Sunday 31 July 2016

Terror threat underpins Prime Minister May's atomic concerns‏

Letter sent to The New York Times






Your report headed "French Utility to Build Britain’s First Nuclear Plant in Years," July 29
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/29/business/energy-environment/edf-hinkley-point-nuclear-france-britain.html?ref=energy-environment&_r=0  misleads as it ignores the important delay announced by Prime Minister Theresa May  on the same day as the applicant utility company, EDF Energy, gave the green light to start the project.

 
Mrs May’s chief policy advisor Nick Timothy has  already raised security concerns (“The Government is selling our national security to China; October  20, 2015; http://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2015/10/nick-timothy-the-government-is-selling-our-national-security-to-china.html)
 
 
On July 13 , in a coruscating critique of the ballooning costs and unreliability of UK nuclear power, the British national financial watchdog, the National Audit Office issued report Nuclear power in the UK, (HC 511 SESSION 2016-17), in which it include the following observation in a section headed The challenges of nuclear power at para 2.11 “There are specific challenges in ensuring that nuclear power is on an equal footing in the market with other low-carbon technologies:  Nuclear power plants have very high upfront costs and take a long time to build. Costs have increased in recent years given the extra safety considerations following the Fukushima disaster and increasing terrorist threats. ( https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Nuclear-power-in-the-UK.pdf)
 
A week earlier, on July 7,  the official British nuclear safety and security regulator, The Office for Nuclear Regulation, published its  annual progress report. In a section headed  Civil Nuclear Security (pages 37-38) it revealed : “Overall, the civil nuclear sector met its security obligations. There are areas where the dutyholder’s security arrangements  did not fully meet regulatory expectations. (emphasis added) (http://www.onr.org.uk/documents/2016/annual-report-2015-16.pdf)
ONR has declined to elaborate what the problem is, on security grounds.
In Europe too, the nuclear terrorist spectre has been recently raised  by Europol, the EU’s  Dutch-based  counter- terror agency. In its annual report issued on July 20 it revealed under the chapter headed Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) substances: Nuclear power plants and nuclear weapon facilities in the EU also remain potential targets for terrorists.”
 
With the latest series of serious European terrorist attacks in France and Germany, Mrs May is surely being prudent.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Friday 29 July 2016

The Nuclear Sieve: why Hinkley C is on hold (yet again)

 
 
After many months of political prevarication, at 6pm yesterday the majority (85%)  French state-owned Électricité de France decided in a Board meeting by 10-7 ( with on board member responsible for renewable energy  resigning, citing no confidence in Edf investment policy) to give the green light for Edf to  go ahead with the final investment decision to build the 37 billion Hinkley C nuclear plant
 
Two hours later, in an astonishing volte facer, the hitherto vey nuclear-friendly  British Government issued a terse two sentence statement ( with the secretary of state for Business, energy, and industrial strategy, Dr Greg Clark away on a nuclear lobby visit in Japan, it came from 10 Dowing Street) that saidThe UK needs a reliable and secure energy supply and the government believes that nuclear energy is an important part of the mix. The government will now consider carefully all the component parts of this project and make its decision in the early autumn.”
 
The huge marquee for VIP nuclear guests was already erected in at the Hinkley site; champagne  was already on ice; VIPs were en route to Somerset to party  at the final break through, when hundreds of thousands of contractual pages were due to be authorised  with co-signatures of the contracting parties
All was abruptly cancelled, with the Chinese delegation – from the co-investors, Chinese National Nuclear Company-  returning to Heathrow to fly back to Beijing to try to explain why this celebration had so quickly to turned sour.
 
