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Told you so: Financial Times follows NFLAs lead on Sizewell C cost estimate.

16 Jan 25 – https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/told-you-so-ft-follows-nflas-lead-on-sizewell-c-cost-estimate/

It is always nice when a media cornerstone of the finance world follows your lead in doing its sums – but that is what the Financial Times did yesterday in publishing an article indicating that the estimated cost of completing the new nuclear plant at Sizewell C will be £40 billion, something the NFLAs have been saying for ages.

One rule in nuclear is that the construction cost for new plants will always be far higher than the first estimate. And there has been no better example of this truism than that of Sizewell C’s sister plant, Hinkley Point C in Somerset, where an initial estimate of £18 billion for completion has now doubled to £34 billion (at 2015 prices).


It was hardly surprising that the FT reported that the final bill is more likely to be nearer £40 billion after speaking to ‘people close to negotiations over flagship energy scheme’; which are understood to be ‘one senior government figure and two well-placed industry sources.’ This figure is double that made in 2020 reflecting the recent surge in construction costs, and the inevitable delays and cost overruns will inevitably add to the eventual total.

The Sizewell C site presents its own costly challenges, namely a need for considerable expenditure on coastal defences as the East Coast will be increasingly subject to inundation and storm surges because of climate change and the need to provide in this water-stressed region for the provision of potable water with the likely installation of a dedicated desalination plant.

The British Government has already spent, or pledged, up to £8 billion in public funds to carry out preparatory groundwork around the site. Although private investors are being sought to finance the cost of construction, under the Regulated Asset Base being adopted by the British Government for the construction of any new nuclear plants, British electricity customers will ultimately have to bear the cost as the developer will be reimbursed these construction costs in stages through applying a nuclear levy to bills.

However, the Final Investment Decision to give the project the go-ahead has yet to be made. This is only expected in the late Spring after the completion of a Spending Review of overall government spending so there is still time for the Chancellor Rachel Reeves to stop it.

Local campaign group Stop Sizewell C is asking supporters to sign a petition to do so. The link to the petition is https://action.stopsizewellc.org/save-billions-cancel-sizewellc

Stop Sizewell C’s message to the Chancellor, via the Treasury, is: “As you carry out your multi-year spending review, I am reminded of your statement to Parliament during your mini-budget last year – “If we cannot afford it, we cannot do it”. I appreciate that you face many difficult choices, but with the Financial Times reporting that Sizewell C will cost at least £40 billion, I urge you not to throw more taxpayers’ money at this expensive, risky project that will raise energy bills during its lengthy and unpredictable construction. For alternative strategies that will help meet the UK’s 2030 target and create many thousands of jobs, I urge you to focus on renewables and energy efficiency.”

The NFLAs endorse this petition as it mirrors our position.

At present, the British Government is the majority stakeholder, but long-term only wishes to retain 20% as Ministers intend to offload much of their stake to private investors. So far however, no one is definitively biting, with mixed messages about interest from Centrica, British Gas’s parent, and Gulf States’ sovereignty funds.

As a second whammy to government hopes that more private sector partners will become involved, yesterday, the French State Auditor, the Cour des Comptes, criticised the expenditure already made by French state owned EDF on Hinkley Point C in a published report which suggested this could compromise investment in domestic nuclear power expansion plans and that “EDF should not take a final investment decision on Sizewell C before achieving a significant reduction in its financial exposure to Hinkley Point C.”

Stop Sizewell C is asking supporters to write to prospective investors asking them not to do so. The relevant links to take this action are shown below:

Amber Infrastructure:  action.stopsizewellc.org/amber
Equitix: action.stopsizewellc.org/equitix
Schroders Greencoat: action.stopsizewellc.org/greencoat
Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation: action.stopsizewellc.org/emirates
Centrica: action.stopsizewellc.org/centrica 

The NFLAs has previously written to these prospective investors and endorse this action.

Finally Stop Sizewell C is petitioning the new Office of Value for Money’s independent Chair, David Goldstone, to call in the Sizewell C project for urgent scrutiny. Initial feedback from the Treasury indicated that Sizewell C would be examined, but more recent correspondence with officials has been less committal.

Supporters are asked to follow the NFLA’s example and sign the petition at https://action.stopsizewellc.org/valueformoney

Ends://..For further information, please contact NFLA Secretary Richard Outram by email to richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk

January 19, 2025 Posted by | media, UK | Leave a comment

  French energy giant EDF launches search for Hinkley Point finance after damning audit report

EDF Group’s chief executive Luc Rémont has hit
back at the national French auditor’s claims that the energy company
should delay its investment in UK nuclear power project Sizewell C.

He said the regulated asset base (RAB) model for financing the Suffolk nuclear
power station, where the cost of development is shared with the consumer,
should not be correlated with the refinancing of the Hinkley Point C
project in Somerset.

The French state-owned energy company has started a
search for financiers to help refinance the delayed project at Hinkley
Point C, following the French state auditor’s findings yesterday,
according to Rémont.

In October, the energy company issued £500m of
senior bonds to help finance investments in two nuclear reactors at the
site. Rémont said that the funding model for the Sizewell C nuclear power
project on the Suffolk coast “limits” EDF’s capital exposure.

The auditor’s report come a week after a letter was sent to the national
auditor in the UK, the National Audit Office, calling for a review of the
government’s spending assessment for Sizewell C. The campaign group
behind the letter raised concerns of rising costs at Hinkley Point C,
another nuclear power station being built by EDF, now estimated to be in
the region of £46 billion. The letter from Together Against Sizewell C
(TASC) followed a plea by Ecotricity founder Dale Vince, a Labour donor,
for the Treasury’s new Office for Value for Money to review plans to
develop the new nuclear power project in Suffolk.

 Energy Voice 15th Jan 2025 https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/565569/french-energy-giant-edf-launches-search-for-hinkley-point-finance-after-damning-audit-report/

January 19, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, France, UK | Leave a comment

Risks of geologic disposal of weapons plutonium

The Bulletin, By Cameron Tracy | January 13, 2025

The United States has a plutonium problem. This heavy metal, rarely found in nature but produced by nuclear reactors, is a primary ingredient of nuclear weaponry. A modern thermonuclear weapon, containing just a few kilograms of this material, could level much of a metropolitan area. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union produced enough plutonium to make tens of thousands of nuclear weapons (IPFM 2015). Both the United States and Russia, which inherited the Soviet nuclear weapons enterprise, have since declared large portions of their stockpiles to be excess: unnecessary for purposes of national defense. But after decades of effort and billions of dollars spent trying to dispose of this material, their weapons plutonium stockpiles remain undiminished (von Hippel and Takubo 2020).

The United States currently plans to bury about one third of this stockpile in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a geologic repository mined 650 meters below the surface of southeastern New Mexico’s Delaware Basin (NASEM 2020). Preparation to dispose of this material is well underway, but key questions about this approach remain unresolved. Will the repository safely contain this radiotoxic material over the thousands of years for which it presents a threat to the environment? Can the repository be effectively secured against attempts to illicitly recover weaponizable material? Can all of this be accomplished on a realistic schedule and budget?

