Nuclear Sites
An eBay-style bidding war is being waged for the right to shape Britain’s nuclear industry over the next 60 years. Three sites earmarked for new reactors are on offer at Wylfa, in Anglesey, Oldbury, in Gloucestershire, and Bradwell, in Essex. Electronic bidding was due to end on March 31 but last night a spokesman for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the government body that owns the sites, confirmed that bidding for all three was continuing, based on a rule that permits the auction to continue indefinitely assuming a new bid at least £5 million higher than the last offer is submitted within 24 hours.
Times 6th Apr 2009 more >>
Sellafield MoX Plant
The Government response (2nd April 2009) to a Parliamentary Question from MP Michael Meacher this week confirms the economic and production failures that have become synonymous with the crippled SMP.
A Table provided in the response shows that SMP, with an original annual production rate of 120 tonnes of Mixed Oxide fuel (MOX, in which plutonium is combined with uranium) for overseas customers, has produced just 6.3 tonnes of fuel in the seven years since it opened in 2002. Further, the Table shows SMP to have suffered a significant financial loss in each and every year of operation – once overheads and operating costs (as well as the costs of having to sub-contract work to its European rivals) are deducted from sales. Since 2002, SMP’s total loss amounts to £626M.
CORE Press Release 3rd Apr 2009 more >>
UKAEA
Serco, the FTSE100 aviation-to-science service conglomerate, is the latest name tipped to bid for the £50m UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). The Government announced plans to privatise the nuclear clean-up business last week, and British groups VT and Amec plus US giants CHM Hill and Fluor are also expected to look at UKAEA. A source said a general “shortage of nuclear engineers” would make UKAEA attractive.
Independent on Sunday 5th Apr 2009 more >>
Terror
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is creating a secret network of 18 centres to deal with a nuclear attack on Britain by terrorists. They would help handle the massive casualties and also monitor vulnerable services like transport. Britain already has 7,000 cops trained to deal with a terror strike – and will soon have 10,000. Ms Smith warned that a nuclear, chemical or biological outrage is more likely than ever, adding: “Terrorists continue to develop new methods.”
Sunday Mirror 5th Apr 2009 more >>
North Korea
NORTH Korea thrust itself back on to the global political agenda yesterday, as it launched a long-range rocket, triggering an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council and provoking both fury and division in the international community.
Scotsman 6th Apr 2009 more >>
Gordon Brown branded North Korea’s rocket launch “completely unacceptable”.
Telegraph 6th Apr 2009 more >>
President Obama faced his first big test on security yesterday after North Korea launched a missile designed to carry a warhead as far as Alaska.
Times 6th Apr 2009 more >>
Guardian 6th Apr 2009 more >>
China’s muted reaction to North Korea’s rocket launch is in sharp contrast to other nations, with Beijing concerned about pushing Pyongyang into a corner which could jeopardise broader nuclear disarmament talks.
Yahoo 6th Apr 2009 more >>
Hans Blix: even during the Bush administration (second term), the US seems to have concluded that to talk North Korea out of its nuclear programme the regime must be offered something that is more useful to it than nuclear weapons and missile programmes. Conversely, the regime knows that for doing away with these programmes, it can demand a great deal.
Guardian 6th Apr 2009 more >>
History may one day record it as a stark irony – and let us hope an amusing one rather than the tragic kind – that on the very day that Barack Obama was sketching out to an adoring throng in Prague his vision of a post-nuclear world, North Korea launched a rocket that may one day give it the capacity to fire a nuclear warhead as far as 3,700 miles. This means, to get down to brass tacks, that it could hit Alaska. Obama can use his standing to get Pakistan and India, Israel and the Palestinians, Iran, Syria and maybe even North Korea into the ballroom. Getting them to dance will be the work of years.
Guardian 6th Apr 2009 more >>
The United Nations failed to agree on a response to North Korea’s long-range rocket launch despite pressure from Washington and its allies for action, while regional powers weighed the extent of the new security threat.
