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A US airman who rescued film of A-bomb horrors is honoured at last

Guardian, Rory Carroll, @rorycarroll72, Sun 31 Jul 2022 

Cameraman Daniel McGovern copied footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki devastation to ensure lessons were learned

The photograph shows devastation in Nagasaki after the atomic bomb: a scorched wilderness where there was once a city. At its centre stands a lone man with a camera.

It was 9 September 1945 and Lt Daniel McGovern, a US Army Air Force cameraman, was documenting ground zero, the point directly below the bomb’s detonation four weeks earlier. Few would recognise McGovern, but the vision of apocalypse is familiar from documentary footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war.

The footage will be shown again this week and next for the 77th anniversaries of the atomic bombings that obliterated the Japanese cities and showed the reality of nuclear war: blasted landscapes, burnt skeletons, radiation sickness.

But those haunting images might not exist were it not for McGovern. As part of the US Strategic Bombing Survey – which studied the impact of bombing – McGovern supervised Japanese and American camera crews in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Back in the US, he saved the footage from suppression by making secret copies.

Only now, decades later, has his full story emerged. Joe McCabe, a journalist from McGovern’s native County Monaghan in Ireland, has pieced together his remarkable life in a biography, Rebels to Reels, published earlier this month after 20 years of research, including interviews with McGovern before his death in 2005………………………………………………….

The fields around Nagasaki were bleached white and the city looked as if a “massive anvil” had flattened it, he later told McCabe. At a ruined school he filmed the bodies of children amid piles of skulls. “Hundreds of kids had been sucked out through the windows. We were always finding bones.”

He filmed harrowing scenes at overwhelmed hospitals, including the agony of a 16-year-old boy named Sumiteru Taniguchi. “His whole back just looked like a bowl of bubbling tomatoes.”

Other patients had rashes, hair loss and bleeding from the nose and mouth – a mysterious malady later identified as radiation sickness.

McGovern also captured the phenomenon of people who had been atomised yet left shadows caused by radiant heat. The two atomic bombs are estimated to have killed more than 200,000 people.

McGovern’s teams amassed 100,000ft of colour footage and enlisted the help of a Japanese newsreel service, Nippon Eigasha, which had 26,000ft of black-and-white footage, much shot before the Americans had arrived. The Irishman helped edit the Japanese footage into a documentary called Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and planned to turn the colour footage into another one.

Authorities in Washington, however, classified the material as secret in 1946. “They didn’t want the American public seeing the horrors,” McGovern said. He discreetly made copies at the Pentagon. He stored one set at an air force motion picture depository in Dayton, Ohio, and kept another set himself.

Years passed – McGovern witnessed rocket tests and debunked theories of aliens at Roswell as “a load of crap” – and then in 1967 a US Congressional committee that included Robert Kennedy asked to see the atomic bomb footage. The material had been declassified but no one could find the originals. McGovern, by now a lieutenant colonel, directed the authorities to his copies.

In 1970 the general public got its first glimpse of some of the footage. It had been incorporated into a film called Hiroshima Nagasaki – August 1945 that premiered at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

The auditorium was packed. At the end, no one made a sound.  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/31/us-airman-daniel-mcgovern-cameraman-hiroshima-nagasaki

August 1, 2022 Posted by | Japan, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Small nuclear reactors will bleed us dry and won’t solve climate change – unfounded promises

there is every reason to believe that if and when a NuScale SMR is built, its final cost too will vastly exceed current official estimates. 

Unfounded promises — Beyond Nuclear International Small Modular Reactors epitomize culture that embraces exaggeration
By M.V. Ramana
In 2006, Elizabeth Holmes, founder of a Silicon Valley startup company called Theranos, was featured in Inc magazine’s annual list of 30 under 30 entrepreneurs. Her entrepreneurship involved blood, or more precisely, testing blood. Instead of the usual vials of blood, Holmes claimed to be able to obtain precise results about the health of patients using a very small sample of blood drawn from just a pinprick. 

The promise was enticing and Holmes had a great run for a decade. She was supported by a bevy of celebrities and powerful individuals, including former U.S. secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, James Mattis, who later served as U.S. secretary of defense, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Not that any of them would be expected to know much about medical science or blood testing. But all that public endorsement helped. As did savvy marketing by Holmes. Theranos raised over $700 million from investors, and receive a market valuation of nearly $9 billion by 2014. 

The downfall started the following year, when the Wall Street Journal exposed that Theranos was actually using standard blood tests behind the scenes because its technology did not really work. In January 2022, Holmes was found guilty of defrauding investors.

The second part of the Theranos story is an exception. In a culture which praises a strategy of routine exaggeration, encapsulated by the slogan “fake it till you make it”, it is rare for a tech CEO being found guilty of making false promises. But the first part of Theranos story—hype, advertisement, and belief in impossible promises—is very much the norm, and not just in the case of companies involved in the health care industry. 

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

Nuclear power offers a great example. In 2003, an important study produced by nuclear advocates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology identified costs, safety, proliferation and waste as the four “unresolved problems” with nuclear power. Not surprisingly, then, companies trying to sell new reactor designs claim that their product will be cheaper, will produce less—or  no—radioactive waste, be immune to accidents, and not contribute to nuclear proliferation. These tantalizing promises are the equivalent of testing blood with a pin prick. 

And, as was the case with Theranos, many such companies have been backed up by wealthy investors and influential spokespeople, who have typically had as much to do with nuclear power as Kissinger had to with testing blood. Examples include Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor; Stephen Harper, the former Prime Minister of Canada; and  Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin group. But just as the Theranos product did not do what Elizabeth Holmes and her backers were claiming, new nuclear reactor designs will not solve the multiple challenges faced by nuclear power.

One class of nuclear reactors that have been extensively promoted in this vein during the last decade are Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). The promotion has been productive for these companies, especially in Canada. Some of these companies have received large amounts of funding from the national and provincial governments. This includes Terrestrial Energy that received CAD 20 million and Moltex that received CAD 50.5 million, both from the Federal Government. The province of New Brunswick added to these by awarding CAD 5 million to Moltex and CAD 25 million in all to ARC-100. 

All these companies have made various claims about the above mentioned problems. Moltex, for example, claims that its reactor design “reduces waste”, a claim also made by ARC-100. ARC-100 also claims to be inherently safe, while Terrestrial claims to be cost-competive. Both Terrestrial and ARC-100 claim to do well on proliferation resistance. In general, no design will admit to failing on any of these challenges. 

Dealing with any of these challenges—safety enhancement, proliferation resistance, decreased generation of waste, and cost reduction—will have to be reflected in the technical design of the nuclear reactor. The problem is that each of these goals will drive the requirements on the reactor design in different, sometimes opposing, directions.

Economics

The hardest challenge is economics. Nuclear energy is an expensive way to generate electricity. In the 2021 edition of its annual cost report, Lazard, the Wall Street firm, estimated that the levelized cost of electricity from new nuclear plants will be between $131 and $204 per megawatt hour; in contrast, newly constructed utility-scale solar and wind plants produce electricity at somewhere between $26 and $50 per megawatt hour according to Lazard. The gap between nuclear power and renewables is large, and is growing larger. While nuclear costs have increased with time, the levelized cost of electricity for solar and wind have declined rapidly, and this is expected to continue over the coming decades. 

Even operating costs for nuclear power plants are high and many reactors have been shut down because they are unprofitable. In 2018, NextEra, a large electric utility company in the United States, decided to shut down the Duane Arnold nuclear reactor, because it estimated that replacing nuclear with wind power will “save customers nearly $300 million in energy costs, on a net present value basis.” 

The high cost of constructing and operating nuclear plants is a key driver of the decline of nuclear power around the world. In 1996, nuclear energy’s share of global commercial gross electricity generation peaked at 17.5 percent. By 2020, that had fallen to 10.1 percent, a 40 percent decline. 

The high costs described above are for large nuclear power plants. SMRs, as the name suggests, produce relatively small amounts of electricity in comparison. Economically, this is a disadvantage. When the power output of the reactor decreases, it generates less revenue for the owning utility, but the cost of constructing the reactor is not proportionately smaller. SMRs will, therefore, cost more than large reactors for each unit (megawatt) of generation capacity. This makes electricity from small reactors more expensive. This is why most of the early small reactors built in the United States shut down early: they just couldn’t compete economically.

SMR proponents argue that the lost economies of scale will be compensated by savings through mass manufacture in factories and as these plants are built in large numbers costs will go down. But this claim is not very tenable. Historically, in the United States and France, the countries with the highest number of nuclear plants, costs went up, not down, with experience. Further, to achieve such savings, these reactors have to be manufactured by the hundreds, if not the thousands, even under very optimistic assumptions about rates of learning. Finally, even if SMRs were to become comparable in cost per unit capacity of large nuclear reactors, that would not be sufficient to make them economically competitive, because their electricity production cost would still be far higher than solar and wind energy.

…………………………………………. Cost escalations are already apparent in the case of the NuScale SMR, arguably the design that is most developed in the West. The estimated cost of the Utah Association of Municipal Power Systems project went from approximately $3 billion in 2014 to $6.1 billion in 2020—this is to build twelve units of the NuScale SMR that were to generate 600 megawatts of power. The cost was so high that NuScale had to change its offering to a smaller number of units that produce only 462 megawatts, but at a cost of $5.32 billion. In other words, the cost per kilowatt of generation capacity is around $11,500 (US dollars). That figure is around 80 percent more than the per kilowatt cost of the infamous Vogtle project at the time its construction started. Since that initial estimate of $14 billion for the two AP1000 reactors, the estimated cost of the much delayed project has escalated beyond $30 billion. As with the AP1000 reactors, there is every reason to believe that if and when a NuScale SMR is built, its final cost too will vastly exceed current official estimates. ……………

Timelines

The other promise made by SMR developers is how fast they can be deployed. GE-Hitachi, for example, claims that an SMR could be “complete as early as 2028” at the Darlington site.  ARC-100 described an operational date of 2029 as an “aggressive but achievable target”. 

Again, the historical record suggests otherwise. Consider NuScale. In 2008, the company projected that “a NuScale plant could be producing electricity by 2015-16”. As of 2022, the company projects 2029-30 as the date for start of generation. Russia’s KLT-40S, a reactor deployed on a barge, offers another example. When construction started in 2007, the reactor was projected to start operations in October 2010. It was actually commissioned a whole decade later, in May 2020. 

The SMR designs being considered in Canada are even further off. In December 2021, Ontario Power Generation chose the BWRX-300 for the Darlington site. That design is based on GE-Hitachi’s Economical Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) design, which was submitted for licensing to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2005. That ESBWR design was changed nine times; the NRC finally approved revision 10 from 2014. If the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission does its due diligence, it might be 2030 or later before the BWRX-300 is even licensed for construction. That assumes that the BWRX-300 design remains unchanged. And, then, of course, there will be the inevitable delays (and cost escalations) during construction. ………….

Waste, Proliferation and Safety

Small reactors also cause all of the usual problems: the risk of severe accidents, the production of radioactive waste, and the potential for nuclear weapons proliferation. …………

……………  small modular reactor proposals often envision building multiple reactors at a site. The aim is to lower costs by taking advantage of common infrastructure elements. The configuration offered by NuScale, for example, has twelve reactor modules at each site, although it also offers four- and six-unit versions. With multiple reactors, the combined radioactive inventories might be comparable to that of a large reactor. Multiple reactors at a site increase the risk that an accident at one unit might either induce accidents at other reactors or make it harder to take preventive actions at others. This is especially the case if the underlying reason for the accident is a common one that affects all of the reactors, such as an earthquake. In the case of the accidents at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, explosions at one reactor damaged the spent fuel pool in a co-located reactor. Radiation leaks from one unit made it difficult for emergency workers to approach the other units. ……………………………

Claims by SMR proponents about not producing waste are not credible, especially if waste is understood not as one kind of material but a number of different streams. A recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined three specific SMR designs and calculates that “relative to a gigawatt-scale PWR” these three will produce up to 5.5 times more spent fuel, 30 times more long-lived low and intermediate level waste, and 35 times more short-lived low and intermediate level waste. In other words, in comparison with large light water reactors, SMRs produce more, not less, waste per unit of electricity generated. As Paul Dorfman from the University of Sussex commented, “compared with existing conventional reactors, SMRs would increase the volume and complexity of the nuclear waste problem”.

Further, some of the SMR designs involve the use of materials that are corrosive and/or pyrophoric. Dealing with these forms is more complicated. For example, the ARC-100 design will use sodium that cannot be disposed of in geological repositories without extensive processing. Such processing has never been carried out at scale. The difference in chemical properties mean that the methods developed for dealing with waste from CANDU reactors will not work as such for these wastes.

Many SMR designs also make the problem of proliferation worse. Unlike the CANDU reactor design that uses natural uranium, many SMR designs use fuel forms that require either enriched uranium or plutonium. Either plutonium or uranium that is highly enriched in the uranium-235 isotope can be used to make nuclear weapons. Because uranium enrichment facilities can be reconfigured to alter enrichment levels, it is possible for a uranium enrichment facility designed to produce fuel for a reactor to be reconfigured to produce fuel for a bomb. All else being equal, nuclear reactor designs that require fuel with higher levels of uranium enrichment pose a greater proliferation risk—this is the reason for the international effort to convert highly enriched uranium fueled research reactors to low enriched uranium fuel or shutting them down.

Plutonium is created in all nuclear power plants that use uranium fuel, but it is produced alongside intensely radioactive fission products. Practically any mixture of plutonium isotopes could be used for making weapons. Using the plutonium either to fabricate nuclear fuel or to make nuclear weapons, require the “reprocessing” of the spent fuel. Canada has not reprocessed its power reactor spent fuel, but some SMR designs, such as the Moltex design, propose to “recycle” CANDU spent fuel. Last year, nine US nonproliferation experts wrote to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressing serious concerns “about the technology Moltex proposes to use.” 

The proliferation problem is made worse by SMRs in many ways. ……………………..

Conclusion

The saga of Theranos should remind us to be skeptical of unfounded promises. Such promises are the fuel that drive the current interest in small modular nuclear reactors………

Rather than seeing the writing on the wall, unfortunately, government agencies are wasting money on funding small modular reactor proposals. Worse, they seek to justify such funding by repeating the tall claims made by promoters of these technologies……  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2022/07/31/unfounded-promises00

August 1, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Dead fish near SC nuclear fuel site were an early warning. Then came the spills and accidents

The State, BY SAMMY FRETWELL, JULY 30, 2022

Dead fish floated in a small pond near a nuclear fuel factory one day in 1980, raising concerns about the Columbia plant’s danger to the surrounding environment. A cocktail of contaminants had been documented in groundwater, which seeps into creeks and ponds, and it appeared that one of these pollutants — ammonia — had contributed to the fish kill in Gator Pond, according to environmental studies. It was a disturbing discovery that foreshadowed a variety of environmental and safety troubles the Westinghouse nuclear fuel plant would deal with over the next 40 years.

Since 1980, more than 40 environmental and safety problems have been tied to the Westinghouse plant, ranging from groundwater pollution to nuclear safety violations that endangered plant workers, according to a review of news accounts and public records by The State. Despite those issues, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a final environmental study Friday that said the future environmental impact of the plant would be small to moderate. The NRC recommended a new license for the plant to operate for an additional 40 years, a decision that greases the skids for final license approval this fall.

John Grego, who is with the Friends of Congaree Swamp organization that supports Congaree National Park, said the fuel factory has had too many troubles of all kinds through the years. “The variety of problems is what troubles me, that this occurred in so many aspects of their culture,’’ Grego said. “It just seems to suggest systemic problems with the safety culture at Westinghouse. You had these long-standing problems that weren’t remediated, problems that weren’t reported.’’

Some of the pollution tied to Westinghouse was not known to the public or government regulators for years, which has incensed some Lower Richland residents who live near the plant. Some residents of the predominantly African-American community have said they were left out of the loop for too long.

Only in recent years, when a flurry of safety issues at the plant arose, did many people learn about past pollution. A key community concern is whether water pollution from the plant could one-day contaminate their drinking water wells. State regulators said mechanisms are now in place to hold Westinghouse more accountable, while resolving past environmental problems. The company struck a binding agreement with the state Department of Health and Environmental Control in 2019 to investigate and clean up pollution on the property. The company also is nearing completion of an investigative study of the site’s environmental problems, according to a statement Friday from DHEC.

……………………… Congaree Riverkeeper Bill Stangler was skeptical. Stangler said he is not confident Westinghouse will improve the operation, despite recent assurances and agreements with state regulators to clean up and do a better job. The plant is located near the Congaree River. “They have a long track record of problems at that facility that would raise anyone’s eyebrows,’’ Stangler said. “It’s concerning if you have an interest in the environment; it’s concerning if you are someone who lives in the surrounding area. Time after time we have seen that they haven’t followed the rules, and they have had problems.’’

………………………

Troubles at Westinghouse began in the 1970s, not long after the plant opened, when a wastewater pond leaked. But problems continued steadily after the 1980 fish kill, sometimes little known to the public. After the company reported a leak of uranium through a hole in the plant floor in 2018, federal and state regulators learned that the company had spilled toxins into the ground in 2008 and in 2011 without telling them or the public. The company said it was not required to report the spills. Contaminants such as fluoride, uranium, solvents and ammonia have been found in groundwater on the Westinghouse site. Technetium, a nuclear pollutant, also has been discovered on the soggy property, but no one has yet pinpointed the cause of the pollution.

Some of the biggest troubles at Westinghouse have revolved around nuclear safety inside the plant. The company has run into trouble through the years for failing to make sure nuclear materials it manages didn’t trigger small bursts of radiation, which can endanger workers. Records show the NRC has expressed concerns multiple times with Westinghouse over the issue, known as criticality safety

……………………… Government records also show that people working at the plant falsified records, including as recently as 2009. In some cases, employees have been injured or threatened by nuclear accidents.

…………………. News accounts and government records also show that Westinghouse has, at times, had trouble handling and keeping track of nuclear material it is responsible for………………………………………….  https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article263945551.html

August 1, 2022 Posted by | environment, safety, USA | Leave a comment

UN Nuclear Review: A Prime Time to Stop the New Arms Race

The real solution to the threat of nuclear war is in plain sight, but still the powerful weapons makers and war profiteers refuse to yield.

 https://medium.com/@codepink/un-nuclear-review-a-prime-time-to-stop-the-new-arms-race-6e3303aa0ccd By Marcy Winograd and Medea Benjamin, 31 July 22,

In the run-up to August’s United Nation’s 10th Annual Review of the landmark Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a review undertaken every five years, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s State Department issued a surprising reaffirmation of the U.S. commitment to this treaty and the “ultimate goal of a world without nuclear weapons.”

The NPT, designed to “further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament,” entered into force in 1970 and was extended indefinitely in 1995. It has now been signed by 191 nations, including the U.S. and Russia.

If only Blinken’s verbal support for the NPT was U.S. policy, as opposed to wishful thinking or trickery.

As treaty signatories and civil society representatives from around the world gather for a month in New York to evaluate the treaty’s implementation, the White House, Congress, and military contractors will move ahead on a near $2 trillion nuclear rearmament program euphemistically termed “nuclear modernization.”

Modernization is a kitchen upgrade. New touch-to-open cabinets. New LED recessed lighting.

It is not 600 new–instead of funeralized–intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM’s) on hair trigger alert to replace the Minuteman III in the midwest. Each of these “modern missiles” would span the length of a bowling lane with new warheads that are 20 times more powerful than the bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Modernization is not a new sea-launched nuclear cruise missile that carries both conventional and nuclear warheads with the same radar profile to confuse “the enemy.”

Modernization is not 100 new stealth air-launched nuclear missiles like the B-21 Raider, also capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear weapons.

Ahh, but these nuclear weapons are just upgrades, not new systems, right?

Semantic back-flips aside, U.S. nuclear “modernization” means the development of new weapon systems with new nuclear warheads and a new arms race. What the State Department failed to mention in its reaffirmation of the NPT was that the U.S. nuclear rearmament program violates the spirit and intent of Article 6 of the NPT, which prohibits the pursuit of new nuclear weapons.

Instead of pursuing world peace and climate preservation for our children, US leaders are chasing a reckless foreign policy.

In April, the Wall Street Journal published a commentary titled “The U.S. should show it can win a nuclear war.”

More recently, the City of New York, home of the United Nations, released, however well-intentioned, a so-called public service announcement on how to survive a nuclear attack, referring to it as “the big one”, as though it were an earthquake. No mention was made of blinding flashes of light or widespread radiation that blisters the skin or immediate incineration. Instead, New Yorkers were instructed to get inside, stay inside and stay tuned. Tuned to what? Our fading heartbeats?

According to the International Committee to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a nuclear war between the US and Russia would lead to over 34-million dead and 57 million injured in the first few hours — and a dark subzero winter of famine and soot blocking the sun for those who survived.

No mention is made of this nightmare scenario, however, in the 2019 Joint Chiefs Nuclear Operations Publication (3–72), a Strangelovian document briefly released then deleted from the website of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The vanishing unclassified document, preserved by the Federation of American Scientists, reflects the Pentagon’s delusional thinking that a nuclear war can be limited and won. Mark Milley, then Secretary of the Army, now Chair of the Joint Chiefs, signed off on the chilling statements below:

“A nuclear weapon could be brought into the campaign as a result of perceived failure in a conventional campaign, potential loss of control or regime, or to escalate the conflict to sue for peace on more-favorable terms.”

“Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability …”

UN treaty signatories, along with NGO conference delegates, should use the month-long NPT operations review to speak truth to power.

First, they should speak out against the dangerous proxy war in Ukraine between the U.S./NATO and Russia that could lead to a nuclear confrontation. The delegates should denounce Russian President Vladmir Putin for ordering the invasion of Ukraine and call on all parties in the war to engage in a negotiated settlement.

One miscalculation, one moment of confusion, one intentional launch of a short-range nuclear warhead, followed by a retaliatory long-range nuclear weapon, could burn us alive and blanket the world in ash.

Delegates should also call on the United States and NATO to denuclearize Europe. This would entail removing US nuclear weapons from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey; scrapping plans to redeploy nuclear weapons to the United Kingdom, where for 14 years nuclear storage facilities rightfully have sat empty; and removing the provocative anti-ballistic missiles from Romania and Poland, both of which are perilously close to Russia’s border.

On the broader issue of disarmament, attendees at the UN meetings should shout “Come to your senses!” to the President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley for supporting nuclear rearmament. Delegates should denounce members of Congress who recently voted for the $840 billion dollar military budget that includes $30 billion as another down payment on the nuclear rearmament program.

Participants at the UN gathering could also call on President Biden to declassify his Nuclear Posture Review. Every administration is obligated by US law to release a new Nuclear Posture Review outlining the administration’s nuclear policy.

To date, Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review remains a secret.

Classified.

Declassifying the Review would allow the people of the United States, and the world, to know whether President Biden is committed to keeping his campaign promise of no first use of nuclear weapons and if he abides by the Joint Statement he signed with Putin in 2021 and the Joint Agreement he signed in 2022 with five nuclear weapons states, including Russia and China, committing the US to the NPT because “a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.”

The real solution to the threat of nuclear war is in plain sight. It is the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons. It was adopted in July 2017 and entered into force in January 2021, after it was ratified by 50 states. None of the nuclear states have signed it.

The NPT Review Conference is a golden opportunity for the participants, and the public in general, to call on all nations to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and to once and for all embrace the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to, in the treaty’s words, “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”

Take Action: Email the White House to demand President Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review be made public. Call your US Senators (202) 224–3121 to urge them to vote NO on the 2023 military budget or NDAA.

Marcy Winograd of Progressive Democrats of America served as a 2020 DNC Delegate for Bernie Sanders and co-founded the Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party. Coordinator of CODEPINKCONGRESS, Marcy spearheads Capitol Hill calling parties to mobilize co-sponsors and votes for peace and foreign policy legislation.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace, is the author of the 2018 book, “Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Her previous books include: “Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection” (2016); “Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control” (2013); “Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart” (1989), and (with Jodie Evans) “Stop the Next War Now (Inner Ocean Action Guide)” (2005).

August 1, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ukraine War Hangs Over UN Meeting on Nuclear Treaty’s Legacy

VOA UNITED NATIONS 31 July 22, — 

There was already plenty of trouble to talk about when a major U.N. meeting on the landmark Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was originally supposed to happen in 2020.

Now the pandemic-postponed conference finally starts Monday as Russia’s war in Ukraine has reanimated fears of nuclear confrontation and cranked up the urgency of trying to reinforce the 50-year-old treaty.

“It is a very, very difficult moment,” said Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

Russia’s invasion, accompanied by ominous references to its nuclear arsenal, “is so significant for the treaty and really going to put a lot of pressure on this,” she said. “How governments react to the situation is going to shape future nuclear policy.”

The four-week meeting aims to generate a consensus on the next steps, but expectations are low for a substantial — if any — agreement……………………………

The events in Ukraine create a tricky choice for the upcoming conference, said Patricia Lewis, a former U.N. disarmament research official who is now at the international affairs think tank Chatham House in London.

“On the one hand, in order to support the treaty and what it stands for, governments will have to address Russia’s behavior and threats,” she said. “On the other hand, to do so risks dividing the treaty members.”

Another uncomfortable dynamic: The war has heightened some countries’ apprehensions about not having nuclear weapons, especially since Ukraine once housed but gave up a trove of Soviet nukes.

Ukraine is hardly the only hot topic.

North Korea appears to have been preparing recently for its first nuclear weapons test since 2017. And talks about reviving the deal meant to keep Iran from developing nukes are in limbo.

The U.S. and Russia have only one remaining treaty curtailing their nuclear weapons and have been developing new technologies. Britain last year raised a self-imposed cap on its stockpile. China says it’s modernizing — or, the U.S. claims, expanding — the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal……………..

In recent years, frustration with the Nonproliferation Treaty catalyzed another pact that outright prohibits nuclear weapons. Ratified by more than 60 countries, it took effect last year, though without any nuclear-armed nations on board.

At a recent meeting in Vienna, participating countries condemned “any and all nuclear threats” and inked a lengthy plan that includes considering an international trust fund for people harmed by nuclear weapons.

Fihn, whose Geneva-based group campaigned for the nuclear ban treaty, hopes the vigor in Vienna serves as inspiration — or notice — for countries to make progress at the U.N. conference.

“If you don’t do it here,” she said, “we’re moving on without you elsewhere.” https://www.voanews.com/a/ukraine-war-hangs-over-un-meeting-on-nuclear-treaty-legacy/6681249.html

July 31, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Grief for the abuse of nature that will come with Sizewell C nuclear station

 

East Anglia – already in drought and water scarcity, and climate change bringing heat waves – and they want to inflict more water-guzzling nuclear power upon this fragile environment

It’s hard not to be a nimby when nuclear meets nature. The margins of
our village lanes are thick with yellow leaves. It looks autumnal, but
they’ve changed colour and fallen due to heat stress. The fields are
tinder-dry; crop fires have sprung up here and there, some sparked by chaff
from combine harvesters hitting power lines, some thought to have been
started by the sun glancing off glass bottles left as litter.

In my garden the sparrows are no longer busy and voluble but sit out each day’s heat
in the privet, tiny beaks agape.

East Anglia gets little rain; the region
includes some of the driest places in the UK. Even so, aerial images
comparing now with last July are shocking — only the larger forests and
the damper creases of the watercourses still appearing green.

When I went to our local river for a cooling paddle, the water didn’t even reach my
knees. I drove to the coast. Suffolk’s seasides can be busy, but the long
dog-friendly beach south of the fishing hamlet of Sizewell is largely
overlooked by tourists and is a great place to swim. Kwasi Kwarteng, the
business secretary, had just given the proposed new nuclear power station
the go-ahead, and, bobbing in the waves, I gazed at the existing site’s
faraway blocks and sphere and tried to come to terms with what’s likely
to happen to this lovely stretch of coast — not to mention the Minsmere
nature reserve and all the sleepy villages, nightingale-filled woods and
family farms that the long building process will irrevocably change.

My grief for the countryside here is acute. I wish there were other options
than Sizewell on the table. You might say that’s nimbyism, but without
people willing to protect their home patches even more of our precious
landscapes, habitats and creatures will disappear — and that’s not just
a loss to locals, it’s a loss to all of us.

 Times 29th July 2022

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/its-hard-not-to-be-a-nimby-when-nuclear-meets-nature-sd2wgdt9b

July 31, 2022 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

Westinghouse Nuclear Fuel Fabrication plant – a detailed history of troubles.

Dead fish near SC nuclear fuel site were an early warning. Then came the spills and accidents, The State, BY SAMMY FRETWELL, JULY 30, 2022 

“……………………………………………………. 1980: State regulators learn of a fish kill near the Westinghouse wastewater plant. They found elevated levels of fluoride and ammonia-nitrogen in groundwater and surface water. It was later determined that the pollution came from the plant wastewater area. 1980: Twenty plant workers evacuated from Westinghouse after a small leak of uranium hexafluoride gas.

1982: Westinghouse unable to find 9.5 pounds of slightly enriched uranium, according to an NRC report. 1983: State regulators fine Westinghouse $6,000 for illegally shipping flammable material that caused a fire at Barnwell County’s low-level nuclear waste dump. 1988: Radioactivity found in monitoring wells is thought to have come from prior leaks of industrial wastewater. Low concentrations of Uranium 235, 234 and 238 found.

1989: EPA investigators find an array of pollutants in groundwater at the Westinghouse site, some higher than safe drinking water levels. Vinyl Chloride and TCE, both of which can cause cancer, were found to exceed the drinking water standard. 1989: Twenty five dead deer discovered at the Westinghouse property, some of them in an area where wastewater was being discharged near the Congaree River. The deer reportedly died from nitrate poisoning, but public records reviewed by The State do not show an exact cause. 1992: Trichloroethene (TCE), cis-1,2-dichloroethene (CIS 1,2 DCE) and tetrachloroethene (PCE), are detected at amounts above the federal maximum contaminant level for safe drinking water. The high levels were found near the plant’s oil house.

1993: NRC fines Westinghouse $18,750 after alleging that the company failed to perform a criticality safety analysis and failed to conduct safety tests. 1994: Radioactive leak exposes 55 workers to uranium hexafluoride and shuts down the Westinghouse plant. 1997: The plant loses two low-enriched fuel rods. The NRC says five violations of NRC requirements occurred. Safety was not compromised, but problems “are indicative of inadequate management attention.’’

