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.)

Posted by Justin at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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.

Posted by Justin at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Justin at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 | Comments (0)

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

Needless to say…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Justin at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

But what’s missing from the ads?

Posted by Justin at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Justin at 2:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Justin at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We’re grateful to Areva’s North America blog for pointing us towards a speech Areva’s Chief Executive Officer Anne Lauvergeon made back in April of this year. Entitled, ‘Nuclear Industry’s Role In Nonproliferation’, the speech was given to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

We’d like to take a look at the number of fascinating things Ms Lauvergeon had to say during her speech…

…the fact is that we witness worldwide enthusiasm for nuclear energy coming from governments, coming from utilities, or electro-intensive industries…

Or, in other words, from vested interests. Notice she didn’t say ‘and the public’ or ‘and environmental groups’. Can a handful of cheerleaders really be described as ‘worldwide enthusiasm’?

Renewable energy sources, she says…

…don’t meet competitiveness requirements as well, needing heavy subsidies in the USA as well as in Europe. It’s not shocking to subsidize a source of energy at the early stage of its development, but we have to be aware of it.

Unlike nuclear energy which is a source of energy late in its development (having been developed in the 1950s) which is still needing heavy subsidies. Nuclear, says Ms Lauvergeon meets ‘all three requirements of sustainability, competitiveness, and security’. How can an energy source be sustainable when it’s reliant on a finite resource, in this case uranium? If it’s so competitive, why has the CEO of French nuclear giant EDF recently called for a ‘level playing field’ to be created so nuclear power can compete with renewable energy sources? How does having to rely on imported nuclear fuel give energy security to those countries without their own supply? Don’t expect answer from the likes of Atomic Anne.

And on and on she went. She dwelled briefly on the myth of the so-called ‘proliferation proof’ closed nuclear fuel cycle (here’s a clue: it isn’t closed and still produces dangerous nuclear waste). Have a quick look at the speech yourself (don’t spend too long – it’s eight pages) and try and find your own favourite piece of nuclear spin. Maybe we’ll offer a prize for the best one.

There was a spectacular piece of easily debunked spin from Lauvergeon in the question and answer session after her speech. It’s indicative of how Areva and the nuclear industry deal with questions. Questioned about the Savannah River Mixed-Oxide (MOX) fuel plant being built in South Carolina, she said…

…it’s a little bit over budget because the decisionaround this facility in Savannah River has taken a little bit more time in to the Department Of Energy forecast in the beginning. So you know when the projects are longer to be able to be developed, it’s very often a little bit more expensive.

In 2007, the Department of Energy costed Savannah River at $3.6 billion. In 2009 the cost was $4.8 billion. That’s a budget overrun of 33 per cent with costs set to rise still further. That’s a definition of ‘a little bit more expensive’ of which we’ve previously been unaware.

One thing she did get right however was this…

Two billion people are currently living without access to electricity, left by the wayside. And no electricity means life expectancy of 35 or 40 years. We cannot allow this situation to continue.

It’s a shocking state of affairs that cannot, we agree. And yet with stories like those of Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother and her newly solar-powered homestead, it’s all too apparent that Areva and Anne Lauvergeon don’t offer the cheap, secure and quickly-provided solution these two billion people – not to mention the rest of us - so urgently need.

Posted by Justin at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Weird and whacky news from the nuclear industry continues to pour in, thicker and faster than George Bush on a skateboard. Let’s take look and see what’s been happening recently…

The Scottish National Party is calling for an investigation after it was revealed that there have been 165 leaks and fires at the UK’s nuclear plants over the last eight years.

A hundred and sixty-five leaks and fires? We don’t know about you but that gives us the mental image of the UK nuclear industry as a burning garden sprinkler. Spraying in all directions while on fire. Impossible and paradoxical, you say? It’s the nuclear industry we’re talking about here - it’s their job to attempt the impossible and paradoxical. They call nuclear power clean and safe for starters.

Elsewhere, Gwyneth Cravens, author of ‘Power To Save The World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy’ has been telling us just how convenient it is to store nuclear waste…

The world’s entire annual inventory could fit in one large townhouse.

Excuse our ignorance, but who in their right mind would want to store nuclear waste in a large town house? Even if you hid the stuff in the attic and the basement, in cupboards and under the bed, we doubt a townhouse could hold it all safely. Yes, if you were an idiot and piled the world’s entire annual inventory of nuclear waste into a big pile you probably could shovel it all into a townhouse. But it would be very, very wrong. There are lots of very good reasons why nuclear waste storage facilities are huge. For one thing, nuclear waste needs lots of space between the storage casks to allow the heat produced to escape. You don’t get townhouse architects to design these babies. We also liked this part…

Nuclear waste recycling, done abroad, drastically reduces volume, radioactivity, and the need for long-term disposal.

