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  Last German nuclear power plant to receives decommissioning and dismantling permit

WNN Thursday, 24 October 2024


The Schleswig-Holstein Ministry for Energy Transition, Climate Protection, Environment and Nature has issued the first decommissioning and dismantling permit to PreussenElektra for the Brokdorf nuclear power plant. Brokdorf is the last German nuclear power plant to receive this approval and begin dismantling.

PreussenElektra – a subsidiary of EOn Group – applied for approval to decommission and dismantle the 1410 MWe pressurised water reactor in December 2017. The plant was shut down on 31 December 2021.

Phase 1 of the plant’s decommissioning and dismantling has now been approved. This includes the decommissioning and dismantling of the plant components that are no longer required and subject to nuclear regulatory supervision, with the exception of the reactor pressure vessel and the biological shield.

Since Brokdorf’s closure, the conditions for dismantling the plant have been created in close coordination with the authorities. These include the decontamination of the primary cooling circuit, systems and plant components that are no longer required have been taken out of service, and the workforce has been adjusted. A large proportion of the fuel elements still present in the plant have already been moved to the interim storage facility on site and replacement systems for the plant’s energy supply have been installed.

…………….. The next steps will be to create new logistics routes within the control area and set up a waste processing centre for the dismantled masses. In addition, systems and plant components that are no longer required will be prepared for dismantling.

A second dismantling permit is required to dismantle the reactor pressure vessel and the biological shield. This requires the removal of all fuel elements and special fuel rods, which are expected to be transported to the interim storage facility at the site in 2025. PreussenElektra submitted the application for the second dismantling permit on 30 August this year. This is currently being examined by independent experts.

………………………………. In December last year, PreussenElektra, together with EOn group companies, announced plans for the construction at the Brokdorf site of the largest battery storage facility in the EU to date. The facility – to store electricity from renewable sources – is to be expanded in two stages to up to 800 MW of power and a storage capacity of up to 1600 MWh. Commissioning could begin as early as 2026.  https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/decommissioning-permit-granted-for-brokdorf-plant

October 26, 2024 Posted by | decommission reactor, Germany | Leave a comment

Nuclear lobby on track to sabotage COP29.

By Noel Wauchope | 24 October 2024,  https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/nuclear-lobby-on-track-to-sabotage-cop29,19101

The nuclear lobby is on track to sabotage the COP29 UN Climate Change Conference next month in Azerbaijan — lobbying governments for support and investors for money, writes Noel Wauchope. 

IT’S NOT SO LONG AGO that the global nuclear energy lobby used to deny the threat of climate change. Even as recently as 2020, a leading nuclear propagandist, Michael Shellenger, was downplaying climate change, while trashing renewable energy.

But that’s changed.

In the face of public anxieties about nuclear health and safety dangers – and above all, of nuclear costs – the propagandists desperately needed a new shtick.

The answer was — nuclear power to beat climate change!

COP28 UN Climate Change Conference in December 2023 — the global nuclear lobby trumpeted its “success”

But, in reality, only a tiny minority at COP28 agreed that nuclear power was needed to address global warming.

198 Parties (197 countries plus the European Union) attended this climate summit in Dubai in 2023. Only 22 agreed to the pro-nuclear declaration proposed by France’s President Emmanuel Macron — the Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy Capacity by 2050, Recognizing the Key Role of Nuclear Energy in Reaching Net Zero.   

And, 31 countries that do have nuclear power — why didn’t Russia and China sign up? 

Thirteen other countries that have key nuclear programs were also missing from the declaration — five in Europe (Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain), two in South Asia (India and Pakistan) three in the  Americas (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico), South Africa (the only nuclear energy producer in Africa), and Iran.

COP29 United Nations Climate Change Conference November 2024, Baku, Azerbaijan

The global nuclear lobby is much better organised now — and will try again.

It’s well to keep in mind that the United Nations is beholden to the nuclear industry. 

On 28th May 1959, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – not yet two years old! – and The World Health Organisation (WHO) signed an agreement referred to as WHA 12-40. Though, it might, on paper, appear balanced and reciprocal, in practice the WHA 12-40 puts WHO in a subordinate position to the IAEA.

So, the United Nations (UN) is tethered to the nuclear industry. The IAEA is part of the UN system — and its brief is to promote the “peaceful” nuclear industry.

COP29 is all about the money

So, the global nuclear push is well prepared with the recent release of an IAEA report on Climate Change and Nuclear Power focussing on the need for investment.

‘The 2024 edition of the IAEA’s Climate Change and Nuclear Power report has been released, highlighting the need for a significant increase in investment to achieve goals for expanding nuclear power.’

According to the report, global investment in nuclear energy must increase to USD$125 billion annually – up from the around USD$50 billion invested each year from 2017-2023 – to meet the IAEA’s high case projection for nuclear capacity in 2050.

The more aspirational goal of tripling capacity – which more than 20 countries pledged to work towards at COP28 last year – would require upwards of USD$150 billion in annual investment.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said:

“Across its near century-long lifetime, a nuclear power plant is affordable and cost-competitive. Financing the upfront costs can be a challenge however, especially in market-driven economies and developing countries, ….the private sector will increasingly need to contribute to financing, but so too will other institutions. The IAEA is engaging multilateral development banks to highlight their potential role in making sure that developing countries have more and better financing options when it comes to investing in nuclear energy.” 

The new report also examines ways to unlock private-sector finance — a topic that is gaining increasing attention worldwide.

Last month, 14 major financial institutions including some of the world’s largest banks came together during a New York Climate Week event to signal a willingness to help finance nuclear newbuild projects.

On the sidelines of Climate Week in New York City, major banks, government representatives and industry executives met at the Financing the Tripling of Nuclear Energy Leadership Event.

Note that this event was sponsored by the IAEA and the Clean Energy Ministerial’s (CEM) Nuclear Innovation: Clean Energy Future (NICE) initiative. The CEM’s role is to run forums for propagandising the nuclear industry.

The IAEA report continues:  

‘Nuclear power’s inclusion in sustainable financing frameworks, including the European Union (EU) taxonomy for sustainable activities, is having a tangible impact. In the EU, the first green bonds have been issued for nuclear power in Finland and France in 2023. Electricité de France (EDF) was one of the first recipients, with the award of €4 billion in green bonds and around €7 billion in green loans between 2022 and 2024.’

The report makes the case for policy reform and international partnerships to help bridge the financing gap and accelerate nuclear power expansion into emerging markets and developing economies — including for small modular reactors.

