Not Exactly

During December Urenco produced a statement which states:-

‘ Urenco welcomes the UK Government’s pledge to realise a more ambitious target of reducing the country’s emissions by at least 68% by 2030, as compared with 1990 levels.’

What this statement does not include is how mining and processing uranium, the building of new reactors, or nukiller waste storage processes increase atmospheric pollution.

While there is no account of transport carbons emissions in this statement.

The best line in this statement states: –

‘ This pledge further demonstrates a serious intention for the UK to be seen as a leader in decarbonisation.‘

It sounds very similar to those lines we keep hearing from those who operate Sellafield.

It’s more like world leaders in the production of pollution.

Sizewell

Together Against Sizewell C [ TASC ] was founded in 2013 to stop EDF’s plans to build two EPR nukiller reactors on Suffolk’s fragile Heritage Coast.

You can read about their campaigning activities at

www.tasizewellc.org.uk/

Home

ONR Reports ‘Significant incidents‘.

Normally we would not recommend anyone to read the publications of the Nukiller Power Industry, but this is [ as they say ] an exception.

The annual report of the Office for Nuclear Regulation [ ONR ] was published in November.

As with all such reports it is very self congatuatilly in nature, which is why it needs to be read with a very critical analysis what it states to be factually true.

The most telling part of the report is to be found within the section Significant incidents by site.

This lists various problems at Devenport, Dungeness, Heysham, & Sellafield.

Nukiller Power, Capenhurst, and Brexit.

Amongst the various undesirable aspects of the Brexit deal is the following agreement for further cooperation on nukiller power.

This agreement continues to uphold the Treaty of Almelo, under which URENCO was established on the 4^th of March 1970.

You can read the text of it here.

DRS Updates

On October 15^th yet another DRS waste train was observed on the way to Torness. While on December 7^th there were two flasks which arrived at Dungeness.

Framatome

Framatome is not a company which is very well know by many anti nukiller activists, but it is one which does need to receive much more of our attention.

Framatome is owned by the EDF Group (75.5%), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI – 19.5%) and Assystem (5%).

Here are a couple of headline press releases which have been put out of late.

May 26, 2020 – Framatome signed a framework agreement with EDF in to provide engineering services to support ongoing nukiller power station operations.

December 7^th 2020 – Rolls-Royce group signs agreement to sell its civil nuclear instrumentation & control business to Framatome

Forthcoming Events

Given the current restrictions on public transport, it is not possible to do much forward planning, or undertake any of our regular events.

However there are a few dates which we wish to highlight over the coming year.

– Fukushima Day – March 11^th.

– The DRS Open Day – In July if it takes place at all.

– 64^th Anniversary of the Windscale fire – October 10^th.

Lockdown Campaigning

As with many campaigning groups and organisations, it is extremely difficult to plan any protests, pickets, leafleting sessions, or public events at present.

Thus we are spending a lot of out time keeping up to date with various nukiller developments, and trying to work out just where we might hold events over the next year to 15 months.

The problem is that many of the places we wish to hold events in are now back in lockdown again. A good example being Preston near Springfields. While many of the events at which we have had stalls in the past have been cancelled this year.

On the plus side it is giving us time to evaluate just how we will continue to campaigning over the next few years.

Current Campaigns

There are currently a lot of news stories about reactor developments with possible new build, Hinkley, Sizewell, & Bradwell.

Rather than just link, or reproduce all this news information, we recommend everyone to take out a subscription to the No2NuclearPower daily news briefings.

Other blogs and websites which we also recommend in terms of keeping up to date on energy and nukiller power issues are that of

Dr Ian Fairlie, Dave Toke’s Green Energy Blog , RADIATION FREE LAKELAND, Beyond Nuclear International, Fairewinds Energy Education, and the WISE Nuclear Monitor.

You can also keep up to date upon what’s new via our facebook page.

Petitions

Currently there are a number of online petitions calling for action to stop the nukiller power industry.

A number of these are to be found on the Stop Hinkley Website.

There is also a Petition calling on the Welsh Government to invoke the Environment (Wales) Act 2016, and thus stop the dumping of radioactively contaminated mud in Welsh waters.