‘Done abroad’? Nice. She means it’s someone else’s problem. Out of sight, out of mind. In America it’s called ‘passing the buck’.

Meanwhile, the construction of the state-of-art fast breeder reactor being built in India is running as one would expect. It’s 40 per cent over budget, a year late and the taxpayer is paying the bill. Fast breeder reactors are supposed to herald a change in the way nuclear power works. It seems however, the more things change in the nuclear industry, the more things stay the same.

Have a great weekend!

Posted by Justin at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A couple of weeks ago we talked about eminent environmentalist James Lovelock and his idea for burying nuclear waste in the rainforests because…

One of the striking things about places heavily contaminated by radioactive nuclides is the richness of their wildlife…

He was at it again in the UK’s Observer newspaper last weekend…

Nuclear is the answer. Far, far less dangerous than any propagandist has ever pretended. Look, even now, at the wildlife all around Chernobyl! Because man and his pets have not been near for years!

We’d really like to know where Lovelock gets his information because well… Let’s hand you over to Messrs Møller, Mousseau, de Lope and N Saino, and their paper ‘Anecdotes and empirical research in Chernobyl’…

[JT] Smith suggested, based on two-page reports, that animal populations are thriving in Chernobyl (e.g. Baker & Chesser 2000). These reports provide anecdotal evidence with no information on methods or empirical findings. Although animals and plants can be censused using standard, rigorous methodology (e.g.Bibby et al. 2005), surprisingly, the first large-scale censuses of any living organism were conducted by us during 2006–2007, 20 years after the disaster, showing reduced population densities of most species of birds in contaminated areas (Møller & Mousseau 2007a,b). If we classify species as farmland and otherwise, we find no evidence for farmland species having different slopes between abundance and radiation when compared with other species (F1,78=0.0003, p=0.99), providing no support for Smith's suggestion.

Why has there been no concerted effort to monitor the long-term effects of Chernobyl on free-living organisms and humans? The official reports by IAEA, WHO and UNDP were narrative renditions of parts of the literature, and these reports, with Smith as co-author, concluded that Chernobyl was a thriving ecosystem with increasing populations of animals (Chernobyl Forum 2005; EGE 2005), despite no census data existing. Scientific enquiry depends on rigorous analysis of data rather than rendition of anecdotal evidence.

There has been ‘no concerted effort to monitor the long-term effects of Chernobyl on free-living organisms and humans’. So again, where is Lovelock getting his information? Are his assertions a ‘rendition of anecdotal evidence’ or built on large-scale censuses using ‘standard, rigorous methodology’? If it’s the latter, we’d really like to see the data.

Posted by Justin at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nuclear waste has undergone an image makeover recently. Indeed, the industry is working hard to ensure that the most dangerous kind of nuclear waste isn’t even called nuclear waste any more. It’s now called ‘spent fuel’.

Sounds much friendlier, doesn’t it? Doesn’t make all the nasty problems associated with the nuclear waste that comes out of reactors disappear but giving something horrible a nice name helps to stop people thinking about those nasty problems. It why we call civilians killed in wars ‘collateral damage’ and why genocide gets called ‘ethnic cleansing’.

The issue of we do with this nuclear waste – sorry, spent fuel - has also had a splash of greenwash. There’s been a big push to rebrand nuclear waste reprocessing as recycling. We don’t reprocess nuclear waste any more - we ‘recycle spent fuel’. Isn’t that nice? Sounds green and environmentally friendly, doesn’t it? Nothing in the actual process has changed and we’re still left with the dangerous by-products but it sounds so much better.

So, now nuclear power has successfully rebadged* itself as not-nasty and environmentally friendly, surely it’s been warmly accepted as a renewable energy source?

The International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) will not back programmes to develop nuclear energy due to the waste it produces and the risks it presents […] 'Irena will not support nuclear energy programmes because it's a long complicated process, it produces waste and is relatively risky,' Helene Pelosse, director general of Irena, told Reuters in a telephone interview from the French Alps.

That’s a big fat ‘no’.

After all that hard work as well. It’s back to the brainstorming sessions for the nuclear industry and their marketing guys…

* Our new favourite euphemism for nuclear waste reprocessing is ‘plutonium destruction’. Sounds great doesn’t it? Destruction. Just what we need for all that horrible plutonium lying around the place. Except ‘plutonium destruction’ actually means ‘plutonium creation’. It involves the use of a mix of plutonium and uranium nuclear fuel to make so-called MOX ( (Mixed OXide), which results in the production of more plutonium because there is only a small consumption of the plutonium fuel in nuclear reactors while the uranium creates more plutonium.

