UK’s Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) alarmed at likely promotion of nuclear power in govt’s White Paper
NFLA 24th June 2019 The Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) has been monitoring with concern
the UK Government’s expected summer White Paper expected to advocate the
funding of new nuclear power stations through the Revenue Asset Base (RAB).
In the view of the NFLA this could put a heavy financial burden and
unnecessary risks for such projects on to the public purse and the consumer
– effectively us the taxpayer.
This move largely arises from the heavy
costs of contract for delivering the Hinkley Point C reactor project and
the collapse of the Sellafield Moorside and the Wylfa B projects over the
past year. It also comes at a time when the financial costs of offshore
wind, onshore wind, solar and energy storage schemes all continue to come
down in cost.
http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-concerned-edf-financial-risks-public-purse-new-nuclear/
Danger of nuclear bomb convoys in Scotland
Safety risks exposed by nuclear bomb convoy exercise in Scotland, The Ferret, Rob Edwards on June 23, 2019 An emergency exercise imagining an explosion spreading radioactive contamination from a nuclear bomb convoy crash in East Lothian was hampered by communication breakdowns that would have put people at risk.
An official assessment of the exercise by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been passed to The Ferret. It reveals that paper masks worn by the emergency services would have failed to protect them from radioactivity leaking from a damaged nuclear warhead.
During the exercise police could not hear the convoy commander over the radio because he was wearing a respirator. Police also missed vital safety information because they failed to invite the commander to briefing meetings, and were criticised by the MoD for being “unfamiliar” with emergency procedures.
Campaigners condemned the exercise, codenamed Astral Climb, for not testing measures for protecting the public. They accused the MoD of failing to learn from mistakes made in previous nuclear bomb convoy exercises. …….
Convoys comprising up to 20 or more military vehicles transport Trident nuclear warheads by road at least six times a year between the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport on Loch Long, near Glasgow. and the bomb factory at Burghfield in Berkshire. The warheads have to be regularly maintained at Burghfield.
Though they are meant to be secret, the convoys are often photographed, filmed and followed on social media. They travel close to major centres of population such as Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester and Birmingham.
In May 2018 The Ferret revealed that safety problems plaguing the convoys had risen to a record high, with 44 incidents logged in 2017. A report by campaignershas warned that Scotland was “wholly unprepared” to deal with an accident or an attack on a convoy……..
It took more than two years for the MoD to release the report on Astral Climb in response to a freedom of information request by the campaign group, Nukewatch. The MoD apologised for such a “severe delay” and redacted sections of the report to protect “national security” and “personal information”.
The Scottish co-ordinator of Nukewatch, Jane Tallents, accused the MoD of failing to safeguard the public. “The MoD is now conducting convoy accident exercises which don’t even pretend to test any measures to protect the public from a radiation release,” she said.
“In the past more realistic exercise scenarios still stopped short of actual evacuation and sheltering of the public but at least played out on paper how that might be done. For Astral Climb 2016 the MoD imagined a convoy on a back road it never uses nowhere near any population centres.”
She added: “Nukewatch can only conclude that the MoD itself realises that a robust test of emergency procedures would always show that the public would be put at risk. Therefore they have moved to an annual box ticking exercise with the minimum of information being released to the public.”
Tallents urged the Scottish Government and emergency services to demand more transparency. “The scenarios for future exercises should be set by the regulators and civil emergency services to ensure that they are realistic and challenging,” she told The Ferret.
“Of course the best way to protect the public is to stop transporting nuclear warheads on our roads altogether.”…….
The Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND) described the MoD report on Astral Climb as a “massive cause for concern”. Nuclear weapons were a “major threat” to the health and safety of local communities, it warned……
The Scottish Government pointed out that the transportation of defence nuclear material in Scotland was a reserved matter for the MoD. “The Scottish Government expects any such transportation to be carried out safely and securely and has made this expectation clear to the UK government,” said a spokesperson……..https://theferret.scot/astral-climb-nuclear-bomb-convoy-exercise/
High costs of Britain’s nuclear submarine graveyards
Plymouth Live 22nd June 2019 , Devonport is home to 13 retired Royal Navy submarines – some of whichwere removed from service almost 30 years ago. Now the MoD wants to get
permission to store four more unwanted nuclear subs in the city. Dubbed
Plymouth’s nuclear graveyard, this week Plymouth MP Luke Pollard warned the
taxpayer is spending £30 million a year to maintain sites such as these,
including the one in Devonport, and another one in Rosyth, Scotland.
