Rapid growth in solar and wind power in UK
| MORE than 10,000 megawatts per hour of renewable energy were produced in Southampton last year. Figures from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy show 16,730 megawatts per hour (around 17 gigawatts) of renewable electricity were generated in Southampton in 2020. This was 10% more energy than the 15 GWh produced the year before, and 23% more than the amount produced in 2014 – the earliest year of data available. Across the UK, 134,600 GWh of renewable energy was generated in 2020, a 13% rise on the year before, and above the 9% increase from 2018 to 2019. Climate think tank Ember said huge falls in costs means the growth in offshore wind power is set to go “parabolic” in the coming months. Phil MacDonald, chief operating officer at the organisation, added: “But the Government is still missing the opportunity of cheap onshore wind, and not doing enough to explore earlier-stage technologies like geothermal and tidal. The biggest producer of energy in Southampton last year was solar power, which generated 10 GWh – 62% of the total. Daily Echo 8th Nov 2021 https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/19700736.figures-renewable-energy-produced-southampton-yearly/ |
Former UK environment minister Tim Yeo an unreliable ”expert” on nuclear energy .
Is Tim Yeo really a reliable expert of nuclear energy? https://electricalreview.co.uk/2021/11/05/is-tim-yeo-really-a-reliable-expert-of-nuclear-energy/
As part of a lengthy feature querying the need for new nuclear power stations, how magnanimous it is of The Sunday Times to quote Tim Yeo, the former Tory environment minister.
He said, “We need a significant nuclear element in the energy mix if we’re going to get to net zero in the timeframe that is necessary — and that means having these new plants built.” He was cited as the current chairman of an entity called New Nuclear Watch Institute, which is funded by the nuclear industry.
But how reliable is Tim Yeo? Back in 2015, Yeo was described by a judge when he lost a libel case as “unreliable,” “dishonest,” “untruthful,” “untrue,” and “unworthy of belief.”
He has also recently been found guilty of deliberately misusing his “fiduciary powers” as Chair of TMO Renewables, and repeatedly offering misleading evidence in court. He was accused of a “dishonest strategy for maintaining control of the board,” a strategy that included “misleading existing shareholders” into thinking the company had just received a substantial cash investment, when in reality the ‘new friendly shareholders’ he had cited had not invested a penny. Amongst the latest judge’s conclusions were that Yeo was motivated by an “improper purpose,” and that his tendency to “speechify” gave his evidence a “contrived, evasive and rather self-serving quality.”
I am sure it is a coincidence that the libel case he lost back in 2015 was against The Sunday Times.
Serco pulls out of bidding for work on UK’s nuclear arsenal, because of ethical investing concerns
The rise of ethical investing has forced the outsourcer Serco to
pull out of bidding to help manage Britain’s nuclear weapons arsenal,
leaving the Ministry of Defence reliant on fewer potential partners for the
critical work. The FTSE 250 company has abandoned plans to compete for
contracts with the Atomic Weapons Establishment, which designs, makes and
maintains warheads, City sources revealed. The decision follows warnings
from fund managers that working with nuclear weapons might force them to
dump Serco shares due to non-compliance with Environmental, Social and
Governance (ESG) standards.
Telegraph 6th Nov 2021
UK govt calls for submissions on Nuclear Energy Financing Bill
Do you have relevant expertise and experience or a special interest in the
Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill 2021-22, which is currently passing through
Parliament? If so, you can submit your views in writing to the House of
Commons Public Bill Committee which is going to consider this Bill. The
first sitting of the Public Bill Committee is expected to be on Tuesday 16
November. Written evidence can now be sent in to the Public Bill Committee.
The Committee is scheduled to report by Tuesday 30 November. However,
please note that when the Committee concludes its consideration of the Bill
it is no longer able to receive written evidence and it can conclude
earlier than the expected deadline of 5.00pm on Tuesday 30 November. You
are strongly advised to submit your written evidence as soon as possible.
The sooner you send in your submission, the more time the Committee will
have to take it into consideration.
House of Commons 4th Nov 2021
NATO chief advises UK to deal with climate change threat to its Trident nuclear weapons at Faslane
COP26: NATO chief says it is up to UK to address Trident climate change flooding threat. NATO’s secretary general has stressed that it is up to individual nation members of the alliance to take action to protect military resources from the impacts of climate change, amid warnings that Faslane, the home of the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent, could be
impacted by flooding due to rising sea levels.
Scotsman 3rd Nov 2021
High time to rid Wales of plans for costly, risky Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
Leanne Wood: My column in The National two weeks ago argued for a transition away from manufacturing weapons of war to firing up our greeneconomy. Isn’t it also high time we rid Wales of the scourge of nuclear
power and redirect resources into clean, renewable energy? We have that opportunity now. Wales is a nuclear-free zone but for how much longer?
