An explosive and unmissable memorandum published by Energy Fair will open your eyes to the massive subsidies that you, the tax and bill payer, have to bear to make nuclear power possible. Click here.

24th May 2013

In spite of government reassurances that their nuclear plan is on track, it is clear that it is falling apart at the seams.

EDF are still holding out for double the price guarantees to build Hinkley C that other energy projects will receive and China is now getting cold feet as it feels the pressure of hard economics and the growing tide of oppositon in the UK to new nuclear build.

The full article can be read here: http://gu.com/p/3gvck

20/05/2013

Dennis Hayden, nuclear test veteran and Lydney resident, told a public meeting at the Annexe, Lydney last Thursday, that routine and allowable releases of radioactivity from our nuclear power stations were causing untold genetic damage, cancers and serious health problems.

Quoting Dr John Gofman, former advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission, he said, "Nuclear Industry is conducting a war against humanity".

The meeting was called by STAND (Severnside Together Against Nuclear Development), a group of local people concerned at Horizon/Hitachi's plans to build a large nuclear power station on the banks of the Severn at Oldbury, just over the river from Lydney.

Dennis went on to say that if they build the new nuclear plant at Oldbury, radioactive water used to cool the reactors will be pumped back into the estuary. Deadly radioisotopes will become trapped locally in river sediment and on estuary mud banks. At low tide, during warmer weather, these radioactive particles - invisible to the eye, that cannot be felt, smelt or tasted - will become re-suspended in the air we breathe and therefore will gain easy access inside your body and those of your family.

He said that while these particles cannot easily be measured by geiger counters, as they only emit radiation for a very short distance - typically a millionth of an inch. Once inside the body they act as internal emitters, harming and destroying our life sustaining blood, tissue, organs and bone.

Dennis is a co-founder of the Combined Veterans Forum International, which was formed in 2002 to gather information and fight for compensation for the service men who participated in Britain's nuclear test programme in the 50's and 60's. Between 1952 and 1967 over 20,000 servicemen participated in British nuclear weapons tests. Dennis himself, while a member of the armed forces, took part in the testing of nuclear weapons in Maralinga in Australia.

Although Britain and Australia refuse to test the health of the veterans, Dennis showed the meeting a short film about research that had been carried out, part funded by the New Zealand government, into Chromosomal Translocation. This occurs when radiation particles trapped inside a person's body mutate the chromosomes and cause permanent genetic damage, damage that can lead to cancers and other health effects, and can be passed on to to the person's children. The research showed unequivocally that the nuclear test veterans had three times as much genetic damage compared with a test group.

The meeting also heard from Cheryl Mayo, who reported on her and other STAND members meeting with Horizon, the company who will licence and run the proposed Oldbury nuclear development when Hitachi have built it.

She said that the company was formed in 2009 by EON and RWE, but was sold to Hitachi in 2012 when the German power companies, along with every other major power company, decided that they would pull out entirely of nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster.

She said she found it disturbing that they had no track record, never having built a nuclear power station, or indeed, anything!

They told her they were planning to build the nuclear plant in Wylfa, on Anglesey first, as "…practice, because there are a lot of problems with the Oldbury site".

The meeting then had a presentation from Carl Spiby and John French who looked in detail at every paragraph of a letter that Horizon had sent to members of the public in response to their concerns.

They said that Horizon placed a lot of emphasis on the Weightman Report, which was formed to look at the safety of nuclear power in the UK post-Fukushima. However, they pointed out that the report made no recommendations, and in essence said they would leave the nuclear industry to police themselves.

Quoting Wikipedia, they said that the type of nuclear reactor Horizon wished to build was virtually unproven. There were only four in the world, all of them had had considerable technical difficulties, and they had a lifetime operating factor of less than 50%

Among other points that the presenters contested were the assurances from Horizon that the plant would be Tsunami and storm-surge safe - which is impossible to guarantee, it would require a crystal ball; that the plant was needed to fill the "energy gap" - it could not come on stream until 2028 at the earliest, too late to help; and that the idea of "consultation" was a sham, as the decision rested solely with the Secretary of State.

This was followed by an entertaining presentation from James Greenway, who graphically illustrated that the Forest of Dean could become energy self-sufficient in a short time by adopting various renewable strategies such as anaerobic digesters, tidal turbines, wind and solar energy, ground and air source heat pumps, Severn tidal lagoons and better home insulation. He said this would create 7,250 permanent jobs in the Forest, and bring in £400 million. Contrast this with the 1000 jobs Horizon say they will create in the future.

