Dear all,

 

Please find today’s press roundup below. Thank you all for your continued support.

 Nukes in Britain

• Oxford Mail: A UK nuclear warhead convoy was spotted travelling through Oxfordshire this week. Nukewatchers from Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), who monitor and track these convoys, said the convoy consisted of four warhead carriers, MOD escort and support vehicles. They said it left Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Burghfield in Berkshire early Monday (October 21) morning and travelled north through Oxfordshire.
• Evening Standard: A Labour MP has suggested that £100 million would be better spent on preserving the BBC World Service, as opposed to an F35 fighter jet.

  In the Commons, Peter Prinsley described the BBC as a “vital UK soft power” as he urged the Government to acquire 73 jets instead of 74, to better fund the broadcaster.

  Earlier this year, the previous Conservative government said it was in negotiations to increase the number of F35 fighter jets by 2033. Meanwhile, the Labour Government is currently conducting a strategic defence review (SDR).

Global Nukes

• Reuters: Russia calls US statements on readiness for nuclear talks ‘deception.’
• China Daily: Nuclear weapons not means for common security.
• World Politics Review: There’s no such thing as ‘limited’ nuclear weapons.
• In Depth News: Nuclear disarmament is more important than tackling global warming.

Middle East

• Tony Blair: US should make sure Iran never gets nuclear weapons.
• The Korea Times opinion: Imperative to strengthen tradition of nonuse of nuclear weapons.
• Declassified UK: Gaza: Britain’s seventh genocide. Since the 1960s, Labour and Conservative governments have supported or acquiesced in several cases of genocide across Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

NATO / Europe

• Hamish de Bretton-Gordon for Forces News: Chemical weapons are the WMDs the West should fear from Putin, not nuclear.
• Kyiv Independent: Russia helping North Korea with sanctions evasion, nuclear technology in return for soldiers, arms, Budanov says.
• CEPA: Ukraine Can Go Nuclear — Should it? Western nations are being naïve if they expect Ukraine to quietly acquiesce to its own eradication.
• Politico: US envoy to NATO questions EU’s ‘buy local’ strategy on weapons.Julianne Smith suggests EU protectionism is not the way to get large quantities of good weapons to trouble spots quickly.
• Reuters: Poland leads NATO on defence spend – but can it afford it?.

UK Nuclear Energy

• Nuclear Engineering International: Engineering teams have successfully lifted the third and final steel liner ring into place at Hinkley Point C’s second unit using the giant crane known as Big Carl. Engineering teams have lifted the 423-tonne third and final steel liner ring into place at unit 2 of the Hinkley Point C NPP using giant crane, Big Carl. The steel ring, which is 11.6 metres in height and 47 metres in diameter, forms part of the inner containment wall of the reactor building and will now be encased in two layers of concrete.

Nuclear Energy

• Reuters: Giant cooling towers at Constellation Energy’s (CEG.O), opens new tab Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania have sat dormant for so long that grass has sprung up in the towers’ hollowed-out bases and wildlife roam inside. Armed guard stations at an entrance to the shut concrete facility, surrounded by barbed wire, sit empty. The plant, which would run so loud when operating that workers were required to wear hearing protection, is nearly silent. Constellation announced last month that it would revive the half-century-old Three Mile Island with the purpose of fueling Microsoft’s (MSFT.O), opens new tab data centers. Microsoft is expected to pay at least $100 a megawatt-hour, nearly double the typical cost of renewable energy in the region, as part of the 20-year power contract. The agreement shows the dramatic lengths Big Tech is willing to go to procure electricity for its artificial intelligence expansion and the undertaking by the U.S. power industry to meet that demand. The effort to restore Unit 1 at Three Mile Island is expected to take four years, at least $1.6 billion, and thousands of workers to complete the unprecedented task of restarting a retired nuclear plant.

Nuclear Waste

• National Audit Office: Value for money not yet being achieved at Sellafield, with concerns over project management and staffing. Management of major projects has begun to improve, but four projects underway when the NAO last reported in 2018 are significantly over budget and behind schedule. Sellafield demonstrated for the first time that it can remove its most hazardous waste, but progress isn’t quick enough. All four of these projects will be delivered much later than planned in 2018 and will cost much more: Site Security Architecture Upgrade (SSAU); Box Encapsulation Plant Product Store Direct Import Facility (BEPPS DIF); Box Encapsulation Plant (BEP); Magnox Swarf Storage Silo (MSSS).
• Coverage from the Guardian, Times, Telegraph, BBC, noting the cost overruns at the site are expected to hit £136 billion.

AI

• Dave Toke’s blog: How data centres will cut carbon emissions, not increase them.Despite the torrents of nonsense you will hear from lots of places (and a lot of energy nonsense these days seems to be concentrated in the Daily Telegraph) data centres and that fellow monster AI is unlikely to bust the electricity grid. Indeed, it is, on balance, more likely to reduce total energy demand. Nevertheless, lurid tales of the data centre/AI monster devouring power have been spreading, and, they have even been linked to companies such as Meta, Amazon and Amazon issuing press releases about how they are going to source power from another monster, new nuclear power plants. However, as in horror stories in general, these monsters are, at least in almost all cases, entirely mythical. As a point of fact, despite the seemingly rapidly rising number of data centres in the USA electricity demand in the first half of 2024 was the same as it was two years previously. The UK’s electricity demand has been on a downward path for some time. The International Energy Agency has recently published an analysis saying that data centres will be a small proportion of future growth energy demand (see HERE). Now, there is a very strong case for saying that electricity demand will increase to a greater or lesser extent. However, it rests on increased electrification of transport (starting with Electric Vehicles) and also heat pumps. But I don’t suppose many Daily Telegraph readers are very interested in that.

Future War

• Financial Times: Defence groups bet big on drone-destroying laser weapons.Leading contractors, including RTX in the US, the UK’s QinetiQ, and Europe’s MBDA, are investing heavily in the technology.
• Financial Times opinion: The conflicted investment case for defence tech. There’s a bull market for the fast-changing sector but investing and innovating in weapons carries risks

AUKUS / Indo-Pacific

•  Mondaq: AUKUS partnership so far and what’s to come.

 

Best,

 

Pádraig McCarrick

 

Press and Communications Officer

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament