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)

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Justin at 6:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)