What does this mean for COP29?

Well, despite the IAEA hype, the nuclear push at COP28 was a bit of a flop.

Forcefully led by France, which is stuck with its unfortunate situation of nuclear monopoly on its energy system. The pro-nuclear declaration was not a global success. 

The aim then was to get governments to promote the industry. And, that’s still the aim, despite the pleas for private investment.

But the two go together – lobbying governments to weaken safety regulations, assume the financial risk and provide tax breaks and incentives – while simultaneously encouraging investors about government support.

Ideally, like France, governments could nationalise the nuclear industry. After all, the taxpayer is the most reliable customer.

Sustainability campaigner and author, Jonathon Porritt, predicts COP 29 will be: 

‘Baku will be worse than Dubai – as the capital of an even more corrupt, even more misogynistic, and more autocratic petrostate than the UEA.’

The polluting industries will be there in force to counter any real action — as they did in 2023. 

In a happy partnership with them will be Rafael Grossi and his nuclear crew. 

The much-touted nuclear resurgence – if it happens at all – will be so long coming that it will be irrelevant to the galloping global heating.

Meanwhile, the nuclear push will enable coal, oil and gas to rocket on — while investment in renewable energy will be stymied.


Climate is the big argument. That is for now.

If they win world acceptance that financing nuclear power is essential for climate action, the nuclear lobby can then go on to erase other lingering concerns — on health, safety, wastes, weapons proliferation, indigenous rights.

The world media has dutifully regurgitated the promotion of those mythical beasts — the small nuclear reactors (SMRs). 

The digital age – so far – has enabled such myths to be widely promoted and widely accepted.

Ever-increasing AI is becoming accepted as essential — along with its ever-increasing lust for electricity.  

I see the global belief in “nuclear for climate” as the first of many global successes in perpetrating lies.

October 25, 2024 Posted by | climate change | Leave a comment

Cost overruns at Sellafield nuclear waste site to hit £136bn

Storage facility is not delivering value for money as large projects are running
behind schedule, warns spending watchdog.

The cost of managing Britain’s most hazardous nuclear waste has risen by almost a fifth to £136 billion due to a failure to set a realistic budget, the government’s spending
watchdog has concluded.

Sellafield, which is home to about 85 per cent of the UK’s nuclear waste and stores the most hazardous waste, is not delivering value for money as large projects are running behind schedule and over budget, according to the National Audit Office’s latest
assessment.

The site in Cumbria is operated by the Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority (NDA), a mainly taxpayer-funded body, and over its lifetime will
retrieve about 3.3 million m3 of waste from ageing facilities and store it
in more modern silos. The cost of maintaining the site into the next
century, when Sellafield is scheduled for demolition, is likely to cost
£136 billion after adjusting for inflation, up from £84 billion at March
2019, but could run to £253 billion under a worst-case scenario.

None of the budgets for the four big projects under way at Sellafield in 2018, when
the audit office last scrutinised the waste storage site, accounted for
“optimism bias”, which assumes work will be delivered on time and
within budget. More realistic costings were only included in 2018, despite
the watchdog recommending the NDA require Sellafield to do so in 2012.
There has been some progress made since the National Audit Office last
scrutinised Sellafield, including savings of about £170 million a year by
operating the sites as subsidiaries rather than contracting out their
management and the government indemnifying the decommissioning authority
against certain risks so it no longer needs to buy insurance. The
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said that the NAO’s report
showed “significant progress” had been made by Sellafield and the NDA
but “there is still more to do”.

 Times 23rd Oct 2024, https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/energy/article/cost-overruns-at-sellafield-nuclear-waste-site-to-hit-136bn-zjklxk3p7

October 25, 2024 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Alistair Osborne: Nuclear is waste of time and money

The National Audit Office has found that the Sellafield nuclear waste dump is still a mess,
with costs spiralling and projects delayed. As rebranding jobs go, it’s
hard to beat. Somehow, the nuclear lobby has managed to convince
politicians that the industry is not only green, but “clean”.

Just about all of them have fallen for it, not least our energy supremo Ed
Miliband. Here he is last month: “Homegrown clean energy from renewables
and nuclear offers us a security that fossil fuels simply cannot
provide”. On the energy security point, fair enough. But isn’t he
forgetting something about nukes that you don’t get with windmills and
sunbeams?

Luckily, the National Audit Office is not so easily taken in, as
it’s just proved with a nice reality check: its latest report on
Sellafield, the radioactive waste dump in Cumbria owned by the state-backed
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). True, there is a glimmer of good
news: the spending watchdog says the “management of major projects has
begun to improve”. But it must have been off a chronically low base,
given the problems the NAO finds.

As it notes, of the NDA’s 17 sites
“Sellafield is the UK’s most complex and challenging”: home to
“seven former nuclear reactors” and Britain’s “entire stockpile of
civilian-owned plutonium”. Indeed, much of the “highly hazardous”
stuff knocking around has been deemed by the government to “pose an
intolerable risk”. Cleaning it up is a thankless task, too. On NDA
estimates, it “will take until 2125”.

 Times 23rd Oct 2024, https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/companies/article/nuclear-is-waste-of-time-and-money-ljmxhqklh

October 25, 2024 Posted by | spinbuster, UK | Leave a comment

Mission Innovation should not send tax-payer money to Bill Gates’ nuclear dream

We cannot trust billionaire philanthropists to lead the way on climate action, Online Opinion, By Noel Wauchope , 16 December 2015  “…….At the opening of the Paris Climate Summit (COP21), with the blessing of the White House, Bill Gates announced the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEA), with an ambitious goal to deal with climate change. 24 billionaire philanthropists have joined in the BEA. They include Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos.

Simultaneously 19 governments, including the United States, China and India, announce “Mission Innovation”, a project that will involve tax-payer money to explore and invent new ways to develop low carbon energy.

Not surprisingly, the two organisations will work in tandem. The billionaire philanthropists plan a public-private partnership between governments, research institutions, and investors that will focus on new energy methods especially for developing countries……

For a start, this twin project is directed at researching new forms of low carbon energy. A lot of money therefore is to go into trying out new plans, that exist at best, only in blueprint form. Yet already there are in operation large scale and small scale renewable energy projects that could be deployed. In particular, small scale solar energy is very well suited to being deployed in rural India, Africa, and other developing nations, as well as in Australia and other developed nations. It is happening now. Projects such as Barefoot Power have operated for years now, bringing affordable solar power to millions of rural poor in Africa, Asia Pacific, India and the Americas.

