Kick Nuclear November 2022

Posted: 23rd November 2022

SIZEWELL C GO-AHEAD CONFIRMED

Sizewell C – artist’s impression

The new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has confirmed that, in spite of finding it necessary to make swingeing cuts to public services in an attempt to balance the books, one sacred cow is reprieved – Sizewell C is to go ahead and an initial government investment of £700m would be made within weeks.

He added that, “Subject to final government approvals, contracts for the initial investment will be signed with relevant parties, including EDF, in the coming weeks; it’ll create 10,000 highly skilled jobs providing reliable, low-carbon, power to the equivalent of 6 million homes for over 50 years.”

What he forgot to add was that the cost of building the plant is estimated at between £20bn and £30bn (how many hospitals and schools could that be used to build?) and would take some 10 years to construct and so would be too late to help with the current energy crisis.

Indeed the plan is that the overall cost of funding the project should be defrayed by a levy on gas and energy bills while the plant is being built, meaning that already sky-high energy bills will be become even higher

On the other hand, renewable energy generators powered by wind or sun are much, much cheaper and quicker to build (an onshore wind-farm can be built in a year) and will generate much cheaper electricity. A pity the government has turned its back on onshore wind and solar farms, presumably for electoral reasons.

A spokesperson for the group Stop Sizewell C commented, “If the chancellor is looking for cheap, reliable, energy independence, he is backing the wrong project, as Sizewell C’s ultimate cost and technical reliability are very uncertain and building it is reliant on French state-owned EDF.

“[The investment plan for Sizewell C] also loads more tax on struggling households, who would be forced to pay a nuclear levy on bills for a decade before…a single lightbulb [would be powered by the plant].”

On August 30th another group, Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) submitted a claim for a Judicial Review at the High Court of the government’s previous decision to go-ahead with the project at thee High Court. The RSPB also submitted a similar claim but this was rejected because it was submitted one day too late. In November the group was notified that the initial review of TASC’s judicial review application has resulted in their claim being denied in the first instance.

TASC believes that the judge did not properly engage in the arguments and says it using “our procedural right to ask for our judicial review claim to be re-determined at an oral hearing in front of a different judge.” Suffolk Coastal Friends of the Earthand Stop Sizewell C are supporting this legal action.

TASC is asking for donations through Crowdfunder to help cover the high cost of cost of this fresh legal action. Contact: https://tasizewellc.org.uk

NUCLEAR POWER IN JAPAN, 10 YEARS AFTER

Nuclear power renaissance: 10 after the Fukushima disaster, Japan is planning much increased investment in nuclear power.

Thus on 24th August the newly established “Green Transformation Implementation Council”, chaired by Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, announced that the Japanese government is considering the restart of seven more of the reactors closed down “for inspection” after the disaster. This adds to the 10 other such reactors that have been restarted since Fukushima.. According to the Japan Atomic Energy Relations Organisation, six advanced “next generation” nuclear reactors are also being planned. (There were 54 reactors operating in Japan prior to the disaster.) The government also announced that that it was considering the construction of “small modular reactors”. It said these developments would help achieve its goals of reducing carbon emissions and provide a steady supply of electricity.

Storage Tanks Containing Radioactive Water, Fukushima 2021

These plans for the expansion of nuclear power are perhaps surprising in a country that suffered so grievousely, and indeed continues to suffer, from the effects of the Fukushima disaster. What is perhaps even more surprising is that polls of public opinion in Japan seem to be moving towards majority support for the plans, though the results of polls very widely. By contrast polls carried out immediately after the disaster found that some 80% of Japanese polled were in favour of abandoning nuclear power entirely.

Plans for disposal of radioactive water: ever since the disaster, water has had to be continually poured down through the three reactors which suffered melt-downs in 2011 to keep the melted-down cores cool to prevent them suffering a further chain reaction and melting down further, with catastrophic results.

In the process the water becomes radioactive. Up to present most of this water has been stored in over 1,000 large steel tanks, presumably to prevent contaminating the Pacific. By 2021 over a million tons was stored and TEPCO, owners of Fukushima, claimed that the storage space available for storing such water would run out when it reached 1.37 million tons, predicting this would be reached by summer 2022. Though it’s not clear why more storage tanks could not continue to be built indefinitely!

With no prospect of the melted cores being removed and dealt with safely, the Japanese government in April 2021 gave up any idea of keeping the water out of the Pacific and announced that, beginning 2023, the water would be released to the Pacific in a “controlled” fashion. But, if all the water was to be released into the Pacific eventually, what was the point of storing it in the first place?

Surely the reason for the decision to release the water is rather to put an end to the ever-escalating cost of storing the water and because having such large and increasing amounts of radioactive water being stored on land gives the lie to Japan’s claim that the Fukushima disaster is over.

The plan is for all the water to be treated by the “Advanced Liquid Processing System” which will remove some but not all of the radioactive particles in it, as even TEPCO admits, before being fed into the Pacific.

This plan is now being acted on. On 2nd August, the Japanese Government, TEPCO, the Fukushima prefectural government and two local municipalities reached an agreement for the plan to go ahead. Two days later construction began of an underwater tunnel to be used for feed in the water from the tanks into the Pacific. On 6th September TEPCO even opened the construction site to the public. By then 80 metres of the tunnel had been completed.

The plan has encountered stiff opposition from regional fishing unions, including Japanese ones, that fear its impact on their livelihoods. The governments of Japan’s neighbours, China, South Korea and Taiwan have also expressed concern.

On 22nd September the President of the Pacific island state of Micronesia, in a speech at the UN General Assembly, condemned Japan’s decision to discharge the radioactive water into the Pacific, saying, “We cannot close our eyes to the unimaginable threats of nuclear contamination, marine pollution and eventual destruction of the ‘blue Pacific continent” [caused by the decision’s implementation].

“The impacts of this decision are both transboundary and intergenerational in nature. As Micronesia’s head of state I cannot allow for the destruction of our ocean resources that support the livelihood of our people.” 

Adapted from a read-out at the Japanese Embassy vigil by Shigeo Kobayashi.