Friday 29 September 2017

Russia's radioactive river: the story of the world's third biggest atomic disaster

Today is the 60th anniversary of the world's third worst nuclear accident. But hardly anyone has ever heard of it, at the former Soviet Union's  vast secret military nuclear complex at Mayak, south West of the Ural mountains. The Daily Mail ran a very interesting  picture story on the consequences of the Mayak radiological disaster, reproduced below, in April last year:



Russia's nuclear nightmare flows down radioactive river

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3565685/Russias-nuclear-nightmare-flows-radioactive-river.html

 

MUSLYUMOVO, Russia (AP) — At first glance, Gilani Dambaev looks like a healthy 60-year-old man and the river flowing past his rural family home appears pristine. But Dambaev is riddled with diseases that his doctors link to a lifetime's exposure to excessive radiation, and the Geiger counter beeps loudly as a reporter strolls down to the muddy riverbank.
Some 50 kilometers (30 miles) upstream from Dambaev's crumbling village lies Mayak, a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country's biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility's decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations.
The results can be felt in every aching household along the Techa, where doctors record rates of chromosomal abnormalities, birth defects and cancers vastly higher than the Russian average — and citizens such as Dambaev are left to rue the government's failure over four decades to admit the danger.
In this photo taken on Thursday, April  7, 2016, an old man fishes in a lake that connects to the nearby Techa River, near the village of Muslyumovo, Chelyab...

In this photo taken on Thursday, April 7, 2016, an old man fishes in a lake that connects to the nearby Techa River, near the village of Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, which is polluted with radioactive waste from Mayak nuclear plant. Mayak has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)
"Sometimes they would put up signs warning us not to swim in the river, but they never said why," said Dambaev, a retired construction worker who like his wife, brother, children and grandchildren have government-issued cards identifying them as residents of radiation-tainted territory. "After work, we would go swimming in the river. The kids would too."
Thousands already have been resettled by Russia's Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corp. to new homes two kilometers (a mile) inland from the river, leaving Dambaev's village of Muslyumovo in a state of steady decay as shops close and abandoned homes are bulldozed. The evacuations began in 2008, two decades after Russia started to admit disasters past and present stretching from Mayak's earliest days in the late 1940s as the maker of plutonium for the first Soviet atomic bombs.
The question, 30 years after the former Soviet Union's greatest nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, is whether Mayak is truly cleaning up its act or remains primed to inflict more invisible damage on Russians. Nuclear regulators say waste no longer reaches the river following the last confirmed dumping scandal in 2004, but anti-nuclear activists say it's impossible to tell given the level of state secrecy.
Vladimir Slivyak, an activist for the Russian environmentalist group EcoDefense, has visited villages downstream from Mayak many times to help document the poor health of locals in the area, 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) east of Moscow near Russia's border with Kazakhstan.
"My opinion is they're still dumping radioactive waste," he said, "but proving that is impossible unless Mayak says: 'Yes, we're dumping radioactive waste.'"
The Nuclear Safety Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, which oversees safety standards for the country's nuclear industry, told the AP that Mayak's nuclear waste processing system presents no danger to the surrounding population. The plant also manufactures a range of radioactive isotopes of use for specialist equipment, medical research and cancer treatments that generate lucrative contracts worldwide.
Rosatom spokesman Vladislav Bochkov, in response to several Associated Press requests seeking an interview to discuss Mayak's safety standards and operations, sent an email Thursday denying Mayak dumps nuclear waste in the river. Bochkov said the complex "follows all the environmental protection guidelines and has all the approvals it needs for operation."
"The level of pollution in the Techa River today completely complies with the sanitary standards of the Russian Federation," he wrote. He said the river water is clean: "You can drink it endlessly."
But when the AP took a Geiger counter to the riverbank outside Dambaev's home, the meter reading surged at the water line and the machine began beeping loudly and continuously. Measurements ranged from 8.5 to 9.8 microsieverts — 80 to 100 times the level of naturally occurring background radiation. A typical chest X-ray involves a burst of about 100 microsieverts.
Nuclear Safety Institute member Leonid Bolshov bills these levels as safe, saying: "The level of pollution in the water today is incomparably less to what it used to be."
What it used to be is pretty bad. Environmentalists estimate that Mayak tossed 76 million cubic meters (2.68 billion cubic feet) of untreated waste — enough to fill more than 30,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools — into the river from 1948 to the mid-1950s as nuclear scientists scrambled to catch up to the U.S. nuclear program.
In September 1957, underground storage tanks of overheating nuclear waste exploded, sending a cloud of nuclear fallout 300 kilometers (200 miles) northeast across 217 towns and villages containing 272,000 people, a minority of which were quietly evacuated over the following two years.
A decade later, a nearby lake used to dispose of nuclear waste dried up amid a summer drought, and high winds whipped the exposed powdery residue to many of the same population centers. Greenpeace estimates the fallout reached 68 towns and villages containing 42,000 people.
Russia suppressed all news of both disasters until the late 1980s, when it acknowledged the two accidents and the Mayak site's very existence.
In 1993, Russia said the two accidents combined with longer-term dumping of waste into the river meant that an estimated 450,000 people had been exposed to excess radiation from Mayak. It offered no breakdown of immediate deaths, accelerated deaths or increased rates of illness and disease in the populace.
A 2005 criminal case against Mayak's then-director, Vitaly Sadovnikov, revealed that the plant continued to dump at least 30 million cubic meters (1 billion cubic feet) of untreated nuclear waste into the river from 2001 to 2004. Prosecution documents said the dumping quadrupled the volume of the radioactive isotope strontium-90 in the river.
A study by Greenpeace in 2007, citing hospital records and door-to-door surveys of Muslyumovo residents, reported cancer rates 3.6 times higher than the Russian national average. Russian scientists have reported residents suffer 25 times more genetic defects than the general population.
A decades-long Radiation Research Society study of people living near the Techa River conducted jointly by Russian and American scientists has linked radiation particularly to higher rates of cancer of the uterus and esophagus. In their latest 2015 report, the scientists analyzed 17,435 residents born before 1956, among them 1,933 with cancer. They found that the vast majority of residents had accumulated heightened deposits of strontium-90 in their bones and such "radiation exposure has increased the risks for most solid cancers."
Such figures come as no surprise to one of Muslyumovo's longest-serving doctors, Gulfarida Galimova, a gynecologist and family general practitioner who started work in the village's hospital in 1981. Galimova says she was immediately struck by the exceptional volume of pediatric emergencies involving miscarriages, early and still births, and newborns with malformed limbs and other defects.
Still, like others she did not know Mayak —unmarked on any map at the time and still off-limits to the public today — even existed. She recalls 1980s mornings of blissful ignorance washing her hair in the deceptively soft waters of the Techa.
"The water was nice and not calcified. Soft water. Your hair would be so fluffy," Galimova recalled.
She was among some 280 households that accepted Rosatom's offer to abandon their homes in Muslyumovo for new two-story homes away from the river in what today is called New Muslyumovo. But her 2012 move came too late for her own family. A son born in the village in 1985, and a grandson born last year, both have birth defects that she blames on Mayak radiation. Her son has a club foot; her grandson has heart deformities.
One of her neighbors in New Muslyumovo, with its rows of pastel yellow homes with red roofs, blames the new location for her family's health problems. Alfia Batirshina, 28, says a radon deposit beneath the topsoil of the new settlement gives her chronic headaches and her 8-year-old daughter recurring nosebleeds.
She is loath to discuss her daughter's own birth defect, a deformed leg, and keeps her out of view of journalists. Her 62-year-old father, Vakil Batirshin, struggles to say anything at all. His neck is painfully swollen from lymph nodes that have grown triple their normal size, leaving his words nearly unintelligible.
The homemaker says she and neighbors are resigned to their medical fate living in Mayak's nuclear shadow.
"I don't hope for anything anymore," she said. "If we get sick, we get sick."
___
Associated Press reporters Iuliia Subbotovska in Muslyumovo, Jim Heintz in Moscow and Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin contributed to this story.
In this photo taken on Thursday, April  7, 2016, Vakil Batirshin and his wife Minfiza stand in their fenced side yard in the village of New Muslyumovo, Chely...

In this photo taken on Thursday, April 7, 2016, Vakil Batirshin and his wife Minfiza stand in their fenced side yard in the village of New Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia. Batirshin has swollen lymph nodes from radiation-related illnesses. Mayak, is a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Iuliia Subbotovska)
This photo taken on Wednesday, April  6, 2016, shows the Techa River, near the village of Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, where over 760 million cubi...