So what happened? The most convincing explanation for the cold feet  developed by the Prime Minister, Theresa May, is the influence of her newly re-appointed, but loyal, policy advisor, Nick Timothy, who had previously been her chief of staff before going off to become the Director of the New Schools Network.
Last October, out of Government, he wrote on the ConservativeHome web site of his doubts about  the UK nuclear industry collaborating with the Chinese sate investment bank and nuclear companies to build  reactors in  the UK . (Nick Timothy: The Government is selling our national security to China; 20 October  2015; http://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2015/10/nick-timothy-the-government-is-selling-our-national-security-to-china.html)
Timothy wrote, inter alia,
“Last month, on the same day George Osborne announced his desire to “formally connect” the London and Shanghai stock exchanges – and give an even greater role for China in building British nuclear power stations – the Chinese received a rather different message from Britain’s principal ally across the Atlantic.
Shortly before President Obama hosted President Xi Jinping in the White House, Susan Rice, the American National Security Adviser, said that Chinese cyber-enabled espionage “isn’t a mild irritation, it’s an economic and national security concern to the United States.” Not mincing her words any further, Rice said Chinese hacking “that targets personal and corporate information for the economic gain of businesses undermines our long-term economic cooperation and it needs to stop.”
We should expect no such plain speaking from the British Government today, as President Xi begins his state visit to London. In place of candour, we will see official press releases and ministerial speeches promising new investments, business partnerships and a “golden decade” in Sino-British relations.
During Xi’s visit to London, the two governments will sign deals giving Chinese state-owned companies stakes in the British nuclear power stations planned for Hinkley Point in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk. It is believed that the deals could lead to the Chinese designing and constructing a third nuclear reactor at Bradwell in Essex. Security experts – reportedly inside as well as outside government – are worried that the Chinese could use their role to build weaknesses into computer systems which will allow them to shut down Britain’s energy production at will.
For those who believe that such an eventuality is unlikely, the Chinese National Nuclear Corporation – one of the state-owned companies involved in the plans for the British nuclear plants - says on its website that it is responsible not just for “increasing the value of state assets and developing the society” but the “building of national defence.” MI5 believes that “the intelligence services of…China…continue to work against UK interests at home and abroad.”
Sir Iain Lobban, the former head of GCHQ, says there have been “attempts to steal British ideas and designs – in the IT, technology, defence, engineering and energy sectors, as well as other industries – to gain commercial advantage or to profit from secret knowledge of contractual arrangements.” Evidence like this makes it all the more baffling that the British Government has been so welcoming to Chinese state-owned companies in sensitive sectors.
The Government, however, seems intent on ignoring the evidence and presumably the advice of the security and intelligence agencies. But no amount of trade and investment should justify allowing a hostile state easy access to the country’s critical national infrastructure. Of course we should seek to trade with countries right across the world – but not when doing business comes at the expense of Britain’s own national security.”
Timothy was prescient in his concerns over nuclear security. Over the past two weeks while France and Germany have suffered a series of devastating terrorist attacks and many deaths, the nuclear industry in the UK has been quietly challenged by a series of very authoritative official watchdog bodies over nuclear security vulnerabilities.
On 13 July, in a coruscating critique of the ballooning costs and unreliability of UK nuclear power, the national financial watchdog, the National Audit Office issued report Nuclear power in the UK, (HC 511 SESSION 2016-17), in s a which I tinclude the following observation in a section headed The challenges of nuclear power

2.11 There are specific challenges in ensuring that nuclear power is on an equal footing in the market with other low-carbon technologies:  Nuclear power plants have very high upfront costs and take a long time to build. Costs have increased in recent years given the extra safety considerations following the Fukushima disaster and increasing terrorist threats. (

 
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Nuclear-power-in-the-UK.pdf
This has been followed up by a Parliamentary question by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas who asked Greg Clark  “what  assessment he has made of the implications for his Department's costings for nuclear power of the findings of the National Audit Office in its report published in July 2016 on Nuclear power in the UK, HC 511, paragraph 2.11, on the effect on running costs of nuclear power facilities of increased terrorist threats.

A week earlier, on 7 July, to no media attention at all, the official UK nuclear safety and security regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation, published its  annual progress report. In a section headed  Civil Nuclear Security (pages 37-38) it revealed : “  
Overall, the civil nuclear sector met its security obligations. There are areas where the dutyholder’s security arrangements did not fully meet regulatory expectations, and these
continue to be subject to our regulatory focus. (emphasis added)
(
http://www.onr.org.uk/documents/2016/annual-report-2015-16.pdf)
ONR has declined to elaborate what the problem is, on security grounds.

