CND Press Digest: Tuesday 10th September 2024

Nukes in Britain

• Nucnet: UK industry employment highest ever as ‘major new projects’ bring big increase. Industry association report shows record growth, but calls for ‘urgent decisions’ on planned reactors.
• The Economist: Britain’s submarines are at sea for too long—or not at all. No sunlight or fresh food for months.
• The National: New images raise concerns over state of UK nuclear submarines.

Ukraine

• Greenpeace: Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe is formally opening a new office in Kyiv, Ukraine today. The global environmental network has worked with allies in the country since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and will now officially expand its offices in order to accelerate its work on green reconstruction projects in Ukraine, as well as investigating environmental war crimes resulting from Russia’s invasion. Greenpeace will also continue to closely monitor the security concerns and radiation levels around Ukrainian nuclear power plants.

UK Nuclear Power

• Somerset County Gazette: The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station project is investigating new locations for the creation of saltmarsh, as an alternative to the proposed site at Pawlett Hams near Bridgwater. This follows a public consultation held earlier this year where hundreds of people shared their views on the proposal. Hinkley Point C is obliged to make environmental improvements like saltmarsh. Measures also include the improvement of weirs in tributary rivers to help migrating fish reach their breeding grounds.
• Somerset County Gazette: Hinkley Point B nuclear power station’s decommissioning project has now opened for public consultation. Stakeholders, including residents of the Bridgwater area, are invited to share their thoughts with the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) on EDF’s environmental impact assessment for the proposed decommissioning project. Construction started at Hinkley Point B in 1967, with the site beginning to generate energy in 1976. It was decommissioned in August 2022, after supplying 965 MW to the National Grid.

Decommissioning

• Somerset Live: EDF has applied to the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) for formal permission to decommission the B site. Somerset residents now have three months to give their views on the matter – with any decommissioning not expected to get under way until mid-2025 at the earliest.
• New Civil Engineer: Government considering scrapping Wylfa plans and 24GW nuclear capacity target. Energy secretary Ed Miliband is considering scrapping plans to use the Wylfa site in North Wales for a new large-scale nuclear power plant as well as the UK’s target of developing 24GW of nuclear capacity by 2050.
• Electronic Specifier: Officials from the US Department of Energy visited a UK facility that is advancing the application of technology to make nuclear decommissioning safer, quicker, and more cost-effective. The Sellafield Engineering Centre of Excellence in Cumbria welcomed the delegation to highlight how off-site innovation and solutions can address challenges at Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) sites across the UK. The visit, part of a knowledge-sharing initiative facilitated by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), involved a tour of the centre in Cleator Moor. The US delegation were shown how teams at the Centre of Excellence employ various technologies, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), Virtual Reality (VR), and 3D printing.

Nuclear Power

• Financial Times: World’s largest uranium miner warns Ukraine war makes it harder to supply west. Kazatomprom’s chief executive has warned that Russia’s war on Ukraine is making it harder for the world’s largest uranium producer. Kazatomprom’s chief executive has warned that Russia’s war on Ukraine is making it harder for the world’s largest uranium producer to keep supplying the west as the gravitational pull towards Moscow and Beijing grows stronger.
• Mediapart: Flamanville EPR shutdown prompts fresh questions over reactor design. The first attempt to start up the process of nuclear reaction in the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) at the Flamanville nuclear power plant, situated on France’s Channel Coast close to Jersey and Guernsey, was aborted by an automatic shutdown last week. The process was finally successfully re-engaged four days later, but the failure was just the latest in a catalog of incidents and delays at the site, now 12 years overdue. For one specialist, the flaws in the design of the reactor, which is the same design as that planned for Hinkley Point in England, are such that it ‘will never function properly’.
• The Guardian: A difficult operation to remove a small amount of radioactive debris from Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has begun, after technical issues suspended an earlier attempt. Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said in a statement on Tuesday that its “pilot extraction operation” had started. It will take about two weeks, according to the company.
• The Telegraph: I ate a £27 peach from Fukushima so you don’t have to. Harrods is selling the fruit grown in the Japanese region hit by nuclear disaster, saying it offers ‘unparalleled sweetness and juiciness’.
• Bloomberg: Italy is looking to build nuclear reactors by creating a new company in partnership with a foreign investor, the Ansa newswire reported, citing Industry Minister Adolfo Urso. “We are working on an Italian Newco, with a foreign technological partnership, which will allow advanced, third-generation nuclear power to be produced shortly in Italy,” Urso said at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, on Lake Como, according to Ansa. Urso didn’t named any of potential companies and partners. The production and use of atomic energy on Italian soil would mark a shift: nuclear power was banned by popular votes in referendums in 1987 and again in 2011. The government is also working on a legislative measure that aims to reintroduce the use of nuclear energy with the latest available technologies later this year, Energy Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said on Saturday.

NATO / Europe

• NATO airspace. Bucharest dispatches F-16 fighter jets and sends alerts to residents after drones fly into Romania and Latvia.
• Foreign Policy: NATO frontline states need an air defense shield now. Russia is probing NATO with attack drones and missiles. Ignoring them is a dangerous option.
• UnHerd: NATO is holding back Poland’s self-defence. The Russian threat grows every day.

Middle East

• Iran International: Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has raised alarms over the continuous increase in Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 20% and 60%. Grossi also highlighted the agency’s growing concerns over Tehran’s failure to provide critical information about its nuclear program, further escalating international fears of Iran’s advancing nuclear capabilities.
• Middle East Monitor: The UAE has successfully completed the Arab world’s first nuclear power plant, with the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant now fully operational.

AUKUS/ Indo-Pacific

• Reuters: IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi speaks to reporters following a board of governors meeting on nuclear security, verification and monitoring in Iran and the application of safeguards in North Korea.
• CNN: North Korea’s Kim Jong Un says country to increase number of nuclear weapons ‘exponentially,’ state media reports.
• Newsweek: North Korea slams US ‘nuclear threat’.
• Voice of America: Under Yoon, calls for South Korean nukes ‘normalized’.

Best,

Pádraig McCarrick

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament