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UK seeks a nuclear energy renaissance – but experts question whether it’s value for money

The most powerful argument against nuclear could be economic as most plants take at least ten years to commission, design and build

inews, By Leo Cendrowicz, Brussels Correspondent, 21 Apr 23,

BRUSSELS – As Europe scrambles for new energy sources, Britain has joined the countries seeking a nuclear renaissance.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced last month the creation of Great British Nuclear, a body to oversee the roll-out of a fleet of nuclear power stations.

However, there are concerns about the environmental impact of nuclear, with campaign groups saying that the risks of nuclear reactions and the difficulties in disposing of nuclear waste mean it cannot be considered green.

And the most powerful argument against nuclear could be economic. Most plants take at least ten years to commission, design and build. Delays are frequent: Europe’s largest nuclear reactor, the Olkiluoto 3 plant in Finland, came online last week a full 14 years after its scheduled date, beset by technological problems that led to lawsuits – while its final price tag ballooned to around €11bn (£9.74bn), almost three times the initial estimate.

The steep upfront building costs for nuclear power plants, along with the long construction times, have raised questions about whether nuclear energy represents value for money.

Now that renewable costs are going down – especially in solar, wind and batteries – renewable is likely to be cheaper in the longer term, making nuclear commissions look less worthwhile.

The fact that Europe has built few nuclear plants since the boom wave of the 60s also means there is little expertise available across the value chain. The EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has said a “colossal” investment in nuclear energy will be needed over the next 30 years to meet the EU’s emissions-reduction targets and electricity demand.

“The big question on nuclear is the economics of building new nuclear plants,” says Ben McWilliams, an energy research analyst at Bruegel – a Brussels-based think tank. “When you compare it to something like solar or wind, which are also modular technologies, so you can have much larger economies of scale – you have to ask if it is sensible to start building new nuclear plants that will come online in 15 or 20 years when they’re going to compete in a grid that should be largely renewable dominated?”

……………………………… France, Europe’s champion, has not been the best advertisement recently: last November, almost half of the country’s reactors were offline, thanks to maintenance issues in its ageing nuclear fleet.

The UK’s strategy is to focus on small modular reactors (SMRs) to ensure faster build times. These mini reactors would generate between 50 and 500 megawatts of power, compared with the 3.2-gigawatt Hinkley Point C in Somerset, the UK’s only large nuclear plant under construction, which is plagued by delays and cost overruns.

………………………….. . In February, 11 EU energy ministers signed a declaration committing to “cooperate more closely” across the entire nuclear supply chain and promote “common industrial projects” in new generation capacity as well as new technologies like small reactors.

While energy policy is mostly set at national level within the European Union, the long-term push is for green, renewable energy. The European Commission has attempted to nudge governments to wean themselves off fossil fuels, adopting a controversial measure that labels nuclear investments as sustainable “transitional” sources, if they replace dirtier fuels. Last Tuesday, Greenpeace and other campaign groups announced plans to take the Commission to the EU Court of Justice of the EU. https://inews.co.uk/news/world/uk-nuclear-energy-renaissance-expert-money-2289161

April 24, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Earth Day 2023: A Newly Post-Nuclear Germany vs. California’s Reactor Relapse

Germany’s initiative calls out California’s backpedaling.

BY HARVEY WASSERMAN , APRIL 22, 2023

This year’s Earth Day marks a massive green energy triumph in Germany that stands in stark contrast to a bitter nuclear challenge in California.

A wide range of estimates put the two regions at a virtual tie for the world’s fourth and fifth-largest economies.

They also share a leading growth industry—renewable energy, with unprecedented investments in wind, solar, batteries, and efficiency. 

But when it comes to atomic power, they are headed in very different directions.

On April 15, Germany claimed a huge global landmark by becoming one of the world’s wealthiest nations to renounce atomic power.  

The decision dates back to 2011, when Germany’s powerful Green movement led a national demonstration aiming to shut the seventeen atomic reactors that, at the time, provided around a quarter of the nation’s electricity.

Before the rally took place, four reactors blew up in Fukushima, Japan, sending huge clouds of radioactive fallout into the air and ocean.

Germany’s then-Chancellor Angela Merkel—who has a Ph.D. in quantum chemistry—ordered eight reactors immediately shut, and soon announced a plan to shut the remaining nine by December 31, 2022.

This energiewende, or “energy transition,” substitutes wind, solar, battery storage, and increased efficiency for nuclear power reactors, moving Germany toward full reliance on renewables. Germany, since then, has invested billions  in the renewables sector, transitioning whole towns  to locally-owned rooftop solar and corporate wind power pumped in from large turbines in the North Sea.

The shutdown of the final three reactors was delayed by nearly four months due to natural gas shortages caused by the Russian war in Ukraine. 

It was also complicated by a major atomic breakdown in neighboring France.  Heavily reliant on nuclear power, France’s more than fifty standard-design reactors succumbed to a wide range of problems, including generic structural flaws and warming rivers too hot to cool their super-heated radioactive cores. In 2022, with more than half its fleet of reactors under repair, France made up for the energy shortfall by importing power  from Germany, much of it fired by the burning of coal. 

This prompted the nuclear industry to criticize Germany’s plan by pointing to a rise in the country’s CO2 emissions from burning increased quantities of coal, failing to note that much of that power was being exported to France to compensate for its own shuttered reactors.

California, whose economy may now be slightly larger than Germany’s, has taken an opposite route.

Two of its last four reactors—at San Onofre, between Los Angeles and San Diego—were shuttered in 2012 and closed permanently in 2013 after flaws were found in the turbines and other components.

In 2016, a deal was reached to shut the Golden State’s last two reactors, located at Diablo Canyon, nine miles west of San Luis Obispo. In the 1970s and 1980s, thousands of protestors were arrested at Diablo Canyon, more than at any other American nuclear plant. 

