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…I try to write some jokes about nuclear energy. I was quite pleased with the al Qaeda one.

…or the nuclear industry and my part in its downfall.

There’s a big story breaking at Greenpeace today. Despite assurances from the nuclear industry that things had been cleaned up, Greenpeace has found that the villages near the uranium mines in Niger are still contaminated with radiation…

I’m extremely pleased to say that I played a small part in helping bring the scandal to light. Back in January I wrote a rather strident post for Greenpeace’s Nuclear Reaction blog about just what the French nuclear company AREVA had been getting up to at its uranium mines in Niger.

AREVA weren’t very happy about that and in their response they invited Greenpeace to go to Niger and see what was going on for themselves. The Greenpeace nuclear campaign accepted the invitation and this month, after much hard work and planning, sent a team to Niger. And they certainly did see for themselves… AREVA nuclear scandal: Greenpeace finds radiation on the streets of Niger.

Why history is against the government’s decision to allow nuclear reactor operators to dump low-level nuclear waste in landfill sites…

There’s a crude British idiom – ‘All fur coat and no knickers’ – that we use to describe something that is all style and no substance, something that is superficially impressive but lacking the fundamentals underneath.

Take for example, the recently launched Indian nuclear submarine, the INS Arihant (Destroyer of Enemies). Just how many enemies the Arihant could be the destroyer of right now is debatable, for you see…

…the Arihant was launched without its nuclear reactor, which will not be ready for another year, or so. No one is saying for sure when the reactor will be ready…

Ladies and gentlemen, the world’s first non-nuclear nuclear submarine. The reason the Arihant was launched without its reactor seems to be one of prestige – it’s taken more than ten years to get this far and presumably someone in the Indian government said, ‘just get the thing in the water, we’re starting to look like idiots’. In an added comedy twist, the Arihant’s launch tubes aren’t wide enough to accommodate any current designs of sea launched ballistic missiles.

Of course, it’s not the first time a flagship nuclear project has launched without vital components being in place. French nuclear berks AREVA have been building their so-called state of the art OL3 EPR reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland for four years ‘without a proper design that meets the basic principles of nuclear safety’. The EPR may be coming to Britain as part of Gordon Brown’s nuclear ‘renaissance’. There’s going to be all manner of fun.

Still, the Indian government could be really on to something here – they’re showing the way forward. If we can have the non-nuclear nuclear submarine why not the non-nuclear nuclear weapon and the non-nuclear nuclear reactor? Imagine the day when scientists unveil the AFCANKPWR (All Fur Coat And No Knickers Pressurised Water Reactor).

(More tales of nuclear insanity can be found at Nuclear Reaction.)

Update: ‘Launch’ is probably not the word an impartial bystander would have used…

Yesterday, the Arihant, which is Indian for “Destroyer of Enemies”, made first contact with water, when the Navy flooded a dry dock in the southern port city of Visakhapatnam. According to Indian officials, the submarine must now undergo extensive sea trials in the Bay of Bengal. The nuclear powered, 112-meter (367 feet) long submarine is intended to carry ballistic missiles and will be operated by a crew of some 100 men. However, the Arihant still is far from reaching operational status, as it currently is little more than a floating hull. Its key capability of nuclear propulsion is not yet available, as the nuclear reactor still has to be fitted. Also, significant systems, such as surveillance equipment as well as ordnance, are still missing, according to Uday Bhaskar, a former naval commander and director of the National Maritime Foundation. It will, therefore, probably take India a further three to five years before the Arihant is fully operational.

Remember this…?

Richard Timney has written a series of letters to the Redditch Advertiser, in the Home Secretary’s constituency, defending controversial plans for ID cards and attacking the Conservatives.

In the letters, Mr Timney fails to declare that he is married to Ms Smith or that he is paid £40,000 a year to act as her Parliamentary assistant. Ms Smith has kept her maiden name.

It was New Labour, of course, that made this practice – or astroturfing as it’s known – widespread in British politics. They didn’t invent it however and other people in other walks of life do it as well.

Here’s one example.

Indeed.