……  Given sufficient effort, funding, and good fortune, the United States may arrive at a workable solution to its plutonium problem. But until questions of safety, security, and cost are addressed, and the associated risks are weighed, agreement on just what it means for a geological plutonium repository to “work” is likely to remain out of reach.

…………………………………. Recognizing these risks, the US National Academy of Science and its Russian counterpart met in 1992 to discuss the issue (NASEM 1994). This agenda eventually rose to the highest levels of government, serving as a centerpiece of discussion between Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin over the next few years. By 2000, the United States and Russia had negotiated and signed the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA), pledging to reciprocally dispose of 34 metric tons of excess weapons plutonium..

……………………………………………………… both sides agreed to a primary disposal method that was complex and difficult, but jointly seen as effective: conversion of weapons plutonium to nuclear fuel and irradiation in nuclear power plants.

Despite this diplomatic achievement, progress on bilateral plutonium stockpile reduction was short-lived. Construction began on the US facility that would convert this material to nuclear fuel in 2007, but in less than a decade, cost estimates grew from initial projections of a few billion dollars to over one-hundred billion (Hart et al. 2015). In 2016, the Obama administration unilaterally pivoted from the irradiation approach mandated by the plutonium disposal agreement with Russia to a new plan: burial in WIPP. 

Russia balked at this shift. In an April 2016 speech in St. Petersburg, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, accused the United States of seeking to “preserve what is known as the breakout potential,” disposing of plutonium in name only while ensuring that it could be “retrieved, reprocessed, and converted into weapons-grade plutonium again.” Citing this, alongside a broad array of other grievances related to steadily worsening US-Russian relations amid the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russia suspended its commitment to the bilateral plutonium disposal agreement later that year.

A new mission for WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Project)

WIPP is mined into the underground salt formations………………. Congress established the facility as a pilot project, a “research and development facility to demonstrate the safe disposal of radioactive wastes resulting from the defense activities and programs” (US Congress 1979). WIPP was originally designed to store wastes made up of clothing, gloves, lab equipment, and other detritus contaminated with heavy, radioactive elements like plutonium, which was sitting at nuclear weapons production sites scattered across the United States. Following decades of site characterization, repository design, and construction—alongside $2.5 billion in funding—WIPP accepted its first shipment of this material in 1999 (Feder 1999).

WIPP’s mission now extends far beyond its original role as a demonstration project. As the sole US site for the disposal of actinide wastes (referring to the class of heavy, radioactive elements including uranium and plutonium), it is now slated as the permanent disposal site for the 34 metric tons of excess weapons plutonium covered by the now defunct US-Russia plutonium disposal agreement. 

This is a major shift from WIPP’s original design basis, and has introduced new sociotechnical challenges to the safe, secure, and effective operation of the repository—and, therefore, to the plutonium stockpile reduction mission to which it is now intimately tied. What started as a pilot program to aid in the clean-up of contaminated Cold War weapons production facilities is now both a potential solution to the long-standing problem of excess weapons plutonium disposal, and a potential threat to both the environment and to global nuclear security. Whether this one-of-a-kind experiment on the long-term safety, security, and risk of the geologic disposal of nuclear materials is ultimately judged a success or failure will depend on its ability to meet several complex challenges.

Challenge 1: Isolating radioactive material from the biosphere

WIPP’s central role is to isolate potentially dangerous materials deep underground, preventing the leakage of radioactive material to the surface or to groundwater flows. Designed to store about 12 metric tons of plutonium, it is now slated to contain nearly four times that inventory (Tracy, Dustin, and Ewing 2016). Of course, more radioactive material means greater potential for its release.

To forecast the risk of release, every five years the US Department of Energy, which operates WIPP, performs a repository performance assessment and submits the results to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA 2022)……………………. However, predicting the future is challenging, even when legally mandated.

Consider, for instance, one of the key repository failure modes: borehole intrusion………………………..  Drilling in the region was virtually nonexistent prior to 1960 and rose exponentially following a boom in the early 1990s………………………………………………………………… When considering the behavior of magnesium oxide in the complex geochemical environment of a repository pierced by a borehole and infiltrated by groundwater, this should be taken as a cautionary tale.

None of this is to say that WIPP cannot operate safely. However, its ability to do so with the current plutonium inventory is uncertain, as uncertainties in long-term local drilling rates and repository chemistry demonstrate. A fourfold increase in WIPP’s plutonium inventory will only add to this safety challenge.

Challenge 2: Ensuring that buried plutonium remains buried

…………………………………………………………The use of two alternative techniques that were overlooked in the prior literature, salt solution mining and in situ leaching, would allow rapid access to buried plutonium with minimal excavation (Tracy and Ewing 2022). 

……………………Applied to WIPP, these techniques could provide access to large quantities of weapons plutonium via only a single borehole just tens of centimeters in diameter (Tracy and Ewing 2022). Plutonium might then be extracted in a matter of days. Afterwards, plastic flow of salt would seal the borehole, removing evidence of the clandestine extraction.

……. the risks of recovery have been insufficiently studied, and WIPP’s design does little to mitigate these risks. Thus, confidence in the security of weapons plutonium disposed of in WIPP is unwarranted. Most worryingly, much of the work on this issue has sought merely to dismiss the risk of plutonium recovery, rather than to establish a design basis for mitigating that risk.

Challenge 3: Managing a complex and costly disposal program

Even if solutions were found for the safety and security challenges detailed above, there would still remain the monumental challenge of implementing those solutions alongside the unprecedented task of burying 34 metric tons of weapons plutonium over half-a-kilometer below ground.  Two of the most serious obstacles to successful disposal are the cost and time required………

………………These challenges are uniquely substantive for the Department of Energy. Analysis of past projects of similar scope overseen by the part of this agency that manages the weapons plutonium stockpile shows that many were cancelled before completion and that “of the few major projects that were successfully completed, all experienced substantial cost growth and schedule slippage” (IDA 2019). The Government Accountability Office, a congressional organization that audits and evaluates US government agency performance, regularly cites management and budgetary failings in the Department of Energy’s plutonium stockpile programs (GAO 2017).

Working towards a repository that “works”

…………………… For technologies like geologic plutonium repositories, problems of risk come to the forefront: What level of risk is expected, what level is acceptable, and even how risk should be measured. Plutonium disposal presents a means of reducing global nuclear risk by shrinking stockpiles of weapons material—a yet unrealized dream of the post-Cold War world. At the same time, burial of this material at WIPP presents new risks of radioactive contamination of the environment, lower barriers to the production of nuclear weapons, and unsustainable cost overruns.

……………the risk to WIPP posed by ongoing mission creep. ……The imposition of a dramatically expanded plutonium inventory and a fundamentally different mission, however, introduces new threats to WIPP’s continuing success [as a pilot research project]   https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-01/risks-of-geologic-disposal-of-weapons-plutonium/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=US%20Nuclear%20Notebook%20Update&utm_campaign=20250116%20Thursday%20Newsletter
—

January 19, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

‘National scandal’: The BBC’s Gaza cover-up

Britain’s ‘public service broadcaster’ is keeping the public in the dark about UK support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, new research finds.

MARK CURTIS, DECLASSIFIED.UK, 15 January 2025

  • Declassified researched the BBC’s online coverage of 16 aspects of UK policy towards Israel and the pro-Israel lobby.
  • “It is high time for the corporation to be truly held to account and be reformed in the public interest”, leading media professor says.

The BBC is failing to report the various ways in which the UK government has supported Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, Declassified’s new analysis finds. 

Our research into the BBC’s written outputs since October 2023 finds the corporation has mainly not reported at all the major ways the UK government has been working with Israel.  

It found that the BBC has reported just four times in 15 months that the Royal Air Force (RAF) has been conducting surveillance flights over Gaza. 

Only one BBC report on the subject has been written since December 2023, despite the fact that hundreds of such spy missions have been conducted, almost daily, in aid of Israeli intelligence. 

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) says these flights are solely to aid the rescue of hostages held by Hamas. Only one BBC online report mentions the UK may be providing targeting information to Israel or flying weapons to the country. 

None of the articles otherwise raise concerns about the UK being willing to collaborate militarily with Israel at a time it is devastating Gaza.

Omitting the news

When Israel’s chief of staff, General Herzi Halevi, was allowed to attend a British military meeting in London last November, this also went unreported by the BBC in its written outputs.

Halevi’s visit was highly controversial, given he has led Israeli military operations throughout its destruction of Gaza. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant are wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

Our research also finds that the BBC has never reported that the British military has been training Israeli armed forces personnel in the UK during the Gaza war. ……………………………………………………………………………………….

Arms exports

In sharp contrast to other UK government policies concerning Israel, the BBC has published many articles mentioning British arms exports to Israel. 

In these reports, the BBC has occasionally cited concerns by human rights groups and MPs about the possible use by Israel of these arms, at the same time as citing pro-Israel figures.

However, article headlines have rarely been critical of these weapons sales. 

………………………………………. many headlines are conciliatory towards Israel. These include:

‘Deputy PM: It’s still legal for the UK to sell arms to Israel’  

‘UK defends partial Israel arms ban as Netanyahu calls it “shameful”’

‘UK ban on selling arms to Israel would benefit Hamas, says Cameron’

‘Boris Johnson: Shameful to call for UK to end arms sales to Israel’

There are no headlines about the possible use of UK arms by Israel in Gaza, or any directly reflecting the repeated calls by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, to halt all UK arms exports and military assistance to Israel.

The prominent legal action against the government for arming Israel brought by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), the Global Legal Action Network and Al-Haq, has been ignored by the BBC. Declassified could find no BBC written coverage of this at all. 

The most prominent group challenging British arms exports, the Campaign Against Arms Trade, has been mentioned six times on the BBC website in 15 months.

Declassified has uncovered three other disturbing aspects of Britain’s arming of Israel, none of which appears to have been covered by the BBC. 

Voluntary censorship

Neither has the BBC covered the possible role of UK spy agency GCHQ or the army’s special forces, the SAS, in facilitating Israeli military operations. 

These are live issues given that GCHQ operates an extensive intelligence operation on Cyprus, from where the RAF planes are flown over Gaza.

GCHQ is known to have aided past Israeli combat operations in Gaza. Yet Declassified could find no reports on the BBC website mentioning GCHQ in the context of Gaza.

Reporting on the SAS was subject by the government to a D-Notice – a voluntary gagging order not to publish ‘sensitive’ information concerning ‘national security’- in October 2023.

It followed reporting by the Mail that an SAS team was positioned on Cyprus, reportedly to help rescue British hostages held by Hamas.

Since then, it appears the entire UK national media, including the BBC, has complied with this. The BBC has no articles covering or speculating on an SAS role in Israel or Gaza.

Unreported collusion

There are other ways in which the British government is in effect colluding with Israel which have gone unreported by the BBC.

Perhaps incredibly, the BBC has not reported in its written outputs since October 2023 that the UK is engaged in negotiations with Israel to secure a free trade agreement. 

Conservative and Labour ministers have since 2022 held five rounds of talks with the Israeli government, whose economy minister, Nir Barkat, is an outspoken supporter of its attacks on Palestinians.

Jonathan Reynolds, the current trade minister pursuing the prospective new deal, is a recipient of funding from Britain’s Israel lobby.

Neither has the BBC reported on the arrests by the UK authorities of pro-Palestinian journalists in Britain. ……………………..

Lobby, what lobby?

Neither has any effort been made by BBC journalists to highlight the influence in the UK parliament exercised by the Israel lobby, notably Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). 

This is a major gap in reporting since these are among the largest lobbying forces in British politics, funding dozens of MPs to go on “fact-finding” visits to Israel………………………………………………………

‘National scandal’

Des Freedman, professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, said: “The BBC is clearly utterly failing to inform the public about how the UK military and government is complicit in the horrors of Gaza. This is a national scandal, showing how far away the corporation is from being a public service broadcaster.”

He added: “The BBC’s failure to accurately report on Israel’s genocide in Gaza is as much to do with what it refuses to report as with what it does report. It is high time for the corporation to be truly held to account and be reformed in the public interest”…………………………………………… more https://www.declassifieduk.org/national-scandal-the-bbcs-gaza-cover-up/

January 19, 2025 Posted by | Israel, media | Leave a comment

These Are The Six Times The USA Lost Nuclear Weapons

The US military has had at least 32 “Broken Arrow” incidents.

Tom Hale, Senior Journalist, FL Science 17th Jan 2025, https://www.iflscience.com/these-are-the-six-times-the-usa-lost-nuclear-weapons-77661

Keys, phones, headphones, socks, thermonuclear weapons – some things just always seem to go missing. Believe it or not, there were at least six instances when the US lost atomic bombs or weapons-grade nuclear material during the Cold War.

Not only that, but the US is responsible for at least 32 documented instances of a nuclear weapons accident, known as a “Broken Arrow” in military lingo. These atomic-grade mishaps can involve an accidental launching or detonation, theft, or loss – yep loss – of a nuclear weapon.

February 13, 1950

The first of these unlikely instances occurred in 1950, less than five years after the first atomic bomb was detonated. In a mock nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, a US B-36 bomber en route from Alaska to Texas began to experience engine trouble. An icy landing and stuttering engine meant the landing was going to be near-impossible, so the crew jettisoned the plane’s Mark 4 nuclear bomb over the Pacific. The crew witnessed a flash, a bang, and a sound wave.

The military claims the mock-up bomb was filled with “just” uranium and TNT but no plutonium core, meaning it wasn’t capable of a conventional nuclear explosion. Nevertheless, the uranium and the weapon have reportedly never been recovered.

March 10, 1956

On March 10, a Boeing B-47 Stratojet set off from MacDill Air Force Base Florida for a non-stop flight to Morocco with “two nuclear capsules” onboard. The jet was scheduled for its second mid-flight refueling over the Mediterranean Sea, but it never made contact. No trace of the jet was ever found.

February 5, 1958

In the early hours of February 5, 1958, a B-47 bomber with a 3,400-kilogram (7,500-pound) Mark 15 nuclear bomb on board accidentally collided with an F-86 aircraft during a simulated combat mission. The battered and bruised bomber attempted to land numerous times, but to no avail. Eventually, they made the decision to jettison the bomb into the mouth of the Savannah River near Savannah, Georgia, to make the landing possible. Luckily for them, the plane successfully landed and the bomb did not detonate. However, it has remained “irretrievably lost” to this day.

January 24, 1961

On January 24, 1961, the wing of a B-52 bomber split apart while on an alert mission above Goldsboro, North Carolina. Onboard were two nuclear bombs. One of these successfully deployed its emergency parachute, while the other fell and crashed to the ground. It’s believed the unexploded bomb smashed into farmland around the town, but it has never been recovered. In 2012, North Carolina put up a sign near the supposed crash site to commemorate the incident

December 5, 1965

An A-4E Skyhawk aircraft loaded with a nuclear weapon rolled off the back of an aircraft carrier, USS Ticonderoga, stationed in the Philippine Sea near Japan. The plane, pilot, and nuclear bomb have never been found.

In 1989, the US eventually admitted their bomb was still sitting on the seabed around 128 kilometers (80 miles) from a small Japanese island. Needless to say, the Japanese government and environmental groups were pretty annoyed about it.

Spring, 1968

At some point during the Spring of 1968, the US military lost some kind of nuclear weapon. The Pentagon still keeps information about the incident tightly under wraps. However, some have speculated that the incident refers to the nuclear-powered Scorpion submarine. In May 1968, the attack submarine went missing along with its 99-strong crew in the Atlantic Ocean after being sent on a secret mission to spy on the Soviet Navy. This, however, remains conjecture.

January 19, 2025 Posted by | history, safety, USA | Leave a comment

Submarine nuclear core project faces ‘challenges’

The Core Production Capability programme, tasked with delivering safe
nuclear reactor cores for the UK’s submarine fleet, remains under pressure
as highlighted in the latest Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA)
Annual Report.

Maintaining its Red rating, the programme faces critical
challenges in achieving key milestones crucial to sustaining the Continuous
At Sea Deterrent (CASD). According to the report, the programme is
fundamental to providing the Royal Navy with the capability to propel the
Dreadnought-class submarines and a “modern, safe, and sovereign
capability to manufacture further cores” for a future fleet of attack
submarines.

This capability is also essential for fulfilling the UK’s
commitments under the AUKUS defence partnership.

UK Defence Journal 17th Jan 2025 https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/submarine-nuclear-core-project-faces-challenges/

January 19, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Nukes kill kids.

Dr Tony Webb, 17 Jan 25.

One moment from my work in the USA in the early 1980s stands out in my memory.  I’d driven from Chicago to Cleveland at the invitation of the Health and Safety Officer of the US Boilermakers Union to speak to the members meeting held on the night ahead of the recruitment of members for work on the annual ‘clean-up’ of the local Nuclear Power plant.  The hired workers would be ‘radiation sponges’ – short-term casuals recruited for the ‘dirty jobs’ that would result in significant radiation exposures sometimes up to the permitted annual exposure limit and ‘let go’ if they reached that limit.  The practice offered some protection to the company’s full -time employees whose skills would be needed on an ongoing basis and whose exposures needed to be kept below the limit.   The meeting was well attended , rowdy, with a lot of questions and discussion which spilled over into the carpark after the meeting closed.  I noticed one man hanging back from the circle and invited him to join and share his thoughts.  As I recall them the essences was:

“I will be going in to apply for work tomorrow.  I understand what you shared about the risks . . . no safe level of exposure and chance of getting cancer perhaps 20 years from now . . .  It will put a roof over my family’s heads and food on the table . . . BUT my wife and i have had all the family we want.  If we hadn’t, what you shared about the genetic risks, the damage to our children and future generations . . . no I wouldn’t be going . . . “

It is a sad fact that workers, both men and women will choose, often from necessity, to put their health at risk from the work environment.  What is however consistent in my experience of working on radiation and other occupational health and safety issues is that they are far more concerned, cautious and likely to prioritise safety when it comes to risks to their children.

We now have solid evidence that workers in nuclear power plants routinely exposed to radiation face significantly increased cancer risks, risks of cardiovascular disease including heart attacks and strokes, dementia and potentially other health effects.  There is also an increased risk of genetic damage that can be passed on to their children and future generations.   But perhaps most significant of all there is now solid evidence of increased rates of leukaemia in children living close to nuclear power plants.

To put it simply and in language that will resonate with workers and their families in the communities around the seven nuclear power plant sites the federal Liberal-National Coalition  proposes to build if elected to government;  nuclear kills kids.  It matters little whether or not these nuclear plants can be built on time, within budget, make a contribution to climate change, reduce electricity prices, or secure a long-term energy future;  these nuclear power plants will kill kids who live close by.    They cannot operate without routine releases of radioactive material into the environment and our young will be exposed and are particularly susceptible to any exposure that results. 

Now add to that if you care that women are more susceptible than men, that workers in these plants face greater exposure and health risks than adults in the community, that nuclear plants have and will continue to have both major accidents and less major ‘incidents’ resulting in radiation releases, community exposures and consequent health damage. Add also that quite apart from the workers and others exposed when these plants need to be decommissioned, the radioactive wastes resulting from perhaps 30-50 years life will need to be safely stored and kept isolated from human contact for many thousands of years longer than our recorded human history.    And, again if you care, also add in the concerns around proliferation of nuclear weapons which historically has occurred on the back of, enabled by and sometimes concealed by countries’ developing so called peaceful nuclear power.

All these arguments add weight to the absurdity of Australia starting and the world continuing down this nuclear power path.  But if we want a single issue that strikes at the heart of human concerns it is this – and forgive me saying it again, it needs to be repeated many times until the electorate in Australia hears it loud and clear – Nuclear Kills Kids

January 19, 2025 Posted by | children | Leave a comment

EDF Energy Juggles Maintenance Amid UK’s Nuclear Energy Challenges

 EDF Energy is ensuring Britain stays powered while handling scheduled
outages at several key nuclear reactors, including Heysham and Hartlepool,
all while preparing for future decommissioning.

With key nuclear capacities
offline for maintenance, the UK’s energy market faces uncertainties.
Investors should monitor energy stock dynamics and a possible shift towards
renewables, as EDF Energy’s planned outages may cause temporary price
swings.

 Finimize 16th Jan 2025
https://finimize.com/content/edf-energy-juggles-maintenance-amid-uks-nuclear-energy-challenges

January 19, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

TODAY. The world’s blind eye to the nightmare problem of nuclear waste disposal.

18 Jan 2025 https://theaimn.net/the-worlds-blind-eye-to-the-nightmare-problem-of-nuclear-waste-disposal/

Now if you were to ask an old-fashioned housewife, to prepare a complicated dinner with strong-smelling crayfish, seafoods and vegetables, , she would probably first make sure that there was a suitable garbage bin at hand.

