The world gasps at the Americans swallowing lie after lie from the superb dissimulator Donald Trump. But the world might not notice Britain’s worthy, virtuous, man of the working people, Keir Starmer, also proclaiming a set of lies. Starmer has got into a super-confident sort of Trumpian mode as he pronounces ‘Build baby build’.
Yes, Sir Keir is “taking on the blockers” to bring the UK back to a leadership position on building nuclear power. The “blockers” are safety and environmental regulators. A new Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce will be established to speed up and streamline the approval of new reactors. This will report directly to the PM.
For the first time, mini-nuclear power stations will be included in planning rules. Nuclear sites could now be built anywhere across England and Wales, as a list restricting the sites for new reactors will be scrapped. The expiry date on planning rules will be scrapped. The specialist taskforce will lead on making sure nuclear regulation incentivises investment, to deliver new projects more quickly. It will all apply to both the civil and the military nuclear industry.This has been greeted with joy by X-Energy, EDF, Microsoft, Great British Nuclear, the Nuclear Industry Association, Prospect, the Institute of Directors, Laing O’Rourke, Nuclear EMEA at AtkinsRéali, GCHQ, tech UK, newcleo – indeed, all the people who hope to make a financial killing from the UK tax-payer.
Others are less enthused:
“The Labour government has swallowed [the] nuclear industry spin whole … They present as fact things which are merely optimistic conjecture on small nuclear reactor cost, speed of delivery and safety.” (Doug Parr, policy director of Greenpeace UK).
We must keep in mind that, with all this enthusiasm, these new small nuclear reactors do not actually exist. They are only designs on the computers of a multitude of companies vying for the contracts to build their prototype, and with a history of failures so far, USA’s NuScale and France’s Nuward small nuclear reactors.
The other side of the hoped-for resuscitation of the nuclear industry is the maintenance and planned life-extension of Britain’s aging nuclear fleet of big Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGRs) and one big Pressurised Water Reactor. With a mean age of 37.1 years they are all due to be decommissioned before long. With exposure to radiation, high temperatures, their components become more brittle, susceptible to cracking, less able to cope with temperature extremes.
Other spin matters happily regurgitated by Starmer are the idea of new nuclear power not only as “cheap” but as providing thousands of “clean” healthy and safe jobs. The fact that the UK is already in a horrible mess with its unsolved problem of plutonium waste – is just ignored – yet the new small nuclear designs would produce even more toxic plutonium wastes.
Recent research has backed up many previous studies that prove that workers in the nuclear industry are at higher risk of radiation-induced illness and death, especially from cancer. So – they’re not “clean” jobs, and it’s clear now that the new smrs+AI are intimately connected with military applications – not jobs where one could feel safe and proud of doing really beneficial work.
Starmer blames all the opposition, delay on building nuclear power, on Vladimir Putin, “holding Britain hostage”. Now it seems, the nuclear history of environmental damage, cancer, accidents, intractable waste problems, and stupendous costs, – all mean nothing. Those who oppose new nuclear power in the UK are just tools of pro-Russian propaganda?
Indeed, it is Spin Baby, Nuclear Spin!
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Noel!
What you seem to have forgotten is that internationally respected scientific organisations like the CSIRO are deliberately spreading lies about everything they have their greasy fingers in:
– nuclear energy
– climate change
– domestic solar power
– larger renewable energy projects
– etc. etc.
Peter Dutton and his scheming nucleocrats will take heed of this and knit the weave to include Australia’s developing nuclear industry that will include proposals for military (think AUKUS), domestic and industrial energy (think no power without wind on cloudy days) and no doubt a medical isotope or two for new mRNA “vaccines”. Nuclear reactors are potential targets for aggressors with awful consequences should they be breached. The Ukrainians fear this prospect more than in-coming conventional weapons.
I guess all those nuclear non-proliferation treaties are lining a cat litter box somewhere…
I have no words…
Spin, baby, spin, indeed!
One might say, thank goodness the Tories have imploded, shrivelled on the vine like Britain as a whole. But this account goes to show that Keir Starmer is an absolute mindless, traitorous turd. And that the British Labour Party is bereft of any spine. Will it be getting its uranium through Macron after France thieves from and beats the shit out of the people of Niger?
The old imperialists, after obliterating half the world, and leaving it a toxic nightmare, seem to be coalescing to do it again. As they crumble through blithering ineptitude, it’s truly amazing that still, just under the florid skin of respectability, the political class of England are beholden to the horrendous City of London cabal, and indeed remain a bunch of brutal and racist bastards.