Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Toxic waste trickles toward New Mexico's water sources
‘Radioactive debris has been found in canyons that drain into the Rio Grande, but officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory say there's no health risk. Reporting from Los Alamos, N.M. - More than 60 years after scientists assembled the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, lethal waste is seeping from mountain burial sites and moving toward aquifers, springs and streams that provide water to 250,000 residents of northern New Mexico. Isolated on a high plateau, the Los Alamos National Laboratory seemed an ideal place to store a bomb factory's deadly debris. But the heavily fractured mountains haven't contained the waste, some of which has trickled down hundreds of feet to the edge of the Rio Grande, one of the most important water sources in the Southwest. So far, the level of contamination in the Rio Grande has not been high enough to raise health concerns. But the monitoring of runoff in canyons that drain into the river has found unsafe concentrations of organic compounds such as perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket propellent, and various radioactive byproducts of nuclear fission. Much surface contamination, however, becomes embedded in sediment or moves down into groundwater. That subterranean migration poses the greatest long-term danger to drinking-water wells and ultimately the Rio Grande.’

You may remember that back in July this year, the summer weather put a third of France’s nuclear reactors out of action. It was just too darn hot to keep the reactors safely cooled and France was forced to import electricity from the UK.

So, we can expect things to improve now the colder winter weather is on the way? Er, not so much…

The subsidiary of EDF, which manages the network of power lines, said that France will have to import 4 000 megawatts (MW) of electricity "for several weeks from November 2009 to January 2010, according to a study released Friday. This is equivalent to the production of 4 nuclear reactors.

This strong dependence of France on other countries for its electricity needs is because of the downtime suffered by the French nuclear facilities this year. Fifteen of 58 nuclear reactors were shut down Friday for maintenance, uranium refuelling, because of various problems, according to a source familiar with the matter.

So that’s France’s nuclear: out of action when it’s hot, out of action when it’s cold. To add insult to injury, parts of France may see power cuts because the French grid isn’t designed to accept large imports of electricity. To think France is regarded as the world leader when it comes to nuclear energy technology. Somebody somewhere really didn’t think this all through.

While we’re on the subject of France’s nuclear antics, how about this: President Sarkozy is about to designate Mururoa, an atoll in French Polynesia and the site of more than 180 nuclear weapons tests between 1966 and 1996, as a site of ‘remembrance and territorial pride’.

As a Greenpeace report said back in 1995, the ‘interior of the atoll is effectively a vast, unregulated high-level radioactive waste dump’. Yes, this should serve as a permanent reminder of the dangers of nuclear weapons, but a source of pride?

So we got to thinking. Just what was it that happened on Mururoa that makes Sarkozy so very proud? Was it this…?

Perhaps it’s the fact that for 30 years successive French governments lied about there being ‘no radioactive fallout from French nuclear tests, or leakage of radioactivity into the lagoons at Moruroa’ that gives President Sarkozy warm, partriotic feelings.

One thing he shouldn’t be feeling proud of is his own government’s treatment of the victims of French nuclear testing in the Pacific. Many Polynesians will be excluded from the compensation programme due to strict restrictions imposed by the French senate. It’s a strange set of priorities, celebrating pride in a blasted island but not the sacrifices made by the people on the road to France’s nuclear ‘glory’.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Niger Leader rewrites rules to keep power
‘The cause of democracy in Africa could have done without this latest affront. Barely six months after giving the French president an undertaking that he would leave power at the end of his second term, Niger's president, Mamadou Tandja, has rewritten the rules to give himself power for as long as he wishes. A general election was held on 20 October to renew 113 seats in parliament, which Tandja dissolved in May to overcome its opposition to his plans to change the constitution. He organised a referendum on 4 August to obtain popular approval for new rules, doing away with the two-term limit on presidential office. Tandja, who has been in power for 10 years, thus avoided the need for another presidential election - scheduled for the end of this year - and can in theory remain in power for as long as he likes. Meanwhile he has had large numbers of political opponents arrested. After pretending to support democracy for Nicolas Sarkozy's benefit in March, Tandja changed his tune at the official launch of the massive Imouraren uranium mining project, which has been contracted to Areva, the French nuclear conglomerate. He announced plans for a referendum on the new constitution at the ceremony, attended by the French secretary of state for cooperation, Alain Joyandet, and Areva's CEO, Anne Lauvergeon. Paris says its mining interests have no bearing on the president's behaviour "given that the contract has already been signed".’

As we’ve discussed before, there are two questions asked about building a nuclear reactor – ‘How much will it cost?’ and ‘When will it be operational?’- to which there is only one, honest reply: ‘I’ll tell you when it’s finished.’

This week, however, lumbering French nuclear ogre AREVA added a third question to the list: ‘What will the design look like?’…

In an unprecedented step, the UK nuclear safety regulator (HSE’s ND), the French nuclear regulator (ASN), and the Finnish nuclear regulator (STUK) released a joint statement on their respective evaluations of the design of AREVA’s shiny all-singing, all-dancing state-of-the-art third generation EPR Pressurised Water Reactor. You see, all three have discovered the same problem with the reactor’s design…

The issue is primarily around ensuring the adequacy of the safety systems (those used to maintain control of the plant if it goes outside normal conditions), and their independence from the control systems (those used to operate the plant under normal conditions).

Independence is important because, if a safety system provides protection against the failure of a control system, then they should not fail together. The EPR design, as originally proposed by the licensees and the manufacturer, AREVA, doesn’t comply with the independence principle, as there is a very high degree of complex interconnectivity between the control and safety systems.

In short: the EPR’s safety system isn’t independent from its control system. The safety system is there, in case the control system fails, to prevent catastrophic accidents. In EPR’s case, if the control system fails, the currently non-independent safety system could fail as well. And AREVA wants to sell the EPR all over the world.

Needless to say, AREVA responded with an awesome piece of denial, spin and downright fantasy…

The safety of the EPR™ reactor has not been called into question…

Really? So clearly ‘The issue is primarily around ensuring the adequacy of the safety systems’ and ‘The EPR design… doesn’t comply with the independence principle’ actually means ‘there’s nothing to worry about’. Silly us. Need we remind you that the OL3 EPR reactor in Olkiluoto, Finland has been under construction since 2004, the EPR at Flamanville, France has been under construction since 2006. And there are still questions about the ‘adequacy’ of the EPR’s safety systems.

AREVA then move straight to the fantasy…

The EPR™ reactor is currently the most powerful reactor in the world...

(No it isn’t – it hasn’t been built yet.)

AREVA guarantees the safety of its reactor…

(It could guarantee snow in Summer but that wouldn’t make it any more likely. AREVA can make as many guarantees as it likes but what will those guarantees be worth after a major accident? Can you clean up nuclear contamination with a guarantee? Figures vary as to the cost of the Chernobyl disaster but a quarter of a trillion dollars is a conservative estimate. Does AREVA have that kind of money? It will be governments and taxpayers who will be paying for any clean-up.)

So what does this mean? What it always does: more cost, more delays, more uncertainty, more spin, more fantasy, and more distraction from the fight against climate change. It means more of the same from AREVA and those who support them.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Australia's Future Power Sources Won't Include Nuclear - PM
‘CANBERRA -(Dow Jones)- The future sources for Australia's power needs include coal, natural gas and a range of renewables rather than nuclear, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Wednesday. Australia's challenge for power generation, as the world's biggest exporter of seaborne coal, is to invest in "clean coal" technology that captures and stores carbon and to develop the vast array of gas sources available including using liquefied natural gas onshore, he said. As well, Australia needs to invest in renewable energysources including large-scale solar and wind, to meet the government's target of sourcing 20% of its power needs from renewable sources by 2020, he said. "This is the future for Australia, other countries will reach their own decisions" about their sources of energy, Rudd said in an interview on radio 4BC when asked about developing nuclear power domestically. Australia sells uranium overseas because countries such as France don't have the same range of options for sourcing power as Australia does, he said. Rudd also argued against nuclear power on the basis of cost, the relatively modest amount of power that modelling suggests would be available from this source and the difficulty of locating a nuclear power station near water.’

Looks like the shockingly poor economics of nuclear energy may have killed two more two more reactor projects, this time in the US…

Entergy Corp Chief Executive J. Wayne Leonard said on Tuesday that the company is unlikely to pursue construction of new nuclear plant in its Southeastern U.S. utility territory. "It's not off the table, but the economics are really not supportive and not likely to be supportive in the near future," Leonard said from the sidelines of the Edison Electric Institute financial conference.

…and…

The estimated cost of two new nuclear reactors proposed by CPS Energy has gone up as much as $4 billion, prompting the [San Antonio] City Council to postpone Thursday's vote on the project's financing until January… CPS interim General Manager Steve Bartley said the utility's main contractor on the project, Toshiba Inc., informed officials that the cost of the reactors would be “substantially greater” than CPS' estimate of $13 billion, which includes financing.

This fear of the rocketing costs of new nuclear reactors isn’t merely confined to the US. Remember Turkey and Canada unveiling similarly ridiculous figures recently?

Other countries have different approaches to nuclear economics. France and Finland decided to rush headlong into building their own new reactors before for the full financial horror hit them. In the UK, government ministers refuse to even discuss the costs of new nuclear reactors in public. One doesn’t have to be a genius to wonder why – if the costs of nuclear power were even remotely acceptable, these pro-nuclear ministers would be shouting it from the rooftops.

The thing is, you don’t have to look very far under the surface of the industry’s hype to see all this. So why does it continue with the charade in the face of the evidence?

Read more: Forget Nuclear by Amory B. Lovins, Imran Sheikh, and Alex Markevich

Should We Have More Nuclear or More Coal?

The short and sensible answer? Neither.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

French nuclear export drive tainted by safety fears
‘PARIS - Safety fears and threats of winter power cuts have taken some of the shine off France's world-beating nuclear industry, the country's main source of power and a key plank in its foreign trade strategy. France generates more than three-quarters of its electricity through nuclear power, more than any other country by proportion, and President Nicolas Sarkozy has made exporting French know-how a top priority. China and Finland are already building French-designed new generation reactors, and talks are underway to export the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) model to Britain, India, Abu Dhabi and the United States. Alarm bells rang this week, however, when French, British and Finnish regulators called on the French nuclear engineering firm Areva to review the design of the planned plants' safety and control systems. Meanwhile, French businesses and householders in some regions could face winter power cuts or rationing after labour strikes delayed the refuelling of France's older plants and left almost one third of them off line.’

We’re once again grateful to lumbering French nuclear ogre AREVA’s North American blog for a quite spectacular piece of greenwash, the title of which is...

The Nature Conservancy: Nuclear Power has a Small Footprint

Now, when it comes to environmental issues, what’s the kind of footprint that springs to mind? It would be carbon footprint, wouldn’t it? A quick Google tells us that there are over four million references to ‘carbon footprint’ out there on the internet.

So reading that headline from AREVA’s blog, what kind of footprint did you first think of?

The thing is, the particular footprint AREVA are talking about here isn’t nuclear power’s carbon footprint but it’s ‘land-use footprint’. Apparently, ‘nuclear power has the smallest land-use footprint of all forms of energy generation’. We’ll confess to not being familiar with the term. A quick Google tells us that ‘land-use footprint’ has just over 20 thousand references out there on the internet. It’s not a search term used very frequently at all on Google.

So far, so misleading. It’s just one more example of the creative lengths you have to go to when you want to promote a dirty, dangerous and discredited energy source (debunking nuclear, thanks to it being so dirty, dangerous and discredited, is an altogether simpler proposition).

This isn’t to say that the issue of ‘energy sprawl’ and the amount of land we use to generate our power isn’t hugely important. We’re not downplaying it, it’s just that AREVA is coming to the issue suspiciously late and takes the line that ‘nuclear power has the smallest land-use footprint’ but stays silent on just what happens on the land that nuclear power sits on (in their blog post, they’re still calling nuclear power ‘safe, reliable, clean, CO2-free’ without any proof). It smacks of desperation.

Have the good people at AREVA read this passage of the ‘Land Use Intensity’ study from which they quote so approvingly…?

Our definition of impact varies among energy production techniques, so a less compact way of generating energy does not necessarily mean that an energy production technique is more damaging to biodiversity, but simply that it has a larger spatial area impacted to some degree. Moreover, many energy production techniques actually have multiple effects on biodiversity, which operate at different spatial and temporal scales… Further, the longevity of the impacts described here varies. For example, radioactive nuclear waste will last for millennia, some mine tailings will be toxic for centuries…

In other words, AREVA are promoting the part of the study that says ‘nuclear power has the smallest land-use footprint of all forms of energy generation’ but not the part that talks about nuclear power's devastating impact on the environment from uranium mining to land contamination around nuclear reactors to high-level nuclear waste storage. Fancy that.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

ANALYSIS-German nuclear policy skirts a taboo
‘FRANKFURT, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Germany's nuclear power policy of keeping old reactors open longer to bridge the gap to greener energy may also leave the door open to eventually break a major electoral taboo -- new atomic power plants. Chancellor Angela Merkel's new centre-right government last week kept nuclear energy alive but stressed that would only be until renewable energies are fully viable. Popular opposition to nuclear is strong and visceral. A total of 17 reactors had faced closure in the coming decade but can now expect a new lease of life. Analysts think this leaves room for opinions to change. "There is an attempt in Germany to establish a policy comfort zone," said Lawrence Poole of IHS Global Insight. "Once they have that in place and safe and well maintained nuclear plants continue to supply power, it makes it that much easier to progress the overall debate," he said, adding, "Whether that means new plants is another question." Merkel's political opponents have been less circumspect in raising their own suspicions. "The oldest scrap metal reactors remain online despite all safety problems," said Green politician and former environment minister Juergen Trittin in a comment on the coalition deal.’

Yesterday, we saw nuclear reactor builders AREVA citing a study that said ‘nuclear power has the smallest land-use footprint of all forms of energy generation’.

The thing is, there’s actually quite a bit of disagreement on the matter. The study ‘Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America’ isn’t the only one to examine the issue.

