Times 5th July 2020, A high-stakes game of chance is being played at Hunterston B nuclear power
station on the west coast of Scotland. Engineers from the French giant EDF and safety experts from the Office for Nuclear Regulation are trying to work out if and when the plant’s two reactors can be restarted.
Forty-four years of hard use have not been kind to the plant’s graphite core — a vast chunk of carbon riddled with cracks that weighs the same as 110 double-decker buses. While the regulator and EDF insist that, with careful supervision, a cracked graphite core is nothing to worry about, it
is a symptom of its advancing years.
Hunterston, like the rest of EDF’s nuclear power stations around the UK, is on borrowed time. Seven nuclear stations capable of supplying about a sixth of the UK’s power needs will shut during the next decade. Unless ministers leap into action, the country that opened the first industrial-scale nuclear power station in 1956 at Calder Hall, Cumbria, will be left with just one replacement plant, Hinkley Point C on the Somerset coast, which is under construction.
The government faces difficult decisions: what next in its race to eliminate carbon emissions by 2050? A boom in renewable power has offered the beguiling prospect that wind and solar, combined with storage such as big batteries and hydrogen, could fill the void. A report from the National Infrastructure Commission has suggested that commercially unproven technologies, such as hydrogen generation, could negate the need for more nuclear power and be “substantially cheaper”.
With half an eye on this utopian future, successive governments have tried to persuade European
power giants such as Germany’s RWE and Eon, and Japan’s Toshiba and Hitachi, to pump cash into new reactors. However, one by one, those companies have dropped out, leaving just a handful of options remaining.
EDF and China General Nuclear (CGN) — both backed by their governments — are building the £22bn Hinkley plant. Without a state support package, EDF will struggle to build the planned Sizewell C in Suffolk. That would leave CGN as the only developer capable of going it alone without UK taxpayer support. ……
Jane Goodall on conservation, climate change and COVID-19: “If we carry on with business as usual, we’re going to destroy ourselves” BY JEFF BERARDELLI JULY 2, 2020 CBS NEWS While COVID-19 and protests for racial justice command the world’s collective attention, ecological destruction, species extinction and climate change continue unabated. While the world’s been focused on other crises, an alarming study was released warning that species extinction is now progressing so fast that the consequences of “biological annihilation” may soon be “unimaginable.”Dr. Jane Goodall, the world-renowned conservationist, desperately wants the world to pay attention to what she sees as the greatest threat to humanity’s existence.
CBS News recently spoke to Goodall over a video conference call and asked her questions about the state of our planet. Her soft-spoken grace somehow helped cushion what was otherwise extremely sobering news: “I just know that if we carry on with business as usual, we’re going to destroy ourselves. It would be the end of us, as well as life on Earth as we know it,” warned Goodall.
What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.
Jeff Berardelli:Destruction of nature is causing some really big concerns around the world. One that comes to the forefront right now is emergent diseases like COVID-19. Can you describe how destruction of the environment contributes to this?
Dr. Jane Goodall: Well, the thing is, we brought this on ourselves because the scientists that have been studying these so-called zoonotic diseases that jump from an animal to a human have been predicting something like this for so long. As we chop down at stake tropical rainforest, with its rich biodiversity, we are eating away the habitats of millions of animals, and many of them are being pushed into greater contact with humans. We’re driving deeper and deeper, making roads throughout the habitat, which again brings people and animals in contact with each other. People are hunting the animals and selling the meat, or trafficking the infants, and all of this is creating environments which are perfect for a virus or a bacteria to cross that species barrier and sometimes, like COVID-19, it becomes very contagious and we’re suffering from it.
But we know if we don’t stop destroying the environment and disrespecting animals — we’re hunting them, killing them, eating them; killing and eating chimpanzees in Central Africa led to HIV/AIDS — there will be another one. It’s inevitable.
Do you fear that the next [pandemic] will be a lot worse than this one?
Well, we’ve been lucky with this one because, although it’s incredibly infectious, the percentage of people who die is relatively low. Mostly they recover and hopefully then build up some immunity. But supposing the next one is just as contagious and has a percentage of deaths like Ebola, for example, this would have an even more devastating effect on humanity than this one.
I think people have a hard time connecting these, what may look like chance events, with our interactions and relationship with nature. Can you describe to people why the way that we treat the natural world is so important?
Well, first of all, it’s not just leading to zoonotic diseases, and there are many of them. The destruction of the environment is also contributing to the climate crisis, which tends to be put in second place because of our panic about the pandemic. We will get through the pandemic like we got through World War II, World War I, and the horrors following the World Trade towers being destroyed. But climate change is a very real existential threat to humankind and we don’t have that long to slow it down.
Intensive farming, where we’re destroying the land slowly with the chemical poisons, and the monocultures — which can be wiped out by a disease because there is no variation of crops being grown — is leading to habitat destruction. It’s leading to the creation of more CO2 through fossil fuels, methane gas and other greenhouse gas [released] by digestion from the billions of domestic animals.
It’s pretty grim. We need to realize we’re part of the environment, that we need the natural world. We depend on it. We can’t go on destroying. We’ve got to somehow understand that we’re not separated from it, we are all intertwined. Harm nature, harm ourselves.
If we continue on with business as usual, what do you fear the outcome will be?
Well,if we continue with business as usual, we’re going to come to the point of no return. At a certain point the ecosystems of the world will just give up and collapse and that’s the end of us eventually too.
What about our children? We’re still bringing children into the world — what a grim future is theirs to look forward to. It’s pretty shocking but my hope is, during this pandemic, with people trapped inside, factories closed down temporarily, and people not driving, it has cleared up the atmosphere amazingly. The people in the big cities can look up at the night sky and sea stars are bright, not looking through a layer of pollution. So when people emerge [from the pandemic] they’re not going to want to go back to the old polluted days.
Now, in some countries there’s not much they can do about it. But if enough of them, a groundswell becomes bigger and bigger and bigger [and] people say: “No I don’t want to go down this road. We want to find a different, green economy. We don’t want to always put economic development ahead of protecting the environment. We care about the future. We care about the health of the planet. We need nature,” maybe in the end the big guys will have to listen……….https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jane-goodall-climate-change-coronavirus-environment-interview/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&linkId=92720503
What Facebook and the Oil Industry Have in Common,Bill McKibben, New Yorker, 2 July 20,
Why is it so hard to get Facebook to do anything about the hate and deception that fill its pages, even when it’s clear that they are helping to destroy democracy? And why, of all things, did the company recently decide to exempt a climate-denial post from its fact-checking process? The answer is clear: Facebook’s core business is to get as many people as possible to spend as many hours as possible on its site, so that it can sell those people’s attention to advertisers. (A Facebook spokesperson said the company’s policy stipulates that “clear opinion content is not subject to fact-checking on Facebook.”) This notion of core business explains a lot—including why it’s so hard to make rapid gains in the fight against climate change.
For decades, people have asked me why the oil companies don’t just become solar companies. They don’t for the same reason that Facebook doesn’t behave decently: an oil company’s core business is digging stuff up and burning it, just as Facebook’s is to keep people glued to their screens. Digging and burning is all that oil companies know how to do—and why the industry has spent the past thirty years building a disinformation machine to stall action on climate change. It’s why—with the evidence of climate destruction growing by the day—the best that any of them can offer are vague pronouncements about getting to “net zero by 2050”—which is another way of saying, “We’re not going to change much of anything anytime soon.” (The American giants, like ExxonMobil, won’t even do that.)
Total, the French oil company, has made the 2050 pledge, but it is projected to increase fossil-fuel production by twelve percent between 2018 and 2030. These are precisely the years when we must cut emissions in half, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to have any chance of meeting the vital targets set by the Paris climate agreement, which aim to hold the planet’s temperature increase as close as possible to one and a half degrees Celsius. The next six monthswill be crucial as nations prepare coronavirus recovery plans. Because effective climate planning at this moment will require keeping most oil, coal, and gas reserves in the ground, the industry will resist fiercely.
So we need power brought to bear from companies whose core business is not directly challenged by climate activism. Consider the example of Facebook again: after organizing by people like Judd Legum and StopHateForProfit.org, companies including Unilever and Coca-Cola agreed to temporarily stop advertising on the social platform. Coke’s core business is selling you fizzy sugar water that can help make you diabetic—when that’s threatened, the company fights back. But when it feared being attacked for helping Facebook’s core business, it simply stopped advertising with the company, which wasn’t essential for Coke’s business.
That’s why it is critical to get third parties to pressure the oil industry. This past month, the growing fossil-fuel divestment campaign got a huge boost when the Vatican, whose core business is saving souls, called for divestment, and the Queen of England, whose core business is unclear but involves hats, divested millions from the industry.
Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, announced that he was suingExxonMobil, as well as the American Petroleum Institute and Koch Industries, for perpetrating a fraud by spreading climate denial for decades. (Ellison’s core business is justice, and his office is pursuing this climate action at the same time that it is prosecuting the killers of George Floyd.) All this, in turn, puts pressure on the financial industry to stop handing over cash to oil companies.
As I pointed out in a piece last summer, JPMorgan Chase may be the biggest fossil-fuel lender on earth, but that’s still only about seven per cent of its business—big, but not core.
NMIMS-FPJ webinar: Nuclear energy not for countries looking at economic development, https://www.freepressjournal.in/fpj-initiatives/nmims-fpj-webinar-nuclear-energy-not-for-countries-looking-at-economic-developmentBy FPJ Web Desk 1 July 20, If India is looking at development by increasing power consumption, it is essential that it opts for cheaper forms of energy, stated nuclear expert M V Ramana, at a webinar ‘The future of nuclear energy’. He stressed that in such a case nuclear is not the right choice. Ramana is Director of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia.
Speaking at the third session of a series ‘The future of energy’ organised by NMIMS-FPJ in association with Tata Power, Ramana said, “If you were looking at (economic) development by providing power to hundreds of villages that do not have power, then nuclear energy is a very bad choice. For development, you need cheap energy but you have (nuclear energy which is) an expensive form of energy.”
He revealed today it costs somewhere between USD 10-15 billion to build a nuclear power plant. However, the power produced by this plant is at the cost of USD 100 per MW hour. This is three times higher the cost of solar and wind energy, he added. “Solar and wind energy today are selling at USD 30-35 per megawatt hour (MWh).” After including storage costs and other costs, solar and wind energy continues to be cheaper and will cost over USD 50 per MWh.
Basically, what nuclear energy does is boil water and use the steam to drive turbines. But it is a very expensive way to boil water. And the risks involved are considerable too. And since solar and wind energy has become cheaper than nuclear energy, they have also overtaken nuclear in terms of power generation.
“Compared to nuclear energy, solar and wind energy have contributed much more in the last few years.” Solar overtook nuclear energy last year in terms of the electricity contributed to the grid. Meanwhile, wind energy overtook nuclear energy in 2012. Ramana highlighted that even though nuclear energy has been there since the 1940s, the newer technologies in solar and wind grew faster than technology in nuclear.
The contribution of nuclear energy globally is 10 per cent compared to other forms of energy. However, it was 17.5 per cent in 1996 but has declined since then as other forms of energy grew faster than nuclear energy. Meanwhile, in India, the electricity generated by nuclear power has consistently stayed between 2-4 per cent for the last 20-25 years. “As per the last figures, nuclear power contributed about 3.2 per cent of India’s power needs.”
He went on to add while nuclear plants are complicated, the fast breeder reactor is a lot more complex. Countries like the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, others had fast breeder reactors programmes, which they gave up. “For historical and sociological reasons, India has said it is a very important part of our programme and pours in a lot of resources into that. Even if you are supporting nuclear energy, this is not the technology that you should be focussing on,” he advised. https://www.freepressjournal.in/fpj-initiatives/nmims-fpj-webinar-nuclear-energy-not-for-countries-looking-at-economic-development
Nuclear site cyber attack possible: Iran, Canberra Times, 4 July 20, Iran will retaliate against any country that carries out cyber attacks on its nuclear sites, the head of civilian defence says, after a fire at its Natanz plant which some Iranian officials say may have been caused by cyber sabotage.
The underground Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) is one of several Iranian facilities monitored by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog.
Iran’s top security body said on Friday that the cause of the “incident” at the nuclear site had been determined but “due to security considerations” it would be announced at a convenient time……
Three Iranian officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said they believed the fire was the result of a cyber attack, but did not cite any evidence.
One of the officials said the attack had targeted the centrifuge assembly building, referring to the delicate cylindrical machines that enrich uranium, and said Iran’s enemies had carried out similar acts in the past.
Two of the officials said Israel could have been behind the Natanz incident but offered no evidence.
Asked on Thursday evening about recent incidents reported at strategic Iranian sites, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters: “Clearly we can’t get into that.”
In 2010, the Stuxnet computer virus, which is widely believed to have been developed by the United States and Israel, was discovered after it was used to attack the Natanz facility. to have been developed by the United States and Israel, was discovered after it was used to attack the Natanz facility.
Low Levels of Radioisotopes Detected in Europe Likely Linked to a Nuclear Reactor – IAEA, 27/2020 The recent detection of slightly elevated levels of radioisotopes in northern Europe is likely related to a nuclear reactor that is either operating or undergoing maintenance, when very low radioactive releases can occur, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said today. The geographical origin of the release has not yet been determined.
Basing its technical assessment on data reported by its Member States, the IAEA reiterated that the observed air concentrations of the particles were very low and posed no risk to human health and the environment.
Estonia, Finland and Sweden last week measured levels of Ruthenium and Caesium isotopes which were higher than usual. They also reported the detection of some other artificial radionuclides. The three countries said there had been no events on their territories that could explain the presence of the radionuclides, as did more than 40 other countries that voluntarily provided information to the IAEA.
Seeking to help identify their possible origin, the IAEA on Saturday contacted its counterparts in the European region and requested information on whether the particles were detected in their countries, and if any event there may have been associated with the atmospheric release.
By Thursday afternoon, 37 Member States in the European region (Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Republic of Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Republic of Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and United Kingdom) had voluntarily reported to the IAEA that there were no events on their territories that explained the release. They also provided information about their own measurements and results……
Based on the IAEA’s technical analysis of the mix of artificial radionuclides that were reported to it, the release was likely related to a nuclear reactor, either in operation or in maintenance. The IAEA ruled out that the release was related to the improper handling of a radioactive source. It was also unlikely to be linked to a nuclear fuel processing plant, a spent fuel pool or to the use of radiation in industry or medicine.
Iran nuclear: ‘Incident’ at Natanz uranium enrichment facility, BBC, 2 July 2020
A fire has reportedly damaged a building at a nuclear facility in Iran.
Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) spokesman Behruz Kamalvandi said there was an incident in “one of the industrial sheds under construction” at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant.
There were no fatalities or concerns about contamination, he added.
Meanwhile, in a statement sent to BBC Persian journalists before the AEOI’s announcement, an unknown group calling itself “Cheetahs of the Homeland” claimed it had attacked the building. The group said its members were part of “underground opposition with Iran’s security apparatus”.
The claim could not immediately be verified by the BBC.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which monitors Iran’s compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal struck with world powers, said it was aware of the reports from Natanz and currently anticipated no impact on its verification activities.
The incident comes six days after an explosion near the Parchin military complex.
Project Force: Could the world survive a nuclear winter?
The consequences of a nuclear war would extend far beyond the blast itself, killing millions of people across the globe. Aljazeera, by Alex Gatopoulos, 2 Jul 2020 Firestorms triggered by burning cities create a huge plume of smoke, soot and ash. The plume rises above the clouds, into the upper atmosphere of the planet, where it will stay, encircling the globe, shielding the Earth from the Sun’s light, cooling the planet.
This is the scenario we could expect following a nuclear clash between nations.
The term nuclear winter was coined in the 1980s as scientists began to realise that the horrors of a nuclear war would not be confined to explosive blasts and radiation.
As climate prediction models become more powerful and sophisticated, scientists have been able to examine more closely what would happen in a nuclear conflict between two antagonists. In the past, most scenarios focused on potentially apocalyptic conflicts between Russia and the United States.
But new models now predict that even a very limited nuclear war would have drastic knock-on effects for global agriculture and dire consequences for life on Earth.