The energy need now for poor countries is deployment of existing technologies, not years of research and testing of so far non-existent ones………

  • The one and only University that has joined BEA is the University of California, which runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, well known for its nuclear research.
  • Bill Gates is co-founder and current Chairman of the innovative nuclear energy company TerraPower Gates has a long term history of enthusiasm for small nuclear power reactors. Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, USA’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission has tightened the rules for new reactors. Fortunately for Mr Gates, China is less fussy about this, so Gates has been able to do a deal with the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). TerraPower and CNNC will build the first small 600 MW unit in China, and later deploy these nuclear reactors globally.

Gates and Branson

I don’t doubt that Bill Gates is sincere in his goal of reducing greenhouse gases. It’s just that I have reservations about Small Nuclear Reactors having any impact on global warming.

If Small Nuclear Reactors did in fact reduce greenhouse gases, the world would need thousands of them to be up and running quickly, but they’re still at the planning stage. They’re supposed to be much safer than conventional nuclear reactors, but still produce radioactive wastes, and are targets for terrorism. Each and every one of them would need 24 hour guarding. It gets expensive………

The term selected “Breakthrough Energy Initiative” gives the game away. For many years now, America’s Breakthrough Institute has lobbied and publicised “new nuclear” as the solution for climate change. The Breakthrough Institute has many well-meaning and enthusiastic environmentalists as members. Its philosophy, expressed in “The Ecomodernist Manifesto” is full of beautiful motherhood statements about climate and environment, and only a few paragraphs about new nuclear technology.

This Manifesto, by the way, appears as a Submission to the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.

The effect of the Breakthrough Institute, over the years, has been to slow down action on reducing the use of fossil fuels. It has also aimed to discredit renewable energy……..http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17899

October 25, 2024 Posted by | technology, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste plant ‘leaking 2,100 litres of contaminated water a day’.

The Magnox Swarf Storage Silo is among the most hazardous buildings at Sellafield

Matt Oliver, Industry Editor

A crumbling nuclear waste site in Cumbria is leaking
thousands of litres of radioactive water into the ground every day, a
report by Whitehall’s spending watchdog has warned.

The so-called Magnox Swarf Storage Silo is among the most hazardous buildings at Sellafield, Europe’s largest nuclear site, with work ongoing to transfer its contents
into newer, safer facilities.

But a report published on Wednesday said slow
progress had pushed back an estimated completion date into the late 2050s,
with “significant safety and financial consequences”.

The ageing building sprung a leak in 2019 and is spewing about 2,100 litres of water
into the ground every day, the National Audit Office (NAO) said. However,
due to the extreme hazards involved in accessing the building, engineers
are unable to fix the leak or even determine its exact cause – meaning it
is poised to continue for another 30 years.

Staff shortages on the site had become so bad that it was “increasingly common” for buildings to be temporarily shut down for safety reasons, the NAO found. A spokesman for
Sellafield said the company had grown its workforce from around 11,200 to
12,000 in the past year and expected this problem to fade as new recruits
became fully trained. However, a key issue that remains unresolved is the
fate of the site’s “essential” testing laboratory, which is more than
70 years old and described as being in extremely poor condition.

 Telegraph 23rd Oct 2024,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/23/nuclear-waste-leaking-2100-litres-contaminated-water-day/

October 25, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The New Nuclear Push: New Package, Same Lies

Karl Grossman,  https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/23/the-new-nuclear-push-new-package-same-lies/

Nuclear power zealots are engaged in their biggest push in years in the United States and internationally. Headlines of recent pieces online about nuclear power include: “Japan’s top business lobby proposes maximum use of nuclear energy.” And, U.S. “looks to resurrect more nuclear power.” And, “European nations back nuclear power ahead of major climate summit.” And, “The super-rich are looking at nuclear power for emission-free yacht voyages.” And, “France plans to turn nuclear waste into forks, doorknobs and saucepans.”

Central to the drive: they’re trying to latch on to climate change as a new reason for nuclear power with the claim that it is “carbon-free” or “emissions-free.”

This is untrue especially when the “nuclear fuel chain” is taken into account.

“The dirty secret is that nuclear power makes a substantial contribution to global warming. Nuclear power is actually a chain of highly energy-intense industrial processes,” Michel Lee, an attorney and chair of the Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy, has said. “These include uranium mining, conversion, enrichment and fabrication of nuclear fuel; construction and deconstruction of the massive nuclear facility structures; and the disposition of high-level nuclear waste.”

In a two-page fact sheet that is online titled “How Nuclear Power Worsens Climate Change,” the Sierra Club Nuclear Free Campaign says: “Nuclear power has a big carbon footprint. At the front end of nuclear power, carbon energy is used for uranium mining, milling, processing, conversion, and enrichment, as well as for formation of [fuel] rods and construction of nuclear…power plants….All along the nuclear fuel chain, radioactive contamination of air, land and water occurs. Uranium mine and mill cleanup demands large amounts of fossil fuel. Each year 2,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste and twelve million cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste are generated in the U.S. alone. None of this will magically disappear. Vast amounts of energy will be needed to isolate these dangerous wastes for generations to come.”

The main release of carbon occurs during this nuclear fuel cycle; however, nuclear plants themselves also emit carbon, a radioactive form, Carbon 14.

Still, many politicians and much of media continue to use the words “carbon-free” or “emissions-free” when it comes to nuclear-generated electricity. Consider the front-page story in the business section of The New York Times this month that began: “Technology companies are increasingly looking to nuclear power plants to provide the emissions-free electricity needed to run artificial intelligence and other businesses.”

And there was an Associated Press article last month in the Long Island daily newspaper Newsday which started: “Amazon on Wednesday said that it was investing in small nuclear reactors, coming just two days after a similar announcement by Google, as both tech giants seek new sources of carbon-free electricity to meet surging demand from data centers and artificial intelligence.”

Among the politicians buying into the climate change claim appears to be New York Governor Kathy Hochul who just organized a “summit” with a focus on nuclear power. At it, a “Draft Blueprint for Consideration of Advanced Nuclear Technologies” from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) was released. It asserted that “a growing and innovative group of advanced nuclear energy technologies has recently emerged as a potential source of carbon-free power.”

As the Washington, D.C. organization Food & Water Watch says: “Governor Hochul’s latest bad idea is to build new nuclear power plants in New York. In September, she hosted an ‘Energy Future Summit’ in Syracuse where she wined and dined the nuclear industry, and now her administration has published a ‘blueprint’ for promoting the construction of new nuclear reactors.”

