Revelations of UK government’s deceit over true state of its nuclear energy programme
“The government has been colluding with the nuclear industry to try to media manage the collapse of their hopes,”
“In reality the cost of new nuclear power has doubled in recent years and continues to rise. Instead of trying to pull the wool over the public’s eyes, the government should accept their nuclear dream is over and back renewable energy.”
Emails reveal UK government’s moves to protect nuclear power from bad news
Government officials worked closely with E.ON and RWE to soften the impact of a major blow to plans for a new nuclear programme Rob Edwards guardian.co.uk, 19 July 2012 Government officials worked closely with two energy companies to soften the impact of a major blow to ministers’ plans for a new programme of nuclear power stations, internal emails reveal.
The revelation is further evidence of how Westminster has collaborated with the industry to try and protect nuclear power from bad news, first exposed by the Guardian in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident in Japan last year. Continue reading
Dispute over UK plan for underground nuclear waste bunker
Kent and Shepway councils in Romney Marsh nuclear waste row, BBC News 19 July 12 The facility would have nuclear waste underground with research facilities at ground level Two council leaders have clashed over a report opposing plans for a nuclear waste facility on the Romney Marsh. The report, co-authored by Kent County Council leader Paul Carter, has been criticised by Shepway council leader Robert Bliss as emotive and inaccurate.
Mr Carter said he believed the report, which said the facility would blight the area, was factually correct but Mr Bliss said it was a knee-jerk reaction.
Earlier, Kent County Council voted to “totally oppose” the facility. The area is already the site of Dungeness nuclear power station, where Dungeness A is being commissioned and Dungeness B is due to stop generating power in 2018 or 2023…….
Public consultation On Thursday, Kent County Council voted to oppose the establishment ofa nuclear research and development facility in the county. It also agreed that if Shepway council decided to progress the proposal further, Kent council should review whether or not to hold acounty-wide referendum…
The facility would place nuclear waste in secure containers underground in vaults and tunnels, and at ground level, buildings would house research, office, transport and other facilities. The Shepway consultation is asking people whether it should find out more information about a possible facility on the Marsh. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-18917732
Britain also involved in murders of Iran’s nuclear scientists
Murdoch’s media is currently banking on the false intelligence provided by MI6 that “Iran is two years from having a nuclear bomb” in order to convince the world public opinion about launching a new war with Iran.
Britain MI6 behind assassination of Iran nuclear scientists: Analyst
http://presstv.com/detail/2012/07/15/251070/mi6-behind-nuclear-assassinations-in-iran/
An American military analyst says Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, MI6 has facilitated assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists in cahoots with the Western media machine. Continue reading
UK to sell out of nuclear power company URENCO
Nuclear sale set to net billions for UK The Government is holding a “beauty parade” for bankers to advise it over a potential sale of the UK’s multi billion-pound stake in nuclear power giant Urenco. Telegraph UK, By Emma Rowley, Rowena Mason, and Helia Ebrahimi 15 Jul 2012 Continue reading
After one MOX nuclear reprocessing disaster, Britain plans another one!
Pete Wilkinson, an independent environmental consultant, said it “beggared belief” that ministers were going down this path after losing an estimated £600m from operating an original MOX plant.
“It would be interesting to see the commercial arrangements which justify turning Britain into a nuclear waste dump for plutonium that no-one else wants.”
UK nuclear authority takes ownership of German plutonium UK risks becoming a ‘nuclear laundry’ looking after unwanted waste from other countries, warns industry expert Terry Macalister guardian.co.uk, 13 July 2012 Britain risks being turned into a “nuclear laundry” by taking ownership of German plutonium in return for cash, the government was warned on Friday.
The move came along with confirmation that ministers were moving towards a controversial decision to build a new mixed oxide fuel (MOX) plant despite having just agreed to close an existing one which lost millions of pounds.
Britain has the largest stockpile of plutonium in the world but has taken permanent control of a further 4 tonnes under a deal with German nuclear power companies.. Continue reading
UK’s secretive discussions on the unknown cost of new nuclear power
“Discussions are happening in smoke-filled rooms, over champagne and croissants, to establish a price that we will all pay,” said Ian Marchant, chief executive officer of the U.K.’s second-largest energy supplier SSE Plc (SSE), which dropped plans to develop reactors in
September. “There is no transparency as to what that price will be.”
