Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Taiwan Aboriginal Village Targeted for Nuclear Waste Disposal
’Taiwan has tried and failed to sell its nuclear waste to North Korea and China. Now, the government is seeking a burial place at home. The top choice is a poor aboriginal community. When it comes to nuclear waste, most people say, "not in my back yard." But most residents of Nantian village in southeastern Taiwan's Taitung County favor building a low-level nuclear waste dump five kilometers away. Taiwan has thousands of barrels of low-level waste - mostly contaminated clothing, boots and mops used by the workers at the island's three nuclear power plants. If selected for the nuclear waste dump, Taitung County will receive $155 million. The central government calls it a "Friendly Neighbor" payment. It is not clear how much money the Nantian villagers would receive. Pan Han-shen is the Secretary General of Taiwan's Green Party, which opposes nuclear power. He thinks Nantian is being considered for a waste storage facility because it is a poor, aboriginal community. Pan says this is a phenomenon all over the world. Governments always chose minority inhabited areas for nuclear waste disposal sites. In Taiwan, he says, all the sites are inhabited by aboriginals.’

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Party may have won last weekend’s national election but they certainly haven’t won the argument on Germany’s nuclear phaseout.

Following on from 50,000 people gathering in Berlin last month to protest against nuclear power in Germany, and in just two days, nearly 43,000 people (at the time of writing) have signed an open letter to Chancellor Merkel along with her coalition partners, Horst Seehofer - chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU) - and Guido Westerwelle - leader of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) demanding that they not reverse Germany’s nuclear power phaseout.

‘CDU, CSU and FDP have won the election not because of, but despite, their position on nuclear power,’ says the letter and it urges eight nuclear reactors be closed immediately, an end to the disinformation surrounding the disastrous Gorleben nuclear waste storage facility, and the strengthening of the development of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. The campaign has promised ‘massive protests’ should Germany’s new government decide to reverse the decision made in 2000 to rid the country of its nuclear reactors by 2020.

German citizens can sign the letter here.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Obama keeps Israel's nuke secret

’President Obama has reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, three officials familiar with the understanding said. The officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing private conversations, said Mr. Obama conveyed the message when he first hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in May. Under the understanding, the U.S. has not pressured Israel to disclose its nuclear weapons or to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which could require Israel to give up its estimated several hundred nuclear bombs. Israel had been nervous that Mr. Obama would not continue the 1969 understanding because of his strong support for nonproliferation and priority on preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The U.S. and five other world powers made progress during talks with Iran in Geneva on Thursday as Iran agreed in principle to transfer some potential bomb fuel out of the country and to open a recently disclosed facility to international inspection. Mr. Netanyahu let the news of the continued U.S.-Israeli accord slip last week in a remark that attracted little notice. He was asked by Israel's Channel 2 whether he was worried that Mr. Obama's speech at the U.N. General Assembly, calling for a world without nuclear weapons, would apply to Israel.’

It’s political party conference season in the UK right now. At these annual events the party’s politicians and supporters gather together to discuss various issues. In addition, each large party conference has what’s called a ‘fringe’ - a collection of meetings, away from the main conference discussions, about various subjects.

This year, one of the topics for fringe discussion was low carbon energy. A discussion on the issue took place at the fringes of the three main political parties, Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. One of the attendees was to be Tom Burke, former executive director of Friends of the Earth, special adviser to a number of past environment ministers, and a founder of Third Generation Environmentalism. We’ll let Tom take up the tale…

I thought you would all like to know that I was originally invited by [political information publisher] Dod's to speak at the three low carbon fringe meetings at the party conferences. I accepted the invitation and received a confirmation of my participation sometime early in the summer. Three weeks ago I was notified by e-mail that I had been disinvited at the request of EDF who were sponsoring the meetings. This dis-invitation arrived too late to change the programme for the event at the Lib-Dem Conference where I was listed as a speaker.

So why was Tom disinvited? He has the answer.

Given that EDF have now owned up to the fact that they cannot do new build nuclear without subsidies I am not totally surprised that they no longer wish to debate the issue in public.

In June of this year, chief executive of EDF Vincent de Rivaz went on national television in the UK and declared ‘I am very open to debate and discussions’ . Those words sound pretty hollow.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

UN to inspect Iran's new nuclear plant October 25
’TEHRAN: Experts will inspect Iran’s new uranium enrichment plant on October 25, UN atomic watchdog head Mohamed ElBaradei said on Sunday, praising Tehran’s shift “from conspiracy to cooperation,” but warning that “concerns” remain over its nuclear aims. ElBaradei told a news conference in Tehran that Iran had given assurance that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors would be able to access the new plant, in a mountain near the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran. “Iran’s case can be solved through dialogue,” the IAEA chief said, as quoted by the official IRNA news agency. At present we are shifting from confrontation to cooperation and I am asking Iran to continue its transparency,” ElBaradei added. “We are now on an appropriate path. The agency and the international community and Iran have started constructive talks,” he said.’

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Iran to start final test run of Bushehr nuclear power plant
’MOSCOW, October 5 (RIA Novosti) - The final test run of Iran's first nuclear power plant will begin within the next several days, Iran's vice president said on Monday. Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads the country's Atomic Energy Organization, earlier said the plant was 96% complete, almost all of the equipment had been installed, and that after testing the plant would go into full operation. The construction of the Bushehr plant was started in 1975 by German companies. However, the firms stopped work after a U.S. embargo was imposed on high technology supplies to Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the subsequent U.S. embassy siege in Tehran. Russia signed a contract with Iran to complete the plant in February 1998, originally due for completion at the end of 2006. The date was postponed several times over financial problems and Iranian claims that Russia was reluctant to finish the facility due to UN sanctions and suspicions of a covert nuclear weapons program. Russia's Atomstroiexport in January completed deliveries of nuclear fuel to the Bushehr plant. As a rule, nuclear fuel is delivered to a nuclear power plant six months before it goes into operation.’

Slovakia is a country that claims some of the highest popularity for its nuclear power plants in Europe. That‘s certainly true among its political leaders, who are such dedicated fans of nuclear reactors that they are ready to break European legislation by providing illegal state subsidies to nuclear sector, ready to violate the EU accession treaty by contemplating restarting high risk reactors, and ready to put pressure on utilities to go ahead with economically non-viable projects in Mochovce and Bohunice.

Sad to say, some of the Slovak media – instead of doing investigative work and allowing open debate – are trying to keep these controversies away from the public, thus helping to maintain an uninformed nuclear consent. Well, we do not have proof of corruption or evidence of a political link there, but two stories that I have just observed on Slovak public television give us a certain indication.