I live on Long Island, New York where for decades the now defunct Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) planned to build seven to eleven nuclear power plants. Long Island was to become in the parlance of nuclear promoters what they called a “nuclear park.”

It took years, but the scheme was stopped by strong actions at the grassroots, opposition by Suffolk County government and also then New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and the creation by the state of the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) with the power to utilize condemnation if LILCO persisted in its nuclear plans. The first nuclear power plant LILCO constructed, at Shoreham, was turned over to the state for $1 after problem-plagued low-power testing and was decommissioned as a nuclear facility.

Safe-energy activists on Long Island are now concerned that the area might again be targeted for nuclear power plants. The 120-mile-long island jutting out into the ocean east of Manhattan has been regarded as an advantageous area for nuclear power plants because of it being surrounded by vast amounts of water which can be tapped as coolant—a nuclear power plant needs up to a million gallons of water a minute as coolant.

Moreover, established on Long Island in 1947 by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was Brookhaven National Laboratory with developing civilian uses of nuclear technology as a main mission. Its staff included many scientists and engineers who had worked at the Manhattan Project who at BNL sought to develop uses of atomic energy in addition to nuclear bombs. At the start of 1947, on January 1, 1947, the Manhattan Project, the World War II crash program to build nuclear weapons, was succeeded by the AEC.

BNL scientists and engineers joined with LILCO attorneys at hearings on LILCO nuclear plant projects and they formed an organization, Suffolk Scientists for Cleaner Power and Safer Environment, to promote them.

BNL’s administrators were closely involved with LILCO. Phyllis Vineyard, wife of BNL’s long-time director, George Vineyard, was a member of the board of directors of LILCO, advocating nuclear power. And in the years before LILCO went under due to its failed nuclear power pursuit, its CEO and chairman was William Catacosinos, a former assistant director of BNL

Long Island safe-energy activists —some who were veterans of the battle against LILCO’s drive for nuclear power—are now readying a letter to the board of trustees of LIPA stating they “reaffirm the long-held consensus that nuclear power has no place on Long Island. We are also convinced that nuclear power has no place in planning New York’s energy future.”

“LIPA exists because the people of Long Island said no to nuclear power. Public safety, the impossibility of evacuation and ever-rising costs and electric rates were the reasons for this decision. Nuclear energy was neither necessary nor appropriate for Long Island.  This is still true,” it continues.

“A recent study by the Nature Conservancy found that ‘Long Island has enough low-impact solar PV siting potential to host nearly 19,500 megawatts (19.5 gigawatts) of solar capacity in the form of mid-to large-scale installations (250 kilowatts and larger),’” the letter went on. “A gigawatt of energy can power 750,000 homes. These estimates, totaling almost three times more power than is currently required, do not even include the potential for residential solar. Additionally, solar is the most widely accepted and supported form of renewable energy in the nation. By contrast, nuclear power garnered the most public opposition.

“Long Island’s abundant energy resources also include offshore wind. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the full offshore wind potential in our region is 323,000 megawatts or 323 gigawatts of energy. LIPA has led the way with the South Fork Wind Farm. Clearly, there is no shortage of renewable energy potential on Long Island. Nuclear energy will not be needed here.”

Also, the letter points out, “LIPA’s enabling legislation clearly states that the ‘authority shall utilize to the fullest extent practicable, all economical means of conservation, and technologies that rely on renewable energy resources, cogeneration and improvements in energy efficiency which will benefit the interests of the ratepayers of the service area.’”

It calls for opposing “any effort” by the state’s Public Service Commission or NYSERDA to site nuclear power facilities on Long Island.

Food & Water Watch is asking that people to relate their views about the Hochul administration’s advocacy of nuclear power by letter or email to Hochul and Doreen Harris, president of NYSERDA, both in Albany, before a November 8th deadline set for comments. “Take action: Demand they stop this fast-track to danger and instead chart a path to the renewable energy future we need,” asks the group.

This month, the U.S. Department of Energy released a report saying: “U.S. nuclear capacity has the potential to triple from 100 GW [gigawatts] in 2024 to 300 GW by 2050.” It said: “In 2022, utilities were shutting down nuclear reactors; in 2024, they are extending reactor operations to 80 years, planning to uprate capacity [pushing nuclear power plants to run harder and generate more electricity]; and restarting formerly closed reactors.”

The nuclear power issue remains—indeed, is getting even more intense.

“We are up against the biggest push for nuclear power that I’ve ever experienced in 32 years of anti-nuclear power activism,” said Kevin Kamps of the Takoma Park, Maryland-based organization Beyond Nuclear in a TV program I hosted this year. It and a follow-up program were syndicated by Denver, Colorado-based Free Speech TV and broadcast on nearly 200 cable TV systems in 40 states and the major satellite TV networks and also on internet platforms.

Of the new main argument for nuclear power, that it is “carbon-free,” Kamps stated: “It’s not true. It’s not carbon-free by any means,” and “not even low carbon when you compare it to genuinely low carbon sources of electricity, renewables like wind and solar.” But the nuclear industry, he said, is involved in a “propaganda campaign” attempting to validate itself by citing climate change. He speaks of many in government having “fallen for this ploy.”

Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, and the Beyond Nuclear handbook, The U.S. Space Force and the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war in space. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.

October 25, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Iran complains to IAEA about possible Israeli attack on nuclear sites

Iran International, Oct 21, 2024, 

Iran has written to the UN nuclear watchdog to complain about Israel’s threats against its nuclear sites in a possible retaliatory strike, foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said on Monday.

“Any acts of aggression towards nuclear sites are condemned under international law,” Baghaei said during his weekly news conference.

He added that Tehran had officially communicated its position to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), saying, “we have sent a letter about it to… the UN nuclear watchdog.”

Israel has vowed to attack Iran in retaliation for a volley of Iranian missiles launched on October 1, leading to widespread speculation that Iran’s nuclear sites could be among Israel’s targets.

On October 1, Iran fired more than 180 missiles at Israel, a move described as retaliation for the killings of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon. It was the second Iranian attack on Israel this year. Israel responded to the first missile volley in April with an air strike on an air defense site in central Iran.

After the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Tehran had made a “big mistake tonight” and vowed that “it will pay for it.” Later, the Biden administration revealed that it told Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear sites.

Last week, Netanyahu’s office said Israel would listen to key ally the United States regarding a response to Iran’s missile attack but would decide its actions according to its own national interest.

His statement was attached to a Washington Post article which said Netanyahu had told President Joe Biden’s administration that Israel would strike Iranian military targets, not nuclear or oil sites.

Baghaei, responding to a question about the possibility of Iran changing its official nuclear doctrine, said “weapons of mass destruction have no place in our policy”. Tehran would decide on how and when to respond to any Israeli attack.

Israel, which has long accused Tehran of plans to develop nuclear weapons, regards Iran’s nuclear activities as a threat. Tehran denies these accusations, insisting that its program is entirely peaceful.

Additionally, Israel’s former premier Naftali Bennett called for the country’s leaders to launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities as the Jewish state weighs its response to the barrage of 181 ballistic missiles.

Bennet slammed Biden who had called for a “proportionate” response, saying, “President Biden has said that Israel can retaliate against Iran, but must keep the response ‘proportionate’. The president also urged Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear program.”

Moreover, prominent Israeli opposition lawmaker and former defense minister Avigdor Liberman also called on the government to use “all the tools” at its disposal to confront the threat of Iran’s nuclear program, tacitly suggesting that Israel should use a nuclear weapon against the Islamic Republic.

“In order to stop the Iranian nuclear program, which is already at weaponization stages, we must use all the tools at our disposal… It must be clear that, at this stage, it is impossible to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons via conventional means.”……………………………………………………………………………………https://www.iranintl.com/en/202410210736

October 25, 2024 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Top Australian honour (whaa-at !!!!) for American politician who helped push Australia into the shonky AUKUS agreement

Rex Patrick, 24 Oct 24

Albanese pours $5B of Australian taxpayers’ cash into US shipyards (with no guarantee #AUKUS subs will ever be delivered). He then arranges for the local US Congressman to get a top Australian honour. Icing on the cake for that guy.

Rep. Courtney to receive Australia’s top civilian award

WSHU | By Brian Scott-Smith, October 23, 2024 

U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT-2) has been chosen for one of Australia’s top civilian awards. Courtney is one of a few Americans to be given the Order of Australia, which recognizes extraordinary service by a non-citizen…………………… He has also been instrumental in the AUKUS trilateral defense agreement between Australia, the UK and the U.S. to help provide nuclear submarines to Australia. It’s the first time the U.S. has entered into such an agreement with another country……..  https://www.wshu.org/connecticut-news/2024-10-23/ct-joe-courtney-australia-civilian-award

October 25, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, politics international | Leave a comment

Harris admits to US/Israeli genocide in Gaza….then says ‘Oops, never mind’.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL

At a campaign stop in Milwaukee, Kamala Harris was confronted by a protester who charged the Biden administration “invested “billions of dollars in genocide in Gaza that has resulted in massive child casualties.”

Before Harris could consult her scripted genocide denial playbook, she blurted out “What he’s talking about, it’s real. That’s not the subject that I came to discuss today, but it’s real.”

Mainstream news didn’t cover Harris’ US genocide agreement comment. But just to be safe her campaign issued a statement that Harris “doesn’t agree with defining the war as a genocide, and she has not expressed such a stance in the past, as this is not her position.”

Perhaps the guilt of participating in the most grotesque genocide in this century is beginning to weigh on the conscience of Kamala Harris. If so campaign protesters, keep holding up the mirror of Biden/Harris genocide enabling in Gaza to Kamala at every campaign stop. She must be constantly reminded she cannot escape the depravity into which she has sunk to achieve the US presidency.

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL

October 25, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

US authorizes CIA mercenaries to run biometric concentration camps in Gaza Strip

A private intelligence corporation billed as “Uber for war zones” is preparing to create what Israel hopes will be the model for supplanting Hamas rule in Gaza.

Uncaptured Media, Dan Cohen, Oct 22, 2024

The Biden administration has approved the deployment of 1,000 CIA-trained private mercenaries as part of a joint U.S.-Israeli plan to turn Gaza’s apocalyptic rubblescape into a high-tech dystopia.

Starting with Al-Atatra, a village in the northwestern Gaza Strip, the plan calls to build what the Israeli daily Ynet calls “humanitarian bubbles” – turning the remains of villages and neighborhoods into tiny concentration camps cut off from their environs and surrounded and controlled by mercenaries.

This comes as Israel carries out daily massacres and ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, enacting the proposal known as The Generals’ Plan, originally crafted by former national security chief Giora Eiland to turn Gaza into “a place where no human being can exist.”

The plan, approved by White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, calls for the Israeli military to clear out pockets of Palestinian resistance, which it has failed to achieve, demonstrated by the recent killing of Israeli Colonel Ehasn Daksa, the highest ranking officer to lose his life in the year long war.

48 hours after stamping out resistance, they plan to erect separation walls around the neighborhood, forcing its residents, and no one else, to enter and exit using biometric identification under the CIA contractors’ control. Those who do not accept the biometric regime would be refused humanitarian aid…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://open.substack.com/pub/uncaptured/p/us-authorizes-cia-mercenaries-to

October 25, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Fears salt marsh plan could lead to ‘destruction’ of Severn Vale

Gazette, 21st October 24

THERE are fears plans for new salt marshes linked to the construction of nuclear power plant Hinkley C would lead to “wholesale destruction of the Severn Vale”.

EDF bosses have been severely criticised for their environmental improvement plans in Gloucestershire which are linked to the new Hinkley C site in Somerset.

Their original plan for Hinkley Point was to install an acoustic fish deterrent system to scare fish away from the site as the Bristol Channel is home to numerous species such as eels, herring, salmon and sprats.

However, the French government-owned energy firm feel this will no longer be viable and have instead drawn up alternative plans to create salt marshes along the River Severn.

In the area, they have identified sites in Arlingham and Littleton Upon Severn near Thornbury in South Gloucestershire.

Other proposed sites include Rodley near Westbury-on-Severn in Gloucestershire and Kingston Seymour in Somerset.

But the proposals, which were aired at a recent parish council meeting, have been met with strong opposition in the Severn Vale.

David Seal, a local resident, believes the plans would “likely bring an end to most ideas of future development of the village, farming, farmland, miles and miles of hedgerow, trees and just about everything we all love about the green serenity of the village”.

“All this to ‘offset’ Hinckley C destroying 182 million fish in the estuary per year over 60 years,” he said.

“EDF has all the technical know-how to dig two enormous cooling water tunnels 3.3km out under the Bristol Channel, yet they say it’s ‘too risky’ to fit an acoustic deterrent to mitigate the problem at source in the same estuary.

