CND Press Digest: Wednesday 9th October 2024

Posted: 9th October 2024

Nukes in Britain

  • One of the most terrifying programmes ever shown on British television,Threads is the nuclear apocalypse drama-documentary that continues to haunt people’s nightmares 40 years on. Ahead of a rare new showing on the BBC, here’s a look at how the drama still has the potential to terrify people. First broadcast on 23 September 1984, anyone who tuned in to BBC Two on that Sunday evening would experience a bleak and unforgettable depiction of a massive nuclear bomb attack on a British city and its aftermath. It was a nightmare scenario that was all too plausible in an era of heightened tension between the West and the then Soviet Union. Rarely seen on television since its first broadcast, it’s being shown again on BBC Four and iPlayer on 9 October. Sheffield was chosen as the fictional nuclear target because its writer, Kes author Barry Hines, lived there. Ahead of transmission, about 600 people from the area who volunteered to work as extras were invited to a private viewing of the film. Some were involved with amateur dramatics while others just thought it might be a bit of fun. Maybe they could spot themselves or their friends on television. No one was expecting anything quite like this. https://www.bbc.co.uk/articles/crl8nj3xxp7o?link_id=0&can_id=3728975d598a06451f917f9447384219&am…

Global Nukes

  • Associated Press: US scrambled to urge Putin not to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Woodward book says. Months into Russia’s war in Ukraine, the United States had intelligence pointing to “highly sensitive, credible conversations inside the Kremlin” that President Vladimir Putin was seriously considering using nuclear weapons to avoid major battlefield losses, journalist Bob Woodward reported in his new book, “War.”
  • Militarnyi: France modernizes Rafale F5 for ASN4G nuclear missiles.
  • National Interest: ‘Uncovered hatches’ caused a new navy submarine to sink at dock. In September, US defense officials revealed that the lead ship of a new class of Chinese nuclear-powered attack submarines sank while under construction, marking a significant embarrassment for China’s military.

Ukraine

  •  World Nuclear News: IAEA’s Grossi warns against targeting of Zaporizhzhia staff.“Any targeting of employees of nuclear power plants would constitute a blatant violation of this pillar fundamental for overall nuclear safety and security,” International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Raphael Mariano Grossi has said. It follows the killing, in a car bomb, of a person, identified by the IAEA as “Mr Korotkyi” on Friday morning in Energodar, where most staff of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant live. The IAEA said Russia said he was “one of the key staff members responsible for ensuring nuclear security” at the plant, while Ukraine told it he was not a staff member any more.
  • New Voice of Ukraine: Prominent Ukrainian scientist says nuclear weapons may soon be a thing of the past.
  • The Mirror: Horror footage shows aftermath of Putin’s ‘poor man’s nuclear weapon’ unleashed on Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed his country’s troops to invade Ukraine as part of a full-blown war in a bid to annex as much territory as possible and bring Kyiv under its control.
  • Financial Times: Ukraine weighs lifting arms export ban in bid to scale up drone industry. Country’s manufacturers could generate up to $20bn from sales abroad and boost domestic production for army.

Middle East

  • The New Arab: Israel has been accused of using bombs containing depleted uranium in its bombardment of Lebanon. “The extent of destruction and the penetration of buildings and ground by dozens of meters is evidence of the use of bombs containing depleted uranium, which has tremendous penetrating power,” the Syndicate of Chemists in Lebanon (SCL) said in a statement released on Monday. The statement further claimed that “the use of such types of internationally banned weapons, especially in densely populated Beirut, leads to massive destruction, and their dust causes many diseases, especially when inhaled.”
  • BBC: Netanyahu warns Lebanon of ‘destruction like Gaza.’
  • The Guardian: Israeli military deploys fourth division in Lebanon ground offensive. Hezbollah acting leader says its military capabilities still ‘fine’ as Israel sends more troops and keeps up airstrikes.
  • Patrick Wintour: Could Saudi-Iran talks prevent Lebanon from turning into a second Gaza?
  • Reuters: Hezbollah officials drop Gaza truce as condition for Lebanon ceasefire.

Iran

  • Tehran Times: Rising call for nukes. Unchecked Israeli aggression fuels Iranian public demands for nuclear weapons.

