Articles

Siemens Abandons Nuclear Power - Karl Grossman reports for Counterpunch, 19 September 2011. "The just-announced decision by Siemens, a major player in the nuclear industry, to withdraw entirely from nuclear power is a significant declaration by a corporation about nuclear power and the world's potential energy future ... ".
Fukushima spoils world appetite for nuclear power - reports Deutsche Welle, 9 September 2011. "Several months after the nuclear disaster in Japan, market research company Ipsos asked citizens in 24 countries how they feel about atomic energy. In all but three of them - India, the United States and Poland - there was consensus that the time has come for cleaner, safer sources of power." That includes the UK where just over half now oppose nuclear power!
Soft Energy Paths for the 21st Century - by Amory B. Lovins, 30 July 2011. "The Fukushima disaster was not a surprise. Since the 1960s, reactor meltdowns caused by power failures have been understood and feared. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission task force now examining this accident - America has six identical and 17 very similar plants - already found the backup power supplies inadequate. Many of us have been saying so for decades. More broadly, it was unwise to put 54 reactors in an earthquake-and-tsunami zone crowded with 127 million people, and to pack many reactors together at one site so failure can cascade from one to the rest ... "
The UK′s new energy future - Damian Carrington reports for The Guardian on how Chris Huhne set out the government's plan for cutting the UK's carbon emissions, while keeping the lights on. And how EDF are "beaming" at the outcome: huge subsidies at the consumer's expense specifically designed to favour nuclear power. Published 12 July 2011.
Lib Dem MPs set to rebel against nuclear power ′subsidy′ - Backbenchers say measure would represent breach of trust with voters as coalition agreement rules out bringing in new subsidy, reports Allegra Stratton. Published in The Guardian, 1 July 2011.
With so many LibDem MPs opposed to nuclear subsidies, we need to target LibDem MPs in our campaigning and support them in voting down key legislation.
Revealed: British government′s plan to play down Fukushima - internal emails seen by Guardian show PR campaign was launched to protect UK nuclear plans after tsunami in Japan. By Rob Edwards, 30 June 2011.
Learning from Japan's nuclear disaster - buy Amory B. Lovins, 17 March 2011. "Nuclear power is the only energy source where mishap or malice can kill so many people so far away; the only one whose ingredients can help make and hide nuclear bombs; the only climate solution that substitutes proliferation, accident, and high-level radioactive waste dangers. Indeed, nuclear plants are so slow and costly to build that they reduce and retard climate protection. Here's how. Each dollar spent on a new reactor buys about 2-10 times less carbon savings, 20-40 times slower, than spending that dollar on the cheaper, faster, safer solutions that make nuclear power unnecessary and uneconomic: ... "
Nuclear power is the reason for the new energy regulations - Catherine Mitchell lifts the lid on the complex web of subsidies the Government is planning for nuclear power. Published in The Guardian, 11 March 2011. "The government wants nuclear power but cannot be seen to subsidise it, so it has had to set up this set of convoluted measures. Why the government wants nuclear power so badly, given all the unwanted outcomes and given nuclear can, at best, only provide a small proportion of the low-carbon energy needed is a mystery. That enigma will hurt those who have to pay a higher price for electricity."
Nuclear Socialism - by Amory B. Lovins, published in the Weekly Standard, 25 October 2010 (Vol. 16 No. 6), in which he exposes the mad, bad world of nuclear finance. "Given Americans' increasing anxiety over made-in-Washington socialism, it's a wonder that the nuclear power industry has escaped scrutiny for so long. The federal government socializes the risk of investing in nuclear power while privatizing profits. This same formula drove the frenzied speculation that cratered the housing and financial markets. What might it cause with nuclear power? "
New nuclear reactors, same old story - by Amory B. Lovins, 21 March 2009. This timely article decisively repudiates the clarion calls of nuclear optimists for a new generation of 'clean, green' nuclear reactors.
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!
France - country of the atom - a classic article from The Ecologist by Edward Goldsmith and Peter Bunyard, from December 1981, revealing the true costs of France's nuclear dream. "If nuclear power seems cheap in France, it is because half the costs have been ignored. An accurate accounting of costs, direct and indirect, reveals France's massive nuclear electricity programme as a ruinously expensive folly."