But that’s not the way that the magnificent men in their nuclear machines thought, about the garbage from their concoctions. The American (pro-nuclear) historian Spencer Weart explains how, in the 1950s:

“the press and the public gave the matter only passing attention, preferring to leave nuclear sanitary engineering to officials. Officials left it to nuclear experts, and most nuclear experts left it alone.” 

So, they left it alone for a long time.

The authority on matters nuclear – the Atomic Energy Commission – mentioned atomic wastes as a “cumbersome” problem, – going along with the view that it was not a major issue, and technolological development would solve it in the future. The British Ministry of Supply, in 1949, concluded that  nuclear waste dumped into sea was “only slightly radioactive and the amount too small ‘to have any harmful effect on fish or on human life.’

Still, even in 1950, one report in the New York Times – “Atomic ‘Cemetery’ Needed for Waste,” a argued that “some kind of national burying place will be needed for the lethal substances;”  and warned of the dangers of dumping atomic wastes into the oceans.-  “[i]f fish ate the material, scientists fear it might find its way into food used by humans.”

“Expert” thinking about nuclear waste moved on , in the 1950s, to the idea that it could be beneficial. It could be used to generate electricity. It could have a military use -it could be used to create “a lethal radioactive ‘ line’ along a frontier. behind a river, across a peninsula, that would deny an area to the enemy.” In 1956, Lewis L. “Strauss, the head of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission  said the term ‘atomic waste’ is a misnomer”.

So developed one of the nuclear lobby’s favourite themes over the decades – “Not a Waste, but a Resource”.

However, from 1957 onwards, there was a growing public realisation especially in Europe, that nuclear wastes are dangerous, especially to health, and opposition increased to the dumping of wastes at sea..

It was not until 1993 that nuclear waste dumping at sea was banned, by international treaties – and it’s still not enforced everywhere. So, it has taken the nuclear experts and the various authorities, world-wide, a very long time to take action against the nuclear industry’s most egregious crime against nature

So, where are we today?

Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Becoming a responsible ancestor“– Daniel Metlay gives the most comprehensive account of the USA’s policies, and the authorities’ continuing struggles to tackle the Gordian knot of nuclear wastes. And that’s just from the peaceful nuclear power industry.

On the nuclear weapons industry, also in the Bulletin, Cameron Tracy writes on the- Risks of geologic disposal of weapons plutonium.

Apart from the American experience, the media tells us, generally in glowing, optimistic terms, of the progress of super-costly deep underground facilities in Finland, and soon to come, in Sweden and France.

As if the American or “Western” history of nuclear waste were the whole story, we learn little or nothing about nuclear waste management in Russia, China, India, North Korea, South Korea, Japan (except for Fukushima). On the rare occasions when the Western media has mentioned Russia’s nuclear waste history, it is to gloat over what a mess Russia has made of it.

However, the US National Academy of Science and its Russian counterpart met in 1992 , leading to a U.S-Russia  pledge in 2000 to reciprocally dispose of 34 metric tons of excess weapons plutonium. It was a complicated co-operative effort which fell apart completely by 2016.

The nuclear waste industry bumbles on, with prospects of profits for waste management companies like Holtec, and of “jobs , jobs’, Jobs”. Is the nuclear behometh just too big to be stopped?

There are two questions about nuclear wastes that are never asked by the “experts”, let alone answered by them:

  1. Why not stop making more nuclear trash?
  2. Why do the nuclear-power countries not work together, co-operate, in getting rid of the existing global problem of nuclear trash?

January 18, 2025 Posted by | Christina's notes | Leave a comment

California wildfires: a warning to Nuclear Regulatory Commission on climate change

January 16, 2025,  https://beyondnuclear.org/ca-wildfires-are-a-warning-to-nrc-on-climate-change/
 US Government Accountability Office warnings to Nuclear Regulatory Commission go unheeded

For nuclear power plants, fire is considered a very significant contributor to the overall reactor core damage frequency (CDF), or the risk of a meltdown. Fire at a nuclear power station can be initiated by both external and/or internal events.  It can start with the most vulnerable external link to the safe operation of nuclear power plants; the Loss Of Offsite Power (LOOP) from the electric grid. It is considered a serious initiating event to nuclear accident frequency. Because of that risk, US reactors won’t operate without external offsite power from the electric grid.

The still largely uncontained wildfires burning in and around Los Angeles and Ventura Counties in southern California “are sure to rank among America’s most expensive.” The ongoing firestorms have now extended into a fourth period of “extremely critical fire weather” conditions and burned for more than a week an area the size of Washington, D.C., nearly 63 square miles. The estimated number is still being tallied for the thousands of homes and structures destroyed, the loss of life,  the evacuation of communities indefinitely dislocated and the threats to and impacts on critical infrastructure including electrical power .

There is no scientific doubt that global warming is primarily caused by the unquenchable burning of fossil fuels though politically motivated denial is entrenched in the US Congress. The increased frequency and severity of these wildfires—leading to suburban and even urban firestorms— are but one consequence of a climate crisis along with a range of other global natural disasters including sea level rise, hurricanes, more severe storms generally, extreme precipitation events, floods and droughts. This  more broadly adversely impacts natural resources and critical infrastructures to include inherently dangerous nuclear power stations.

At this particular time, it is important to reflect upon the April 2, 2024, report to Congress issued by its investigative arm, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), “Nuclear Power Plants: NRC Should Take Actions to Fully Consider the Potential Effects of Climate Change,” (GAO 24-106326).

The GAO warns that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) needs to start taking actions to address the increased risk of severe nuclear power plant accidents attributable to human caused climate change.

The NRC’s actions to address the risks from natural hazards do not fully consider potential climate change effects on severe nuclear accident risks. “For example, NRC primarily uses historical data in its licensing and oversight processes rather than climate projections data,” the GAO report said.

Beyond Nuclear has uncovered similar findings during our challenges to the NRC’s extreme relicensing process for extending reactor operating licenses, now out to the extreme of 60 to 80 years and talk of 100 years. We found that the agency’s staff believes and stubbornly insists that an environmental review for climate change impacts (sea level rise, increasingly severe hurricanes, extreme flooding, etc.) on reactor safety and reliability is “out of scope” for the license extensions hearing process.

The GAO report  points out to the NRC that wildfires, specifically, can dangerously impact US nuclear power stations operations and public safety with potential consequences that extend far beyond the initiating natural disaster. These consequences can include loss of life, large scale and indefinite population dislocation and uninsurable economic damage from the radiological
consequences:

“Wildfire. According to the NCA (National Climate Assessment), increased heat and drought contribute to increases in wildfire frequency, and climate change has contributed to unprecedented wildfire events in the Southwest. The NCA projects increased heatwaves, drought risk, and more frequent and larger wildfires. Wildfires pose several risks to nuclear power plants, including increasing the potential for onsite fires that could damage plant infrastructure, damaging transmission lines that deliver electricity to plants, and causing a loss of power that could require plants to shut down. Wildfires and the smoke they produce could also hinder or prevent nuclear power plant personnel and supplies from getting to a plant.”

