Two wise voices explain why spending on Britain’s nuclear weapons must stop

The cost of Britain’s nuclear weapons is skyrocketing; a National Audit Office report reveals that Britain’s nuclear weapons will account for almost a third of military procurement spending over the next decade. 

In December 2023 the NAO published The Equipment Plan 2023–2033, which found that the budget for the Defence Nuclear Organisation saw its “costs increased by £38.2 billion (62%) to £99.5 billion” in 2023.

Founded in 2016, the Defence Nuclear Organisation is a body within the Ministry of Defence that oversees Britain’s Nuclear Defence Enterprise – nuclear weapons infrastructure, procurement, research and equipment – including the delivery of Britain’s new nuclear-armed Dreadnought-class submarines.

In February this year HMS Vanguard conducted a Trident missile firing that was said to have demonstrated the boat’s readiness to return to operations following an extensive refit (Armada International). But the missile’s booster rockets failed and it landed in the sea close to the launch site (BBC):

CND General Secretary Kate Hudson said: “Spending on Britain’s nuclear weapons is well and truly out of control and has to stop. We have a climate emergency to tackle, a cost-of-living crisis to end, and crumbling public services to fix. Yet the government thinks that spending ever-increasing sums on new nuclear weapons is the priority – all at the expense of the public it is supposed to protect”.

She ended: “There is no evidence to back up the claim that nuclear weapons keep us safe. They actually make us a nuclear target and building new ones just fuels a new nuclear arms race and an increasing risk of nuclear war. It’s time to end the madness and get rid of them once and for all.”

Keir Starmer claims that we need nuclear weapons “in the face of rising global threats and growing Russian aggression (BBC).” But nuclear weapons have done nothing to avoid the Russian invasion of Ukraine – indeed mzny stress that the gradual expansion of nuclear-armed NATO to the borders of Russia has been a huge contributing factor to the conflict.

Sir Keir Starmer talks to workers at the BAE Systems factory in Barrow-in-Furness

Ben Chacko’s editorial refutes the claims of Trident supporters that the 30,000 BAE Systems jobs supported at a cost of £205bn are protected by investment in Britain’s nuclear weapons. The real figure in 2016, according to a report by CND, was closer to 11,500. And the bulk of the £205bn spent on Trident goes into the pockets of shareholders in the global arms trade.

As former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said, “Security is being able to put food on the table. It’s having a roof over your head” (Twitter/X). Ben concludes that if Labour really cared about the creation of secure well-paid jobs,  it will – if elected – invest the money to be wasted on Trident in rebuilding Britain’s manufacturing base, creating high-skilled, well-paid (Ed: and cleaner) jobs for communities which have suffered the ravages of 40 years of deindustrialisation.

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1. No to new nuclear power projects: resources should be spent on rapidly scaling up Britain’s far greener renewable energy

Nuclear Engineering International, which covers all aspects of civil nuclear power generation and related supply chains globally, exults that 2023 proved to be one of the most noteworthy 12 months for nuclear since the start of the industry – a turnaround largely unthinkable over decades of decline. It hopes that 2024 will prove to be even more remarkable for the nuclear industry, due to the energy security implications of the on-going conflict in Ukraine.

The Johnson government’s 2020 White Paper, Powering our Net Zero Future, confirmed nuclear power’s clean energy status, in order to encourage investment in funds dedicated to environmental, social and governance (ESG) funds which promise their investors that their cash is going towards social good, such as tackling the climate crisis (Matt Oliver).

The Green Finance Institute (GFI) is an independent, commercially focused organisation ‘backed by government and led by bankers’. Its Green Technical Advisory Group warns that the UK’s finance taxonomy must not greenwash harmful investments, noting that the EU has faced legal challenges over its award of a green investment label to nuclear power which comes with risks relating to concerns about nuclear waste, water usage and the remote but catastrophic risk of nuclear accidents.

Oliver adds it can be argued that pursuing the project would prove a drain on government and financial resources, which could be better spent on rapidly scaling up Britain’s wind and solar capacity and improving electricity networks and storage – noting that an effective ban on onshore wind developments still remains in place.

The Suffolk Heritage Coast, Sizewell Marshes SSSI, RSPB Minsmere (the UK’s flagship rare bird and wildlife sanctuary), the marine environment and acres of rural Suffolk are all under threat from Sizewell C.

The Sizewell C site from this to………………………….