Sizewell budget meltdown could hit taxpayers under EDF proposals
Sizewell budget meltdown could hit taxpayers under EDF proposals, Rachel Millard, June 23 2019, The Sunday Times, Taxpayers could end up on the hook for cost overruns if a new £20bn nuclear power station in Suffolk blows its budget by more than 30%, under plans proposed by French energy giant EDF.
It is trying to attract investors to bankroll Sizewell C. EDF has told investment funds it wants similar state support for London’s £4.2bn super sewer.
Ministers have pledged to fund any cost overruns of more than 30% on the Thames Tideway Tunnel, and to act as lender of last resort if funding dries up.
The proposal by EDF is part of a broader push to create a new model for funding nuclear power after Japanese giants Hitachi and Toshiba ditched plans to build reactors in the UK.
The regulated asset base… (subscribers only) https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/sizewell-budget-meltdown-could-hit-taxpayers-under-edf-proposals-wrjdkdx20
UK Labour’s energy policy means that nuclear energy could be prioritised over renewables
Dave Toke’s Blog 15th June 2019 Labour’s proposals to take the national and regional energy grid back
into public ownership may give a boost to workers’ interests over
shareholder profits, but the way the proposals are set out produces an
increased risk of nuclear power being given priority over renewable energy.
Put simply that is because the way the proposals are structured means more
power to the GMB in particular, a body which is very pro-nuclear and which
is relatively hostile to renewable energy and a smart energy network.
Labour announced the plan, in May, to take the transmission and
distribution energy structure into public ownership, as well as plans to
set up a ‘National Energy Agency’ (to run the National Grid), Regional
Energy Agencies (to run regional distribution), and give opportunities for
municipal ownership of distribution on a local basis.
This plan can achieve traditional Labour Movement objectives, but its impact on pushing forward a
green agenda is doubtful. Put bluntly, the more that power is given to
bodies that will be influenced by organisations like the GMB (who favour
centralised power station solutions), the less useful will be the outcome.
The proposals make a gesture in favour of municipalisation, but for most
places the reality will be central control.
Control over the grid should be
given to local authorities as a matter of course, perhaps in consortia
(certainly at a national, transmission, level). Local authorities are
influenced by the local electorate and local citizen groups. They will be
sympathetic to green energy priorities. On the other hand centrally owned
quangos will be insulated from such democratic input and will be under the
thumb of the existing industrial establishment. Innovation will go out of
the window.
Climate change denier makes big donations to Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt.
Open Democracy 12th June 2019 Revealed: Climate change denier makes big donations to Boris Johnson andJeremy Hunt. Tory hopefuls under fire for accepting cash from company
linked to major ‘climate science denial’ group. Johnson has yet to
declare the funding, ‘raising questions about who else is bankrolling
him’.
each to both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt’s leadership campaigns,
openDemocracy has discovered. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s largest
donation was £25,000 on May 22 from First Corporate Shipping, according to
the register of MPs’ interests.
name of Bristol Port, which is co-owned by Tory donors Terence Mordaunt and
Sir David Ord. Mordaunt is a director of the Global Warming Policy Forum,
the advocacy arm of the climate sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Chernobyl 2.0? Cracks found in UK nuclear reactor could lead to evacuation of millions.
radioactive contamination and full evacuation of major Brit cities, experts
have said in a terrifying warning. Experts have warned that in the very
worst case the hot graphite core could become exposed to air and ignite
leading to radioactive contamination and evacuation of a large area of
Scotland’s central belt – including Glasgow and Edinburgh.
currently making a case for turning them back on, with help from trade
union GMB. Although the probability of a meltdown is still low, the
consequences could be incredibly severe.
Edinburgh would need to be entirely evacuated due to radioactive
contamination. According to Dr Ian Fairlie, an independent consultant on
radioactivity in the environment, and Dr David Toke, Reader in Energy
Policy at the University of Aberdeen, the two reactors definitely should
not be restarted. Speaking about the cracks in the barrels, they warned:
“This is a serious matter because if an untoward incident were to occur –
for example an earth tremor, gas excursion, steam surge, sudden outage, or
sudden depressurisation, the barrels could become dislodged and/or
misaligned.