Two weeks ago, when Greenpeace delivered a massively popular petition against uranium mining to the Slovak parliament, national TV was planning to have an evening live debate with us on this hot issue. Surprisingly, its editors did not manage to find anyone in the country to defend those outrageous plans, as its proponents do not dare to speak out at the moment. So, referring to the need to be object and to have a balanced debate, the TV bosses decided rather to cancel the debate.

Last week, when another live debate was organized about nuclear power in the country, the principles of balance and objectivity were suddenly forgotten. This is how I ended up in a studio facing four leading nuclear proponents in a 90 minutes live talk: Lubomir Jahnatek (economy minister), Tibor Mikuš (president of Slovak Nuclear Forum), Vladimír Slugeň (chair of Slovak Nuclear Society), and Miroslav Lipár (Slovak delegate to International Atomic Energy Agency). The debate’s moderator turned out to be an even more passionate proponent – no wonder, he worked as an editor on a book celebrating history of Slovak nuclear programme.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Berlin warns nuclear industry
’BERLIN, Oct. 6 (UPI) -- The German nuclear industry is expecting a revival for their power source, but not so fast, warns the new German government. The bosses of Germany's big utilities were rubbing their hands with glee when it surfaced that Chancellor Angela Merkel's Conservatives would be re-elected in a team with the pro-business Free Democratic Party -- both groups had campaigned in favor of nuclear power, and they were set to scrap the planned phase-out of the controversial energy source. After the election, Juergen Grossmann, the head of utility RWE, urged the new government to swiftly extend the running times of the German reactors. But officials from both parties have warned utilities that nuclear won't be boosted at all costs. "If the utilities refuse our terms and conditions then the nuclear phase out will remain in place," Andreas Pinkwart, a senior FDP official, told German news magazine Der Spiegel. Pinkwart said each reactor needed to be evaluated regarding its safety before a decision can be made. "Some reactors may even qualify for an earlier shut down," he warned.’

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On October 2nd - which is Gandhi’s birthday and India’s most famous national holiday - activists held a rally in Delhi against nuclear power. The situation was pretty bizarre for the government as on September 29th the Prime Minister decided to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Homi J. Bhabha, the father of India's nuclear program. Three days later the government went into selective amnesia and forgot Gandhi’s ideas on the nuclear issue.

Nuclear energy is presented as the foremost solution for the nation’s lack of energy security, military security and overall national security. All this in a country where hundreds of millions of people do not have food security, water security, sanitation security, and other basic needs for life and human dignity.

The Indian government has signed nuclear agreements with a number of countries such as the United States, France, Russia, Kazakhstan, Namibia, Mongolia and so forth. India is now projected to generate an additional 25,000 MW of nuclear power by 2020 with American plants in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, Areva plants in Maharashtra, and Russian reactors in Tamil Nadu. But it’s not for the first time that India has come out with such projections. Let’s put this in perspective. In 1984, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) had a dream of generating 10,000 MW of electricity by the year 2000. Never mind that Homi J. Bhabha had dreamt of 20,000 MW by 1987.

It’s 2009 and India still produces only somewhat more than 4000MW.

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Gandhi Jayanti was a perfect day for organizing this rally and reminding the government about the incoherence of its policies and targets. Unfortunately, government acknowledgment is hard to come by. As Gandhi himself said: ‘They are ready to garland my photos, but never ready to follow my advice.’

(This is a guest post by Orsi Kralik, nuclear campaign blogger for Greenpeace India)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Senate Dems Opening to Nuclear as Path to GOP Support for Climate Bill
’Key Senate Democrats signaled yesterday they are willing to negotiate with Republicans on nuclear power and expanded domestic oil and gas development if it helps in nailing down the 60 votes necessary for floor passage on a comprehensive global warming and energy bill. "Every idea is on the table," said Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), the lead sponsor of Senate climate legislation. "We're going to work in a bona fide way with everybody to see how to bridge a gap here. We've got to get a 60-vote margin. That means you've got to legislate, which means you have to compromise." Several moderate Senate Republicans, including John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said they are in talks with Kerry and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on the nuclear language, as well as other key issues. "A guy like Senator Kerry is looking for coalitions," Graham said. "If you had a bill that would allow for responsible offshore drilling, a robust nuclear power title, I think you could get some Republican votes for a cap-and-trade system."’

We’ve talked about the nuclear industry using the same tactics to get their way all over the world – the cover-ups, the fixed consultations, the propaganda. But the problems the nuclear industry creates for itself are also the same the world over.

Look at Italy, for example, and its push for a nuclear ‘renaissance’ (we much prefer the original) of its own. Planning and funding problems, a rush to get things done (‘six months to finalise the sites of future plants and waste storage facilities, and to establish an independent atomic agency’) that can only lead to problems later on, and in-fighting between those who want a slice of the nuclear pie (‘[Italian industry minister Claudio] Scajola support for Sviluppo Nucleare Italia has angered other suppliers’)

We’ve been here before, and before, and before. Does the nuclear industry hand out the same script at the start of every new venture? What’s missing? Ah, yes – what nuclear tale would be complete without our favourite character, Areva…

Finmeccanica SpA Chairman Pier Francesco Guarguaglini said Wednesday the defense and aerospace company is unsatisfied with the talks with French state-controlled nuclear group Areva SA over building nuclear reactors in Italy. Negotiations with Areva "are still unsatisfactory because they don't include the activity of the reactors,"

Areva, in unsatisfactory behaviour shock? Where’ve we heard that before? Oh yes, in Finland. And in the UK. And in the US. And in… And in…

If the nuclear industry was a film studio, it would just make the same bad film over and over and over again. The films would cost a fortune to make and the public would have to pay to see them whether they wanted to or not.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Laser Uranium Enrichment Undermines US Nuclear Non-Proliferation Efforts
’WASHINGTON - October 8 - Experts last week warned that a proposed uranium enrichment nuclear facility in Wilmington, NC would undermine U.S. efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and materials in other countries. In a letter to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the experts noted that the planned Global Laser Enrichment Commercial Facility would complicate diplomatic efforts to discourage the use of this technology in other countries. They explained that, "Should the United States be seen to embrace the use of laser isotope enrichment as a commercially viable technology, there can be little question that other states will be strongly encouraged to follow this lead and develop such technology for their own
use," and that, "Given the great difficulty of detecting laser isotope enrichment facilities, their spread could undermine U.S. nonproliferation efforts and the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to confirm the absence of undeclared nuclear activities in nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) non-nuclear-weapon states." The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering a license request by General Electric-Hitachi for its planned Global Laser Enrichment Commercial Facility.’