“What is too risky is messing about with the River Severn and destroying the land we and nature live off…………………………………………………….
https://www.gazetteseries.co.uk/news/24665869.fears-salt-marsh-plan-lead-destruction-severn-vale/

October 25, 2024 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

TODAY. Behind the really nasty “NICE” nuclear energy push to control the November COP Climate Change Conference.

Prepare to be dangerously greenwashed.”

The billionaires and other manipulators have been planning this for years

Their goal is to direct United Nations policy, and the finances for climate action, towards the nuclear industry . Their motives are mixed, but MONEY is the big one.

The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly known as COP29, will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan from 11 to 22 November, 2024. 

The nuclear push is led by a relatively small phalanx of wealthy, powerful individuals – not many in number, compared to the many thousands of people who have qualms about the nuclear lobby running the show at Azerbaijan . But of course, the nuke lobby will be helped along by the fossil fuel giants. If nuclear is accepted as the cure for climate change, there will be a delay of decades for nuclear power to get going again – which means that oil, gas, coal will have full sway.

Nuclear and fossil fuel energies are partners in this crime against our planet.

Even at the 2015 COP  Paris Climate Agreement, nuclear ‘influencers’ like Ernest Moniz and Bill Gates were touting the plan – nuclear as the cheap way to fund climate action. A plan quickly taken up by Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Jack Ma (Alibaba), David Rubenstein (Carlyle Group), Tom Steyer, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg – forming the Breakthrough Institute

Now it was time to really go for the tax-payers’ money, as Bill Gates launched Mission Innovation – to “increase government support” for new generation nuclear technologies. Mission Innovation involves 24 national governments, including the USA, Canada, China and India, the World Economic Forum, the International Energy Agency, and the World Bank.

Joyce Nelson has outlined the development of this “nuclear for climate” push, kicking off the new enthusiasm for small nuclear reactors, especially in Canada, around 2018. No surprise that the scandal-ridden company SNC-Lavalin jumped onto this bandwagon, forming a consortium the Canadian National Energy Alliance (CNEA)

By 2018, Gates was launching Breakthrough Energy Europe, a collaboration with the European Commission. In 1919 Canada hosted the Clean Energy Ministerial/Mission Innovation summit launching NICE -the “Nuclear Innovation Clean Energy Future”

M.V. Ramana warned in advance of the summit, “Note to Ministers from 25 countries: Prepare to be dangerously greenwashed.”

I doubt that the COP 29 summit has any credibility with intelligent people. Held in Azerbaijan, one of the world’s worst petrochemical autocracies, this supposed climate action meeting will be one blatant front for the fossil fuel lobby, as well as the nuclear one.

Sad to have the United Nations sponsoring this pack of liars.

October 24, 2024 Posted by | Christina's notes, climate change | Leave a comment

Sellafield cleanup cost rises to £136bn amid tensions with Treasury

National Audit Office questions value for money as predicted bill for decommissioning increases by £21bn

Alex Lawson and Anna Isaac, Wed 23 Oct 2024 , https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/23/sellafield-cleanup-cost-136bn-national-audit-office

The cost of cleaning up Sellafield is expected to spiral to £136bn and Europe’s biggest nuclear waste dump cannot show how it offers taxpayers value for money, the public spending watchdog has said.

Projects to fix buildings containing hazardous and radioactive material at the state-owned site on the Cumbrian coast are running years late and over budget. Sellafield’s spending is so vast – with costs of more than £2.7bn a year – that it is causing tension with the Treasury, the report from the National Audit Office (NAO) suggests.

Officials from finance ministry told the NAO it was “not always clear” how Sellafield made decisions, the report reveals. Criticisms of its costs and processes come as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, prepares to plug a hole of about £40bn in her maiden budget.

Europe’s most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a “bottomless pit of hell, money and despair”. The Guardian’s Nuclear Leaks investigation in late 2023 revealed a string of cybersecurity problems at the site, as well as issues with its safety and workplace culture.

The NAO found that Sellafield was making slower-than-hoped progress on making the site safe and that three of its most hazardous storage sites pose an “intolerable risk”.

The site is a sprawling collection of buildings, many never designed to hold nuclear waste long-term, now in various states of disrepair. It stores and treats decades of nuclear waste from atomic power generation and weapons programmes, has taken waste from countries including Italy and Sweden, and is the world’s largest store of plutonium.

Sellafield is forecast to cost £136bn to decommission, which is £21.4bn or 18.8% higher than was forecast in 2019. Its buildings are expected to be finally torn down by 2125 and its nuclear waste buried deep underground at an undecided English location.

The underground project’s completion date has been delayed from 2040 to the 2050s at the earliest, meaning Sellafield will need to build more stores and manage waste for longer. Each decade of delay costs Sellafield between £500m and £760m, the NAO said. Meanwhile, the government hopes to ramp up nuclear power generation, which will create more waste.

Sellafield is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a taxpayer-owned and -funded quango. The NDA believes the cost of decommissioning Sellafield could range from £116bn to £253bn, depending on the length and complexity of the cleanup.

Plans to clean up three of its worst ponds – which contain hazardous nuclear sludge that must be painstakingly removed – are running six to 13 years later than forecast when the NAO last drew up a report, in 2018. The NAO said deteriorating buildings, Covid restrictions, staffing and equipment breaking down were to blame. Sellafield had “retrieved much less waste than it had planned” since 2020, it said.

Sellafield could spend more on demolishing buildings earlier to be more efficient and offer better value for money, the NAO said.

One pond, the Magnox swarf storage silo, is leaking 2,100 litres of contaminated water each day, the NAO found. The pond was due to be emptied by 2046 but this has slipped to 2059. The Guardian investigation revealed it could continue leaking until 2050.

The NAO said: “Sellafield has demonstrated that it can remove safely the most hazardous waste, but is not progressing quickly enough to meet its plans.”

Last year, Sellafield defied the Treasury and without consultation increased its headcount from 11,200 to 12,000, despite previous commitments to reduce its employee numbers by becoming more efficient, the report said.

In one blunder, Sellafield paid out £2.1m more in staff bonuses than it should have done – about £200 a person – in 2023. This was paid after a management decision that the NAO suggests was questionable.

Sellafield had expected to replace a testing facility that is more than 70 years old and in “extremely poor condition”, but after racking up £265m over more than seven years the project is under review amid concerns over delays and the condition of buildings on the site. The NAO said this was the single biggest risk to Sellafield’s future, as workers needed to carry out many different regular scientific tests.

Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: “Despite progress achieved since the NAO last reported, I cannot conclude Sellafield is achieving value for money yet, as large projects are being delivered later than planned and at higher cost, alongside slower progress in reducing multiple risks.”

