Today, April 22, is Earth Day. Happy Earth Day to one and all.

Founded 40 years ago today, this annual event reminds us ‘that all people, regardless of race, gender, income, or geography, have a moral right to a healthy, sustainable environment’

So, this being a blog about nuclear power, we’re asking ourselves today just how the nuclear industry – with the likes of French nuclear giant AREVA having their say - is helping to assert all people’s moral right to a healthy, sustainable environment.

Is it by contaminating large parts of the planet, perhaps? Are Sellafield, Hanford, Kakadu, Caetite, Chernobyl, Mayak, Wollaston Lake, Seversk, Arlit, Mailuu-Suu, the Navajo Nation, the Tibetan Plateau, Jefferson County, Jadugoda, Tricastin, Koshkar-Ata Lake, Gansu province, Asse, healthy, sustainable environments? What do you think the people who live (or used to live) in those places would say? If the nuclear ‘renaissance’ were to take off as its supporters want, can’t we expect more places like these to be created?

Does nuclear power defend our moral right to a healthy, sustainable environment by blocking renewable energy and energy efficiency programmes? By its inability to contribute to beating climate change, by preventing countries from meeting their CO2 emission targets? How is nuclear power, based as it is on a finite resource (that is, uranium) in anyway sustainable?

There are many ways to give us our healthy, sustainable environment. Nuclear power isn’t one of them, however. That’s something we should remember every day, not just once a year.

Posted by Justin at 3:11 PM | Permalink

Some supporters of nuclear energy seem to think that the nuclear industry is losing the debate:

Some of us in the profession and industry have been reaching out to the public on our own, and through the American Nuclear Society’s Public Information Committee. Our efforts are weak compared to the anti-nukes who bring in the professional hit-men from Washington to local events.

It could be said that if arguments for nuclear power are so strong, they should be able to beat even those of ‘professional hit-men’. It’s about the American Nuclear Society’s Public Information Committee’s ability (or lack of it) to present their side of the debate at these local events, isn’t it?

With its ‘multifarious membership composed of approximately 11,000 engineers, scientists, administrators, and educators representing 1,600 plus corporations, educational institutions, and government agencies’, the American Nuclear Society’s Public Information Committee doesn’t sound like your typical underdog.

It does sound, however, like someone could do with a lesson history. The only professional hit-men we can remember being involved in the nuclear debate were the ones hired by the French government to bomb and sink the Rainbow Warrior in 1985. Our Greenpeace colleague Fernando Pereira was killed.

Posted by Justin at 3:38 PM | Permalink

We’re a big fan of French nuclear corporation AREVA’s promotional videos. If you haven’t seen their ‘Funky Town’ masterpiece, you should treat yourself right now. You’ll discover, among other things, that nuclear power can help people fall in love in Shanghai dance clubs.

The latest video we’ve seen is also a triumph of condescension and misinformation. It brings a cartoon cutesiness to the horrors of nuclear waste not seen since The Simpson’s Smilin’ Joe Fission.

Isn’t that simply gorgeous? Unfortunately it shows the actual realities of ‘spent fuel recycling’ (we’re not allowed to call it ‘nuclear waste reprocessing’ any more) about as much as Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs shows the reality of the social relationships between woolly mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers.

So, the friendly little spent fuel rod with the hat, on his way for ‘recycling’, says Mixed-OXide fuel ‘is pretty hard’ to use ‘any other way, especially in a bad way’. This is flat wrong. The way MOX is produced means it’s actually easier to extract the plutonium from it than ordinary nuclear fuel. MOX presents an even greater nuclear proliferation risk.

‘By treating me and recycling me into MOX fuel,’ says our little friend, ‘there’s less waste to watch after and for a shorter period of time too’. Really? The Sellafield THORP MOX processing plant creates 180 times the volume of waste that you start with. Also, when used in nuclear reactor, ‘only some of the plutonium in MOX fuel gets "fissioned," or converted into other radioactive elements. These include such deadly elements as Strontium-90, Cesium-137, Iodine-129 and many, many more.’ Iodine-129 ‘has a half-life of 16 million years but remains dangerous for more than 160 million years’.

According to the cartoon, AREVA have ‘successfully treated and recycled for 25 years’. This is a definition of ‘successful’ of which we’d previously been unaware. In this context ‘successful’ means ‘sending tens of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste to be dumped in Russia’. The English language, as ever, is nothing if not flexible.