But how is the Russian nuclear industry celebrating the economical, political and social achievements of its female workers?

By choosing the prettiest one.

Did you know you can’t insure nuclear reactors and their decommissioning processes? The commercial insurance companies just won’t touch them. The costs of cleaning up a major nuclear accident are so huge they would bankrupt any company stupid enough to offer cover.

So governments have to step in and offer to pay the costs in the event of an accident. That’s what New Labour did over the summer while Parliament was in recess and MPs were on holiday.

However, doing so involved a circumvention of the democratic niceties – which isn’t uncommon when it comes to dealings with the nuclear industry. But this particular dirty, backroom deal might be back to bite the government:

A government decision to rush through a scheme indemnifying a US-led private consortium who took over Sellafield from any liability for a nuclear accident is to be investigated, the Speaker of the Commons, Michael Martin.

He has accepted a complaint from Paul Flynn, the Labour MP for Newport, that former energy minister Malcolm Wicks had not properly consulted MPs when he granted the consortium, made up of the American company URS Washington, French firm Areva and the UK company Amec, an indemnity.

[...]

The consortium had threatened to walk away unless Britain waived its rights to charge companies the first £140m for the costs of any accident.

You see this kind of thing all over the world – rigged public consultations, a blurring between the roles of politician and nuclear lobbyist, and – as in this case – the blackmailing of governments.

The added bonus for this consortium? The British taxpayer will fork out even if the accidents are the fault of the consortium itself. It’s a sweet deal to be sure. Whether you’re for or against nuclear power, though, surely you can agree that this isn’t the way to do things. It doesn’t do the already poor reputations of nuclear energy or politics any favours.

(Cross-posted at Nuclear Reaction)

When French state-owned energy company EDF bought British Energy last year, it announced plans to build four new nuclear power stations in the UK.

There was a story in The Times yesterday saying that EDF are looking to ‘modular’ nuclear reactor designs that aim to shorten construction times. EDF has since refuted the story saying:

EDF is proposing to use the same construction method for EPRs in the UK as it is using at Flamanville in a project which is on schedule to be operational in 2012.

The EPR (European Pressurized Reactor) is a flagship third generation, state of the art nuclear reactor. It’s the future of nuclear energy, apparently. The one being built in Flamanville is one of just two being built in the world right now (the other is in Olkiluoto, Finland). The Flamanville project won’t be familiar to most people but it’s worth looking at see what we can expect when EDF starts building over here.

Despite only being only under construction for 12 months, Flamanville is 12 months behind schedule. The costs have increased by 20 per cent. Cracks were found in the concrete in the reactor’s foundations. A quarter of the welding in the reactor’s steel lining was found to be substandard. (The steel lining is what helps to stop the radiation getting out.)

(The EPR under construction in Finland is in an even worse state. It’s 50 percent – 1.5 billion euros – over budget and running three years late. The builders Areva and the owner utility TVO are squabbling about who pays the extra costs. More than 1,500 construction defects have been discovered. Welders were found working on the steel support structure without proper specifications or supervision. Site workers were warned with their jobs about speaking out about safety concerns.)

So, when EDF says it’s ‘proposing to use the same construction method for EPRs in the UK as it is using at Flamanville’, you’d be forgiven for feeling apprehensive. If you thought the Millennium Dome, the new Wembley, the Scottish Parliament building, and the NHS IT system were triumphs of profligacy and stupidity, just you wait until they start building new nuclear reactors. You ain’t seen nothing.

The government lovingly and gently lowers our wedding tackle into American hands…

The UK Atomic Weapons Establishment, which makes and maintains the warheads for Britain’s nuclear missiles, has come under the control of US companies after the government sold its one-third stake.

Ministers were accused Thursday night of trying to conceal the change in ownership after failing to make an announcement to parliament.

So let’s not have any more of this nonsense – Here’s Gordon Brown in 2006:

And I mean not just stability by securing low inflation but stability in our industrial relations, stability through a stable and competitive tax regime, and stability through a predictable and light touch regulatory environment – a stability founded on our strength to make the right long term decisions, the same strength of national purpose we will demonstrate in protecting our security in this Parliament and the long-term – strong in defence in fighting terrorism, upholding NATO, supporting our armed forces at home and abroad, and retaining our independent nuclear deterrent.

(Actually, there’s hardly any of that paragraph that doesn’t deserve a shoeing.)

Are they willing conspirators or were they brainwashed by western intelligence agencies?

When Gordon Brown became prime minister, he promised to…

…build trust in our democracy, I’m sure we need a more open form of dialogue with citizens and politicians to genuinely talk about problems and solutions. It is about a different type of politics, a more open and honest dialogue…’

So what the hell happened? Take the government’s consultation on nuclear power for example. It’s bent…

Late yesterday we received an astonishing response to our complaint to the Marketing Research Standards Board about the government’s second public consultation on nuclear power. The board sets the standards for opinion research and found that the market research company Opinion Leader Research breached the Code of Conduct. The board said Opinion Leader “information was inaccurately or misleadingly presented, or was imbalanced, which gave rise to a material risk of respondents being led towards a particular answer.”

Is that an ‘open form of dialogue with citizens’ and politicians talking ‘genuinely’ about ‘problems and solutions’? Is is ‘a different type of politics’ and ‘a more open and honest dialogue’?

I’m going to hazard a ‘no’.

A thought experiment:

You live within 20 kilometres of a uranium mine. Tests have shown that your drinking water contains up to seven times the World Health Organisation’s limit for uranium contamination. The company running the mine have tested the water themselves but have not informed you of the findings. They have not properly implemented health monitoring for the mine’s workers or local residents. Documents show that the company knew from the outset that contamination of the water supply was a risk. The local hospital is not accredited to diagnose or treat cancer.

What should you do?

Business Secretary John Hutton says a British nuclear ‘renaissance’ will create energy security, 100,000 jobs, and a vibrant export market.

Except… importing uranium doesn’t guarantee energy security, with the UK lacking a nuclear skills base workers for those jobs will have to be imported, and we’re up against well-established multinational corporations who have the nuclear market sewn up between them…

John Hutton says it’s a ‘no-brainer’ – I agree.

There’s a nuclear reactor being built at Flamanville in France that, despite being under construction for only nine months, is already nine months behind schedule. How does that work then?

Heard the one about Barack Obama’s running mate having a nuke built and then smuggled into the Senate?

If nuclear energy companies were cat breeders.

There’s something about the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station…

Shame’s an emotion that’s not much in evidence in these cynical times. The glands that produce it are underused and weakened. I bet they don’t survive our next evolutionary iteration.

Take the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean as an example. Back during the Cold War it was actually quite hot – over a period of 12 years, the Americans tested a total of 67 nuclear weapons there including the world’s first hydrogen bomb. Two of the islands were vaporised entirely.

The residents of the nearby islands saw the flashes of light brighter than the sun; the white ash of the fallout fell on their upturned faces. Those still alive today who witnessed the test are dying of cancers; their grandchildren, the ‘octopus babies’, who survive long enough, head for less remote parts of the world to have their birth defects treated.

Between 1964 and 2004, the US government gave $400 million for the clean up and compensation. Ten million dollars a year. One hundred and fifty millions of the money was ‘final settlement of all past and future claims deriving from the nuclear tests’. In other words, so long suckers.

On the nearby island of Runit there’s a crater left by one of the blasts. The US military collected all the radioactive by-products from the 67 nuclear tests (except for 19,000 cubic metres of radioactive soil that somehow went missing) and put it in the crater. They then built a concrete dome over the crater, nine metres high and 115 metres wide. The WA Today journalist who visited the dome wrote:

While the views from the top are stunning, it is a sobering experience to climb. Cracks riddle the surface, many water-stained at the edges and crumbling. Some spalls are so large, birds have laid eggs in them. The concrete cap – 45 centimetres thick and peppered with plutonium waste – contains at least two holes 15 centimetres deep. Below lie thousands more cubic metres of radioactive waste.

The dome was built in 1979. The plutonium waste underneath it has a half-life of 24,000 years. The US Department of Energy says that ‘the US has no formal custodial responsibilities for the site’. Anybody care to put a length to shame’s half-life?

Burying nuclear waste demands commitments – financial and moral – from future societies and governments. It’s a future we can’t predict and they are commitments which, by their very nature, we can’t put to those expected to keep them. The US’s ‘commitment’ to the people of the Marshall Islands lasted forty years. Iodine-129, a by-product of nuclear reactors (to name but one), has a half-life of 16 million years.

(See also Nuclear Reaction)

I’m helping Greenpeace break a big news story today. All is not well at the construction site of Olkiluoto 3, the world’s largest nuclear reactor…

A tale of seagulls, shit, and sharpshooters. You really do learn something new every day.

The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency notes that no fissile material has been diverted from Iran’s stocks, but raises grave questions about some of the documents it has found, which suggest research into bomb-making (Iran says the papers are forgeries). Those of us who oppose an attack on Iran are under no obligation to accept Ahmadinejad’s claims of peaceful intent.

Nor do we have to accept the fictions of our own representatives. The Security Council’s offer to Iran claimed that resolving this enrichment issue would help to bring about a “Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction”. But like every other such document, it made no mention of the principal owner of these weapons in the region: Israel.

Read the rest

(Link via Quinn)

For the past few weeks I’ve been helping Greenpeace put together a new blog, recording and commenting on the various incompetencies, radioactive leaks, cover-ups, accidents, spin, radioactive leaks, empty promises, contamination, massive cost overruns, radioactive leaks, substandard reactor construction, and radioactive leaks that dribble and gush from the nuclear energy industry.

The blog is now officially live and can be found here at Nuclear Reaction. The nice people at Greenpeace have let me take some of the Chicken Yoghurt snark over there with me.

With nuclear, not a day goes by without a jaw-dropping news item. The industry news is chock full of ‘NO WAY!’ moments. Much of it is darkly, surreally comedic. If you were to write a sitcom that involved some of the nuclear incidents I’ve blogged in the last few weeks, the show would bomb as too far-fetched.

The nuclear power plant that is actively contributing to global warming. The Japanese nuclear recycling plant which will release a collective dose of radiation in the next 40 years equivalent to half of that released during the Chernobyl disaster. The Canadian nuclear plant where they lost a piece of the reactor radioactive enough to give you a year’s worth of radiation exposure in a few minutes.

The American nuclear waste storage facility with the $32 billion cost overrun. The French rivers that had ‘only’ 18,000 litres of uranium solution poured into them this month. The 100 workers at the same plant who were ’slightly’ contaminated this month. The other French nuclear leak this month, from a pipe that had been faulty for ’several years’.

The Philippine nuclear reactor which took eight years and $2.3 billion to build, took 32 years to pay off and never produced a single watt of electricity. The nuclear insider who says it’s ‘difficult to have an intelligent conversation about costs’. The state of the art French reactor with substandard welding in its steel lining and cracks in its concrete foundations.

The Japanese plant built in an earthquake zone and then closed when there was an earthquake. The miraculous Indian nuclear deal that made the bedridden walk and set the imprisoned free. The taxpayers who’ll bail out the nuclear industry in the event of an accident.

And that’s just for starters. All this and more are at Nuclear Reaction. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll wish we were making it up.

Here’s Business Secretary John Hutton on the push for nuclear energy:

Mr Hutton said: “Nuclear power is an essential part of our future energy mix. And, alongside a 10-fold increase in renewables and investment in clean coal technology, it will help wean us off our dependency on oil and protect us against the politicisation of energy supplies.

It doesn’t matter where you stand on the issue of nuclear power – for or against – the assertion that increasing our number of nuclear power stations will ‘protect us against the politicisation of energy supplies’ is manifest bollocks.

Is the UK self sufficient in uranium? No. We’ll have to get it from somewhere else then. That makes notions of so-called ‘energy security’ shakey from the outset. Canada and Australia are the biggest producers. They also happen to be democratic, white and friendly to us (which is nice).

You don’t have to get very far down the list to find that some of the other uranium producers are proper bastards. Kazakstan, Uzbekistan, increasingly tonto Russia, Namibia, and Niger, for example.