In his paper ‘Four Nuclear Myths’, Amory B. Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute shows that…

…windpower is far less land-intensive than nuclear power; [solar] photovoltaics spread across land [is] comparable to nuclear if mounted on the ground in average U.S. sites, but much or most of that land… can be shared with lifestock or wildlife, and PVs use no land if mounted on structures, as ~90% now are.

The paper ‘Improving the ecological footprint of nuclear energy: a risk-based lifecycle assessment approach for critical infrastructure systems’ (from the International Journal of Critical Infrastructures, Vol. 1, No. 4.) estimates that nuclear’s land-use footprint is four times higher than coal…

Specifically, a lifecycle assessment of nuclear energy production is important because it captures the release of radionuclides and other toxic materials into the environment... It is concluded that, when critical infrastructure risks are taken into consideration, the actual nuclear footprint may be significantly higher than previous footprint calculations.

Would AREVA care to cite a study taking all this into account?

(And there’s one thing that hasn’t been mentioned: energy efficiency doesn’t use any land at all.)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Britain's nuclear strategy threatens destruction of Kalahari
‘Namibian environmentalists warn expansion of uranium mining could devastate spectacular natural landscape. The hidden cost of Britain's new generation of nuclear power could be the destruction of the Kalahari desert in Namibia and millions of tonnes of extra greenhouse gas emissions a year, the Observer has discovered. The desert, with its towering sand dunes and spectacular lunar-like landscapes, is at the centre of an international uranium rush led by Rössing Uranium, a subsidiary of the British mining giant Rio Tinto, and the French state-owned company, Areva, which part-manages the nuclear complex at Sellafield and wants to build others in Britain. Tomorrow, Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, will release a batch of plans covering every aspect of Britain's strategy to replace its ageing nuclear power stations. Documents seen by the Observer suggest the mines would initially consume about 53 million cubic metres of water a year, more than 75% of the water presently supplied by the Namibian state water company. The water will need to be pumped more than 56km to the mines from the coast. The proposed expansion of the uranium mining would create mountains of waste radioactive sand.’

When I am having a bad day on the frontiers of the solar revolution, I try to imagine being the chief finance officer of British Energy, who will probably be having a much worse day, and indeed, vocational, life. He or she is supposed to raise multiple billions for a new generation of nuclear plants, but a few questions need answering by the owners and likely suppliers first. EDF, owners of British Energy, are majority-owned by the French government, like the French reactor-building company, Areva, which is widely expected to build most or all new British reactors (if they are ever built). I imagine an e-mail from CFO to CEO about these questions…

Read on…

Work for the nuclear industry? It seems your private life is no longer private…

Thousands of staff at UK nuclear power stations have been told to spy on the private lives of workmates and inform on colleagues who might be “vulnerable” to blackmail or bribery by terrorists intent on getting access to Britain’s nuclear secrets and stocks of weapon-grade plutonium. As part of the “security measures” nuclear power station staff are being asked to keep a watch on their colleagues’ love lives. They are also being told to keep tabs on colleagues they think may be using illegal drugs and even those travelling abroad.

How’s that for fostering team spirit and camaraderie? Would you like to go for a night out with a work colleague if you thought he was counting the number of drinks you were having with a view to reporting back to your boss? How about confiding in him or her that you were having money trouble or relationship problems? Your work mates must now be regarded with suspicion and distrust. You are all potentially guilty in the eyes of your employer.

And why stop with staff at nuclear reactors? There are people right across the industry with access to nuclear materials, information and influence. The Prime Minister of the UK Gordon Brown’s brother Andrew is head of media relations at EDF who are looking to build nuclear reactors in the UK. Just what discussions has he had with his brother on the subject of nuclear power? Isn’t anyone spying on him?

The other French nuclear giant AREVA are currently causing chaos across the nuclear industry with their botched reactor construction projects and incomplete reactor designs. Is anyone keeping tabs on AREVA CEO Anne Lauvergeon? AREVA are doing such an unbelievably poor job of the nuclear ‘renaissance’ you could almost imagine they’re double agents working for various environmental campaigns.

The logic of this takes us to all kinds of unpleasant places. Are the partners and children of these reactor workers being followed? Their phones bugged? If not, why not? We assume that the armed police forces who escort nuclear waste shipments are spying on each other? The people who arrange the shipments? The guys who load, unload and drive the transport trucks? If not, why not? Aren’t all these people open to kidnap and coercion, blackmail and duress?

We don’t want to see this kind of awful paranoia and divisiveness but it is, unfortunately, the price you pay when you embrace a dirty, dangerous and discredited energy source like nuclear power which has the potential for such terrible consequences as nuclear proliferation and sabotage. We doubt very much that they’re spying on each other at the wind and solar energy farms across the world.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Seven of Britain's new nuclear plants will be on Irish Sea coast
‘Fears have been raised about the health and environmental risks to Ireland after the British Government gave the green light for the construction of 10 new nuclear power plants - seven of them along the Irish Sea. And after years of campaigning by the Irish Government and environmental groups to close the plant at Sellafield in England, British authorities have confirmed they will build a new reactor there. The new Sellafield plant is among 10 reactors to be given the go-ahead, with the first opening by 2018. Just three of the new reactors will be located on the east coast of England - Hartlepool in Co Durham, Sizewell in Suffolk and Bradwell in Essex. Fine Gael TD for Louth, Fergus O'Dowd, said people there had long called for the closure of Sellafield and the placement of more nuclear power plants across the Irish Sea was a cause for concern. "Seven are on the west coast of England, directly opposite large centres of population.’

It’s a while since we’ve hear from our old friend Tricastin but she’s never really very far from our thoughts or the headlines.

France’s nuclear power facility had a very busy time last year. There was a leak of 30,000 litres of a uranium solution that prevented nearby residents using water from the two rivers contaminated as a result. A false alarm saw workers evacuated. A storage facility for contaminated equipment was flooded when heavy rainfall caused the River Gaffiere to burst its banks. Forty-five employees with small traces of radiation on them were found to be contaminated from a previous leak and had gone undetected. Nuclear safety inspectors found that, in seven months, the plant had emitted more radioactive carbon-14 (an isotope with a half-life of 6,000 years) gas than was permitted for the whole year. Tired of the terrible publicity that the facility has attracted to the region, local winegrowers declared they no longer wanted to call their vintage Côteaux du Tricastin.

And then there was the refuelling. In September last year, Tricastin’s number 2 reactor was closed for two months after two fuel units became ‘snagged’ during the procedure. ‘Snagging’ can be dangerous and risks exposing reactor workers to the intense radiation of the fuel elements. At least the site’s operators learned from that particular mistake, right?

Wrong.

An incident at EDF's Tricastin plant in southeast France late on Thursday forced the company to stop refuelling operations at the reactor 2, which started on Oct. 31, it said on Friday.

The incident occurred during refuelling of the reactor, when a fuel assembly got stuck in the pressure vessel, EDF said in a statement.

[...]

"The incident took place at 2215 GMT," a source at the plant told Reuters on Friday. "We are very worried about this especially as this already happened just a year ago," he added.

Did you know there are iguanas that can successfully repeat a task after being shown how to do it only once?