Posted by Justin at 3:06 PM | Permalink

PricewaterhouseCoopers have released a report, Resurgence of nuclear power, which talks about how the ‘utilities around the world are realizing the great promise of new nuclear power plants and making investments today’ and offers ‘key considerations as the nuclear option is re-introduced’. It paints an extraordinarily glowing picture of the upcoming nuclear ‘renaissance’.

It doesn’t mention nuclear waste once. The safety concerns around nuclear power have been ‘refuted’. Oh, really? The global movement against nuclear power refutes that refutation. The daily news is littered with stories that give lie to the statement that the safety concerns around nuclear power have gone away.

How about this advice from the report on how to successfully build a nuclear reactor:

In our view, the key to delivering a successful project will revolve around understanding organizational objectives in the new environment, establishing effective strategies that are aligned with these objectives, and ensuring that contracts and project execution tactics follow suit.

What does that even mean? This is the problem with the nuclear industry and the language used around it. It all sounds very encouraging and optimistic in the abstract. It’s once you get down to the specifics that things start to look a lot less happy.

You can talk about ‘understanding organizational objectives’, ‘establishing effective strategies’, and ‘execution tactics’ all day. But avoiding the subject of uranium mining and its associated exploitation and contamination or the long-term responsibilities created by nuclear waste serves no-one.

All this feeds into the spin and misinformation that the nuclear industry gives us when it talks about nuclear energy being ‘green’ and ‘clean’. It does not allow an honest and open debate and must stop.

Posted by Justin at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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

Trouble, or so they say, comes in threes and so it is for the designs of the so-called new ‘third generation’ of nuclear reactors.

Look at AREVA’s European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) design. Two are currently being right now – one in Finland and one in France – and both projects are currently massively behind schedule and over budget, and plagued with safety and construction defects. The design, also currently being considered for construction in the UK, was the subject of an unprecedented statement by the UK nuclear safety regulator (HSE’s ND), the French nuclear regulator (ASN), and the Finnish nuclear regulator (STUK) which said the EPR’s safety system isn’t independent from its control system and therefore isn’t safe.

Then there’s the Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor. Also currently being evaluated by the UK authorities who late last year said that Westinghouse still had to prove its reactor is safe across ‘the majority of the technical topic areas’. The safety case on internal hazards has ‘significant shortfalls’ and regulators criticised Westinghouse for a ‘lack of detailed claims and arguments’. The US nuclear regulator found that the design ‘is vulnerable to severe weather such as tornadoes and hurricanes, and natural disasters like earthquakes’ and ‘raises the concern that the design is also vulnerable to terrorist attacks such as intentionally crashing airliners’ (the UK regulator agrees).

Which brings us the third of the troublesome trio: General Electric-Hitachi’s Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR). Company vice president Daniel Roderick has announced this week that it ‘plans to sell between 10 and 15 new generation reactors in the next 10 years to Europe’. Why target Europe? Because the ESBWR has failed to take off in America with project after project of planned ESBWRs cancelled in recent months as power utilities raised ‘quality assurance contentions regarding the ESBWR design’ and looked for ‘greater commercial certainty’ (they should be wished good luck in trying to find that in the nuclear sector).

Whether the ESBWR can gain a foothold in Europe remains to be seen. The signs aren’t great. GE- Hitachi withdrew the design from the UK reactor evaluation process in October 2008 saying it wanted to concentrate on the US market (don’t laugh). The company said it planned to re-enter the UK evaluation in 2009 but a look at the regulator’s website suggests this didn’t happen.

These three really are identical triplets: late, unsafe and uncertain.

Posted by Justin at 3:17 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

Here’s French nuclear corporation AREVA caught in a jaw-dropping and disgraceful piece of greenwash on the Discovery Channel’s ‘The Green Room’…

We can’t believe the Discovery Channel fell for it. It’s a classic of PR spin by AREVA which blatantly ignores several unpleasant facts about nuclear waste reprocessing in France. If you want a corrective to this glossy AREVA propaganda, you should take a look at Eric Guéret and Laure Noualhat’s film Déchets - Le Cauchemar du Nucléaire (Waste - The Nuclear Nightmare). As the International Panel on Fissile Materials’ blog puts it…

