Beyond Nuclear International
Grim(m) news
Europe writes its own fairly tale on nuclear power and fossil gas
By Linda Pentz Gunter
The brothers Grimm are alive and well and they just wrote a new fairy tale. It doesn’t have a very alluring title — The Taxonomy Complementary Climate Delegated Act (Act)— but it is packed full of fantasy.
The February 2nd European Commission (EC) document of that name is the culmination of a whole masterwork of myths that preceded it to establish what is known as the EU Taxonomy. It lays out the Commission opinion “that there is a role for private investment in gas and nuclear activities in the transition” to European climate neutrality.
The EU Taxonomy “is a classification system, establishing a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities” and “would provide companies, investors and policymakers with appropriate definitions for which economic activities can be considered environmentally sustainable.”
This kiss to turn nuclear “green” was not unexpected. France, famous for its fairy tales and who we’ll try not to refer to as the Frog Prince, had been lobbying hard for the inclusion of nuclear power for months. To mix magic metaphors, the EC happily ate the poisoned apple.
If you feel like you are disappearing down a labyrinth as we begin to untangle this here, you are not alone.
The February 2 announcement amended the earlier Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act. Feeding into all this was the Joint Research Center’s report — Technical assessment of nuclear energy with respect to the ‘do no significant harm’ criteria of Regulation (EU) 2020/852 (‘Taxonomy Regulation’) (also thankfully known as ‘The JRC Report’).
The JRC Report was reviewed in an “Opinion” by the Group of Experts referred to in Article 31 of the Euratom Treaty (yes, that’s the group’s actual name).
It was also assessed by “experts” from the Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks, known as the “SCHEER” group. (I am sure the late great Hermann Scheer, who founded the International Renewable Energy Agency and wrote that “Nuclear energy belongs in a museum” must be rolling in his grave.)
There was also a more critical view published on January 21, 2022, by the EU’s Technical Expert Group (TEG) from the Platform on Sustainable Finance, which called out the Act’s acceptance of nuclear power and fossil gas in the Taxonomy as “greenwashing.”
Who are all these “experts”? Good luck sorting that out. Christiana Maria Mauro, a legal advocate who also works with Nuclear Transparency Watch, had a go at getting the names — and declarations of interest — of the Euratom 31 group under freedom of information laws and got stonewalled for months until the Euratom Supply Agency finally coughed up the list.
Read MoreCaught between nostalgia and science fiction
Swapping one dangerous technology for another isn’t progress
By Linda Pentz Gunter
It’s starting to sound a lot like a Christmas carol as a growing chorus of voices clamors to stop the European Union from including nuclear power in its “green taxonomy.”
Six countries, five former Japanese prime ministers, four former nuclear regulators, a bunch of French hens (at least 20 protesters), and two heads of Italy’s major energy behemoth, have all spoken out in recent weeks against rebranding dangerous, expensive nuclear power as “sustainable” energy or even a bridge to an all renewable future.
The youth climate movement, Fridays for the Future, have also condemned the potential inclusion of nuclear power in the EU Taxonomy as “greenwashing”, with spokesperson Luisa Neubauer telling Euractiv that Germany “can phase out both coal and nuclear power and enter the renewable age.” Why, she asked, would you “swap one high risk technology, coal, for another high risk technology? And maybe those risks aren’t quite the same, but the risks attached to nuclear energy, people have experienced that.” In addition, the costs for nuclear power, she said are “in a different galaxy” compared to renewables.
Francesco Starace, a nuclear engineer by training and the head of Enel, the Italian multinational energy company, said of nuclear power, “we can’t stay halfway between nostalgia for the past and hope in science fiction”. Enel Green Power head, Salvatore Bernabei, said “we don’t intend to invest in nuclear, obviously.”
Said Starace: “We must act now because the red alert for humanity has gone off and the next ten years will be crucial. There is only one road and it is already marked: electrification, renewables and batteries”.
Read More“Nuclear warfare without bombs”
Ukraine’s reactors could be in the line of fire
By Linda Pentz Gunter
As Craig Hooper so chillingly warned us in his December 28, 2021 article for Forbes, a Russian invasion of Ukraine, “could put nuclear reactors on the front line of military conflict.” The result, he said, depending on the tactics deployed by the Russians, could be equivalent to “nuclear warfare without bombs.”
