminster Chief Magistrate from 2016-2021. 

For part of her tenure, she was in charge of the Assange case and made two key rulings against him in 2018. Lady Arbuthnot eventually stepped aside from ruling on the case because of a “perception of bias” but never declared a conflict of interest. 

The links between Patel and Lord Arbuthnot go further. In 2010, soon after becoming an MP, Patel was appointed one of five parliamentary officers of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) when the group was chaired by Lord Arbuthnot. 

CFI has been described as “beyond doubt the most well-connected and probably the best funded of all Westminster lobbying groups”. It also does not disclose its funders.

Patel was forced to resign as Secretary of State for International Development in November 2017 after it was revealed that she had held more than a dozen undeclared meetings with Israeli ministers and organisations while on holiday in the country. 

Many of these were arranged by CFI’s honorary president, Lord Polak. Patel’s resignation letter accepted that her conduct “fell below…standards of transparency and openness”.

HJS staff have been repeatedly critical of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in the British media since 2011 when its then associate director, Douglas Murray, engaged in a combative debate with Assange. 

……….  Over the following years, the HJS and its staff continued to be among the most active civil society voices for impugning the motives and reputation of Assange. 

This stands in contrast to nearly all human rights and press freedom organisations which argue that extraditing the WikiLeaks publisher to the US would be a grave blow to media freedom. 

‘Conspiracy theories’

In October 2016, the HJS released a statement to the media, which claimed: “Mr Assange has a long track record of stealing and distributing information, peddling conspiracy theories, and casting aspersions on the moral standing of western democratic governments. He has done this whilst supporting, and being supported by, autocratic regimes.” 

No evidence was supplied to support the assertions. 

A number of other HJS staff—including spokesperson Sam Armstrong and then chief of staff Ellie Green—have made anti-Assange interventions in the British media.

Secrecy

In October 2019, as home secretary, Patel visited Washington again to meet William Barr, the US Attorney General who was then in charge of the Assange case as head of the Department of Justice. 

Together they signed the Cloud Act which made it easier for American and British law enforcement agencies to demand electronic data on targets as they undertake investigations.

Assange’s defence team had previously raised the concern in court that Barr may be using Assange’s extradition case in the UK for political ends.

In August 2020, Declassified requested basic information about Patel’s 2019 trip to Washington. The Home Office confirmed it held the information but refused to release it because the department considered “that disclosure of some of the information would prejudice relations between the UK and the United States”.

In May 2020, Declassified also requested information about any calls or emails made or received by Patel since she became Home Secretary which concerned the case of Julian Assange, or mentioned his name.

The Home Office told us “we can neither confirm nor deny whether we hold the information you have requested” because “to do so either way would disclose information that constitutes the personal data of Julian Assange”.

The same request for Sajid Javid’s tenure as Home Secretary from 2018-19 was rejected because the department said “we have carried out a thorough search and we have established that the Home Office does not hold the information that you have requested.” 

This was despite the fact Javid signed the initial US extradition request for Assange in June 2019. The shadow home secretary at the time, Diane Abbott, opposed approving the US extradition request.

Declassified previously revealed that before signing the US request, Javid had attended six secretive meetings, some attended by former CIA directors, which were organised by a US lobby group which has published calls for Assange to be assassinated or taken down. 

The Home Office recently admitted it had eight officials working on Operation Pelican, the UK government campaign to seize Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. 

The department, however, claimed it did not know which other UK government ministries were involved in the operation.

Priti Patel and the Henry Jackson Society did not respond to requests for information and comment. https://declassifieduk.org/priti-patel-was-part-of-cia-linked-lobby-group-with-husband-of-assange-judge/

May 23, 2022 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, UK | Leave a comment

UK Public Accounts Committee warns on need to double-check on safety of aging nuclear reactors

Ageing nuclear reactors must be ‘double-checked’ for safety before
being kept going to ease energy crisis. Closure of seven nuclear reactors
by 2028 will ‘significantly reduce’ UK energy generation, the Public
Accounts Committee warns, and taxpayers face billions of pounds in extra
costs.

 iNews 20th May 2022

https://inews.co.uk/news/business/ageing-nuclear-reactors-double-checked-safety-ease-energy-crisis-costs-1640564

May 21, 2022 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

UK Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee sets out the grim facts on costs of decommissioning nuclear reactors

Despite government already having had to provide additional funding of
£10.7 billion, there remains a strong likelihood that more taxpayers’
money will be required to meet the costs of decommissioning the seven
Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor nuclear power stations.

