Sellafield
Taxpayers are being forced to indemnify the winner of the £7.5bn contract to decommission the highly toxic Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria against an accident because the bidders are based overseas. The preferred consortium will be announced on Friday. Four consortia are vying for the contract, which could be worth £20bn over its lifetime, including US engineering giants Fluor, Bechtel, Washington Group and CH2M Hill, as well as French nuclear power group Areva and the Japanese firm Toshiba. UK companies Serco and Amec are also members of overseas-led consortia. Because every country has different laws setting out liability in the event of a nuclear accident, the government has agreed to waive UK rules that require companies to pay the first £140m of clean-up costs.
Observer 6th July 2008 more >>
New Nukes
Energy ministers of the G8 group of countries have promised to work together to ensure that any expansion of the nuclear industry worldwide is carried out with improved safety standards and non-proliferation precautions.
Nuclear Engineering International 5th July 2008 more >>
Iran
Iran’s oil minister said any military attack aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear work will push crude prices to “unpredictable” highs, the website of the country’s Oil Ministry reported on Saturday.
Reuters 5th July 2008 more >>
Pentagon chiefs fear that Israeli plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear programme will fail to destroy the facilities because neither the CIA nor Mossad knows where every base is located.
Telegraph 5th July 2008 more >>
Iran said today that its nuclear programme remained unchanged, indicating that it would reject European Union incentives to stop enriching uranium. The statement by government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham’s came just a day after Tehran sent a response to the EU, the details of which have yet to be revealed.
Guardian 5th July 2008 more >>
Reuters 5th July 2008 more >>
BBC 5th July 2008 more >>
Letter: Realities in the Middle East do not conform to the wishful thinking of The Observer or of political scientists who compare a nuclear Iran to the Cold War, allowing themselves to ignore the religious and cultural dimensions of a nuclear Middle East. The checks and balances that mitigated the conflict during the Cold War do not exist in this region. The bipolar nature of the Cold War, its relatively rational strategic decision-making processes, clear lines of command over nuclear arsenals and the absence of public pressure to launch a nuclear war contributed to its stability.
Observer 6th July 2008 more >>
Iran has insisted its approach to its nuclear programme remains unchanged, despite demands in the West that it suspend uranium enrichment. On Friday, it sent its response to an international offer of economic incentives if it were to halt the programme. Spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham’s comments, carried by the official Irna news agency, however, suggest that the West’s key demand has not been met.
Observer 6th July 2008 more >>
Pakistan
Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has lived under house arrest since 2004 when he confessed to selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, has said for the first time that Pakistan’s army was involved in his proliferation ring.
Telegraph 5th July 2008 more >>
Climate
Figures revealed last week in an obscure government report – snappily entitled Development of an Embedded Carbon Emissions Indicator – produced by the Stockholm Environment Institute and Sydney University for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) – show that Britain is responsible for 200 million more tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year than official figures admit, an increase of 37 per cent.The official figures are confined to totting up only the amount of pollution emitted from within a country’s borders, and excludes what is produced from international aviation and shipping. The report includes such transport emissions and those produced in other countries in making goods for export to Britain, mainly in the Third World.
Independent on Sunday 6th July 2008 more >>