The 2016 shutdown deal involved another energiewende, based on blueprints to replace Diablo’s power with a huge influx of new wind, solar, battery, and efficiency installations. The agreement was approved by the California state legislature, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the state Public Utilities Commission. It was signed by then-Governor Jerry Brown, then-Lieutenant-Governor Gavin Newsom, and a wide range of local governments, unions, and environmental groups, all of whom assumed the state would thus be nuke-free once Unit Two was shut in 2025—the date its original forty-year license would expire.

But along the way, the state experienced two close calls with partial blackouts.  During both incidents, Newsom, now the governor, asked consumers to dial back their energy use. Ironically, independent battery capacity—mostly controlled by individual owners—helped the state stay lit. 

But Newsom reversed course and now argues that California must keep Diablo open. Infuriating the national safe energy movement, Newsom rammed through the legislature a $1.4 billion midnight bailout for PG&E, to be funded by all of the state’s consumers, including many who live hundreds of miles from the plant, and receive no energy from it at all.

The Biden Administration also kicked in $1.1 billion, money that safe energy advocates angrily argue would be far better spent on renewables.

In 2019 a statewide petition signed by Hollywood’s Jane Fonda, Martin Sheen, Lily Tomlin, Eric Roberts, and some 2,500 other Californians demanded that Newsom facilitate an independent inspection. Nearing forty years of age, both Diablo reactors suffer a wide range of structural and age-related defects. 

They are also surrounded by at least a dozen known earthquake faults, sitting just forty-five miles from the infamous San Andreas fault. Former NRC site inspector Michael Peck, who was stationed at Diablo for five years, has warned it might not survive a major earthquake, for which its owner, PG&E, has little or no private insurance. The state has never made public any plans to evacuate Los Angeles or other heavily populated areas in the event of an accident.

Newsom has also supported moves by state regulators to severely slash compensation paid by utilities to solar panel owners who feed their excess energy into the grid. While 1,500 workers are stationed at Diablo, some 70,000 work in the state’s solar industry, which angrily charges that Newsom’s pro-nuclear, anti-green positions are crippling the state’s top job creator.

Indeed,  the irony of these twin economies heading in opposite energy directions is hard to ignore. In the 1970s, much of America’s early anti-nuclear movement was inspired by mass demonstrations led by German Greens (with the slogan “Atomkraft? Nein, danke!”). Both movements succeeded in massively moving their communities toward a renewable future.

But at this critical moment, Germany appears to be moving beyond nuclear power, while California clings to a hugely controversial technology it had once planned to transcend.

April 24, 2023 Posted by | ENERGY, Germany | Leave a comment

Complex safety problems in overhauling USA’s nuclear weapons stockpile, especially plutonium pits

TRUST BUT VERIFY. U.S. labs are overhauling the nuclear stockpile. Can they validate the weapons without bomb tests?

20 APR 2023, BY SARAH SCOLES Science.org

LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO—Behind a guard shack and warning signs on the sprawling campus of Los Alamos National Laboratory is a forested spot where scientists mimic the first moments of a nuclear detonation. Here, in the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT) facility, they blow up models of the bowling ball–size spheres of plutonium, or “pits,” at the heart of bombs—and take x-ray pictures of the results.

In a real weapon, conventional explosives ringing an actual pit would implode the plutonium to a critical density, triggering an explosive fissile chain reaction. Its energy would drive the fusion of hydrogen isotopes in the weapon’s second stage, generating yet more neutrons that would split additional fission fuel………………………………………………………..

Facilities like DARHT have been important since 1992, when the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) three weapons labs—Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratory—stopped full-fledged tests of nuclear weapons. By 1996, the United States had signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty—credited not only with stopping the environmental damage of nuclear testing, but also with disincentivizing new weapons designs.

Without tests, however, the only things ensuring that warheads work are facilities like DARHT, computer simulations from “weapons codes,” and a cache of data from the old days of nuclear testing. For relatively minor changes to old weapons—new fuses, fresh top-ups of the hydrogen isotope tritium—that has been enough. Every year, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Department of Defense have certified the stockpile, an assessment that means they are convinced the weapons will work when they’re supposed to, as they’re supposed to—and not do anything when they’re not supposed to. “Because we’ve blown up so many of them, these things are incredibly reliable,” says Geoff Wilson, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight, which argues nuclear weapons spending should be reduced.

But now the stockpile is getting an overhaul, the biggest in decades. This fiscal year, NNSA has a record $22.2 billion budget. Much of the money will go to producing new plutonium pits to replace those in the arsenal and to modernizing four warheads. A fifth weapon, dubbed the W93—a submarine-launched warhead—is a new design program. “It’s really the first warhead program we’ve had since the end of the Cold War” that isn’t a life extension or modernization of an existing weapon, says Marvin Adams, NNSA’s deputy administrator for defense programs………………………………

Wilson worries that the international dynamics and the U.S. overhaul could ultimately lead to a revival of bomb tests, bringing back their hazards and stoking a new arms race. “It is not unfathomable to me, which is scary to say.” It’s one thing to tweak weapons with a deep heritage. It’s another to infer functionality for modified weapons that have never been fully tested, he says………………………………….

SIMPLY REPLACING the bombs’ plutonium pits poses a science challenge: understanding how subtle changes affect their behavior. They aren’t easy to make, in part because plutonium, a metal only in existence since 1940, is mysterious and hard to handle. The last time anyone made pits at scale—in the 1980s at Colorado’s Rocky Flats plant—DOE’s contractor was shut down for environmental violations and forced to pay an $18.5 million fine.