NATO / Europe

  •  New NATO member joins first nuclear weapons drill. Finland will take part in a major NATO nuclear weapons exercise next week for the first time since the country joined the military alliance last year, local media reported on Friday. https://www.newsweek.com/finland-news-new-nato-member-joins-first-nuclear-weapons-drill-1964764?link…
  • UnHerd: NATO will “disintegrate” if Ukraine loses its war with Russia, according to the French historian and public intellectual Emmanuel Todd. Speaking to Italian newspaper Corriere di Bologna this week, Todd claimed that “if Russia is defeated in Ukraine, European submission to the Americans will last for a century”, but that if the US-backed Ukrainian effort fails, “Nato will disintegrate and Europe will be left free.”

Space

  • Forbes: Ghost rockets, ASAT tests create ‘a ticking time bomb’ for astronauts. Decades of shooting rockets into orbit, interspersed with the firing off of anti-satellite missiles to shatter spacecraft circling the globe, are surrounding Earth with ever-moving minefields that will threaten spacefarers and space stations into the future.

Nuclear Waste

  •  World Nuclear News: The first canister has been packed successfully with test elements simulating actual fuel in the ongoing trial run of final disposal at the Onkalo used nuclear fuel repository, Finnish waste management company Posiva has announced.
  • Courthouse News Service: Supreme Court takes up nuclear waste storage scrap. A federal court said the government’s nuclear power regulator overstepped its authority by granting licenses to a pair of proposed short-term storage facilities for the country’s spent nuclear fuel inventory. The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday said it would hear arguments in two cases challenging the government’s ability to approve storage sites for used nuclear fuel from power plants, marking its official foray into the yearslong battle over what to do with the country’s growing stockpile of radioactive waste.
  • Gordon Edwards: The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) representing the nuclear waste producers, is mandated by the federal government to find a “willing host community” to accept the burial of all of Canada’s high level radioactive waste (used nuclear fuel) in a Deep Geological Repository (DGR). All but 2 of the original 22 candidate sites (from 12 years ago) have dropped out. NWMO hopes to have one of the two remaining candidates willing to take the last step. This talk by Gordon Edwards is one of several intended for residents of the northernmost candidate site, the Revell Lake site, between the towns of Ignace and Dryden, in Treaty 3 Territory of the Anishinabek Nation. Date of presentation: September 23, 2024.

