Remember earlier in the week when Greenpeace activists dismantled railway tracks near France’s Tricastin nuclear facility? The action was to stop nuclear waste from being exported to Russia.

Unfortunately the waste is on the move and now at sea on the Russian transport ship, Kapitan Kuroptev. That doesn’t mean Greenpeace has given up the chase…

© Pierre Gleizes / Greenpeace

Our colleagues managed to get alongside the ship displaying banners reading ‘Russia is not a nuclear dump’ before attempting to board it.

© Pierre Gleizes / Greenpeace

The Kapitan Kuroptev is carrying this waste to an uncertain future. Ninety percent of French nuclear waste shipped to Russia since 2006 has been dumped. Only 10% was returned. How much of the Kapitan Kuroptev cargo will be making the return trip and how much will be left to contaminate Russia for thousands of years?

(More photos and information in French is available at the Greenpeace France website.)

Posted by Justin at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yesterday morning at 8am CET, eight Greenpeace activists dismantled the railway tracks between the Tricastin nuclear facility and Pierrelatte in order to stop a shipment of nuclear waste being shipped to Russia. The Russian ship, Kapitan Kuroptev, is waiting at Le Havre to receive the shipment.

French nuclear companies AREVA and EDF say depleted uranium is sent to Siberia to be enriched and then returned to France. This is spin and deception. This isn’t ‘recycling’ or ‘reuse’. This is making nuclear waste somebody else’s problem. It only demonstrates once again the industry’s complete inability to deal with the dangers of nuclear waste.

Official figures published in December 2009 show that AREVA and EDF are
not telling the truth. Since 2006 33,000 tons of uranium have been exported to Russia, while only 3,090 tons have returned. Where are the missing 30,000 tons? It’s dumped in places like Seversk.

So frightened are AREVA of Greenpeace shining a light on their dirty dealing they’ve taken us to court in France in an attempt to gag us. If they’ve got nothing to hide, they’ve got nothing to fear.

In France, Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo has already received more than 29,000 petitions for a moratorium on the export of nuclear waste In Russia, people can write directly to Mr Borloo here.

(For more information in French, visit Greenpeace France’s website and follow them on Twitter.)

Posted by Justin at 2:32 PM | Permalink

We’ve talked before about French nuclear waste being sent to Russia for reprocessing but very little of it coming back. Here’s some facts for you…

• France has sent 33,000 tonnes of nuclear waste to Russia for reprocessing since 2006. A mere 3,090 tonnes has returned. That’s less than 10%. The rest is dumped.

• The contracts for this arrangement were signed in violation of Russian law.

• Rostechnadzor – the federal agency that supervises nuclear production facilities – have acknowledged that the requirements for storing the waste are violated on a regular basis.

• Russia does not have the technology to process uranium hexafluoride (which makes up most of the waste). Nor does it have the funds to invest in conversion technology.

• The cost of disposing of 700 thousand tons of Russian uranium hexafluoride, stored at depots of the state owned Rosatom, may reach billions of euros. Under their contracts. Areva and other Western European companies will add about 130 thousand tons of dangerous materials to the existing stockpile.

• The overwhelming majority of Russians – 92% - are strongly against turning Russia into an international nuclear waste dump.

You can send a letter to Jean-Louis Borloo, the French Minister for Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development, telling him all this and demanding the French Government make a unilateral decision to stop imports of depleted uranium into the Russian Federation. You can send a letter in French here, or in Russian or English here.

(To send a letter in English, scroll down the Greenpeace Russia page and put your name in the upper box and your email address in the lower one. Click the button at the bottom of the letter and you will receive a confirmation email. Click the link in that email to confirm your letter to Mr Borloo.)

Posted by Justin at 2:38 PM | Permalink

So, without a doubt, nuclear power fails the safety, economic and reliability tests. Is it, however, flexible? Not so much.

Over the last year it became much more clear that the problem with nuclear (and coal) power stations is that they are too inflexible to be able to fit in energy system with higher percentages of renewable sources.

The nuclear industry responded by saying that reactors could ‘load-follow’ (which means they rapidly adjust their power output according to fluctuating demands for electricity). However this depends very much on the power plant design.