16/05/2013

It is STAND's belief that EDF(majority owned by the French state) are blackmailing the government into giving them better subsidies to build Hinkley C than any other form of power generation. Read the Guardian article and the previous Nuclear News item about subsidies, and make up your own mind.

Renewable energy providers to help bear cost of new UK nuclear reactors

Experts say decision to share cost of accommodating Hinkley Point reactors among providers amounts to subsidy for nuclear

The row over subsidies for the UK's new nuclear power stations has deepened after it emerged that the £160m-a-year cost of accommodating the giant reactors on the national electricity grid will be borne by all generators, including renewable energy providers.

The new reactors planned by EDF for Hinkley Point are significantly larger than any existing power stations, meaning the national grid has to pay for extra standby electricity to stop the grid crashing if one of the reactors unexpectedly goes offline. National Grid said its decision to charge all generators for the cost was because "increasing costs on larger users could delay the commissioning of large nuclear plants by a number of years".

Read the full Guardian article here

Public to foot bill for huge new subsidies for nuclear power says energy minister

The Government yesterday announced they would be renaging on their promise, made in 2010, not to subsidise the nuclear power industry.

New nuclear build - plagued by setbacks as most major energy companies desert nuclear power because of cost and safety issues - is to be given special subsidies over and above those given to renewable projects, the energy minister Ed Davey announced yesterday.

Tom Burke, visiting professor at Imperial and University colleges, London, estimates that EDF - the company threatening to withdraw from its planned nuclear power station at Hinkley - would receive at least an extra £50 billion over 40 years for Hinckley alone under the new plan as an incentive to stay on. This money would come from a surcharge on consumers electricity bills.

STAND has always argued that there is no economic justification for nuclear power, that the huge sums wasted on this outdated technolgy would be better spent on research and development into ever better ways of generating electricity through renewable sources. We are being proved right yet again.

Read a full article in The Guardian here

Floods kill, wreak havoc and cost billions. And we know they're coming. So why aren't we doing anything about them?

British Gas owner's exit is blamed on rising costs and construction delays. Clears way for Chinese investors

Energy company Centrica has abandoned its plans for building new nuclear reactors in the UK, blaming rising costs and construction delays.

The move is a blow to the government's aspirations to build the most ambitious fleet of new reactors in Europe, and comes on the day MPs severely criticised the management of nuclear waste at Sellafield and after Cumbria county council rejected proposals for a deep burial site to permanently dispose of the waste.

Click here to see the full article

Damning report casts doubt on future of nuclear power in UK .

The total lifetime cost of dealing with nuclear waste reaches £67.5bn - and rising.

The reputation of the nuclear industry faces further damage this week with the publication of a highly critical report on Monday on the management of the Sellafield plant in Cumbria, days before a court action over the illegal dumping of nuclear waste.

The moves follow Cumbria county council's refusal last week to pursue plans to build a storage facility for radioactive materials needed, many believe, if Britain is to build new atomic power stations.

Margaret Hodge MP, the committee's chair, said: "Taxpayers are not getting a good deal from the [Nuclear Decommissioning] Authority [NDA] arrangement with Nuclear Management Partners.

"Last year the consortium was rewarded with £54m in fees despite only two out of 14 major projects being on track.

Read the full article here

Plans to expand the UK's nuclear industry are in disarray after the only area to show interest in hosting an underground radioactive waste storage centre rejected the idea.

Cumbria county council's cabinet voted by more than 2-1 to pull out following expert critiques of the fractured local geology and an international outcry over the threat to the Lake District.

Read the full article here

SANE (Sheperdine Against Nuclear Energy) have produced artist's impressions, showing how the proposed plant would dominate the Severn estuary. Click here

Hitachi said it plans to spend only approximately 60pc of the build cost in the UK.

Daily Telegraph article

Oliver Tickell

18th February 2015, The Ecologist

The discovery of over 16,000 cracks in two Belgian reactor vessels may have global implications for nuclear safety, says the country's nuclear safety chief. He and independent experts are calling for the immediate checks of nuclear reactor vessels worldwide.

Thousands of cracks have been found in the steel reactor pressure vessels in nuclear reactors Doel 3 and Tihange 2 in Belgium - vessels contain highly radioactive nuclear fuel cores.