He added: “Continued underperformance will mean the cost of decommissioning will increase considerably, and ‘intolerable risks’ will persist for longer.”

This month, Sellafield was fined £332,500 for cybersecurity failings and the chief magistrate in the case, Paul Goldspring, said it fell into a category “bordering on negligence”.

The NAO said the nuclear site had again admitted that its cybersecurity efforts were falling short.

David Peattie, the NDA’s chief executive, said: “Sellafield is one of the most complex environmental programmes in the world. We’re proud of our workforce and achievements being made, including the unprecedented retrieval of legacy waste from all four highest hazard facilities.

“But as the NAO rightly points out there is still more to be done. This includes better demonstrating we are delivering value for money and the wider significant societal and economic benefits through jobs, the supply chain and community investments.”

October 24, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Mini-Nukes, Big Bucks: The Interests Behind the SMR Push

The “billionaires’ nuclear club”

The 2015 Paris climate talks featured what cleantechnica.com called a “splashy press conference” by Bill Gates to announce the launch of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC) – a group of (originally) 28 high net-worth investors, aiming “to provide early-stage capital for technologies that offer promise in bringing affordable clean energy to billions.”

Though BEC no longer makes its membership public, the original coalition included such familiar names as Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Jack Ma (Alibaba), David Rubenstein (Carlyle Group), Tom Steyer, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg. Many of those names (and others) can now be found on the “Board and Investors” page of Breakthrough Energy’s website.

Why Canada is now poised to pour billions of tax dollars into developing Small Modular Reactors as a “clean energy” climate solution

by Joyce Nelson, January 14, 2021, story. Mini-Nukes, Big Bucks: The Interests Behind the SMR Push | Watershed Sentinel

Back in 2018, the Watershed Sentinel ran an article warning that “unless Canadians speak out,” a huge amount of taxpayer dollars would be spent on small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), which author D. S. Geary called “risky, retro, uncompetitive, expensive, and completely unnecessary.” Now here we are in 2021 with the Trudeau government and four provinces (Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Alberta) poised to pour billions of dollars into SMRs as a supposed “clean energy” solution to climate change.

It’s remarkable that only five years ago, the National Energy Board predicted: “No new nuclear units are anticipated to be built in any province” by 2040.

So what happened?

The answer involves looking at some of the key influencers at work behind the scenes, lobbying for government funding for SMRs.

The Carney factor

When the first three provinces jumped on the SMR bandwagon in 2019 at an estimated price tag of $27 billion, the Green Party called the plan “absurd” – especially noting that SMRs don’t even exist yet as viable technologies but only as designs on paper.

According to the BBC (March 9, 2020), some of the biggest names in the nuclear industry gave up on SMRs for various reasons: Babcock & Wilcox in 2017, Transatomic Power in 2018, and Westinghouse (after a decade of work on its project) in 2014.

But in 2018, the private equity arm of Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management Inc. announced that it was buying Westinghouse’s global nuclear business (Westinghouse Electric Co.) for $4.6 billion.

“If Wall Street and the banks will not finance this, why should it be the role of the government to engage in venture capitalism of this kind?”

Two years later, in August 2020, Brookfield announced that Mark Carney, former Bank of England and Bank of Canada governor, would be joining the company as its vice-chair and head of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) and impact fund investing, while remaining as UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.

“We are not going to solve climate change without the private sector,” Carney told the press, calling the climate crisis “one of the greatest commercial opportunities of our time.” He considers Canada “an energy superpower,” with nuclear a key asset.

Carney is an informal advisor to PM Trudeau and to British PM Boris Johnson. In November, Johnson announced £525 million (CAD$909.6 million) for “large and small-scale nuclear plants.”

SNC-Lavalin

Scandal-ridden SNC-Lavalin is playing a major role in the push for SMRs. In her mid-December 2020 newsletter, Elizabeth May, the Parliamentary Leader of the Green Party, focused on SNC-Lavalin, reminding readers that in 2015, then-PM Stephen Harper sold the commercial reactor division of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) “to SNC-Lavalin for the sweetheart deal price of $15 million.”

May explained, “SNC-Lavalin formed a consortium called the Canadian National Energy Alliance (CNEA) to run some of the broken-apart bits of AECL. CNEA has been the big booster of what sounds like some sort of warm and cuddly version of nuclear energy – Small Modular Reactors. Do not be fooled. Not only do we not need new nuclear, not only does it have the same risks as previous nuclear reactors and creates long-lived nuclear wastes, it is more tied to the U.S. military-industrial complex than ever before. That’s because SNC-Lavalin’s partners in the CNEA are US companies Fluor and Jacobs,” who both have contracts with US Department of Energy nuclear-weapons facilities.”

But, states May, “Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan has been sucked into the latest nuclear propaganda – that ‘there is no pathway to Net Zero [carbon emissions] without nuclear’.”

Terrestrial Energy

Then there’s Terrestrial Energy, which in mid-October 2020 received a $20 million grant for SMR development from NRCan’s O’Regan and Navdeep Bains (Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry). The announcement prompted more than 30 Canadian NGOs to call SMRs “dirty, dangerous, and distracting” from real, available solutions to climate change.

The Connecticut-based company has a subsidiary in Oakville, Ontario. Its advisory board includes Stephen Harper; Michael Binder, the former president and CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission; and (as of October) Dr. Ian Duncan, the former UK Minister of Climate Change in the Dept. of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

Perhaps more important, Terrestrial Energy’s advisory board includes Dr. Ernest Moniz, the former US Secretary of the Dept. of Energy (2013-2017) who provided more than $12 billion in loan guarantees to the nuclear industry. Moniz has been a key advisor to the Biden-Harris transition team, which has come out in favour of SMRs, calling them “game-changing technologies” at “half the construction cost of today’s reactors.”

In 2015, while the COP 21 Paris Climate Agreement was being finalized, Moniz told reporters that SMRs could lead to “better financing terms” than traditional nuclear plants because they would change the scale of capital at risk. For years, banks and financial institutions have been reluctant to invest in money-losing nuclear projects, so now the goal is to get governments to invest, especially in SMRs.

That has been the agenda of a powerful lobby group that has been working closely with NRCan for several years.

The “billionaires’ nuclear club”

The 2015 Paris climate talks featured what cleantechnica.com called a “splashy press conference” by Bill Gates to announce the launch of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC) – a group of (originally) 28 high net-worth investors, aiming “to provide early-stage capital for technologies that offer promise in bringing affordable clean energy to billions.”