There's been a lot happening on the nuclear campaign today. Over in Finland our colleagues have have occupied the chimney of Meri-Pori and Tahkoluoto coal power plants in Pori. You can check out more photos on Flickr here, watch a snatch of video here, and relive the action on Twitter here. You can find out more on the Greenpeace Climate blog here.

Meanwhile the team from Greenpeace Belgium greeted government ministers arriving at the prime minister's office with a sound system, and banners of the PM breaking a wind turbine and the message "Sorry, nuclear is making the laws here".

More information in Dutch is available here and in French here. Check out the video of the police kicking the poor Belgian prime minister. (All the activists have been released.)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Environmental campaigners have accused the SNP of turning Scotland into the world’s ‘nuclear dustbin’.
’The allegations come as the Sunday Herald today uncovers how more than 600 tonnes of foreign nuclear waste is to be kept in Scotland despite repeated promises by governments and the nuclear industry that it would be sent back to the countries from which it came. The Sunday Herald can reveal that the Scottish government has secretly proposed storing the waste at the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness. Moreover, under a ‘swap scheme’, waste from south of the border - from Sellafield in Cumbria, which has been stored in a different form - will be returned instead. Anti-nuclear campaigners have responded by accusing the SNP of breaking its promises to prevent Scotland from becoming the world’s ‘nuclear dustbin’. Campaigner Lorraine Mann said: ‘It is quite disgraceful that any Scottish government should acquiesce in turning Scotland and the Highlands into a dumping ground for vast quantities of other people’s radioactive waste. ‘Solid undertakings were given by Tory and Labour administrations that all of this waste would be returned to the countries of origin. It is perhaps the ultimate irony that it is an SNP administration, whose members screamed so loudly about nuclear dumping when in opposition, which is reneging on these assurances now they’re in office.’

Some news that French energy giant EDF might have preferred to keep quiet has emerged in French newspaper, Liberation…

The paper said 13 percent of French radioactive waste produced by power group EDF could be found in the open air in a town in Siberia to which access is forbidden. The paper said it based its information on an investigation due to be broadcast on TV channel Arte on Tuesday.

Access to the UF6 nuclear waste storage facility in Seversk, Siberia might be forbidden (in’s known as a ‘closed city’) but in this hi-tech age, very few things remain hidden…

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Look at all those rusty storage tanks. The city was formerly known as Tomsk-7 and in 1993 was the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents. In 2000 contamination of rivers around the facility was said to have reached ‘staggering levels’ and the ‘worst ever recorded’.

EDF has finally admitted that a large part of its nuclear waste is sent to Russia…

An EDF spokeswoman declined to confirm the 13 percent figure, or that waste was stored in the open air, but confirmed EDF sends nuclear waste to Russia. "We send waste to Russia for treatment, and they send 10 to 20 percent of it back to us to be used in French power plants," she said.

A whole 10 to 20 percent? Wow. So what happens to the other 80 to 90 percent? Sounds very much as if it’s in Seversk somewhere. This, however, is how the nuclear industry likes things – out of sight and out of mind. Like the beginnings of the nuclear reaction – in dangerous and contaminating uranium mining – they don’t want you to think about what happens at the end either.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

EDF denies sending nuclear waste to Russia
’PARIS, Oct 12 (Reuters) - EDF is sending to Russia spent nuclear fuel that needs to be reprocessed, the French nuclear power producer said on Monday, denying a French press report that it was using Siberia to dump nuclear waste. The world's largest nuclear energy producer said that radioactive waste was kept in France, where it was processed and stocked in dedicated facilities at Areva's storage site of La Hague, on the northwestern coast of Normandy. "Following the news reported today by (French daily newspaper) Liberation, EDF wants to point out that contrary to what has been said, no nuclear waste is transported to Russia," EDF said in an emailed comment. Earlier on Monday an EDF spokeswoman had told Reuters the company was sending nuclear waste to Russia and that 10 to 20 percent of it was recycled and sent back to be be used in French power plants. The spokeswoman later clarified that she was referring to spent fuel, not to radioactive waste. Liberation said on Monday that 13 percent of the radioactive waste produced by EDF's nuclear power plants was stored in open-air spaces in a Siberian town where access to journalists is prohibited.’

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Nuclear Materials Stored In Siberian Carparks
’A French documentary has revealed that radioactive materials from nuclear power plants are being stored in containers in a Siberian car park. Meanwhile the largest power company in Europe, France's EDF, which sent the materials there, says it is not responsible. The largest utility company in Europe, Électricité de France, has been accused of storing nuclear waste in an open air car park in Siberia. An investigative documentary called the "Nuclear Nightmare" that screened on Tuesday in Germany and France accuses the company of sending nuclear waste to a town in Siberia where it is then stored in metal containers in a car park. The containers, the makers of the documentary -- French documentary director Eric Guéret and French journalist Laure Noualhat of the newspaper Libération -- report, are in the Siberian town of Seversk, formerly a secret "closed city" where there are several nuclear reactors, plants for reprocessing uranium and plutonium as well as storage and production facilities for nuclear weapons. Although the Russian town now appears on maps, entry into the area is still restricted to locals. Noualhat told SPIEGEL ONLINE that although they visited the outskirts of the city during their research, they were not able to get in themselves. However, they did interview contacts who worked in the nuclear industry inside the city. And apparently the containers can also be seen via satellite images.’

In an exclusive for Nuclear Reaction, we are proud to present an excerpt from a recently discovered and previously unknown Beatrix Potter manuscript. It’s the sequel to her famous tale about Peter Rabbit.

Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter.

But round the end of a nuclear sludge tank, whom should he meet but Mr. Hanford!

Mr Hanford then chases Peter in a helicopter (hired at a cost of $300,000), scooping up the terrified rabbit’s radioactive droppings and burying them in a landfill site. Does Peter learn his lesson? Of course not, not with the people who dumped the nuclear waste at Hanford making it so easy for him and his bunny chums to burrow into the underground storage tanks full of delicious radioactive salts.

You heard us – they couldn’t even build nuclear waste storage tanks at Hanford able to keep the ickle bunnies out. Unlike dear Beatrix, we’re not making this up.