Plans to resurrect Wylfa B are effectively dead, even though some politicians continue to tout the idea. Attention has turned, instead, to the Trawsfynydd site where Rolls Royce is proposing a Small Modular Nuclear Reactor (SMNR), the latest experiment in nuclear fission technology. Except the old problems of safety and cost of storage and waste disposal haven’t gone away.
The first SMNR to be approved last year in the US was met by fierce criticism from notable scientists, including Professor MV Ramana of the University of Columbia who described the project as “risky and expensive”. Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, highlighted ‘safety gaps’ in the design. Still
the Welsh Government, with the backing of Westminster, continues with costly feasibility studies.
The National (Wales) 10th Oct 2021
https://www.thenational.wales/news/19637359.wales-needs-forget-nuclear-power-forever/
UK govt would do better to spend consumers’ money on making homes sustainable, and supporting smart grids, rather than on a nuclear tax
NFLA comments on Plans to Impose a Nuclear Tax on Consumers’ Bills. The
Minister justifies this on the basis that consumers will save more than
£30 billion compared with the system used to pay for Hinkley Point C.
NFLA UK & Ireland Steering Committee Chair Councillor David Blackburn said:
“The Minister is comparing one expensive environmentally unsustainable
project with another expensive environmentally unsustainable project.
If he really wanted to save consumers’ money he would introduce a National
Homes Retrofit Scheme as quickly as possible having learned the lessons
from its failed Green Homes Scheme, and introduce a scheme to support
flexibility, demand management and smart grids so that we can use more of
our cheap, sustainable renewable electricity.”
The Minister went on to argue that despite the fact that the Scottish Government has a different
position with regard to new nuclear projects, Scottish Consumers should
also pay his “nuclear tax” because they “will benefit from a cheaper,
more resilient and lower-carbon electricity system.”
Scottish NFLA Chair, Cllr. Feargal Dalton said: “Renewables met 97% of Scotland’s
electricity demand in 2020. The Scottish electorate has consistently voted
for Governments opposed to building new nuclear power stations. With wind
and solar now the cheapest forms of electricity Scottish consumers
shouldn’t have to pay for the Tories’ failed energy policies.”
NFLA 4th Nov 2021
Terra Praxis – another pro nuclear front group pushing for the mythical small nuclear reactors.
AJ100 practice Bryden Wood has revealed plans to repurpose the world’s
coal-fired power stations to house modular nuclear reactors as part of a
‘major initiative’ to decarbonise the energy sector. The practice’s
Repurposing Coal proposal has been drawn up with Terra Praxis, a non-profit
organisation focused on action for climate and energy.
Unveiled at COP26 this week, the strategy sets out how coal-fired boilers at existing power
plants could be replaced with Advanced Heat Sources (Generation IV Advanced
Modular Reactors) .
Architects Journal 5th Nov 2021
Bradwell is not suitable for nuclear fusion, not suitable for nuclear fission either.
Bradwell has been dropped from the list of 15 sites for fusion. Andy
Blowers said Bradwell was always unlikely to be a non-starter for the
nuclear fantasy project. Voracious cooling water demands will damage the
vulnerable ecology of the Blackwater estuary. If Bradwell is not suitable
for fusion it is not suitable for Bradwell B. Maylands Mayl – November 5th Nov 2021
Only Britain has the dubious plan to get to net zero by relying on multiple nuclear reactors
Even without our plentiful opportunities to exploit wind, solar, wave and tidal power many countries feel they do not need nuclear power to reach their goals.
Questions remain over the UK’s nuclear power plans https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/nov/02/questions-remain-over-the-uks-nuclear-power-plans?fbclid=IwAR3TQj7xYv3jEY824jm9tVFuNln6CgT7xqS3
No other country taking part in Cop26 is relying on multiple new reactors to get to net zero by 2050 Paul Brown, Tue 2 Nov 2021 In 2007, Vincent de Rivaz, the then EDF chief executive, said Britain would be “cooking our Christmas turkeys” with electricity from Hinkley Point C nuclear station by 2017. Instead the first concrete was poured that year and the turkey is now scheduled for late 2026.
In the race against time to avert dangerous global heating, the UK government has decided to back an untried reactor from Rolls Royce. The first of these could be “plugged into the grid by 2031”, according to Nuclear Industry Association.
Internationally average planning time for reactor proposals is 10 years, plus another decade for building, and that is for already proven designs. The 16 planned Rolls Royce reactors are still on the drawing board. The arguments about where they could be sited are beginning. Apart from other possible objections the favoured UK coastal locations are vulnerable to sea level rise, erosion and storms.