French nuclear corporation AREVA’s so-called state of the art third generation EPR reactor design has already been criticised for lacking this flexibility. French utility EDF who are building an EPR at Flamanville in France have tried to prove the contrary and ordered design changes that would make the reactor able to respond to changing power demands.

Unfortunately this ambition has been stymied by the EPR’s own safety system. The proposed design for the EPR’s reactor core means that it will not be able to rapidly increase or decrease its power output. That is, it won’t be able to ‘load-follow’.

Countries looking to adopt the EPR may now face a choice: lots of centralised, inflexible electricity generation or decentralised flexible power generated by renewables. The two don’t go together at all well.

Expect a lot of pressure from the centralised power industry in the coming months. The battle for the control of the grid is about to begin.

(With thanks to Jan Haverkamp, Greenpeace EU Policy Campaigner on dirty energy)

Posted by Justin at 3:44 PM | Permalink

The nuclear industry’s most famous salesman, French President Nicholas Sarkozy (where does he find the time to do anything else?), has once again been singing the praises of nuclear energy and its miraculous powers to do almost anything. On this occasion, it’s the ability to solve world poverty….

Speaking at the International Conference on Access to Nuclear Energy in Paris today, Sarkozy said that solutions to future energy needs would not be found in no-growth theories. Such policies were selfish and would force the poorest people of the world to stay in their current situation and 'would close the door' on have-nots. France is deeply convinced that nuclear power is the key to more equitably sharing wealth on the planet.

It’s a piece of breathtaking hypocrisy from the President. Let us, for example, look to Niger in Western Africa. The country provides 40-45 per cent of the uranium needed to fuel French nuclear reactors. French companies have been mining uranium in Niger since 1971. In 2008 uranium mining generated 260 million euros in revenue for French nuclear corporation AREVA.

So how are things in Niger after 40 years of French mining? Has nuclear power been ‘the key to more equitably sharing wealth’ in Niger?

In short: No.

Niger is firmly rooted to the bottom of the United Nation’s Human Development Index which ‘provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life, being educated and having a decent standard of living’. Eleven out of every hundred babies born in Niger die before their first birthday.

The nuclear industry has brought contamination to the people of Niger and left poverty in its wake. Where is the concern from the French government about their plight? French uranium mining did not pause for one second during or after the military coup which took place last month.

President Sarkozy seems to have a highly selective eye when it comes to the ‘have-nots’ of the world. Those have-nots who might buy his country’s reactors are worthy of attention whereas those have-nots who merely help fuel those reactors can be safely ignored. Niger is another of the nuclear industry’s dirty little secrets. Don’t expect to see it featured in any flashy PR videos or glossy brochures.

So let’s take Sarkozy’s words and frame them in a more honest way: French nuclear policies are selfish and force the poorest people of the world to stay in their current situation and do 'close the door' on have-nots.

Posted by Justin at 1:22 PM | Permalink

Of all the nuclear waste France has sent to Russia since 2006 for reprocessing, less than 10% has ever been sent back. That’s 3,090 tonnes out of 33,000. The rest is dumped in Russia, often in the open air. This is the ‘clean’ and ‘safe’ nuclear energy US President Barack Obama was mythologizing yesterday.

© Pierre Gleizes / Greenpeace

Greenpeace are demanding a moratorium on the export of nuclear waste from France to Russia. That’s why yesterday Greenpeace France activists blockaded the Tricastin nuclear facility to prevent a shipment of nuclear waste leaving for its Russian dumping ground.

Nuclear waste reprocessing in France is a scam. AREVA and EDF claim that 96% of nuclear waste can be reprocessed. However just 1% finds its way in to MOX (Mixed Oxide fuel). The rest is sent to Russia where most of it is simply dumped and never reprocessed. Nuclear industry claims about ‘recycling’ are simply spin, hype and propaganda. Forget about ‘safe’ and ‘clean’.

(More information and photographs are available in French from Greenpeace France’s website)

Posted by Justin at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here’s a story.

Last August, Haaretz revealed that workers at the [Israel’s] Dimona nuclear reactor had been required to participate in an experiment in which they drank a certain quantity of uranium mixed with juice… After drinking the liquid, workers were required to give urine samples which were then sent for testing at the lab. The aim of the experiment was to examine how uranium is excreted through the urinary tract.

