Low Carbon Nuclear? No Way!

“There is no such thing as a zero or near-zero-emission nuclear power plant”. Stanford professor Mark Z Jacobson has said new nuclear plants may cost up to 7.4 times more than wind and solar facilities, with construction times longer by up to 15 years. Such a delay, he said, may see a huge amount of…

But Councils simply don’t get it

We made sure the Vice-Chair of the Joint Local Authorities Group on Sizewell C read our placards at the opening night of the latest consultation on the proposed new stations. Since then Suffolk County Council has been widely reported criticising various aspects of the project that don’t go far enough to protect the local environment…

Where’s the Government?

Chuckling perhaps over the cracks in the Hunterston reactors’ graphite blocks. The publicity given to them, including the crass allusion that they are still hairline when they’re 2.9 mm wide, neatly reinforces the Government’s argument that new nuclear stations are necessary to replace these crumbling fossils. What about Chancellor Hammond’s Regulated Asset Base (RAB) as…

And what about small modular reactors (SMRs)?

To understand the extent of the hype from the nuclear industry and government alike about SMRs one should read the March Nuclear Monitor: https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor, to whom we are indebted for this cartoon and excerpt. “There’s nothing in [this] history that would inspire any confidence in the likelihood of a significant SMR industry developing now. The…

Whitehall’s problems

There are so many very good arguments for no more nuclear power stations of any sort to be built, that there must be a good reason for Rolls Royce to produce fantasies like this SMR of theirs (left), that might get washed up on any convenient shore near you – particularly since the famous firm…

Let’s raise some issues

We plan to keep the issue of Sizewell in the public eye with homemade placards on roadside vigils, for an hour or two in different places. If you’re interested in getting together half a dozen people and choosing a safe and suitable place, (not too far away perhaps from some refreshment) we would join you…

Is SNAHU a term whose time has come?

Four and a half years after the Head of the UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said it ought to happen, the UK is to base its emergency protection against nuclear accidents on “severe nuclear accidents however unlikely” instead of on “reasonably foreseeable accidents” (SNAHU, not RFA). But not until Parliament finds time to debate…