Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Uranium: The new 'foreign oil'
’Shocking report from the Department of Energy might dampen enthusiasm for the nuclear industry. The U.S. now imports close to 60% of its uranium, and prices are skyrocketing. The one thing that everyone from both sides of the aisle can agree on in the current energy debate is the concept of "energy independence" -- i.e. the production of energy "in-house" rather than the reliance on foreign fuel imports, like oil, which often originate from countries that are in conflict. Sen. John McCain has been one of the staunchest advocates for energy independence, so it was a bit surprising to see him so visibly lauding one particular industry that is so totally reliant upon foreign imports - nuclear energy. The U.S. Department of Energy released an EIA report (PDF) on uranium production and trade. The findings are frightening. Since 1979...uranium imports have risen from 5 percent to about 60 percent while domestic production has tanked. Meanwhile prices have skyrocketed. In the last five years, the price per pound of raw uranium has gone from about $12 to $45. That would be the equivalent of oil prices going from $60 a barrel to $200... in 5 years..’

The OL3 nuclear European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), being built by French nuclear giant AREVA at Olkiluoto in Finland, is in such desperate financial trouble it has single-handedly wiped out the company’s half year profits.

The company’s operating profit is down by 97 per cent and net profit is down by 79 per cent – all thanks to the disastrous Olkiluoto EPR project. Facing up to the realities of nuclear reactor construction – the only true answer to the question ‘how much does a reactor cost?’ being ‘we’ll tell you when it’s finished’ – AREVA CEO Anne Lauvergeon has finally admitted that it is impossible to predict the final cost of OL3.

When the OL3 project was presented to Finnish government and parliament for (an ultimately positive) decision, TVO said the cost would be EUR 2.5 billion. The contracted fixed budget was EUR 3.2 billion. After years of schedule overruns, safety violations, and thousands of construction defects, the cost of this so-called state-of-the-art third generation reactor - one of just two being built in the world right now – now stands at EUR 5.5 billion. The counter above shows just how much OL3 is over schedule and over budget. To think AREVA describe EPR as ‘a cost effective reactor’.

The profit announcement has resulted in another very public argument between AREVA and the reactor’s owners, Finnish utility TVO. AREVA are demanding TVO help carry some of the financial burden (one billion euros and counting) – despite OL3 being a ‘turnkey’ project with a fixed price – and are threatening to suspend construction until the original contracts are modified.

So now Areva starts blackmailing its Finnish partner in an attempt to force it to cover at least some of the massive cost overrun. Anne Lauvergnon said that Areva will not commence with some of the construction unless TVO agrees to modified contracts. So far, it seems these threats have been made only in the media as TVO says it has not been informed about ‘discontinuing work or presented any conditions for the continuation of work on the OL3 construction site’

The countries – China, UK, US, India, Italy and others – looking to build their own EPRs are surely watching closely. How must potential investors be feeling, watching a reactor builder refusing to complete construction unless contracts are changed in its favour?

The real losers in this are of course Finnish electricity consumers (who face higher bills) and French taxpayers (AREVA is 91 per cent owned by the French state). In other words, the OL3 EPR reactor cannot be completed without massive public subsidies.

Arrogance and a misplaced faith in its own abilities have brought AREVA to this position. Like the rest of the nuclear industry, the EPR reactor is a dangerous and failing experiment (the other EPR being built at Flamanville in France is also hugely over budget and behind schedule, and has seen the same construction problems as OL3). EPR is massively expensive, untried and untested, and a block to the real and urgently needed solutions to climate change – renewable energy sources and energy efficiency programmes.

EPR is unaffordable both financially and environmentally. Construction Olkiluoto must be abandoned.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Anti-nuclear protestors scale Berlin's Reichstag
’Germany decided in 2000 under former premier Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats and the Greens -- when current Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives were in opposition -- to mothball its 17 reactors by about 2020. Greenpeace activists scaled Berlin's Reichstag parliament building on Tuesday to protest against Germany backtracking after this month's general election on its decision to abandon nuclear power. The 15 activists managed to hang a banner underneath the inscription "Dem deutschen Volke" ("For the German people") reading "...eine Zukunft ohne Atomkraft" ("a future without nuclear power").’

The nuclear industry has the world’s most powerful people believing its fairy tales. A compliant and gullible public are seemingly happy to have their pockets constantly rifled by these nuclear pickpockets in search of subsidies. The nuclear industry spends millions on propaganda and planting pro-nuke stories in the media, making sure we all buy into their empty promises and so allow this status quo to continue.

Then there are days when you have to wonder if the nuclear industry really doesn’t care how it looks to the rest of us.

How about the story that ‘nuclear experts are using household cleaner Cillit Bang to clean radioactive stains at a UK nuclear power plant after watching an ad that showed dirt being stripped from a 10p coin’? Surely that’s a sign of a nuclear industry no longer worried about looking terrifyingly insane or worried that the rest of us might think they’re terrifyingly insane. Hey guys, why not try a little bicarbonate of soda? We hear white wine’s pretty good for removing stains as well.

Then there’s this:

Worsening working conditions, inadequate pay rises, pressure to work faster and safety concerns…

No,it’s not a description of 19th century working conditions as described by the likes of Charles Dickens in his novels. It’s the description of 21st century working conditions at France’s Tricastin nuclear power plant as described by independent experts. ‘We work on top of each other in the nuclear reactor which is very narrow and where it's hard to operate,’ said a 53-year-old worker. A hundred or so years ago we used to make children climb up chimneys to clean them. It seems the practices remain the same at nuclear reactors, only the ages of the workers have changed. When the nuclear industry is running its reactors as if they were factories in the early industrial revolution, you know it must think it can get away with anything…

…like contaminating enough soil at one nuclear reactor ‘to fill Yankee Stadium with radioactive sludge a foot deep’. That’s 1.63 million cubic feet of soil in case you were wondering. Yet Entergy, Indian Point nuclear power plant’s operators, want to extend its working lifetime by another 20 years. Such an attitude is admirable in a way – it speaks of an almost courageous a lack of vanity on the part of the nuclear industry. It looks a mess and just doesn’t care.

