New Nukes
Radiation Free Lakeland has submitted evidence to the select committee on the Future of the Nuclear Industry in the North West. Their evidence includes Freedom of Information requests they made to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and also scientific reports. RFL claim the reports show that the draft Nuclear National Policy Statement is a “staggering concoction of lies – which if allowed to go unchallenged will have devastating consequences for us and the wider international community.”
Get Noticed Online 6th Jan 2010 more >>
French nuclear firms should stop pushing expensive state-of-the-art reactors to developing countries and instead market the EPR – Areva’s flagship nuclear reactor – to rich countries where top-notch safety systems are politically key, they added. Countries such as India or the Gulf states should be offered older, cheaper technology, analysts said, adding Areva should also work on quickly finalising a smaller type of reactor with new technology to broaden its range of products.
The New Economy 6th Jan 2010 more >>
French energy giant EDF will be leading the charge with its proposals for new nuclear power stations at Hinkley Point in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk. It is believed that the £4bn Hinkley Point project will be the first to come to fruition. A planning application is expected this summer. EDF intends to let over 150 contracts covering work at Sizewell and Hinkley Point. Decommissioning work at Sellafield is also set to continue, with procurement of a £1.5bn contract to build a Highly Active Liquid Effluent Facility likely to progress this year. However there have been murmurs of funding issues for new build and decommissioning work. Wind farms also appear to be coming into favour as an alternative energy source, and this year should see the Government’s plans gain momentum.
Construction News 7th Jan 2010 more >>
Radioactive Waste
THE issue of Copeland being a potential home for the Government’s high-level radioactive waste is on the agenda at the next Hillcrest and Hensingham Neighbourhood Forum. Borough councillors Tim Knowles and David Moore will be speaking and taking questions on the subject at the meeting, set for Thursday, January 14.
Whitehaven News 6th Jan 2010 more >>
STUDENTS at St Benedict’s School joined a discussion on the disposal of radioactive waste in underground facilities around Copeland. The sixth-formers were taking part in workshops, run by West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safety Partnership, aimed at educating them about the reality of an underground facility in their area.
Whitehaven News 5th Jan 2010 more >>
Hartlepool
PEOPLE are being urged to have their say on whether they think a new nuclear power station will benefit Hartlepool. The Government launched a public consultation in November last year after Hartlepool was confirmed as one of the 10 potential sites for a new nuclear power station. Hartlepool Borough Council has already said that it will be sending its own response to the consultation, but it wants to hear the views of local people to help shape the submission. One way people can air their views is via the council’s online questionnaire, which gives them the opportunity to answer a series of questions. The council will also be organising its own ‘Question Time’ debate in the town on Tuesday, January 26, which will include a number of expert panellists. Further details will follow.
Peterlee Mail 6th Jan 2010 more >>
Uranium
AREVA have confirmed with their own survey high radiation contamination levels in the streets of Akokan close to French nuclear company AREVA’s uranium mines in Niger. These levels are unacceptably high. The company says the area has now been cleaned and also checked by the radiation safety authority. It also states that it has a plan of action for a complete survey of the two cities close to its uranium mines, and is promising that by the end of next year both will have been completely checked and cleaned up. However, we remain worried. Would this action have been taken had it not been for Greenpeace visiting Akokan and taking its own radiation measurements?
Greenpeace Nuclear Reaction 5th Jan 2010 more >>
Ireland
The answer, Prof James Hansen, director of the Nasa Goddard Institute, insists, is next-generation nuclear power, using “fast- breeder” reactors. Current reactors are hugely inefficient, burning less than 1 per cent of uranium. Fast-breeder reactors are up to 99 per cent efficient, so produce vastly more energy and simultaneously, far less radioactive waste. Even better, current “waste” can actually be made safer by being reburned in these reactors. More research is needed to bring them into production. The problem remains that some governments and almost all environmentalists trenchantly oppose nuclear power. Hilariously, Ireland has a law against even considering nuclear power – and two Green Ministers, both decent men, who would probably quit politics sooner than concede that nuclear may in the end be the lesser of two evils.