Without authorisation, and ‘in gross violation of the Helsinki Committee rules - which stipulate when and how it is possible to carry out experiments on human subjects’, two scientists took it upon themselves to give the workers radioactive liquids. We suppose they should be grateful they were told what they were drinking, unlike the unfortunate crew at India’s Kaiga Generation Station who last year had their water cooler spiked with tritium.

The official inquiry into the Dimona experiments submitted its findings last week. They included…

…a recommendation that new and clear procedures stipulating when and how it is permissible to carry out medical experiments on workers be established.

You read that right. The scientists at Dimona need to be told when and how it’s ok to make workers drink uranium.

What’s the opposite of a renaissance, do you think? Denaissance, perhaps. We ask because in France, the supposed cradle of the rebirth of the nuclear ‘renaissance’, things seem to be sliding backwards rather than striding forwards.

According to the grid operator RTE, electricity generation from the country’s 58 nuclear reactors fell by 6.8% in 2009, marking a ten year low point. This shortfall meant France was a net importer of electricity for 57 days.

President Nicholas Sarkozy’s nuclear bandwagon is said to be leading the world. Just where it’s leading us however is more difficult to say. It seems to be travelling in the general direction away from a bright future of clean and secure energy supplies.

Finally, it’s over to Turkey where it looks as if our grisly prediction of last November is in danger of coming true. The country’s bid to build its first nuclear reactor – killed so many times we’re in danger of losing count – may be clawing its way from the grave once more.

This week ‘Russia and Turkey have signed a joint statement here Wednesday on the construction of a nuclear power plant on Turkish soil’. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Russia has ‘significant advantages’. He wasn’t kidding…

"We provide loans and equipment, and we give local construction companies ... a share of 20-25 percent or even 30 percent in the entire volume of contracts," he said, "We provide nuclear fuel and are ready to take back spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing."

The whole package, in fact. Russia will even provide the scientists to give the workers juice laced with uranium (we imagine).

There’s no date for when then first reactor of four will be operational but then why should it be any different from any other reactor? At this early stage the project is estimated to cost ‘between 18 and 20 billion US dollars’. What’s a couple of billion dollars between friends?

Still, it sounds like a plan of a fashion. Turkey, in order to ensure its energy security, wants its first nuclear reactors designed, built and fuelled by Russia. Look, you’ll just have to get someone from the nuclear industry to explain the logic of it to you, ok?

Posted by Justin at 6:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The nuclear industry likes to make a big song and dance about reprocessing nuclear waste (or ‘recycling spent fuel’ as they’re currently greenwashing it).

Did you know, for instance that France has sent 33,000 tonnes of nuclear waste to Russia for reprocessing since 2006? How much of that has come back to France? A mere 3,090 tonnes. That’s less than 10%. The rest is dumped and abandoned in places like the ‘closed’ city of Seversk, the nuclear waste storage facility in Siberia. Some of it is even stored in open air car parks. This is the fabled nuclear safety we’ve heard all about.

After these revelations in October this year, along with it emerging that plutonium had been ‘forgotten’ at the Cadarache nuclear plant, the French government announced a moratorium on nuclear waste shipments to Russia while the High Committee for Transparency and Information on Nuclear Safety conducts a full inventory of France’s nuclear waste products. The results are expected in January.

So when the French government decided to pre-empt the inventory’s findings and break the moratorium this weekend, resuming nuclear waste shipments to Russia, Greenpeace France sprang into action. Nuclear campaigner Yannick Rousselet chained himself to the railway line along which the nuclear waste was to be transported, delaying the shipment.

It’s a strange coincidence that French nuclear giant AREVA would choose to resume nuclear waste shipments exactly when attention is focussed on the opening of the Copenhagen climate change summit. Thanks to Yannick and his colleagues, however, AREVA’s dirty little secret is in the public eye once more.

(More information is available in French at Greenpeace France’s website)

Posted by Justin at 8:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So a guy puts radioactive tritium in the water cooler at India's Kaiga nuclear power plant, poisoning 50 of his work colleagues. It turns out that this isn't the first time something like this has happened. Back in 1990 someone put heavy water containing radioactive isotopes in a drinks dispenser at Canada’s Point Lepreau reactor*.