Somebody somewhere thinks this is all a price worth paying for ‘safe’, ‘cheap’, and ‘reliable’ electricity. That somebody? The industry with its propaganda, politicians who believe the propaganda, and you with your open wallet.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

South Korea to train Myanmar technicians on nuclear energy
’YANGON, Sept. 2 (Xinhua) -- South Korea will provide training on nuclear energy to officials and technicians from Myanmar along with other member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the local weekly Myanmar Times reported Wednesday. It was offered by the South Korean government when ASEAN+3 energy ministers met recently in Myanmar's second largest city of Mandalay, South Korean embassy here was quoted as disclosing. The East Asian country agreed to the provision of technical know-how on nuclear power stations in order to reduce the burning of fossil fuels and to help protect the environment. Under a three-year training program which lasts from 2009 to 2011, South Korea will train a total of 150 technicians and senior government officials from ASEAN countries including Myanmar, the report added.’

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Energy Department Forced to Release Photos of Trucks Used to Transport Nuclear Bombs and Components and Nuclear Weapons Materials

Friends of the Earth announced today it has used the Freedom of Information Act to force the U.S. Department of Energy to release color photos of the special trucks that transport nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons components and "special nuclear material" such as plutonium and highly enriched uranium. It is believed that these are the first nuclear bomb truck photos released by the Department of Energy in recent years. "The trucks carrying nuclear weapons and dangerous materials such as plutonium pass through cities and neighborhoods all the time and the public should be aware of what they look like," said Tom Clements, Southeastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator with Friends of the Earth in Columbia, South Carolina. "Release of these photos will help inform the public about secretive shipments of dangerous nuclear material that are taking place in plain view."’

This Saturday Berlin will see what is expected to be Germany’s largest anti-nuclear demonstration. Thousands of campaigners, activists and protesters will arrive in the city to highlight the issue ahead of Germany’s national elections on September 27.

Should Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party win the election and/or build a coalition with the Free Democrats (FDP), it is feared they will abandon the country’s policy to phase out its nuclear reactors by 2020. The CDU seem to have learned little from recent events at Germany’s Krummel reactor. Nuclear power has already cost German taxpayers 165 billion euros in subsidies since 1950. They’ll be expected to give up another 92.5 billion euros between now and 2021 even if the phase out goes ahead.

This is a critical time. With time running out in the fight against climate change, Europe and the wider world cannot afford further investment of time, money and resources in the nuclear boondoggle.

Together with many people from Greenpeace I will be at the gathering on Saturday and reporting on the day’s events via Twitter. You can follow me at @AslihanTumer. You can also follow other campaigners and protesters on Twitter by searching for the #antiatomdemo hashtag.

We’ll have a report and pictures of the protest next week. If you’re going to be there yourself let us know in the comments and leave links to your own photos and reports.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

For Merkel, no clear way out of nuclear woes
’An effigy of German Chancellor Angela Merkel sits atop a placard reading "All is Great, All is Clean, All is Fine", as tractors lead the anti-nuclear energy march on September 5, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany escalates ahead of national election, with some 50,000 activists marching in Berlin to demand the shut down of the country's 17 aging nuclear power plants. On Saturday, the demonstrators, led by 400 farmers on tractors, marched past Chancellor Angela Merkel's office in the capital to urge her center-right government to stay committed to a nuclear phase-out by 2020 adopted eight years ago. The protests came just a day after Merkel told Westdeutschen Allegemeinen Zeitung daily that a stalled risk appraisal of Gorleben, including its geology, should proceed and that findings should be "open-ended." She said the usage of the mostly aging nuclear stations should be extended. Saturday's rally rejected a proposal to transform a former salt mine in Gorleben, in northern Germany, into a long-term storage site for radioactive waste.’

Tens of thousands of people gathered in Berlin on Saturday to protest against nuclear power and put the issue at the heart of the upcoming national elections. They were led by 350 tractors driven by farmers who had begun their journey at the Gorleben nuclear waste dump.

As the gathering was taking place Greenpeace announced that its survey had found that 59 per cent of Germans were against Angela Merkel’s proposals to extend the lifetimes of the country’s 17 nuclear reactors. Even supporters of Chancellor Merkel’s own party, the CDU, and those of its potential coalition partner, the FDP, are equally split over the issue.

More news on the gathering, along with a photo gallery and video, is available (in German*) on the Greenpeace Germany website. There is also the transcript of the speech given by Greenpeace Finland’s nuclear campaigner, Lauri Myllyvirta at the Brandenburg Gate. Pictures twittered by Greenpeace International nuclear campaigner Aslihan Tumer can be seen here, here [http://twitpic.com/gkvtn], here and here.

* Google’s translation service can help those who don’t read German.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Reactor opponents challenge law funding work
’ATLANTA --- The question of a controversial law's constitutionality could halt new nuclear reactors in Georgia. A group opposed to reactors on environmental grounds is using a legal challenge to the financing mechanism granted to Georgia Power during the past legislative session as a way to prevent what it considers to be an ecological mistake. Senate Bill 31 violates the state and federal constitution on several points, argue lawyers for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. The group, which is based in Tennessee but has members and offices in Georgia, has often spoken out against nuclear power and in favor of solar and wind power. Sara Barczak, of the group's Savannah office, relied on environmental arguments in December when she testified against the plant in front of the Public Service Commission. "Downstream communities should be concerned about project water consumption at the proposed Vogtle site because consumptive water loss, especially during low river flows, can pose significant negative impacts to water quality and aquatic resources," she said.’

It seems nuclear business is booming in China right now. The country is looking to quadruple its nuclear power capacity in the next ten years. The Japan Steel Works manufacturer of reactor components has ‘more than doubled its forecast for China’s nuclear plant construction’.

The relationship between China and the US is ‘evolving to include sharing expertise in nuclear-energy technology’ with David Sandalow, the US Department of Energy’s assistant secretary for policy and international affairs, saying ‘nuclear is going to be more of a focus’ in future negotiations between the two countries.

Chinese companies are also eyeing majority stakes in uranium mining projects in Australia, one of the world’s biggest uranium producers in the world.