This photo taken on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, shows the Techa River, near the village of Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, where over 760 million cubic meters (2.68 billion cubic feet) of radioactive waste was dumped between 1949- 1956. Mayak is a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)
In this photo taken on Friday April  8, 2016, a sign warns people not to enter the town of Ozersk, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, which houses the Mayak nuclear...

In this photo taken on Friday April 8, 2016, a sign warns people not to enter the town of Ozersk, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, which houses the Mayak nuclear facility. Mayak is a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)
In this photo taken on Wednesday, April  6, 2016,  Gilani Dambaev shows a copy of his disability card to the Associated Press from his home in Muslyumovo in ...

In this photo taken on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, Gilani Dambaev shows a copy of his disability card to the Associated Press from his home in Muslyumovo in the Chelyabinsk region, Russia. Dambaev has eight times the normal amount of radiation in his body from years of exposure to radiation. Some 50 kilometers (30 miles) upstream from Dambaev¿s crumbling village lies Mayak, a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)
In this photo taken on Wednesday, April  6, 2016, Gilani Dambaev speaks to the Associated Press from his home in Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia. Damb...

In this photo taken on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, Gilani Dambaev speaks to the Associated Press from his home in Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia. Dambaev, 61, has over eight times the normal amount of radiation in his body. Some 50 kilometers (30 miles) upstream from Dambaev¿s crumbling village lies Mayak, a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)


 
In this photo taken on Thursday, April 7, 2016, the family of Vakil Batirshin are photographed outside their home in New Muslyumovo, Chelyabiksk region, Russ...



Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)
This photo taken on Thursday, April  7, 2016, the village of New Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, which was built less than two kilometres away from t...

This photo taken on Thursday, April 7, 2016, the village of New Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, which was built less than two kilometres away from the old Muslyumovo and the Techa River, which is polluted with radioactive waste. Mayak is a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)
In this photo taken on Thursday, April  7, 2016, Alfia Batirshina, step-daughter to Vakil Batirshin, speaks with the Associated Press in the village of New M...

In this photo taken on Thursday, April 7, 2016, Alfia Batirshina, step-daughter to Vakil Batirshin, speaks with the Associated Press in the village of New Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia. Batirshina, 28, used to go swimming in the Techa River, which is polluted with radioactive waste from the nearby Mayak nuclear facility. Mayak is a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Iuliia Subbotovska)
This photo taken on Friday, April  8, 2016, shows a run-off area near the Karabash copper smelting factory in the Chelyabinsk region, Russia. A 1957 explosio...

This photo taken on Friday, April 8, 2016, shows a run-off area near the Karabash copper smelting factory in the Chelyabinsk region, Russia. A 1957 explosion, frequently referred to as Russia's Chernobyl, is referred to as the Kyshtym accident because the town of Ozersk, where the explosion took place, was a secret town. (AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)
In this photo taken on Wednesday, April  6, 2016, a dog runs along a street in the town of Sultanovo near the Techa River, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, where ...

In this photo taken on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, a dog runs along a street in the town of Sultanovo near the Techa River, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, where nuclear was dumped as recently as 2004. Mayak is a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)
In this photo taken on Thursday, April  7, 2016, Gulfarida Galimova is a doctor working in the town of New Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia. Galimova b...

In this photo taken on Thursday, April 7, 2016, Gulfarida Galimova is a doctor working in the town of New Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia. Galimova began working in Muslyumovo in the late 1980s and noticed illnesses among her patients, which she later realized were linked to high levels of radiation from the nearby Mayak nuclear facility. Mayak is a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Iuliia Subbotovska)
This photo taken on Wednesday, April  6, 2016, shows fencing around the Techa River, near the village of Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, which contai...

This photo taken on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, shows fencing around the Techa River, near the village of Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, which contains radioactive waste from the nearby Mayak nuclear facility. Mayak is a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)
In this photo taken on Wednesday, April  6, 2016, an abandoned building that served as a children's dormitory until 2001 is situated on the bank of the Techa...

In this photo taken on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, an abandoned building that served as a children's dormitory until 2001 is situated on the bank of the Techa River, near Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia. Mayak is a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)
In this photo taken on Thursday, April 7, 2016, a dog enjoys the sun in the village of Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia. Approximately 70 km northwest ...

In this photo taken on Thursday, April 7, 2016, a dog enjoys the sun in the village of Muslyumovo, Chelyabinsk region, Russia. Approximately 70 km northwest of Chelyabinsk lies Mayak, a nuclear complex that has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Iuliia Subbotovska)
In this photo taken on Wednesday, April  27, 2016, Vladimir Slivyak, an activist for the Russian environmentalist group EcoDefense, speaks with the Associate...