Such crazy guys! But then it’s only natural we suppose. Who amongst us, finding ourselves bored or stressed at work, hasn’t decided to unwind by playing a joke on our workmates and putting radioactive material in the drinking water? They must laugh all day at these reactors.

* Thanks to Wisa in the comments for the link)

Posted by Justin at 3:30 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Justin at 3:01 PM | Permalink

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.)

Posted by Justin at 1:26 PM | Permalink

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.)

Posted by Justin at 7:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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.)

Posted by Justin at 3:30 PM | Permalink

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...

Posted by Justin at 9:28 AM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Justin at 10:54 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Justin at 6:45 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Justin at 4:53 PM | Permalink

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?

Posted by Justin at 7:26 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Justin at 6:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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’.

Posted by Justin at 5:45 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Justin at 5:41 PM | Permalink

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.)

Posted by Justin at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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.

Posted by Justin at 1:30 PM | Permalink

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.

Posted by Justin at 5:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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…

View Larger Map

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.

Posted by Justin at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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

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

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

Then there’s this:

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

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

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

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

Posted by Justin at 10:59 AM | Permalink

In November 2007, Anne Lauvergeon, President and Chief Executive of French nuclear energy incompetents Areva boasted…

In a world enjoying a growing energy thirst, we have in our hands nuclear energy: a formidable asset to build an energy sustainable future. It means that one of the answers to the issues of achieving security of supply, competitiveness and the fight against climate change is already available to us.

Nuclear energy can already help us against climate change?

Oh really?

Tell that to the French government who are this summer are being forced to import electricity from the UK because its inland nuclear reactors cannot operate properly in the summer heatwave…

Fourteen of France’s 19 nuclear power stations are located inland and use river water rather than seawater for cooling. When water temperatures rise, EDF is forced to shut down the reactors to prevent their casings from exceeding 50C […] One power industry insider said yesterday that about 20GW (gigawatts) of France’s total nuclear generating capacity of 63GW was out of service.

Yes, this amazing, cheap, reliable and safe technology that is going to save us from rising global temperatures can’t work when the temperature rises. Really. The world’s major exponent of nuclear power, the one that is supposedly going to lead us the promised land of a nuclear ‘renaissance’, is having to import electricity because its own reactors aren’t up to the job. Nuclear power is supposed to save us from climate change but can’t work when the climate changes. That’s what they call a Catch-22.

With temperatures only set rise in the coming years, it looks like France has a big problem. And they’re not alone. There are over 400 nuclear power plants across the world. How many are inland and rely on river water for coolant? Not that coastal reactors are any better. Look for example at the CanDU facility in Ontario, Canada which is actively contributing to climate change.

So what’s the solution? In France, desperate times demand desperate measures when a country is so reliant on nuclear power…

EDF must also observe strict rules governing the heat of the water it discharges into waterways so that wildlife is not harmed. The maximum permitted temperature is 24C […] In 2003, the situation grew so severe that the French nuclear safety regulator granted special exemptions to three plants, allowing them temporarily to discharge water into rivers at temperatures as high as 30C.

Can these strict rules governing reactors’ discharges survive in the face of rising global temperatures? One would imagine not. In other words the nuclear industry will be allowed to damage the environment more than it already does.

‘In order to save the planet we must destroy it,’ should be its new slogan.

Posted by Justin at 3:18 PM | Permalink

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Washington Post: Obama: Iran cannot be permitted to be nuke power
’WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says he is "not reconciled" to the idea of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon within a year. The president told The Associated Press in an interview that U.S. government planning is running in precisely the opposite direction. He said a nuclear-armed Iran would likely trigger an arms race in the already volatile Mideast and said that would be "a recipe for potential disaster."’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Obama: Iran cannot be permitted to be nuke power" »