However, as always with these predictions, projections, pipe dreams (or whatever you want to call them) it’s worth looking beyond the hype. How, for example, does China’s reliance on foreign technology and uranium feed into nuclear power’s supporters’ claims that it offers energy security?

The manufacturing of large reactor components still presents a serious roadblock to a large and fast expansion of the so-called nuclear ‘renaissance’, not just in China but across the world. Factories able to produce the parts are few and already have significant order backlogs. Extra production capacity is promised but would it be enough to satisfy the demand the nuclear industry tells us to expect?

Then there is the question of skills. We can apparently expect ‘$1 trillion worth of contracts for reactors worldwide in the coming decade’. Where is all the expertise and the labour force going to come from fulfil those contracts? Before building more nuclear reactors, the industry might think about building some more training schools and fast.

This rush will inevitably lead to shortages - of resources, manpower and expertise. These shortages could lead to dangers. As Li Ganjie, director of National Nuclear Safety Administration, told the International Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Energy…

At the current stage, if we are not fully aware of the sector's over-rapid expansions, it will threaten construction quality and operation safety of nuclear power plants…

Look at the problems they’ve had at Olkiluoto in Finland where the construction of the OL3 EPR reactor had been plagued with problems with construction quality and safety procedures. And this at a time when the nuclear industry is expanding not-at-all and OL3 is supposedly a fully-resourced flagship project.

That being the case, what can we expect if all these plans for expansion reach their construction phases? Increased competition for resources, expertise stretched thin, corners cut and safety compromised. The vision of a nuclear future suddenly doesn’t look so great. The likes of China’s ambitions start to look less like firm plans and more like fantasies.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Anti-radiation pills raise questions for residents near nuclear power plants
’BERRIEN COUNTY - It's a potential danger that many people living near a nuclear power plant don't always consider. But now, potassium iodide pills will be given to people who live and work near nuclear power plants, including the Cook and Palisades Nuclear Power plants in southwest Michigan. In the case of a nuclear accident, potassium iodide pills can limit the amount of radioactive iodine absorbed by a person. Starting in October, people who live or work within a 10-mile radius of one of the three nuclear plants in Michigan can get those anti-radiation pills for free. "If something did happen down the road there, I think we'd be happy we have something that could help us," said Pat Bormann of Bridgman. Potassium iodide pills are also known as KI tablets. If an accident were to occur, residents who have the pills would be instructed to take them. The pill works by "filling up" the thyroid with stable iodine so radioactive iodine cannot enter the system.’

At the end of last year Japan owned 31.8 tons of fissile plutonium. Apparently 6.6 tons of that is actually in Japan while the rest is held abroad under terms of various nuclear waste reprocessing deals.

That’s a lot of fissile plutonium. You can use it, for instance and if you really wanted to (not that you would being a lovely reader of Nuclear Reaction), as the naughty bit in nuclear weapons. In the case of 31.8 tons of the stuff, that’s a lot of naughty bits in nuclear weapons. Let’s have a little rough fun with the numbers.

There was around six kilogrammes of plutonium in the ‘Fat Man’ atomic bomb that exploded over Nagasaki on August 9 1945 killing 80,000 people by the end of that year. Japan currently owns enough fissile plutonium to make 4,500 replicas of ‘Fat Man’. ‘Fat Man’ exploded with the force of 21,000 tons of TNT (21 kilotons). Japan’s current stockpile of fissile plutonium has the potential explosive force equivalent to a mountain of TNT weighing 94,500,000 tons (94,500 kilotons) – that’s around a fifth of the total explosive force expended by all the nuclear weapons tests in history (510,000 kilotons).

We told you it was a lot of fissile plutonium. We do hope someone’s keeping a close eye on it all.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Areva Pressures Finland's TVO About Troubled Nuclear Power Plant

French company Areva SA (Paris, France) has told the Finnish nuclear power company Teollisuuden Voima Oy (TVO) (Eurajoki) that it will complete construction of the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant only after TVO issues contracts for requested modifications and has agreed to proposals that have been made. Areva claims that the modifications and proposals were necessary because of TVO's failure to follow standard industry practices involving the management of the project. However, TVO claims that Areva has not informed the firm of the threatened stoppage of work and has not presented any conditions for continuation of construction work on the project. According to Areva, work on the reactor is more than 80% complete, with initial preparations under way for the placement of the reactor dome. Civil work on the main buildings is approaching 73% completion.

Is this a crack opening in the nuclear industry’s usually watertight public relations strategy? People who live and work within ten miles of the Cook and Palisades Nuclear Power plants in southwest Michigan are to be given potassium iodide pills to be taken in the event of a nuclear accident.

It’s a brave if uncharacteristic move for the nuclear industry to allow such a move. We’re surprised that it hasn’t lobbied hard against this idea. It certainly goes against the mountains of industry propaganda that insists nuclear energy is safe .

The pills stop radioactive iodine from being absorbed by a person’s thyroid gland and can help prevent radiation-related cancer. However, potassium iodide pills are just one protection. They only protect the thyroid and not other parts of the body, and do no protect against other radioactive elements apart from radioactive iodine. Unfortunately, the people of southwest Michigan should not therefore take too much comfort from their pills.

There is, of course, a 100 per cent protection against radiation poisoning. It protects against all radioactive elements in all parts of the human body. It’s called Energy [R]evolution. It has no harmful side-effects and is readily available. Take two and call us in the morning.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Russia Says No to Iran Nuclear Sanctions

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it clear Thursday that Moscow wouldn't back any new rounds of tough sanctions against Iran in the United Nations Security Council, and he dismissed a U.S. timetable for securing progress from Iran on ending its nuclear-fuel program. Mr. Lavrov's comments in Moscow cast doubt over the ability of the U.S. to succeed in an effort to secure international backing for new sanctions. They also appeared to end any hopes that the Obama administration's "reset" of troubled relations with Russia would lead to Moscow's support for one of the top U.S. foreign policy priorities. Just a day after U.S. officials warned that Iran may already have enough enriched uranium to make a bomb if processed further, Mr. Lavrov said negotiations should begin without any imposed timetable. He also said that even if Iran tried to make weapons-grade fuel it would be detected and there would be time to respond.