“What you have is a whole bunch of people saying they know what a new reactor will cost and they don’t,”
U.K. Seen Doubling Power Price to Guarantee New Reactor Bloomberg News, By Kari Lundgren on July 13, 2012. “……The future of the U.K.’s nuclear industry will be decided on one number: the price the government’s willing to guarantee Electricite de France SA will get
for generating atomic power. Continue reading
Britain’s disastrous record in technology to manage nuclear waste
Minister admits total failure of Sellafield ‘MOX’ plant http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/minister-admits-total-failure-of-sellafield-mox-plant-793489.html BY GEOFFREY LEAN It was a deeply embarrassing moment for the Government, though it passed almost without notice.
Late last month, the Energy Minister, Malcolm Wicks, had to admit to one of the most comprehensive and catastrophic failures in British industrial history – and one that has led directly to the plans to ship weapons-ready plutonium to France.
Answering a question from Dai Davies, the independent MP for Blaenau Gwent, Mr Wicks confessed that a new plant at Sellafield, built amid great controversy at a cost of £473m, had comprehensively failed to work. Continue reading
Britain looks at dubious technical “fixes” for its radioactive pile at Sellafield
It is the task of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to clean all this up. The plans are to pay the French company Areva, who have proved their technology works, to build a new mixed oxide fuel (MOX) plant.
The other option is to let the US-Japanese GE-Hitachi build a new fast PRISM reactor on the site to burn the plutonium and produce electricity. This is a more elegant engineering option but the reactor is totally unproven and is decades away from completion.
Sellafield: The dangers of Britain’s nuclear dustbin RT, 10 July, 2012“…….Cold war legacy Behind the razor wire, security guards and public relations campaigns,
Sellafield is home to some of the most radioactive buildings in Europe.
The UK has the largest stockpile of Plutonium anywhere in the world and it’s all stored at Sellafield. Plutonium is used for the manufacture of nuclear weapons and is extremely radioactive with a half-life of 25,000 years. Continue reading
Btitain’s dilemma of its massive stockpile of plutonium at Sellafield
Sellafield is where all storage of radioactive materials and nuclear reprocessing in the UK takes place. It was once at the heart of plutonium manufacturing for the British atomic weapons program. Despite the controversy that surrounds the plant, there are plans to build new reactors at Sellafield. The government has approved initial plans to build a fast PRISM reactor on the site. Most locals are against it. They want the UK government to commission a safety study into Sellafield’s effects on the health of the local population.
A study in the 1980’s found that over ten times the national average of childhood Leukaemia’s occurred near Sellafield. Thirty families tried to take the company who then ran the site to court and lost. “There has never been a proper investigation into the environmental impact of the plant and there should be.”
Sellafield: The dangers of Britain’s nuclear dustbin RT, 10 July, 2012 Britain’s nuclear industry is again the center of controversy. The UK has the biggest stockpile of Plutonium in the world, but there are no definite plans for how to get rid of it – and the delays are costing the UK taxpayer billions.
A record number of radioactive particles have been found on beaches near the Sellafield nuclear plant, in North West England. The authorities who run it admit it’s the most radioactive place in Western Europe but insist it’s safe. Continue reading
“Community owned nuclear power stations” suggested to solve problem of public distrust
Perhaps the government simply accepts no-one will ever trust it on nuclear power.
How not to solve nuclear power’s trust problem http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/jul/09/nuclear-power-energy-secrecy?newsfeed=true Continued secrecy, shown in stupidly brief minutes of official meetings, and entrenched attitudes lead to daft ideas like community-owned reactors The public does not trust the government to be objective on nuclear power, a committee of MPs conclude today .
This is hardly surprising, as the MPs note: “The government’s position as an advocate for nuclear power makes it difficult for the public to trust it as an impartial source of information . Continue reading
266 fires on UK’s nuclear submarines
“Any one of these fires could have had catastrophic consequences and the frequency 
of these incidents raises the most serious safety concerns.”