Keeping Informed Via Out Publications

Unlike many campaigning groups we are not holding online talks, but you can still keep yourself informed by reading our publications online.

Here are the links to them.

Capenhurst. The facts.

Spotlight on Springfields

Wildlife and the Atom

You can also find a lot of information via our Issue Briefings.

DRS Updates

DRS are still moving used nukiller fuel rods to Sellafield.

Recent waste flask movements included to and from Torness on May 14^th & June 16^th.

While they were also observed going through Crewe on May 20^th & June 6^th.

It is also of note that DRS are still recruiting for more drivers, which will be based in their London and Rugby depots.

Future Events

Windscale Fire Anniversary events

On October 10^th it will be the 63nd Anniversary Of The Windscale Fire.

At the moment we intend to mark this anniversary.

How exactly this will be done will depend upon both local lockdowns, and the availability of public transport.

So more information about what we intend to do much nearer the time.

These last few months we have been very busy on campaign work which is of a long term nature.

This edition of Countering Capenhurst is a brief summary of just some of this work.

New Pamphlet.

One of our major projects at present is working upon a new edition of Wildlife and the Atom.

It is a study of the effects of radiation upon our fellow creature.

The pamphlet was first published by Greenpeace [ London ] in 1983, and so there are a lot of updates which are being added to it.

e.g. The effects upon wild life due to what happened, and is still going on, at Both Chernobyl and Fukushima.

We Hope to have this work published within the very near future.

Cumbrian Coal mine campaign.

There is a proposal to build a new coal mine just a few miles from Sellafield. Keep Cumbrian Coal in the Hole is campaigning to stop this from happening.

We fully support this campaign, and urge others to do the same.

Australian Aboriginal Flags

The Close Capenhurst Campaign has two Australian Aboriginal flags which have been used to make the point about uranium mining outside of various nukiller power plants. From now on they will also be used to make the point about stopping coal mines both in Australia, and elsewhere, on all climate change demonstrations.

Updates.

Waste train Leaflet changes.

As the last of the highly radioactive nukiller fuel rods has been sent from Wylfa to Sellafield, we have altered our Beware! High Level Radioactive Waste Trains leaflet to reflect this fact.

We have also stopped leafleting upon the waste trains issue outside of Chester station, as they no longer go through the city. Though we will continue our leafleting sessions at the other stations they go through.

As ever – If you would like to join in this work, then please let us know.

Springfields Video.

More Uranium Hex Arrived at Springfields on the 62nd Anniversary of the Windscale Fire –

Uranium Prices Are Falling.

Here is a news story which caught our attention of late.

‘ From a spot price of $136 per pound of uranium oxide in June 2007 it fell to just $25.68 this September.

Uranium bulls are “as rare as white unicorns” according to a commentary in FNArena in September 2019, and the market is “sick and dying” with uranium “quickly becoming a dinosaur of a commodity”.

Nothing To Celebrate.

URENCO

50 years on.

The close Capenhurst Campaign will be marking 50 years since URENCO came in to being.

That is the signing of the Treaty of Almelo.

We will be outside of the Capenhurst plant to mark this anniversary at 14.00. on March 4th.

More details about this event in a few weeks time.

An open letter to URENCO upon the opening of new Capenhurst Tailings facility.

It has just been announced the Urenco are opening their new £1 Billion, and 2 years late, tailing plant in June.

We will be producing an open statement about this facility,which will be read outside of the Capenhurst plant on Saturday June 22^nd.

More details will be published about this in the next couple of weeks.

Capenhurst Pamphlet online.

Copies of the CCC pamphlet are both available in print, and online.

Capenhurst in the news.

What They Say.

As ever we note that the URENCO website is way behind in telling us anything about what is going on at the plant. So we have to keep looking for information about both the Company and their plants from other sources.

However that said, it is still worth while taking a look at the URENCO website, even if it is full of corporate spin.

More new flasks.

It was reported in the April edition of the Railway Magazine, that W H Davis has just handed over eight new nukiller waste flasks to DRS.

That is on top of the 10 new ones which were reported about during 2014.

What we don’t know is just how many of these flasks are in use at any one time.

DRS Open Day demonstration.

DRS – The Nukiller waste train company has just announced it’s open day, which will be on July 20th.

We will be outside once more, leafleting about the dangers which come from moving high radioactive waste through out city centres.

More details to follow in the next few weeks.

URENCO at 50

Urenco was founded with the Treaty of Almelo on the 4^th of March 1970.

New year we will be joining with others to mark 50 years since it was signed.

For more details – watch this space.

Weekly vigils outside London Japanese Embassy.

Every Friday [work day] members of Kick Nuclear and JAN UK hold a vigil outside the Japanese Embassy on Piccadilly in London to remember Fukushima and to protest against nuclear power.

The vigil begins at 10:00am GMT to coincide with the vigils held in Tokyo at 6:00pm JST, outside the Prime Minister’s residence and outside the Diet (Parliamentary) building. These two vigils are attended by hundreds of people. Dozens more such vigils are held across Japan, in the USA and in other parts of the world.

At noon, the London vigil moves to outside the London office of Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Company), the company in charge of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

These weekly vigils first started during august of 2012.

Read outside of the London Japanese Embassy and TEPCO on 31st May 2019.

‘ Dear Anti-Nuclear Power/Weapon activists, friends and supporters,

The Japanese Government announced May 24 that it plans to arrange an international meeting to consider how to dispose of highly radioactive nuclear waste. 

Tokyo is set to get approval for the plan at the Group of 20 Ministerial Meeting on Energy Transitions and Global Environment for Sustainable Growth scheduled for mid-June in Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture, and aims to launch the first roundtable this autumn.

Nuclear waste is a problem for all countries operating nuclear power plants, and the Japan-backed international summit on cooperation to dispose of it will be a world first. Participating nations are expected to aim for improved cooperation and formulation of an international “basic strategy” on dealing with radioactive waste.

High-level nuclear refuse is usually “vitrified” — mixed with melted glass and solidified — before deposited in an underground storage facility. Japan’s own disposal plans call for holding the waste for 30-50 years to cool it before burying it in stable rock formations at least 300 meters below ground. Finland is already building a major underground disposal site, while its neighbor Sweden is conducting a safety evaluation at the location of its own planned facility. However, there is no precedent for actually operating such an installation, and Japan has not yet even begun the survey process to choose a site.

The Japanese government will thus use the June 15-16 G-20 environment and energy summit meeting to urge member nations to cooperate on realistic solutions. Specifically, Japan will press nations with advanced nuclear disposal technology including those in Europe to share their know-how, and also promote international collaboration among research facilities and staff exchanges.

The international roundtable will put together a collection of proposals on a basic nuclear waste disposal cooperation strategy and how to explain the issue to the citizens of member nations.

We have to ask the following questions to the Japanese government and member countries:-

1. All types of nuclear wastes are going to be cooled in the pool of water for more than 30 years and then stored in containers?
2. These nuclear wastes are controlled by the private companies for at least 300 years? Which company can last 300 years?
3. After 300 years and for 100,000 years, who is going to control these nuclear wastes?
4. Decommissioning the nuclear plant takes how many years? 40-50 years?
5. Who is going to cover all costs?
6. Where is the final disposal sites for the spent fuel wastes?
7. Why the government is reluctant to give up the nuclear power which costs so much and needs a very very long term control?

With strong solidarity with the Japanese Anti-Nuclear movements, which mobilised 10,000 demonstrators in Tokyo on 20th March 2019 and every Friday evening Anti-Nuclear Power action in front of the Prime Minister’s official residence and the Diat in Tokyo, we, the Japanese Against Nuclear-UK, Kick nuclear and CND are planning to organise the monthly vigil and leafleting including Statement-Read-Out form 11:30 AM. After handing a copy of the statement to the embassy, we will move to the TEPPCO office (14-18 Holborn near Chancery Lane Tube station). A copy of the statement will be posted to TEPCO. We will be there during 13:00-13:45 PM.’