Independent 6th Apr 2009 more >>
Disarmament
Gordon Brown said a new global bargain was possible after President Obama outlined his vision for a nuclear free world.
Press and Journal 6th Apr 2009 more >>
US President Barack Obama stood before a crowd of more than 20,000 in a square beneath the walls of Prague Castle yesterday to lay out his goal of forging a world free of nuclear weapons, while acknowledging that he may not see it in his lifetime.
Independent 6th Apr 2009 more >>
Telegraph 6th Apr 2009 more >>
BBC 5th Apr 2009 more >>
President Obama’s hopes for a world free of nuclear weapons may just be a dream. Despite his rousing rhetoric in Prague that “we can do it”, huge obstacles are in the way and even he gave himself two escape clauses.
BBC 5th Apr 2009 more >>
There is no near-term prospect that any existing nuclear power will abandon its weaponry. The more likely scenario is proliferation of nuclear capabilities to states that are variously unstable, tyrannical and threatening. President Obama is right to assert that nuclear deterrence can be secured with a lower level of nuclear stockpiles. Balanced reductions in nuclear arsenals are an important goal for the new Administration. But in the international order as it exists, the US must retain a nuclear capability.
Times 6th Apr 2009 more >>
As well as supporting the test ban treaty, Obama pledged to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation treaty which dates from 1968 and is the cornerstone of the effort to try to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. He specified two ways of reinforcing the NPT regime – banning the production of fissile material used for nuclear warheads and establishing an “international fuel bank” which would supply and keep tabs on low-enriched uranium for peaceful nuclear purposes in electricity generation for countries that need it. This is aimed at keeping countries, such as Iran, from developing their own fuel enrichment programmes and at restricting the growth of nuclear know-how.
Guardian 6th Apr 2009 more >>
Background to the Non-proliferation Treaty.
Guardian 6th Apr 2009 more >>
The one concrete, deliverable promise that Mr Obama made in his Prague “end of nuclear weapons” speech was to continue one of the most unpopular Bush policies: the deployment of the missile defence shield in Europe. So long as Iran remains a threat, he said, the US would maintain its commitment to the missile defence programme which has (he tactfully did not say) been so unpopular in Eastern European countries such as the one in which he was speaking. And the enormous Czech crowd which stretched as far as the eye could see, cheered him.
Telegraph 6th Apr 2009 more >>
Climate
Business leaders have delivered a surprise attack on the government’s environmental policy, arguing that ministers are not doing enough to cut global warming emissions or make sure the UK does not run out of power. The CBI says billions of pounds of necessary investment will move to the US and China unless the government takes “urgent action”. Further evidence of the growing crisis of confidence in the green energy sector is exposed today by a survey which revealed that more than three quarters of Britain’s green energy companies were now facing enormous financial difficulties gaining vital access to loans and investment money – a finding that has seriously shaken the industry’s parent body. The CBI’s new strategy, one of four “road maps” to a low-carbon economy published today, will call for immediate and short-term actions, including clear planning guidance to fast-track investment in offshore wind farms and nuclear power stations and an upgraded National Grid.
Guardian 6th Apr 2009 more >>
In his new book on global warming, the distinguished sociologist Anthony Giddens coins a paradox. What he helpfully calls Giddens’s Paradox runs thus: however massive the dangers posed by climate change, their lack of immediate visibility in daily life means many people will do nothing concrete to tackle it; by the time they are prompted to action it will, by definition, be too late.
Guardian 6th Apr 2009 more >>
Trident
The UK is currently committed to replacing the Trident system at an estimated cost of about £20bn. The decision, which was taken in 2007, provoked the largest revolt among backbench Labour MPs since the Iraq war and will see the UK’s four nuclear weapons submarines replaced with new boats from 2024.
Guardian 6th Apr 2009 more >>