1998: Company fined $13,750 after NRC notes the “loss of criticality control,’’ a problem that could have led to an accident. The agency says a problem had gone uncorrected. 2000: NRC hits Westinghouse with a violation notice because an operator “willfully violated criticality safety procedures when preparing to mix a batch of powder.’’ 2000: Uranyl nitrate spills at the Westinghouse plant, causing a cleanup. When the cleanup began, workers found the spill was worse than originally thought.

2001: NRC hits Westinghouse with a violation for transporting 3 cylinders of licensed material with elevated radiation levels. 2001: Westinghouse fails to follow criticality safety rules at a uranium recovery area dissolver elevator, violation notice says. Containers were not stacked far enough apart, reducing safety. Westinghouse didn’t do enough to fix the problem. 2001: NRC issues a violation notice to Westinghouse after raising concerns about criticality safety, including failing to keep uranium powder mixing hoods properly separated.

2001: NRC hits Westinghouse with violation after criticality safety controls failed to work on the ammonium diurnate process lines. 2002: NRC letter tells Westinghouse that its criticality safety control efforts need improvement. NRC Regional Administrator Luis Reyes says the last two safety reviews have urged improvement for criticality safety. Letter notes concern about nuclear transportation program. 2002: NRC notice of investigation says a contractor for Westinghouse falsified records about the receipt and processing of materials. That resulted in a small amount of nuclear material being improperly shipped to nuclear site in Tennessee. 2004: NRC again raises concerns about criticality safety, the practice of making sure a nuclear chain reaction does not occur. Efforts to improve compliance with procedures and “implement criticality safety controls were not fully effective,’’ letter from regional administrator Luis Reyes says.

2004: NRC letter hits Westinghouse with a $24,000 fine. The company failed to maintain criticality controls as required. Ash in the company’s incinerator exceeded concentration limits for uranium. The Level 2 violation is, at the time, the most serious ever noted at the plant. 2008: Broken pipe spills radioactive material into the soil in the same area as a later 2011 leak, but Westinghouse doesn’t tell state or federal regulators for years. 2008: The NRC sanctions Westinghouse for losing sixteen sample vials of uranium hexafluoride. The company didn’t properly document and control the transfer of the vials and failed to secure them from “unauthorized removal.’’ 2008: Westinghouse hit with a violation notice after a worker disabled an alarm and bypassed a safety significant interlock.

2009: Westinghouse fires a contract foreman after federal regulators found that he had falsified records. Westinghouse also was cited by the NRC. The foreman certified that employees were trained in safety procedures, when they had not completed training.

2009: Westinghouse loses 25 pounds of pellets that were to be used in making nuclear fuel rods. NRC downplays danger but says Westinghouse should have kept better track of the nuclear material.

2010: NRC levies $17,500 fine against Westinghouse after uranium-bearing wastewater spilled inside the plant.

2011: Uranium leaks into ground beneath the Westinghouse plant, but federal inspectors weren’t told about it for years. NRC officials said they only learned about the spill in 2017.

2012: Worker exposed to uranium-containing acid and whisked to a hospital by emergency medical crews. The worker was treated for pain and released.

2012: Westinghouse fails to follow through on a report to improve the facility so it could better withstand an earthquake, NRC says. Recommendations had been made nine years previously.

2015: Three workers are injured when steam erupted from a wash tank. The workers are taken to a Columbia area hospital for treatment and later sent to the burn center in Augusta, which specializes in treating severe burns.

2016: A buildup of uranium that could have led to a small burst of radiation forces Westinghouse to shut down part of the fuel plant and temporarily lay off 170 workers, about one-tenth of its work force at the plant. The uranium found in the scrubber area is nearly three times the legal limit.

2017: Westinghouse worker exposed to a solution toxic enough to cause chemical burns when the solution sprayed him. 2018: Uranium leaks into the ground through a hole in the Westinghouse plant floor. An acid solution had eaten into the floor. Soil was contaminated.

2018. The NRC says Westinghouse allowed workers to walk across a protecting liner for years, which likely weakened the liner and contributed to a hole in the floor that allowed uranium solution to leak out.

2019: Fire breaks out in a drum laden with mop heads, rags and other cleaning equipment.

2019: State and federal authorities report that water had leaked through a rusty shipping container and onto barrels of uranium-tainted trash. Contaminants then leaked into the soil below the shipping container floor.

2019: Westinghouse sends three workers to the hospital after they complained of an unusual taste in their mouths while doing maintenance on equipment that contains hydrofluoric acid.

2019: Two contaminated barrels are shipped from the Westinghouse plant to Washington State after workers in South Carolina failed to properly examine the containers for signs of radioactive contamination.

2020. The NRC issues violation against Westinghouse, this time after questions arose about nuclear safety. The issue centered on improper security of tamper seals, used to keep nuclear material from being stolen.

2020. NRC reports finding 13 pinhole leaks in a protective liner.

2020: South Carolina officials raise concerns about earthquakes at Westinghouse.

Sources: NRC records and news reports from The State. https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article263945551.html

July 31, 2022 Posted by | incidents, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear Weapons Policies of Japan and South Korea Challenged

By Jaya Ramachandran, GENEVA (IDN)31 July 22, — The Basel Peace Office, in cooperation with other civil society organisations, has challenged the nuclear weapons policies of Japan and South Korea in the UN Human Rights Council, maintaining that these violate the Right to Life, a right enshrined in Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

The two East Asian countries’ nuclear strategies have been called into question in reports submitted on July 14 as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the obligations of Japan, South Korea and 12 other countries under human rights treaties. (See Submission on Japan and Submission on South Korea).

The submissions, presented at a time when Russia has made nuclear threats to the US and NATO if they intervene in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, underline the need to address the risks of nuclear deterrence policies. Besides, Russia is not the only country that possesses nuclear weapons and/or maintains options to initiate nuclear war………………

 both Japan and South Korea are engaged in extended nuclear deterrence policies which involve the threat or use of US nuclear weapons on their behalf in an armed conflict. Both have also supported the option of first use of nuclear weapons on their behalf, even when the United States has been trying to step back from such a policy.

The Basel Peace Office and other civil society organisations argue that the extended nuclear deterrence policies of Japan and South Korea violate their human rights obligations, as is their lack of support for negotiations for comprehensive, global nuclear disarmament.

The submissions make several recommendations of policies the governments could take to conform to the Right to Life. These include adopting no-first-use policies and taking measures to phase out the role of nuclear weapons in their security doctrines.