Ellesmere Port Igas Inquiry.

During January a planning inquiry took place in Chester concerning the proposal to set up a Fracking facility just a few miles from Capenhurst.

This was our response to it.

PRESS NOTICE

Radiation Free Lakeland and Close Capenhurst have successfully placed a late Comment

before the Ellesmere Port Igas Inquiry.

Uranium Hexafluoride and Fracking Side by Side?  What Could Go Wrong?

Nuclear safety group Radiation Free Lakeland says – “alongside the group, Close Capenhurst, we have been working on a report which exposes the unique dangers of the Capenhurst plant.  Capenhurst is the UK’s uranium enrichment plant with 600 container movements annually of uranium products including Uranium Hexafluoride which is uniquely dangerous to health. Adding a fracking site just 4 miles away from this already intolerable chemo and radiotoxic burden would be madness”.

URENCO in the news.

Source of Capenhurst humming noise which torments residents revealed.

In an update issued on Thursday, January 3, URENCO cited three ventilation stacks as the source of the nuisance noise.

New CEO

URENCO has appointed a new chief executive.

Boris Schucht will take up the position in May 2019, at which time he will also be appointed to the company’s board.

Up until now he has been working for the German company 50Hertz.

End Game

On January 11^th PAWB (People Against Wylfa) issued a press release welcoming reports from Japan which strongly suggest that Hitachi will freeze their project to build a nuclear power station at Wylfa.

Then on January 17^th we read: –

Hitachi scraps £16bn nuclear power station in Wales

This is very good news, yet it’s not end game until we close down all the existing reacting reactors, together with Capenhurst & Springfields.

While we still need to keep campaigning on the long term nukiller waste issue.

Statement.

What is very telling are some of the remarks made by Greg Clark MP, Business and Energy Secretary, in a statement to Parliament on January 17^th.

‘Why the government was unable to reach an agreement with Hitachi over Wylfa nuclear plant that strikes a fair deal for billpayers and taxpayers’

These include the following:-

‘The cost of renewable technologies such as offshore wind has fallen dramatically, to the point where they now require very little public subsidy and will soon require none.’

&

‘Across the world, a combination of factors including tighter safety regulations, have seen the cost of most new nuclear projects increase, as the cost of alternatives has fallen and the cost of construction has risen. This has made the challenge of attracting private finance into projects more difficult than ever, with investors favouring other technologies that are less capital-intensive upfront, quicker to build, and less exposed to cost overruns.’

Thus we have progressed from the line about ‘too cheap to meter’, to ‘too expensive to build’ within just a few decades.

While the clean up costs will continue for many centuries in to the future.

Decommissioning Costs

During January the National Audit Office issued the following press release: –

Oil and gas in the UK – offshore decommissioning

The key line being: –

‘ The government estimates that decommissioning the UK’s offshore oil and gas infrastructure will cost taxpayers £24 billion, although the actual cost is highly uncertain – – – .’

Meanwhile this is the latest news on what it might cost to clean up the existing UK nukiller power plants.

‘ The current nuclear provision is estimated at some £164bn, over the next 120 years as the NDA (nuclear decommissioning authority) undertake the decommissioning of 17 of the UK’s older nuclear sites.’

Anniversaries & Forthcoming Events

Fukushima Day.

8th anniversary events in London 2019

Kick Nuclear will be holding an evening vigil outside of the Japanese Embassy on Monday March 11th, march on Saturday March 16^th

April 26^th – Chernobyl Day.

On Saturday April 27^th SNNA will be holding an event outside of the Springfields plant.

May 4^th – 8^th.

This will be the 40 anniversary of the Torness Occupation.

Aside from marking this as the last major anti-nukiller action on a now completed green field site, it might also worth while making the point about this is now a dangerously ageing reactor.

October 10^{th –} 62 years since the Windscale Fire.

We will be organising another event to mark this anniversary.

Details about this will be announced later year.

Other Events.

If anyone wishes to join us on any of our regular leafleting sessions about nukiller waste trains, or wants a speaker on any aspect of the dangers inherent with the use of nukiller power, then please let us know.