Faced with the well-documented delays and drawbacks to nuclear programmes it is perhaps not surprising that there is no other country taking part in the Cop26 process in Glasgow relying on multiple new nuclear reactors to get to net zero carbon targets by 2050. Even without our plentiful opportunities to exploit wind, solar, wave and tidal power many countries feel they do not need nuclear power to reach their goals.
Jellyfish keep attacking nuclear power plants
 | |||
Jellyfish Keep Attacking Nuclear Power Plants. Jellyfish are continuing to clog the cooling pipes of nuclear power plants around the world. GG, By Gabriel Geiger 3 Nov 21, Jellyfish are continuing to clog the cooling intake pipes of a nuclear power plant in Scotland, which has previously prompted a temporary shutdowns of the plant.
The Torness nuclear power plant has reported concerns regarding jellyfish as far back as 2011, when it was forced to shut down for nearly a week—at an estimated cost of $1.5 million a day—because of the free-swimming marine animals………
Like many other seaside power plants, the Torness plant uses seawater to prevent overheating. While there are measures in place to prevent aquatic life from entering the intake pipes, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, they are no match for the sheer number of jellyfish that come during so-called “jellyfish blooms.”
“Usually, screens prevent aquatic life and similar debris from being drawn into the power plants’ cooling system,” the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists wrote in a 2015 blog post. “But when sufficiently large volumes of jellyfish or other aquatic life are pulled in, they block the screens, reducing the volume of water coming in and forcing the reactor to shut down.” ……
“Any industry on the coast which uses seawater can find its operations complicated when seaweed or jellyfish blooms impact protective systems,” Angus Bloomfield, a marine biologist, is quoted as saying in a press release from the University of Cranfield. “They can damage machinery and even stop power generation, which could threaten stability of the electricity grid. An early warning system involving drones could allow industries in marine environments to act early and avoid the most dramatic effects these events can bring.” https://www.vice.com/en/article/epx4mj/jellyfish-keep-attacking-nuclear-power-plants
Nuclear is Not Green – campaigners from Suffolk travel to COP26
Campaigners from Suffolk have travelled to COP26 host city Glasgow to
protest over Sizewell C, which they say is not the solution to the climate
emergency. Stop Sizewell C, two Suffolk Coastal 2019 General Election
candidates and local supporters unfurled a “Nuclear is Not Green” banner in
the centre of the city.
East Anglian Daily Times 2nd Nov 2021
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/stop-sizewell-c-protest-at-cop26-in-glasgow-8458020
USA and UK’s transparent persecution of Australian Julian Assange
The goal is to set a legal precedent which allows journalists who expose the crimes of the powerful to be persecuted not covertly as is normally done in ‘free democracies,’ but right out in the open. To tell journalists “We’ll just throw you in prison if you cross us.
What makes this precedent uniquely dangerous is that it is not just threatening to imprison American journalists who expose US crimes, but any journalist anywhere in the world.
Caitlin Johnstone: The Assange persecution lays out Western savagery at its most transparent https://www.rt.com/op-ed/538713-us-appeal-of-the-julian-assange/28 Oct, 2021 By Caitlin Johnstone, an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter @caitozThe first day of the US appeal in the Julian Assange extradition case saw grown adults arguing in court that the US government could guarantee that it wouldn’t treat the WikiLeaks founder as cruelly as it treats other prisoners.
I wish I was kidding.
In their write-up on Wednesday’s proceedings, The Dissenter’s Kevin Gosztola and Mohamed Elmaazi report that the prosecution argued that “the High Court should accept the appeal on the basis that the U.S. government offered ‘assurances’ that Assange won’t be subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) or incarcerated in ADX Florence, a super-maximum prison in Colorado.”
What this means is that in order to overturn the January extradition ruling which judge Vanessa Baraitser denied on the basis that the notoriously draconian US prison system is too cruel to guarantee Assange’s health and safety, the prosecution has established as one of their grounds for appeal the claim that they can offer “assurances” that they would not inflict some of their most brutal measures upon him. These would include the aforementioned Special Administrative Measures, wherein prisoners are so isolated that they effectively disappear off the face of the earth, or sending him to ADX Florence, where all prisoners are kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day.
What’s ridiculous about these “assurances,” apart from the obvious, is that within its own legal argument the US government reserves the right to reverse those assurances at any time and impose SAMs or maximum security imprisonment upon Assange if it deems them necessary. As Amnesty International explains:
They say: we guarantee that he won’t be held in a maximum security facility and he will not be subjected to Special Administrative Measures and he will get healthcare. But if he does something that we don’t like, we reserve the right to not guarantee him, we reserve the right to put him in a maximum security facility, we reserve the right to offer him Special Administrative Measures. Those are not assurances at all. It is not that difficult to look at those assurances and say: these are inherently unreliable, it promises to do something and then reserves the right to break the promise.