By Aslihan Tumer , Nuclear campaigner at Greenpeace International

The Mochovce plant is a nuclear dog whose owners like very dirty tricks.

It seems that the Nukes industry has been up to its old tricks in trying to prevent any sort of transparent public process. In this case “seeing it” is definitely “believing it”.

Some kind soul leaked our colleagues in Slovakia a power point presentation which outlines the dastardly plans of the Slovak electric utility, whose majority owners are Italian company ENEL, for the up and coming environmental impact assessment of Mochvoce - their nuclear reactor. [Check out an example from their Powerpoint presentation below.]

They have so little confidence in their “clean & safe” reactor that they came up with this lovely plan to do as much as possible to manipulate the public hearings in order to make sure things go well for them.

They want to:
• prevent any protests in the area by organizing their own demonstrations
• restrict the participation of the public in a “public” hearing
• reach the lowest possible media and public attention
• prevent a legally required hearing in the neighbouring country of Austria

So another nuclear utility bites the 'transparency dust'. ENEL has always presented itself as a champion in transparency. With this document it shows it is willing to use communist era manipulation to avoid public scrutiny. And with reason: the Mochovce project sports two 1970s Russian designed nuclear reactors that are not even equipped with secondary containment. No wonder they don’t want anyone finding out.

[For more on Greenpeace's nuclear campaign - follow Aslihan on Twitter!]

Update: The Powerpoint presentation is now available here.

Update 22/09: Greenpeace asked Paolo Ruzzini, CEO of Slovenské elektrárne, 15 questions about the preparation of the public hearing for the Environmental Impact Assessment of the Mochovce 3,4 nuclear reactor project. Here's his answer.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Musharraf admits US aid diverted to nuke program
’Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has admitted to what many of us have known for some time: Pakistan has diverted US aid - money that was intended to be used to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban - to programs designed to strengthen the military against India. From The Times of India: Musharraf admitted that he had violated rules governing the use of the military aid, and justified his actions by saying he had "acted in the best interest of Pakistan." In an interview with a news channel, he said he "did not care" whether the US would be angered by his disclosure.’

In the face of huge opposition – both in the polls and on the streets of Germany [http://weblog.greenpeace.org/nuclear-reaction/2009/09/50000_say_nein_danke_to_nuclea.html] – Chancellor Angela Merkel has again outlined her nuclear ambitions [http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601090&sid=as9F1MHi6CgE]…

In a town-hall-style meeting in Cologne three weeks before elections, Merkel told voters that prolonging the phase-out that’s planned for 2020 is “justifiable” to avert having to import power from nuclear sources in other European Union states. Utilities including RWE AG and E.ON AG have pressured the government to let them keep nuclear plants running longer.

With just over two weeks to go before Germany’s national elections, pressure is still needed to make sure the new German government does not make a historic mistake by giving a nuclear lead to the rest of the world.

If further inspiration is needed, here’s a slideshow of photos taken at the anti-nuclear power demonstration in Berlin on September 5 which was attended by 50,000 people…

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Mafia sank boat with radioactive waste: official

’The Cunsky is one of 32 vessels carrying toxic material that has been sunk by the mafia in the Mediterranean, according to the prosecutor's office in Reggio Calabria. Italian authorities have discovered a ship that was sunk by the mafia off the coast of southern Italy with 120 barrels of radioactive waste on board, a local prosecutor said Monday. The 110-metre (360-feet) long ship was found on Saturday 500 metres (1,640 feet) under water and around 28 kilometres (17 miles) from the coast of Calabria, Paola city prosecutor Bruno Giordano told AFP. "For the moment, we do not know the origin of the waste, but it is probably from abroad. It is a first lead," he said. The Cunsky is one of 32 vessels carrying toxic material that has been sunk by the mafia in the Mediterranean, according to the prosecutor's office in Reggio Calabria.’

Here’s a question for you: what would you rather do, wrestle an alligator or try and outrun a starving tiger?

The answer is, of course, ‘neither, you idiot.’

It’s a shame US Energy Secretary Steven Chu didn’t think of the same answer when asked…

‘If he had to choose between having a coal-fired energy plant or a nuclear facility next door to his home…’

He replied,,,

‘…me personally, I'd rather be living near a nuclear power plant.’

Wrong answer. What he should have said was…

‘Neither, you idiot. I’d rather live next to a wind or solar farm based on a distributed grid and so taking us away from the tyranny of the baseload myth and the vested interests of greedy energy companies eying billions in public subsidies…’

What a shame that, faced with the enormous challenges of climate change and scare resources, the energy secretary of the richest and most innovative country in the world couldn’t bring himself to challenge the false choice of the status quo.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Homeless nuclear waste
Standing on the end of Bailey Point, looking out on a cold, blue inlet of the Atlantic, you'd never know a nuclear power plant once stood here. The massive concrete containment dome, the spent fuel storage pool, and the six-story-high turbine hall were all torn down earlier this decade, leaving a rain-soaked meadow of grass. The engineers and technicians who tended the
900-megawatt reactor packed up and left town a decade ago, when the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Station stopped producing power. All that's left is radioactive waste: the remains of the plant's reactor vessel lining and the 1,435 spent fuel assemblies that passed through it over a quarter century of operations. It has nowhere else to go. The owners of the defunct plant have
put the waste in sealed canisters and placed them inside 64 two-story concrete silos that stand in regimented formation behind a 12-foot earthen berm and twin rows of razor-wire-topped fencing. Guards, insurance, maintenance, and other costs add up to $8 million a year, which is currently borne by utility customers. If it weren't for the need to watch over the waste, the company would have been dissolved with the rest of the plant in 2005.

‘In preparation for this new reactor boom…’

Areva does its bit for public confidence in its new EPR reactor.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Meltdown: A Gloomy Look at the Economics of Nuclear Power
For sheer radioactivity, there's little that can match a discussion of the economics of nuclear energy. So let's wade right in. There's a new paper out from Spanish researchers at Universidad Pontificia Comillas exploring nuclear economics. Spain, you may recall, has its own debate about the future viability of nuclear energy. The paper poses a simple question: Does nuclear energy add up to a rational investment in a liberalized energy market? Rather than trying to compare the costs of generating electricity, the paper focuses on the costs of building new nuclear reactors. The answer: New nuclear plants might just make economic sense, but probably won't in the real world.

‘Telling states to build new nuclear plants to combat global warming is like telling a patient to smoke to lose weight.’

Jennifer Nordstrom, co-ordinator of the Carbon-Free Nuclear-Free project

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Foreign minister orders probe of secret agreements with U.S.
Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada has ordered a top Foreign Ministry official to probe secret Japan-U.S. accords, including one granting permission to nuclear-armed U.S. vessels to make port calls in Japan. Okada revealed during his inaugural press conference early Thursday that he instructed Administrative Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka to investigate the bilateral secret agreements left in the ministry and report the findings by the end of November. "The secret agreements are an extremely critical issue," Okada stressed before the assembled media. Okada said he instructed Yabunaka to probe into: a secret pact on the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japan at the time of the revision of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in
January 1960; a secret agreement on combat operations in times of emergency on the Korean Peninsula, which is believed to have been struck in 1960; a secret accord on the introduction of nuclear weapons in case of emergencies, which was reached at the time of the return of Okinawa Prefecture to Japan in 1972; and a secret pact in the same year on Japan's shouldering of expenses for restoring land plots used by the U.S. military to their
original state when they are returned to Japan.

IAEA's poor nations split on Iran's attack ban bid
VIENNA (Reuters) - An Iranian attempt to ban attacks on nuclear sites suffered a setback on Wednesday when fellow developing nations declined as a bloc to endorse a draft resolution, diplomats said. An Iranian draft resolution, obtained by Reuters, declares that any attack on a nuclear plant in operation or being built to be a violation of international law. It urges states to aid any attacked country and others hit by radioactive fallout and asks the International Atomic Energy Agency to pursue a legally binding ban on attacks or even threats of attacks on nuclear facilities. The Islamic Republic had been due to submit the resolution at the U.N. nuclear
watchdog's 150-nation general assembly later this week, with a simple majority required for passage.But a senior diplomat in the Non-Aligned Movement of 118 developing nations,
to which Iran belongs, said it was possible Tehran would withdraw the measure after failing to win a NAM endorsement as a bloc in a meeting outside the assembly.

Bulgarian Nuclear Plant Is Key Piece In Great Game
Today's Great Game still goes back to Central Asia, as did the similar jousting between Russia and Britain more than a century ago. This time, though, Bulgaria will matter. Will the Balkan country side with Russia or the European Union? Some progress should be notched up Thursday at a meeting in Sofia between Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko and his Bulgarian counterpart Traicho Traikov. But as the first edition of the Great Game taught, events can be slippery and even reversed. Core to the talks in Sofia is the fate of Bulgaria's planned Belene nuclear power plant. It was ardently sought by the former Socialist government, which signed a construction deal with Russia's Atomstroyexport. Now, Traikov is backing off, saying Bulgaria might not wish to finance its 51% stake in the project. One reason, he noted, is that the estimated cost has jumped to close to EUR10 billion from the EUR4 billion inked early last year.

NRC proposes extending licenses for 20 more years for dry cask storage of spent nuclear fuel
The federal regulator of nuclear power has proposed allowing the renewal of licenses for dry cask storage of spent fuel to be extended from 20 years to 40 years. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's proposed rule change would also allow new dry cask storage facilities to be licensed for 40 years. It would likewise allow the casks that contain the spent fuel to be approved for certificates of compliance for up to 40 years. The proposed rule changes were published Tuesday in the Federal Register. The NRC is accepting public comment for the next 74 days. The current duration of the licenses and certificates of compliance are for up to 20 years. Reactor owners seeking lengthier licenses must get an exemption under the existing rules.

Areva sees bigger cap increase if no T&D sale
PARIS, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Areva will have to raise the size of a planned capital increase if "insufficient" bids cause it to abandon the sale of its T&D power transmission and distribution business, the French group's head said. The group has set a deadline of Friday evening for offers for the division and plans to finalise its capital increase at the end of 2009 or the start of 2010, Chief Executive Anne Lauvergeon told France's parliament on Thursday. Certain sovereign funds are interested in investing in Areva, which is considering selling a 15 percent stake to partners, the CEO of the nuclear reactor maker said. The group, of which the French state owns 91 percent, wants to sell T&D as part of an 11 billion-euro financing plan that includes a capital increase. Analysts value T&D at up to 5 billion euros ($7.38 billion).

Northern Arizona tribes united against uranium mines
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. » The Hualapai (WAHL'-uh-peye) Tribe has renewed a ban on uranium mining on its land near the Grand Canyon, joining other American Indian tribes in opposing what they see as a threat to their environment and their culture. The tribal bans add to a temporary mining ban on nearly 1 million federally owned acres around the Grand Canyon. The combined actions mean uranium-bearing lands in northern Arizona open to companies hungry to open mines are growing scarce. Much of the uranium in Arizona is in the northwest corner of the state. The high-grade ore used in nuclear energy and for medicine is especially attractive at a time when prices for uranium have risen. But members of northern Arizona tribes say it's not worth putting their health, water and land at risk.

Cry Me a River - Uranium and Genocide in Indian Country
When Paul Zimmerman writes in his new book about the Rio Puerco and the Four Corners, he calls out the names of the cancers and gives voice to the poisoned places and streams. Zimmerman is not just writing empty words. Zimmerman writes of the national sacrifice area that the mainstream media and the spin doctors would have everyone forget, where the corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado meet, in his new book, A Primer in the Art of Deception: The Cult of Nuclearists, Uranium Weapons and Fraudulent Science. - A report in 1972 by the National Academy of Science suggested that the Four Corners area be designated a 'national sacrifice area,' he writes. Then, too, he writes of the Rio Puerco, the wash that flowed near my home when I lived in Houck, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation in the 1980s. The radioactive water flowed from the Churck Rock, N.M., tailings spill on down to Sanders, where non-Indians were also dying of cancer, and it flowed by New Lands, Nahata Dziil Chapter, where Navajos were relocated from their homes on Black Mesa. They moved there from communities like Dinnebeto. Some elderly Navajos died there in New Lands, not just from the new cancers, but from broken hearts.