As climate prediction models become more powerful and sophisticated, scientists have been able to examine more closely what would happen in a nuclear conflict between two antagonists. In the past, most scenarios focused on potentially apocalyptic conflicts between Russia and the United States.
But new models now predict that even a very limited nuclear war would have drastic knock-on effects for global agriculture and dire consequences for life on Earth.
First, a blinding flash of light and radiation in the form of heat from the initial explosion would produce temperatures as high as that of the Sun. Wood, plastics, fabrics and flammable liquids would all ignite.
This would almost immediately be followed by the blast wave, moving at several times the speed of sound. A wall of compressed superhot air, the wave would gather up rubble and anything moveable, levelling all buildings within the blast zone and killing everyone in its path for several kilometres.
Within 20 to 30 minutes, a shroud of highly radioactive ash would begin to fall, blanketing both the blast site and the surrounding area, tens of kilometres downwind, and very quickly killing anyone caught outdoors who had somehow managed to survive the initial explosion.
For people outside the blast zone, the situation would also be grim. All electronic equipment would cease to function as the electromagnetic pulse fried every electronic circuit. No phones, internet, computers or cars would work.
Hospitals would be quickly overwhelmed, with the vast majority of the population needing some kind of medical care. Food would disappear as logistical supply trains stopped working. What little there was would be contaminated by the radioactive fallout, along with any water.
In the case of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan, for example, it is estimated that between 50 million and 125 million people would die.
What comes afterwards?
Those would be the initial, local effects of a nuclear conflict on a population. But the ensuing nuclear winter would take it to a whole new level.
The vast plumes of dark soot entering the upper atmosphere would spread not just regionally but right around the planet within months. The resulting darkening of the sky would severely affect harvests, even in areas nowhere near the conflict zone.
In one recent simulation, global harvests plummeted between 20 percent and 40 percent for at least a decade. Temperatures dropped dramatically as the climate shifted, triggering widespread drought, a worldwide famine and the death of tens of millions more people.
If these scenarios seem far-fetched, consider that the 1815 volcanic eruption of Tambora in Indonesia ruined harvests as far away as the US with 1816 known as the “Year Without Summer” as temperatures dropped sharply around the planet and the resultant failed harvests triggered severe famine across Europe.
The Tambora eruption lowered the global temperature by 0.7 degrees Celsius. The estimated temperature drop from a “limited” nuclear exchange is reckoned to be anywhere between 2 and 5 degrees Celsius.
The Pakistan vs India scenario
The latest studies show that there does not need to be a large-scale nuclear war to have this effect: A possible nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan is the scenario most of these studies have used as their prime example………
If these scenarios seem far-fetched, consider that the 1815 volcanic eruption of Tambora in Indonesia ruined harvests as far away as the US with 1816 known as the “Year Without Summer” as temperatures dropped sharply around the planet and the resultant failed harvests triggered severe famine across Europe.
The Tambora eruption lowered the global temperature by 0.7 degrees Celsius. The estimated temperature drop from a “limited” nuclear exchange is reckoned to be anywhere between 2 and 5 degrees Celsius.
…….. the greatest damage to the environment would be from the vast amount of superheated ash and soot that would rise from these destroyed cities, swept up by a nuclear firestorm into the upper atmosphere.
Darkness and starvation
The impact of even such a “limited” nuclear conflict would be devastating for the Earth as a whole. With global dimming, harvests would fail across the planet…….
In 2016, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated that 815 million people were food-insecure. They would all be put at far greater risk as food supplies rapidly dwindled in the aftermath of such a conflict.
Another major, cascading effect of even a partial nuclear winter would be the depletion of the ozone layer, allowing crops to be further damaged by unfiltered hard ultraviolet solar radiation.
Ozone would be destroyed by the heating of the upper atmosphere as the darker soot-laden layer of air absorbed more solar energy. The effect would last for more than five years, with 20 percent of the ozone lost across the planet and, in some places, as much as 70 percent, leading to significant destruction of plant, marine and animal life on Earth, and resulting in skin cancers, DNA mutation and eye damage in humans and animals alike.
Nuclear waste regulations put Canadians at risk https://www.trailtimes.ca/opinion/cannings-nuclear-waste-regulations-put-canadians-at-risk/Richard Cannings is in his second term as MP for the South Okanagan-West Kootenay riding, Jul. 2, 2020 The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) should not approve a suite of regulatory documents on radioactive waste at its meeting June 18, 2020 and instead live up to the Liberal government’s commitment to openness and transparency for regulatory development.
Some of these regulations developed by commission staff are at best vague guidelines that leave nuclear waste policy decisions in the hands of private industry, instead of actually prescribing actions that are in the public interest.
These regulatory changes would pave the way for several controversial nuclear waste disposal projects, including a giant mound at Chalk River, Ontario, two entombments of shut-down reactors, and a proposed deep geological repository for the burial of high-level nuclear fuel waste.
This proposal does not meet Canada’s commitment to meeting or surpassing international standards for the handling of nuclear waste.
For example, the entombment of nuclear reactors is designated as “in-situ decommissioning”, a practice that the International Atomic Energy Agency says should only be used as a last option for facilities damaged in accidents.
Of further concern is the lack of clarity in the proposed regulations.
In many cases the licensee is directed to develop safety requirements with no explicit directions as to what those safety requirements are.
The giant mound at Chalk River is meant to contain up to 1 million cubic metres of low- to intermediate-activity nuclear waste but these activity levels are not defined and the private owner of the facility would get to decide what materials are stored in that mound of nuclear waste.
The Minister of Natural Resources has committed to consulting Canadians on a policy framework and strategy for radioactive waste. Instead we have this backdoor process with limited public input and no parliamentary oversight.
The minister should be conducting a public process to develop a Canadian framework for radioactive waste management that meets or exceeds international best practices, a framework that does not allow the nuclear industry to police itself.
Richard Cannings is NDP Natural Resources Critic and MP for South Okanagan-West Kootenay
Environment ministry: If Estonia gets nuclear power plant, not before 2035, ERR News, 3 July 20, Estonia’s first nuclear power plant would not start operating before 2035, according to a memorandum from the Ministry of the Environment (Keskkonnaministeerium), which the government will discuss later this summer.
The memorandum “Possibilities for the Deployment of Nuclear Energy in Estonia” (“Tuumaenergia kasutuselevõtmise võimalused Eestis”) describes a process of at which would take at least 15 years which would follow the government agreeing to a nuclear power plant. Estonia is starting this process almost from scratch.
The first proposal of the memorandum signed by Minister of the Environment Rene Koka calls for the establishment of an inter-ministerial working group on nuclear energy in order to form publicly agreed positions on the possibility of introducing nuclear energy in Estonia.
…….. The memorandum states it is important to determine society’s support for nuclear energy as soon as possible and to avoid problems caused by poor communication. Holding a referendum on this issue should also be discussed….
The memorandum lists the main risks and describes possibilities to mitigate them. These include problems with the introduction of new technology, the possibility of an emergency, concerns about the production and supply of nuclear fuel, financial and nuclear liability, radioactive waste management, lack of know-how and specialists, public involvement and communication.
……Finally, there are political risks.
If a referendum is held on the construction of a nuclear power plant and if the public vote against it, the ability to initiative nuclear energy projects in Estonia will be ruled out for a very long time, and Estonia’s energy policy may change with the change of government,
Largs & Millport News 1st July 2020, A CALL has been made to shut down Hunterston B with immediate effect. West Kilbride councillor Todd Ferguson says that Hunterston should not be a
‘guinea pig’ for the UK nuclear industry testing long far power stations can last. Cracks have been appearing in all of the EDF advanced cooling reactors fleet around the United Kingdom – and the Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR) are currently examining the safety case presented by EDF to switching the reactors back on but the matter has been delayed several times this year.
Councillor Ferguson said: “The cracks at Hunterston keep making news and EDF acknowledge that the cracks have been accelerating quicker than expected. “There comes a time when the reactors should remain offline for good. The North Ayrshire Conservative Group believe the time to look at this is now. …….
I believe that the time is right for the Office of Nuclear Regulation not to grant permissionto restart the reactors at Hunterston B. I’m concerned that Hunterston B is being used as some sort of guinea pig, with the purpose being to supply data on how far you can push EDF’s ageing AGR reactor fleet. The station has exceeded its life cycle and the time is right to start winding down operations safely. The safety of the workforce and local communities are paramount.