The failure of these components can cause catastrophic nuclear accidents with massive release of radiation.

The pervasive - and entirely unexpected - cracking could be related to corrosion from normal operation, according to leading material scientists Professor Walter Bogaerts and Professor Digby MacDonald.

Speaking on Belgian TV, Professor MacDonald said: "The consequences could be very severe ... like fracturing the pressure vessel, loss of coolant accident. This would be a leak before break scenario, in which case before a fracture of a pipe occurred ... you would see a jet of steam coming out through the insulation.

"My advice is that all reactor operators, under the guidance of the regulatory commissions should be required to do an ultrasonic survey of the pressure vessels. All of them."

Professor Bogaerts added: "If I had to estimate, I would really be surprised if it ... had occurred nowhere else ... I am afraid that the corrosion aspects have been underestimated."

Jan Bens, Director-General of the Belgian nuclear regulator the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (FANC), has said that this could be a problem for the entire nuclear industry globally - and that the solution is to begin the careful inspection of 430 nuclear power plants worldwide.

The government of Austria is planning to make a legal challenge with regard to the European Union’s relatively recent decision to allow the Hinkley Point C nuclear energy project to be subsidized to the tune of billions of pounds, according to recent reports.

The European Union (EU) approved Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant receiving a £17.6 billion subsidy deal last October — a decision that was met with a fair amount of debate at the time. Austria’s appeal (to be launched in April) could mean that the subsidy deal will be, at the least, delayed for 1–2 years.

Given that Luxembourg — nuclear-free, like Austria — is considered very likely to support the appeal, there appears to be a fair deal of opposition behind the approval of the subsidy package. There are reportedly other countries that might back the appeal as well, but that’s unverified as of right now.

The reasoning behind the legal challenge is that the UK’s 35-year loan guarantees constitute illegal state aid. “There has been a high-level decision by our chancellor and vice chancellor to challenge the EU decision on Hinkley within two months of its publication in the EU’s official journal,” stated Andreas Molin, the director of Austria’s environment ministry, in a conversation with the Guardian.

The foreign policy adviser to the Austrian federal chancellory, Stefan Pehringer, stated: “The Austrian government has announced its readiness to appeal against the European Commission’s decision concerning state aid for the Hinkley Point project, as it does not consider nuclear power to be a sustainable form of technology — neither in environmental nor in economic terms.” The Hinkley project represents what is, if completed, the first new nuclear reactor in the UK in ~20 years — representing a step backwards for opponents of the technology. (There are numerous good reasons for opposing the technology, as evidenced by this recent news: Uranium Contamination Persisting At Old Processing Sites Despite Remediation.)

It’s worth noting here, though, that if Hinkley C is completed and performs according to expectations, it’s expected to cover roughly 7% of the UK’s electricity needs by 2023, with a 3.3 GW generating capacity — with the power generated being bought at a strike price of £92.50 per megawatt-hour, roughly twice the market rate. The approval of the project’s subsidy deal — between the French state-owned EDF and the UK government — was previously described by David Cameroon as being “a very big day for our country.” Commenting on an analysis of European court cases of this type done by the Austrian government, Molin stated that this might go on longer than normal, “as this is going to be a more complicated and fundamental case, it will last a little bit longer. Two years could be a rough guess.”

Molina concluded: “If you accept the argument that Hinkley constitutes a ‘market failure’ as put forward by the commission, you could apply it to all other means of electricity production, probably all other forms of energy conversion, and it might even apply beyond the energy sector. We think that the single energy market itself is at stake in this case.” Work on the project has reportedly already begun.

Dilapidated nuclear waste storage ponds abandoned 40 years ago containing hundreds of tonnes of fuel rods pose an immediate danger to public safety, photographs sent to The Ecologist reveal. The fuel and sludge in the ponds could spontaneously ignite if exposed to air, spreading intense radiation over a wide area. See the full Ecologist article here

The radioactive water woes at the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant got worse over the weekend after the tritium concentration in a groundwater sample surged more than tenfold this month.

A spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Saturday that heavy rain caused by Typhoon Phanfone probably affected the groundwater after the storm whipped through Japan last week. Some 150,000 becquerels of tritium per liter were measured in a groundwater sample taken Thursday from a well east of the No. 2 reactor. The figure is a record for the well and over 10 times the level measured the previous week. In addition, materials that emit beta rays, such as strontium-90, which causes bone cancer, also shattered records with a reading of 1.2 million becquerels, the utility said of the sample.

