The provocations behind the ‘unprovoked’ war
By Phil Wilayto Jul 23, 2022, ack in 1949, the United States, Canada and 10 Western European countries formed a military alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty organization, or NATO. Washington had decided that the Soviet Union, its wartime ally — the one that had broken the back of the Nazi war machine — now was its peacetime enemy.
By 1990, the Soviet Union and most of its socialist allies were collapsing, the result of internal contradictions and outside pressures. The U.S. was promoting the reunification of Germany — a move opposed by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who still remembered how his country had lost 20 million people to the Nazi invasion, and was not real excited about the prospect of a revitalized Germany.
So U.S. Secretary of State James Baker offered a deal: If Gorbachev agreed to a united Germany, NATO — which, by that time, had grown from its original 12 members to 16 — would promise not to advance one inch eastward. Gorbachev agreed.
Today, each of the 14 new NATO member countries has been to the east. Of the seven countries bordering Russia’s western flank, Estonia, Latvia and Norway already are NATO members. Finland, Georgia and Ukraine have asked to join.
Once that process is completed, Russia’s only western border ally would be Belarus. Every other bordering country would be committed by Article 5 of the NATO Charter to come to each other’s defense in the event of a military confrontation.
And this should worry Russia, why?
In 1999, NATO carried out a 78-day air campaign in Yugoslavia that involved 400 aircraft, 5,000 personnel and the use of cancer-causing depleted uranium munitions……………………………………
Once that process is completed, Russia’s only western border ally would be Belarus. Every other bordering country would be committed by Article 5 of the NATO Charter to come to each other’s defense in the event of a military confrontation.
And this should worry Russia, why?
In 1999, NATO carried out a 78-day air campaign in Yugoslavia that involved 400 aircraft, 5,000 personnel and the use of cancer-causing depleted uranium munitions.
For NATO, combined military expenditures of all 30 member countries in 2021 was an estimated $1.2 trillion — more than 18 times that of Russia.
And even though Russia and NATO have rough parity when it comes to nuclear weapons, it’s just possible that the steady eastward expansion of a steadily growing, hostile NATO might have raised some legitimate security concerns in Russia.
Then, there’s the matter of U.S. support for the anti-Russian Ukrainian coup of 2014. This began as peaceful protests against then-President Viktor Yanukovych for his opposition to closer economic ties with Western Europe. It morphed into a violent uprising in which openly neo-Nazi organizations played a major role.
The U.S. support was not in dispute. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had traveled to give encouraging speeches to the protesters. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland handed out pastries to the crowds. More importantly, she later openly bragged about how the U.S. had spent $5 billion promoting “pro-democracy” groups in the country.
The coup changed Ukraine in fundamental ways. The new government banned the use of the Russian language for official business, even though 17% of the population was ethnic Russian and some 30% spoke Russian as a first language.
Statues honoring Ukrainian fascists like Stepan Bandera, who had collaborated with the Nazi occuaption, were erected while memorials to Soviet war heroes were taken down. The neo-Nazi organizations were free to roam the streets, attacking anyone opposed to the coup. Those acts of violence included the May 2014 Odessa Massacre, where dozens of people were murdered in the Black Sea port city.
Meanwhile, Ukraine began to operate as a NATO member in everything but name, including carrying out joint military exercises right up to Russia’s border.
None of this is meant to endorse Russia’s war. But since the Biden administration already has given Ukraine $5.3 billion in military aid, it might be a good idea to view the war in a historical context.
And if we do that, “unprovoked” might not be the first word that comes to mind.