(With apologies to Beatrix Potter. For more cute radioactive animal tales, see also the Tale of the Natanz Two and the Tale of the Sellafield Seagulls.)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

The medical and economic costs of nuclear power
’Jennifer Nordstrom, co-ordinator of the Carbon-Free Nuclear-Free project has noted "Telling states to build new nuclear plants to combat global warming is like telling a patient to smoke to lose weight." A recent study sponsored by the German government (the KiKK study - Kaatsch P, Spix C, Schultze-Rath R, et al. Leukemia in young children living in the vicinity of German nuclear power plants. Int J Cancer. 2008; 1220:721-726,) examined children who lived near 16 of the country's commercial nuclear power plants. The results revealed a strongly increased risk of all childhood cancers, particularly leukaemia, the closer the proximity of the children's residence to the reactor. In particular, the study found that children less than the age five years, living within a 5km radius of the power plant exhaust stacks were more than twice as likely to develop leukaemia compared with those children residing more that 5km away. The KiKK team studied other carcinogenic factors which may be responsible for the cancer clusters but none were found.’

Today is Blog Action Day…

First and last, the purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. We ask bloggers to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue.

This year’s is on the topic of climate change. So what do we at Nuclear Reaction have to say?

First and foremost, it needs to be remembered that nuclear energy is a huge barrier to fighting climate change. It diverts vital time, money, energy and resources away from much cheaper, ready sooner, safer, cleaner and efficient renewable energy sources and energy efficiency programmes.

You only have to look as far as the massively overbudget and behind schedule OL3 nuclear reactor being built in Olkiluoto in Finland. This disastrous experimental boondoggle has accounted for a massive 85 percent of the country’s energy investment budget over the last few years.

Imagine what could have been done with all those billions and all those years (the project was costed at EUR 2.5 billion but is currently running at EUR 5.5 billion – it is also three years late). Think of what will be lost if the rest of the world follows Finland’s terrible example. We, our families and the planet simply can’t afford to rely on nuclear energy. We need clean energy and we need it - and can have it - now.

What you can do today

1. Sign up and write a blog post for Blog Action Day.
2. If you live in the US you can write to your senator asking them to stop the nuclear industry – with lobbying cash - from buying the the Senate climate bill
3. In the UK you can ask your MP to sign up to Greenpeace’s Climate Manifesto.
4. In Turkey, you can be one of the million people to tell the government that nuclear power is not the answer to Climate change.
5. Get to know the nuclear issue. Get to know why and how it is so dangerous, from dirty and dangerous uranium mining to dirty and dangerous nuclear waste disposal. Look at the lives ruined by nuclear power. Discover the problems. Learn about the solutions. Tell your friends. Contact your government representative. Join us and take action.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

More Nukes, More Coal Plants, More Drilling ....Nuking the Climate Bill
’Is the Climate Bill morphing into an excuse to promote fossil fuels and new nuclear power plants? Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) recent promotion of a pro-nuke/pro-drilling/pro-coal agenda in the name of Climate Protection has been highlighted in a New York Times op ed co-authored with Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC). The piece brands nuke power "our single largest contributor of emissions-free power." It advocates abolishing "cumbersome regulations" so utilities can "secure financing for more plants." And it wants "serious investment" to "find solutions to our nuclear waste problem." The Senate Bill as now drafted also includes a "Clean Energy Development Administration" that could deliver virtually unlimited federal cash to build new reactors and fund other mega-polluters. Also on the table are vastly expanded permits for off-shore drilling. And Kerry/Graham have talked of making the US "the Saudi Arabia of clean coal" while bringing "new financial incentives for companies that develop carbon capture and sequestration technology." If you think pushing nukes, oil wells and coal mines to "prevent global warming" is counter-intuitive, you ain't seen nothin' yet.’

Bad news from the construction site of the OL3 EPR nuclear reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland arrives with such reliable and alarming regularity you can almost set your watch by it.

First up we have Jouni Silvennoinen, head of OL3 project for Finnish utility TVO, announcing that the reactor might not now be working until 2013, four years later than planned. TVO has now requested a new timetable from Areva, the reactor’s builders. The reasons Silvennoinen gives for this further delay are problems with the EPR reactor’s vital control and instrumentation system design, and ‘accumulation of delays in construction’. And what an ‘accumulation’…

The second piece of bad news is rather more worrying. The Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority Finland (STUK) has suspended welding on OL3’s essential cooling system (one of the most important parts of a nuclear reactor) after…

…STUK’s inspectors noticed deficiencies in the welding of the pipes in the plant’s cooling system between 6th and 8th October 2009. Among the deficiencies observed were that one welder did not have the welding instructions at his disposal, neither was he familiar with the welding requirements, as a result of which an excessive amount of power was being used in the welding. Other deviations noticed concerned the use of shielding gas necessary for welding and the shape of the contact surfaces to be welded.

The reactor’s builders have been told time and time again about the poor standards in the welding of this so-called state of the art nuclear reactor. Why have lessons not been learned? How hard can it be to ensure a welder – working on a nuclear reactor - has proper instructions and knows his equipment?

STUK has previously drawn attention to welding quality and its supervision in the welding of the steel lining of the containment building, amongst others. STUK has also required TVO to take into account what has been learned from this experience in pipe welding and its supervision. The matter will continue to require special attention from TVO as the volume of pipe installation work increases in the near future.

The EPR reactor is supposed to be the future of nuclear power. You don’t need a crystal ball to see what that future’s shaping up to look like. It’s going to be a very expensive future, shoddily built and arriving late. EPR must be stopped.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Families face nuclear tax on power bills
Government officials have drawn up secret plans to tax electricity consumers to subsidise the construction of the UK's first new nuclear reactors for more than 20 years, the Guardian has learned. The planned levy on household bills would add £44 to an annual electricity bill of £500 and contradicts repeated promises by ministers that the nuclear industry would no longer benefit from public subsidies. Anti-nuclear groups have accused governments of being too close to the industry, which they say already benefits from indirect subsidies. The government has promised to guarantee the cost of disposing of nuclear waste and also pay for the cleanup resulting from any nuclear accident.

Nuclear power: The consumer always pays
From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the warehouse by the offices on Finland's Olkiluoto island, site of what should have been the world's first modern nuclear reactor. But inside, stacked on five kilometres of shelving, are 160,000 documents. "If a valve for the reactor is changed, it comes in a small box and a van full of documents," complains Jouni Silvennoinen, project director for Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), the Finnish utility that ordered the plant from the Franco-German consortium Areva-Siemens. The paper mountain helps explain why the reactor, which should have cost EUR 3bn (£2.72bn) and been working this year, will now miss its revised completion date of mid-2012 and will cost at least EUR 5.3bn. In the latest delay, Finland's nuclear safety regulator halted welding on the reactor last week and criticised poor oversight by the sub-contractor, supplier and TVO. Areva claims TVO does not trust it to modify the fiendishly complex design as it sees fit, demanding documentation and approval from regulators for every change, however small. TVO says Areva is treating the new reactor as an R&D project in which the Finns are guinea pigs.’