This time, NNSA is splitting production between Los Alamos and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. It has tasked them with making 80 new pits per year by 2030, a deadline NNSA admits it will not meet.

Los Alamos’s pits will be made at a facility called PF-4, a set of high-security buildings surrounded by cyclone fences with razor wire. Inside PF-4 are glovebox enclosures—radiation-shielded workstations where workers use thick gloves and peer through glass windows to manipulate the exotic metal. The lab is hiring thousands of workers, and its first pit is likely to be ready for the stockpile next year.

The gargantuan effort is motivated by a simple fact: many current pits are more than 40 years old, and plutonium behaves in confounding ways as it ages and radioactively decays. A green, fuzzy coating grows on it as its surface oxidizes. Atoms in its metallic lattice are knocked out of place as it spits out uranium isotopes. Its dimensions shift when it slips between six different solid phases. And the pits do not necessarily degrade smoothly. “We know at some point there will be a nonlinear piece,” says David Clark, director of Los Alamos’s National Security Education Center and editor of the Plutonium Handbook. “We just haven’t seen it.”…………….

One might think the new pits would make it easier to certify the stockpile, by avoiding the uncertainties of aging plutonium. But they come with uncertainties of their own. The new pits won’t be twins of their predecessors, so weapons scientists will have to understand how the alterations change pit behavior. They are being manufactured using recycled and purified plutonium from old pits, not fresh material, unlike the originals. Moreover, they will be made with different processes, and in some cases designed to slightly different specifications. “If you look at a new requirement,” Adams says, “you often will find that the old pits we have available to us are really, really suboptimal.”……………………………………….  https://www.science.org/content/article/trust-verify-can-u-s-certify-new-nuclear-weapons-without-detonating-them

April 23, 2023 Posted by | Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

French-Russian nuclear relations turn radioactive

Ukraine and several EU countries want France to cut commercial ties with Russia’s atomic sector.

Politico, BY VICTOR JACK, APRIL 20, 2023 

BRUSSELS — Pressure is building on France to fully cut ties with Russia’s atomic sector as the EU mulls its latest sanctions package against Moscow.

The European Commission is set to meet with diplomats from the EU’s 27 member countries on Friday to start discussions on the bloc’s 11th round of Russia sanctions. Hitting Moscow’s state-run nuclear company Rosatom — a divisive issue for some EU countries reliant on Russia for nuclear fuel — is likely come under the spotlight once again.

That means increased scrutiny of France’s ties to Rosatom, the Moscow-based atomic firm…………………………..

“I am sure” that Paris has a moral duty to encourage its state-backed companies to cut ties with Rosatom, Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko told POLITICO last month, adding that Kyiv wants all EU countries with links to Russian’s nuclear industry to cut them.

“All of our public scrutiny has been on Germany and not so much on France,” for ties with Russia, said a diplomat from one EU country, who spoke on condition of anonymity, “whereas I think if you look closely … they haven’t been the best kid in the class either.”…………………………………………..

Paris and Moscow’s nuclear ties, which date back to the Cold War, are most apparent in the links between Rosatom and state-controlled EDF, France’s largest utility that runs the country’s nuclear fleet. It signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Rosatom on green hydrogen in 2021, as well as a joint declaration to develop research cooperation.

The Rosatom spokesperson called it “a win-win partnership” that is “a driver of development both in the field of nuclear energy and scientific projects.”……………………….

When Rosatom builds a nuclear plant abroad, it often relies on technology from French companies — typically spending up to €1 billion per project, Faudon said. Those orders usually include command and control systems from Framatome, which is majority-owned by EDF.

Framatome has an ongoing role in Russian nuclear construction projects around the world, including at Paks. The company aims to set up a joint venture with Rosatom to produce nuclear fuel in western Germany, a project that has been sharply criticized by local authorities.

The French firm also signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Rosatom in December 2021 to expand collaboration on fuel fabrication and other technologies. 

Framatome didn’t comment on its ongoing contracts but with reference to the 2021 agreement, a company spokesperson said: “Everything has been postponed until further notice,” adding that Framatome will “re-examine the agreement if and when that is appropriate.”

EDF declined to comment…………………………..

And while France isn’t dependent on Russia for its nuclear fuel and security of supply, it bought enriched uranium worth €359 million from Moscow last year, more than three times the amount it bought in 2021.

It’s not the only such sale to the West. The U.S. bought $830 million of enriched uranium from Russia last year. Moscow also supplies fuel to reactors in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Slovakia and Hungary…………………

In February, the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on Rosatom to face sanctions. ……………………………….

https://www.politico.eu/article/french-russian-nuclear-relations-radioactive-rosatom-sanctions/

April 23, 2023 Posted by | France, politics international | Leave a comment

‘There’s a lot of posturing’: Europe’s nuclear divide grows as one plant opens and three close

Guardian Jon Henley Europe correspondent, and Kate Connolly in Berlin, 21 Apr 23,

When Europe’s first new nuclear reactor in 16 years came online in Finland, it was hailed by its operator as a “significant addition to clean domestic production” that would “play an important role in the green transition”.

The opening last Sunday of the long-delayed Olkiluoto 3 plant, Europe’s largest, means about 40% of Finland’s electricity demand will soon be met by nuclear power, which the government says will boost energy security and help it achieve its carbon neutrality targets.

Across the Baltic Sea and just hours before the Finnish plant came on stream, Germany was finally pulling the plug on its last three nuclear power plants, shutting down the steaming towers of Isar II, Emsland and Neckarwestheim II reactors late on Saturday.

The environmental group Greenpeace, at the heart of Germany’s long-lived and powerful anti-nuclear movement, organised a party at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. “Finally, nuclear energy belongs to history,” it proclaimed.

There are few clearer illustrations of Europe’s nuclear divide. One faction, led by Germany, argues that the costs are too high and the risks – from reactor accidents and toxic waste – are, as the Green environment minister, Steffi Lemke, put it, “ultimately unmanageable”.

Another, headed by France, argues equally forcefully that nuclear power is a reliable, low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels for electricity, and that phasing it out as Europe tries to meet vital green targets is ecologically damaging and economically senseless.

The debate is not new. But with a third of the bloc’s nuclear reactors nearing the end of their original lifespan by 2025, and a legally binding aim of cutting net greenhouse gas emissions by 55% from 1990 levels by 2030, it is becoming increasingly intense.

The energy shock that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, which brought an end to cheap gas imports and led Germany to briefly delay closing its last nuclear plants, has only entrenched the divisions.

“There’s a lot of posturing,” the centrist MEP Pascal Canfin, who chairs the European parliament’s environment committee, said. “Different member states have made very different choices and have very different positions – and interests.

According to Eurostat, 25.4% of the EU’s electricity was nuclear generated in 2021, with 100-odd reactors in 13 member states. France, which has 56 operable nuclear reactors, accounting for just over half of that total.

The divide across the bloc, though, is stark. If France has the highest share of nuclear in its electricity mix (almost 70%), followed by Slovakia (52.4%) and Belgium (50.6%), others hardly touch it. The Netherlands stands at barely 3%…………

Advocates of its “Energiewende” green transition plan note that the 46% share of its electricity generated by renewables is far greater than the share that was produced by nuclear when its phase-out was first announced in 1998.

While its plan, aimed at winning long-term public and industry support, will increase fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions in the short term (coal is due to be phased out by 2038 or earlier), Germany argues it will also stimulate renewables growth.

Immediate energy supply concerns meant public opinion swung against the shutdown last weekend, but polls before the war in Ukraine showed broad support for the principle. Other countries hold similar views.

Several have already phased out nuclear, or plan to do so. Italy shut all its plants in 1990, after a 1987 referendum (in a 2011 plebiscite, held weeks after the Fukushima disaster, 94% of voters rejected a government plan to reintroduce nuclear power).

Belgium was planning to close the last of its seven reactors by 2025, but recently extended the life of the two newest for a further decade, saying they were “critical to our energy security”. Spain aims to phase out its five active plants by 2035.

Other opponents include Portugal, Denmark and Austria – which, along with Luxembourg, is suing the European Commission for classing nuclear energy as a “bridge technology” on the path to net zero, and thus as a “green” investment.

In the French-led pro-nuclear camp, meanwhile, are Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia – which this year launched an alliance to boost nuclear cooperation within the bloc.

Far from phasing out nuclear, Romania has doubled production in the last 15 years; Hungary and the Czech Republic have increased theirs by a fifth. Sweden is drafting a law to allow it to build more, while France aims to extend its plants’ life to 50 years and open at least six new ones by 2035.

“Certain countries have made the extreme choice of turning their back on nuclear energy,” President Emmanuel Macron said when unveiling his plans in February. “Not France.” The country launched its nuclear programme after the 1973 oil crisis; a poll last year showed nearly 80% of voters support it, up 20 points from 2016.

The nuclear standoff – at its most tense between France and Germany – has the potential to disrupt a range of vital EU projects, from changes to the bloc’s electricity market to the Green Deal programme supporting industry’s transition to net zero…………………………  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/21/europe-nuclear-divide-grows-one-plant-opens-three-close-finland-germany

April 23, 2023 Posted by | EUROPE, politics | Leave a comment

Chinese Diplomacy Seen as Threat to US ‘Peace,’ ‘Stability’

FAIR, GREGORY SHUPAK 21 Apr 23

China has undertaken a diplomatic blitz that has seen it broker a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, warm relations with France, and put forth a proposal to end the war in Ukraine. US media coverage of these developments has involved illusion-peddling about America’s potentially waning empire, and calls for the US to escalate what amounts to a new cold war with China.

In Foreign Policy (3/14/23), Michael McFaul and Abbas Milani say that China “now shares the burden of keeping the peace in the Middle East. This is not an easy assignment, as the United States has learned bitterly over the decades.”

The US has done the opposite of “keeping the peace in the Middle East.” Nor has it sought to, as the Iraqi case makes tragically clear. Since the US-led 2003 invasion, Brown University’s Costs of War Project notes,………………………………………………………

Power = ‘peace’

Walter Russell Mead of the Wall Street Journal (3/27/23) claimed that while “American power” results in “peace and prosperity,” “challengers like China, Russia and Iran undermine the stability of the American order.” “Peace” and “stability” must seem like odd ways of characterizing that order to, say, Libyans, who had their country flattened by a US-led intervention (Jacobin, 9/12/13), and endured years of a brutal war, and even slavery.

David Ignatius of the Washington Post (3/16/23) asserted that

if Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to take on the role of restraining Iran and reassuring Saudi Arabia, good luck to him. The United States has been trying since 1979 to bend the arc of the Iranian revolution toward stability.

Washington supported Iraq’s invasion of Iran, to the point of helping Iraq use chemical weapons against the country. The US has also levied sanctions that have immiserated the country, undercutting Iranians’ access to food and medicine. Describing such aggression as attempts to engender “stability” inverts reality—to say nothing of Ignatius’ strange desire to “reassur[e]” Washington’s execution-happy longtime client in Riyadh.

In the case of the war that turned Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, McFaul and Milani exculpate the US, writing that “the Biden administration, supported by other countries with a commitment to stopping this war, helped negotiate a truce.”

Like McFaul and Milani, Ignatius accuses China of “harvest[ing] the goodwill” after the US allegedly “laid the groundwork for a settlement of the horrific war in Yemen.” This omits the rather salient point that the United States is a major reason the war has gone on for as long as it has, with as high a price as it has had for Yemenis.