Phil Wilayto is editor of The Virginia Defender and coordinator of the Odessa Solidarity Campaign. Contact him at: virginiadefendernews@gmail.com
https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/phil-wilayto-column-the-provocations-behind-the-unprovoked-war/article_ea0e7635-8bd4-5fa7-beef-56d0f2d149f6.html
Protest against radioactivity-contaminated water, at French nuclear site
ALERT Cigéo = radioactivity = contaminated water http://burestop.free.fr/spip/spip.php?article1040&fbclid=IwAR05l37LqSVNJwx7JOKpqVBxYmfqiTd8ggXjx_YYpUxc1w1Ock_MoaMBjyY COMMUNIQUE COORDINATION CIGEO/BURE STOP – 23/07/2022,
Small rafts to warn of the danger threatening a large territory!
The Coordination Stop Cigéo organized this Saturday 23/07/2022 a symbolic action in Bar-le-Duc, to make visible what Andra does not show, to tell what Andra is silent about: operating discharges of Cigeo for 150 years, just as those resulting from an underground accident will be impossible to control.
The small wooden rafts, painted with radioactive symbols and arrows, mentioning Cigéo/Bure and Paris and thrown over the water in the Ornain, symbolized the phenomenal danger that threatens water resources, this common good.
SEE THE PICTURES ( Pictures )
Indeed, the water discharges contaminated by the operation of the site or in the event of an accident, would come out in an anarchic way on the sector in a few days, towards Saulx via the losses of Orge, towards Bar-le-Duc via Haironville, towards Saint-Dizier via Ménil-sur-Saulx, towards Joinville, haphazardly… knowing that everything would end up flowing into the Marne. The impacts of Cigeo (1) would not be confined to the ultra-local perimeter as Andra claims, but would be diluted in the hydrographic network towards Paris.
A gigantic site, a scary future
The high water consumption of the site would clearly have an impact on the local resource and its distribution… which worries many municipalities today. What will become of local waterways (fragile natural environments)? What effects on tap water? What are the impacts of chemical and radioactive releases on activities such as fishing, market gardening, etc.? All these simple but essential questions have never been addressed. Afraid to tell the truth?
Cigeo could endanger the territory and beyond, permanently, if the water were to suffer contamination and scarcity. At a time when heat and drought are becoming an agonizing and lasting reality, there is still time to refuse such an impacting project for man and nature and to change course.
Public utility, obtained on a file more than inadequate
Andra repeats that the public utility of Cigéo does not mean authorization of the project. But the recent signatures of the DUP and OIN decrees are incomprehensible, given the lack of figures on the real impact of nuclear storage on water resources and surface waters. Beyond the inadequacy of the data in the DUP file, Andra is postponing the potential conclusions of the research until later, at the stage of the creation authorization application, which according to it, would serve as an application for authorization of rejection. And that is not enough for us!
Everyone at the Bure’lesques festival, August 5-6-7, 2022 in Hévilliers
The question of water from here and water from elsewhere, threatened by nuclear power and its waste, will be at the heart of the conferences and round tables of the Bure’lesques 2022. Three days of exchanges and information but not only! Film screenings, shows, concerts and good food, a rich and beautiful program is announced for this 3 rd edition. ALL INFO on https://burefestival.org/
EDF to change design of EPR nuclear reactors following troubles of the China one – (making it up as they go?)
EDF to redesign flagship UK nuclear reactors after China shutdown
Company to change way fuel rods are held in place in pioneering EPR generators,
By Rachel Millard, 23 July 2022 • The power company charged with driving Britain’s nuclear revolution is to overhaul the design of its flagship new reactor to avoid a repeat of damage to fuel rods that forced a unit in China to shut down. …https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/07/23/edf-redesign-flagship-uk-nuclear-reactors-china-shutdown/
The Great American Military Rebrand
A new defense bill crammed with political pork smashes records, but you likely didn’t hear the news, because War is Good again
Matt Taibbi Jul 21 Fifteen years ago……..A trifecta of scandals……………… exposed an intricate system of legalized payoffs both parties scrambled to oppose.