The well is close to the plant’s port in the Pacific. The water crisis could get worse as the nation braces for Typhoon Vongfong this week. Although downgraded from supertyphoon status, the storm was still packing winds of up to 180 kph and on course to hit Kyushu by Monday. The Meteorological Agency said it could reach Tokyo on Tuesday before gradually losing strength as it races north toward Tohoku. The storm dumped heavy rain on Okinawa, and at least 35 people have been reported injured in both Okinawa and Kyushu, where authorities told 150,000 people to evacuate as the typhoon toppled trees, flooded streets and cut power to more than 60,000 homes.

Tepco also revealed that, at a separate well also east of the No. 2 reactor, a groundwater sample was giving off a record 2.1 million becquerels of a beta ray-emitting substance, nearly double the level from a week earlier. The cesium activity in the sample was 70 percent higher at 68,000 becquerels. Tepco has been periodically measuring the concentration of radioactive materials in groundwater at 34 points east of the reactors 1 through 4. Readings hit record highs at three points after the heavy rain caused by the typhoon, but the utility said it does not know why.

See the source (Japan Times) here

Brussels gives go ahead to state subsidy scheme, that offers EDF Energy a set price for 35 years, clearing the way for first nuclear reactors to be built in Britain for almost 20 years

See the full story in the Guardian here

BBC web site 6/10/2014

New cracks found in the core of the Hunterston-B nuclear reactor could threaten operator EDF's plans to extend the Scottish power station's life.

Experts say fissures in two of the 3,000 graphite fuel bricks that make up its No 4 core are of a new type. These "Keyway root cracks" are said to be more serious than previously identified fractures.

Safety rules stipulate that if the new problem gets above a certain threshold, the reactor would have to close.

Hunterston-B came online in 1976, and was due to close in 2016, but EDF wants to keep it running until 2023 and beyond.

For full story, visit the BBC web site here

From Reuters, 6/10/2014

"Alternative forms of energy are worthy of subsidies, not nuclear energy,”says Austria’s chancellor.

Under the plan, Britain would be allowed to offer EDF a guaranteed price of more than twice the current market rate.

Austria will take the European Commission to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) if it approves Britain's plans for a 16 billion-pound nuclear power plant, a spokesman for the chancellor said on Sunday.

The deal to pay a guaranteed price for the power produced in the plant faces opposition from a quarter of EU policymakers, who want to overturn approval from the top European regulator.

A vote is expected on Wednesday.

For the full story, follow this link.

Guardian, 6/10/2014

Environmentalists cite unpublished EU figures in call for a more ambitious goal for reducing energy use by 2030

A 40% cut in energy use by 2030 through efficiency measures would increase the UK’s GDP by £62bn and create 40,000 new jobs, according to unpublished EU figures.

Hitting a lower target of 30% would create 13,000 jobs and boost the economy by £17.3bn, says the study by independent consultancy Cambridge Econometrics, obtained by WWF after an access to information request.

For the full story, follow this link.

Private consortium accused of spending cash 'like confetti'.

Sellafield is regarded as the most dangerous and polluted industrial site in western Europe. It houses 120 tonnes of plutonium, the largest civilian stockpile in the world.

STAND says: This is why the government has been forced into the incredibly dangerous practice of storing all future high level plutonium waste on the sites of nuclear power stations, including the proposed Oldbury plant. But who will look after the stockpiles of lethal waste when the power station operators have packed up and gone home? The UK taxpayer, that's who. But instead of one centralised plant to deal with the waste there will be several, with all the extra cost - and extra danger - that will bring.

Those engaged in the clean-up are still some way from knowing exactly what is in the storage facilities. "Record-keeping in the past was clearly not what it should have been," said a source.

Senior nuclear executives will be asked by Public Accounts Committee to comment on how £6m of bonuses came to be shared out among NMP bosses over three years and why the consortium paid back £100,000 in expenses that had been wrongly claimed.

Read the full article in the Guardian here

In a shock article published in major UK newspapers today, Naomi Hirose, president of the company that runs Fukushima, said Britian’s nuclear industry must be 'prepared for the worst'

He said that despite what the nuclear industry and the public wanted to believe, nuclear power was not 100 per cent safe.

