nuclear power
Last edited 1 January 1970 at 1:00am
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Posted by jossc — 17 March 2009 at 3:54pm
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Prepare to be unsurprised. Very unsurprised. Those lovable energy giants EDF and E.ON have put their collective boots into government plans to generate 35 per cent of our electricity from renewable sources.
According to their submissions to the latest energy consultation, the figure is not only unrealistic but also damaging to alternative schemes such as nuclear plants. So damaging that, um, they may be forced to drop their plans to build a new generation of nuclear power plants in the UK unless the government scales back its targets for wind power.
Posted by jamie — 6 March 2009 at 1:14pm
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Mention Cherbourg and what springs to mind? Brigit Bardot skipping through the rain with a song on her lips, twirling one of those famous umbrellas? Sadly, that was all a long time ago and the quaint port of Jacques Demy's masterpiece is now a major link in the fuel chain for Japan's nuclear power stations.
Yesterday, a shipment of plutonium mixed oxide (Mox) fuel left France bound for Japan. It's the first shipment of Mox fuel to Japan in eight years, and the largest shipment of plutonium the world has ever seen - 1.8 tonnes of it in fact, enough to make 225 nuclear weapons.
Last edited 17 February 2009 at 3:47pm
The troubled plutonium and uranium reprocessing plant at Sellafield may have to shut down.
The Sellafield mixed oxide plant (SMP) cost the taxpayer £472 million and was intended to turn plutonium and uranium recovered from used nuclear fuel into usable fuel for overseas nuclear reactors.
Posted by jamie — 17 February 2009 at 2:12pm
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Back in 1999, Greenpeace was protesting about plutonium shipments destined for the Mox plant at Sellafield. Now the plant may have to close © Greenpeace/Sims
In the 'funny if it weren't so scary' category we have the advert which ran last week in the Whitehaven News, the local paper for west Cumbria where Sellafield is to be found. As reported in the Guardian at the weekend, LLW Repository Ltd - the company which has recently taken over managing the site - have found there are significant holes in records detailing what radioactive waste was dumped in the repository at nearby Drigg; so they're appealing for people who worked at Sellafield in the 60s, 70s and 80s to rack their brains and fill in the gaps.
Posted by jamie — 3 February 2009 at 12:47pm
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Last edited 2 February 2009 at 5:12pm
Nuclear waste from the reactors likely to be built in the UK will be up to seven times more hazardous than that produced by existing reactors.
The admission was made in an 'environmental impact assessment' report by nuclear company Posiva. Posiva are responsible for managing the waste which will be produced by the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) currently being constructed in Olkiluoto, Finland.
And an independent nuclear consultant has warned that this will increase the costs of nuclear energy, as waste storage and safety expenses will rise above expected levels.
Posted by jamie — 5 January 2009 at 6:23pm
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The papers have been filled with reviews of the year and we're barrelling into awards season, so it's only fitting that we have some awards of our own. My colleagues over on the very entertaining Nuclear Reactions have been staging their own award ceremony, "to recognise those who have help make the nuclear industry the over-subsidised and under-scrutinised joke it is today".
Posted by jamie — 3 December 2008 at 2:32pm
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Here's the latest in the Deep Green column from Rex Weyler -author, journalist, ecologist and long-time Greenpeace trouble-maker. The opinions here are his own, and you can sign up to get the column by email every month.
The nuclear industry has hitched a ride on the climate change
bandwagon, proclaiming that nuclear power will solve the world's global
warming and energy problems in one sweeping "nuclear renaissance."
As you might expect, there's a catch. Nuclear energy faces escalating
capital costs, a radioactive waste backlog, security and insurance
gaps, nuclear weapons proliferation, and expensive reactor
decommissioning that will magnify the waste problem.
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