Beyond Nuclear International
South Carolina’s dormant nuclear volcanoes
Resuming construction of the abandoned V.C. Summer reactors is rife with challenges, says a new report from Savannah River Site Watch
The proposal to restart the failed nuclear reactor construction project in South Carolina faces a host of unexamined challenges, according to a just-released report. The report, prepared by the nuclear policy expert who led the intervention against the project since its inception in 2008 through its collapse and termination in the face of ratepayer outrage 2017, outlines major stumbling blocks to the revival of the nation’s most shocking failure of a nuclear reactor construction project in the United States in the 21stcentury.
The V.C. Summer project involved the botched attempt by now-defunct South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) to construct two large Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors 2 – units 2 & 3 – 25 miles north of Columbia, South Carolina. Over $10 billion was wasted on the construction of project.
Its abrupt termination was one of the most impactful and costly nuclear construction-project collapses in U.S. history, which was the death knell for the so-called “nuclear renaissance” in the U.S. Customers were hit hard and are still left holding the bag with nothing in return for a reported $2 billion payment so far, for financing costs, an amount that grows daily. Though far-fetched, project restart is now being discussed.
The report – presenting 14 unanalyzed challenges to the restart idea and prepared by the Columbia-based public-interest, non-profit group Savannah River Site Watch – is titled Economic, Technical and Regulatory Challenges Confound Restart of the Terminated V.C. Summer Nuclear Reactor Construction Project in South Carolina.
The 24-page report was written by Tom Clements, director of SRS Watch, who led interventions before the PSC by the environmental group Friends of The Earth beginning in 2008 and running through the bankruptcy of SCE&G and its takeover by Dominion Energy South Carolina in January 2019.
“As the public was so abused during the V.C Summer construction project, they now deserve a voice in raising concerns about proposals concerning rebirth of the project in which they still have financial ownership and that’s for whom this report speaks” said Clements. “We reveal in the report that Dominion ratepayers are right now paying 5.22% of the bill for the terminated project and are paying, since 2019, an additional $2.8 billion over 20 years. The restart effort could once again saddle customers with additional massive costs if VCSummer 2.0 proceeds.”
Read MorePunishing India but still paying Russia
Trump slapped tariffs on India for importing Russian oil, but the US imports even more uranium from Russia and its allies, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
On August 6 we learned that US president Trump would raise tariffs on India to 50 percent. The decision was announced in yet another White House executive order, which was ostensibly about punishing Russia, proclaiming that “the actions and policies of the Government of the Russian Federation continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
Instead, the punitive measures were directed toward India because, the order says, “the Government of India is currently directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil.”
Although Trump had already been on his tariff rampage for quite some time, this was, nevertheless, a somewhat surprising strike at one of the United States’s largest trading partners.
The reason Trump gave for increasing tariffs was that India was still importing 38 percent of its crude oil from Russia and that “they don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine”. Worse still, railed Trump, India was selling some of the oil on the open market “for profits”.
Needless to say, none of this passes the credibility test since successful profiteers are high on the list of people Trump admires and he himself has no interest in the beleaguered people of Ukraine — or anywhere else —including right here at home in the United States. And didn’t he just tell us during their meeting in Alaska that Russian president, Vladimir Putin is his friend? “I’ve always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin, with Vladimir,” Trump said.
So why punish India for its dealings with Russia and not China, for example, a far bigger importer of Russian oil?
Read MoreProfiting corporations while penalizing the public
Changes in Indian law would allow commercial nuclear power plants to proliferate, warns the National Alliance of Anti-Nuclear Movements
The National Alliance of Anti-nuclear Movements (NAAM), India, is opposing attempts by the Indian government to smooth the way for private contractors to proliferate nuclear power plants across the country, already eased by a ridiculously small limited liability cap for plant operators in the event of a major accident (much like the Price-Anderson Act in the United States).
NAAM has submitted a memorandum to political parties, parliamentarians, activists and civil society members to oppose the Modi government’s plans to dilute the provisions of the Atomic Energy Act, 1962 and Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010. What follows is the text of their memorandum:
The Indian government headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party, is planning to amend the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010, in order to facilitate private companies’ participation in the construction and development of nuclear reactors in India, and to fetch foreign direct investments for the nuclear industry.
According to Section 3 of the Atomic Energy Act, 1962, the “Central Government shall have power” “to produce, develop, use and dispose of atomic energy either by itself or through any authority or Corporation established by it or a Government company and carry out research into any matters connected therewith;” “to manufacture or otherwise produce any prescribed or radioactive substance;” “to buy or otherwise acquire, store and transport any prescribed or radioactive substance;” and “to dispose of such prescribed or radioactive substance.”
Read MoreThe jellyfish are the symptom
The cure is ending the use of nuclear power, which takes an immense toll on wildlife and the environment, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
A swarm of jellyfish that recently brought four of the six reactors at the Gravelines nuclear power plant in France to a halt, made widespread headlines but, as some reports have noted, this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. The remaining two reactors were already offline for maintenance.