News in the UK this week has been dominated by debate about the dire economic outlook facing the nation, and the likely severity of the cutbacks it will need to make to pay down its now massive national debt. Government ministers wring their hands about it but can't escape the reality that Britain needs to make cuts across the board - unless, of course, it's weapons of mass destruction that are under discussion.

Remarkably, the cost of maintaining the UK’s 'independent' nuclear deterrent continues to increase in inverse proportion to it's usefulness. New research from Greenpeace, using only the government's own figures, puts the actual cost of replacing the UK’s aging WMDs at over £95bn, compared to the government’s already sizeable estimate of £15-20 billion.

In The Firing Line, released today, has received the backing of many senior political and military figures. There is so much spin around the issue that it's hard to know where to start. In the first place the government has tried to spin the renewal project as 'routine maintenance'. This may fool poor citizens, but not the governments of other nations. They see it see it for what it is – re-armament, and a breaking of legally binding pledges to disarm. Secondly, the level of intentional obfuscation around timings and costs have practically been elevated to an art form.So much so that it took Greenpeace researchers months to work out the real levels of expenditure involved…

All the details can be found on Greenpeace UK’s website

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Struggles to keep memories over critical accident continue
’On Sept. 30, 1999, Shoichi Oizumi and his wife Keiko were wondering why helicopters were continuously hovering over their auto parts factory in the village of Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture. ''Firefighters came to our factory to tell us to close the windows as an accident took place at JCO Co.,'' a nuclear fuel processor across the street, the 81-year-old Oizumi said. ''But they did not know precisely what happened.'' ''I looked out the window, but I did not see any abnormal signs, such as smoke. I called the village office, but the officials did not know what really happened either,'' he said. It was when the couple tuned in to the 7 p.m. TV news program at home that they knew Japan's first criticality accident had occurred at JCO at 10:35 a.m. The critical state lasted around 20 hours until its termination at 6:14 a.m. the next day, eventually causing the deaths of two JCO workers and exposing hundreds of residents, including the Oizumis, to radiation. The village was thrown into disarray, with many residents forced to evacuate, traffic systems suspended, schools closed, and it was hit by harmful rumors that its farm products were contaminated with radiation.

We haven’t mentioned it for a little while but we’re still working on our comedy show set in the nuclear industry. The only worry we have about it is that some of the storylines we have planned, despite being true stories, will be rejected as too fantastical, outlandish, or just downright puerile.

Take the 40 contract workers fired or temporarily suspended at Canada’s Bruce Power nuclear reactor for ‘violating the company's code of conduct regarding Internet use’. Were the contractors, who were supposed to be refurbishing the reactor, merely updating their Facebook statuses or was there – if you’ll forgive us – something more single-handed going on? The company isn’t telling. Chief executive officer Duncan Hawthorne said, ‘you can fill in the blanks yourself’. We will, Duncan, we will.

Meanwhile, the big-hitters of the nuclear industry are getting together to establish a ‘European Nuclear Energy Leadership Academy’ providing ‘theoretical and practical-based nuclear management education’ in order to train future ‘leaders in European nuclear corporations and institutions’. The thing is, when you consider that some of these big hitters include AREVA (whose flagship reactor project is running three years late and 2.3 billion euros over budget) and Vattenfall (threatened with ‘special supervision’ in Sweden and on its last chance with the Krummel reactor in Germany), you have to be slightly concerned about what kind of leaders this academy is going to produce. What’s the first lesson? Financial Mismanagement 101? Advanced Incompetence?

Speaking of last chances, it seems Scotland’s Hunterston B nuclear reactor may also be on borrowed time after the latest leak at the plant. Nobody was too surprised, Hunterston being one of the worst reactors in the UK for safety violations with a decade-long record of leaks and fires. Apparently there is a culture of ‘failures of management and supervision’ and ‘failure to use “best practicable means” to abide by the rules’. These people sound the ideal recruits to teach at the ‘European Nuclear Energy Leadership Academy’.

Finally, on the subject of the nuclear industry and education, in a gesture we’re sure was in no way an attempt at buying popularity or scoring a cheap propaganda victory, the UK’s Oldbury Power Station has bought a whole three laptops for one of the town’s primary schools. No doubt the pupils will be crowding around their new computers and Googling their generous benefactor…

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Steps towards a nuclear-free world
‘A new report by the Climate Group claims 1.4% of global economic output, or an annual $1tn, is needed until 2050 to deliver the technology needed to reduce CO2. This is slightly less than the $1.46tn spent globally on the military each year. If we want a secure planet, it's time we rebalanced where we spend our money. President Obama has called on the world to get rid of nuclear weapons. The total cost of Trident until around 2050 is at least £97.5bn (Revealed: the £130bn cost of Trident replacement, 18 September). With one revenue-neutral decision the UK can provide a much-needed boost to both the multilateral disarmament process and the international effort to avert climate catastrophe. (John Sauven, Executive director, Greenpeace UK)

Remember last week and the nuclear industry plot in Slovakia to manipulate the public consultations on the Environmental Impact Assessment for the Mochovce reactor (‘Reach the lowest possible media & public attention’ and ‘Prevent public hearing in Vienna’)? Greenpeace EU policy campaigner on dirty energy, Jan Haverkamp, asked Paolo Ruzzini, CEO of Slovenské elektrárne, 15 very specific questions about the scandal. Make your own mind up as to whether Mr Ruzzini's answers were satisfactory...

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

New Russian nuclear plant worries residents
’Russia's plans to build a nuclear power plant in its Baltic territory of Kaliningrad, hemmed in between Poland and Lithuania, has local residents and environmentalists worried. Russian state energy corporation Rosatom announced plans last year to build a 1,200-megawatt nuclear plant near Sovetsk by 2016. The site is just 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Lithuania's border. But memories of the world's worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 in what is now Ukraine has convinced residents like Lyudmila Litvinova and others who went to a meeting with local officials that the risk is too high. "Why would we want to succumb to a radiation risk here in Russia," Litvinova, 52, told AFP. "Nuclear power plants don't just explode, they also generate a small amount of radioactivity that could be very harmful to the population," Alexandra Koroleva, co-chairwoman of the environment group Ecodefence, told AFP.’