Loss of offsite electrical power (LOOP) to nuclear power stations is a leading contributor to increasing the risk of a severe nuclear power accident. The availability of alternating current (AC) power is essential for safe operation and accident recovery at commercial nuclear power plants. Offsite fires destroying electrical power transmission lines to commercial reactors therefore increase the probability and severity of nuclear accidents.

For US nuclear power plants, 100% of the electrical power supply to all reactor safety systems is initially provided through the offsite power grid. If the offsite electrical grid is disturbed or destroyed, the reactors are designed to automatically shut down or “SCRAM”. Onsite emergency backup power generators are then expected to automatically or manually start up to provide
power to designated high priority reactor safety systems needed to safely shut the reactors down and provide continuous reactor cooling, pressure monitoring, but to a diminished number of the reactors’ credited safety systems. Reliable offsite power is therefore a key factor to minimizing the probability of severe nuclear accidents.

The GAO identifies a number of US nuclear power plant sites that are vulnerable to the possible outbreak of wildfires where they are located. “According to our analysis of U.S. Forest Service and NRC data, about 20 percent of nuclear power plants (16 of 75) are located in areas with a high or very high potential for wildfire,” the GAO report states. “More specifically, more than
one-third of nuclear power plants in the South (nine of 25) and West (three of eight) are located in areas with a high or very high potential for wildfire.” The GAO goes on to identify “Of the 16 plants with high or very high potential for wildfire, 12 are operating and four are shutdown.”

To analyze exposure to the wildfire hazard potential, the GAO used 2023 data from the U.S. Forest Service’s Wildfire Hazard Potential Map. “High/very high” refers to plants in areas with high or very high wildfire hazard potential. Those nuclear power stations described by GAO as “high / very high” exposure to wildfires and their locations are excerpted from GAO Appendix III: Nuclear Power Plant Exposure to Selected Natural Hazards.

Table 1: Potential High Exposure to “Wildfires” at Operating Nuclear Power Plants

–AZ / SAFER, one of two mobile nuclear emergency equipment supply units in the nation, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–CA / Diablo Canyon Units 1 & 2 nuclear power station, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–FL / Turkey Point Units 3 & 4 nuclear power station, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–GA / Edwin I. Hatch Units 1 & 2 nuclear power station, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–GA / Vogtle Units Units 1, 2, 3 & 4, nuclear power station, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–NC / Brunswick Units 1 & 2 nuclear power station, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–NC / McGuire Units 1 & 2 nuclear power station, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–NC / Shearon Harris Units 1 & 2 nuclear power station, “HIGH /VERY HIGH”
–NB / Cooper nuclear power station, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–SC / Catawba Units 1 & 2 nuclear power station, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–SC / H. B. Robinson Units 1 & 2 nuclear power station, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–WA / Columbia nuclear power station, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”

Table 2: Potential High Exposure to “Wildfires” at Shutdown Nuclear Power Plants

–CA / San Onofre Units 1 & 2, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–FL / Crystal River, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–NJ / Oyster Creek, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”
–NY / Indian Point Units 1, 2 & 3, “HIGH / VERY HIGH”

Wildfires can transport radioactive contamination from nuclear facilities

A historical review of wildfires that occur around nuclear facilities (research, military and commercial power) identifies that these events are also a very effective transport mechanism of radioactivity previously generated at these sites and subsequently released into the environment by accident, spills and leaks, and careless dumping. The radioactivity is resuspended by wildfires that occur years, even decades later. The fires carry the radioactivity on smoke particles downwind, thus expanding the zone of contamination further and further with each succeeding fire. The dispersed radionuclides can have very long half-lives meaning they remain biologically hazardous in the environment for decades, centuries and longer.

Here are a few examples of how wildfires increasing in frequency and intensity are also threatening to spread radioactive contamination farther away the original source of generation.

The Chornobyl nuclear catastrophe and recurring wildfires

The Chornobyl nuclear disaster that originally occurred on April 26,1986, initially spread harmful levels of radioactive fallout concentrated around the destroyed Chornobyl Unit 4 in northern Ukraine. The radioactive fallout was transported high into the atmosphere by the accidental reactor explosion. The days long fire and smoke transported extreme radioactivity from the expelled
burning nuclear fuel and its graphite moderator. Radioactive fallout then spread far afield in shifting winds, precipitated  with rainfall and was terrestrially deposited in its highest concentrations largely in northern Ukraine, Belarus and Southern Russia.

Additional atmospheric distributions of radioactive contamination fell across much of Europe, persisting in numerous hot spots, including in Scandinavia, and the United Kingdom, where it remains as a persistent toxin.

The Chornobyl ‘Exclusion Zone’ to restrict long term human habitation was established in the immediate aftermath in 1986 as an arbitrary 1,ooo square miles within an 18 mile radius around the exploded reactor in Ukraine and remains in place today nearly 39 years later.  The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists reports that seasonal wildfires continue to occur within the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, routinely burning across already contaminated land and resuspending radioactivity via the smoke into the atmosphere. The radioactive smoke is borne on the wind, carrying the radioactive fallout farther out and increasing the size of what can be measured as potentially an expanding Exclusion Zone.

Contrary to claims, wildfires can threaten US nuclear facilities

The Los Angeles Times headlined in May 2024 “Sites with radioactive material more vulnerable as climate change increases wildfire, flood risks.”

The LA Times did a look back at several wildfires surrounding the government radiological laboratories and government nuclear weapons manufacturing sites including the 2018 Woolsey wildfire at the old Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL). This facility specifically housed 10 nuclear reactors and plutonium and uranium fuel fabrication facilities located in the Los Angeles suburbs. SSFL was used for early testing of rockets and nuclear reactors for energy.  But decades of carelessness during experiments resulted in one of  the first nuclear reactor meltdowns in 1959, leaving acres of soil, burn pits and water radioactively and chemically contaminated. Boeing is the current operator of SSFL  now obligated to conduct the cleanup of the SSFL site.

“A 2018 fire in California started at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a former nuclear research and rocket-engine testing site, and burned within several hundred feet of contaminated buildings and soil, and near where a nuclear reactor core partially melted down 65 years ago,” reported the LA Times.

Over the years, NBC news has broadcast continuing coverage of the massive 2018 Woolsey fire at SSFL and the radioactive contamination from this event, found in several Los Angeles suburbs miles away.

Despite these events, federal authorities continue to issue vapid safety assurances that climate changes, including more frequent wildfires, will not increase the risks to public health and safety from contaminated commercial, military and national laboratory facilities and that there is no need to include environmental reviews that account for the impacts of climate change in the
regulatory environmental review process.

A recent example of the NRC resistance to factor in reasonable assurance for protecting the public’s health and safety from climate change risk and its potential impacts that increase the risk of a severe nuclear accident, including wildfire,  into its oversight and environmental reviews for licensing and relicensing is Chairman Christopher Hanson’s September 27, 2024 response to the GAO report:

“…the NRC does not agree with the [GAO] conclusion that the agency does not address the impacts of climate change. In effect, the layers of conservatism, safety margins, and defense in depth incorporated into the NRC’s regulations and processes provide reasonable assurance of adequate protection of public health and safety, to promote the common defense and security, and to protect the environment.”