This they could do by establishing a Northeast Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone and urging at the ongoing Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference an agreement on the global elimination of nuclear weapons by 2045, the 75th anniversary of the NPT………………………..
more https://www.indepthnews.net/index.php/armaments/nuclear-weapons/5487-nuclear-weapons-policies-of-japan-and-south-korea-challenged

July 31, 2022 Posted by | Japan, South Korea, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Kishida to call for nuke-free world in historic address at U.N. treaty conference

Japan Times, BY ERIC JOHNSTON, 31 July 22,

In a year in which nuclear disarmament hopes have been dented by not-so-subtle references by Russia to its own arsenal following its invasion of Ukraine, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is set to make history as the first Japanese leader to address the United Nations’ nuclear nonproliferation treaty review conference, which begins in New York on Monday.

Kishida, who represents a district in Hiroshima, is expected to call for a world without nuclear weapons and for greater transparency among nuclear powers regarding their stockpiles and capabilities. His message will refer to Japan’s experience as the only country to have been attacked with an atomic bomb. The leader will also stress that all countries should neither use nuclear weapons nor threaten to use them.

Speaking to reporters in Tokyo on Friday, the prime minister said it was important to link the treaty’s ideals with current geopolitical realities.

“The debate on nuclear disarmament is atrophying,” Kishida said, and he announced he would present a plan at the conference that would hopefully serve as a roadmap toward reaching a world without nuclear weapons.

The prime minister sees Japan’s role at the nearly monthlong conference, which will focus on keeping the buildup of nuclear weapons under control, as one of helping to bridge the differences between nuclear powers and nonnuclear states. Kishida is hoping to promote talks between China and the United States on nuclear disarmament and arms control. He’s also expected to call on the international community to work toward North Korea’s denuclearization………………………….
more https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/07/31/national/nuclear-conference-kishida-speech/

July 31, 2022 Posted by | Japan, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Lawmaker Says Iran Nuclear Talks Will Resume In Coming Days

 https://www.iranintl.com/en/202207318199 1 Aug 22, An Iranian lawmaker has said the talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, will resume probably in Vienna in the coming days.

Yaghoub Rezazadeh, a member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said on Sunday that the decision has been taken thanks to the latest efforts of the European parties to reach a conclusion about the negotiations. 

Rezazadeh added that the Islamic Republic had proposed that the next round would be held in Iran, but the final location of the negotiations will be determined following the agreement by the parties.

He said during the past few days the members of the committee held several meetings with Ali Bagheri-Kani, the head of Tehran’s negotiating team.

Moreover, Ali Bagheri-Kani tweeted on Sunday that “We shared our proposed ideas, both on substance and form, to pave the way for a swift conclusion of Vienna negotiations which were aimed at fixing the damaging complicated situation caused by the US unilateral and unlawful withdrawal.”

He added that Tehran works closely with the JCPOA partners, in particular with the EU coordinator of the talks “to give another chance to the US to demonstrate good faith and act responsibly. As Iran, we stand ready to conclude the negotiations in a short order, should the other side be ready to do the same.”

State Department spokesman Ned Price said on July 26 that the US was mulling European Union’s proposals over Iran’s nuclear program. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell recently produced new ideas to bridge differences between the United States and Iran and allow both to return to the agreement.

July 31, 2022 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Is it environmentally sound to bury a massive stockpile of nuclear waste beneath the ocean floor? Probably not.

 In case you were wondering if it was environmentally sound to bury a
massive stockpile of untreated nuclear waste beneath the ocean floor, the
answer that many UK-based experts will likely give you is: probably not.
But according to The Guardian, that’s exactly what the UK government is
planning to do — and experts are begging them to reconsider, arguing that
burying the waste beneath the seabed could devastate marine life in the
short-term, and leave future generations with an even more serious
environmental catastrophe to sort out.

 Futurism 30th July 2022

https://futurism.com/the-byte/uk-bury-nuclear-waste-under-ocean-floor

July 31, 2022 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Hinkley Point B nuclear power station to close permanently, due to safety concerns

 Hinkley Point B closure adds to strain on Britain’s power supplies. The
nuclear plant is due to stop generating power on Monday,…  Hinkley Point B, near Bridgwater in Somerset, will stop generating at 10am on Monday morning, 46 years after it first
sent power to the grid. It is closing due to age, with hairline cracks appearing in its graphite
bricks. EDF said it was too late to try and keep it open for winter, given the detailed safety case required.

Telegraph 30th July 2022

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/07/30/nuclear-plant-closure-adds-strain-britains-power-supplies/

July 31, 2022 Posted by | safety, UK | Leave a comment

JNFL to consider delaying completion of spent fuel reprocessing plant

26th postponement of the commissioning of the Rokkashô-mura nuclear reprocessing plant in Japan. It should have started in 1997…

July 29, 2022
At a press conference on July 29, Naohiro Masuda, president of JNFL, which is constructing a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Rokkasho Village, said that the plant’s target completion date, which is approximately two months away, “has reached a point where we have to consider postponing it. JNFL is considering the postponement of the construction of the Rokkasho Nuclear Power Plant.

JNFL has set the target completion date of the spent fuel reprocessing plant it is constructing in Rokkasho Village for the first half of this fiscal year, by September of this year.

At a regular press conference held on September 29, JNFL President Masuda stated, “Next week we will have less than two months to complete the plant, so we would like to consider the future outlook based on the status of the examination. We have reached a point where we need to consider postponing the project,” he said, indicating that he would consider postponing the project.

President Masuda cited as reasons for the postponement the ongoing Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review of safety measures and other work that are prerequisites for completion, as well as the fact that the amount of work has increased from the original plan and that the plan needs to be carefully examined in order to proceed safely.

Regarding the time frame if the project is postponed, he stated, “I don’t think it will be something that will take two or three years,” but he also indicated that it is not expected to last more than a few months.

The reprocessing plant was originally planned to be completed in 1997, 25 years ago, but has been postponed 25 times due to repeated problems.

The reopening of the uranium enrichment plant has been postponed.
JNFL announced on April 29 that the plant in Rokkasho, which manufactures enriched uranium needed to produce nuclear fuel for use in nuclear power plants, will resume operation in February of next year, instead of September of this year, based on the status of safety measures and other factors. JNFL announced on April 29 that the resumption of operations at the Rokkasho uranium enrichment plant, which is located in Rokkasho Village, has been changed to February next year.