Constantly facing the AREVA PR that states that 96% of the nuclear materials are "recycled" through the reprocessing scheme, the reporters inquired where the recovered uranium, roughly 95% of the mass of spent fuel, does end up. In fact, AREVA has been sending most of the reprocessed uranium (23,000 tons were still stored in France at the end of 2008), to Russia officially for re-enrichment. In fact, even if all of that uranium had indeed been re-enriched, which is not the case, over 90% of the mass remains in Russia as enrichment tails. This material is waste, because there is absolutely no economic incentive to re-enrich it, in particular considering the hundreds of thousands of tons of "clean", first generation enrichment tails that are stored in Russia and in the other major enrichment countries, including in France (close to 260,000 tons at two sites). The message that AREVA's "recycling" ratio had to be corrected from 95% to less than 10% of the original mass send a shockwave through the French political landscape.

In the Discovery Channel film, AREVA describes nuclear as ‘a very green form of energy’, ‘a very clean technology’ which produces ‘relatively small volumes of waste that has to be disposed of’ (260,000 tonnes?). It’s difficult to know whether to laugh at AREVA’s audacity or be incandescent at the deception. We wouldn’t tolerate such transparent lies from our children and yet AREVA clearly think they can get away with it.

Now, this is a family blog and we don’t like to use bad language. So we’ll restrain ourselves to comparing AREVA’s claims to the solid waste produced by male cows.

Posted by Justin at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In an interview last week Jacques Besnainou, chief executive officer of French nuclear corporation AREVA’s U.S. unit, said: ‘What Wall Street needs to see, and Main Street as well, is that we are able to build on time, on budget.’

He’s completely right. Wall Steet and Main Street do need to see that the nuclear industry is able to build on time and on budget because, in the entirety of its 60-year history, it’s been an abject failure at doing both.

Of course, Mr Besnainou is only telling half the story because what his industry also has to show us all is that it is able to mine uranium and produce nuclear fuel in a way that doesn’t devastate people’s lives and the environment. Or is the implication that we shouldn’t worry or care about what goes on at the start of the nuclear chain? We notice, for instance, that it’s business as usual at AREVA’s mines in Niger despite the military coup that took place in the country last week.

The industry also needs to show us all that it can deal with the highly radiaoctive waste that nuclear reactors produce in a safe, clean fashion. AREVA in particularly are singularly failing in that regard. Again, is the implication that we shouldn’t worry or care about wat happens at end of the nuclear chain?

Like we said, we’re only told half a story by the nuclear industry. The likes of AREVA can talk the talk but we’ve yet to see them walk the walk. As Wealth Daily puts it, Mr Besnainou sounds ‘like he might be ready to sing "Kumbaya" around a glowing hunk of uranium’ but actions speak louder than words.

While we’re hearing a lot of the latter we’re seeing precious little of the former. Nuclear energy has a long way to travel before it’s anywhere close to being accepted as clean, safe, cheap, reliable and a solution to climate change. And it’s a road with no end in sight.

Posted by Justin at 5:15 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)

On its US blog, French nuclear giant AREVA has a ‘Clean Energy Quiz’. It really is quite something. It manages to undermine wind, solar and other truly clean and renewable energy sources in favour of giving nuclear a great big boost.

Here we go again with nuclear energy being called ‘clean’. If AREVA PR people think nuclear is clean we’d hate to see their houses. Imagine the shocking state of their kitchens if nuclear is their idea of cleanliness. Remind us never to go for dinner at an AREVA spin doctor’s house.

In an interview elsewhere on its blog, AREVA’s CEO ‘Atomic’ Anne Lauvergeon insists ‘nuclear power isn’t THE solution’. She says nuclear is just part of the ideal energy portfolio but the way AREVA regards wind and solar in the likes of its quiz, that’s like someone telling you they love you while punching you in the face.

Posted by Justin at 5:31 PM | Permalink

We’re not sure who’s advising President Obama on nuclear energy policy but we’d suggest he gets some new advisers and fast. His current ones seem to be feeding him a lot of bogus information.

At a question and answer session earlier in the month, the President had this to say…

Nuclear energy has the advantage of not emitting greenhouse gases. For those who are concerned about climate change, we have to recognize that countries like Japan and France and others have been much more aggressive in their nuclear industry and much more successful in having that a larger part of their portfolio, without incident, without accidents. We’re mindful of the concerns about storage, of spent fuel, and concerns about security, but we still think it’s the right thing to do if we’re serious about dealing with climate change.