(Although to be fair, it’s France, which generates 80 per cent of its electricity from nuclear, that has the big stake in Niger’s uranium. Not that Niger’s people slumped, as they are, at 177 in the United Nations Human Development Index, have seen much benefit.)

So, do we swap one set of oil-supplying bastards – the Saudis, and all – for a different set of uranium-supplying bastards? We might have the decision taken out of our hands if American proposals to form a new uranium cartel are realised. A US State Department advisory body (chaired by no less a figure than Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz) has suggested the US and six other producer nations get together to form a ‘uranium bank’ to control supply. Goodbye Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, hello Organization of the Uranium Exporting Countries.

We’re on the verge of a ‘nuclear renaissance’ we’re told. (The use of ‘renaissance’ is spin, by the way – it evokes a golden age of exploration and enlightenment rather than, in the instance of the nuclear industry, a retreat to ignorance and cover-up). The world and his dog wants a nuclear reactor for some unknown reasons (if someone’s worked out how to keep a 100 per cent safety record and found a safe way of getting rid of the waste they’re keeping bloody quiet about it).

Are we to expect that this cartel’s decisions won’t be politicised in the face of growing competition for uranium whose supply, we might add, is expected to run out before the end of the century at current rates of consumption? The mere suggestion of creating such a body means the ‘politicisation of energy supplies’ as Hutton puts it.

Here’s something to bear in mind should the bombs eventually hit the fan.

The United Nations Security Council’s five permanent members and Germany are due to discuss remaining differences on further UN sanctions against Iran.

There are already two UN resolutions demanding that Iran cease uranium enrichment – 1696 and 1747.

The thing is, with everybody running around screaming over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, certain other factors get overlooked. Have gander through those resolutions and see if you can see the words ‘human rights’. Take your time.

Anything? No. Indeed, the UN’s Human Rights Council saw fit last year to ‘discontinue the consideration of the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran’. And apart from those of one or two bloggers, no one turned a hair, at least not the coiffures of the men meeting in Berlin today.

(I wrote about the Human Rights Council’s predecessor, the tawdry Commission on Human Rights, back in the day. Time to catch up with the less than sparkling offspring, I think.)

The thing is, as we’re probably all aware by now, human rights only really come in to play in high politics via expediency and the need to manipulate. When Saddam gassed the Kurds at Halabja in 1988, Tony Blair, Geoff Hoon and Jack Straw weren’t interested in signing the Early Day Motions condemning the atrocity. Fifteen years later, when needing to build a case for war, they wasted no time in waving the corpses at us.

So, remember when the time comes and we’re asked to give a toss about the human rights situation in Iran to make us all feel better about bombing the place. Keep an eye out for the emotional appeals to our decency.

Remember that Gordon and George and the rest didn’t give a sod until the the time was right and they needed another page in the dossier against Iran. We’re not too bothered about the Iranian government enriching its society as long as its not enriching uranium.

Those of us who do give a sod should probably be doing something right now. If it has to take Gordon Brown or George Bush appealing to our consciences on such matters, it’s probably already too late.

Probably more to come from me on the newly announced energy strategy, particularly as there are suggestions (coming via that excellent chap, Rochenko) that they might like to stick a nuclear power station near Brighton.

In the mean time, I’ll kick off with this:

I was determined to stay for Alastair Darling’s nuclear statement. But then he started speaking. His first words filled the chamber, as of a pair of bagpipes groaning into action. We all left. One of the most important announcements, probably, of a generation. Strategic energy supplies. Life-threatening emissions. Ageing power stations. Challenges at home and abroad.

Lunch. No one can listen to Alastiar Darling talking about these things. But that, of course, is the point. That’s how the consultation process will come out as the Government wants. That’s how the public will be excluded, for once and for all.

A fait accompli announced by Darling is like being steam-rollered veeerrry slooooowly. Will you die of boredom before your gizzards bulge out of your eye sockets?

Gordon Brown is probably looking into having him cloned right now. Get Darling to announce we’re bombing Iran and no one will stir from their slumber.