The Obama, Trump and Biden administrations prolonged and escalated the war……………………………………………………………………..

Looking just at wars in this century, the United States carried out a 20-year occupation of Afghanistan, and its troops remain in Iraq 20 years after it invaded and overthrew that country’s government. US troops still occupy parts of Syria against the will of that country’s government. Washington has carried out bombing campaigns against Libya, as noted, as well as Somalia and Pakistan.

Given that it is also the “major patron” of Israel, which invaded Lebanon in the relevant period (on top of occupying and annexing Syrian and Palestinian land), and of Saudi Arabia, the main aggressor against Yemen, there’s a strong case to be made that Uncle Sam is the world’s “most destabilizing state.”

If China overtakes the US’s position atop the global order, it’s uncertain exactly what the world system will look like. What is clear, however, is that US hegemony has been “anything but peaceful.”

April 23, 2023 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Germany okays Ukrainian strikes on Russian soil

21 Apr 23,  https://www.rt.com/news/575139-german-defense-minister-ukraine-strikes-russia/—

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has argued that such attacks are “fully normal” as long as the civilian population is not affected.

Ukraine has every right to conduct strikes and other military operations on Russian territory, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has argued. He noted, however, that civilians should not be hurt in the process.

Ukraine has regularly shelled several Russian border regions ever since Moscow launched its military campaign last February. Dozens of civilians have lost their lives as a result, with many more injured.

Appearing on Germany’s ZDF TV channel on Thursday, Pistorius said that it is “fully normal” that the “attacked [party] also moves into enemy territory, for instance to cut supply routes.”

“So long as cities, civilians, civilian areas are not attacked, you will unavoidably have to accept this,” the minister clarified.

However, Pistorius said that the West should not simply automatically rubber-stamp any weapons request by Kiev.

“If Ukraine asks for certain types of bombs that are outlawed globally, then we must say no,” the minister stressed.

Speaking about Kiev’s chances of joining NATO, the German official said that “this is now not the time to decide this.” Ukraine and NATO should for the time being prioritize “repelling this attack,” Pistorius insisted. Should these efforts prove successful, the US-led military bloc will have to “carefully weigh” this step, the minister said.

Pistorius went on to point out that NATO cannot admit Ukraine into its ranks purely “out of solidarity,” but should rather “decide with a cold head and hot heart, and not the other way round.”

Russian border regions – particularly those of Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk – have repeatedly come under Ukrainian attacks over the past year. Kiev’s forces have used explosive-laden drones, mortars, artillery, and missiles in these strikes.

The toll taken on Belgorod Region in particular has been significant. Earlier this week, the region’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, revealed that a total of thirty civilians in his region have been killed in Ukrainian attacks since February 2022, with 123 more people sustaining injuries. More than 3,000 homes have also been either destroyed or damaged, the official said. Dozens of schools and power facilities have also been hit.

Furthermore, the Donetsk People’s Republic, which joined Russia after a referendum last fall, has been subjected to regular shelling by the Ukrainian military since 2014. The attacks appear to be largely indiscriminate, with scores of civilians having lost their lives as result.

April 23, 2023 Posted by | Germany, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Environmentalists say Starship failure boosts their concerns

Washington Post, 21 Apr 23

Thursday’s Starship explosion underscored the concerns of the American Bird Conservancy, which has opposed SpaceX’s operations at Boca Chica in South Texas because of the facility’s impacts on wildlife habitat and the species that rely on it, including species listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The fiery mishap highlighted in dramatic fashion the risks and the stakes of potential environmental destruction, the group said. Photos showed that the launch itself had sent debris flying across across the launch site and appeared to have damaged the company’s facilities. SpaceX and local officials had enforced a broad keep-out area to ensure no one was threatened by the launch.

“From our point of view, it’s good news it didn’t blow up at the pad site, but future launches could,” said American Bird Conservancy President Michael Parr. The sounds, debris and fires fueled by a crash could all pose risks to wildlife, he said. Had an explosion taken place over the sensitive wetlands, a cleanup would further disturb the environment…………………………………………  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/unmanned-starship-explodes-over-gulf-after-liftoff/ar-AA1a6BtR?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=225bf63143754ebc94b3de444cf9de7d&ei=14

April 23, 2023 Posted by | space travel, USA | Leave a comment

Maori workers exposed to radiation in cleaning up USA’s failed nuclear reactor in Antarctica

Detour: Antarctica – Kiwis ‘exposed to radiation’ at Antarctic power plant,  https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/detour-antarctica-kiwis-exposed-to-radiation-at-antarctic-power-plant/NY5WTQ72JF4OFUW4F35ZSUCB6U/ 8 Jan, 2022 By Thomas Bywater, Thomas Bywater is a writer and digital producer for Herald Travel

In a major new Herald podcast series, Detour: Antarctica, Thomas Bywater goes in search of the white continent’s hidden stories. In this accompanying text series, he reveals a few of his discoveries to whet your appetite for the podcast. You can read them all, and experience a very special visual presentation, by clicking here. To follow Detour: Antarctica, visit iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Waitangi Tribunal will consider whether NZ Defence Force personnel were appropriately warned of potential exposure to radiation while working at a decommissioned nuclear reactor in Antarctica.

It’s among a raft of historic claims dating from 1860 to the present day before the Military Veterans Inquiry.

After an initial hearing in 2016, the Waitangi Tribunal last year admitted the Antarctic kaupapa to be considered alongside the other claims.

“It’s been a bloody long journey,” said solicitors Bennion Law, the Wellington firm representing the Antarctic claimants.

Between 1972 and the early 1980s, more than 300 tonnes of radioactive rubble was shipped off the continent via the seasonal resupply link.

Handled by US and New Zealand personnel without properly measuring potential exposure, the submission argues the Crown failed in its duty of care for the largely Māori contingent, including NZ Army Cargo Team One.

“This failure of active protection was and continues to be in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi,” reads the submission.

The rubble came from PM3A, a portable nuclear power unit on Ross Island, belonging to the US Navy. Decommissioned in 1972, its checkered 10-year operating history led it to be known as ‘Nukey Poo’ among base inhabitants. After recording 438 operating errors it was shut off for good.

Due to US obligations to the Antarctic Treaty, nuclear waste had to be removed.

Peter Breen, Assistant Base Mechanic at New Zealand’s Scott Base for 1981-82, led the effort to get similar New Zealand stories heard.

He hopes that NZDF personnel involved in the cleanup of Ross Island might get medallic recognition “similar to those who were exposed at Mururoa Atoll”. Sailors were awarded the Special Service Medal Nuclear Testing for observing French bomb sites in the Pacific in 1973, roughly the same time their colleagues were helping clear radioactive material from Antarctica.

A public advisory regarding potential historic radiation exposure at McMurdo Station was published in 2018.

Since 1975 the Waitangi Tribunal has been a permanent commission by the Ministry of Justice to raise Māori claims relating to the Crown’s obligations in the Treaty of Waitangi.

The current Military Veterans’ Kaupapa includes hearings as diverse as the injury of George Nepata while training in Singapore, to the exposure of soldiers to DBP insecticides during the Malayan Emergency.

Commenced in 2014 in the “centenary year of the onset of the First World War” the Māori military veterans inquiry has dragged on to twice the duration of the Great War.

Of the three claimants in the Antarctic veterans’ claim, Edwin (Chaddy) Chadwick, Apiha Papuni and Kelly Tako, only Tako survives.

“We’re obviously concerned with time because we’re losing veterans,” said Bennion Law.

Detour: Antarctica is a New Zealand Herald podcast. You can follow the series on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

April 23, 2023 Posted by | ANTARCTICA, health, indigenous issues, New Zealand, wastes | Leave a comment

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant will switch back to Russian fuel, from Westinghouse fuel

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine which Russia
captured last year will stop using U.S.-produced nuclear fuel as quickly as
possible, the Interfax news agency quoted a Russian official as saying on
Thursday. The biggest nuclear power plant in Europe, mostly built in the
Soviet times, originally used Russian nuclear fuel, but Ukraine gradually
switched to supplies from Westinghouse after its first conflict with Russia
in 2014.

Reuters 20th April 2023

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-held-ukraine-nuclear-plant-stop-using-us-fuel-ifax-2023-04-20/

April 23, 2023 Posted by | Ukraine, Uranium | Leave a comment

Globally, taxpayers are on the hook for nuclear accidents. Nuclear is uninsurable and unacceptable.

Simon Daigle – 21 Apr 23,

Simon J Daigle, B.Sc., M.Sc., M.Sc.(A) Concerned Canadian Citizen. Occupational / Industrial Hygienist, Epidemiologist. Climatologist / Air quality expert (Topospheric Ozone).

Any NPP plant globally has no guarantees from  insurers, or governments, or have adequate accident liabilities to cover for just one NPP accident and any country host NPP taxpayers are always on the hook for damages

When will governments globally understand that taxpayers should not be collateral damage (tokens) financially for potential human suffering and/or irreversible biosphere damage as « willing » participants for the nuclear industry ? The answer should be none. Yet we see a different reality and narrative. It’s all Shameful.

In India, a US company paid a fraction of the true cost of one chemical disaster: Bhopal (less than 500 million US dollars) for one chemical accident. And worse, they were never found guilty in a court of law in the US. Imagine when nuclear accident happens in India ? Who will be responsible? We know today that the true cost are billions (USD) because of Chernobyl and Fukushima tragedies for examples.

Now, in 2023, and for past decades, any nuclear accident in India, or elsewhere, citizens and taxpayers, had and will continue to absorb the true public burden in the global insurance pool for all nuclear energy countries that are contributing in for covering any NPP risks or accident liabilities.

Current insurance policy are clearly inadequate to repair and compensate for any human suffering, death, disease, and biosphere irreversible damages for any potential NPP accident, nuclear waste and compensation.

Unacceptable.

April 22, 2023 Posted by | 2 WORLD, business and costs, Christina's notes | Leave a comment

French Winter Power Twice as Pricey as Germany’s on Nuclear Woes

Bloomberg By Todd Gillespie, April 19, 2023 

France’s weakened nuclear power output means the cost of its electricity for next winter is more than twice as expensive as Germany’s, as concerns over the health of the country’s reactors persist.

The “massive” gap of nearly €250 ($273) per megawatt-hour between French and German prices is because traders are pricing in more risk as they await updates on Electricite de France SA’s struggles with its aging atomic fleet, according to analysts at Engie SA’s EnergyScan. “No participants want to risk being short next winter,” they wrote.

French power for the first quarter of 2024 is trading at €416 per megawatt-hour, more than double Germany’s rate of €169. Normally a power exporter, France’s atomic generation has been gradually returning to service but still remains below historical averages.   

The price discrepancy is a sign of France’s lingering energy woes even as its European neighbors benefit from a prolonged drop in prices. EDF’s nuclear reactors have faced recurring corrosion issues as the government takes greater hold over the state-backed utility…………………  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-19/french-winter-power-twice-as-pricey-as-germany-s-on-nuclear-woes?leadSource=uverify%20wall—

April 22, 2023 Posted by | business and costs, France | Leave a comment

Six war mongering think tanks and the military contractors that fund them.

