New nukes
Ministers are today expected to give approval to a new generation of nuclear power stations for Britain.
Reports suggested yesterday that the cabinet’s Energy and Environment Committee – chaired by Tony Blair and attended by senior ministers including Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, the Industry Secretary, and Douglas Alexander, the Scottish Secretary – will put the final touches to the government’s recommendations in its energy review. Last week in Dumfries Mr McConnell appeared if anything to strengthen his position, against new reactors in Scotland, saying: “I am not in favour of new nuclear generation in Scotland until the issue of waste is satisfactorily resolved. Nuclear waste is virtually permanent and potentially very, very lethal.”
Scottish Herald 26th June 2006
Daily Mail 26th June 2006
Telegraph 26th June 2006
Sellafield
If nuclear energy is, as Tony Blair has said, back on the agenda with a vengeance, nowhere will feel its impact more acutely than west Cumbria – one of the poorest and most isolated regions that for more than 50 years has borne the brunt of Britain’s muddled advances in atomic technology. It is virtually certain that Sellafield, the UK’s largest nuclear site and the biggest employer in west Cumbria, would play an important part in any revival, either as a site to build a power station or as a place to store nuclear waste. Much of the country’s research capability is also at Sellafield.
FT 26th June 2006
Nuclear Skills
A national nuclear laboratory should be set up to safeguard skills vital to the industry, according to the head of British Nuclear Fuels’ research and development subsidiary.
FT 26th June 2006
Trident
Defence Secretary Des Browne held out the possibility of a vote in Parliament over whether Britain should renew its independent nuclear deterrent.
Guardian website 25th June 2006
Letters, including from Prof Shaun Gregory: As one of those who gave evidence to the Defence Select Committee against the replacement of Trident, I find it regrettable that Gordon Brown has signalled his intention to replace Britain’s dependent deterrent without taking time either to reflect on the committee hearings or to debate the issue within the Labour Party.
Times 26th June 2006
So Gordon Brown has announced the recommissioning of Trident – the delivery system for our very own Weapons of Mass Destruction – and without a pause the debate has immediately sunk into the incessant babble about the Labour leadership. But this decision is far too important to be left to Westminster Village trivia. It affects the single greatest threat to the future of the human species, along with global warming – the spread of nuclear weapons. It is only four years now since India and Pakistan were so close to nuclear war that Britain had to order its citizens to evacuate the sub-continent. We are about to see a nuclear standoff between Israel and Iran in the heart of the most volatile region in the world. This is the reality of the Second Nuclear Age, a time when mini-cold wars are proliferating across the world’s hot spots, each offering its own protracted Cuban Missile Crises.
Independent 26th June 2006
Quite how a fleet of vastly expensive submarines patrolling the oceans with the power of hundreds of Hiroshimas on board is supposed to protect us from Muslim lads in the suburbs, or rogue tyrannies abroad, is never quite spelled out. Can anyone explain why a new generation of post-Trident nuclear ballistic missiles with the power to immolate Asia help winkle out al-Qaida in the rocky badlands of northern Pakistan?
Guardian 26th June 2006
China
One sinister aspect of the US Defence Department’s 2006 report on the Chinese military released last month is its discussion of nuclear weapons policy.
World Socialist Web Site 26th June 2006
Nuclear Weapons
Letter: R D DON states that he believes that “our deterrent has protected us and kept the peace for the past 50 years” (June 24). Why? This is not a belief I share, for the simple reason that he can offer no proof of this. The theory of deterrence is essentially flawed because there is no way of demonstrating that it has worked.
Scottish Herald 26th June 2006
Iran
The debate over Iran has come to focus almost exclusively on negotiations and diplomacy, and the effort to persuade that country to give up aspects of its nuclear enrichment activity and reopen itself to United Nations inspections. Whether or not such agreement is reached, the real issue is not what Iran agrees to but how determined it is to pursue a nuclear weapons programme.
FT 26th June 2006
