Chernobyl/Russia
Forest wardens today stepped up patrols in the Chernobyl fallout zone as a leading ecologist warned that fires could send radioactive particles as far as Moscow. Around 160,000 emergency personnel are battling 600 wildfires across Russia, 290 of which ignited in the last 24 hours. Greenpeace said at least 20 fires – three of them in a highly contaminated forest area – had broken out in the Bryansk region, bordering northern Ukraine, in recent days. Bryansk was part of the zone sprayed with a plume of radioactive isotopes caesium-137 and strontium-90 when the Chernobyl power plant’s fourth reactor exploded in 1986. Alexei Yablokov, a member of the Academy of Sciences, warned that winds could spread contaminants embedded in trees and plants as they succumbed to the inferno.
Guardian 12th Aug 2010 more >>
Russia faced an escalating public health scare on Wednesday after forest fires burned through areas contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster, raising fears that radioactive material could be released into the atmosphere.
Telegraph 12th Aug 2010 more >>
BBC 11th Aug 2010 more >>
A Russian state forest official has said that wildfires burned in Russia’s Bryansk region, an area that was contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, contradicting a previous government report about fires in potentially radioactive areas. Fires covering hundreds of hectares were recorded in Russia’s Bryansk region on August 6, an area hit by contamination from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the state forest watchdog said Wednesday
France24 11th Aug 2010 more >>
Fires around a nuclear production facility in western Russia have been fully stabilized and a red alert on the situation has been dropped, the national emergency ministry said Wednesday. The nuclear facility, located in the Chelyabinsk region — specifically, in Snezhinsk — has avoided any dangerous threat, the press office of the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry told CNN.
CNN 11th Aug 2010 more >>
Nuclear Waste
AN ALLERDALE councillor is to call on colleagues to withdraw the borough’s expression of interest in a high level nuclear waste dump. Seaton councillor Joe Sandwith has submitted a notice of motion for Wednesday’s council meeting, calling on the authority to end its involvement in the project. Allerdale and Copeland have both expressed interests, without obligation, in hosting a repository for high level nuclear waste.
Whitehaven News 9th Aug 2010 more >>
ANTI-NUCLEAR protestors are calling on the government to halt moves to get rid of radioactive material in conventional landfill.
Whitehaven News 11th Aug 2010 more >>
Nuclear Costs
Large civilian nuclear energy programs can and have brought states quite a way towards developing nuclear weapons, and it has been market economics, more than any other force, that has kept most states from completing the original plans.
Policy Review Aug/Set 2010 more >>
New Nukes
Political deciders, corporate elites and mainstream media, almost everywhere, have swung to virtually total support for nuclear power. Major agencies and entities promoting nuclear power, such as the OECD’s NEA and the WNA announce the industry’s 2010-2020 potential for rivalling its previous highwater mark, in the 1975-1985 period, when it averaged one new reactor on line every 17 days, for 10 years. In the next decade, at least 12 – 15 “new nuclear” countries, and this total could grow to 18 or more, will have opened the civil-military option, and Pandora’s Box for their leaderships. More and more nations could take the known and proven civil-to-military route for building nuclear weapons, acquiring the political clout these weapons are supposed to confer, and equipping themselves with Doomsday Weapons in the event of military invasion by hostile powers. As these leaderships know, the powerful and rich nations of the UN Security Council – the world’s earliest atomic weapons powers – owe their Security Council status in major part to nuclear weapons.
Market Oracle 11th Aug 2010 more >>
Letter: reliance on wind power is not an option. The French know better, hence their large number of nuclear power stations. We must start building these now and not delude ourselves that renewables will power a modern state.
FT 12th Aug 2010 more >>
Dungeness
Damian Collins MP for Folkestone and Hythe said: “I welcome the Government’s commitment to nuclear power. “I have been pressing for Dungeness to be included on the list of recommended sites for new power stations, after it was removed from that list by Labour. “It would certainly seem to fit the bill in that there are already nuclear power stations on the site, there is considerable local support for a new power station and it is a site that the energy companies believe can be developed by 2018. “Given the need for the country to have new and reliable sources of low carbon energy in the next decade, I would hope that the Government, in reviewing the consultation on nuclear sites, would include Dungeness.
Hawkinge Gazette 10th Aug 2010 more >>
A new nuclear power station at Dungeness could still be built after the Government gave its strongest signal yet about its preferred list of sites. Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said the first of a new generation of reactors should be up and running by 2018 and those areas where there were already stations and popular local support were being considered for development.