…….ONR have a
big decision to make in relation to the safety case which has been presented by EDF.” At the recent Hunterston Site Stakeholders Group meeting, EDF were asked when it became economically prohibitive to re-start the reactors and the response was that the data coming from the testing of
the reactors was important information for the rest of the fleet of reactors around the UK.Councillor Ferguson said: “Hunterston is by far the most heavily cracked. When does it get to the points where the risks outweigh everything else? “I don’t want it to get into a position of a race of what is going to fail first – the graphite or the boilers.”………https://www.largsandmillportnews.com/news/18533657.dont-turn-hunterston-guinea-pig—call-shut-reactors-now/
Swarm of insects cause nuclear reactor to lose power in Michigan, Fox 23, July 2, 2020 NEWPORT, Mich. — The Enrico Fermi 2 Nuclear Power Plant in Newport lost offsite power Wednesday in what has been described as a “mayfly accumulation.”
In a report released by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the outage was “caused by mayfly accumulation” around the facility’s switchyard. Diesel generators started automatically as a backup power supply.
Germany is first major economy to phase out coal and nuclear, Economic Times, 3 July 20
The plan is part of Germany’s ‘energy transition’ – an effort to wean Europe’s biggest economy off planet-warming fossil fuels and generate all of the country’s considerable energy needs from renewable sources…….
Bills approved by both houses of parliament Friday envision shutting down the last coal-fired power plant by 2038 and spending some 40 billion euros ($45 billion) to help affected regions cope with the transition.
The plan is part of Germany’s ‘energy transition’ – an effort to wean Europe’s biggest economy off planet-warming fossil fuels and generate all of the country’s considerable energy needs from renewable sources…….
Bills approved by both houses of parliament Friday envision shutting down the last coal-fired power plant by 2038 and spending some 40 billion euros ($45 billion) to help affected regions cope with the transition.The plan is part of Germany’s ‘energy transition’ – an effort to wean Europe’s biggest economy off planet-warming fossil fuels and generate all of the country’s considerable energy needs from renewable sources.
“The days of coal are numbered in Germany,” Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said. “Germany is the first industrialized country that leaves behind both nuclear energy and coal.”……
Schulze, the environment minister, said there would be regular government reviews to examine whether the end date for coal can be brought forward. She noted that by the end of 2022, eight of the country’s most polluting coal-fired plants will have already been closed………
This week, utility companies in Spain shut down seven of the country’s 15 coal-fired power plants, saying they couldn’t be operated at profit without government subsidies.
But the head of Germany’s main miners’ union, Michael Vassiliadis, welcomed the decision, calling it a “historic milestone.” He urged the government to focus next on an expansion of renewable energy generation and the use of hydrogen as a clean alternativ ..
The heads of state of the 27 EU member states agreed to resist calls from a reported eight countries to expand the nature of projects eligible for energy transition support beyond renewables.
JULY 1, 2020 MAX HALL An EU spokesperson has confirmed the heads of the bloc’s 27 member states have announced an intent to block any of the European Commission’s proposed €40 billion energy transition money being spent on gas or nuclear power facilities.
The commission has proposed pulling together a Just Transition Fund (JTF) to be spent helping regions dependent on fossil fuels transition to clean energy as part of its much-vaunted Green Deal for Europe. The fund would comprise €30 billion from the bloc’s coronavirus recovery fund and €10 billion from the EU budget for 2021-27, both of which are yet to be ratified.
Reports late last week suggested the 27 heads of state who make up EU joint legislative body the European Council had agreed to resist calls from eight EU states to permit the proposed JTF to be spent on gas and nuclear facilities, as well as clean energy generation.
An EU spokesperson has told pv magazine the council wants to ensure the cash is spent only on renewables and confirmed the plans will now be negotiated with the other EU legislative body, the European Parliament, with the commission mediating.
“We would hope for an agreement as soon as possible, certainly this autumn,” said the spokesperson, indicating a hoped-for resolution by December 20.
Tell Congress: Prevent Nuclear Catastrophe in Iran
Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