We’re grateful once again to Areva’s North America blog for pointing us towards yet another laughably woeful piece of pro-nuclear propaganda. This time it’s by Thomas Friedman writing in the New York Times. (Some of you might remember the Pulitzer Prize-winning Friedman’s erratic and downright wrong predictions about the war in Iraq a few years ago which gained him much attention and made him the butt of several jokes.)

Further evidence that Friedman maybe isn’t the most reliable pundit comes in the very first paragraph of his nuclear hagiography…

Was it really fair for some to call the French and other Europeans “cheese-eating surrender monkeys?” Is it time to restore the French in “French fries” at the Congressional dining room, and stop calling them “Freedom Fries?”

In fact, the Congressional dining room stopped calling French Fries ‘Freedom Fries’ in 2006 (I wrote a jokey article about it for the Guardian at the time). Friedman clearly didn’t have the time to do a little Googling.

So what about the rest of what he has to say?

France today generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants, and it has managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics. And us? We get about 20 percent and have not been able or willing to build one new nuclear plant since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, even though that accident led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or neighbors. We’re too afraid to store nuclear waste deep in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain — totally safe — at a time when French mayors clamor to have reactors in their towns to create jobs. In short, the French stayed the course on clean nuclear power, despite Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and we ran for cover.

France has ‘managed to deal with all the radioactive waste issues without any problems or panics’ has it? We suppose it’s possible to say that if you regard shipping thousands of tons of nuclear waste from France to Russia - where it is stored in dangerous conditions - as dealing with ‘issues’ without any ‘problems’. Official French government policy does not have a proper solution to even mid-level nuclear waste let alone the high-level stuff.

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And take a look at page 15 of Greenpeace’s report ‘France’s Nuclear Failures’…

In total, close to 890,000 m3 of radioactive waste had been produced by the end of 2004. Almost 40% of this amount is linked to reprocessing. This total does not account for some 12,000 m3 of waste from the reprocessing plant in Marcoule that was dumped into the sea in 1967 and 1969. Neither does the inventory include any of the “reusable materials” currently in stock – thousands of tonnes of spent nuclear fuels stored at La Hague, separated plutonium and uranium, scrap MOX – nor the two cores of the closed fast-breeder reactor in Creys-Malville, still stored on the reactor site.

Ask the people living in the Champagne region about Tritium leaking into the groundwater. Ask the the French authorities why they are conducting tests of groundwater at the country’s 58 reactors. We could go on and on and on.

Friedman frames his argument with talk of ‘real men’ and ‘tough guys’ and ‘grit’ as if the fight against climate change was a cowboy movie. It’s an odd kind of debating tactic to be sure, this juvenile machismo. Was anyone ever won over in an argument by being called a ‘wimp’?

(Harvey Wasserman has much more at Counterpunch)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Merkel put on the defensive over nuclear power
’When German voters go to the polls on Sunday the fate of the country's nuclear power industry will be hanging in the balance. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is campaigning to reverse a decision to phase out nuclear energy by 2021 if her favoured centre-right coalition option takes power. Nuclear power is an issue where the election result could trigger policy shifts in Berlin, but revelations days before polling have put the chancellor on the defensive. Opinion polls suggest either Ms Merkel's preferred option - involving an alliance between her Christian Democrats and the liberal Free Democrats - or a "grand coalition" between the CDU and the Social Democrats are the most likely outcomes of the September 27 election. Prolonging the CDU-SPD alliance, in power since 2005, would mean no change to the phase-out plans. But in the final days of the campaign, radioactive revelations have emboldened the anti-nuclear lobby and forced Ms Merkel to defend her plan to extend the lifespan of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors. Social Democrats have seized on news that the conservative-controlled economics ministry had commissioned research into the security of modern types of nuclear reactor.’

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This week saw Greenpeace deliver a petition with 113,488 signatures calling for the Slovak parliament to change laws regarding uranium mining in the country. Under the Slovakian constitution, any petition having more than 100,000 signatories must be discussed by the country’s parliament.

The petition is seeking a change in the law allowing municipalities to have a say on uranium mining in their areas. As all the towns and cities near potential mining sites are against the idea, this could mean very little or no uranium mining being done in Slovakia.

The campaign was launched three years ago, in order to stop a project aggressively pushed by the Canadian-based company Tournigan. It planned to open two uranium mines: one located just six kilometres upstream from Košice, the second largest city in Slovakia with a population of 250,000 people; the other at the border of the stunning UNESCO national park, ’Slovak Paradise‘. A coalition of groups lead by Greenpeace mobilized dozens of towns and local councils, regional governments, and over 100,000 citizens to express their refusal to turn Slovak Paradise into a contaminated and devastated landscape.

A briefing about the campaign prepared in January 2007 is available here. The only information to have changed is the huge rise in support for the campaign and the fact that a legal intervention from Tournigan closed the tournigan.info website (so much for industry transparency).

The authorities are now counting the signatures. We’ll keep you updated on how things progress.

(More information in Slovak is available on the Greenpeace Slovakia website)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Iran 'has second enrichment site'
Iran has revealed the existence of a second uranium enrichment plant, the UN nuclear watchdog has confirmed. Tehran made the announcement earlier this week in a letter to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohammed ElBaradei.

When not making cameo appearances in James Bond movies or building space planes, famous British industrialist Sir Richard Branson like to speak out on the state of the world. Here he is speaking about nuclear power at the National Press Club in Washington earlier this year…

The trouble is, by talking about oil and nuclear power in the same breath, Sir Richard isn’t comparing like with like. Nuclear power can replace our reliance on oil, can it? How so? Nuclear power, as we know, is used to generate electricity. How about oil? Not so much. For example, in 2007 the US generated only 1.6 per cent of its electricity using oil.