Posted by Justin at 5:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When he works for British Energy.

Here’s Jon Coniam writing for Energetika.NET (free subscription required) – ‘the leading Slovenian provider of energy business news covering South Eastern Europe’ – where he responds to an article criticising the Bulgarian nuclear power plant at Belene…

Belene still represents the best option in an electricity-starved, economically weak and polluted area of our planet.

So, we have a pro-nuclear article from a writer, who is described at the end of the piece as…

Jon Coniam is an Independent Energy and Environment Consultant

…making the article a balanced piece by an even-handed observer, yes? The reader can be assured that Mr Coniam looked at both sides of the issue and came to a fair conclusion, can’t they? That there are no hidden agendas behind the article?

Well, not exactly.

According to his biography here…

Jon Coniam is British Energy’s representative in Brussels. As a lobbyist for more than 13 years, he works closely with Members of the European Parliament, Commission officials and other industry representatives to influence European Union regulations, directives and policies so as to benefit British Energy and the low carbon energy industry in general. He has almost 40 years experience in the nuclear sector having been a sponsored student during his Mechanical Engineering degree and post-graduate courses. He has extensive experience working on Nuclear Power plants in UK, Bulgaria and elsewhere.

British Energy of course own eight nuclear power stations in the UK. The company was recently bought by France’s EDF who want to build a fleet of new nuclear reactors.

So who described Mr Coniam as ‘an Independent Energy and Environment Consultant’? Mr Coniam himself? Or was it an oversight on behalf of Energetika.NET, perhaps? Of the article he criticises, Mr Coniam says…

The article was based on an interview with Petko Kovachev, a Green Party politician. I am so disappointed that you should give headline coverage to a pressure group whose declared aim is to stop this project just because it is using nuclear technology.

At least Kovachev’s aims were declared. Unlike Mr Coniam’s.

Why is this important? We’re not suggesting for one minute that Mr Coniam shouldn’t be expressing opinions. It’s just that in a time when the nuclear industry needs to be scrutinised like never before, clarity, transparency, and the declaration of interests are essential. Don’t episodes like this just help to further undermine the public's trust in the nuclear industry?

Posted by Justin at 5:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most of us like to think of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) as a force for good, led by calm and reassuring figures such as Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, touring the world fighting nuclear proliferation.

That’s part of the story. The other, less well known, part of the story sees the IAEA as a global lobbyist for the nuclear industry…

… the IAEA's mission is to "accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world". Although best known for its work to restrict nuclear proliferation, the IAEA's main role has been to promote the interests of the nuclear power industry worldwide.

If this wasn’t disturbing enough for a so-called independent organisation that reports to the United Nations’ Security Council and General Assembly, things take a sinister turn when it comes to the health implications of nuclear power. It has used its position to ‘suppress the growing body of scientific information on the real health risks of nuclear radiation’…

For example, investigations into the health impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 have been effectively taken over by IAEA and dissenting information has been suppressed. The health effects of the accident were the subject of two major conferences, in Geneva in 1995, and in Kiev in 2001. But the full proceedings of those conferences remain unpublished – despite claims to the contrary by a senior World Health Organisation spokesman reported in Le Monde Diplomatique.

When information of this nature is suppressed, one must be forgive for concluding the people doing the suppressing have something to hide; that, in this case, the IAEA has good reason to help hide the risks of nuclear energy to human health. Surely, if there were no concerns, the proceedings of these conferences would be in the public domain. So why aren’t they?

Posted by Justin at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There’s more hype and spin on AREVA’s North America blog today as it tries to sell the idea that the company is on the frontline against nuclear proliferation.

As part of this commitment to remove weapons-grade material from stockpiles, AREVA has partnered with the Shaw Group to build the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. This facility when complete with convert the weapons-grade plutonium into MOX fuel for use in commercial nuclear power plants. This $4.9 billion project now under construction employs some 1,000 workers and is being built for DOE.

We’ll move swiftly over the fact that the construction at the Savannah River Site was recently issued with a ‘notice of violation’ for multiple failings in quality control evaluations, construction procedures and safety testing.

Instead we’ll focus on AREVA’s claim that MOX somehow helps in the battle against nuclear proliferation. In reality, MOX presents a greater proliferation risk than even conventional nuclear fuel. The plutonium required to create MOX could be stolen by terrorists and can be diverted to nuclear weapons programmes by countries. Once the MOX fuel is produced, the plutonium content is also easier to extract than from other varieties of nuclear fuel.

So, AREVA’s MOX plant may well remove ‘weapons-grade material from stockpiles’ but it certainly doesn’t remove the dangers.

Posted by Justin at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)