Kent News 12th Aug 2010 more >>
Hinkley
Residents of Burnham will get their chance to have their say on plans for hinkley.
Burnham-on-sea.com 11th Aug 2010 more >>
Oldbury
This Autumn will be a very important period for the residents of the Vale of Berkeley. SANE as a group is committed to building our membership up so that DECC and developers “See the Light” and exclude Shepperdine from the list of suitable sites. We are not going to go away! Thanks to continued support from Steve Webb MP we realise that we have a chance of fighting for our blighted community.
Shepperdine Against Nuclear Energy 11th Aug 2010 more >>
Wylfa
Horizon Nuclear Power today said initial work by reactor companies would start shortly on preparatory design studies for its proposed new power station in North Wales. The company has signed contracts for preliminary work to be carried out between now and the end of the year with Areva and the consortium formed by Westinghouse Electric Company Nuclear Power Delivery UK (NPDUK). The two organisations’ designs are being assessed for new UK nuclear reactor licences.
Nuclear Industry Association 12th Aug 2010 more >>
Sellafield
Sellafield trades unions have lost a £12 million claim against the nuclear site’s operators over pay bribery allegations.
Whitehaven News 11th Aug 2010 more >>
Cumbria
ENERGY Secretary Chris Huhne’s “speed up” for nuclear new-build has been welcomed in West Cumbria. While confirming that the coalition government will not subsidise the new fleet of electricity-producing reactors, Mr Huhne said: “We are on course to make sure the first new nuclear power stations opens on time in 2028.” Some months ago Copeland MP Jamie Reed revealed to The Whitehaven News that the Spanish-led consortium Iberdrola hoped to start construction on at least one new reactor at Sellafield by 2015.
Whitehaven News 11th Aug 2010 more >>
Ireland
Letter: I’M very worried whether my children and grandchildren will have enough energy in the future. We’re told that oil and gas supplies will give out, so what will replace them? The Government puts its trust in wind power but wind doesn’t always blow. If we were to rely on wind and wave we would find ourselves back in the dark ages. I can’t understand why this country hasn’t followed other countries along the sensible route of nuclear power. France had the wisdom to go all-out with nuclear power, which now supplies over three-quarters of its electricity.
Irish Independent 11th August 2010 more >>
China
China currently has 12 operational plants generating 12 gigawatts accounting for 2.3% of the country’s power. Another 23 are currently under construction. It plans to add ten a year for the next decade, taking them up to 70 Gigawatts by 2020, and a staggering 400 gigawatts by 2050. That’s nearly the total power generated in China today. This will make China the world’s largest consumer of yellow cake (U3H8) for fuel. Canadian, American, and Australian uranium miners please take note.
Oil Price 11th Aug 2010 more >>
Germany
Germany’s biggest power company, E.ON, posted mixed quarterly results on Wednesday and pressed the government to make up its mind on the issue of nuclear energy.
Yahoo 11th Aug 2010 more >>
Submarines
Flags will fly at half-mast across Russia as the country remembers the sailors who lost their lives in one of the greatest tragedies in Russian naval history.
Exactly 10 years ago, an explosion on the nuclear-powered Kursk submarine, the largest attack submarine ever built, resulted in the deaths of all 118 people on board.
BBC 12th Aug 2010 more >>
Trident
Letter: Philip Stephens writes that “prudence cannot be at the expense of prestige when it comes to the Trident nuclear deterrent”. The possession of nuclear weapons may well have generated prestige in the late 1950s, when the US and Soviet Union measured their strengths in terms of bombers and missiles, and there were only three nuclear powers (including Britain.) But is the same really still true of the much more complex international political world of the early 21st century? Prestige is an intangible concept that is often easier to assert than to measure or assess. But given the price tag of a replacement for Trident, and the high potential opportunity costs in terms of other elements of the defence budget, this is a case that needs to be argued, rather than declared as an article of faith.
FT 12th Aug 2010 more >>
Peak Oil
Peak oil is inevitable. Something has to give, and it’s consumerism. Governments know this perfectly well. What they really need is some externality, something abstract they can blame – deflecting the public wrath from the ballot box. Western governments need a villain. Oil at $200 a barrel fits the bill perfectly.
Guardian 11th Aug 2010 more >>
Renewables
The UK’s leading solar energy firm, SolarCentury, has today reported that the number of people employed by the company and its partner network has almost doubled over the past six months as the government’s feed-in tariff incentive scheme begins to take effect.
Business Green 11th Aug 2010 more >>