Posted by Justin at 3:15 PM | Permalink

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

AP: Exelon delays plan for Texas nuclear plant
’COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Power generator Exelon Corp. said Tuesday it has called off plans for now to build a new nuclear plant in Texas because of worries over the economy and the limited availability of federal loan guarantees. The Chicago-based company, the largest nuclear power generator in the U.S., is the second company in the past two months to postpone work for a new nuclear plant. St. Louis-based AmerenUE said in April that it was suspending work on a reactor in Missouri. "We just aren't in a place to pursue the nuclear project," John Rowe, Exelon's chairman and CEO, told The Associated Press in an interview regarding the company's plans to add two nuclear reactors in Victoria, Texas. But the projects are so expensive, running an estimated $6 billion to $8 billion per unit, that they are proving difficult to finance.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Exelon delays plan for Texas nuclear plant" »

Posted by Justin at 3:26 PM | Permalink

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Financial Times: French government forces Areva's 'iron lady' to bend
’Areva's board meets today to rubber stamp what was always inevitable - the sale of the nuclear group's transmission and distribution business and its stakes in a number of blue-chip companies. This is what Areva's main shareholder, the French government, has long wanted to fund the rising investment needs of its nuclear champion. This is what Jean-Cyril Spinetta, its new chairman - also the chairman of Air France-KLM - is going to recommend. He is also expected to confirm that the government, which, through different state or state-controlled institutions, owns more than 90 per cent of Areva, has agreed to open up the company's capital to new investors, although perhaps not the investors Anne Lauvergeon, Areva chief executive, would have wanted. Ms Lauvergeon, sometimes called France's "iron lady", has long campaigned for a market flotation to open up the group's capital, which is only traded through investment certificates. However, the government has always regarded Areva as a strategic national asset. It now wants to raise funds which are urgently needed not just for investments, but also to finance the â‚2bn ($2.8bn) Areva needs to buy out Siemens, its German engineering joint venture partner.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: French government forces Areva's 'iron lady' to bend" »

Posted by Justin at 8:27 PM | Permalink

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Bloomberg: Gulf’s Push for Nuclear Experts May Delay U.K. Plans
June 15 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. utilities risk falling behind with plans to build nuclear power plants because Middle East nations may use higher salaries to lure skilled workers, reactor builder Westinghouse Electric Co. said. “These nations have no legacy program to use as a source for nuclear expertise,” said Adrian Bull, U.K. stakeholder relations manager at Westinghouse, a unit of Japan’s Toshiba Corp. “If you have literally nothing to go on, you have to be the Chelsea or Real Madrid and buy in the people from elsewhere.” Oil-producing nations including the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait plan nuclear plants to meet growing energy demand at home while exporting fuel abroad. The U.A.E. plans to select companies to develop an atomic power program by the end of this year and has a 2017 target date for completing its first reactor, the same year Electricite de France SA plans to start a new British nuclear plant.

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Gulf’s Push for Nuclear Experts May Delay U.K. Plans" »

Posted by Justin at 2:08 PM | Permalink

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Whitehaven News: 'Rogue' radioactive material to be sent to France
’This is the batch of eight Mox fuel assemblies made at Sellafield and later found to be "falsified" in its specification data after being shipped out to customers in Japan. The faked pellets scandal led to loss of business confidence in BNFL and for a time Japan refused to strike any further deals with Sellafield. The fuel, a mixture of plutonium and uranium, was sent back to Sellafield - seven years ago. Now, after several years "evaluating the best options", agreement has been reached with the government that the "rogue" fuel batch, along with a another eight, will be shipped to France for treatment - but not until 2014/15.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: 'Rogue' Sellafield radioactive material to be sent to France" »

Posted by Justin at 5:01 PM | Permalink

Today's big stories from the nuclear industry:

Today’s Zaman: Turkey's nuclear dreams face uncertain future
’Turkey's long-running dream of having a nuclear power plant is surrounded by uncertainty despite the fact that a recently concluded tender on the construction of the country's first nuclear power plant is about to be finalized. Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yildiz said the final decision on the tender would be made in June, but it seems that incertitude about the matter will not be cleard up easily even if the tender is discussed at a Cabinet meeting. As only one company entered the tender and the price offered is considerably high, the Cabinet will not be able to make an easy decision. Moreover, the global economic crisis has taken its toll on funds that were to be allocated to the nuclear power plant contract.’

Continue reading "Nuclear News: Turkey's nuclear dreams face uncertain future" »

Posted by Justin at 4:31 PM | Permalink