Articles

Why greens must learn to love nuclear power - I have great respect for Mark Lynas but on this occasion he seems to be completely wrong - putting his faith in fast breeder reactors for heaven's sake! The reactors may work well enough, the problems are in managing a massive global plutonium cycle, predicated on reprocessing unbelievably dangerous high level nuclear waste in a safe way, without significant releases of radiation ... all over the world. We wouldn't feed our dogs Chinese pet food (contaminated with toxic melamine) so how come we can trust them to undertake a huge plutonium reprocessing exercise - when we can't even do it ourselves (as demonstrated by Sellafield)? Published in the New Statesman, 18 September 2008.
The future will not be nuclear - writing in Prospect magazine (September 2008, issue 150), Tom Burke deftly demolishes the case for a new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK. "The government is pinning its hopes on a nuclear renaissance to meet Britain's climate change goals. Planning procedures are being eased and hidden subsidies offered. But the policy is based on a misunderstanding of nuclear power's lousy economics, and will fail ... "
Government gives nuclear go-ahead - we review the Government's announcement of 10 January 2008.
Nuclear Power Dossier - Uranium Mining and Milling - Jon Hughes investigates the problems of Uranium supply for The Ecologist. "The government's chief scientist Sir David King has talked about doubling capacity in the UK, to around 30 per cent. Japan envisages building another 30 reactors, the US around 10-15. If nuclear capacity doubles in size, then the ore is going to run out in 20 years. Under such circumstances there is no guaranteed price stability. The spot market price has risen 600 per cent in the past four years amid talk that nuclear capacity is to double in size. In turn there will be no security of supply ... "
Paying to be propagandised - BNFL, the controversial nuclear company, is at the heart of the multi-million pound PR and lobbying campaign for new nuclear power stations in the UK. Yet the publicly-owned company refuses to divulge important details of how it seeks to manipulate public opinion and governmental support. Chris Grimshaw writes for Corporate Watch, October / November 2006.
UK Energy Review: A policy made by big business - Part II - article by Robert Stevens, 5 September 2006, the second of a two-part critique of the Blair government's 2006 review of UK energy policy which ended up supporting new nuclear power stations in the UK.
UK Energy Review: A policy made by big business - article by Robert Stevens, 4 September 2006, the first of a two-part critique of the Blair government's 2006 review of UK energy policy which ended up supporting new nuclear power stations in the UK.
Thanks, But We Still Don't Need It, writes George Monbiot. "How on earth can we say what nuclear power stations will cost if we don't even know what their decommissioning entails? The government will assure us today that there will be no subsidies and no guaranteed prices for the nuclear industry ... But in order to guarantee public safety, the government must be ready to rescue our power stations or their waste piles if the nuclear operators are in danger of going bankrupt."
Nuclear Power Dossier: Licenced Emissions and Controlled Releases - The Ecologist examines the routine nuclear discharges on which the nuclear industry depends. "You can get a certain amount of warmth into your body by standing in the sunshine for half an hour. You could quite conceivably get the same amount of warmth into your body by eating a hot burning coal plucked from the fire. Obviously the results of one are beneficial and the results of another are fatal. But as far as the current radiation risk model is concerned, both are understood in the same way."
Nuclear Power Dossier: Operation and Maintenance - running a nuclear reactor has many hazards, according to The Ecologist: "When the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) met in Berlin in 2003, ‘carelessness and complacency' by operators was at the top of the agenda. Both ‘threaten the continued existence of our business,' Nucleonics Week quoted a Swedish delegate as saying. The then President of the WANO, Hajimu Maeda, diagnosed a ‘terrible malaise' that threatened the business from within. It starts with loss of motivation, complacency and ‘carelessness in upholding a culture of safety due to severe cost pressures resulting from deregulated electricity markets'. If these problems are not recognized and countered, he warned, ‘a serious accident will destroy the industry'. "
Nuclear Power Dossier: Nuclear Waste - The Ecologist turns the spotlight onto nuclear waste. "When spent fuel is removed from the reactor core, it is a pulsating mass of radioactivity, containing uranium, plutonium, cesium, strontium, technetium and neptunium among other elements. If unshielded, it would kill a person standing three feet away in seconds. Even after decades of radioactive decay, a few minutes' unshielded exposure could deliver a lethal dose ... "
Nuclear Power Dossier - Building a Nuclear Power Station - The Ecologist explains what is involved in building a nuclear power station. "A nuclear power station is not a singular building as the name implies. It is a facility comprising of around 10 auxiliary buildings, which act as the central nervous system for the reactor. The eventual footprint of any facility will be between 500-1,000 acres, including the exclusion zone ... "
Nuclear Amnesia by Walt Patterson, published in The World Today, April 2006. "Those suffering from nuclear amnesia have forgotten why nuclear power faded from the energy scene in the first place, how many times it has failed to deliver, how often it has disappointed its most determined advocates, how extravagantly it has squandered unparalleled, unstinting support from taxpayers around the world, leaving them with burdens that may last for millennia ... "
Why nuclear power cannot be a major energy source - excellent article by David Fleming (April 2006 ). "It takes a lot of fossil energy to mine uranium, and then to extract and prepare the right isotope for use in a nuclear reactor. It takes even more fossil energy to build the reactor, and, when its life is over, to decommission it and look after its radioactive waste. As a result, with current technology, there is only a limited amount of uranium ore in the world that is rich enough to allow more energy to be produced by the whole nuclear process than the process itself consumes. This amount of ore might be enough to supply the world's total current electricity demand for about six years ... "
Mighty mice - by Amory Lovins, published in Nuclear Engineering International 21 December 2005. "The most powerful force resisting new nuclear may be a legion of small, fast and simple microgeneration and efficiency projects ... "
A nuclear power primer by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen. "Renewable energy from photovoltaics, biomass and wind will solve the world's energy and climate problems, not nuclear-power giantism ... " Published by Open Democracy, 7 June 2005.
UK 'neglects' nuclear waste - BBC story about the Royal Society's assessment of UK nuclear waste management. Current liabilities are of the order of £85 billion!