Center for Strategic and International Studies

Center for a New American Security

Hudson Institute

Atlantic Council

International Institute for Strategic Studies

Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Amanda Yee, March 7, 2023  https://www.liberationnews.org/six-war-mongering-think-tanks-and-the-military-contractors-that-fund-them/

From producing reports and analysis for U.S. policy-makers, to enlisting representatives to write op-eds in corporate media, to providing talking heads for corporate media to interview and give quotes, think tanks play a fundamental role in shaping both U.S. foreign policy and public perception around that foreign policy. Leaders at top think tanks like the Atlantic Council and Hudson Institute have even been called upon to set focus priorities for the House Intelligence Committee. However, one look at the funding sources of the most influential think tanks reveals whose interests they really serve: that of the U.S. military and its defense contractors.

This ecosystem of overlapping networks of government institutions, think tanks, and defense contractors is where U.S. foreign policy is derived, and a revolving door exists among these three sectors. For example, before Biden-appointed head of the Pentagon Lloyd Austin took his current position, he sat on the Board of Directors at Raytheon. Before Austin’s appointment, current defense policy advisor Michèle Flournoy was also in the running for the position. Flournoy sat on the board of Booz Allen Hamilton, another major Pentagon defense contractor. These same defense contractors also work together with think tanks like the Center for Strategic and International Studies to organize conferences attended by national security officials. On top of all this, since the end of the Cold War, intelligence analysis by the CIA and NSA has increasingly been contracted out to these same defense companies like BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin, among others — a major conflict of interest. In other words, these corporations are in the position to produce intelligence reports which raise the alarm on U.S. “enemy” nations so they can sell more military equipment!

And of course these are the same defense companies that donate hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to think tanks. Given all this, is it any wonder the U.S. government is simultaneously flooding billions of dollars of weaponry into an unwinnable proxy war in Ukraine while escalating a Cold War into a potential military confrontation with China?

The funding to these policy institutes steers the U.S. foreign policy agenda. To give you a scope of how these contributions determine national security priorities, listed below are six of some of the most influential foreign policy think tanks, along with how much in contributions they’ve received from “defense” companies in the last year.

All funding information for these policy institutes was gathered from the most recent annual report that was available online. Also note that this list is compiled from those that make this information publicly available — many think tanks, such as the hawkish American Enterprise Institute, do not release donation sources publicly.

1 – Center for Strategic and International Studies

According to their 2020 annual report

$500,000+: Northrop Grumman Corporation

$200,000-$499,999: General Atomics (energy and defense corporation that manufactures Predator drones for the CIA), Lockheed Martin, SAIC (provides information technology services to U.S. military)

$100,000-$199,999: Bechtel, Boeing, Cummins (provides engines and generators for military equipment), General Dynamics, Hitachi (provides defense technology), Hanwha Group (South Korean aerospace and defense company), Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. (largest military shipbuilding company in the United States), Mitsubishi Corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (provides intelligence and information technology services to U.S. military), Qualcomm, Inc. (semiconductor company that produces microchips for the U.S. military), Raytheon, Samsung (provides security technology to the U.S. military), SK Group (defense technology company)

$65,000-$99,999: Hyundai Motor (produces weapons systems), Oracle 

$35,000-$64,999: BAE Systems

2 – Center for a New American Security

From fiscal year 2021-2022

$500,000+: Northrop Grumman Corporation

$250,000-$499,999: Lockheed Martin

$100,000-$249,000: Huntington Ingalls Industries, Neal Blue (Chairman and CEO of General Atomics), Qualcomm, Inc., Raytheon, Boeing

$50,000-$99,000: BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, Intel Corporation (provides aerospace and defense technology), Elbit Systems of America (aerospace and defense company), General Dynamics, Palantir Technologies

3 – Hudson Institute

According to their 2021 annual report

$100,000+: General Atomics, Linden Blue (co-owner and Vice Chairman of General Atomics), Neal Blue, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman

$50,000-$99,000: BAE Systems, Boeing, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

4 – Atlantic Council

According to their 2021 annual report

$250,000-$499,000: Airbus, Neal Blue, SAAB (provides defense equipment)

$100,000-$249,000: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon

$50,000-$99,000: SAIC

5 – International Institute for Strategic Studies

Based in London. From fiscal year 2021-2022

£100,000+: Airbus, BAE Systems, Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Rolls Royce (provides military airplane engines)

£25,000-£99,999: Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, Northrop Grumman Corporation

6 – Australian Strategic Policy Institute

Note: ASPI has been one of the primary purveyors of the “Uyghur genocide” narrative

From their 2021-2022 annual report

$186,800: Thales Australia (aerospace and defense corporation)

$100,181: Boeing Australia

$75,927: Lockheed Martin

$20,000: Omni Executive (aerospace and defense corporation)

$27,272: SAAB Australia

April 22, 2023 Posted by | spinbuster, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

SpaceX launches most powerful rocket in history in explosive debut – like many first liftoffs, Starship’s test was a successful failure

The Conversation, Wendy Whitman Cobb 21 Apr 23

Professor of Strategy and Security Studies, Air University

Starship is almost 400 feet (120 meters) tall and weighs 11 million pounds (4.9 million kilograms). An out-of-control rocket full of highly flammable fuel is a very dangerous object, so to prevent any harm, SpaceX engineers triggered the self-destruct mechanism and blew up the entire rocket over the Gulf of Mexico.

On April 20, 2023, a new SpaceX rocket called Starship exploded over the Gulf of Mexico three minutes into its first flight ever. SpaceX is calling the test launch a success, despite the fiery end result. As a space policy expert, I agree that the “rapid unscheduled disassembly” – the term SpaceX uses when its rockets explode – was a very successful failure.

The most powerful rocket ever built

This launch was the first fully integrated test of SpaceX’s new Starship. Starship is the most powerful rocket ever developed and is designed to be fully reusable. It is made of two different stages, or sections. The first stage, called Super Heavy, is a collection of 33 individual engines and provides more than twice the thrust of a Saturn V, the rocket that sent astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s.