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

The economic downside to nuclear energy
‘Whether you think nuclear power is "clean" or not there are other considerations to be addressed before anyone starts building new nuclear reactors. Will new nuclear reactors and subsequent nuclear energy really be economical for the people who will be using and paying for it? Are new modern nuclear power plants really safe? Will building new power plants immediately bring more jobs to Americans or will it mean more money going abroad? Let's look at these questions in reverse order since the immediate issue is the creation of new jobs here at home. Michael Eckhart of ACORE related the following conversation he had with friends in the nuclear energy industry: Then, I had a conversation recently with some friends in the nuclear power business and asked where the nuclear power plants would come from if we DID begin to build them. The answer was amazing. The super-pure stainless steel will come from Germany, and it would be fabricated into steam-supply-systems in China, and the overall contractor would probably be Mitsubishi from Japan, and the construction contract would probably go to a firm in Korea that would send workers to the U.S. Well, I said, what's in it for the U.S.? They laughingly said: "the spent fuel." The answer to the question, will more jobs quickly be created would be a resounding NO.’

Every time you think the thing’s been laid to rest, up to gets again, moaning once more and trudging along to who knows where, half terrifying and half pathetic.

No, we’re not talking about some zombie from a bad horror movie. Yet again it’s Turkey’s bid to build its first nuclear reactor that has us holding our breath – is it really dead this time or will it sit up yet again and begin another rather pitiable campaign of terror? The thing’s had more comebacks than Freddy Kreuger.

The latest hero to vanquish the creature is the Turkish courts who yesterday ‘suspended three articles in the regulations governing the tender process’. The Union of Turkish Engineers' and Architects' Chambers said: ‘With this decision, the nuclear power plant tender has legally ended. It has been rendered invalid."

We hope this is the end of this particular horror franchise – the signs are good but we won’t relax just yet. We’ve seen the sickening sight of the tender process receiving just one bid. We witnessed the stomach-churning scenes of the cost of the electricity that would be produced by the reactor being three times the current average price of electricity in Turkey. We screamed in horror as the technical shortcomings of the single bid were revealed. We trembled in terror as the Turskish government announced it was considering a sequel despite the first episode being a financial and critical flop. And every time the thing got up and lumbered on. Please, enough is enough. It’s dead but it won’t lie down.

(Greenpeace Turkey are doing their utmost to defeat the undead nuclear bid. Check out the mutant heart at I Lovve Nuclear. You can also follow the campaign at @ILovveNuclear.)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Nuclear power industry may benefit from climate change levy exemption
Government is considering fresh tax breaks for Britain's nuclear power industry that could smooth the way for the construction of a new generation of UK reactors, The Times has learnt. Whitehall insiders have told The Times that officials at the Department for Energy and Climate Change have been studying the possibility of an exemption for nuclear electricity from the climate change levy, a tax on industrial energy consumption that was created to boost energy efficiency. The levy, which was introduced in 2001, raises an estimated £1 billion a year for the Treasury. Suppliers pay the levy on electricity provided to businesses to Customs & Excise and then pass on the costs to customers. Other low-carbon sources of electricity, such as wind energy, are already exempt from the levy, but it draws no distinction between low nuclear and higher-emitting coal or gas generation. Jeremy Nicholson, a spokesman for the Energy Intensive Users' Group, an industry association that has been lobbying for the switch, estimated that an exemption for nuclear power would be worth up to £300 million a year to the industry, or £3 billion over the next decade, during which a big construction programme for new reactors is planned.’

There are days when you simply run out of words. How to continue to describe the ongoing construction of the flagship OL3 EPR reactor at Olkiluoto, Finland? We’ve done ‘disastrous’, ‘incompetent’ and ‘farce’. Add to those ‘massively over-budget’ and ‘hugely behind schedule’.

We’re at a loss to describe the latest news from the construction site…

The pipes that form the cooling system around the reactor have been partially welded without any supervision. TVO and Areva are right now investigating how much of the work must be redone and what the consequences are.

This pertains to the same pipes whose weld seams have been investigated before. This time the weld seams are not concerned but welding has been performed to cover cosmetic damages on the surface of the pipes. Welding work has not been, however, documented.

If the entire primary coolant piping had to be redone, it would take three years.

The cooling system is the very important bit of the reactor that prevents the thing getting too hot and going into meltdown. Imagine being the press officer for OL3. We’re struggling to think of a more depressing job.

The EPR, if you need reminding, is supposed to be the most advanced reactor on the planet. The top dog. The big man. Numero uno. This is the design – which its owners AREVA are selling around the world – that is, according to the propaganda, going to usher in the so-called nuclear ‘renaissance’ and lead us to a glorious future where nuclear-generated electricity is abundant, cheap, clean and pixies in funny little hats caper around for our entertainment.

And yet here we are again. Fundamental mistakes at Olkiluoto are compounded by the repetition of the same fundamental mistakes. The OL3 project has been notorious from the very beginning for its inability to get something as essential as the reactor’s welding right – non-existent supervision, lack of training and instructions, and poor quality work.

You’d expect a five year old child to learn lessons faster and shake your head in bitter disappointment if they didn’t. You know when kids do something stupid and you have to tell them not to do it, then they do it again, then again, and you think you're going to go insane with frustration? It must be a bit like at OL3.

AREVA however are hailed around the world by gullible leaders and journalists as potential saviours of the human race. Like we said – words have failed us.

Duke Energy Abandons Plutonium Fuel (MOX) Testing Program in South Carolina Reactor

Friends of the Earth has learned that Duke Energy has taken a decisive step which signals its complete withdrawal from the Department of Energy's controversial program to test the potential use of surplus military plutonium as fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. In a stunning and silent move, Duke Energy has decided not to reload experimental plutonium fuel (mixed oxide fuel, MOX) test assemblies into its Catawba Unit 1 reactor during the current fuel outage which began on November 6. This move is a major setback to the Department of Energy's goal of using MOX fuel in commercial reactors. Such an outage is a normal procedure, as the radioactive uranium fuel must be withdrawn from the reactor core every 18 months. "Duke's total abandonment of the plutonium fuel program should be a wake-up call to the Energy Department. Plans to force the use of this costly and dangerous fuel in U.S. reactors must be immediately halted," said Tom Clements, Southeastern Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for Friends of the Earth. "That it took Duke a full ten years to pull out of the MOX program is a good indicator of more trouble ahead with respect to costs, schedule and safety. It's not too late to pull the plug on the entire misguided program, halt construction of an expensive MOX plant under construction at the Savannah River Site and pursue a cheaper, safer and faster alternative: management of plutonium as nuclear waste."’

We talk all the time about the terrible economics of nuclear power. Every aspect of them is, without exception, terrible:

• We see very little prospect of construction costs falling and every likelihood of them rising further.
• We calculate that a new nuclear station will require €65/MWh (?8.5/MWh) in real terms year in year out to hit its breakeven hurdle rate.
• The returns for new nuclear development will need to be underpinned by the government and the risks shared with the taxpayer / consumer.
• Evidence to date suggests time delays in new nuclear construction can be significant.
• Construction delays and planning problems have led to a 77% increase in construction costs at the Olkiluoto site [in Finland].
• In a purely merchant market (such as the UK) where wholesale power prices need to cover construction costs over the life of the project, there is no active way for a developer to recover cost overruns.
• Neither the UK nor the US have yet approved any designs and although it will be a lengthy process anyway, amendments and additional configurations for each country's demands could be highly problematic.