Earmarks, those handy appropriations tools congressfolk used to slip million-dollar favors into the budget, had been ballooning in number for over a decade and looked so bad upon reveal, “corruption and ethics” became the top issue in the 2006 midterms…………………. In return, the contractor showered the congressman with gifts — helping him finance a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, a condo overlooking the nation’s capital, exclusive use of a yacht on the Potomac, antiques, private-jet travel and prostitutes.
Fast forward to last week. As January 6th hearings, a presidential fist-bump, and a Kardashian spawn’s gender reveal gobbled attention, the House quietly passed a monster $839 billion defense package. It was “the definition of a bipartisan bill,” chirped Alabama’s Mike Rogers, as 180 Democrats and 149 Republicans joined to smash by tens of billions previous records for military spending. With this already underreported story, just one news outlet, Roll Call, described a “first of its kind” report published by the Department of Defense Comptroller’s office, which revealed at least $58 billion of “congressional additions” above Joe Biden’s budget request.
As former Senate aide and defense budget analyst Winslow Wheeler puts it, these “additions” are “not (all) earmarks under either the House’s or Senate’s shriveled definition of them, but they are all earmarks… under the classic understanding……………. Billions of dollars in weapons the military did not seek, such as more than $4 billion worth of unrequested warships, many of them built by the constituents of senior appropriators.
……………………………….. the actual amount of “additions” is almost surely far higher than $58 billion.
…. Both the triumphant return of the earmark and the enormous defense hike should have been big stories. To put $58 billion (at least) in defense “increases” in context, the amount of overall federal earmarks in 2006, the infamous year that prompted so much outrage, was said to be $26 billion. Meanwhile Biden’s one-year arms increase exceeds the pace of Donald Trump’s infamous $200 billion collective defense hike between 2017-2019. These are major surges past the levels of both pork and weapons spending that had progressives roaring for “change,” yet there’s almost zero outcry now. Why?
It feels like just the latest echo in a prolonged, very successful re-marketing effort…………………
the U.S. embarked upon what geopolitical analyst Christopher Mott calls the “millennial rebrand of the neoconservative project,” and the Pentagon’s fortunes rose anew. In the Obama years, think-tankers, pundits, and other actors began to push inverted, left-friendly versions of Bush’s rejected military utopianism, this time focusing on using force to achieve social justice aims abroad. It worked, brilliantly……………..(Subscribers only) more https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-great-american-military-rebrand
Stiff resistance by fishing unions to Japan’s move to dump Fukushima nuclear wastewater into the ocean.
The impact of Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami still ripples through
the country as the nation continues the decommissioning process of the
wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. In addition to mass
evacuations of the surrounding area, the plant’s meltdown also uncovered
failings by its operator to take proper precautions, resulting in hefty
fines for four former executives.
The latest move involving the failed
plant has brought fresh criticism as Japan’s nuclear regulators approved
a plan to release water from the plant into the ocean, the government said
on Friday. The water, used to cool reactors in the aftermath of the 2011
nuclear disaster, is being stored in huge tanks in the plant, and amounted
to more than 1.3 million tonnes by July. The regulators deemed it safe to
release the water, which will still contain traces of tritium after
treatment, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Plant operator Tokyo
Electric Power Company (Tepco) would face additional inspections by
regulators, it added. Tepco plans to filter the contaminated water to
remove harmful isotopes apart from tritium, which is hard to remove. Then
it will be diluted and released to free up plant space and allow
decommissioning to continue. The plan has encountered stiff resistance from
fishing unions in the region, which fear its impact on their livelihoods.
Neighbours China, South Korea and Taiwan have also voiced concern.
Irish Independent 24th July 2022
Greenpeace experts find Chornobyl under Russian occupation – radiation levels much higher than the IAEA estimated
Russian military occupation at Chornobyl commits crime against the
environment and global science understanding of radiation risks.