Commission Chairman Hanson’s outright dismissal of the GAO report and its finding that the agency needs to take action runs contrary to one of agency’s own, Atomic Safety Licensing Board Judge Michael Gibson’s dissenting opinion to the similar blanket dismissal by the NRC to take a “hard look” climate change impacts  under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on extreme reactor relicensing.  In this case, the Judge Gibson supported Beyond Nuclear’s legal challenge to the Commission’s second 20 year license extension of its operating license of its commercially reactors and dissented from the licensing board’s majority denial of our hearing request on climate change’s contribution to the risk and consequences of severe nuclear accidents.

In Judge Gibson’s 23 page dissent of his colleagues’ decision to extend the nuclear plant’s operating license out to 2060 without a pubic hearing on climate change impacts on nuclear power plants, he went on the record,

“That is hardly the reception climate change should be given. As CEQ (the President’s Council on Environmental Quality), the federal government’s chief source for assessing the importance of climate change in environmental analyses under NEPA, has made clear, ‘The United States faces a profound climate crisis and there is little time left to avoid a dangerous—potentially catastrophic—climate trajectory. Climate change is a fundamental environmental issue, and its effects on the human environment fall squarely within NEPA’s purview.’ Sadly, the majority and the NRC Staff have failed to heed this warning.”

January 18, 2025 Posted by | climate change, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

Chris Hedges: The Ceasefire Charade

By Chris Hedges ScheerPost, January 16, 2025 m https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/16/chris-hedges-the-ceasefire-charade/

Israel, going back decades, has played a duplicitous game. It signs a deal with the Palestinians that is to be implemented in phases. The first phase gives Israel what it wants — in this case the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza — but Israel habitually fails to implement subsequent phases that would lead to a just and equitable peace. It eventually provokes the Palestinians with indiscriminate armed assaults to retaliate, defines a Palestinian response as a provocation and abrogates the ceasefire deal to reignite the slaughter.

If this latest three-phase ceasefire deal is ratified — and there is no certainty that it will be by Israel — it will, I expect, be little more than a presidential inauguration bombing pause. Israel has no intention of halting its merry-go-round of death.

The Israeli cabinet has delayed a vote on the ceasefire proposal while it continues to pound Gaza. At least 81 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours.

The morning after a ceasefire agreement was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of reneging on part of the deal “in an effort to extort last minute concessions.” He warned that his cabinet will not meet “until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement.”

Hamas dismissed Netanyahu’s claims and repeated their commitment to the ceasefire as agreed with the mediators.

The deal includes three phases. The first phase, lasting 42 days, will see a cessation of hostilities. Hamas will release some Israeli hostages – 33 Israelis who were captured on Oct. 7, 2023, including all of the remaining five women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses – in exchange for up to 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

The Israeli army will pull back from the populated areas of the Gaza Strip on the first day of the ceasefire. On the 7th day, displaced Palestinians will be permitted to return to northern Gaza. Israel will allow 600 aid trucks with food and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.

The second phase, which begins on the 16th day of the ceasefire, will see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel will complete its withdrawal from Gaza during the second phase, maintaining a presence in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which stretches along the eight-mile border between Gaza and Egypt. It will surrender its control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.

The third phase will see negotiations for a permanent end of the war.

But it is Netanyahu’s office that appears to have already reneged on the agreement. It released a statement rejecting Israeli troop withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor during the first 42-day phase of the ceasefire. “In practical terms, Israel will remain in the Philadelphi Corridor until further notice,” while claiming the Palestinians are attempting to violate the agreement. Palestinians throughout the numerous ceasefire negotiations have demanded Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza. Egypt has condemned the seizure of its border crossings by Israel.

The deep fissures between Israel and Hamas, even if the Israelis finally accept the agreement, threaten to implode it. Hamas is seeking a permanent ceasefire. But Israeli policy is unequivocal about its “right” to re-engage militarily. There is no consensus about who will govern Gaza. Israel has made it clear the continuance of Hamas in power is unacceptable. There is no mention of the status of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the U.N. agency that Israel has outlawed and that provides the bulk of the humanitarian aid given to the Palestinians, 95 percent of whom have been displaced. There is no agreement on the reconstruction of Gaza, which lies in rubble. And, of course, there is no route in the agreement to an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.

Israeli mendacity and manipulation is pitifully predictable.

The Camp David Accords, signed in 1979 by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt. But the subsequent phases, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never honored.

Or take the 1993 Oslo Accords. The agreement, signed in 1993, which saw the PLO recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people, and Oslo II, signed in 1995, which detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state, was stillborn. It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” was to be delayed until “final’ status talks, by which time Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were to have been completed. Governing authority was to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. The West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority has limited authority in Areas A and B. Israel controls all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.

The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law — was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat, instantly alienating many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees. Edward Said called the Oslo agreement “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians.”

The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There was no provision in the interim agreement to end Jewish colonization, only a prohibition of “unilateral steps.” There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank at the time of the Oslo agreement. They have increased to at least 700,000. No final treaty was ever concluded.

The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo “a sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”

Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo agreement, was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995 following a rally in support of the agreement, by Yigal Amir, a far-right Jewish law student. Itamar Ben-Gvir, now Israel’s National Security Minister, was one of many rightwing politicians who issued threats against Rabin. Rabin’s widow, Leah, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters — who distributed leaflets at political rallies depicting Rabin in a Nazi uniform — for her husband’s murder.

Israel has carried out a series of murderous assaults on Gaza ever since, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” These attacks, which leave scores of dead and wounded and further degrade Gaza’s fragile infrastructure, have names such as Operation Rainbow (2004), Operation Days of Penitence (2004), Operation Summer Rains (2006), Operation Autumn Clouds (2006) and Operation Hot Winter (2008).

Israel violated the June 2008 ceasefire agreement with Hamas, brokered by Egypt, by launching a border raid that killed six Hamas members. The raid provoked, as Israel intended, a retaliatory strike by Hamas, which fired crude rockets and mortar shells into Israel. The Hamas barrage provided the pretext for a massive Israeli attack. Israel, as it always does, justified its military strike on the right to defend itself.

Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), which saw Israel carry out a ground and aerial assault over 22 days, with the Israeli air force dropping over 1,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, killed 1,385 — according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem — of whom at least 762 were civilians, including 300 children. Four Israelis were killed over the same period by Hamas rockets and nine Israeli soldiers died in Gaza, four of whom were victims of “friendly fire.” The Israeli newspaper Haaretz would later report that “Operation Cast Lead” had been prepared over the previous six months.

Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, who served in the Israeli military, wrote that:

the brutality of Israel’s soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesman…their propaganda is a pack of lies…It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel’s objective is not just the defense of its population, but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers.

These series of attacks on Gaza were followed by Israeli assaults in November 2012, known as Operation Pillar of Defense and in July and August 2014 in Operation Protective Edge, a seven week campaign that left 2,251 Palestinians dead, along with 73 Israelis, including 67 soldiers.

