nuclear

Millions face shock New Year’s Day hike in energy bills

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https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/millions-face-shock-new-years-day-hike-energy-bills

A household energy bill displayed on a mobile phone held next to a gas hob

MILLIONS face a shock New Year’s Day hike in energy bills — to pay for nuclear expansion projects even while wholesale prices fall.

Industry “regulator” Ofgem announced today a surprise increase in gas and electricity costs from January.

Campaigners urged Chancellor Rachel Reeves to act in her Budget to help struggling families as freezing winter temperatures bite.

The government’s cap on energy prices is to go up by 0.2 per cent in the three months to March.

End Fuel Poverty Coalition co-ordinator Simon Francis said: “Energy bills remain stubbornly high as households face a fifth winter of the energy costs crisis. Today’s announcement sees standing charges rise yet again, highlighting the structural problems in how energy is paid for. 

“The addition of a new levy on bills which pays for nuclear power stations is unwelcome and could have been delayed until closer to when these plants actually start to generate electricity.”

The government this summer announced that taxpayers will effectively underwrite a private investment deal worth more than £38 billion to build Britain’s biggest nuclear project in a generation at the Sizewell C site on the Suffolk coast.

Billpayers face paying £1 a month for the costs from this winter until the project is complete under a funding mechanism that shields Sizewell’s investors from the impact of any delays — even if the total cost spirals to as much as £47bn.

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https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/millions-face-shock-new-years-day-hike-energy-bills

dizzy: Nuclear power is too expensive, we can’t afford it. There’s also the problem that it produces waste that remains dangerously radioactive essentially for ever.

Continue ReadingMillions face shock New Year’s Day hike in energy bills

Green Party leader criticises nuclear reactor plan

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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c98np768g92o

Green Party leader Zack Polanski said money would be better spent on renewable energy

Green Party leader Zack Polanski has criticised government plans to build a new generation of nuclear reactors, calling it old technology that is like “creating a fax machine”.

Centrica and US firm X-energy aim to create up to 2,500 jobs in Hartlepool by building 12 new advanced modular nuclear reactors.

Polanski said it was technology “from a long time ago” and that money would be better spent on wind and solar power, which could deliver thousands of jobs.

Labour MP for Hartlepool Jonathan Brash said the technology was being pioneered in the United States and that the companies were also working with schools and colleges to recruit a local workforce.

The nuclear site will be developed next to the town’s existing nuclear power station, which is set to be decommissioned in 2028.

The government previously said that the deal could secure the next 50 years of clean, homegrown energy and that it “marks the dawn of a new golden age for British nuclear”.

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Continue ReadingGreen Party leader criticises nuclear reactor plan

Government faces calls to investigate Faslane nuclear leak

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/government-faces-calls-investigate-faslane-nuclear-leak

Undated handout photo provided by the Ministry of Defence of vanguard class nuclear submarine HMS Vengeance in Gare Loch, after departing HM Naval Base Clyde in Faslane, Scotland, to go on sea trials

REVELATIONS of radioactive leaks from Trident’s base were branded “as shocking as they are unsurprising” today as the government faced calls to urgently investigate.

Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) documents obtained by The Ferret revealed that the watchdog was aware of the 2019 discharge of radioactive water from the home of Britain’s nuclear arsenal at Faslane and Coulport — just 30 miles from Glasgow, Scotland’s most populous city — into Loch Long, citing the cause as the Royal Navy’s failure to properly maintain a network of 1,500 pipes.

Scottish CND executive member David Kelly told the Star: “The failures in pipework at Coulport, and the subsequent release of nucleotides into Loch Long are as shocking as they are unsurprising.

“‘How cheaply can we run a nuclear arsenal’ seems to be the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) approach to this most deadly of facilities.  

“All mechanical components, as complex as a nuclear submarine, or as simple as a pipe, are designed for a specific life.

“At Scottish CND we make as much noise as we can about the four Vanguard class nuclear submarines which host the missiles we lease from America being well beyond their design life.

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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/government-faces-calls-investigate-faslane-nuclear-leak

Continue ReadingGovernment faces calls to investigate Faslane nuclear leak

Hiroshima 80 years on

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/hiroshima-80-years

JEREMY CORBYN reports from Hiroshima where he represented CND at the 80th anniversary of the bombing of the city by the US

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Hundreds of thousands died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the bombs and the cancers that followed. Probably two million lives have been lost by testing and the medical effects of radiation emitted.

Hiroshima’s bombing in 1945 did not serve any military purpose. Japan was already on the verge of surrender and was reaching out via the Soviet Union for an end to the conflict.

This was well known to the US and Britain at the time. In reality, it was the last bomb of WWII, and the first bomb of the cold war. The US had spent $2 billion on the Manhattan Project to develop the bomb, despite the opposition of many scientists including Albert Einstein who had initially supported it. They opposed it because they realised the indiscriminate killing of civilians was then, as it is now, an inevitable consequence of nuclear war.

The horrors of the atomic bombings still haunt the now aged survivors. Known as the Hibakusha, they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in pleading with the world to abolish the nuclear weapons that had killed their friends and family.

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Eighty years on from the horrors of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki), and the weapons now available are many times more powerful. There are no winners in nuclear war; only burnt bodies, a destroyed environment and a nuclear winter for the whole planet.

After 80 years, we need to make the Global Ban Treaty a reality — and rid this world of nuclear weapons once and for all.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/hiroshima-80-years

Continue ReadingHiroshima 80 years on

Greens react to Sizewell C deal: Nuclear is too expensive and too slow 

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Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.

Commenting on news that the Government has struck a deal with private investors to progress the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk – a deal in which the government will have a 45% stake – co-leader of the Green Party and Waveney Valley MP, Adrian Ramsay, said:   

“The tax-payer will pick up nearly half of the estimated £38bn bill for Sizewell C but see not a single watt of electricity from it for at least a decade. Bill-payers will also have to stump up the cash for this plant through an increase in their energy bills by around £12 a year.  

“New nuclear is a vastly more expensive way to produce electricity than renewables, with electricity from Sizewell C estimated to cost around £170 per megawatt hour compared to offshore wind at around £89/MWh. Hinkley C has also shown how the costs of developing nuclear power plants mushroom and are beset by endless delays.  

“The billions of our money being squandered on this nuclear gamble would be far better spent on insulating and retrofitting millions of homes, which would bringing down energy bills and keep people warm in winter and cool in summer. We should also be investing in genuinely green power such as fitting millions of solar panels to roofs, and in innovative technologies like tidal power. All this would create many more jobs than nuclear ever will and deliver clean electricity much more quickly.” 

Continue ReadingGreens react to Sizewell C deal: Nuclear is too expensive and too slow