May 2009

New Finnish reactor lacks 'a proper design that meets the basic principles of nuclear safety'

Posted by jossc — 14 May 2009 at 11:16am - Comments

The new EPR site at Olkiluoto, Finland

The OL3 European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) project, under construction at Olkiluoto, Finland, is seen by the nuclear industry as the blueprint for a new generation of reactors they'd like to see being built all over the world.

Already well behind schedule and way over cost, serious problems were uncovered two days ago in the primary coolant pipes, only a week after documents leaked to Finnish media revealed that designs for the most vital and fundamental part of this untried and untested nuclear reactor - the safety systems - are still not yet in place.

Article tagged as: EPR, finland, nuclear

Imagine a world without fish...

Posted by jossc — 13 May 2009 at 3:59pm - Comments

Hot on the heels of The Age of Stupid comes The End of the Line, a disturbing and powerful film about one of the world's most shockingly ignored problems - overfishing.

For centuries people have viewed the seas as an unlimited resource which can be tapped into at will, and one that will rapidly replenish itself regardless of how much we take from it. But the more we learn about what's happening in our oceans, the more we realise that this is no longer true, if it ever was.

Article tagged as: charles clover, destructive fishing, end of the line, oceans, overfishing, videos

Making a connection and making a difference

Posted by mollybrooks — 13 May 2009 at 1:58pm - Comments

Molly and the whaleMolly is our online marketing coordinator and is next up in the blog relay, a whistle-stop tour of Greenpeace staff here in the UK. Click here to catch up on the other entries.

In January 2005, the Onilahy River in southwest Madagascar flooded. Nineteen people were killed and thousands left homeless. The cyclone that caused it was probably exacerbated by climate change; the landslides that followed were definitely made worse by extensive deforestation in the area.

The flood was little reported outside Madagascar. Similar events, caused or worsened by environmental destruction, happen all over the world on a regular basis, and most of them don't make the news. The only reason I know about it is because I was there.

Article tagged as: blog relay, climate change, deforestation, donation, flooding, madagascar, supporters

Hip, hip, array! World's largest wind farm given go-ahead

Posted by jossc — 12 May 2009 at 4:09pm - Comments

Ok, ok, I know there've been some unflattering things said about E.ON on these pages in the recent past, but that's just us trying to helpfully point them away from their dependence on dirty fuels towards the sunlit uplands of clean, green energy sources. And it doesn't mean that we can't praise them when they get something right, as they've done today in announcing the start of work on the long delayed London Array.

Article tagged as: eon, london array, offshore wind, renewables obligation, wind farms

Turkey gobbles up tuna

Posted by Willie — 11 May 2009 at 1:59pm - Comments

Lords of the sea no longer... bluefin tuna carcasses await auction at a Tokyo market - Japan is the main destination for Turkish tuna (image by stewart, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

No, this is not another story about the crazy things we feed to our farm animals, but rather yet another sad tale of failure in fisheries management … and yet another nail in the coffin for bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean.

Article tagged as: bluefin, iccat, marine reserves, mitsubishi, nobu, overfishing

Put the Japanese whalers on trial, not the Tokyo Two

Posted by jossc — 8 May 2009 at 1:44pm - Comments

We've been out and about this morning at the Japanese embassy in London to show our support for the Tokyo Two. Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki are two brave whaling campaigners who are facing prison terms for exposing a major embezzlement scandal at the heart of the Japanese whaling industry.

Article tagged as: japan, oceans, tokyo two, whaling

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