The full story can be read here on the Guardian's web site or here on the Telegraph's web site.

The spectre of a new nuclear power station at Oldbury came a step nearer today as the UK Government announced it has given the go-ahead for a new nuclear power station at Hinkeley Point in Somerset.

Although the government has always said it will not offer extra subsidies to the nuclear industry, that is just what it has done. It has offered a ridiculously high price for the future production and has made no stipulations about disposal of waste. And all this not to British companies but to to two foreign governments, the French and the Chinese!

The plan now is to store waste on site. This will mean that tons of highly dangerous radioactive waste will be stored on the same site as nuclear power stations. Althought the staions themselves have a life of only 35 years, the waste will remain toxic for thousands of years. Who will look after this? And who will paye for it? The UK taxpayer and energy bill payer , that's who!

There is an excellent article about the crazy economics of nuclear power by Jonathon Prritt and others from Friends of the Earth here

STAND believes the ongoing and seemingly unresolvable emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi plant serves as a stark warning to the UK and any other country thinking of embarking on the lunacy of nuclear power.

Eminent statistician and epedimioligist, John Urquart, has told STAND that the chances of an accident of the severity of Fukushima happening to the proposed Oldbury Nuclear Power Station are a staggering 1 in 200 in its lifetime.

Do you think these are good enough odds, given the utter devastation and loss of life - not to mention the loss of millions of homes - that would ensue? And remember, nuclear acidents are specifically excluded from home insurance policies.

There is a great article from the BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes about the state of Fukushima today, in which he quotes influencial sources in Japan saying that the disaster was avoidable and could happen anywhere. Read it here

(See our new Q and A facts page for further details)

2 years on, Fukushima still leaking 300 tons of highly radioactive water per day. Public to pick up the bill. Tepco said to have lied to public about leaks.

In a furious letter to Tepco's president, Naomi Hirose, Japan's national fisheries federation said the water leakages were an "act of treason to all fishing industry workers and to all members of the public in Japan".

Read the full article here (Guardian) and here (BBC News)

STAND believes the ongoing and seemingly unresolvable emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi plant serves as a stark warning to the UK and any other country thinking of embarking on the lunacy of nuclear power.

Eminent statistician and epedimioligist, John Urquart, has told STAND that the chances of an accident of the severity of Fukushima happening to the proposed Oldbury Nuclear Power Station are a staggering 1 in 200 in its lifetime.

Do you think these are good enough odds, given the utter devastation and loss of life - not to mention the loss of millions of homes - that would ensue? And remember, nuclear acidents are specifically excluded from home insurance policies.

(See our new Q and A facts page for further details)

As well as being given £10 bn, EDF, who are half owned by the French state and have already prepared the Hinckley site, are blackmailing the British government to give a guaranteed minimum price for the electricity the new reactor would produce that is much higher than for other forms of new electricity generation.

Lib/Dems are reported unhappy at renege on promises of fair subsidies for all new power generation.

See article here.

30th June 2013

Nuclear Decommissioning Authority declines to predict final lifetime clean-up cost amid fears total bill could exceed £100bn

The public body charged with overseeing the dismantling of Britain's network of atomic power and research stations has revealed that its estimates for the lifetime cost of the programme has risen by billions of pounds.

See article here.

23rd June 2013

The NDA, desperate to find a home for dangerous nuclear waste after their last hope, Cumbria County Council, refused permission, has proposed that around 280 yellow boxes of intermediate level waste could be brought from other sites to be stored at Bradwell in Essex

But, significantly, it also mentioned as potential sites for storage, Berkeley, in Gloucestershire, Trawsfynydd, in Gwynedd, and Hinkley Point, in Somerset. It is interesting to note that these are all old decommissioned nuclear power stations, where presumably the local councils cannot object, as they have elsewhere in the UK.

See article here

16th June 2013

An explosive and unmissable memorandum published by Energy Fair will open your eyes to the massive subsidies that you, the tax and bill payer, have to bear to make nuclear power possible. Click here.

24th May 2013

In spite of government reassurances that their nuclear plan is on track, it is clear that it is falling apart at the seams.

EDF are still holding out for double the price guarantees to build Hinkley C that other energy projects will receive and China is now getting cold feet as it feels the pressure of hard economics and the growing tide of oppositon in the UK to new nuclear build.