Theresa May will ignore cost warnings and bring in net zero emissions goal
Business Green 7th June 2019 Theresa May will ignore cost warnings and bring in net zero emissions goal before her successor takes over in Downing Street, reports suggest. The Prime Minister will set in law a target for the UK to reach net zero
greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 before she leaves office, although she is
unlikely to bring forward any new policy or detailed action plan for
achieving the goal, according to reports.
As recommended by the Committee
on Climate Change (CCC) in its landmark report last month, Theresa May is
set to announce a net zero goal for 2050 and could do so as soon as next
week, in a move the government expects to garner broad parliamentary
support, reports The Independent.
Chernobyl disaster: how radiation affected the UK, and which parts of Britain are most radioactive today
Background radiation levels are much higher in some parts of the UK than in others,
The poisonous radiation that spewed into the atmosphere drifted over to Western Europe, causing a spike in radiation-related diseases and deaths in the years following the disaster.
How was the UK affected by Chernobyl?
In the immediate aftermath of the accident, the UK government banned the sale of sheep across thousands of farms on the basis that the animals had likely ingested radioactive material from fallout absorbed by plants.
In June of the same year, almost 9,000 British farms were affected by restrictions brought in on the movement and sale of sheep meat. This meant livestock had to be scanned by government officials before they were allowed to enter the food chain.
Parts of Cumbria, Scotland and Northern Ireland were impacted, and North Wales was hardest hit, with sheep in Wales still failing radioactive tests 10 years after the accident in 1996.
The last restrictions on the movement and sale of sheep in the UK were lifted in 2012, 26 years after the meltdown.
There have also been some studies linking increased incidences of infant leukaemia in Britain to the Chernobyl disaster but results are not conclusive.
Which parts of the UK are most radioactive?
Most of the background radiation present in the UK today comes from radon rather than fallout from Chernobyl.
Radon is an odourless, colourless gas formed by the radioactive decay of the small amounts of uranium that occur naturally in all rocks and soils.
Due to the variations in terrain across the UK, this means that some areas nationwide have far higher levels of background radiation than others……. https://inews.co.uk/news/science/chernobyl-disaster-radiation-uk-today-most-radioactive-areas-britain/
It is absurd to question whether we can afford to keep our planet liveable
Guardian Fiona Harvey 7 June 19, The chancellor has warned against cutting UK emissions to net zero. But failing to act will have dire consequences.
The chancellor, Philip Hammond, has written to the prime ministerto warn against adopting the strict targets on greenhouse gas emissions recommended by the government’s advisers.
His intervention, first reported by the Financial Times (£), raises the important question of whether or not it makes economic sense to save the planet.
If the question sounds absurd, that’s because it is. If we fail to move to a low-carbon economy, the consequences will be dire. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body of the world’s leading climate scientists convened by the UN, we must drastically reduce our emissions in the next decade to avoid a catastrophic situation in which droughts, floods, heatwaves and extreme weather across the globe devastate lives, destroy agriculture, lay waste to wildlife and force millions to flee.
Set against that, the costs – of £50bn a year in investment, according to the Committee on Climate Change(CCC), which set out the case last month for a target of net-zero emissions by 2050, or £70bn a year, according to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy – of maintaining our current lifestyles and orderly existences are trivial. The UK’s economy is worth roughly £2tn a year at present, so Hammond’s estimate of a £1tn cumulative cost by 2050 amounts to less than half of one year’s GDP in three decades.
Doug Parr, the chief scientist for Greenpeace UK, said: “The Treasury is putting their ideology before our wellbeing, and trying to shape the public debate for political ends. If you want to know whether a policy is good, include the benefits as well as the costs. In this case, the benefits include an economy fit for the 21st century, cleaner air, warmer homes, and maximising the chances of civilisation surviving. If reality doesn’t fit with the Treasury models, it’s the models that need to change.”…….
When we ask whether we can afford to tackle climate change, we are really asking – as the IPCC report and decades of climate science show us – whether we want humanity to survive in anything like our current structures. If our economic system stands in the way of doing so, perhaps it is the economics that are at fault. And economics, like politics, are just a human construct. The physics of the earth’s atmosphere are not. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/06/it-is-absurd-question-whether-we-can-afford-keep-our-planet-liveable
As Uk’s nuclear power plans fumble, time to boost renewable energy to ensure electricity supply
Report: Boost renewables for ‘no-regrets insurance’ against nuclear gap Business Green, Michael Holder 7 June 19, Boosting renewable power sources in the UK would provide “no-regrets insurance” against a looming gap in the UK’s nuclear capacity, playing a crucial role in reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in the process, a report today by a leading think tank has found.