The uranium enrichment plant in Rokkasho is the only commercial facility in Japan that produces enriched uranium, which is necessary for nuclear fuel used in nuclear power plants. The plant has been out of operation since September 201 7 in order to conduct safety work to comply with the new national regulatory standards.

JNFL announced on the 29th that it had changed the date of resumption of operation to February next year, citing delays in the safety work.

[President apologizes for trouble with reprocessed liquid waste.
Naohiro Masuda, president of JNFL, apologized for the trouble at the spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Rokkasho village, saying, “I would like to express my deepest apologies for causing great concern to the local community.

At the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant, the cooling system for one of the tanks storing high-level radioactive liquid waste stopped functioning for about eight hours on the second of this month.

At the beginning of the press conference on March 29, JNFL President Masuda stated, “I would like to express my deepest apologies for causing so much concern to the local community. I am very sorry.

JNFL has stated that one of the two lines circulating water to cool the tank was under construction, and that a worker who was instructed to close the valve on that line may have inadvertently closed the valve on the line that was still in operation. The company claims that this is the case.

Regarding measures to prevent recurrence, President Masuda explained that valves that affect the cooling function are physically locked so that they cannot be operated, and that when safety-related equipment is placed in one line for construction or other reasons, monitoring is strengthened more than usual.

He added, “We will thoroughly implement measures to prevent recurrence and continue to place the highest priority on safety.
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/lnews/aomori/20220729/6080016788.html?fbclid=IwAR0J114Ufuu1EDQ3nl_NeXdxMclco4QjbKnxyoI87ry9B0Ff_d0Btawxkig

July 31, 2022 Posted by | Japan | , , , | Leave a comment

Nuclear Industry Association of Japan (NIAJ) proposes that “new and additional nuclear power plants and rebuilding of nuclear power plants should be clearly stated in national plans

Shiro Arai, president of the Japan Atomic Energy Industries Association (JAEA), presented a proposal calling for the construction and replacement of new nuclear power plants.

July 22, 2022
On July 22, the Japan Atomic Energy Industries Association (JAEA), an association of companies involved in nuclear power generation, released a proposal calling for the construction of new nuclear power plants and their replacement (rebuilding). The association said this is the first time it has issued such a proposal. The association calls for new nuclear power plants to be built or rebuilt to maintain the nuclear power supply chain.

　Public distrust of nuclear power plants has been deep-rooted in the wake of the accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The government has stated that it “does not envision” new or rebuilt reactors at this time, and a freeze on nuclear power plants continues in Japan.

　However, the crisis in Ukraine has led to…
https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASQ7Q6FMPQ7QULFA00G.html?fbclid=IwAR15C-Y5Sa1q9Ix65ZQ3PZpe3Oo7o3ZEnoTISCxBrTj-NzMO5nQ6xPsAhQQ

July 31, 2022 Posted by | Japan | , , , | Leave a comment

French finance minister and MPs clash over future of nuclear power

 to “all those who confuse reality with their fantasies […] nuclear power does not work”.

By Paul Messad | EURACTIV.fr | translated by Arthur Riffaud, Jul 29, 2022 

Left-wing MPs and Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire came to heated debate in the French National Assembly over a reduction in nuclear power production during the vote on the rectifying finance bill.

On Tuesday night (26-27 July), French MPs adopted the rectifying finance bill, in which it was agreed the country’s public energy supplier EDF should be nationalised. At a minimum, it was agreed that the state will make a public offer to buy the remaining 16% of the company that it does not already own, a sum amounting to €9.7 billion……….

LFI MP Antoine Léaument said that the cost of the ‘Grand Carénage’ programme, aimed at extending the life of power plants, would represent the same budget as the construction of 33 to 76 offshore wind farms, which would produce more installed power than that of nuclear.

The themes of the discussion are not new. In June, LFI’s party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon revived debate over nuclear’s votality, saying that while this is not a “fact”, the current situation of climate breakdown is such that “what was not intermittent yesterday will become more and more so.”

He added that “France is now the country lagging furthest behind in its renewable energy objectives” within the European Union.

On renewable profitability

On 18 July, the French Energy Regulation Commission (CRE) unveiled its assessment of the public service costs of energy to be compensated by the state for 2023.

The report concludes that renewables will generate revenue for the State in 2023, due to the current very high price of megawatt hours (MWh). When prices are set higher than the feed-in tariff set by the state, operators pay the difference to public authorities.

This has prompted some observers to insist on the profitability of renewable energies, in particular wind power.

“France is reactivating its coal power plants while at the same time there are currently 4.7 GW of wind projects and 3 GW of solar projects being put on hold”, said Anne-Catherine Tourtier, president of the France Energie Eolienne association.

The government has already announced a bill to speed up the development of renewable energies for the autumn.  https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/french-finance-minister-and-mps-clash-over-future-of-nuclear-power/

However, the outcome was not easy to swallow, particularly for those on the left.

In reality, nuclear production is at half mast. France is significantly importing electricity: up to 10 GW on a single day, as the country’s transmission system operator RTE figures show, a noteworthy figure considering that the country is usually a net exporter.

Nuclear capacity

Currently, about thirty reactors are shut down, more than half of France’s fleet. Some are closed for maintenance, and 12 for problems with corrosion. Others have been impacted by the weather, with extreme temperatures endangering the cooling capacities of the plants.

EDF announced that it has lost €5.3 billion euros in the first half of the year, mainly associated with the forced closure of many of the nuclear plants.

The French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) extended a temporary derogation to the shutdown rules for such situations on Friday (22 July) to “ensure the safety of the electricity network” during this critical period. The power plants of Golfech, Saint-Alban, Blayais and Bugey will thus be permitted to operate until 7 August 2022.

Heated debate in the National Assembly

During the debate on the draft rectifying finance law in the National Assembly, Green MPs and others from the left-wing party La France Insoumise (LFI) condemned the government’s irresponsibility in its approach to nuclear energy.

Julien Bayou, Europe Écologie Les Verts (EELV) MP for Paris and party executive, repeatedly said: to “all those who confuse reality with their fantasies […] nuclear power does not work”.

July 30, 2022 Posted by | France, politics | Leave a comment

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