The Nuclear Liabilities Fund, which was set up to meet the decommissioning costs of these stations,
has not kept up with the increased costs of decommissioning or met its
investment targets. In response, government has chosen to top up the Fund
with taxpayers’ money, providing an injection of capital of £5.1 billion
in 2020–21 with a further £5.6 billion expected in 2021–22. HM
Treasury and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy have
opted to maintain an investment strategy for the Fund whereby around 80% of
its assets are invested in the National Loans Fund currently earning
minimal returns.

Estimated decommissioning costs on the other hand have
almost doubled since March 2004, estimated at £23.5 billion in March 2021,
and there remains a significant risk that the costs could rise further
putting strain on the Fund.

 Public Accounts Committee 20th May 2022

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmpubacc/118/summary.html

May 21, 2022 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

UK nuclear power stations’ decommissioning cost soars to £23.5bn

UK nuclear power stations’ decommissioning cost soars to £23.5bn  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/20/uk-nuclear-power-stations-decommissioning-cost Failures in government’s investment strategy mean taxpayer has contributed £10.7bn in just two yearsm Sandra Laville Environment correspondent Fri 20 May 2022

The cost of decommissioning the UK’s seven ageing nuclear power stations has nearly doubled to £23.5bn and is likely to rise further, the public accounts committee has said.

The soaring costs of safely decommissioning the advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs), including Dungeness B, Hunterston B and Hinkley B, are being loaded on to the taxpayer, their report said.

Failures in the government’s investment strategy for the fund, which was set up to pay for the decommissioning, have led to the taxpayer topping it up by an additional £10.7bn in just two years.

The nuclear power stations are owned by EDF Energy and provide much of the UK’s nuclear power-generated electricity, which makes up 16% of the energy mix. But the stations are nearing the end of their lives and are scheduled to stop generating electricity during this decade.

The government has recently agreed that once the stations have been defuelled by EDF, which involves the removal of all the spent fuel from the reactor core and cooling ponds, ownership of the stations will be transferred to the government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to complete decommissioning.

“The pace at which the stations can be defuelled could have a big impact on the costs, between £3.1bn and £8bn depending on the time taken,” the inquiry report said. “Successful defuelling will depend on all parties being ready and working together, including the NDA being ready to receive and dismantle the volume of fuel arriving at Sellafield. Any delays in the defuelling process could result in costs increasing substantially.

“The handover agreement does not appear to sufficiently ‘incentivise cost efficiency and ensure a smooth transfer of defuelled stations to the NDA’.”

The public accounts committee also said it had concerns over whether the NDA had the capacity to take on the seven AGR stations in addition to its other responsibilities, which includes decommissioning the older Magnox reactors.

It will cost the UK taxpayer £132bn to decommission all the UK’s civil nuclear sites and the work will not be completed for another 120 years, according to latest estimates.

Boris Johnson has pledged to build eight nuclear power stations in eight years. But the UK has no facility for permanently and safely storing the waste from past, present or future nuclear power stations. Most is currently stored at Sellafield, one of the most complex and hazardous nuclear sites in the world.


Nuclear Waste Services, an arm of the government, is seeking a site to build a geological deposit facility deep underground for all the UK’s nuclear waste.

MPs on the public accounts committee said in their report on Friday the government must learn lessons from the rising costs of decommissioning the seven AGR reactors and be clear how the decommissioning of proposed new nuclear stations would be funded.

The seven stations were sold by the government to EDF in 2009, with the later agreement that the French company would remove the fuel from the stations when they closed, and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority would take on the decommissioning of the sites. But the cost of decommissioning the seven AGR reactors that began to close last year, plus Sizewell B, has more than doubled from £12.6bn in 2004-05 to £23.5bn in 2020-21, the public accounts committee report said.