Nuclear submarine fire figures revealed BBC News 9 July 12, There have been 266 fires on nuclear submarines in the past 25 years, the Ministry of Defence has revealed. The incidents included 74 on ballistic missile submarines. Three happened while the vessels were in naval bases; one of these was on a ballistic missile submarine. Continue reading
AREVA and others scramble to sell nuclear technology to Britain
Areva confirms joint bid with China’s CGNPC for UK’s Horizon AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France, July 7 | Sat Jul 7, 2012 (Reuters) – French nuclear group Areva will make a joint bid with China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corporation Holding (CGNPC) for the UK’s 6-gigawatt Horizon project, its chief executive Luc Oursel said on Saturday.
“We will participate in the British government’s plan to make this project a reality, and we will probably do it with Chinese power companies and other players,” Oursel said on the sidelines of a conference in Aix-en-Provence, southern France. “Probably by the end of the year, the sellers will make public their choice for the team that will take over the project,” Oursel told
reporters.
Reuters reported on June 18 that Westinghouse teamed up with SNPTC to make a bid, while Areva picked China Guangdong to put forward a bid…. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/07/areva-horizon-idUSL6E8I72CS20120707
Opposition in UK Labour Party to Trident nuclear submarine programme
Labour AM Mark Drakeford opposes Trident fleet in Wales BBC News Wales, 4 July 12, First Minister Carwyn Jones has been rebuked by a Labour backbencher after suggesting the UK’s nuclear submarine fleet would be welcome in Wales.
Cardiff West AM Mark Drakeford said he was “utterly opposed” to the siting of nuclear missiles in Wales.
It comes after Mr Jones raised the prospect of the Trident weapons system leaving its Scottish base and coming to Milford Haven….
.. Mark Drakeford was proud to align himself with the thousands of people “within my own party and beyond” who called for an immediate decommissioning of the Trident nuclear programme…. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-18707465
“Fast nuclear reactors” not the solution to plutonium wastes
Ultimately, however, the core problem may be that such new reactors don’t eliminate the 
nuclear waste that has piled up so much as transmute it. Even with a fleet of such fast reactors, nations would nonetheless require an ultimate home for radioactive waste, one reason that a 2010 M.I.T. report on spent nuclear fuel dismissed such fast reactors.
Can Fast Reactors Speedily Solve Plutonium Problems? The U.K. is grappling with how to get rid of weapons-grade plutonium and may employ a novel reactor design to consume it Scientific American By David Biello | March 21, 2012 The U.K. has nearly 100 metric tons of plutonium—dubbed “the element from hell” by some—that it doesn’t know what to do with. The island nation does not need the potent powder to construct more nuclear weapons, and spends billions of British pounds to ensure that others don’t steal it for that purpose. The unstable element, which will remain radioactive for millennia, is the residue of ill-fated efforts to recycle used nuclear fuel.
One solution under consideration is to recycle the plutonium yet further—by using it as fuel in a pair of new, so-called “fast” reactors. Such nuclear reactors can actually “consume” plutonium via fission (transforming it into other forms of nuclear waste that are not as useful for weapons). The U.K. is considering a plan to build two of General Electric’s PRISM fast reactors, the latest in a series of fast-reactor designs that for several decades have attempted with mixed success to handle plutonium and other radioactive waste from nuclear power. The idea remains that fast reactors, which get their name because the neutrons that initiate fission in the reactor are zipping about faster than those in a conventional reactor, could offer a speedy solution to cleaning some nasty nuclear waste, which fissions better with fast neutrons, while also providing electricity as a by-product.
The U.K. is hardly alone in struggling to cope with nuclear waste, whether plutonium or otherwise. Continue reading
Growing interest in UK for farming the wind and the sunlight
UK: Concern about energy security ‘sparks rise in interest in developing renewable schemes’ EADT 24, UK , June 24, 2012 Growing concern about climate change and energy security has sparked the country-wide development of renewable energy facilities and commercial interest from landowners and developers, says surveyors’ organisation RICS. Continue reading
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PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
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