Nuclear proliferation remains a nightmare for all of us. What would happen if terrorists or rogue states were to get there hands on the plutonium produced by nuclear reactors?

The nuclear industry must therefore keep a close watch on the nuclear waste they produce. Strict auditing processes must be observed to ensure plutonium does not fall into the wrong hands.

Take the Cadarache nuclear facility in France, which is currently being decommissioned, for example. How much plutonium does it have? Easy, it has eight kilogrammes of plutonium. Sorry, make that 22 kilogrammes. Yes, that’s right. No, wait a minute, it could be ‘in the region’ of 39 kilogrammes. In fact, the amount of plutonium at Cadarache has been massively underestimated.

France’s Nuclear Safety Authority has suspended decommissioning at the site, saying the ‘underestimation of the quantities of plutonium reduces safety margins calculated to prevent criticality accidents’. The underestimation was found by Cadarache’s owners, the Atomic Energy Commission, in June this year but they didn’t report it until October. You can tell they put a premium on transparency, trust and public confidence, can’t you?

So, how much of this plutonium may have been stolen to make nuclear weapons or is otherwise unaccounted for? We’ll never know – until it’s too late, obviously – because the operators of Cadarache (which has 19 nuclear installations) have absolutely no idea how much plutonium they were supposed to be safeguarding.

French nuclear giant Areva is placing full page advertisements in the American media.

But what’s missing from the ads?

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

The Dilemma of Aging Nuclear Plants
’PARIS - From the time the world's first commercial nuclear power plants were switched on in the late 1950s, installed generating capacity rose rapidly over two decades. It leveled off in the 1980s as new building programs were scrapped in the wake of the accident at Three Mile Island, among other factors. Contractors generally designed plants to last for 40 years – a standard enshrined in the United States in the adoption by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or N.R.C., of a 40-year licensing regime. A large part of the world's installed nuclear power capacity is now coming to the end of that designed life span. Caught between approaching retirement deadlines and public opposition to new plants, industry operators are pushing to extend the life of their plants to 60 or even 80 years - and this despite problems of premature aging of major components that have already obliged many to replace their plants' steam generators at heavy capital expense. Running plants longer is one way to recoup the extra cost and raise returns on investment over the full life of the plant. But it has safety implications. The 40-year life span was a design specification, said Guillaume Wack, director for nuclear plants at the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire, or A.S.N., the French nuclear regulator.’

The UK government is to allow nuclear reactor operators to dump low level nuclear waste in ordinary refuse landfill sites accessible by the public. The move comes as part of an attempt to reduce the massive costs of decommissioning old nuclear reactors (currently £73 billion and rising).

Needless to say…

..the move has triggered a swath of applications around the country from big corporations trying to cash in on this potential new business…

The trouble with all this is the fact that, when it comes to dumping its waste, the nuclear industry simply cannot be trusted. Regulations are flouted and scrutiny is avoided. How can we be sure that other, more dangerous waste won’t find its way into these sites? There are, after all, so many past examples.

Take the so-called Low-Level Waste Repository at Drigg in the north-west of England. The facility’s current managing director, Dick Raaz, says he hates the word ‘dump’. Yet, that is exactly what Greenpeace found when it visited the site in 1994…

A lot of that waste was certainly not of the low level variety. Have things improved at Drigg since then? Could Dick Raaz give assurances that the waste in that video is now properly catalogued and stored? How about restoring some trust, Dick?

You see, it’s all about trust or, rather, the lack of it. The UK nuclear industry is still misplacing its waste fifteen years later. In 1998, at the Tricastin nuclear facility in France, it was revealed that military nuclear waste was being secretly stored at the site in mounds of dirt. Only last week it was found that nuclear waste is being stored in an open air car park in Siberia. In 2006 it was reported that nuclear waste had been dumped in secret pits on the Scottish coast and the official records of the dumping destroyed.

Look at the French Atomic Energy Commission keeping secret for five months the fact it had massively underestimated the amount of plutonium in its possession. How about Europe’s gift to Africa’s west coast? ‘Unusual skin infections, bleeding at the mouth, acute respiratory infections and abdominal haemorrhages’ all caused by nuclear waste and other toxic materials, dumped at sea. We could go on and on and on.

The weight of history is against the nuclear industry on this issue. It would take an unprecedented turnaround in its attitudes towards accountability and transparency for there to be even the tiniest amount of trust and confidence in the UK government’s latest announcement.

As history shows, again and again, the industry has had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards proper regulation and scrutiny – a regulation and scrutiny they often ignore or circumvent. Why should we believe any differently this time?

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

French Boardrooms Remain 'Europe's Last Royalty,' Report Shows
’Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Boards of France's largest companies are getting cozier as the corporate suite is populated by a shrinking group of people, defying what critics say needs to be done to improve governance, a study published today shows. Among SBF120 companies, with a combined market value of 796 billion euros ($1.19 trillion), power consolidation has increased from last year, Ernst & Young and France Proxy wrote. It's even greater among companies on the benchmark CAC 40 Index. Ninety-eight directors, or 22 percent of the total, hold 43 percent of the voting rights, representing "the biggest network of influence in French capitalism." Veolia Environnement SA Chief Executive Officer Henri Proglio's plans to become non-executive chairman or chairman of the supervisory board of the company after he moves to head Electricite de France SA next month. Proglio's planned move, which still needs approval by Veolia's board and shareholders, comes after a French parliamentary report recommended earlier this year tighter limits on the number of directorships top executives can hold in other companies. There is a serious risk of conflict of interest for whoever runs EDF and Veolia. That person could not be considered independent," said Lebegue, who estimates being a director necessitates two days a month of work. Total SA Chairman Thierry Desmarest, Areva SA Chief Executive Officer Anne Lauvergeon and Areva's Chairman of the Supervisory Board Jean-Cyril Spinetta as well as BNP Paribas SA Chairman Michel Pebereau were singled out in the parliamentary report by Deputy Philippe Houillon as holding a "troubling" number of board seats.’

For me, nuclear power is the lazy option. Stick up a few more reactors, don't say too much about costs per kilowatt hour (let alone costs for each tonne of CO2 abated), dump the responsibility of dealing with the waste on future generations, and don't worry too much about the state of the grid or the impact on renewable energy.

