New nukes
Nuclear power is an expensive investment. Letter from Institute of European Environment Policy: nuclear energy suffers not just from “perception” problems as the interview with Andris Piebalgs, EU energy commissioner, emphasises, it has been, and continues to be, an expensive investment in an age of liberalisation that shifts risk to companies no longer able to saddle the public with whatever bad idea central planners concoct.
FT 24th May 2006
Tony Blair has come under a double attack from his allies for the way he introduced nuclear power to the political agenda. He was told that his announcement had aroused suspicions that there is a “secret agenda” behind government policy. One of the critics was the former environment secretary Stephen Byers, normally seen as a Blairite, who warned yesterday that the Government will now find it very difficult to achieve general agreement on where Britain should turn for its future energy supplies.
Independent 24th May 2006
Letter: Another pre-emptive strike by Tony Blair! This time not against Iraq but against the Government’s own energy review.
Leicester Mercury 24th May 2006
Letters.Nuclear power versus renewables, including one from Bath Green Party.
Bath Chronicle 23rd May 2006
Letters about Milliband’s connection to the nuclear industry and te sacking of Elliot Morley
Lincolnshire Echo 23rd May 2006
The first new nuclear plant would almost certainly be at Sizewell.
Suffolk Evening Star 23rd May 2006
Sellafield
IRISH campaigners have reiterated their calls for Sellafield to be closed down, saying that its existence could jeopardise the health of future generations. Warnings were also issued against moves to build new nuclear power stations in the UK, at a conference held by Sinn Fein in Dundalk, County Louth.
Carlisle News and Star 23rd May 2006
Accidents
Fifty seven breaches in safety have occurred at British nuclear plants since 1997. In the last year there were three such breaches at the Sellafield plant in Cumbria, including the large leak of highly radioactive nuclear fuel which forced the closure of the Thorp reprocessing plant.
Socialist Worker 27th May 2006
An investigation is under way after a minor collision between a car and a train carrying an empty nuclear waste flask on a rail crossing. The Direct Rail Services (DRS) train, which was on its way to the Sizewell A nuclear power plant on Monday, hit the Ford Focus at Knodishall in Suffolk.
BBC 23rd May 2006
Wylfa
The Assembly Government said it still wants to extend the life of Wales’s only nuclear power station today, despite the the NDA effectively ruling it out in evidence to the House of ommons Welsh Select Committee.
ICWales 23rd May 2006
France
Radioactive waste from a storage facility in Normandy, France is leaking into groundwater and is being used by local farmers for their dairy cattle, according to a report published today by French laboratory ACRO for Greenpeace.
Greenpeace International Press Release 23rd May 2006
Opinion polls
Scotland and Yorkshire are opposed to nuclear power but the rest of England and Wales are in favour, according to a new regional analysis of opinion polls by the nuclear industry.
Rob Edwards website 23rd May 2006
An ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph shows 47% still opposed to new nuclear stations, with only 40% in support
ICM May 2006
Iran
Iran has requested through intermediaries direct talks with Washington over its nuclear program.
Interactive Investor 24th May 2006
London hosts talks on Iran today between France, Germany, Russia, China and US.
Sky 24th May 2006
Reuters 24th May 2006
Opposition by US “hawks” led by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, is complicating efforts by the main European powers to put together a package of incentives aimed at persuading Iran to suspend its nuclear fuel cycle programme, according to diplomats and analysts in Washington.
FT 24th May 2006
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Kuwait that Moscow supports an EU proposal aimed at coaxing Iran into halting sensitive nuclear work and called on Tehran to cooperate.
Interactive Investor 23rd May 2006
North Korea
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday the stalemate over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme cannot be allowed to continue and China is crucial to the success of talks trying to bring it to a close.
Reuters 23rd May 2006
Fusion
Today, after years of false starts and political wrangling dating from the cold war, they will get their chance to make that dream a reality. A €10bn (£7bn) project, called Iter, to build a prototype nuclear fusion reactor will be signed off in Brussels by the EU, Japan, China, South Korea, India and the US.
Guardian 24th May 2006
CoRWM
Good to know the Tories are going right back to basics with nuclear waste. In March, their new environment and energy teams met CoRWM, the committee charged by government to deal with thousands of tonnes of nuclear rubbish. Documents released under freedom of information show that the new green politicians had ideas of their own, asking if they could shoot it all into space . . . or even dump it at sea. CoRWM had to explain patiently to the Tories that “firing waste into space was [considered] too high risk” and “burying it at sea would be fraught with legal complications”. All other suggestions on a postcard to Zac Goldsmith and John Gummer.
Guardian 24th May 2006
Star Wars
In a move that is raising hackles in Moscow, the US is proposing to install an anti-missile defence system in central Europe to counter any future attack from a nuclear-armed Iran.
Independent 24th May 2006