“There remain significant uncertainties that will need to be managed to prevent further increases in costs and ease pressures on the fund,” the report said. “The cost of defuelling will depend on the stations not closing significantly earlier than planned and how quickly they can be defuelled once electricity generation ceases.”

The public accounts committee, in a previous report, said the cost of decommissioning the older Magnox reactors – which were the first generation of UK nuclear stations – had increased by billions of pounds because of uncertainty over the condition of the sites and how to tackle the decommissioning.

The PAC report said the closure of seven nuclear stations by 2028 would have a significant impact on energy production, but EDF has said there can be no extensions to the life of the reactors while the UK waits for new generating capacity to come online.

May 21, 2022 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | 1 Comment

Cost of shutting down UK’s old nuclear reactors is doubling and then some

 The cost of decommissioning the UK’s seven ageing nuclear power stations
has nearly doubled to £23.5bn and is likely to rise further, the public
accounts committee has said. The soaring costs of safely decommissioning
the advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs), including Dungeness B, Hunsterston
B and Hinkley B, are being loaded on to the taxpayer, their report said.
Failures in the government’s investment strategy for the fund, which was
set up to pay for the decommissioning, have led to the taxpayer topping it
up by an additional £10.7bn in just two years. The nuclear power stations
are owned by EDF Energy and provide much of the UK’s nuclear
power-generated electricity, which makes up 16% of the energy mix. But the
stations are nearing the end of their lives and are scheduled to stop
generating electricity during this decade. The government has recently
agreed that once the stations have been defuelled by EDF, which involves
the removal of all the spent fuel from the reactor core and cooling ponds,
ownership of the stations will be transferred to the government’s Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to complete decommissioning.

 Guardian 20th May 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/20/uk-nuclear-power-stations-decommissioning-cost

May 21, 2022 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Greens oppose Nato membership for Scotland and ‘evil’ nuclear weapons

The National By Angus Cochrane@_Anguscchrn, Multimedia Journalist 18 May 22,  NUCLEAR weapons are “simply evil”, the Scottish Greens have said as they detailed their reasons for opposing Nato membership for an independent Scotland.

West Scotland MSP Ross Greer said it would be “morally wrong” for Scotland to join Nato if it were to become independent. It comes after Nicola Sturgeon reaffirmed her party’s support for joining the military alliance in the event of a Yes vote.

Greer explained both parties, who signed a historic co-operation deal in Holyrood last year, “agreed to disagree” on Nato. The MSP told BBC Scotland’s The Nine: “It’s no surprise to anyone that the Scottish Greens and the SNP have different positions on Nato.

“For the Scottish Greens, we enthusiastically believe in co-operation, especially in areas like security and defence.

“Patrick Harvie lists one of them and that is Nato’s first strike nuclear policy. Nato reserves the right to launch the first strike in a nuclear war.

“That would be world ending and we believe that is simply evil. No-one has the right to do that and we believe it would be morally wrong for Scotland to join such an alliance.”

BBC Scotland put it to Greer that nuclear weapons were a deterrent.

Greer added: “But it is a Nato policy. First strike is not about responding to an attack, first strike is about the right to launch, to actually start that war, to start the last world war, because it would be the war that ended the world as we know it.

“That’s the nature of nuclear weapons.“The very existence of nuclear weapons risks the chance of nuclear war.“If we want to persuade rogue and hostile states to reduce their nuclear stockpiles, asking them to do it, demanding that they do it unilaterally, has no chance of success.”“This is a fundamental moral question. I don’t want the last thing that my country potentially does in its existence is to wipe another country off the map. Nuclear weapons are simply evil.”…………………….. The intervention comes after Nicola Sturgeon said the Russian invasion of Ukraine has strengthened the case for joining Nato……………………………  https://www.thenational.scot/news/20147291.greens-oppose-nato-membership-scotland-evil-nuclear-weapons/

“We agree with the First Minister that Scotland has a really positive role to play in Europe’s collective security arrangements. But we disagree on membership of Nato for two reasons.

May 19, 2022 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, UK | Leave a comment

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