Then last week, Mrs May’s former department, the Home Office, issued a report CONTEST, UK strategy for countering terrorism: annual report for 2015 with a section included  on  Resilience of Critical Infrastructure. Paragraph 2.57 of this report - which must have been prepared and signed off while Mrs May was still in charge of the Home Office - states: “ We assess all risks to our Critical National Infrastructure, from flooding to cyberattack to terrorism, and work with operators to enhance our infrastructure security. We are reviewing infrastructure policing to ensure that the UK has the right capability to protect our national infrastructure and address national threats. The scope includes the protection of civil nuclear and some military sites, (emphasis added) policing at airports and policing of the strategic road and rail network. A number of different national and local forces are currently responsible for policing this infrastructure. We expect the review to report to Ministers later this year.
It continued: in paragraph 2.51 “In 2015, as part of an ongoing programme, the Home Office invested substantially in radiological and nuclear screening at the UK border to ensure our systems remain amongst the best in the world. This has further strengthened our capabilities to identify and intercept illicit materials that may represent a threat to the UK’s national security, or pose a public health risk.” (emphasis added)
In Europe too, the nuclear terrorist spectre has been raised this month by Europol, the EU’s  Holland-based  counter- terror agency. In its annual report issued on 20 July, it revealed under the chapter headed Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) substances:
In former-Soviet Union countries, nuclear and radioactive  materials have continued to appear on the black market since the early 1990s | Nuclear power plants and nuclear weapon facilities in the EU remain an important target for jihadist terrorists or groups
….The likelihood of a CBRN attack occurring is assessed as being low, but the consequences of such an incident remain serious. In 2015 no major terrorist incidents with chemical, biological, nuclear or other radioactive materials were disclosed by the EU Member States.”…Although CBRN materials remain highly attractive to terrorists, they are difficult to acquire, transport, handle and deploy without particular scientific knowledge and technology. Nevertheless, several incidents in 2015 involved the actual or attempted malevolent use of CBRN materials with criminal or unknown intentions. In recent years, jihadist terrorists and their sympathisers have regularly expressed threats involving CBRN materials in their propaganda.”
“Nuclear power plants and nuclear weapon facilities in the EU also remain potential targets for terrorists. Of note is a case that occurred in December 2015 in Belgium. It was reported that, during a house search of a suspect linked to the November Paris attacks, a video was found containing surveillance footage of a senior executive of a nuclear research site.”
“Thefts of radioactive sources are usually financially motivated, often due to the value of shielding containers or housing devices, and not necessarily for the source itself. In 2015 for example, two incidents involving the theft of radioactive sources, which are commonly used in various authorised applications in industry, medicine and research, were reported by Poland. Nevertheless, there were no reported cases of radioactive materials being used to deliberately injure or poison people.
In the European Union, trafficking cases are rare because nuclear and other radioactive materials are relatively well safeguarded, both by regulation and enforcement. However, in EU neighbouring former-Soviet Union countries, nuclear and radioactive materials have continued to appear on the black market since the early 1990s. In 2015 incidents involving the attempted sale of radioactive materials by organised crime groups occurred in Moldova, Ukraine and Turkey. Although there is no information on potential links between the groups involved in these three cases and terrorist organisations, criminals with access to these materials can potentially play a role in acquiring and selling radioactive materials to terrorists.”
 (“211 terrorist attacks carried out in EU Member States in 2015, new Europol report reveals,” https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/211-terrorist-attacks-carried-out-eu-member-states-2015-new-europol-report-reveals
And with the Olympic games starting in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil next week, nuclear terror concerns have been raised there too. The Chinese press agency, Xinhua, reported on 21 July : Nearly 300 nuclear security experts will be deployed for the upcoming Olympic Games, Agencia Brasil reported on Wednesday.
The nuclear security agents, trained in radiation detection, were also deployed at the 2014 World Cup of football.
"Close to 300 agents from the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN) are to be engaged in the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games," the agency said.
"Their work will focus on the prevention and identification of nuclear risks and emergency situations, as well as the response to such incidents," the agency added.
(“Nuclear security agents to be deployed for Rio Olympics,” http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2016-07/21/c_135528664.htm)
None of this fear of nuclear terrorism  is new, but it very rarely gets media reportage. Last year Labour MP Paul Flynn, now the  shadow Leader of the House of Commons, asked the Transport department :what assessment it had made of the fitness-for-purpose of the Air Navigation (Restriction of Flying) (Nuclear Installations) Regulations 2007 and their applicability to technical developments for unmanned aerial vehicles since their coming into force in 2007. He was told in response by transport minister, Robert Goodwill on 21 December: “The airspace over Uk nuclear  licensed sites is restricted by the Air Navigation (Restriction of Flying) (Nuclear Installations) regulations 2007. These impose restricted airspace of a radius between 0.5 and 2 miles to a height of between 1000 and 2400 feet around the centre of all nuclear sites. Airspace usage in the UK is regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Therefore it is a criminal offence to fly in the vicinity of nuclear sites without the permission of the CAA. The CAA and nuclear sites work closely together on this.” He added” All of Britain’s nuclear power stations are robust and designed with safety in mind and are stress-tested to withstand a vast range of potential incidents. The independent regulator continuously monitors and evaluates the safety of each plant alongside the operator to protect it from outside threats. (Question: 20272)
 
 
A week earlier, on 17 December, Flynn was told by the then junior energy minister, Andrea Leadsom: Commons
“The security of the UK’s civil nuclear  sector is of paramount importance to the Government. The Nucleasr Industry Malicious Capability Planning Assumptions (NIMCA) provide a common basis for determining the sector’s required protective security posture. It is reviewed by DECC, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), and industry representatives on an annual basis. To ensure that the NIMCA assumptions remain appropriate, these annual reviews are supplemented with assessments of threat information provided by the police and the intelligence agencies on an ongoing basis. Additionally, the ONR maintains a permanent presence within the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which guarantees the fastest possible identification and notification of intelligence that might indicate changes to present and foreseeable threats to civil nuclear sites.
(Question: 20270)
 
It seems Mrs May’s chief policy advisor is not entirely convinced by these warm words.

Wednesday 27 July 2016

Trump’s finger hovers ever nearer the nuclear button



 

The biggest problem we have is nuclear—nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That's in my opinion that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.”

Donald Trump, December 15, 2015

 

As he cranked up his campaign for the United States Presidency this year, Donald Trump has uttered many things that have left not just the US electorate, but the wider world watching, gasp in near disbelief.

 

At the end of March he came up with one of his biggest shock statements, stressing to  popular checkout PEOPLE  magazine his caution at pushing the nuclear button should he be elected to the White House. “That would be such a last resort … “Nobody is going to mess with us. But I would be very, very slow on the draw.”

 

 

"The depth and gravity of the responsibility of the office seem to elude Trump so far,"  Mark Pfeifle, former deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush told PEOPLE. "No one knows if reading the [CIA's daily terror-threat briefing] would sober him." http://www.people.com/article/real-donald-trump-people-special-report

 

Should the World breathe a sigh of collective relief he is not trigger happy?

As the Huffington Post headlined the story: ‘President’ Donald Trump Would Only Turn To Nuclear Annihilation As A ‘Last Resort; I would be very, very slow on the draw’”(http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/donald-trump-nuclear-weapons_uk_56fbec2ae4b0c5bd919aa058)

 

Yes, but Trump’s views on nuclear weapons are maverick, like many other of his policies.

 

With Donald Trump having won the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States (POTUS) at last week’s Republican Convention in Cleveland, he is just one more [General] election away from becoming the US Commander-in- chief, in charge of authorization of use of the US arsenal of over 9,000 nuclear weapons.

 

Were he to win this authority by beating an increasingly unpopular Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, what do we know about Trump’s thinking on nuclear weapons? Even Trump’s former Republican rival for the Presidency, Marco Rubio, says the US can't give "the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual."

 

Last month, Dr Bruce G. Blair a nuclear security expert with hands on experience of being involved in the management of nuclear weapons for the Pentagon - and now a research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton and the co-founder of Global Zero, a lobby group – wrote a perceptive analysis of Trump’s understanding of nuclear weapons for on-line magazine Politico. (What Exactly Would It Mean to Have Trump’s Finger on the Nuclear Button? A nuclear launch expert plays out the various scenarios.http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-nuclear-weapons-missiles-nukes-button-launch-foreign-policy-213955)

Among his chilling conclusions were: 

Ø 
The “nuclear button” is a metaphor for a complex apparatus that has the president’s brain at its apex. The image of a commander in chief simply pressing a button captures none of the machinery, people and procedures designed to inform the president and translate his or her decisions into coherent action.

 

Ø  Since the flight time of missiles fired from launch stations in Russia or China to the White House is 30 minutes, and 12 minutes or less for missiles fired from submarines lurking in the Western Atlantic Ocean (Russian subs historically favor a patrol area to the west of Bermuda), the steadiness and brainpower of the commander in chief in such circumstances are serious questions indeed.

 

Ø  How would a President Trump behave under such duress, informed of the attack and the imminent destruction of the nation’s capital and himself? He would have only a few minutes to consider the reliability of the attack report and decide whether and how to retaliate. If the attack is real, and he hesitates, a president will likely be killed and the chain of command decapitated, perhaps permanently.

 

Ø  Voters should want to consider whether Trump or any other candidate possesses the steely nerves and competence to deliberate intelligently and calmly at the moment of truth.

