Also by ben

Arctic oil: even the money men can't do the maths

Posted by ben - 27 January 2011 at 12:57pm - Comments

Cairn's tugs drag icebergs out the way of its Arctic oil drilling rig

An interesting article was published recently in the German newspaper Der Spiegel, examining the costs of oil extraction in the Arctic. The region, increasingly seen by the oil industry as the Promised Land, could hold significant amounts of hydrocarbons.

Article tagged as: arctic, BP, cairn, cairn energy, climate change, go beyond oil, oil, oil spill

Why we've taken the government to court over oil drilling

Posted by ben - 12 November 2010 at 6:30pm - Comments

Campaigner Vicky Wyatt with the papers for the legal challenge

Ben Ayliffe, one of our climate campaigners, writes about the reasons behind the legal case:

Former BP boss Tony Hawyard's recent mea culpa over Deepwater Horizon reminded me of an interview he gave to the company's in-house magazine in 2008. Hayward, it was claimed, "has the advantages of a scientist's clarity of mind, combined with a lifelong BP man's human understanding," the eulogy concluding that BP "is in good hands." Whilst the Gulf of Mexico disaster went on to illustrate the price of such hubris, Hayward's admission that the catastrophe was one "that all our corporate deliberations had told us simply could not happen" raises questions about how government and investors assess the risks of unconventional oil.

Article tagged as: BP, chevron, climate change, deep water, drilling, go beyond oil, judicial review, legal action, oil

Nuclear costs head for the moon

Posted by ben - 18 July 2008 at 1:39pm - Comments

Yesterday, the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) released their annual report and, as surely as night follows day, the news is that the bill for decommissioning and cleaning up our existing nuclear plants is rising. And rising. And rising.

In fact, we could have funded two London Olympics just from the rises in the estimated costs over the past two years.

Although no one really has a precise figure (and the NDA admits it can't tell us what the final bill will be), the estimate now stands at around £73bn - about the same amount as the Apollo Moon Landings cost*.

Article tagged as: nuclear contamination, nuclear power, nuclear subsidies

Double whammy to EPR sites in France and Finland

Posted by ben - 25 June 2008 at 10:53am - Comments

EPR

20 Greenpeace activists blocked the entrance to 3 quarries in Normandy that supply concrete and gravel for the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) site at Flamanville yesterday. We took this action to stop the re-opening of the construction site, which had been ordered by the French Nuclear Safety Agency (ASN). This was despite none of the safety problems the ASN discovered over a month ago having been adequately resolved by EdF, who are carrying out the project.

Article tagged as: EPR, flamanville, nuclear, olkiluoto

Construction stopped on French 'flagship' nuclear reactor

Posted by ben - 27 May 2008 at 4:16pm - Comments

We've learned that the French nuclear safety agency has ordered a halt to the construction of the new EPR reactor in Flamanville, France. Only six months after work first began. The EPR is the same type of reactor that is proposed to be built in the UK.

Article tagged as: EPR, flamanville, nuclear

Sellafield produces very little of anything - apart from headaches for its operators

Posted by ben - 3 March 2008 at 5:58pm - Comments

Sellafield

More gloomy news from Cumbria, where yet another pall of tenebrous darkness has descended over the hapless nuclear monolith that is Sellafield. This particular cloud comes in the form of the hugely expensive and much-vaunted MOX Plant, whose job it is to turn reprocessed material (mainly in the form of plutonium and depleted uranium) into new MOX fuel.

In theory MOX, which stands for mixed oxide, can then be exported overseas and used to power some reactors in countries like France and Japan. In theory, that is. Because in practice it turns out the plant isn't producing much of anything. Apart from headaches for its operators.

Article tagged as: environment agency, malcolm wicks, mox fuel, NDA, nuclear power, nuclear subsidies, sellafield

A day trip to Sellafield

Posted by ben - 13 December 2007 at 2:53pm - Comments

Earlier in the week the nukes campaign team were lucky / unlucky (delete as appropriate) enough to be taken on a tour of Sellafield, the UK's biggest nuclear site. And it was a bit of an eye opener.

It's a massive site, covering about 4km², which meant we couldn't see everything in one go. So we spent most of our time in the vitrification plant watching high level waste being mixed with molten glass and poured into huge milk churns prior to storage (this stuff is so dangerous that if you placed a flask of it in the centre circle of a football pitch and tried to walk to it from the dug out, it would kill you before you reached it), and then in the hugely expensive Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP).

Article tagged as: nuclear power, nuclear waste, reactor safety, sellafield

British Energy reckons nuclear power stations are safe from flooding - cobblers

Posted by ben - 28 November 2007 at 11:30am - Comments

British Energy, the UK's biggest nuclear operator, has just published a report (pdf) they claim shows that new nuclear reactors in the UK could be protected from flooding and sea-level rise caused by climate change. They concluded "that all our sites can be sustained over the next 100 years." But their report doesn't cut the mustard.

Article tagged as: british energy, climate change, nuclear power

A nuclear future? Dream on

Posted by ben - 26 November 2007 at 4:42pm - Comments

A new independent report out today has suggested that plans to build new nuclear power stations here in the UK risk wandering into the realms of fantasy. The study, The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2007 (pdf), shows that the self-styled "nuclear renaissance" currently being talked up by budding Mr Burns wannabes around the world is actually nothing of the sort.

Article tagged as: climate change, energy, nuclear power

When is a solution not a solution?

Posted by ben - 15 November 2007 at 7:51pm - Comments

Nuclear waste barrels

As Gordon Brown grapples with the question of whether to push the nuclear button and give the green light to a fleet of new reactors in the UK, we keep on hearing from those rum coves in the industry about how they now have a solution, or more accurately a "management strategy", for dealing with all the tonnes of lethal radioactive waste nuclear reactors produce. This state-of-the-art solution comes in the shape of the rather grandly titled "deep geological repository". To you and me this roughly translates as "a deep hole in the ground", a massive underground dump wherein our toxic legacy will be buried, back filled and then it's goodnight Vienna.

Article tagged as: deep dumping, nuclear power, nuclear waste, yucca mountain

Greenpeace UK