The first stage is designed to get the rocket to about 40 miles (65 kilometers) above Earth. Once Super Heavy’s job is done, it is supposed to separate from the rest of the craft and land safely back on the surface to be used again. At that point the second stage, called the Starship spacecraft, is supposed to ignite its own engines to carry the payload – whether people, satellites or anything else – into orbit.

An explosive first flight

While parts of Starship have been tested previously, the launch on April 20, 2023, was the first fully integrated test with the Starship spacecraft stacked on top of the Super Heavy rocket. If it had been successful, once the first stage was spent, it would have separated from the upper stage and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. Starship would then have continued on, eventually crashing 155 miles (250 kilometers) off of Hawaii.

During the SpaceX livestream, the team stated that the primary goal of this mission was to get the rocket off the launch pad. It accomplished that goal and more. Starship flew for more than three minutes, passing through what engineers call “max Q” – the moment at which a rocket experiences the most physical stress from acceleration and air resistance.

According to SpaceX, a few things went wrong with the launch. First, multiple engines went out sometime before the point at which the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy rocket were supposed to separate from each other. The two stages were also unable to separate at the predetermined moment, and with the two stages stuck together, the rocket began to tumble end over end. It is still unclear what specifically caused this failure.

Starship is almost 400 feet (120 meters) tall and weighs 11 million pounds (4.9 million kilograms). An out-of-control rocket full of highly flammable fuel is a very dangerous object, so to prevent any harm, SpaceX engineers triggered the self-destruct mechanism and blew up the entire rocket over the Gulf of Mexico…………………………………… https://theconversation.com/spacex-launches-most-powerful-rocket-in-history-in-explosive-debut-like-many-first-liftoffs-starships-test-was-a-successful-failure-204248

April 22, 2023 Posted by | space travel, USA | Leave a comment

Terrestrial Energy’s molten-salt reactor gets over one hurdle – but many more to come. Will it be a lemon?

Terrestrial Energy’s molten-salt reactor clears prelicensing review, Globe and Mail, MATTHEW MCCLEARN, APRIL 19, 2023

Nuclear-reactor developer Terrestrial Energy has completed a prelicensing review by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, an early milestone along the road to commercialization of its next-generation product.

The Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) is the first of its kind to finish the CNSC process known as a vendor design review. Whereas conventional reactors use solid fuel, this novel variety features liquid fuel dissolved in molten salt that’s heated to temperatures above 600 degrees.

The review, which began in 2016, is intended to provide feedback to reactor vendors in the early stages of development, but does not confer a licence to build one. CNSC staff found “no fundamental barriers to licensing,” signalling their willingness to entertain next-generation designs radically different from Canada’s aging fleet of Candu reactors………..

 the CNSC’s high-level findings, published Tuesday, highlight the challenges ahead. It called on Terrestrial to provide more information to confirm that the IMSR meets safety requirements. Sensors, monitoring equipment, instrumentation and control systems all need to be further developed……………

” you see a lot of engineering questions that have to be followed up on.” -Akira Tokuhiro, a professor at Ontario Tech’s energy and nuclear engineering department. 

Prof. Tokuhiro said answering those questions means Terrestrial (which currently employs about 100 people) will need to grow its engineering staff. NuScale Power, an early developer of small modular reactors (SMR) founded in 2007, stands alone in achieving certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It needed 500 staff and US$1-billion to accomplish that, said Prof. Tokuhiro, who previously served as an engineer at NuScale.

“There have been SMR startups – I won’t name names – where the company and investors quit when they got to the point of going from 50 engineers to 500 engineers on payroll,” he said.

Prof. Tokuhiro estimated that fewer than 20 people throughout North America possess deep experience with molten salt technologies, making it difficult to find qualified workers. Moreover, Terrestrial will likely need to build a demonstration unit – another expensive undertaking.

“It has to be a facility that’s quality assured and quality controlled,” he said. “And it has to be able to produce data that the regulator accepts.”……..

nitially developed in the 1950s and 60s, molten salt reactors never operated commercially but have lately enjoyed renewed interest. The U.S. Department of Energy funded two small demonstration projects, and the Canadian government provided tens of millions of dollars to each of Terrestrial and Moltex Energy, another startup, based in New Brunswick, that’s marketing a model known as the Stable Salt Reactor – Wasteburner (SSR-W).

According to a 2021 report about advanced nuclear reactors by the Union of Concerned Scientists, molten salt reactors are “even less mature” than other novel designs such as sodium-cooled and gas-cooled reactors.

That report – entitled Advanced Isn’t Always Better– concluded they were “significantly worse” than traditional light-water reactors in terms of safety and the risk of nuclear proliferation and terrorism, but acknowledged that some molten salt reactors would generate less hazardous waste than conventional models.

“MSR fuels pose unique safety issues,” the report concluded. “Not only is the hot liquid fuel highly corrosive, but it is also difficult to model its complex behaviour as its flows through a reactor system. If cooling is interrupted, the fuel can heat up and destroy an MSR in a matter of minutes.

“Perhaps the most serious safety flaw is that, in contrast to solid-fuelled reactors, MSRs routinely release large quantities of gaseous fission products, which must be trapped and stored.”

The nuclear industry has precious few small modular reactors available for sale today, but is under intense pressure to bring new ones to market quickly to capitalize on an anticipated surge in demand for low-carbon electricity. Yet recent reactors based on conventional technologies took longer than 30 years to develop, license and build, and some ran disastrously overbudget……………………………………. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-terrestrial-energys-molten-salt-reactor-clears-prelicensing-review/

April 22, 2023 Posted by | Canada, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

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