 

Ø  The next president will become embroiled in ongoing low-boil nuclear standoffs with Russia, China and North Korea that could morph quickly into a full-blown nuclear crisis. In such situations, actions thought to be defensive and reassuring to allies are often viewed as offensive by the opponent, whose reaction starts another cycle of action-reaction.The United States and Russia today are entwining themselves in this trap over Ukraine, U.S. missile defenses in Europe and other disputes.

 

Ø  As with his predecessors, Trump’s power over the life and death of entire nations would be practically unbounded. Today, the nuclear deluge he could command would consist of thousands of weapons, each 10 or 20 times more deadly than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Nearly 2,000 U.S. strategic nuclear weapons aimed primarily at Russia and China (at a ratio of roughly 2 to 1), with additional dozens aimed at each of several other nations—North Korea, Iran and Syria—would be at a President Trump’s disposal from his first minutes in office.

 

On 23 November last year, Trump opined : “I would be somebody that would be amazingly calm under pressure.” On 27 April 27 this year, he tried to reassure worried doubters, asserting:  “To me, always the No. 1 security threat to the United States is nuclear… and we have to be unbelievably careful.”


Blair concludes, it is not clear that Trump is up to the task. “It is no more clear that his unnamed future advisers, successors and generals would be up to it. Trump certainly has not yet made a convincing case that we could sleep soundly with him at the helm.”

 

So where else can we look? A recent article published in US news web site, Slate, provides an extraordinary insight.

(Trump’s Nuclear Experience: In 1987, he set out to solve the world’s biggest problem www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_spectator/2016/03/trump_s_nuclear_experience_advice_for_reagan_in_1987.html)

 

Written by senior Slate writer, Ron Rosenbaum -  author of  The Shakespeare Wars, Explaining Hitler, and How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III the article resurrects an interview originally given to the author  nearly three decades ago for the now defunct magazine, Manhattan Inc., held in Trump’s glitzy office – it featured a golden mirrored ceiling-  in his eponymous New York HQ, Trump Tower.

Rosenbaum recalls “Trump is not new to nuclear matters. He has been thinking about how he’d handle nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation for more than a quarter-century, at least since 1987, when he claimed to me that he was “dealing at a very high level” with people in the White House (that would have been the Reagan White House) on doomsday questions.

It seemed like a joke, when I first heard of it back then. But at the very peak of the Cold War, when the U.S. and the then Soviet Union had an estimated 25,000 nukes to target at each other, thousands of them on hair-trigger alert (no Trump jokes about “hair trigger” please), Donald Trump announced that he had the know-how to solve the world’s nuclear problems.”

Rosenbaum explained the context of his interview, reminiscing that his “gig” was to take the loudest, glitziest luminaries of the loudest, glitziest era of Manhattan, the power brokers and power lunchers, out to lunch and turn on a tape recorder, and then to profile their self-importance. Not just the rich and famous of biz, but politicos like Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo. Zeitgeist promoters like Robin Leach. Sometimes politics got me kicked out of lunch.

 

Trump revealed he had grander ambitions than being a very successful international business guru. Perhaps the grandest; Rosenbaum records, was “saving the world.” Before lunch he confided that he was talking to “people in Washington,” even “the White House”; he was on the verge of breaking through. Even then he wanted to be viewed as something more than a glam real estate speculator, someone of substance politically.

 

Even then, nearly three decades ago, Trump demonstrated Trumpian impatience with “defense intellectuals,” exemplified in his contempt for then-fashionable nuclear-deterrence theories like “dense pack,” a plan to group our nuclear silos so close together that attacking missiles would destroy each other by means of “fratricide”—crashing into each other over the desolate Great Plains.

 

Even Trump saw how dense this plan was. He knew about the dangerous reality of a “hair trigger” nuclear “posture.” He said he had an uncle who was a nuclear scientist who made him aware of the all-too-easy proliferation of nuclear weapons. He had read Deadly Gambits, the sagacious history of the START nuclear reduction talks penned by nuclear negotiator, Strobe Talbott, a former Time magazine senior reporter, now President of the prestigious Brookings Institution think tank in Washington DC.

 

Trump wanted to begin a crusade to find a way to halt  a national security policy base don nuclear mutually assured destruction (MAD)  “before a wild-card nuke deals death to millions.”