It’s yet one more reminder of just how much an already perilous situation can become orders of magnitude worse, once you introduce the risk of major radioactive releases into the equation.
There are 15 reactors in Ukraine providing about 50% of the country’s electricity. Hooper’s article speculates not only on what could happen if any one of these nuclear sites — such as the six-reactor VVER-1000 complex at Zaporizhzhia — should find itself in the midst of armed conflict or bombardment. He also postulates intentional sabotage by Russia as a strategic measure — “allowing reactors to deliberately melt down and potentially contaminate wide portions of Europe.”
This may sound far-fetched, or, at least, we hope it does. And the Forbes article roundly condemns Russia without factoring in the bristling U.S.-led buildup of NATO armaments on the border, none of which is easing tensions, and which only worsens the likelihood that Ukraine’s nuclear plants could find themselves literally in the line of fire. (For an interesting assortment of perspectives from all sides, endeavoring to unravel the complexities of this situation, Better World Info provides a useful resource.)
Either way, the vulnerability of operating reactors in Ukraine is a danger that is not taken nearly seriously enough. As far as I can tell, Hooper’s is the only article on the still unfolding tension between Russia and Ukraine that has even mentioned the risks posed by those 15 reactors. (A wind farm in a war zone comes with no such hazards.)
Instead, the implications of a radiological disaster ensuing should Russia indeed invade Ukraine, have been largely ignored in favor of panic over a potential energy crisis in Europe, should Russia cut off gas supplies in an effort to dampen European support for Ukraine in the on-going dispute.
This is in itself is a reminder that Europe could have avoided such dependence on imported fossil fuels — while at the same time contributing to a meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions — by developing home-grown renewable energy decades ago, when climate change was already recognized as a threat.
Read MoreA (too) well kept secret
People the world over love the ban treaty. In the US, almost no one’s heard of it
By Lawrence Wittner
Late January of this year will mark the first anniversary of the entry into force of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This momentous international agreement, the result of a lengthy struggle by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and by many non-nuclear nations, bans developing, testing, producing, acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, and threatening to use nuclear weapons. Adopted by an overwhelming vote of the official representatives of the world’s nations at a UN conference in July 2017, the treaty was subsequently signed by 86 nations. It received the required 50 national ratifications by late October 2020, and, on January 22, 2021, became international law.
Right from the start, the world’s nine nuclear powers—the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea—expressed their opposition to such a treaty. They pressed other nations to boycott the crucial 2017 UN conference and refused to attend it when it occurred. Indeed, three of them (the United States, Britain, and France) issued a statement declaring that they would never ratify the treaty. Not surprisingly, then, none of the nuclear powers has signed the agreement or indicated any sympathy for it.
Even so, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has acquired considerable momentum over the past year. During that time, an additional nine nations ratified it, thus becoming parties to the treaty. And dozens more, having signed it, are expected to ratify it in the near future. Furthermore, the governments of two NATO nations, Norway and Germany, have broken free from the U.S. government’s oppositional stance to the treaty and agreed to attend the first meeting of the countries that are parties to it.
In nations where public opinion on the treaty has been examined, the international agreement enjoys considerable support. YouGov opinion polls in five NATO countries in Europe show overwhelming backing and very little opposition, with the same true in Iceland, another NATO participant. Polling has also revealed large majorities in favor of the treaty in Japan, Canada, and Australia.
In the United States, where most of the mainstream communications media have not deigned to mention the treaty, it remains a well-kept secret. Even so, although a 2019 YouGov poll about it drew a large “Don’t Know” response, treaty support still outweighed opposition by 49 to 32 percent. Moreover, when the U.S. Conference of Mayors, representing 1,400 U.S. cities, met in August 2021, the gathering unanimously approved a resolution praising the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Read MoreTime to avert ‘global nuclear Holocaust’
Daniel Ellsberg says ICBM abolition would reduce the risk of a near-extinction event
Daniel Ellsberg is 90, but nothing about him has dulled or dimmed, least of all his vast and inside knowledge of the nuclear weapons complex and its unthinkable threat. Beyond Nuclear was proud to join him in signing this statement, demanding the abolition of all U.S. land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, and even prouder (and humbled) to follow him on a January 12 edition of Dennis Bernstein’s Pacifica Radio show — Flashpoints.