The full article can be read here: http://gu.com/p/3gvck

20/05/2013

Dennis Hayden, nuclear test veteran and Lydney resident, told a public meeting at the Annexe, Lydney last Thursday, that routine and allowable releases of radioactivity from our nuclear power stations were causing untold genetic damage, cancers and serious health problems.

Quoting Dr John Gofman, former advisor to the Atomic Energy Commission, he said, "Nuclear Industry is conducting a war against humanity".

The meeting was called by STAND (Severnside Together Against Nuclear Development), a group of local people concerned at Horizon/Hitachi's plans to build a large nuclear power station on the banks of the Severn at Oldbury, just over the river from Lydney.

Dennis went on to say that if they build the new nuclear plant at Oldbury, radioactive water used to cool the reactors will be pumped back into the estuary. Deadly radioisotopes will become trapped locally in river sediment and on estuary mud banks. At low tide, during warmer weather, these radioactive particles - invisible to the eye, that cannot be felt, smelt or tasted - will become re-suspended in the air we breathe and therefore will gain easy access inside your body and those of your family.

He said that while these particles cannot easily be measured by geiger counters, as they only emit radiation for a very short distance - typically a millionth of an inch. Once inside the body they act as internal emitters, harming and destroying our life sustaining blood, tissue, organs and bone.

Dennis is a co-founder of the Combined Veterans Forum International, which was formed in 2002 to gather information and fight for compensation for the service men who participated in Britain's nuclear test programme in the 50's and 60's. Between 1952 and 1967 over 20,000 servicemen participated in British nuclear weapons tests. Dennis himself, while a member of the armed forces, took part in the testing of nuclear weapons in Maralinga in Australia.

Although Britain and Australia refuse to test the health of the veterans, Dennis showed the meeting a short film about research that had been carried out, part funded by the New Zealand government, into Chromosomal Translocation. This occurs when radiation particles trapped inside a person's body mutate the chromosomes and cause permanent genetic damage, damage that can lead to cancers and other health effects, and can be passed on to to the person's children. The research showed unequivocally that the nuclear test veterans had three times as much genetic damage compared with a test group.

The meeting also heard from Cheryl Mayo, who reported on her and other STAND members meeting with Horizon, the company who will licence and run the proposed Oldbury nuclear development when Hitachi have built it.

She said that the company was formed in 2009 by EON and RWE, but was sold to Hitachi in 2012 when the German power companies, along with every other major power company, decided that they would pull out entirely of nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster.

She said she found it disturbing that they had no track record, never having built a nuclear power station, or indeed, anything!

They told her they were planning to build the nuclear plant in Wylfa, on Anglesey first, as "…practice, because there are a lot of problems with the Oldbury site".

The meeting then had a presentation from Carl Spiby and John French who looked in detail at every paragraph of a letter that Horizon had sent to members of the public in response to their concerns.

They said that Horizon placed a lot of emphasis on the Weightman Report, which was formed to look at the safety of nuclear power in the UK post-Fukushima. However, they pointed out that the report made no recommendations, and in essence said they would leave the nuclear industry to police themselves.

Quoting Wikipedia, they said that the type of nuclear reactor Horizon wished to build was virtually unproven. There were only four in the world, all of them had had considerable technical difficulties, and they had a lifetime operating factor of less than 50%

Among other points that the presenters contested were the assurances from Horizon that the plant would be Tsunami and storm-surge safe - which is impossible to guarantee, it would require a crystal ball; that the plant was needed to fill the "energy gap" - it could not come on stream until 2028 at the earliest, too late to help; and that the idea of "consultation" was a sham, as the decision rested solely with the Secretary of State.

This was followed by an entertaining presentation from James Greenway, who graphically illustrated that the Forest of Dean could become energy self-sufficient in a short time by adopting various renewable strategies such as anaerobic digesters, tidal turbines, wind and solar energy, ground and air source heat pumps, Severn tidal lagoons and better home insulation. He said this would create 7,250 permanent jobs in the Forest, and bring in £400 million. Contrast this with the 1000 jobs Horizon say they will create in the future.

16/05/2013

It is STAND's belief that EDF(majority owned by the French state) are blackmailing the government into giving them better subsidies to build Hinkley C than any other form of power generation. Read the Guardian article and the previous Nuclear News item about subsidies, and make up your own mind.