In this photo taken on Wednesday, April 27, 2016, Vladimir Slivyak, an activist for the Russian environmentalist group EcoDefense, speaks with the Associated Press about the Mayak nuclear facility. Mayak has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
In this photo taken on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, a flooded area on the outskirts of the town of Sultanovo near the Techa River, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, w...

In this photo taken on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, a flooded area on the outskirts of the town of Sultanovo near the Techa River, Chelyabinsk region, Russia, where nuclear was dumped as recently as 2004. Mayak nuclear plant has been responsible for at least two of the country¿s biggest radioactive accidents. Worse, environmentalists say, is the facility¿s decades-old record of using the Arctic-bound waters of the Techa River to dump waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, hundreds of tons of which is imported annually from neighboring nations. (AP Photo/Katherine Jacobsen)

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Tuesday 26 September 2017

Nuclear fission: in one word, Labour’s shadow energy secretary shafts shadow chancellor’s progressive energy stance


In just one word of support - “Moorside”- Labour’s  Shadow Secretary for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Rebecca Long-Bailey MP, ,  speaking at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton on Tuesday, undermined the progressive energy policy outlined by her colleague, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, in his own keynote speech to the same conference on Monday (“The Energy Transformation is happening now!”, 25 September; http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-energy-transformation-is-happening.html).
Long-Bailey, in stressing the importance of investment in “our energy, transport and digital infrastructure to make it fit for the 21st Century, told the conference: “When we promised to take the radical action needed to tackle climate change, and ensure that 60% of our energy comes from low carbon or renewable sources by 2030. To support projects like Swansea tidal lagoon and Moorside nuclear plant.” (http://press.labour.org.uk/).
In backing the Moorside new nuclear station in Cumbria, on a site adjoining the  Sellafield nuclear waste plant, she also aligned herself with the discredited former Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary Sir Ed Davey, who backed the go ahead for new nuclear plants during the Coalition Government, and the most extreme right wing anti-EU Tories, who hate deals with  European industry, but accept with acclamation nuclear plants being built by bankrupt nuclear vendors Westinghouse from the US and Toshiba in Japan, funded by inward investment from the Chinese Communist State Investment Bank.
Last week, the Daily Telegraph reported (“China mulls Moorside nuclear rescue deal to deepen roots in UK plants,” 19 September 2017; www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/09/19/china-mulls-moorside-nuclear-rescue-deal-deepen-roots-uk-plants/): “China’s state-backed nuclear company is hoping to take an equity stake in the troubled £10bn Moorside new nuclear project being developed by debt-hit Toshiba.The Japanese conglomerate is on the hunt for a project partner to safeguard Europe’s largest planned new nuclear plant after France's Engie abandoned its support of the venture in the wake of Toshiba’s spiralling financial woes.China General Nuclear (CGN) confirmed that it is in the running to shore up the 3.8GW project in exchange for an equity share, in a move which would also deepen its stake in the UK’s nuclear ambitions.”CGN told Reuters “We are willing to utilise our experience in nuclear design, construction and operation for more than 30 years to support the development of Britain’s nuclear industry. ” CGN thus  joins another foreigh firm outside the EU - South Korea’s Kepco-  which voiced an interest in the project earlier this summer.
The Telegraph noted  “South Korean state-backed utility has harboured an interest in Moorside since 2013, but said it would want to use its own nuclear design rather than one made by Toshiba’s Westinghouse nuclear business. Westinghouse plunged into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US earlier this year after amassing losses of $9bn (£6.6bn) for Toshiba due to a string of struggling US projects.
A lengthy approval process by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) would  be required of a Kepco reactor design,  which could derail the 2025 start date by at least two years.
Shortly before the Labour Conference started, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, n an interview, for BBC Points West, said he would not rule out a Labour government pulling the plug on Hinkley Point C unless the nuclear power station was "already built and in operation". Asked whether Britain's new nuclear power station should go ahead, Mr Corbyn said: "You have to look at the strike price, you have to look at the long term implications of it. The government has not yet concluded on that."
But when asked whether he would pull the plug if Labour came to power after the station had been built, he said: "If it's already built and in operation then of course not., adding “"But I do want to see, I must say, a much greater diversity of electricity generation." (“Hinkley cancellation? BBC on line, 22 September 2017; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41359590)
Meanwhile, at a fringe meeting at the conference on Monday night, a former shadow business and  energy secretary, Clive Lewis, who was fired from the front bench for voting against activating Brexit Article 50, attacked the vested interests of the big industrial unions in their support for nuclear over renewables. (“Labour's Clive Lewis accuses nuclear unions of being 'voice for big business': Corbyn ally says unions are failing to speak up for renewable energy because they do not have members in that sector;” Guardian, 26 September 2017;https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/26/labours-clive-lewis-accuses-nuclear-unions-of-being-voice-for-big-business)
Lewis, a political  ally of  Mr Corbyn, claimed trade unions that are involved in the nuclear industry have become “a voice for big business” because they have been weakened in other sectors, and  he singled out GMB for being too close to the nuclear lobby and said it was not speaking up for renewable energy because it did not have members there.
Lewis told the Labour Energy Forum  fringe event: “One of the problems with where trade unions are at the moment is that they have been so weakened that I think they have become, and have been used by big business as, a voice for big business.
“Because big business understands that if you have a unionised workforce they also become spokespeople for you. They create a situation where you have a wide and broad spectrum politically of people supporting your particular position.
“On nuclear, yes, GMB and other unions are staunchly supporting it because the jobs there generate union members. Contrast that to the highly self-employed solar sector: the unions have no trade unions there. They are not speaking up at all for them.”
He said unions had thrown their weight behind plans for Hinkley Point C, the first new nuclear power plant to be built in the UK for 20 years. 
“That is one of the reasons that a big song and dance and hoo-ha about solar wasn’t made by the unions and yet they are getting staunchly behind Hinkley,” Lewis said.
Ms Long-Bailey is thus backing pro- nuclear policies backed by big union dinosaurs, by discredited Lib Dems and right wing anti-EU Conservatives, very uncomfortable  bed fellows indeed.