UK Nuclear Energy

  • TASC: EDF’s hidden plans for two huge 30-foot-high flood barriers in the heart of East Suffolk’s Heritage Coast and Coast and Heaths AONB. As part of the much-criticised justification for issuing a nuclear site licence for the controversial Sizewell C nuclear development, the UK’s chief nuclear regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), has divulged hitherto hidden plans for two sea walls to be constructed in the heart of East Suffolk’s Heritage Coast and the Suffolk & Essex Coast & Heaths National Landscape, designed to provide additional flood protection. Both walls are proposed to be up to 30 feet high. To the south of the Sizewell C site, the wall will span the ‘Sizewell Gap’ joining Sizewell A’s Sea defences to the cliffs south of Sizewell village. The northern one will span the river in the Sizewell Marshes SSSI, joining Sizewell C’s northern sea defences with higher ground inland at Goose Hill and will be at least 100 metres in length but potentially much longer. The ONR claims that Sizewell C Ltd, the site’s developer, is ‘committed’ to installing these structures ‘should climate change be worse than is reasonably foreseeable’, despite there being no mention of them in EDF’s application for the Development Consent Order (DCO) for Sizewell C. Therefore, they were absent from the plans approved by the Secretary of State in July 2022 after he had overturned the Planning Inspectors’ recommendation for refusal.
  • Rayo: Bosses at a nuclear power station planned for the Suffolk coast say there are no current plans to build two 30-foot high flood defence walls at the site,despite claims from campaigners. The Together Against Sizwell C (TASC) group says EDF’s ‘hidden plans for the barriers would devastate neighbouring villages if they are installed’. Those in the group also claim that the ONR says that Sizewell C Ltd, the site’s developer, is ‘committed’ to install these structures ‘should climate change be worse than is reasonably foreseeable’, despite there being no mention of them in EDF’s application for the Development Consent Order (DCO) for Sizewell C.
  • East Anglian Daiy Times: Pontins Pakefield holiday park to close to public in January. Refurbishment of a seaside holiday park is set to start in the new year so it can house nuclear power plant builders.
  • Gloucestershire Times: EDF bosses grilled over River Severn salt marsh plans at ‘prickly’ meeting. Arlingham peninsula salt marsh proposal questioned at parish council meeting with one person turning up dressed as a hedgehog. Plans for salt marshes along the River Severn in Gloucestershire linked to a new nuclear power station were met with disbelief at a packed meeting last night (Monday October 7). EDF bosses were quizzed at Arlingham Parish Council about their environmental improvement plans which are linked to the new Hinkley C site in Somerset. Prior to the meeting, the energy firm has been in touch with landowners about the idea of creating salt marshes along the river. EDF made a presentation which outlined how important the nuclear power plant is and they identified four sites for saltmarshes.
  • BBC: How many fish does a nuclear power station kill? It sounds grisly, but for the engineers on the Somerset coast building Britain’s first nuclear power station in a generation, it’s an urgent question. And for conservationists and local villagers on the banks of the River Severn in Gloucestershire, it has become such an urgent question they filled a village hall to debate it. Proposals for the sea-water cooling system at Hinkley Point C will see 44 tonnes of fish ingested and killed every year, according to EDF, the company building it. “This scheme will decimate fish stocks,” said Dave Seal, a wildlife campaigner. “We already have lost 80% of our salmon, and half of the salmon that get into Hinkley’s cooling system will be destroyed.” But Andrew Cockroft, from Hinkley Point C, insisted there will be a “very very small impact on fish populations”.
  • Hartlepool Mail: Hartlepool College of Further Education hosts 70 businesses to set out opportunities for X-energy’s multi-billion pound Hartlepool nuclear reactor project. X-energy and deployment partner Cavendish Nuclear are going to be discussing the potential production of advanced modular nuclear reactors. X-energy wants to develop a 12-reactor plant next to the existing EDF Nuclear Power Station by the early 2030s.
  • Scottish Government: Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004. Could you supply all briefings and analysis held by the Scottish Government on nuclear power in the last six months?
  • Scottish venture capital firm Ventex has acquired Cumbria-based manufacturing business Rovtech, as it seeks to accelerate the expansion of nuclear energy. It is the third business to become part of Ventex, which is focussed on repurposing companies, technologies, skills and experience in the existing supply chain to support renewable energy markets. Rovtec specialises in harsh environment manufacturing and primarily serves the nuclear and subsea energy sectors in the US, Japan, France and the UK. Nuclear power generation is expected to treble by 2050, following a breakthrough at COP28, where 25 countries agreed that nuclear energy is key to carbon reduction. https://www.insider.co.uk/news/scottish-venture-firm-acquires-english-33843881?link_id=27&can_id…

Nuclear Energy

  • The Register: The US Department of Energy has awarded shares of an $800 million contract for advanced nuclear fuel deconversion to four companies, but it’s unclear who will be in charge of getting refined fuel to those deconversion sites. High-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, is needed for nuclear reactor designs like small modular reactors (SMRs), molten salt reactors and other new variations that are supposed to be safer and more efficient. Unlike traditional nuclear fuel, which contains up to 5 percent uranium-235 (the isotope that’s used to power nuclear power plants), HALEU includes a large proportion of the fissile isotope (as much as 20 percent). Unfortunately for American nuclear interests, HALEU production at scale is only really happening in two unfriendly countries: Russia and China. That situation has already caused delays for nuclear power projects like the Bill Gates-backed TerraPower plant in Wyoming.

Renewables

  • David Toke’s blog: Despite Germany’s nuclear power phase out in 2022 and 2023, the use of coal in electricity generation has plunged by nearly half in the first half of 2024 - that is compared to the first half of 2021. Meanwhile renewable energy production is surging. This is no freak result, merely the continuation of a trend. Compared to the first half of 2021 over thirty per cent less coal was used in power generation in the first half of 2024 . The first half of 2021 shows the position before the Greens entered Government following the General Election in September 2021. That is before Green Party (Die Grunen) Energy Minister Robert Habeck (formally Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action) orchestrated the nuclear phase-out. Meanwhile (compared to the first half of 2021) renewable energy production has increased by nearly 30 per cent in the same period. Since the beginning of 2023 renewable energy has been responsible for the generation of more than half of German electricity production. By comparison coal’s contribution is going in the opposite downward direction, and may account for no more than or even less than 20 per cent of electricity production in 2024.

AUKUS

Best,

 

Pádraig McCarrick

 

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

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