Now we know what some of you are thinking: here we go again, it’s anti-technology Greenpeace. Look at them trying to send the human race back to living in caves, the commies. Just where do they get this stuff? I bet they’re making it up.

What’s that? Didn’t we mention it? The above statements aren’t ours. They’re taken from a report called ‘New Nuclear – The Economics Say No’ written by Citigroup. The report describes the financial risks of building new nuclear reactors as ‘Corporate Killers’.

Now Citigroup aren’t anti-technology communists who want the human race to go back to living in caves (neither are Greenpeace as it happens but people don’t believe the evidence). They are an ‘international financial conglomerate with operations in consumer, corporate, and investment banking and insurance.’ .

In other words, they are hard-headed capitalists looking to make as much money as possible. Read the report for yourself – it’s only 14 pages. Citigroup don’t think new nuclear reactors are the way to make big piles of cash (or piles of cash of any size for that matter). If you don’t believe us, believe them.

See also: Congress Should Follow Wall Street's Lead And Shun New Reactors

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Nevada's hidden ocean of radiation
‘A sea of ancient water tainted by the Cold War is creeping deep under the volcanic peaks, dry lake beds and pinyon pine forests covering a vast tract of Nevada. Over 41 years, the federal government detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground at the Nevada Test Site, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Each explosion deposited a toxic load of radioactivity into the ground and in some cases directly into aquifers. But today, as Nevada faces a water crisis and a population boom, state officials are taking a new measure of the damage. They successfully pressured federal officials for a fresh environmental assessment of the 1,375-square-mile test site, a step toward a potential demand for monetary compensation, replacement of the lost water or a massive cleanup. "It is one of the largest resource losses in the country," said Thomas S. Buqo, a Nevada hydrogeologist. "Nobody thought to say, 'You are destroying a natural resource.'" In a study for Nye County, where the nuclear test site lies, Buqo estimated that the underground tests polluted 1.6 trillion gallons of water. That is as much water as Nevada is allowed to withdraw from the Colorado River in 16 years - enough to fill a lake 300 miles long, a mile wide and 25 feet deep. At today's prices, that water would be worth as much as $48bn if it had not been fouled, Buqo said.’

Who said speaking out against nuclear power couldn’t be fun? Last week Greenpeace Mediterranean asked the Turkish public, “are you ready to live with nuclear?” by holding a highly visual performance from Abarjazz Avandgard Music Group in Istanbul. It was the first of many activities to come in the following months. Abarjazz Avendgard is a professional drumming group, that came to help us launch our campaign “I lovve nuclear” with an objective to knock out any chance of bringing nuclear power to Turkey in the future. The group played on barrels marked to look like radioactive waste, while wearing gas masks, and activists asked the government to end all nuclear plans present and future. It received a very positive response.

The Turkish government has spent decades entertaining the idea, and working to bring nuclear power here. So far, they have managed to go through the lengthy and expensive tendering process four times, and have failed all four times. Although, most recently, they accepted the one and only bid, from Russian company, Atomstroyexport, and against the tender’s own regulations, they accepted it. Greenpeace, and other local NGOs brought a legal case against such actions, and three days ago, the High Court restricted the conditions of the tender so significantly that it basically brought it to an end.

Even still, as good as this does sound, history has shown us that we cannot call this a full victory yet, but just another failed tender. In spite of repeated failures, calculated proof that nuclear power is incredibly expensive, and the examples of severe danger, such as Chernobyl, the Turkish government has not taken the nuclear option off the table. In fact, they still have another tender process on the agenda for 2010.

We intend to crush the beast while it’s down. From now until the anniversary of Chernobyl on April 26th next year, we will be pull together one million ‘radioactivists’ through our website ilovvenuclear.org. The campaign will be supported by several offline activities and tremendous outreach on the main social networking sites, and will promote the reality that nuclear power is expensive, dangerous and not the right solution for Turkey. One million voices cannot be ignored!

(This is a guest post by Stephanie Hillman, Programme Director for Greenpeace Mediterranean. More information is available in Turkish here. You can follow the ‘I lovve nuclear’ campaign on Twitter here and sign up to the Facebook group here.)

A few days ago the cargo ship The Happy Ranger left France carrying steam generators intended for the nuclear European Pressurised Reactor under construction in Olkiluoto, Finland. As the ship made its way from France to Finland, activists from the Arctic Sunrise boarded the cargo ship and are currently occupying the cranes on deck.

Read on...

The activists have not been removed and intend to stay on board all the way to Finland.

Photos of the action can be seen here and here. The Greenpeace press release is here.

The EPR reactor could be coming to your country. It's worth finding out why that might be a bad idea. You can find out more about this ill-fated reactor on Greepeace's factsheet and read its disastrous history recorded here on Nuclear Reaction.

Update: Greenpeace Finland nuclear campaigner Lauri Myllyvirta is blogging from the deck of the Happy Ranger.

Greenpeace Finland nuclear campaigner Lauri Myllyvirta is blogging from the deck of the Happy Ranger which Lauri and five colleagues boarded today as the ship transports steam generators to the construction site of AREVA's EPR nuclear reactor at Olkiluoto, Finland.

Find out more here.

When I was woken up for my watch at 4 am, I had a liter of water in my sleeping bag.

Read Lauri's latest blog post from from the deck of the Happy Ranger...

The Happy Ranger is taking up speed again with after stopping when two more Greenpeace activists boarded the ship between Gotland and Öland. There are now eight activists aboard bearing witness to this transport of main components of the new Finnish reactor at Olkiluoto - Lauri, Rosa, Tuomas, Mai, Andreas, Jacky, Elisabeth, and Niko.

The Happy Ranger is expected to arrive in Finland tomorrow afternoon.

(Get the latest news on the Greenpeace activists’ progress on Greenpeace Finland’s Twitter feed and Nuclear Reaction’s Twitter feed. One of the activists on board, Lauri Myllyvirta, is blogging here. Here are photos and video, and more photos.)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

India puts nuclear plants on alert
‘NEW DELHI, Nov 16 (Reuters) - India has put its nuclear power plants under alert and tightened security around them after intelligence about possible attacks, a report said on Monday. The step comes after a man arrested in the United States on charges of plotting attacks in India was found to have travelled to Indian states that have nuclear installations. The Press Trust of India quoted unnamed sources in the home ministry as saying that state governments had been asked to step up security around their nuclear plants as a "precautionary measure".’

French nuclear giant AREVA is upset by the six Greenpeace activists who boarded the transport ship Happy Ranger in the Fehmarn Belt strait between Denmark and Germany. The ship is taking massive steam generators to the construction site of AREVA’s beleaguered OL3 EPR nuclear reactor in Olkiluoto, Finland.