The forthright words of Charles Barrington who lives near Sizewell C denounce the hypocrisy of deeming it to be “green”, pointing out that before an amp of power is produced:

• Suffolk will have 15 years of construction traffic hell, with hundreds of heavy lorries every day on our inadequate roads.
• Minsmere nature reserve and its surrounding biodiversity will be fatally compromised by noise, light and damage to the water table.
• The sea will be affected by the warm water outflow from the cooling system.
• The tourist industry will be crippled, with accommodation taken up by the itinerant workforce.
• And that’s all before an amp of power is produced.

He ends: “Never mind the implications of the post-operational clean-up – a problem conveniently left to our great-grandchildren. Sizewell C will join HS2 in that great graveyard for overpriced government-backed projects.”

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The next post refers to EDF’s renewed pressure on the UK government to help with the cost overrun at Hinkley Point

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2. No to new nuclear power projects: a drain on resources

Last year, EDF warned that the cost of building Somerset’s Hinkley Point nuclear power station costs could rise to £32bn

Estimates of costs to build Hinkley Point C in south-west England have spiralled since EDF started the project in 2016

EDF and its state-owned Chinese partner CGN were asked in the second half of 2023 to make “voluntary” additional equity payments under a compensation mechanism for cost overruns, as “the project’s total financing needs exceed the contractual commitment of the shareholders”, EDF said. But it added that the “probability that CGN will not fund the project after it has reached its committed equity cap is high”.

Luc Rémont, EDF’s chief executive, said he was confident of persuading the British government to help finance two flagship nuclear reactor projects in the UK, as the French group reported a €12.9bn writedown on its delayed Hinkley Point C plant (Financial Times).

On February 28^th, Chris Huhne, former UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary, wrote: ‘Tax­pay­ers shouldn’t be foot­ing bill for EDF fail­ings’

“I was astonished and saddened by your report that both Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, and Luc Rémont, chief executive of EDF, are pressing the UK government to help with the cost overrun at Hinkley Point C, the EDF nuclear plant under construction in the UK . . .

“I will save French blushes by not quoting all the promises that were made by the company about the low cost of its nuclear energy (a fraction even of what was ultimately agreed) . . .

“A clear condition of the Hinkley project was that EDF would be entirely and solely responsible for the construction costs and risks, and the UK government would merely guarantee a price (subsidy-free, taking account of carbon costs) for the electricity output once the plant started. Nothing could be more unambiguous either legally, politically or morally . . .

“Any British minister who now goes back on that arrangement would be betraying their responsibility to the exchequer, and would be a legitimate target for the public accounts committee . . .

“If EDF is unable or unwilling to complete the project in time to avail itself of the price guaranteed under the contract for difference, there are legal processes of liquidation which should be used to find an alternative buyer at the market value for the unfinished assets”.

On Friday EDF said: “Under the worst-case scenario Hinkley could now cost £47.9bn to complete, compared with an initial £18bn estimate in 2016”.

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Government’s new Nuclear Roadmap exposes its grim intent to subsidise our so-called “independent nuclear deterrent”

Ominous when coupled with today’s warning from the head of the British army that the UK public must be prepared to take up arms in a war against Vladimir Putin’s Russia 

Hinkley Point C nuclear plant was originally supposed to start producing electricity from 2017 at a cost of £18bn. It is now reported that it could cost 46bn and be ready by 2029. Bloomberg even says that in a worst case scenario Unit 1 may not start until 2031.

Decommissioned: Hinkley Point B

Jonathon Porritt (below right) appraises the Government’s new Nuclear Roadmap

He points out that the new Nuclear Roadmap sets to one side any pretence that the links between our civil nuclear programme and our military defence needs were anything other than small-scale – and of no material strategic significance.

With quite startling transparency and clarity, the Roadmap not only reveals the full extent of those links, but positively celebrates that co-dependency as a massive plus in our ambition to achieve a Net Zero economy by 2050.

For years, suggestions by a small group of dedicated academics and campaigners that the UK Government’s Nuclear Energy Strategy is being driven primarily by the UK’s continuing commitment to an “independent” nuclear weapons capability.

Their Roadmap acknowledges the crucial importance of the nuclear industry to our national security, both in terms of energy supply and the defence nuclear enterprise, The strategy will:

“address the commonalities across the civil and defence supply chains, and the potential risk to our respective nuclear programmes due to competing demand for the supply chain, the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) is working closely with the Ministry of Defence and the Defence Nuclear Sector.”