Trump believed he had some real personal insight into the nuclear nexus, telling Rosembaum My uncle who just passed away was a great scientist.He was a professor at MIT. Dr. John Trump. In fact, together with Dr. Van de Graaff they did the Van de Graaff generator. He was the earliest pioneer in radiation therapy for cancer. He spent his whole life fighting cancer and he ended up dying of it.”

 “He told me something a few years ago,” Trump recalled“He told me, ‘You don’t realize how simple nuclear technology is becoming.’ That’s scary. He said it used to be that only a few brains in the world understood it and now you have a situation where thousands and thousands of brains can easily understand it, and it’s becoming easier, and someday it’ll be like making a bomb in the basement of your house. And that’s a very frightening statement coming from a man who’s totally versed in it.”

 

Rosenbaum opined: “if Trump gets his way with this, the way he does with other deals, it’s not inconceivable that history will look back on the Trump Plan’s acceptance as one of the few hopeful developments in the course of a miserable century. In any case, you read it here first.

 

Trump told his interviewer:  “There is a vast, vast amount of difference between somebody who has consistently made great deals—and I don’t say me, by the way—of whatever nature, and there aren’t that many of those people, by the way; you have maybe a roomful of them in the whole country. There’s a vast difference between somebody who’s been consistently successful and somebody who’s been working for a relatively small amount of money in governmental service for many years, in many cases because the private sector, who have seen these people indirectly, didn’t choose to hire these people, any of them, because it didn’t find them to be particularly capable. But then, years and years later they get slightly promoted, promoted, promoted. The private sector has passed them by and all of a sudden these people are negotiating the lives of you and your children, your families, and I tell you there’s a tremendous amount of difference.”

 

Trump foresaw a situation soon when “hair-trigger” heads of state will have their hands on multiple nuclear triggers. And, Rosembaum observed, it drives him crazy that nobody in the White House senses the danger.

Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, warned on 2 June:  This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes. It’s not hard to imagine Donald Trump leading us into a war just because somebody got under his very thin skin.”

 

But Trump may well be in a position soon to do something about it himself.

Tuesday 26 July 2016

Nuclear power plant hazards dangerously played down by MPs

Your report the Welsh Affairs Select Committee chairman David Davies MP as saying :“ During this inquiry we have been impressed by the level of scrutiny of nuclear power and are reassured that the highest safety standards are followed” (“Nuclear power projects must be proven as financially viable, Welsh MPs warn,” 26 July; http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/nuclear-power-projects-must-proven-11662605
This observation, following publication of the report on the Future of Nuclear Power in Wales,  www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmwelaf/129/12902.htm) demonstrates worrying level of ignorance and bad judgement.
 
The Committee was told in an  oral evidence session on 7 March 2016, by John Warden, Chief Executive Officer of the  Nuclear Institute ( which describes itself as “the UK membership organisation for Nuclear Professionals. We maintain the standards of professionalism in the nuclear sector”) the following:
 
“I am very comfortable with the risks [from nuclear power] and I understand it. However, I do realise that most of the public do not, and that is one aspect that the Nuclear Institute has a remit to try to educate the public. I am very comfortable. You can look at the four biggest accidents in nuclear history. You have Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. The only positive risk to health that came from any of those was from Chernobyl.”
 
I was so shocked at this statement- which is demonstrably and extremely inaccurate- but was not challenged by WA committee members during the hearing, that  isubmitted short corrective evidence to the committee, inviting  the committee to take these facts into account when drawing up its report on evidence received.
 
An additional disaster not mentioned was the 1957 Kyshtym disaster in Russia, details of which can be found at this link. One study claimed that 8,000 people died over 30 years as a result of the disaster. I also provide a link to information about the  1957 Windscale fire that shows there were significant long-term health effects.
I have also provided these links about Three Mile Island that show there were health effects relating to that disaster in the US in 1979
I have also provided this link on the Chernobyl disaster, which suggests health-related effects were greater than previously thought, and these links on the Fukushima disaster, which suggest that many more people died from the nuclear disaster than previously believed.
I also provide this link, which provides a list of nuclear accidents, with their death tolls.
 
Personally as a professional researcher in this field, born and educated in Neath, I found it very disappointing witness representing body that tells interested parties on its web site “Of most importance to us is the education and training of nuclear professionals, as well as the understanding of the nuclear industry from the wider public. As a learned society we also act as the independent voice of the industry.” (http://www.nuclearinst.com/About-Us) could come before the committee and make such inaccurate statements and present them as if fact.