The company says it is ‘saddened that Greenpeace refuses to engage in a calmer debate on energy issues’. Just how this ‘calmer debate’ is supposed to take place in the eyes of AREVA remains unclear. AREVA studiously ignore the issues raised on this blog, for example, although we know AREVA people are avid readers. And a visit to the facility where these large EPR components have been produced will not advance us in the debate on how nuclear energy undermines climate protection or how the choice for nuclear power has shut the door for renewable energies in Finland. A calmer debate? Greenpeace is ready when you are, AREVA.

©Greenpeace/Mueller

The company certainly wasn’t interested in calm debate at the European Commission’s European Nuclear Energy Forum (Enef) this year. Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Sortir du Nucléaire - the only groups invited into the industry-dominated body - walked out accusing Enef of ‘stifling critical voices’, ‘ignoring their concerns and riding roughshod over alternative scientific evidence’. If the likes of AREVA are so sure of themselves and their reactors you have to wonder why they have to resort to such cover-up and cowardice.

On top of that, AREVA spokesperson Jacques-Emmanuel Saulnier seems to think some kind of ‘association’ is ‘opening up’ between AREVA and Greenpeace just because a Greenpeace team visited the AREVA uranium mines in Niger last week. As if inviting people to the hellish nightmare of what AREVA has done in Niger would endear the company to anyone.

In its Happy Ranger press release AREVA also uses a rather strange and inappropriate metaphor…

To quote a well-known saying, "Our house is burning and we are looking the other way". If we apply this metaphor, then Greenpeace's attempts to stand in the way of nuclear power is like preventing a trusted fire service from getting to the blaze.

AREVA is comparing nuclear reactors to a ‘fire service’ fighting against the ‘burning’ that is climate change. Now, we don’t know about you, but if our house was burning we’d want the fire service at the scene immediately. We wouldn’t want the fire service being massively delayed and taking years to arrive like AREVA's nuclear reactors are. By the time the AREVA fire truck arrives the house could be in ruins. And just imagine the highly toxic and radioactive extinguishing chemicals that AREVA uses when trying to put out this fire. Even if they managed to save the house, it would be uninhabitable for thousands and thousands of years.

And don’t get us started on ‘trusted’.

(Get the latest news on the Greenpeace activists’ progress on Greenpeace Finland’s Twitter feed and Nuclear Reaction’s Twitter feed. One of the activists on board, Lauri Myllyvirta, is blogging here. There are photos and video, and more photos.)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Nuclear power: less effective than energy efficiency and renewable energy?
‘If the U.S. wants to help stop global warming, nuclear power is not the way to go, according to a new report released today. The Environment California Research & Policy Center concluded that launching a nuclear power industry nearly from the ground up is too slow and expensive a process. Energy efficiency standards and renewable energy options are better solutions, researchers said. Currently, no new nuclear reactors are under construction in the country, and no U.S. power company has ordered a nuclear plant since 1978. Meanwhile, building a reactor would probably take around a decade - 2016 at the earliest, the study suggested. Without an existing infrastructure, manufacturing reactor parts with the dearth of trained personnel would be difficult. But even if the nuclear industry managed to build 100 reactors by 2030, the total power produced would reduce total U.S. emissions only 12% over the next 20 years, which Environment California deemed “far too little, too late.”’

The Happy Ranger carrying both steam generators - for AREVA's disaster-prone OL3 EPR nuclear reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland - and eight Greenpeace activists arrived at their destination this afternoon. After the formalities of Finnish immigration, our heroes are now enjoying well deserved baths, hot dinners and celebrations.

A press conference will be held in Helsinki on Friday and we'll bring you all the details from there. This isn't the end of the story so stay tuned.

(A full briefing on Areva's OL3, its many safety issues and negative impact on Finnish climate policy is available here. One of the activists on board, Lauri Myllyvirta, blogged the experience here. There are photos and video, and more photos.)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

New Greenpeace Chief Calls for Sustainable, Nuclear-Free Power Supply
‘Kumi Naidoo was appointed executive director of the environmental campaign group Greenpeace International this month after two decades leading civil society groups in Africa and internationally. Mr. Naidoo, 44, who is from South Africa, takes over the role at a time when environmentalism increasingly enjoys mainstream status, although the agenda of groups like Greenpeace remains at odds with those of many governments in critical areas like nuclear power and biotechnology. Mr. Naidoo, who is based in Amsterdam, answered questions on energy and climate policy in an e-mail exchange with Green Inc. ‘Nuclear power is a dangerous distraction to real solutions.’

Why should we trust the nuclear industry when it doesn’t trust itself? That’s the underlining question of a Greenpeace report released this week.

The Harper government has tabled the Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act in Parliament. The bill would, if passed, artificially cap the liability of a nuclear operator for accidents at $650 million – a miniscule fraction of the likely actual cost of a nuclear disaster. Why?

Read on…

“Nuclear power is a dangerous distraction to real solutions.”
Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director, Greenpeace International

“Have a French nuclear industry that works. That means that we have to rethink the whole industry.”
Henri Proglio, the incoming boss of EDF

“For a nuclear power station to be built at Kirksanton, the Haverigg windfarm would have to be demolished.”
Jill Perry, Green Party candidate for Copeland, UK

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Peak Uranium? Our nuclear future might be shorter than we thought
‘We’ve all heard of Peak Oil (even if there’s some doubt about whether we’ve heard the truth over when it’s going to actually kick in), but there’s no need to worry –nuclear power will step in to fill the gap, right? Well, not for long, perhaps, at least according to Dr Michael Dittmar and his new analysis of the global nuclear industry…’

An independent expert commissioned by Greenpeace has found the two nuclear reactors currently being built in Finland and France have serious safety flaws in their design. Dr. Helmut Hirsch, Scientific Consultant for Nuclear Safety says the design of AREVA’s much heralded third-generation EPR reactor is ‘contradictory to the foundation of nuclear safety’.

A nuclear reactor’s control systems are supposed to be independent, so that a failure of one system doesn’t compromise the whole reactor. This is not the case with the EPR – its systems are interlinked. ‘In the worst case,’ says Dr Hirsch, ‘this can lead to a minor incident developing into a severe accident.’ This has led to the nuclear regulators in the UK (who are evaluating the EPR design as part of their nuclear ‘renaissance’), France and Finland to jointly express their concern with this design flaw.

This is on top of ongoing serious problems at the construction of the OL3 EPR at Olkiluoto, Finland. Last week it was found that the pipes in the reactor’s essential cooling system (the part of the reactor that prevents a meltdown) have been welded using unacceptable methods without any supervision or written records. The surface of the pipes had been welded to cover up damage which may have weakened the pipes beyond repair.

The number of defects in OL3’s construction is around 3,000. The Finnish nuclear regulator STUK has detected many that were in fact approved by AREVA’s quality control but can we be certain that STUK has found them all? In 2006 STUK admitted that they could not be sure due to the high number of problems.

What we can be certain of however is that the EPR reactor is a dangerous and failed experiment. The safety flaws highlighted by Dr Hirsch reveal that there can be no confidence in the safety of the EPR design. The massive budget and schedule overruns show that a programme of building EPRs across the planet, as AREVA plans, presents a very real threat to the fight against climate change. Neither must we forget the legacy of nuclear accidents.