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
More than 60 U.S. organizations issued a joint statement on January 12, 2022 calling for the total elimination of the country’s land-based nuclear missiles, warning that the weapons are both an enormous waste of money and—most crucially—an existential threat to humankind.
Organized by the advocacy groups RootsAction and Just Foreign Policy, the statement argues that intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are “uniquely dangerous, greatly increasing the chances that a false alarm or miscalculation will result in nuclear war.”
“Nuclear weapons could destroy civilization and inflict catastrophic damage on the world’s ecosystems.”
“There is no more important step the United States could take to reduce the chances of a global nuclear holocaust than to eliminate its ICBMs,” continues the statement, which was signed by Beyond the Bomb, Global Zero, Justice Democrats, CodePink, and dozens of other anti-war groups.
“Everything is at stake,” the groups warn. “Nuclear weapons could destroy civilization and inflict catastrophic damage on the world’s ecosystems with ‘nuclear winter,’ inducing mass starvation while virtually ending agriculture. That is the overarching context for the need to shut down the 400 ICBMs now in underground silos that are scattered across five states—Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming.”
The statement comes just two weeks after President Joe Biden signed into law a sprawling military policy bill that allocates billions of dollars to research, development, and missile procurement for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) program, an initiative that is expected to replace the current Minuteman III ICBMs in the coming years.
Ahead of the $778 billion legislation’s passage, some progressive lawmakers—most prominently Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)—called for a pause in GBSD development, a demand that went unheeded.
Daniel Ellsberg, the legendary whistleblower and longtime proponent of nuclear disarmament, told Common Dreams in an email that “most of the so-called ‘defense’ budget is legislative pork.”
“But some of it—in particular, the maintenance and proposed replacement to the current ICBM program—is toxic pork,” he added. “It’s not just unnecessary, it’s positively dangerous, to our own security and that of the rest of the world.”
“We should have gotten rid of our silo-based ICBMs no less than half a century ago.”
Read MoreNot green and not sustainable
The science-based case for excluding nuclear power from the EU taxonomy
A statement by Dawn Slevin, Dr. Erik Laes, Paolo Masoni, Jochen Krimphoff, Fabrizio Varriale, Andrea Di Turi, Dr. Ulrich Ofterdinger, Dr. Dolores Byrne, Dr. Petra Kuenkel, Ursula Hartenberger, Kosha Joubert, Dr. Paul Dorfman, Anders Wijkman, Prof. Petra, Seibert, Rebecca Harms, Joseph Kobor, Michel Lee, Dr. Stuart Parkinson, and Dr. Ian Fairlie
One of the most influential policy initiatives of the European Commission in the past years has been the “EU Taxonomy”, essentially a shopping list of investments that may be considered environmentally sustainable across six environmental objectives.
To be deemed EU Taxonomy aligned, the activity must demonstrate a substantial contribution to one environmental objective, such as climate change mitigation, whilst causing no significant harm to the remaining five environmental objectives (climate change adaptation, sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources, transition to a circular economy, pollution prevention and control, and protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems).
All eligible activities are required to comply with technical screening criteria (TSC) for ‘substantial contribution’ and ‘do no significant harm’ and to demonstrate that social safeguards are in place. The EU Taxonomy provides a common language for sustainability reporting, a foundation for green bond reporting and much more. It is intended to be used by international financial markets participants whose products are sold within the EU in order to evaluate the sustainability of their underlying investments.
The use of the EU Taxonomy is furthermore compulsory for the EU and member states when introducing requirements and standards regarding environmental sustainability of financial products, such as an EU ecolabel for investment products or an EU Green Bond Standard. It will also apply to 37% of activities earmarked as ‘climate-friendly’ financed by the EU COVID-19 recovery funding. Its science-based approach is designed to give confidence to a wide range of international stakeholders that environmental claims are not greenwashing.
The question whether nuclear fission energy complies with the ‘do no significant harm’ (DNSH) criteria of the EU Taxonomy was the focus of the Technical Expert Group (TEG) DNSH assessment on nuclear fission technologies which recommended to the Commission that nuclear should not be included in the EU Taxonomy of environmentally sustainable activities.
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