Porritt predicts

• We will indeed end up with Hinkley Point C and possibly Sizewell C, though as yet the Government cannot currently guarantee the required level of investment.
• We will never get a third big reactor. The economics are literally impossible to justify.
• We are unlikely to get more than a couple of hugely expensive Small Modular Reactors, at some indeterminate point in the future (see Professor Steve Thomas, left)
• Worldwide, no commercial design of SMR has even received a firm order yet.
• And we may or may not get life extensions for the last five power stations in the “legacy fleet” – subject to regulatory approval, which may not be all that easy given extensive cracking in their reactor cores.

He describes the Roadmap as a massive and costly diversion from reality putting at risk our entire Net Zero by 2050 strategy because of “an increasingly anachronistic understanding of our place in the world (with a must-have seat at the nuclear powers’ table) and of what “national security” means, still permeates and contaminates both defence and energy strategies”. He ends:

“Ministers know all that. But they don’t really care. Our nuclear weapons programme (including upgrading Trident) will be protected as a consequence of this, via an unceasing flow of public money into the civil nuclear cul-de-sac, at a time when our defence budget is already massively overstretched. So who cares about the missing 24GW?”#

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More hopefully:

We’ll continue to see new investment into renewables here in the UK, despite (not because of) government policy, which has seriously messed up our offshore wind industry, maintained a de facto ban on onshore wind, couldn’t care less about solar, witters on vapidly about tidal without doing anything etc etc.

Meanwhile, on a global basis, renewables continue to boom. Here are a few facts – in contrast to over-excited sightings of nuclear unicorns: 

• More renewable electricity has been generated in the last 5 years (in fact, enough to power the whole of the EU) than the entire output of today’s global nuclear fleet; 
• Overall renewable capacity grew by 50% in 2023, adding a massive 500GW. 
• China added 278GW of renewables in 2023 (more than 50% of the global total) in contrast to a paltry 1.2GW of new nuclear. And China is the most enthusiastic supporter of nuclear new build. 
• According to the International Energy Agency, renewables will generate more than 40% of total global electricity by 2028.

 

 

 

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‘Let us be a lesson’: a message from Kazakhs fearing a return to nuclear testing

A reader in Wales sent a link to news of a message from communities close to the Soviet-era nuclear testing site in northern Kazakhstan to their leaders.

In November this year, President Vladimir Putin revoked Russia’s ratification of the 1996 global treaty banning nuclear weapons tests but said it will not lead to a resumption of testing unless the United States does this first (Reuters).

A model of a nuclear test at the museum of the Semipalatinsk Test Site, one of the main locations for nuclear testing in the Soviet Union, in the town of Kurchatov in the Abai Region, Kazakhstan

“Let our suffering be a lesson to others,” said Serikbay Ybyrai, local leader in the village of Saryzhal, who saw tests being carried out some 20 km (12 miles) away when he was a boy. “If this (testing) resumes, humanity will disappear.”

About 450 tests were carried out between 1949 and 1989 on the barren steppe near the city of Semey, formerly known as Semipalatinsk, close to the Kazakh-Russian border there. More than 100 of them were atmospheric tests and the rest underground. The latter were used after a 1963 treaty went into force banning nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in space or underwater, and are considered less harmful. Steppe winds carried nuclear fallout across an area the size of Italy

Devices were detonated above ground until 1963 when tests went underground and authorities ordered local people out of homes and schools because of fears that ground tremors might cause buildings to collapse.

Much of the territory, pockmarked with lakes resulting from blast craters, is still considered too contaminated to inhabit or cultivate.

“I remember I was about five years old,” said Baglan Gabullin, a resident of Kaynar (above), another village that lived under the shadow of nuclear testing. He recalled how adults would instruct him and his friends not to look in the direction of the blast. “We were small, so on the contrary, out of curiosity we looked. The flash was yellow at first, and then the black mushroom grew,” he said.

Kazakh authorities estimate up to 1.5 million people were exposed to residual radioactive fallout from testing. Over 1 million received certificates confirming their status as victims of tests, making them eligible for an 18,000-tenge ($40) monthly payout.

In Saryzhal, a village of around 2,000 people, Gulsum Mukanova recalls how she and other children would watch above-ground explosions, known as atmospheric tests . . . “ My father died at the age of 58; then my elder brother died, then my sister,” added Mukanova, who is in her mid-60s. “Everyone started dying.” Gabullin, speaking near a small monument to victims of nuclear tests erected in Kaynar, also said losses were common.

“There were about 300 tractor drivers who worked with me … now only two or three are alive. All died of cancer and leukaemia,” he said. “Even the schoolchildren who worked for me then, now they are 50-53 years old, they are already dying.”