EPR, like nuclear power as a whole, not only threatens our safety, but takes and wastes the vital money, time and resources that we need to expand renewable energy and energy efficiency programmes if we are serious about saving our climate. The risks are too great. EPR must be abandoned immediately.

Read Dr. Hirsch’s report here. Greenpeace’s EPR factsheet is here.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Britain poised to lose jobs as £10bn nuclear power plant contract goes to US
‘Thousands of jobs that were to have been created in Britain to build the next generation of nuclear power plants could be heading overseas instead, after Westinghouse, the nuclear company sold by the government three years ago to Toshiba, chose one of its largest shareholders as the lead contractor to build reactors. Westinghouse is expected to confirm this week that it has appointed US-based Shaw Group to head up its £10bn nuclear programme, passing over the favourite for the contract, rival engineering group Fluor. Industry sources said that Shaw is likely to source far more reactor components from overseas than Fluor, which has close relationships with British manufacturers. The Unite union claimed that 10,000 new jobs in the UK would not be created as a result of Shaw being selected.’

It’s going to be a nuclear ‘renaissance’, they’ve told us. A dormant (or dying) and discredited nuclear industry was going to spring back to life, provide cheap, safe, reliable and clean electricity, and save us from catastrophic climate change. But then…

Turkey’s government announced over the weekend that it is cancelling (for the fourth time) its farcical tendering process to build the country’s first nuclear reactor (following the likes of Canada, Bulgaria, South Africa, Texas, Missouri, Idaho, Alabama, and the rest who’ve all seen their own nuclear plans fall through).

In the UK is looks like a big chunk of the jobs that were hyped by the British government as part of the nuclear ‘renaissance’ may be going to go to overseas contractors. We hate to say we told you so.

Hard-headed capitalists like Citigroup are calling new nuclear reactors ‘corporate killers’ and an utter financial nightmare for potential investors offering non-existent returns.

Bearing all this mind, you be forgiven for asking, ‘just what kind of renaissance is this anyway?’ Where’s the rebirth and revival?

The Renaissance that swept Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries produced masterpieces that have the power to inspire awe even to this day: Gutenberg’s mighty printing press, Michelangelo’s David and the Sistine Chapel, Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, the far-sighted vision of Copernicus and Galileo… to name but a very small few.

So where are the nuclear ‘renaissance’s major works and masterpieces? What does this 'renaissance' have to show for itself? The EPR reactor being built in Olkiluoto, Finland and Flamanville, France is supposed to be the ‘renaissance’s flagship endeavour. Is it the nuclear ‘renaissance’s Mona Lisa? If it is, it’s one drawn in crayon by a five year-old with his eyes shut.

Is the Turkish government, who can’t build a nuclear reactor after four attempts, the nuclear 'renaissance’s Michelangelo? Is Westinghouse, which lacks the vision to see that its new AP-1000 reactor design might need to include safety systems so it can ‘withstand events like earthquakes and tornadoes’ the nuclear ‘renaissance’s Galileo? It's starting to look pathetic.

With the nuclear industry facing yet more accusations (this time from Peter A. Bradford a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 1977 to 1982) of seeking ‘to shift ever more economic risk to taxpayers who are already staggering under the weight of other federal bailouts’, it seems the nuclear 'renaissance' shares just one thing with its historical counterpart: the leading exponents of both being reliant on the money from generous patrons.

The nuclear ‘renaissance’ is really shaping up to be the ‘renaissance that wasn’t’.

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

A Nuclear Reactor Shows Its Age
‘Almost every plan for limiting carbon dioxide output includes keeping old nuclear plants running. But as those plants age, they turn up new problems. The latest is at a plant owned by Progress Energy in Crystal River, Fla., where a gap was found inside the thick concrete of a containment dome. The plant had been temporarily shut in late September so workers could replace the aging steam generators - which required them to cut a hole in the dome. (The steam generators at many aging nuclear reactors were intended to last the life of the plant, so no way for swapping them out was designed.) About 9 inches into the 42-inch-thick structure, workers discovered a gap that varied from 2 inches down to an eighth of an inch, over a roughly 60-foot wide patch of wall. "It appears that other similar plants that have gone through the steam generator replacement process have not seen the same phenomenon," said Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is conducting a special inspection to find out, among other things, where the gap came from.’

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Cuts loom over UK's nuclear clean-up budget
‘The Government is sharpening the axe for Britain's £4 billion nuclear clean-up budget and drawing up plans for big spending cuts at contaminated sites including Sellafield and Dounreay, The Times has learnt. The Treasury has begun a sweeping review of spending by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the quango that over the past four years is understood to have spent about £1 billion of taxpayers' money annually on cleaning up at Britain's 20 contaminated nuclear sites. An NDA spokesman said that it was in talks with the Treasury and the Department for Energy and Climate Change about options to cut costs. These include the acceleration of some pieces of work as well as scrapping or deferring others.’

© Greenpeace / Beentjes

Here’s a story you won’t have heard before about how Europe nearly saw a nuclear meltdown in 2001. Why won’t you have heard it before? Because it was covered up by the Dutch authorities…

On a winter night in December 2001 there was a power failure in North Holland, where Petten is located. The nuclear reactor is a research reactor, not a power reactor; it needs electricity to operate, for instance to pump cooling water. The reactor has a back-up cooling system to prevent meltdown of the core in case of a power failure. But this evening the back-up cooling system failed to come into action and the operators did not know what to do. There is an extra safety system by convection cooling for which the operators had to open a valve, but the control room was dark. When they reached for a torch that should have been there, it had been taken away by a colleague to work under his car. Trying their luck the operators put the valve of the convection cooling in what they thought was the ‘open’ position. But then the lights came back on and the operators discovered they had actually closed the back-up convection cooling system. Had the power failure lasted longer it would have meant meltdown and a major disaster. When I learned about this some months later - they thought they could keep it secret - I did not think I could take responsibility any longer and I resigned from the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands.

They resorted to ‘trying their luck’. In a nuclear reactor.

The country’s nuclear regulator took 13 months before they reported the incident, commenting only that there ‘there has not been an unsafe situation’. The reason we’re only hearing about this now is because Frans W. Saris, a former director of the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands, tells the story in his book ‘Darwin Meets Einstein’ which was released this week.

Let’s go over that again. They came incredibly close to a nuclear meltdown (remember what one of those is?) at a Dutch nuclear reactor in 2001. The authorities covered it up and lied about it.

Still, that was eight years ago. Surely many lessons have been learned about the vital issues of safety, security, transparency, honesty and trust by the nuclear industry and its advocates in the intervening years…?

The [UK] government is refusing to provide details on five separate security breaches at Britain's nuclear power stations last year. The breaches have prompted accusations that ministers are suppressing damaging information at a time when they are attempting to sell the idea of more nuclear power stations.

That’s a bit fat ‘no’ then. Perhaps in another eight years, power cuts, missing torches and luck permitting. Until then, the public’s ignorance is the nuclear industry’s bliss.

(More information can be found in Dutch at Greenpeace Netherlands.)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Accident casts fresh doubt on nuclear safety
‘On Nov. 21, there was a radiation leak at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pa., less than 100 miles north of Baltimore up I-83. One hundred and fifty workers were evacuated, and 20 people were exposed to radiation. The leak didn't get a lot of attention here, but Marylanders should care - not only because Three Mile Island is not very far from us but also because Calvert Cliffs in Southern Maryland may be the site of the first new nuclear power plant to be ordered since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Electricité de France (EDF), the largest merchant of nuclear power in Europe, has purchased an almost 50 percent share in Constellation's nuclear holdings and will try to build a new nuclear power plant in our state with millions of dollars in federal loan guarantees. Last week's leak is the latest reminder that nuclear power, despite its proponents' claims, can be dirty and unsafe.’

Greenpeace has found high radiation contamination levels in the streets of Akokan where children play. What is even more disturbing is that this just year AREVA claimed that those same streets were safe.

It began in 2003 when radioactive contamination was found in towns close to Niger’s uranium mines by the independent laboratory CRIIRAD and local NGO Aghir In’Man.

In 2007 CRIIRAD found dangerous levels of radiation levels near the hospital in the mining village of Akokan. The mine operator, French nuclear giant AREVA, admitted to widespread contamination in the village.

In October of that year, the mining company and AREVA subsidiary COMINAK reported the contamination had been addressed. In September 2009 AREVA confirmed to CRIIRAD that a clean up had been done and the streets made safe.

It is clear that this is not true.

There are still radioactive materials in the street of Akokan. Greenpeace’s findings directly contradict AREVA’s assurances. The people of these villages are being exposed to unnecessarily high levels of radiation. In one area Greenpeace tested, the radiation was almost 500 times higher than normal levels.

This is the hidden cost of nuclear power: innocent men, women and children exposed to radiation, exploitation and danger. It’s something you won’t see in the nuclear industry’s glossy brochures and on its impressive websites.

This is what we must accept if we are to continue using nuclear power for our energy needs. The uranium from Niger is used to keep the lights on in France. Nuclear reactors must have uranium. To obtain that uranium it seems that people must suffer. It is a story told wherever in the world uranium is mined. Ask yourself: would you like to live near a uranium mine?

The nuclear industry does not want you to think about the dust in the streets of Niger. Instead it wants you to think about its so-called clean and safe energy. Are the streets of Akokan clean? Are its people safe?

AREVA has shown it cannot be trusted to take care of this problem themselves. An immediate and comprehensive independent assessment and clean up must be done to ensure that the people of the mining villages are protected from AREVA’s radiation.

(A detailed briefing on Greenpeace’s findings in Akokan can be found here)

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Mohamed ElBaradei tells Atomic Energy Agency he has hit ‘dead end’ with Iran
‘The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said yesterday that he had reached a ‘dead end’ in his investigation into Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme. The remark from Mohamed ElBaradei, at the agency’s Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, came as member nations prepared to vote on a key resolution condemning the Tehran regime. Mr ElBaradei, who has three days left in the job, has been dogged by criticism over his perceived weakness in dealing with Tehran and internal infighting at the agency over a reluctance to release incriminating evidence. Yesterday, however, he criticised Iran for rejecting an internationally endorsed plan to send its nuclear fuel abroad, delaying the moment it could manufacture a nuclear bomb. The agency’s resolution is expected to be passed today with the backing of all members of the E3+3; the international negotiating group on Iran comprising the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.’

Do you know many companies like the nuclear industry who have only one product in their catalogue? There was Ford and the Model T, but that was 100 years ago, and they at least knew how to build and sell it.

We wish we’d come up with that joke. The honour however goes to Henri Proglio, the new chief executive of the French nuclear giant EDF. When even the nuclear industry is mocking the nuclear industry, you know things aren’t right.

So how is the nuclear ‘renaissance’ going this week? Not well, in actual fact…

The UK’s safety regulators, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), have just released the third stage of their assessment for the designs of AREVA’s EPR and Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactors. It’s grim reading.

There are a significant number of issues with the safety features of both designs. The regulators still don't have a complete design yet from either Areva or Westinghouse. The HSE will not approve the designs unless this is addressed.

The EPR design has a long list of problems. There are "significant concerns" about the lack of separation between the safety protection and control systems. The HSE says "you could have the same fault occurring on both, so your protection system won't do what it's supposed to do. The company has proposed a way to fix the problem, but has yet to provide details". Concrete reactor shielding may not meet UK standards (the question is whether it meets any standards at all). There are problems with the structural integrity of the reactor but it’s "too early to say whether they can be resolved solely with additional safety case changes or whether they may result in design modifications being necessary". Unbelievably, even simple, fundamental things such as fire doors and alarms are not properly sited.

(You can take a look at some of the many safety failings of the EPR reactor being built at Olkiluoto here.)

Things with the AP1000 are little better. According to the HSE, Westinghouse has significant additional work to prove its reactor is safe across "the majority of the technical topic areas.". The safety case on internal hazards has "significant shortfalls." The regulator criticises Westinghouse for a "lack of detailed claims and arguments". There are major concerns about the reactor design’s new cooling valve but there has been, says the HSE, "minimal progress in addressing our concerns. There is a significant risk that the depth of the issue and the resources and effort that are needed to address it have been underestimated.". On top of all that aspects of the civil and mechanical engineering plans are being questioned, as well as the structural integrity and "human factors".

Wow. That’s quite a list. If the EPR was a car with a list of concerns like that, would you drive it? If the AP1000 was a plane, would you fly in it?

Meanwhile, UK government ministers are complacently unconcerned…

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Indian radioactive leak was deliberate, says government
‘A radiation leak at a nuclear power station in the southern Indian state of Karnataka was caused deliberately, the Indian government said at the weekend. The leak at the Kaiga plant, run by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, led to the hospitalisation of about 55 employees for tests. An investigation has been launched into how radioactive contamination entered a drinking water cooler at the plant near the coastal town of Mallapur. The incident took place only days before the 25th anniversary of one of the world's worst industrial accidents in the Indian city of Bhopal. In December 1984, a deadly gas leak from the Union Carbide chemical plant cost the lives of more than 8,000 people within three days and left thousands more suffering the toxic effects of the disaster. The Bhopal accident remains highly emotive. Indian authorities last week had to backtrack on a plan to open the factory to the public during the anniversary to dispel widespread fears that the site was still harmful. The Atomic Energy Corporation said yesterday that vials of tritium, a radioactive isotope, had been poured into a drinking water facility at the Kaiga plant.’

Just in case you thought the radioactive contamination found close to uranium mines was peculiar only to Niger…

…Brazil’s Brazilian Nuclear Industries (INB) has just been fined $1 million for covering up a leak of radioactive liquid at its uranium mine at Caetité.

This is the same Caetité where last year Greenpeace found drinking water to be contaminated with high levels of uranium.

A year later and it seems things have not changed. Brazil’s ‘Institute of Water Management and Climate (INGA) and the Department of Health (Sesab) notified the municipal authorities of Caetité, Lagoa Real and Livramento de Nossa Senhora’ to stop the consumption of water from six wells and springs after ‘the presence of alpha and beta radioactivity’ was detected. A report on the source of the contamination is due in three weeks.

(More information is available in Portuguese at Greenpeace Brazil)