These assaults by the Israeli military were followed in 2018 by largely peaceful protests by Palestinians, known as The Great March of Return, along Gaza’s fenced-in barrier. Over 266 Palestinians were gunned down by Israeli soldiers and 30,000 more were injured. In May 2021, Israel killed over 256 Palestinians in Gaza following attacks by Israeli police on Palestinian worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem. Further attacks on worshippers at Al-Aqsa mosque took place in April 2023.

And then the breaching of the security barriers on Oct. 7, 2023 that enclose Gaza, where Palestinians had languished under a blockade for over 16 years in an open air prison. The attacks by Palestinian gunmen left some 1,200 Israeli dead — including some killed by Israel itself — and gave Israel the excuse it had long sought to lay waste to Gaza, in its Swords of Iron War.

This horrific saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged – the erasure of Palestinians from their land. This proposed ceasefire is one more cynical chapter. There are many ways it can and, I suspect, will fall apart.

But let us pray, at least for the moment, that the mass slaughter will stop.

January 18, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s parliament has given the go-ahead for the purchase of two old Russian nuclear reactors.

Nikolaus J. Kurmayer Euractiv 

Reviving a Soviet-era project, the Ukrainian parliament has authorised the purchase of two Russian nuclear reactors from Bulgaria.

On Thursday, the energy committee of the Ukrainian parliament voted in favour of a law which ostensibly aims to improve the business environment in the country – but which also contained a last-minute amendment greenlighting the purchase of two old Russian nuclear reactors, to expand the Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plant.

“The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and/or … ‘Energoatom’ … are granted permission to negotiate, finalize the text, sign, pay for, accept, and store the equipment,” the amendment, seen by Euractiv, reads.

The Khmelnytskyi plant in the south-west of Ukraine was first dreamt up in the early 1970s during the days of Leonid Brezhnev. Due to the Chernobyl disaster, it only ever operated at half capacity.

In 2023, negotiations began to buy two Russian reactors, originally bought for the unfinished Belene nuclear power plant in Bulgaria. The planned purchase has a floated price of at least €600 million.

US company Westinghouse is also planning to build two reactors at the Ukrainian site.

In June 2024, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko, the initiative’s biggest promoter, said that he was betting on foreign loans to finance the purchase. However, in December, the EU’s representative in Kyiv ruled out support for the project.

Euractiv 16th Jan 2025
https://www.euractiv.com/section/eet/news/kyiv-pushes-ahead-controversial-e600m-purchase-of-russian-junk-nuclear-reactors/











 Jan 16, 2025

January 18, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Weatherwatch: Could small nuclear reactors help curb extreme weather? There’s a credibility gap.

As natural disasters make need to cut CO2 emissions clearer than ever, energy demand of AI systems is about to soar.

Paul Brown 27 Jan 25 – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/17/weatherwatch-could-small-nuclear-reactors-help-curb-extreme-weather

Violent weather events have been top of the news agenda for weeks, with scientists and fact-based news organisations attributing their increased severity to climate breakdown. The scientists consulted have all emphasised the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

At the same time there are predictions about artificial intelligence and datacentres urgently needing vast amounts of new electricity sources to keep them running. Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) have been touted as the green solution. The reports suggest that SMRs are just around the corner and will be up and running in the 2030s. Google first ordered seven, followed by Amazon, Microsoft and Meta each ordering more.

With billions of dollars on offer, many startup and established nuclear companies are getting in on the act. More than 90 separate designs for SMRs are being marketed across the world. Many governments, including the UK, are pouring money into design competitions and other ways to incentivise development.

In all this there is a credibility gap. None of the reactor designs have left the drawing board, prototypes have not been built or safety checks begun, and costs are at best optimistic guesses. SMRs may succeed, but let big tech gamble their spare billions on them while the rest of us are building cheap renewables we know work.

January 18, 2025 Posted by | climate change, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Are AI defense firms about to eat the Pentagon?

Competitors are becoming collaborators in the industry’s hottest segment.

Defense One, Patrick Tucker, 15 Dec 24

In an unprecedented wave of collaboration, leading AI firms are teaming up—sometimes with rivals—to serve a Pentagon and Congress determined to put AI to military use. Their growing alignment may herald an era in which software firms seize the influence now held by old-line defense contractors.

“There’s an old saying that software eats the world,” Byron Callan, managing director at Capital Alpha Partners, told Investors Business Daily on Wednesday. “It’s going to eat the military too.”

Over the last week, Palantir, Anduril, Shield AI, OpenAI, Booz Allen, and Oracle announced various partnerships to develop products tailored to defense needs. Meanwhile, the House passed the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act with provisions that push the Defense Department to work more closely with tech firms on AI, and DOD announced yet another office intended to foster AI adoption.

Perhaps the most significant partnership is between Palantir and Anduril, two companies that offer somewhat competing capabilities related to battlefield data integration. Palantir holds the contract for the Maven program, the seminal Defense Department AI effort to derive intelligence from vast amounts of data provided by satellites, drones, and other sensors. Anduril offers a  mesh-networking product called Lattice for rapid collection and analysis of battlefield data for drone swarming and other operations. …………………………………………………………………

Congress gets behind AI firms

On Wednesday, the House approved a 2025 defense authorization bill that includes several provisions intended to spur military adoption of AI. The bill puts a big emphasis on building out data and cloud computing resources to enable much faster adoption of AI and AI-enabled weapons, areas where companies like Anduril, Palantir, Booz Allen, and Shield AI excel. 

One of the most ambitious is Section 1532, which mandates the expansion of secure, high-performance computing infrastructure to support AI training and development. 

This infrastructure, which will include partnerships with commercial and hybrid cloud providers, is critical for developing scalable AI models capable of adapting to evolving mission requirements………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2024/12/are-ai-defense-firms-about-eat-pentagon/401673/?oref=d1-author-river

January 18, 2025 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The remnant nuclear fans say we should learn from what the UAE has done with reactors; guess they don’t want the world to learn also from what they have done since with renewables:

1,000% Renewables for South Australia

tpsrSooned40thiel7 ti58Y670894ar4g h:71ly701dse7a 4l9iM9Aff7  ·

The United Arab Emirates tried nuclear, but like most others also faced years of delay – to 15 years in total – and cost overruns (to US$32 billion of government money) to build just 5.6GW of capacity.

It has since gone back to renewables; this is one of their solar farms and is the world’s largest single-site solar plant at 2GW, producing enough energy to power 200,000 homes.

How long did it take? – just 2.5 years.

How long will it run? – 30 years (vs the typical 28 years nuclear reactors have lasted for so far).

How much did it cost? – it has broken records on cost, with the initial project tariff set at AED 4.97 fils/kWh (US$1.35/kWh) before being revised down to AED 0.0485/kWh (US$0.0132/kWh) at financial close (vs US$0.113/kWh for nuclear (Hinkley C)).

Who paid for it? – no taxpayers’ money; 7 international banks provided financing, and upon completion and commercial operations in 2022, TAQA own 40% of the project, while Masdar, EDF Renewables, and JinkoPower will each own a 20% stake.

And who was one of the major contractors? – none other than France’s struggling nuclear company EDF who is diversifying to renewables, given that is where the big money and growth is now.

January 18, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

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