Though BEC no longer makes its membership public, the original coalition included such familiar names as Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Jack Ma (Alibaba), David Rubenstein (Carlyle Group), Tom Steyer, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg. Many of those names (and others) can now be found on the “Board and Investors” page of Breakthrough Energy’s website.

“As long as Bill Gates is wasting his own money or that of other billionaires, it is not so much of an issue. The problem is that he is lobbying hard for government investment.”

Writing in Counterpunch (Dec. 4, 2015) shortly after  BEC’s launch, Linda Pentz Gunter noted that many of those 28 BEC billionaires (collectively worth some $350 billion at the time) are pro-nuclear and Gates himself “is already squandering part of his wealth on Terra Power LLC, a nuclear design and engineering company seeking an elusive, expensive and futile so-called Generation IV traveling wave reactor” for SMRs. (In 2016, Terra Power, based in Bellevue, Washington, received a $40 million grant from Ernest Moniz’s Department of Energy.)

According to cleantechnica.com, the Breakthrough Energy Coalition “does have a particular focus on nuclear energy.” Think of BEC as the billionaires’ nuclear club.

By 2017, BEC was launching Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), a $1 billion fund to provide start-up capital to clean-tech companies in several countries.

Going after the public purse

Bill Gates was apparently very busy during the 2015 Paris climate talks. He also went on stage during the talks to announce a collaboration among 24 countries and the EU on something called Mission Innovation – an attempt to “accelerate global clean energy innovation” and “increase government support” for the technologies. Mission Innovation’s key private sector partners include the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, the World Economic Forum, the International Energy Agency, and the World Bank.

An employee at Natural Resources Canada, Amanda Wilson, was appointed as one of the 12 international members of the Mission Innovation Steering Committee.

In December 2017, Bill Gates announced that the Breakthrough Energy Coalition was partnering with Mission Innovation members Canada, UK, France, Mexico, and the European Commission in a “public-private collaboration” to “double public investment in clean energy innovation.”

Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources at the time, Jim Carr, said the partnership with BEC “will greatly benefit the environment and the economy. Working side by side with innovators like Bill Gates can only serve to enhance our purpose and inspire others.”

Dr. M.V. Ramana, an expert on nuclear energy and a professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at UBC, told me by email: “As long as Bill Gates is wasting his own money or that of other billionaires, it is not so much of an issue. The problem is that he is lobbying hard for government investment.”

Dr. Ramana explained that because SMRs only exist on paper, “the scale of investment needed to move these paper designs to a level of detail that would satisfy any reasonable nuclear safety regulator that the design is safe” would be in the billions of dollars. “I don’t see Gates and others being willing to invest anything of that scale. Instead, they invest a relatively small amount of money (compared to what they are worth financially) and then ask for government handouts for the vast majority of the investment that is needed.”

Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist at Beyond Nuclear, told me by email that the companies involved in SMRs “don’t care” if the technology is actually workable, “so long as they get paid more subsidies from the unsuspecting public. It’s not a question of it working, necessarily,” he noted.

Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, says governments “are being suckers. Because if Wall Street and the banks will not finance this, why should it be the role of the government to engage in venture capitalism of this kind?”

“Roadmap” to a NICE future

By 2018, NRCan was pouring money into a 10-month, pan-Canadian “conversation” about SMRs that brought together some 180 individuals from First Nations and northern communities, provincial and territorial governments, industry, utilities, and “stakeholders.” The resulting November 2018 report, A Call to Action: A Canadian Roadmap for Small Modular Reactors, enthusiastically noted that “Canada’s nuclear industry is poised to be a leader in an emerging global market estimated at $150 billion a year by 2040.”

At the same time, Bill Gates announced the launch of Breakthrough Energy Europe, a collaboration with the European Commission (one of BEC’s five Mission Innovation partners) in the amount of 100 million euros for clean-tech innovation.

Gates’ PR tactic is effective: provide a bit of capital to create an SMR “bandwagon,” with governments fearing their economies would be left behind unless they massively fund such innovations.

NRCan’s SMR Roadmap was just in time for Canada’s hosting of the Clean Energy Ministerial/Mission Innovation summit in Vancouver in May 2019 to “accelerate progress toward a clean energy future.” Canada invested $30 million in Breakthrough Energy Solutions Canada to fund start-up companies.

A particular focus of the CEM/MI summit was a CEM initiative called “Nuclear Innovation: Clean Energy (NICE) Future,” with all participants receiving a book highlighting SMRs. As Tanya Glafanheim and M.V. Ramana warned in thetyee.ca (May 27, 2019) in advance of the summit, “Note to Ministers from 25 countries: Prepare to be dangerously greenwashed.”

Greenwash vs public backlash

While releasing the federal SMR Action Plan on December 18, O’Regan called it “the next great opportunity for Canada.”

Bizarrely, the Action Plan states that by developing SMRs, our governments would be “supporting reconciliation with Indigenous peoples” – but a Special Chiefs Assembly of the Assembly of First Nations passed a unanimous 2018 resolution demanding that “the Government of Canada cease funding and support” of SMRs. And in June 2019, the Anishinabek Chiefs-in-Assembly (representing 40 First Nations across Ontario) unanimously opposed “any effort to situate SMRs within our territory.”

Some 70 NGOs across Canada are opposed to SMRs, which are being pushed as a replacement for diesel in remote communities, for use in off-grid mining, tar-sands development, and heavy industry, and as exportable expertise in a global market.

Whether SMRs work or not, Mission Innovation members will be throwing tax-dollars at them like there is no tomorrow.

On December 7, the Hill Times published an open letter to the Treasury Board of Canada from more than 100 women leaders across Canada, stating: “We urge you to say ‘no’ to the nuclear industry that is asking for billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to subsidize a dangerous, highly-polluting and expensive technology that we don’t need. Instead, put more money into renewables, energy efficiency and energy conservation.”

No new money for SMRs was announced in the Action Plan, but in her Fall Economic Statement, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland touted SMRs and noted that “targeted action by the government to mobilize private capital will better position Canadian firms to bring their technologies to market.” That suggests the Canada Infrastructure Bank will use its $35 billion for such projects.

It will take a Herculean effort from the public to defeat this NICE Future, but along with the Assembly of First Nations, three political parties – the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, and the Green Party – have now come out against SMRs.

Award-winning author Joyce Nelson’s latest book, Bypassing Dystopia, is published by Watershed Sentinel Books. She can be reached via www.joycenelson.ca.

October 24, 2024 Posted by | Canada, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

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