I can't deny that the alternative course of action (reducing total energy consumption by at least 40%, massively ramping up investments both in large-scale renewables – including the Severn barrage – and small-scale microgeneration, making a proper go of Combined Heat and Power and "Energy From Waste" schemes, and relying on combined-cycle gas turbines for base load generation) is the harder option in terms of the quality of leadership required. But those still wavering about the balance of pros and cons should not underestimate the knock-on effects of any commitment to new nuclear. It will undoubtedly slow investment in new renewables. It will reassure politicians that they don't have to do the heavy lifting required to put energy efficiency at the heart of any strategy. It will weaken efforts to move towards localised distributed energy solutions (why else do you think the industry and pro-nuclear civil servants fought so hard against feed-in tariffs for so many years?), and it will "lock us in" to today's hugely inefficient generation and transmission system for the next 40 years or so.

Read the rest…

So, we’ve all heard the hype and propaganda about the forthcoming nuclear ‘renaissance’ with its shiny and new so-called third generation of nuclear reactors. The thing is, it’s looking as if the biggest barrier to this ‘renaissance’ taking place might actually be that shiny and new so-called third generation of nuclear reactors.

You see, this latest generation of nuclear reactors are, to put it mildly, a little on the flaky side…

The design for Westinghouse’s AP-1000 has recently been rejected by the US’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission because ‘a key component might not withstand events like earthquakes and tornadoes’. The projected cost of building them varies wildly as well.

GE Hitachi’s Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) remains in the ‘early design stage’. Late last year, US energy corporation Exelon dropped plans to build a ESBWR in Texas because the ESBWR wouldn’t have earned them the vital government loan guarantees that keep the nuclear industry afloat. GE Hitachi also withdrew the design from the UK’s currently ongoing reactor evaluation process.

Canada’s Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (AECL) also withdrew their ACR-1000 reactor design from the UK process. In July last year Canada’s own province of Ontario pulled the plug on plans to build two ACR-1000s after the project was priced at 26 billion Canadian dollars, three times what the province wanted to pay.

Which leaves us with French nuclear ogre Areva’s infamous European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) design. Two are currently under construction in the world – one in Olkiluoto in Finland and one in Flamanville in France. The EPR design has quickly become a symbol for everything wrong with the nuclear industry – expensive, late, unreliable, and farcical.

How are things going at those construction sites right now. Well, after it being announced that its anybody’s guess as to when the Olkiluoto OL3 reactor may be ready (it’s currently four years late), Areva said this week that the EPR at Flamanville is now running two years late as well. The company is also making a EUR 300 million provision on top of OL3’s rapidly expanding – and profit-killing - EUR 5.5 billion budget.

In fact, all you need to know about building an EPR reactor is summed up in this simple graph…

Click image for a larger version

The graph upturns at the precise moment construction began. How much higher will those lines reach?

The nuclear industry is starting to look like its own worst enemy.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Iran tentatively agrees to IAEA nuclear deal
’Vienna, Austria - After three days of talks in Vienna, Iran has tentatively accepted a nuclear deal which would increase transparency in its nuclear enrichment program. However, Iranian officials did not comment on the proposal in the plan for them to export the enriched uranium out of the country. The IAEA, Russia, France and the United States had wanted to reach a confirmed agreement before leaving the talks; however Iran wished for time to review the proposal in Tehran. According to Reuters, Iranian Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltaniehtold stated, "We have to thoroughly study this text and ..... come back and reflect our opinion and suggestions or comments in order to have an amicable solution at the end of the day." He also said, "We welcome this event; we are fully cooperating." The draft was written by the United Nations nuclear watchdog group, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the agency's Director General Mohamed ElBaradei set Friday as the deadline for all of the countries involved, Iran, the United States, France, and Russia, until Friday to finalize their agreements. ElBaradei remarked that the agreement was "a balanced approach to the problem."’

With the nuclear industry desperately scrambling to get its nuclear ‘renaissance’ off the ground, and the new fleet of third-generation reactors looking distinctly third-rate, it’s worth reminding yourself just where things are heading: costs are rocketing, expectations are plummeting.

Why not help yourself to a souvenir Greenpeace EPR counter for your own website or blog? It comes in two styles…

wide…

…and tall (as you can see at the top right of this page)…

Simply copy and paste the code into your own website or blog template.

How the counter works:

The accumulating costs above are based on the EUR 1.7 billion overrun announced by Areva/TVO plus an extra EUR 1.2 billion which will be needed to purchase electricity that has not been produced by Olkiluoto-3 since its projected start. These costs will eventually be paid for by Nordic electricity consumers and French taxpayers, either through higher bills for customers or through taxes. A taste of the future for those citizens of countries looking to adopt EPR for their own nuclear ‘renaissances’.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Depleted Uranium Weapons: Dead Iraqi and Afghani Babies Are No Joke

’The horrors of the US Agent Orange defoliation campaign in Vietnam, about which I wrote on Oct. 15, could ultimately be dwarfed by the horrors caused by the depleted uranium weapons which the US began using in the 1991 Gulf War (300 tons), and which it has used much more extensively -- and in more urban, populated areas -- in the Iraq War and the now intensifying Afghanistan War. Depleted uranium, despite its rather benign-sounding name, is not depleted of radioactivity or toxicity. The term "depleted" refers only to its being depleted of the U-235 isotope needed for fission reactions in nuclear reactors. The nuclear waste material from nuclear power plants, DU as it is known, is what is removed from the power plants' spent fuel rods and is essentially composed of the uranium isotope U-238 as well as U-236 (a product of nuclear reactor fission, not found in nature), as well as other trace radioactive elements. There are reports of a dramatic increase in the incidence of deformed babies being born in the city of Fallujah, where DU weapons were in wide use during the November 2004 assault on that city by US Marines. The British TV station SKY UK, in a report last month that has received no mention in any mainstream American news organization, found a marked increase in birth defects at local hospitals. Birth defects have also been high for years in the Basra area in the south of Iraq, where DU was used not just during America's 2003 "shock and awe" attack on Iraq, but also in the 1991 Gulf War. Further, a report sent to the UN General Assembly by Dr Nawal Majeed Al-Sammarai, Iraq's Minister of Women's Affairs since 2006, stated that in September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 babies born, 24% of which died within their first week of life. Worse yet, fully 75% of the babies born that month were deformed. This compares to August 2002, six months before the US invasion, when 530 live births were reported with only six dying in the first week, and only one deformity. Clearly something terrible is happening in Fallujah, and many doctors suspect it's the depleted uranium dust that is permeating the city.’

There were long faces in Italy this week when the bill for Italy’s proposed nuclear ‘renaissance’ arrived.

The bills, which look suspiciously like they were issued by Enel (Italy's largest power company), read: ‘Attention: after the return of nuclear power to Italy, the total amount payable: 242,1 Euros’.

Will the Italian people be happy to put their hands in their pockets to find it if the time comes…?

People are being asked to join the anti-nuclear campaign via three easy steps…

1. Download the nuclear bill [http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/italy/ufficiostampa/file/bolletta-nucleare] and print it.
2. Take a photo of yourself with the bill.
3. Upload your photo to the Flickr group ‘I don't want nuclear bills!’

(More information is available in Italian on Greenpeace Italy’s website)

U.N. inspectors reach Iran's new nuclear site: report

’U.N. nuclear experts inspected on Sunday a uranium enrichment site whose existence was announced by Iran last month, the semi-official Mers news agency said. Tehran's secrecy about the site, which diplomats say was detected by western intelligence three years ago, has raised fears it is running a covert program to develop nuclear bombs.’

If you’re fortunate to have a government that records its proceedings online, you can gain access to all kinds of fascinating information. It might sound a little dull but trust us, there’s diamonds to be found amongst the dusty records of our democracies.

We took the UK parliament as an example. Its members are able to submit written questions to government ministers. A simple search for – let’s say – ‘radioactive’ in the parliamentary proceedings database gives us this question from July this year…

Simon Hughes (North Southwark & Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change from which countries (a) radioactive waste and(b) spent fuel has been received but not yet returned; and what the (i) radioactivity level and (ii) quantity held is in each case.

The answer from David Kidney (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Energy and Climate Change) tells us all kinds of interesting things. For instance, since 1976, the nuclear facility at Sellafield in the north west of England has received 4,500 kilogrammes of spent nuclear fuel from Japan, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy and Sweden. But ‘to date’, waste has only ‘been returned to Sweden as a result of reprocessing’.

Unfortunately, ‘commercial constraints’ prevents the UK government telling its citizens the radioactivity levels of this nuclear waste. The interests and demands of the nuclear industry trump the interests and demands of democracy in the UK, it would seem.

We also find that the Dounreay nuclear site in Scotland, despite ceasing nuclear waste reprocessing in 1998, is still home to the following countries’ waste…

Australia 16.2kg
Belgium 69.73kg
Denmark (of Italian origin) 54.30kg
Georgia 4.36kg
Germany 746.7kg
The Netherlands 8.54kg
Spain 10.84kg

This time the government isn’t able to tell us the radioactivity levels of this waste not because of ‘commercial constraints’ but because it simply does not know. UK government says that Georgia’s 4.36kg of waste cannot be returned due to ‘international security reasons’. We also know that Australia might have sent just 16.2kg of spent fuel but reprocessing it created 53 drums of liquid nuclear waste which is being held at Dounreay on the country’s behalf.

Try it yourself. Go to your own government’s website and try searching for keywords like ‘nuclear’, ‘nuclear waste’ and ‘radioactive’. Who knows what you might unearth.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

India's nuclear drive sparks safety fears
’As the push for nuclear energy grows, so are the murmurs about India's nuclear safety record. Some analysts say there could be cause for alarm, given the non-transparent nature of India's state-controlled nuclear energy sector - there is no way to estimate whether safety issues will be carefully followed. Data on the sector are closely guarded by the nuclear establishment, which functions under the purview of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). The Indian chapter of the International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War, in a 2008 survey, found that "sterility was found to be more common in people residing near uranium mining operations." Birth defects and congenital deformities followed a similar pattern.’

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Defense Board Catches Los Alamos Trying to Dodge Plutonium Safety Vulnerability
’POGO has learned from sources that the Department of Energy (DOE) has been scrambling to delay a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) report about a potential major threat to public safety posed by plutonium at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos). The Department was rushing to begin addressing the safety vulnerability and to release its own public statement before the DNFSB made its report public. DOE is reacting to the DNFSB's report, which it posted to its website this morning, to Energy Secretary Chu about a safety vulnerability involving over 10,000 pounds of plutonium housed in Los Alamos's Technical Area-55 (TA-55). The vulnerability, safety controls that are insufficient to mitigate the release of plutonium to the public, has long been known and unaddressed by DOE and Los Alamos. Years ago, Los Alamos safety analysts determined that the building at TA-55 is so "leaky" that it could not prevent plutonium from being accidentally released. Last year, however, Los Alamos's safety analysts further calculated that in the event of an earthquake and resultant fire,1 -a very real threat, as Los Alamos sits on top of a fault line-the dose to the public from the TA-55 plutonium facility could be over 100 times the acceptable level.’

We’re once again grateful to Areva’s North America blog for pointing us towards yet another piece of nuclear hype, spin and propaganda. This time it comes from Jim Prentice, Canada’s Minister for the Environment.

Nuclear will play a key role in our clean energy strategy. And the reality is: nuclear is non-emitting.

Let’s be blunt here. This isn’t just misleading. This isn’t just misinformation. This is a lie.

Nuclear energy is not clean energy. One need only look at the environmental destruction caused by uranium mining. In his book ‘Wollaston: People Resisting Genocide’, Miles Goldstick details the damage brought to the lives of the people living around the uranium mines in Canada’s Saskatchewan province. The accumulation of radioactive isotopes in edible plants. The lead, arsenic, uranium and radium found downstream from the mines. The spills that J.A. Keily, then Vice President of Production and Engineering for Gulf Minerals Rabbit Lake, described in 1980 as ‘probably too numerous to count’.

These are stories found wherever uranium mining takes place. The ruined lives, the contamination, the cover-ups, and the deception. And that’s before we even consider what happens to the waste produced by generating nuclear energy.

As for ‘nuclear is non-emitting’, it takes just five seconds to Google for ‘nuclear power’ and ‘emissions’ to show that statement for the ridiculous falsehood that it is.

May we remind you that Jim Prentice is Canada’s Minister for the Environment?

This is, unfortunately, a deception that the whole nuclear industry wants you to believe. A child could see through it and yet the industry and its supporters persist. When the US’s EPA - that’s the Environmental Protection Agency – is filing nuclear energy under ‘clean’ energy, you know how far this deception has spread. Look again what EPA stands (or is supposed to stand) for. You begin to wonder it these people think you’re a moron.