As the Guardian reported, “The Torness nuclear plant in Scotland, which is also owned by EDF, was forced to shut for a week in 2021 after jellyfish clogged the seaweed filters on its water intake pipes, a decade after jellyfish shut the plant for a week in 2011.”
But Paul Gunter and I first noted the phenomenon back in 2001 when we released our investigative report, Licensed to Kill: How the nuclear power industry destroys endangered marine wildlife and ocean habitat to save money.
We learned then that jellyfish were a hazard at nuclear plants that use the once-through cooling water system — the kind that don’t use cooling towers — as they can impede the rapid flow of intake water, which then reduces the efficiency of the plant. That, in turn, reduces profits.
Swarms of jellyfish, responding to warmer waters caused by climate change, are likely to become an ever greater and more frequent hazard as waters continue to warm due to our inadequate efforts to tackle the climate crisis effectively or in time.
But why are jellyfish a problem for nuclear power plants in the first place?
The once-through cooling system draws cooling water into the plant, usually through an intake pipe and at considerable velocity, in order to first convey heat from the reactor core to the steam turbines and then to remove and dump the surplus heat from the steam circuit.
Read MoreUS flies nuclear bombs to Britain
Nukewatch UK reveals how US nuclear gravity bombs were deployed on US soil for the first time in 17 years
By Peter Burt
US nuclear bombs were delivered to Lakenheath air base on Thursday 17 July as part of NATO plans to deploy new battlefield nuclear nuclear weapons intended for war-fighting in Europe. The following is an examination of how we know this, with an update also below.
The flight
The arrival of a special flight transporting the bombs was observed by Nukewatch UK, who judge that the evidence publicly available from our observations and flight-tracking data now supports the conclusion that nuclear weapons are based at the Lakenheath US air base in Suffolk. This article explains how the weapons were brought to Lakenheath by the US Air Force and sets out the evidence which indicates they are now stationed at the British base.
Shortly after 7 am local time on Tuesday 15 July a giant C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft, flight number RCH4574 (‘Reach 4574’), assigned to the US Air Force’s 62nd Airlift Wing left Joint Base Lewis–McChord, its home base in Washington state. The 62nd Airlift Wing is an elite, highly trained transport unit which serves as the US Air Force’s Prime Nuclear Airlift Force: the only Air Force section tasked with the role of supporting the US Department of Defence and Department of Energy with their nuclear airlift operations. The aircraft undertaking the flight was a C-17 with the serial number 08-8200, flying on high priority mission with the air force mission number PAM112271196.
The aircraft flew across the continental United States to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico – the hub of the US Air Force’s nuclear operations, where the largest nuclear weapons storage facility in the world is located: the Kirtland Underground Munitions Maintenance and Storage Complex(KUMMSC). KUMMSC stores a significant portion of the US nuclear arsenal, including gravity bombs and warheads.
At Kirtland the aircraft almost certainly loaded up with a cargo of anything up to 20 newly manufactured B61-12 nuclear weapons – a new, modernised version of the US Air Force’s principal nuclear gravity bomb with greater accuracy than older variants of the weapon. Manufacturing of the B61-12 variant was completed in December 2024 and the weapon is currently being rolled out on deployment. Whilst at Kirtland the aircraft was parked on Pad 5 – the section of the airbase designated for handling hazardous cargoes. Other aircraft at the airport were given a warning not to overfly the aircraft on Pad 5 for a period of over five hours, which ended only once the C-17 had departed.
Read MoreNo more Hiroshimas
Why is our response to atomic horror to arm up and ignore other atrocities, asks Linda Pentz Gunter
This is an opinion piece by staff member, Linda Pentz Gunter. It does not necessarily reflect the position of Beyond Nuclear as an organization.
For 80 years, the Hibakusha (survivors) of the United States atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have been warning the world — “never again”. Never again should such weapons of terror be used, on civilians or on anyone. Never again should human beings treat other human beings as sacrificial and expendable. Peace is the only way forward, they plead.
Now it is 80 years since those two terrible days on August 6 and 9, 1945, when the United States chose to end the lives of what would eventually become at least 200,000 people in a callous public relations exercise to prove its might to the Soviet Union. Today, those Hibakusha still alive must surely be asking: “why haven’t you been listening?”
Even though the world has not used nuclear weapons again in war, the nine official nuclear-armed nations went on to “test” their nuclear weapons more than 2,000 times on other innocent communities mostly far away from their own — including in the Pacific, Australia, the Sahara and Kazakhstan — and even, in the case of the US, on its own people in Nevada. The very first atomic victims were of course those downwind of the July 16, 1945 Trinity test in New Mexico that launched the atomic age and the nuclear arms race.
Thanks to luck or grace but certainly not wisdom, we have not yet arrived at the finish line of nuclear annihilation. But we have not won the race to eliminate nuclear weapons, either. Despite international efforts, first with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968 and then the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that entered into force in 2021, nuclear weapon nations are arming up, not drawing down.
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