Renewable energy providers to help bear cost of new UK nuclear reactors

Experts say decision to share cost of accommodating Hinkley Point reactors among providers amounts to subsidy for nuclear

The row over subsidies for the UK's new nuclear power stations has deepened after it emerged that the £160m-a-year cost of accommodating the giant reactors on the national electricity grid will be borne by all generators, including renewable energy providers.

The new reactors planned by EDF for Hinkley Point are significantly larger than any existing power stations, meaning the national grid has to pay for extra standby electricity to stop the grid crashing if one of the reactors unexpectedly goes offline. National Grid said its decision to charge all generators for the cost was because "increasing costs on larger users could delay the commissioning of large nuclear plants by a number of years".

Read the full Guardian article here

Public to foot bill for huge new subsidies for nuclear power says energy minister

The Government yesterday announced they would be renaging on their promise, made in 2010, not to subsidise the nuclear power industry.

New nuclear build - plagued by setbacks as most major energy companies desert nuclear power because of cost and safety issues - is to be given special subsidies over and above those given to renewable projects, the energy minister Ed Davey announced yesterday.

Tom Burke, visiting professor at Imperial and University colleges, London, estimates that EDF - the company threatening to withdraw from its planned nuclear power station at Hinkley - would receive at least an extra £50 billion over 40 years for Hinckley alone under the new plan as an incentive to stay on. This money would come from a surcharge on consumers electricity bills.

STAND has always argued that there is no economic justification for nuclear power, that the huge sums wasted on this outdated technolgy would be better spent on research and development into ever better ways of generating electricity through renewable sources. We are being proved right yet again.

Read a full article in The Guardian here

Floods kill, wreak havoc and cost billions. And we know they're coming. So why aren't we doing anything about them?

British Gas owner's exit is blamed on rising costs and construction delays. Clears way for Chinese investors

Energy company Centrica has abandoned its plans for building new nuclear reactors in the UK, blaming rising costs and construction delays.

The move is a blow to the government's aspirations to build the most ambitious fleet of new reactors in Europe, and comes on the day MPs severely criticised the management of nuclear waste at Sellafield and after Cumbria county council rejected proposals for a deep burial site to permanently dispose of the waste.

Click here to see the full article

Damning report casts doubt on future of nuclear power in UK .

The total lifetime cost of dealing with nuclear waste reaches £67.5bn - and rising.

The reputation of the nuclear industry faces further damage this week with the publication of a highly critical report on Monday on the management of the Sellafield plant in Cumbria, days before a court action over the illegal dumping of nuclear waste.

The moves follow Cumbria county council's refusal last week to pursue plans to build a storage facility for radioactive materials needed, many believe, if Britain is to build new atomic power stations.

Margaret Hodge MP, the committee's chair, said: "Taxpayers are not getting a good deal from the [Nuclear Decommissioning] Authority [NDA] arrangement with Nuclear Management Partners.

"Last year the consortium was rewarded with £54m in fees despite only two out of 14 major projects being on track.

Read the full article here

Plans to expand the UK's nuclear industry are in disarray after the only area to show interest in hosting an underground radioactive waste storage centre rejected the idea.

Cumbria county council's cabinet voted by more than 2-1 to pull out following expert critiques of the fractured local geology and an international outcry over the threat to the Lake District.

Read the full article here

SANE (Sheperdine Against Nuclear Energy) have produced artist's impressions, showing how the proposed plant would dominate the Severn estuary. Click here

Hitachi said it plans to spend only approximately 60pc of the build cost in the UK.

Daily Telegraph article

Click here to go to Horizon's website where you can see the scale of the development. See figures 2, 3a, 3b and 4 in particular.

The 220-megawatt Oldbury 2 nuclear reactor in Britain shut down on Thursday after an electrical problem in the site's turbine hall, a spokeswoman for operator Magnox said...

Reuters 17th March 2011

Even the most ardent defenders of nuclear power are starting to admit the situation in Japan looks bad...

Reuters, 17th March 2011

Former Government advisor says Chernobyl legacy shows dangers of atomic power.

The Guardian, May 14th 2009

Nuclear Plants too complex to check says Inspectorate chief.

The Guardian, Feb 2nd 2009

French nuclear companies are hoping to play a central role in the government's plan to build a new generation of reactors.

At home, however, the industry has been buffeted by a series of mishaps.

The Guardian, July 26 2008