The nuclear industry does not want you to look at where uranium comes from or where it goes to afterwards. To do so would destroy the myths that have supported it this long. ‘Look, our hands are clean,’ it says, while trying to hide its dirty fingers.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Russian space chief backs building a nuclear-powered spaceship to replace Soyez capsules
‘MOSCOW - President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday threw his weight behind a proposal to build a nuclear-powered space ship and give Russia an edge in the space race. But the official statements after a government meeting left key questions unanswered, and environmentalists expressed concern. Federal Space Agency chief Anatoly Perminov told the meeting that the preliminary design could be ready by 2012. He said it would then take nine years and 17 billion rubles ($600 million, 400 million euros) to build the ship. Medvedev, who chaired a government meeting on new communications and space technologies, hailed the plan and ordered the Cabinet to find the money for it. But the stated ambition contrasted with slow progress on building a replacement to the mainstay Russian spacecraft, sounding more like a plea for extra government cash than a detailed proposal. Environmental activists warn the plan for a new nuclear-powered ship with a bigger reactor could be potentially hazardous. "There has been some previous experience in using nuclear reactors in space, and it has been negative," said Vladimir Chuprov, a Greenpeace activist in Russia. "It's dangerous to put nuclear materials in space, they pose risks at re-entry."’

Russia’s space agency is turning the clocks back to the 1950s. In a move straight from a bad Cold War-era science fiction movie, it is ‘planning to build a new spaceship with a nuclear engine’. Yes, (*big, serious film-announcer’s voice*) an ATOMIC ROCKET! Russian space chief Anatoly Perminov said a ‘preliminary design’ for an ATOMIC ROCKET! could be ‘ready by 2012’. It will ‘then take nine more years and 17 billion rubles ($600 million, 400 million euros) to build’ the ATOMIC ROCKET! Let’s ignore for the moment the wisdom of throwing megawatt-class nuclear reactors into the sky (the thought of one re-entering the atmosphere at 25,000 feet per second is certainly a sobering one). Instead, if we factor in the usual nuclear projections and predictions, the ATOMIC ROCKET!’s design should be ready sometime around 2020. It should be built sometime around 2035 and maybe, possibly, fly sometime around 2040. All for a cost of 75 billion rubles.

Meanwhile, the public and the private came together for French president Nicholas Sarkozy this week. Nicholas is famed for his tireless globe-trotting as the nuclear industry’s most ruthless salesman (rumours that he’s about to star as Ricky Roma in a remake of Glengarry Glen Ross have been denied). He just loves seeing tons of public money being wasted on useless white elephants. We did wonder where he got the idea for his nuclear boondoggles until we read about his personal presidential shower. It cost 245,000 euros of public money and he never used it. It’s a dirty business, the nuclear industry. When will Nicholas come clean?

And so to Iraq. ‘The Iraqi government has approached the French nuclear industry about rebuilding at least one of the reactors that was bombed at the start of the first Gulf war.’ This week, in continuing violence, 150 people were killed in two suicide bombings which raised questions about the competence of the country’s security services. The government has called for international support to help it combat terrorism. The country’s politicians are divided on laws needed to conduct national elections in January next year, and so threatening the country’s constitution. A new nuclear reactor? What could possibly go wrong?

(You can read more exciting Tale of Nuclear Insanity here, here, here, here and here.)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Exelon says $50 bln loan program would spark nukes
‘WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (Reuters) - The chief executive of Exelon Corp (EXC.N), the largest U.S. nuclear power generator, said an additional $50 billion in government loan guarantees for nuclear power would be enough to spark the industry to build new plants. The current nuclear loan guarantee program of $18.5 billion could be expanded if utilities and lawmakers who back the industry win new incentives in U.S. climate legislation. "We think that ($50 billion) would be enough to give nuclear a real start for the next couple of decades," John Rowe, Exelon's president and chief executive, told reporters after testifying before a Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works panel. Republican senators like Lindsey Graham have said they would support climate legislation only if it includes far more incentives for nuclear, which is virtually free of greenhouse gas emissions. "It is truly staggering that an industry this big and this mature can claim to need so much government help to survive and thrive in a world in which technologies that don't emit global warming pollution will benefit," Ellen Vancko, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a release.’

© Greenpeace / Rastislav Flesh Prochazka

After staunch opposition from the likes of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Bankwatch, Urgewald and BeleNE!, it looks like the long and ignominious history of Bulgaria’s Belene nuclear power plant might be finally drawing to a close. Citing ‘funding issues’, German utility RWE has walked away from its 49 per cent in the disaster-prone project. Those funding ‘issues’? That there isn’t any funding - it’s a bit like saying there are ‘food issues’ when you’re hungry.

If OL3 in Olkiluoto, Finland is supposed to be the nuclear industry’s poster child then Belene is the nasty and ugly younger brother nobody wants to talk about. Belene was a naughty little boy from the outset…

The construction has been stop-start since the go ahead was given in way back in 1981. Belene was abandoned once before in 1990 due to – wouldn’t you know it? - ‘funding issues’. The project was restarted in 2002 and it’s been downhill all the way since then. Like all nuclear reactors the costs quickly spiralled out of control and now stand at seven billion euros.

The financing of Belene has been suspicious to say the least. ‘For the past 18 months, we’ve been pointing out to RWE that Belene is a high-risk
project in terms of safety, economics, environment and corruption,’ says Heffa
Schücking from the German environment NGO Urgewald. The Bulgarian government found itself faced with accusations that it had given millions of euros in illegal state aid to the Belene project in violation of the EC Treaty.

On top of that the initial environmental impact assessment did not ‘contain adequate information on the seismic conditions, nor does it address beyond design basis accidents’ and its authors were forced, following legal action, to admit it was flawed. The reactor site is just 14 kilometres from where an earthquake killed over 120 people in 1977. The Austrian Institute of Ecology described the AES 92 reactor being built at Belene as ‘The Mystery Reactor’, there being no ‘reliable technical facts’ or ‘operational experience’ for it.

Reliable facts are things that have been scarce when it comes to Belene. The jobs promised by Prime Minister Stanishev were destined for Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese workers because of a lack of nuclear skills in Bulgaria. ‘I am proud of Bulgarian power engineers, who are capable of developing such a complicated design,’ he boasted when the reactor is actually of Russian design. His statements that nuclear could replace Bulgaria’s reliance on oil are revealed as nonsense (unless he has a secret plan for nuclear cars) when you consider the country relies on oil mainly for transport and hardly at all for electricity generation.

So where does Belene go from here now that RWE has woken up to reality? The Bulgarian government has said it will press on with the reactor. But with no credible investors left it’s difficult to see how the poor creature can limp on.