So the prosecution’s legal argument here is essentially “We promise we won’t treat Assange as cruelly as we treat our other prisoners, unless we decide we really want to.”
This is not just a reflection on the weakness of the extradition appeal, it’s a reflection on the savagery of all the so-called free democracies that have involved themselves in this case.
This same prosecution argued that Assange should not be denied US extradition from the UK on humanitarian grounds as in the case of activist Lauri Love, because Love suffered from both physical and psychological ailments while Assange’s ailments are only psychological. They stood before the court and made this argument even as Assange was visibly pained and unwell in his video appearance from Belmarsh Prison, which he was only able to attend intermittently due to his frail condition.
“For my newspaper, I have worked as media partner of WikiLeaks since 2009,” tweeted journalist Stefania Maurizi who attended the hearing via video link. “I have seen Julian Assange in all sorts of situations, but I have never ever seen him so unwell and so dangerously thin.”
So they’re just openly brutalizing a journalist for exposing US war crimes, while arguing that they can be trusted to treat him humanely and give him a fair trial if granted extradition. This after it has already been confirmed that the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate him during the Trump administration, after we learned that the prosecution relied on false testimony from a convicted child molester and diagnosed sociopath, after it was revealed that the CIA spied on Assange and his lawyers in the Ecuadorian embassy, and after intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein famously died under highly suspicious circumstances in a US prison cell.
The worst atrocities in history have all been legal. All the worst examples of genocide, slavery, tyranny and bloodshed have been allowed or actively facilitated by the state. The persecution of Assange is geared toward entering the imprisonment of journalists into this category.
The goal is to set a legal precedent which allows journalists who expose the crimes of the powerful to be persecuted not covertly as is normally done in ‘free democracies,’ but right out in the open. To tell journalists “We’ll just throw you in prison if you cross us.”
What makes this precedent uniquely dangerous is that it is not just threatening to imprison American journalists who expose US crimes, but any journalist anywhere in the world. This is an Australian journalist in the process of being extradited from the UK for publishing facts about US war crimes in the nations it has invaded. The aim is to set up a system where anyone in the US-aligned world can be funneled into its prison system for publishing inconvenient facts.
This is the savagery of the Western world at its most transparent. It’s not the greatest evil the US-centralized empire has perpetrated; that distinction would certainly be reserved for its acts of mass military slaughter that it has been inflicting upon our species with impunity for generations. But it’s the most brazen. The most overt. It’s the most powerful part of the most depraved power structure on earth looking us all right in the eyes and telling us exactly what it is.
And if we can really look at this beast and what it is doing right now, really see it with eyes wide open, it reveals far more about those who rule over us than anything any journalist has ever exposed.
Greenpeace is set for a confrontation with security officials at COP26
Greenpeace is set for a confrontation with security officials at COP26
after revealing plans to dock a ship outside the venue without permission.
The climate group’s Rainbow Warrior yacht set sail from Liverpool on
Saturday night, seeking to sail up the Clyde and dock next to the COP26
venue in Glasgow. Port authorities declined the Rainbow Warrior’s request
to berth, with the area under a tight lockdown as world leaders arrive, but
Greenpeace said that the captain has “decided to ignore the warnings”
and will attempt to dock on Monday morning.
iNews 31st Oct 2021
Megaprojects like Hinkley Point C nuclear are now blamed for shortages of materials for up to 2500 construction firms
HS2 and Hinkley Point blamed for concrete shortages. Megaprojects have
been accused of gobbling up concrete supplies, while steelmakers face a
magnesium drought caused by China. Ian Anfield, managing director of Hudson
Contract, which provides services to more than 2,500 construction firms,
said small builders cannot compete for materials with mega-projects such
as HS2 and Hinkley nuclear power plant.
The British Merchants Federation
(BMF) and the Construction Products Association (CPA) have set up a task
force with the Government and major schemes including HS2 and the Hinkley
nuclear plant to monitor the situation.
Telegraph 30th Oct 2021
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/10/30/hs2-hinkley-point-blamed-concrete-shortages/
1 This Month
23 April – WEBINAR – Why new nuclear reactors are the wrong tools for decarbonization Thursday, April 23 • 1 AM – 2 AM AEST
World Nuclear Power. Reactors 1951-2026, 75 Years of Nuclear Power.
Interactive Map– https://dv.worldnuclearreport.org/
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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