Monday 25 September 2017

The Energy Transformation is happening now!


 

Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell  announced to his party’s annual conference in Brighton today that  an incoming Labour government would seize assets currently leased to the state under the private finance initiative (PFI),

Earlier, during this spring’s general election, Labour’s leaders, Jeremy Corbyn, pledged not to sign new contracts, under which private companies finance the building of new assets for the state and lease them to the state, Speaking to Labour’s conference today Mr McDonnell said he wanted to go further by bringing all the 719 PFI contracts “in house”.

McDonnnell  said to acclaim: “The scandal of the [PFI], launched by John Major, has resulted in huge, long-term costs for taxpayers, whilst handing out enormous profits for some companies. Profits which are coming out of the budgets of our public services.”


But the Shadow Chancellor today  also made an important re-statement of Labour’s plan to radically reform the UK energy supply and services delivery system. He told the Conference:

The storms and flooding sweeping the world in these last few months are yet another environmental wake up call. This country has huge natural, renewable resources. And we have an immense heritage of scientific and engineering expertise. Yet this Government has slashed the funding, the renewables industry needs to find its feet.
Labour will ensure we become world leaders in decarbonising our economy. With a publicly owned energy supply based on alternative energy sources. Where the Tories have dithered and delayed, to deliver zero-carbon electricity, we will absolutely commit for example to building projects like the Swansea Tidal Lagoon.
Ours will only become an economy for the many, if we significantly broaden ownership. That means supporting entrepreneurs, small businesses, the genuinely self-employed and massively expanding worker control and the co-operative sector.”

Just over a year ago, Jeremy Corbyn pledged to create 1,000 community energy co-operatives and give them the legal right to directly sell energy to the people they serve.

, the Labour leader promised to build 1 million carbon neutral homes, half of them council houses. A national home insulation programme would be created to bring four million homes up to the energy efficiency standards B or C, and all rented housing would be forced to meet the same standards. Vulnerable customers would be given help paying their bills.

Corbyn committed his government to generating 65 per cent of the UK’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030, and vowed to get rid of all coal-fired power stations by the early 2020s - slightly ahead of the current government’s pledged phase-out. There would be an outright ban on fracking.

A £500 billion national investment programme, linked to a National Investment Bank and a network of regional development banks, would ensure new green jobs are created “where they are most needed – in coastal towns and areas with high unemployment”.