Where to start with all that?

Nuclear energy has the advantage of not emitting greenhouse gases.

Wrong. The mining, milling and enrichment of uranium and the production of nuclear fuel all create plenty of greenhouse gases. So does the construction of nuclear reactors.

Japan and France and others have been much more aggressive in their nuclear industry… without incident, without accidents.

Without accident? Tell that to Hisashi Ouchi. Oh, you can’t – he’s dead. A worker at the JCO Tokaimura Plant in Japan, in 1999 Ouchi received a fatal does of radiation in a criticality accident and dies of radiation sickness 83 days later. Tell that to the workers at Japan’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant. Built to withstand earthquakes, it was closed in 2007 by – you guessed it – an earthquake. It then suffered a series of fires. And the number 5 reactor at Hamaoka that was closed by an earthquake last year.

Without incident? Tell that to the people living close to France’s Tricastin nuclear facility who in 2008 were told not drink well-water, water their crops or swim or fish in the rivers contaminated by 18,000 litres of uranium solution. Tell it to the people of Akokan in Niger where the street have been contaminated by French nuclear company AREVA’s uranium mining. What about the plutonium that was unaccounted for at France’s Cadarache nuclear site? What about the French reactor design with safety system trouble?

We could go on and on and on.

Who’s putting these words in Obama’s mouth? Its sounds worryingly like it might be the nuclear industry. The issue of nuclear energy demands an informed debate. The industry isn’t interested in giving that debate to us. Obama shouldn’t be playing the same game.

Posted by Justin at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

One of the growing themes we’ve seen as the so-called nuclear ‘renaissance’ struggles to get off its knees is the attempt by the industry to ‘green’ nuclear energy. We’ve noted before the industry’s PR that is increasingly using the word ‘clean’ in connection with nuclear power and has rebranded the reprocessing of nuclear waste as ‘recycling spent fuel’. When they think they can get away with it, there are even those who avoid mentioning the word ‘nuclear’ altogether.

There have been two news stories in particular this week that show up the ‘clean’ and ‘recycling’ greenwashes as the frauds they are.

At the US’s catastrophically contaminated Hanford nuclear site, they have no idea what is buried there. ‘That's because in the 1950's and 60's, crews used the sandy site to dispose of radioactive waste, but they didn't do a very thorough job recording what they buried.’ Don’t try and convince us that things have changed dramatically since the 1950s or 1960s. And don’t try and convince us that this is a characteristic of a ‘clean’ energy source.

Meanwhile, how are things looking on the ‘spent fuel recycling’ front? We can’t help but notice that there are no waste or dangerous by-products when glass is recycled. So when we see that ‘28 stainless steel containers of waste - the byproduct of recycling spent nuclear fuel for Japanese utilities at the Sellafield plant’ – are about to set sail for Japan from the UK, we have to ask: how is this ‘recycling’ by any recognisable definition? The ‘recycling’ of Japanese spent nuclear fuel has created so much waste (850 containers) it’s going to take ten years to ship it all back to its owners. (And what will happen to it when it reaches Japan?)

You see, industry claims for nuclear power don’t stand up to even the most casual scrutiny. Yet we’re hearing them with increasing frequency from the mouths of our leaders and politicians who have swallowed nuclear spin, propaganda and lies. We can’t stress or repeat it enough – these are deliberate deceptions created to downplay the genuine concerns that surround nuclear power. How much longer can this fiction be maintained?

Posted by Justin at 5:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This week the UK’s Guardian newspaper featured a new book by Oxford University professor of physics, Wade Allison. In his book ‘Radiation and Reason’ Professor Allison says ‘health dangers from nuclear radiation have been oversold, stopping governments from fully exploiting nuclear power as a weapon against climate change’.

Allison is only talking about low level radiation rather than the high level radiation released by the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or by the reactor explosion at Chernobyl. ‘The ability to repair damage and replace cells, we discovered in the last 50 years, show how radiation doesn't cause damage except under extreme circumstances,’ he says. Guardian, however, also asked the opinions of many other scientists who did not agree with Allison.

We’ll be reading the book very soon but we’re curious to know whether Professor Allison examines studies such as the German government-sponsored KiKK one which found that children five years or younger living five kilometres or less from nuclear plant exhaust stacks had twice the risk for contracting leukaemia as those residing more than five kilometres away. The science surrounding low level radiation is at best uncertain.

