Sellafield
With upcoming elections, some members of the UK Labour Party seem to be having fun spinning the latest of a long line of Sellafield financial fiascos (Nuclear Management Partners (NMP) to benefit themselves. However, they fail to discuss how Sellafield got in the state it’s in or their role in it. They also fail to discuss that a Labour government gave the contract to the NMP in the first place. And, that a now former Labour MP, Richard Caborn, still sits on the non-executive board of NMP. He started sitting on the board as an MP.
Mining Awareness 21st Jan 2015 read more »
Letter: In the early days of the UK nuclear weapons programme our nuclear boffins had a terrible accident at Sellafield (then called Windscale) when trying to produce polonium — by irradiating bismuth oxide cartridges — in the iconic Windscale Piles. This accident resulted in the widespread polonium contamination of north west England. The official UKAEA history of the accident, by the late Lorna Arnold (published in 1992), revealed that following the accident polonium pollution was detected within days in northern Europe. Samples were collected in Copenhagen, Oslo, Bonn and The Hague and analysed by the UK Atomic Energy Authority scientists at Harwell, near Oxford.
FT 6th Feb 2015 read more »
Iran
No doubt the clearest sign of progress in the long-running negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme is Binyamin Netanyahu’s determination to go to the US Congress to speak against a deal. But there are other straws in the wind in the sidelines of the Munich Security Congress, where the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has been meeting his western counterparts over the weekend.
Guardian 8th Feb 2015 read more »
Australia
South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill raised a few eyebrows about his plans, announced this weekend, for a “royal commission” into the nuclear energy industry. But Weatherill is right about one thing: Nuclear energy, he says, is “not something that would be economically viable in South Australia, or indeed the nation.” For most people, Weatherill’s comments about the costs of nuclear energy would be a case of stating the bleeding obvious. Not the nuclear fan club, however, who appear completely detached – even from the nuclear industry. A glance at the contract for the Hinkley C nuclear reactor -the first to be built in the UK for a generation – proves otherwise. Even in the UK, with a well established nuclear industry, and all the infrastructure that has been built, it is still expensive. It will start with a tariff of £92.5/MWh ($180/MWh) before rising nearly three-fold over the following decades.
Renew Economy 9th Feb 2015 read more »
Guardian 9th Feb 2015 read more »
The South Australia state government aims to review its policy on nuclear power generation, amid growing debate about the impact of growing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels.
Argus Media 9th Feb 2015 read more »
The Lead 9th Feb 2015 read more »