“All of these measures will create secure, skilled employment for hundreds of thousands of people,” added Corbyn. “As part of our transition to a low-carbon economy, we estimate that we will create 316,000 jobs in wind, solar and wave power.”

 (“Corbyn pledges to create 200 local energy companies,” Utility Week, 8 September 2016;   http://utilityweek.co.uk/news/Corbyn-pledges-to-create-200-local-energy-companies/1275732#.V9JzO-RTGM8

In late June, John McDonnell’s energy policy advisor, former Labour MP Alan Simpson, released a pamphlet, ‘Transformation Moment: Can Britain make it to the Age of Clean?’ ( backed by The Beautiful Energy Company and 10:10  Climate Action)

Simpson writes in the preface: This pamphlet is an invitation to radically reshape Britain’s future; a change bigger than anything seen since the Industrial Revolution. Only transformative change - in the way we think, act, live and work - stands any chance of limiting tomorrow’s climate crises. Energy is just one part of this picture. But it does show how technology, democracy and sustainability can team up to write a different economics of tomorrow.”

 

Countries leading the race into the Age of Clean, have changed their energy market

‘ground rules’ to embrace this energy revolution. But the real momentum is coming

from the grassroots; from empowered localities and included communities. People

themselves are becoming the architects and drivers of tomorrow’s solutions.

Today’s global leaders are starting to live within reducing carbon budgets, focusing as

much on what they can save and share as on what they produce and consume, and

using clean and smart technologies to drive the transition to a sustainable future.

Germany, California, Denmark and Sweden all understood this. Denmark, the real

pioneer, now treats whole system transformation as the norm. Norway, the Netherlands

and (perhaps) Germany are taking ‘transport’ into the Age of Clean too.

Countries serious about tackling climate change recognise that the saving and storing of

energy is as important as how we generate it. Seamlessly, the carbon footprint of food and

other consumption will become connected to transport, planning and air quality strategies.

What can be produced, used and shared locally will become the cornerstones

of new national energy security thinking. Within this, the role of the state is itself

being re-defined; providing the legislative, regulatory and fiscal frameworks

that underpin transformational change and, increasingly, taking more direct

responsibility for trans-national and intra-national balancing mechanisms that

complex energy systems still require. Technology plays a role in this, a huge role,

but it is a politics of empowerment and engagement that drives the change.”

Meantime, The Guardian’s Berlin correspondent Kate Connolly speculates  (“In-tray: The battles and  big issues ahead,” 25 September; www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/25/challenges-merkel-faces-as-she-starts-fourth-term-as-german-chancellor ) that re-elected chancellor  Merkel “may well be forced to  face the fact  her kneejerk reaction to Fukushima (nuclear accident in Japan) which led her to announcing Germany would abandon nuclear power, was overly hasty.”

Setting aside the accident  re-affirmed a decision to phase out  nuclear power by not extending  lifetime operation of old reactors- on which the German government was having  second thoughts – I see no chance of any reversal of this policy if Mrs Merkel’s CDU  going into coalition with Green Party, on very likely outcome as Philip Oltermann elsewhere  sets out. in the paper’s  reportage of the German election.( Merkel faces tough coalition talks as nationalists enter German parliament, “ 25 Sept.2017; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/24/angela-merkel-faces-stark-choice-between-coalition-or-minority-rule

In a meeting at the House of Commons on 11 September on the German energy transition – “Energiewende” -  German legal energy specialist, Matthias Buck, who formerly worked for the European Commission Energy Directorate and the German  energy  and environment  ministries respectively, and now works for Berlin=based energy consultancy ‘Agora’  explained in detail how the German Government has taken forward this radical energy strategy with  significant buy –in from political parties and the broader  German energy industry establishment (“Reflections on the Energiewende: http://www.nuclearconsult.com/german-energy-transition-future-uk-energy-policy/).

Buck stressed that against 2008 consumption  levels, the energy transition strategy is successfully heading towards a huge Increase in energy efficiency, with a reduction in electricity power consumption by  - 10% in 2020; and  - 25% in 2050.

Moreover, the share in renewable power consumption is set to increase to:
40 - 45% in 2025; 55 - 60% in 2035; ≥ 80% in 2050.

And all lignite coal consumption for power generation will be phased out by 2050.

Germany could and should be a model for the UK energy strategy if British ministers woke up to how the energy world globally is headed for an irreversible change to a radically cleaner sustainable future, backed by both the market and interventionists alike.