Then there is the politics of low level waste. If, and we stress if, Professor Allison is right it still does not take away from the fact that historically the nuclear industry has been less than honest and transparent when it comes to the disposal of nuclear waste. As Greenpeace found when it visited the supposedly low level nuclear waste storage facility at Drigg near Sellafield in the UK…

Scientists like Professor Allison can make as many reassuring noises as they like but when the nuclear industry behaves in such a fashion, those reassurances are worthless.

Not to downplay the risks of low level radiation but it remains just one of many reasons why nuclear power is a tried and failed technology that has had its day. This blog is a catalogue of those reasons, from the contamination of the lives and environments around uranium mines, the dishonesty and cover-ups in reactor construction and operation, through to the dangers of high level nuclear waste for which we still have no solution and which will be a responsibility for countless generations to come.

Put on top of that the terrible economics, the dishonest propaganda (‘clean’ energy?), the long length of time needed to build reactors, the litany of unreliability, and nuclear power’s inability to help fight climate change.

The dangers of nuclear power are not the mere decadent preoccupation of the anti-technology green movement of popular myth. They are very real issues that affect the lives of (usually poor and exploited) people every day and which the nuclear industry’s propaganda ignores.

Nuclear power has had sixty years in which to prove itself. The questions asked about it way back then have never been answered. Unfortunately, Professor Allison’s attempts at reassurance just aren’t enough to rehabilitate this discredited power source.

Posted by Justin at 4:23 PM | Permalink

The world-wide renaissance of nuclear power that has so often been predicted will not take place in the next few decades. Nuclear energy will be on the decline till the year 2030, and will continue to decline in importance globally.

This is the conclusion of the Swiss “Prognos” institute based in Basel. Germany’s Federal Agency for Radiation Protection in Salzgitter / Lower Saxony commissioned “Prognos” to carry out a survey on “the renaissance of nuclear energy”. The task was to provide a realistic estimate of the future development of nuclear energy world-wide till the year 2030.

Read the rest…

Posted by Justin at 5:32 PM | Permalink

French nuclear corporation AREVA is launching what it calls a ‘Community Advisory Council’ (CAC). The Council will apparently ‘raise greater awareness of the benefits of clean energy technology, including nuclear energy and renewables’ and ‘build a working group of representatives from influential organizations who will informally advise the company on energy and sustainability issues’.

We’ll move swiftly over AREVA once again greenwashing nuclear energy as ‘clean’ and instead focus on what Laurence Pernot, vice president of communications at AREVA, had to say about his CAC:

When it is about energy, there must be no taboo subjects. All issues, including the tricky ones, must be on the table. And when it is about nuclear energy in particular, public concerns must be taken seriously and addressed honestly.

No taboo subjects? All issues, including the tricky ones, must be on the table? Concerns must be taken seriously and addressed honestly?

If this is the case then why, in the month since Greenpeace announced it had found radioactive contamination on the streets of a village close to AREVA’s uranium mines in Niger, has there not been a single word on the subject from AREVA?

Is radioactive contamination in Niger a ‘taboo’ subject for AREVA? Is this ‘tricky’ issue on the table or not? When will these concerns be 'taken seriously and addressed honestly' by the company?

Posted by Justin at 12:30 PM | Permalink

As we’ve pointed out many times before, there are five central promises made by the nuclear industry and its supporters on behalf of nuclear power: that it is clean, safe, cheap, reliable and secure.

The thing is, you can read the news about the nuclear industry on any given day and find stories that torpedo those promises. Each day we publish the latest nuclear news on nuclear reaction. Take today’s selection of stories.

Safe? ‘Arizona State University will lead a $41 million research project to develop systems to help first responders assess radiation exposure in the event of a large-scale nuclear disaster’. (The US government is launching a wider nuclear safety programme that will cost up to $400 million.)

Clean? ‘An Exelon Nuclear monitor located about a mile away from Three Mile Island in Dauphin County picked up trace amounts of radiation during the same week workers were exposed to contamination at the plant.’

Cheap? ‘The Harper government confirmed yesterday it is calling for bids on the reactor wing of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd… AECL hasn't sold a new reactor in years and its maintenance costs are spiking. In each of the last two years, Ottawa was forced to spend hundreds of millions in extra funding on AECL to cover costs that were not forecast in its main spending estimates.’