This was stated by the Greenpeace experts during the press conference in the Ukraine
Crisis Media Center on July 20. The Greenpeace investigation team has found
radiation levels in areas where Russian military operations occurred that
classifies it as nuclear waste to be at least three times higher than the
estimation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In April 2022, the IAEA provided very limited data with assurances that radiation levels
were ‘normal” and not a major environmental or public safety issue.
Ukraine Crisis 20th July 2022
‘Israeli cell planted explosives at nuclear facility,’ Iran media says
Report says cell arrested with ‘powerful explosives’, planned to blow up a ‘sensitive center’ in central Isfahan province — home to nuclear sites and missile bases
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hkb1uwohq Ynet| 07.24.22
ranian news website Nour News, which is affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, reported that the cell planned to blow up a “sensitive center” in Isfahan province in the center of the country. Isfahan is home to several major nuclear sites, as well as missile bases.
According to other reports, the cell crossed into Iran from Iraq’s Kurdistan region after “months of training” in Africa.
Iran’s Intelligence Ministry did not specify, however, how many cell members were arrested and did not publish details about their nationality.
Nuclear industry veteran to lead nuclear waste group’s board – ( the revolving industry-govt door)
Nuclear expert to lead nuke waste group’s board,
The new chair of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s board of directors is a familiar face with an extensive background in the nuclear industry.
Glenn Jager, who was previously a vice-chair on the group’s board, is a retired chief nuclear officer with Ontario Power Generation and has worked in the nuclear sector for more than 30 years, the agency said this week in news release.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization is to select a site next year for a proposed underground facility to store spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors.
One of the sites under consideration is a remote area 35 kilometres west of Ignace. The other is in South Bruce in southwestern Ontario in the vicinity of an existing nuclear-power station.
Russia’s Rosatom to take legal action against Finland company, over terminated €7 billion nuclear power plant project.
Russian state entity plans claim over Finnish nuclear project, Jack Ballantyne 22 July 2022 Russian state entity Rosatom is preparing to launch an arbitration against a Finnish company that cited the war in Ukraine when it terminated a contract for work on a €7 billion nuclear power plant project…………… (Subscribers only) more https://globalarbitrationreview.com/article/russian-state-entity-plans-claim-over-finnish-nuclear-project
Nuclear Power Plants Are Struggling to Stay Cool
Wired, 22 July 22”……………………………. Amidst a slow-burning heat wave that has killed hundreds and sparked intense wildfires across Western Europe, and combined with already low water levels due to drought, the Rhône’s water has gotten too hot for the job. It’s no longer possible to cool reactors without expelling water downstream that’s so hot as to extinguish aquatic life. So a few weeks ago, Électricité de France (EDF) began powering down some reactors along the Rhône and a second major river in the south, the Garonne. That’s by now a familiar story: Similar shutdowns due to drought and heat occurred in 2018 and 2019. This summer’s cuts, combined with malfunctions and maintenance on other reactors, have helped reduce France’s nuclear power output by nearly 50 percent…………………
Nuclear technicians are known to refer to their craft as a very complicated way of boiling water, producing steam that spins turbines. But much more is usually required to keep the reactor cool. That’s why so many facilities are located by the sea and along big rivers like the Rhône.
Plenty of other industries are affected by hotter rivers, including big factories and power plants that run on coal and gas. But nuclear plants are unique because of their immense size and the central role they play in keeping energy grids online in places like France. And warming and dwindling rivers are not the only climate challenges they face. On the coasts, a combination of sea level rise and more frequent and intense storms means heightened flooding risks. Scientists have also pointed to other, more unusual challenges, like more frequent algal blooms and exploding jellyfish populations, which can clog up the water pipes.
……………………… The nuclear industry and environmental groups continue to disagree on whether existing regulations capture the latest science, particularly on the topic of sea level rise.
……………….. . In 2019, the NRC began approving 20-year extensions to some reactors—starting with the Turkey Point power plant in South Florida. Environmental groups filed interventions to halt the plan, arguing that a combination of more intense hurricanes and sea level rise would threaten the low-lying plant in ways that regulators had not adequately considered. In February, the NRC reversed the extension for Turkey Point and other plants pending a more extensive environmental review.
So far, most production cuts are due to warming waters—not just in the Rhône and Garonne, but in places like the Tennessee River in the US, and in the coastal seas where many more plants are sited. In recent years, nuclear plants across Northern Europe have been forced to shut down or reduce output because seawater became too warm to safely cool the reactor cores. Over the past decade, the Millstone power plant in Connecticut saw a series of shutdowns on hot summer days until regulators raised the temperature limit of its cooling waters by 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
………………………. the impact is growing as temperatures continue to rise. In an analysis published in Nature Energy last summer, a Stanford researcher found that there had been eight times the number of heat-related outages in the 2010s compared with the 1990s. In a 2011 study on the impact of warming on nuclear cooling systems, EDF scientists projected a 3 degree Celsius increase in the Rhône’s temperature by 2050, spelling more potential for shutdowns during heat waves.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, “The key issue is when we start building new plants, how can we take into account the impact of climate change for the full lifespan of the plant to 2080 or 2100,” Laconde says, noting that France’s new generation of reactors, recently announced by President Emmanuel Macron, are mostly being built by the coasts.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, in France, regulators are expecting a long summer ahead. While the heat may pass, low water levels can persist, resulting in cutbacks that last for weeks or months. EDF recently told reporters that it expects more cuts in the coming months as water levels continue to fall—leaving the country hoping for the relief of cold, hard rains. https://www.wired.com/story/nuclear-power-plants-struggling-to-stay-cool/
La Hague is still threatened by wildfires Monday afternoon: firefighters mobilized on July 18 not far from the Orano nuclear site
by Christophe Meunier, After being mobilized all day Sunday July 17, 2022 on landage fires in Herquemoulin, the firefighters of the Channel had to fight against another fire this night, still in the sector of La Hague. The second fire regained strength during the afternoon on Monday. The nearby Orano La Hague site has significant means of protection if it were to be threatened by flames.
Up to 108 firefighters were mobilized this Sunday, July 17, 2022 on a landage fire in Herquemoulin, in the La Hague sector, which broke out around 3 a.m. It was only at the end of the evening, after 10 p.m., that the system was lightened. Thirty firefighters, three forest fire tanker trucks, a firefighters’ van, a water carrier and the command echelon remained on site to maintain surveillance of the site. This surveillance is maintained this Monday morning. But in the meantime, the means of the SDIS had to be mobilized on another fire……………….
It was shortly before midnight that a new brush fire broke out in the La Hague sector, this time in Vauville, at a place called Les Pierres-Poquelées. About sixty firefighters, from Saint-Lô, Carentan, La Haye, La Hague, Barneville, Granville, Cherbourg, Bricquebec, Canisy, St Pierre, Valognes but also from Calvados, were engaged in this new operation. Six tank trucks and a fire engine were deployed on site. A command post was set up in Beaumont-Hague at the RD 901/RD 403 roundabout. “The personnel faced unfavorable conditions linked to the topography, the night and the wind “, indicated the Departmental Service Channel Fire and Rescue……………………..
The two fires that have occurred since Sunday in the La Hague sector are both near the Orano waste reprocessing site. ………………………….
France3 18th July 2022
Money Pit: Zelensky govt signals intent to default on tens of billions in foreign debts
Despite countless billions flooding into Ukraine, Kiev can’t pay its debts.
Jordan Schachtel Jul 21, 22, The Dossier, Western governments have allocated well over $100 billion to prop up Ukraine in its war against Russia, with countless billions more flooding into the country at an increasing pace. Yet as each day passes, it’s becoming more and more clear that all of the money awarded and assigned to Ukraine continues to dissolve into a black hole of secrecy, corruption, deceit, and now, default.
On Wednesday, Ukraine finance ministry asked foreign creditors to accept a delay in its debt repayments, requesting a two year freeze on billions of dollars in Eurobonds. Per the Financial Times, “a rescheduling would amount to a Ukrainian default” on Kiev’s tens of billions in foreign debt.
Financial Times @FinancialTimes: Although western financial support has increased since May, Kyiv is still counting on Ukraine’s central bank to buy its debt by selling foreign reserves or printing money, at the risk of setting off an inflationary spiral.
….. Despite all of the money coming in from around the world, Ukraine’s budget deficit has spiraled out of control. Zelensky’s office now claims to have a $9 billion monthly budget deficit, up 80% from just last month.
……………………. In addition to the government as a whole, Ukraine’s state-owned infrastructure and national energy companies have also announced their intent to default on international bonds. Earlier this week, Kiev announced that it has sold some $12+ billion in gold reserves since the start of the war.
The Western government creditors of Ukraine released a joint statement in support of Ukraine’s debt freeze, adding that they “will continue to closely coordinate and assess the situation with the support of the IMF and the World Bank.”
Translation: Western governments will continue to print huge amounts of cash and launch it in the direction of the Ukraine operation. ……. https://dossier.substack.com/p/money-pit-zelensky-govt-signals-intent
The brutal reality of the US-UK ‘Special Relationship’, and the persecution of Julian Assange
In an exclusive article, the world’s leading public intellectual says the handover of global imperial power from Britain to the US is at the root of the UK’s continued persecution of Julian Assange.
Declassified UK, NOAM CHOMSKY, 21 JULY 2022,
The abject submission of British authorities to the Master in Washington in the case of journalist Julian Assange is painful to observe but – unfortunately – not difficult to understand.
The roots go back to the Second World War, when Britain handed the mantle of world domination over to its former colony. The US had long surpassed the UK as an economic power and had displaced it from “our little region over here,” as Secretary of War Henry Stimson described the Western hemisphere. But it had not yet become a truly global power.
At the time, British officials were well aware that the UK was becoming a “junior partner” to the US, now subject to its will, which was often exercised crudely.
Given their own ample experience with imperial arrogance, brutality and hypocrisy, British diplomats could easily read between the lines when their American counterparts protested that US global domination is “part of our obligation to the security of the world…what was good for us was good for the world”, as Abe Fortas, a leading figure in the New Deal administrations, put it.
The British Foreign Office, parsing this apparent altruistic concern, concluded that Washington was, in fact, guided by “the economic imperialism of American business interests” and was “attempting to elbow us out…under the cloak of a benevolent and avuncular internationalism”.
UK officials continued that their American counterparts believe “that the United States stands for something in the world – something of which the world has need, something which the world is going to like, something, in the final analysis, which the world is going to take, whether it likes it or not.” What true believers in the historical profession call “Wilsonian idealism”.
From then, Britain takes it, whether it likes it or not. Things could have gone a different way at various points in modern history, recently if Jeremy Corbyn hadn’t been destroyed by a vicious media campaign. But today’s British authorities just take the orders and Julian Assange is one of the victims.
Intricate handover
While Britain had become the “junior partner” by 1945, the handover process had played out in an extended and intricate way.
One of the reasons why the now-famous Second Amendment of the US Constitution called for “a well regulated militia” was fear that “the Brits are coming”. The first foreign policy goal of the new Republic, apart from cleansing what became the national territory, was to take Cuba.
The British Navy was in the way. But, as the great grand strategist John Quincy Adams explained, over time British power would decline while that of the US would increase and Cuba would then fall into US hands by the laws of “political gravitation”.
This did happen in 1898 when the US intervened to prevent Cuba’s liberation from Spain and turn it into a virtual colony. This is called “the liberation of Cuba” in preferred doctrine…………………………………………..
The vast gap between law and practice is illustrated by the Assange case. Here Britain, adopting its usual role of “junior partner,” has been savagely supporting the effort of the inheritors of the Framers to infringe radically on freedom of the press. The media response has ranged from tepid to cowardly.
The precedent is all too clear. If the states that claim, with some justice, to be in the forefront of defence of freedom are granted licence to crush it when it interferes with state power and violence, the limited freedoms that have been won by popular struggle suffer a severe blow everywhere. https://declassifieduk.org/the-brutal-reality-of-the-us-uk-special-relationship/—
Time for the UK government to tell the truth about nuclear power
Targeting scarce public resources at ailing nuclear initiatives flies in the face of all known data, says Prof Andy Stirling
The UK is sadly becoming habituated to an officially sponsored attrition of truth about nuclear power. Despite intensifying propaganda, even government data shows this military-backed technology to be, in reality, an expensive, slow, unreliable, risky and unpopular way to deliver affordable, secure, zero-carbon energy.
The gap in efficacy and competitiveness between nuclear and other options is continually growing. Supporting nuclear, rather than energy efficiency, wind and solar, slows down climate action, bleeds taxpayers, forgoes jobs and forces unnecessarily large and regressive burdens on consumers.
BEIS says: “Nuclear is the only form of reliable, low-carbon generation
which has been deployed at scale to date.”
The] manifest falsity of this starkly unqualified statement is extraordinary. As the government’s own
data also shows, the costs of managing variable supply are rapidly diminishing and are already far smaller than the competitiveness gap between nuclear and renewables.
Current renewable contributions to UK electricity far surpass the peak achieved by nuclear. When did it become acceptable in British public life that a supposedly democratic government should so seriously misrepresent reality in a formal policy document?
In a period when stakes are unprecedentedly high for climate, economy, energy security and hard-pressed households, it is time to renew reasoned scientific and democratic debate in this field and prevent this national self-harm by unaccountable special interests.
Guardian 21st July 2022
EDF worried that its delays in building Hinkley Point C nuclear station might lessen the huge subsidies it gets from the UK government
EDF pushes UK government to alter Hinkley Point C penalty clauses. EDF is trying to alter a key subsidy contract to avoid missing out on trillions of pounds in guaranteed revenue after the Covid-19 pandemic caused further delays to Hinkley Point C, the first new nuclear power station under construction in the UK in almost 30 years.
The French utility is in negotiations with the British government over penalty clauses in a
controversial agreement struck in 2013 to finance the building of the plant in Somerset.
EDF started work on the 3.2 gigawatt plant in 2016 but has repeatedly pushed back its completion date while costs have spiraled. In the latest setback, EDF warned in May that the first of Hinkley’s two reactors would not be completed until June 2027, 18 months behind schedule. It attributed 12 months of the delay to Covid-related problems, when it had to reduce staff on site from 5,000 to 1,500.
But the company cautioned that there was the possibility of a further 15-month delay to September 2028,
adding that date could slip again if there was another wave of pandemic or there were knock-on effects from the war in Ukraine.
Penalty clauses in the subsidy agreement — which guarantees a price that is more than double
those offered to developers of rival technologies such as offshore wind — would reduce the 35-year term if Hinkley is not generating electricity by May 2029.
EDF would lose one year of guaranteed payments for every year of delay up to 2033. If the delays extended beyond that date the government has the option to terminate the subsidy contract. EDF has already pushed the construction budget of Hinkley up several times with the revision in May raising the total cost by a further £3bn to as much as £26bn in 2015 prices, compared to an estimate of £18bn in 2016. Crooks said about a third of May’s revision to the budget was Covid-related. About £500mn was down to performance being “less than we would expect”, he added. The other cost overruns were due to issues such as completion of some of the outstanding design work and a failure to accurately estimate the quantities of materials, such as the number of bolts needed, to complete the build.
FT 21st July 2022
https://www.ft.com/content/cb715de2-1c95-4a13-8b48-33717b1dcc44
1 This Month
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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