Irish Times 7th Jan 2010 more >>
US
The pro-nuclear Department of Energy is set to offer this month the first of nearly $20 billion in loan guarantees to a nuclear industry that hasn’t built a plant since the 1970s or raised any money to do so in years. But although the industry is seeking to cash in on global warming concerns with $100 billion in proposed loan guarantees, environmentalists, scientists and federal investigators are warning that lax oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of the nation’s aging 104 nuclear plants has led to near-meltdowns along with other health and safety failings since Three Mile Island – including what some critics say is a flawed federal health study apparently designed to conceal cancer risks near nuclear plants. A Massachusetts Department of Public Health study in the late 1980s, though, found a 400 percent increase in leukaemia for those living downwind from the Pilgrim plant.
Truthout 6th Jan 2010 more >>
Iran
David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security has posted a useful Q&A on the Iranian document that reveals, as The Times has reported, the regime’s nuclear deceit. Albright explains clearly the provenance of the documents, and why governments – specifically the Obama Administration, as reported in the NYT on Sunday – are taking them with great seriousness.
Times 7th Jan 2010 more >>
The United States and top EU allies are seeking extended sanctions against Iran over its rejection of a U.N. plan to temper its nuclear ambitions, but Chinese and Russian resistance poses a major stumbling block.
Reuters 6th Jan 2010 more >>
The twin-track approach on the nuclear issue was right a year ago and it is not altogether wrong now. But something big has changed in the meantime. The truth is that the best chance we have of stopping Iran’s covert march to the threshold of becoming a nuclear weapons state is a change in the way Iran is governed. What so many Iranians want is a political system that is more open to its own people and to the world; one in which the representative, republican parts of the Islamic Republic’s hybrid constitution gain the upper hand. Such a system would almost certainly produce a government more open to negotiation with the rest of the world, and more likely to abide by the results of such a negotiation than the present one is. That is now a better bet than the implausible notion that China and Russia will agree to UN sanctions sufficiently stringent to bring this unstable, hyper-nationalist regime – which thrives on images of western imperialist encirclement – to give up its covert pursuit of the capacity to make nuclear weapons, as well as its support for cross-border terrorism, kidnappings etc
Guardian 7th Jan 2010 more >>
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Tsutomu Yamaguchi witnessed at close hand the nuclear devastation of two Japanese cities, and lived to tell the tale. Now it will be left to others to tell his incredible story after his death this week at 93.
Guardian 7th Jan 2010 more >>
Independent 7th Jan 2010 more >>
Energy Efficiency
Every home in Scotland should get free loft and cavity wall insulation as part of measures to make all homes low carbon, according to WWF Scotland. The group announced today (January 5) that free insulation is part of a ‘bold three-pronged approach’ set out in response to a Scottish Government consultation on Scotland’s Energy Efficiency Action Plan which ends today. According to the WWF Scotland ‘urgent’ action is needed as by its own admission the Scottish Government states current policies will deliver at best only a 9% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 – far short of the 42% it’s aiming for.
Edie 5th Jan 2010 more >>
Green campaigners also stepped up calls for a “bold” approach to tackle fuel poverty – and in doing so, meet climate change targets for reducing carbon emissions. WWF Scotland organiser Elizabeth Leighton urged the Scottish government to build on Westminster’s Warm Front scheme in England which offers grants of up to 6,000 for pensioners and single parents on benefits to insulate their homes. And she insisted: “A bold, local authority-led, street-by-street approach with free loft and cavity wall insulation for all is the most effective means to make all homes low-carbon.”
Morning Star 6th Jan 2010 more >>
Renewables
A CONTROVERSIAL new power line which critics claim will scar some of Scotland’s most spectacular scenery has been given the go-ahead without any requirement to bury the cables. Enterprise minister Jim Mather yesterday announced that the 137-mile line between Beauly near Inverness and Denny near Stirling can be constructed. But his announcement quickly brought the threat from one prominent conservation charity – the John Muir Trust – that it would go to court to stop the development.
Scotsman 7th Jan 2010 more >>
Guardian 7th Jan 2010 more >>
Times 7th Jan 2010 more >>