Reliable? ‘Troubleshooters at the Millstone nuclear power complex were working Monday to find the cause of an electrical short that triggered an automatic shutdown of Unit 3, one of two nuclear reactors at the plant… the utility is buying power from other sources to make up for Unit 3's lost output while the investigation continues.’

Secure? Does the Millstone nuclear power complex offer security of supply? How about the Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island which has been out of action since October 26? If the Arizona State University’s worst fears come to pass I think we can safely assume electricity supplies will be interrupted. AECL may be about to put its reactor designs and expertise into the hands of a foreign bidder. We thought nuclear power meant less reliance on other countries?

Another promise we wish the industry would make and keep is that it will be open, transparent and honest. The thing is, when you look at today’s story about the rigged public consultation in Ontario, Canada (a story repeated all over the world), you realise that this is another promise the industry could never keep in a million years.

Posted by Justin at 2:20 PM | Permalink

When it comes to the people making promises on behalf of nuclear power, can any of them be taken at their word? When it comes to Ed Miliband, the UK’s environment minister, we’re not so sure.

Speaking in Parliament last month, Miliband said…

…we are not going to provide public subsidy for the construction, operation and decommissioning of nuclear power stations.

That sounds pretty definite to us. But if that’s the case, why has he refused to answer the ‘question on whether the nuclear power industry would be given an insurance indemnity subsidy from taxpayers’? As Paul Flynn, the Member of Parliament who asked the question, says: ‘The only sensible conclusion to draw is that there will remain, probably huge, hidden subsidies in the form of insurance underwriting.’ If the minister has nothing to hide surely he’d give a straight question a straight answer?

The same applies to decommissioning and waste disposal costs. Nobody knows how much those will cost but the budget is exploding (it's currently around the £73 billion mark). So in order to keep industry and investors comfortable with predictable costs, the UK government now proposes to introduce a flat, fixed payment from the industry. This shifts all the unpredictability to the public, and socializes all the risks attached to it. Whatever the final costs, our grandchildren will have to pay to clean up our mess with public subsidies.

Then we look at the news that the UK taxpayer is giving £25 million to build the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (NAMRC) and we ask: surely that is a public subsidy to the nuclear industry?

The centre will ‘bring together university research and industrial expertise to develop manufacturing techniques’. That means the £25 million to build NAMRC is, in the words of Ed Miliband, a ‘public subsidy for the construction, operation and decommissioning of nuclear power stations’

In July, Rolls Royce was given £45 million of public money to help build four new factories in the UK, including one to manufacture ‘components for nuclear power plants’. That is a public subsidy to the nuclear industry. Also, the government ‘is investing £8 million to expand existing civil nuclear research facilities within The University of Manchester’. That is a public subsidy to the nuclear industry.

In June this year Vincent De Rivaz, the Chief Executive of EDF Energy, said…

I’ve always said we don’t ask for taxpayers’ money. We don’t ask for government subsidy.

When it comes to the UK government and taxpayers’ money, one thing is clear: the nuclear industry doesn’t have to ask.

Posted by Justin at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

A survey conducted by the Ipsos MORI polling organisation for the UK Nuclear Industry Association has found that 67 per cent of people it polled agreed with the statement…

Britain needs a mix of energy sources to ensure a reliable supply of electricity, including nuclear power and renewable sources of electricity.

However, 49 percent agreed that "I don't really know enough about nuclear energy to be able to give an opinion." That figure rose to 58 per cent among women.

We do look forward to the nuclear industry spinning these figures. ’Many of the people who support the use of nuclear power don’t know enough about it’ is a hard line to sell, we’d say.

It’s worth considering how that 67 per cent might change were people to be properly informed about nuclear power - about its costs, its dangers, its unreliability, and its inability to fight impending climate change. We’d like to see the results of a survey presenting those arguments.

It’s unlikely we will though, not one conducted on behalf of the UK Nuclear Industry Association (the trade association representing operators of nuclear power stations and companies engaged in decommissioning, waste management, nuclear fuel cycle…) at any rate. When you look at the lamentable state of the nuclear industry and its so-called ‘renaissance’, you’d imagine a continuing state of public ignorance to be the preferred strategy.

Posted by Justin at 4:44 PM | Permalink

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…

Posted by Justin at 5:01 PM | Permalink

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’.

Posted by Justin at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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 (5)

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

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

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

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

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

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 what 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

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

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

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