Sure, in the long term we could use electric cars thus reducing our reliance on oil, but what about all the other things we rely on oil for? The list of everyday uses for oil is staggering…

More than 95% of pesticides and 90% of fertilisers used to produce the world’s food started life as crude oil or natural gas. Food grains grown in the United States now contain between 4 and 10 calories of fossil fuel for every 1 calorie of sunlight. Plastics, medicines, industrial chemicals, lubricants, refrigerants, paints, solvents, insulation, antiseptics, inks, detergents…

Can we use nuclear power to provide any of those as oil supplies dwindle?

Yes, we need to find alternatives to oil and fast. Sorry Sir Richard, but nuclear power isn’t one of them.

(Thanks to the World Nuclear Association for alerting us to the video)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Scott Ritter: Keeping Iran Honest
It was very much a moment of high drama. Barack Obama, fresh from his history-making stint hosting the UN security council, took a break from his duties at the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh to announce the existence of a secret, undeclared nuclear facility in Iran which was inconsistent with a peaceful nuclear programme, underscoring the president's conclusion that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow". Obama, backed by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, threatened tough sanctions against Iran if it did not fully comply with its obligations concerning the international monitoring of its nuclear programme, which at the present time is being defined by the US, Britain and France as requiring an immediate suspension of all nuclear-enrichment activity. In March 2007, Iran suspended the implementation of the modified text of Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements General Part concerning the early provisions of design information. As such, Iran was reverting back to its legally-binding requirements of the original safeguards agreement, which did not require early declaration of nuclear-capable facilities prior to the introduction of nuclear material. While this action is understandably vexing for the IAEA and those member states who are desirous of full transparency on the part of Iran, one cannot speak in absolute terms about Iran violating its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. So when Obama announced that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow", he is technically and legally wrong.’

So, Angela Merkel’s black Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party wins enough seats in Germany’s national election to allow her to form a coalition with the yellow Free Democratic Party (FDP).

What do you get when you put black and yellow together?

The thing is, yesterday’s vote simply doesn’t reflect the German public opinion on the nuclear phaseout. The majority of Germany’s population is against nuclear energy and in favour of renewable resources and energy efficiency to combat climate change.

The movement against nuclear power is actually growing stronger (see the 50,000-strong demonstration in Berlin earlier this month), following the current crisis with radioactive waste and a recent series of accidents at aging German nuclear reactors.

The decision on the nuclear phase was legislated in 2002 as a result of wide discussion and consensus in the society. It has largely stimulated the German energy industry to make major investments in wind and solar energy, making Germany a world leader in the large scale renewable energy technologies. Rather than phasing out the nuclear phaseout, the new government should listen to the German people, close down dangerous old reactors and maintain the country's leading role in clean energy.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Nuclear sites fear being the alternative to Yucca
WASHINGTON -- It is among the nastiest substances on earth: more than 14,000
tons of highly radioactive waste left over from the building of the nation's
nuclear-weapons arsenal. As the Obama administration and Senate leaders move to
scuttle a proposed repository for the waste in Nevada, the Hanford nuclear
reservation in Washington state, along with federal facilities in Idaho and
South Carolina, could become the de facto dump sites for years to come.

We love pictures and photographs that portray nuclear energy as ‘green’. We have a small collection of which we’re very proud.

This is one of our favourites - the nuclear symbol adorned with flowers and leaves. It’s supposed to give an impression of some kind of nuclear bucolic beauty and a mythical oneness with the environment. It makes us think of the glaring headlight of a nuclear waste transport truck that’s careered through some woodlands and is about to hit us at speed. Now that’s a metaphor for the nuclear industry.

The latest addition to our collection is this one accompanying a news article about China being about to begin construction of two AP1000 reactors in the Shandong province. Just look at all that green and blue. Beautiful isn’t it? Of course, the picture is painted from a point of view too far away to identify where the tonnes of high-level waste are going to be stored (see also Areva’s unintentionally hilarious Funkytown video where the company claims its green nuclear energy gets people dancing in Chinese bars).

Clearly, the picture of the Shangdong reactors was created by a talented artist with an eye for what sells when it comes to nuclear propaganda. We’d like to see him attempt a similar feat with other scenes from the nuclear industry. Could he for instance beautify Russia’s Mayak nuclear waste site (which has irradiated half a million people) or the Ranger uranium mine in Australia’s Kakadu national park (which is leaking 100,000 litres of contaminated water every day)?

These are the sights we so rarely see when the nuclear industry talks of its ‘safe’ and ‘clean’ energy source. So come on guys, get out your brushes and your green paint.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Iran owns 10 percent of French nuclear fuel plant
’PARIS (Reuters) - A French plant that produces a quarter of the world's enriched uranium is 10 percent owned by Iran, which has had the stake for more than 30 years, nuclear reactor maker Areva said on Tuesday. Confirming a press report in a French satirical weekly, state-controlled Areva said it owned the remainder of the Eurodif plant, which was commissioned in the early 1970s. The weekly Le Canard Enchaine said in its edition to be published on Wednesday that the Shah of Iran struck a deal in the early 1970s when the country was turning toward nuclear energy to cut dependence on its oil production.’

What to do with nuclear waste? How do we store it safely in the long term? The answer to that question has eluded the nuclear industry for sixty years. Some isotopes in the waste produced by nuclear reactors are dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. But we have yet to come up with a way of storing them safely to protect ourselves and future generations.

Many are looking to Sweden and the storage method its scientists are currently working on. The project hopes to store high-level nuclear waste 500 metres underground for 100,000 years (plutonium, unfortunately, is still dangerous after 250,000 years). The waste will be sealed in copper-coated containers and then buried in bentonite clay. And there is will sit, it is hoped, for a hundred millennia.

But there’s a problem. The thickness of the copper surrounding the waste is planned to be five centimetres thick. There have been many doubts about this solution and now scientists at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology have just released a paper saying that this protection isn’t enough to stop the copper from corroding, the containers rupturing and them leaking their contents.

One of the scientists says that in the worst case, the containers may only last 1,000 years. According to the paper, the copper would need to be one metre thick to stay safe for 100,000 years. That’s a lot of copper – the storage containers each weigh 25 tonnes.

This research needs to be evaluated and followed up. We’ll be watching closely. But if these findings are corroborated, the current best hope for long term nuclear storage – as it currently stands – will have been found to be a failure. Nuclear waste remains a puzzle without a solution.