The government’s plans for a fleet of new nuclear plants in the UK are facing major challenges after recent decisions by Hitachi and Toshiba to halt projects in North Wales and Cumbria respectively, creating a shortfall between official projections of future nuclear capacity and what the market appears set to deliver.
Meanwhile, the discovery of cracks in graphite bricks around the core of nuclear reactors – such as that which has led to Hunterston B power station in Ayrshire shutting down a reactor – has raised fears some of the UK’s existing nuclear plants could yet close earlier than planned.
The industry’s travails could potentially leave the UK with a looming nuclear capacity gap, which could have huge implications for both the electricity system and the UK’s long-term carbon targets, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU).
Assessing the potential impact of a future nuclear energy gap, the report argues that accelerating the rollout of renewables alongside energy storage and grid flexibility technologies to make up the shortfall in expected capacity during the late 2020s and early 2030s would prove a “no-regrets” solution……
Reports suggests the government may legislate for a 2050 net zero emissions target in the coming week, and if so the government will have to increase its ambitions for renewables in the coming years, said ECIU director Richard Black.
“It would economically pragmatic to accelerate decarbonisation in the near-term by building up capacity in low-cost renewables and flexibility mechanisms,” he explained. “If it turns out they’re not needed, all ministers will have done is to accelerate decarbonisation which they say they need to do anyway; so this really is a no-regrets pathway. But it’s one where decisions are needed soon.” https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3076976/report-boost-renewables-for-no-regrets-insurance-against-nuclear-gap
UK Labour party has accused the government of “actively dismantling” the UK’s solar power industry
the UK’s solar power industry after new installations by households
collapsed by 94% last month. Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business
secretary, used prime minister’s questions to challenge the
government’s record on climate action after scrapping subsidies for
domestic solar panels from April. Standing in for Jeremy Corbyn,
Long-Bailey said solar power had the potential to cut household bills and
carbon emissions while creating thousands of jobs. “But the government,
for some reason, appears to be determined to kill it off, while continuing
to cheerlead for fracking,” she said. (NB – story by Jillian Ambrose
who has moved from the Telegraph to replace Adam Vaughan at the Guardian).https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/05/home-solar-panel-installations-fall-by-94-as-subsidies-cut
In UK civilian nuclear power’s real purpose is to subsidise nuclear weapons, nuclear submarines
 Nuclear: Energy bills ‘used to subsidise submarines’ BBC,
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Concern in Suffolk, UK, over the environmental threat of Sizewell nuclear project
in part of east Suffolk – and the lack of coordinated policy to deal with
the concentration of development. Campaigners fear the massive schemes,
which could be built in 25 square miles of rural landscape, could cause
serious harm to an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – and devastate the
area’s tourism industry.
been set up to fight the Government over the issue and secure a national
plan for where vital infrastructure will be located. Graeme Murray,
chairman of the Anglian Energy Planning Alliance, said the group was not
against the generation and provision of electricity to secure the country’s
future power needs, but wanted “proper planning” to ensure local
communities were treated fairly and precious landscape and habitat was
protected.
hub” is bounded by Friston, Theberton, Thorpeness and Sizewell – small
communities which will see new power stations, wind farm substations, and
national grid interconnector sites to bring power from abroad.
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/east-suffolk-energy-hub-anglian-planning-alliance-fears-1-6084835
UK Labour’s plan for a :Green Jobs” tour
bid to ignite national support for its ‘Green Industrial Revolution’
agenda. Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey visited Morecambe in
Lancashire on Saturday to discuss the area’s potential for “green jobs” in
sectors such as offshore wind, tidal power and community-owned renewable
energy.
and ideas of people throughout society”. “That’s why we’re talking to
unions, businesses and communities across the country to prepare detailed
and ambitious plans to deliver a Green Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Alongside the tour, Labour is hosting an online call for evidence, asking
for input from trade unions, businesses, public sector bodies, party
members, civil society groups and members of the public on its plans to
develop the green jobs market around the UK. The consultation is open until
the end of 2019.https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3076624/labour-launches-green-jobs-tour
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
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
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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