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At present Subcritical (or cold) tests are allowed under the interpretation of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. They involve nuclear materials and possibly high explosives that result in no yield (blast, thermal, and nuclear radiation).The United States, Russia, and the People’s Republic of China continue to perform Subcritical tests.–

See also: After 60 years of deception and denial, Britain’s surviving nuclear test veterans receive a medal: too little, too late  

 

 

 

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Will the US Department of Defense be authorised to build a new B61 nuclear bomb?

News that the US is planning to build a new B61-13 nuclear bomb (Aviationist) was sent by a reader living in Wales. “The U.S. Department of Defense announced the development of yet another, more powerful variant of the B61 nuclear bomb, the B61-13”.

The proposed new B61-13 is usually described as a nuclear gravity bomb and more rarely as a thermonuclear gravity bomb – a hydrogen, or H-bomb (see the fact sheet issued by the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation).

Defense News has reported that the Pentagon said, in its fact sheet accompanying the release, that the B61-13 would give the president more options to strike “harder and large-area military targets”.

A search informed the writer that five months earlier, CND General Secretary Kate Hudson had said that the siting of upgraded guided nuclear bombs (below) at Lakenheath is not just a matter of concern for the people of East Anglia, but for the entire country as it makes Britain a clear target in any nuclear confrontation between Russia and the US:

“The aircraft used to deliver these bombs, the F-35, is a significant polluter to the local area with one tank of fuel emitting the equivalent of 28 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

“The F-35 programme has been plagued with technical problems which remain unsolved and pose a serious accident risk. We’re calling on the British government to deny any US request to site B61-12s at Lakenheath and to engage in serious efforts to deescalate tensions between nuclear-armed states.”

Protests are continuing

The  Chair of the Nuclear Free Local , Authorities Councillor Lawrence O’Neill, has been sending letters to Foreign Secretary James Cleverley and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps in September.

In a later post Defense News added that the US will ‘pursue’ the development which has not yet received Congressional authorization and appropriation’.

Many will hope that Congress will vote against this project after reading the congressional commission’s report on America’s strategic posture, which Dr Harlan K Ullman – senior advisor at the Atlantic Council suggests might  have exaggerated the threats of China and Russia.

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Brief video about the B61-12 nuclear bomb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uHy5HrmUr0

 

 

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Dismantling deterrence instead of dismantling disarmament

To read the NatoWatch post go ro its website: https://natowatch.org/default/2023/dismantling-deterrence-instead-dismantling-disarmament

 

 

 

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Further down the Primrose Path: China, France, USA and Russia have offered Saudi Arabia nuclear technology

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter is hoping to acquire its own civil nuclear capability and is currently considering bids to build a nuclear power station from countries including China, France and Russia (FT).

It seeks a bid from the US as well, offering to assist with normalising relations with Israel, but Washington insists that Saudi Arabia should not enrich its uranium.(see correction)

Saudi Arabia has drawn closer to China, its largest trading partner, and earlier this week joined the BRICS group of emerging economies. It hosted Chinese president Xi Jinping last year for a Gulf summit, and months later Beijing brokered an agreement between the kingdom and Iran.

Saudi Arabia plans to enrich its domestic uranium stocks to ensure its ability to complete “the entire nuclear fuel cycle,” the kingdom’s energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, told a mining and industry conference in Riyadh in Jnnuary .He said the process would include “the production of yellowcake, low enriched uranium and the manufacturing of nuclear fuel both for our national use and of course, for export,” Reuters reported, (Arms Control Organisation).

Saudi officials said that nuclear plants were needed to provide emissions-free energy for a growing population and reduce its reliance on burning oil (WSJ)

But according to Mark Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, when the full life cycle of nuclear is taken into account – from mining, milling and enriching the uranium that provides the fuel, through to fabricating and transporting that fuel, and then on to managing and eventually disposing of the radioactive waste and decommissioning the reactors – emissions from nuclear power are between 10 to 18 times greater than emissions from renewable energy technologies. And all those emissions are over and above the huge embodied carbon costs of construction referred to earlier (Jonathon Porritt: Net Zero Without Nuclear)

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Correction to the 2nd paragraph: Paul Ingram adds :

“Just on a technical point on the second paragraph… it is uranium that is enriched (before going into the reactor)… and the US is attempting to block enrichment of uranium. Plutonium is reprocessed after the rods are extracted from the reactor”.

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Is this ‘civilised’ country supplying DU ammunition – a risk to human & environmental health?

Since the March reports of the UK government’s intention to supply DU ammunition to Ukraine, the media has been silent, merely adding in June that the Biden administration is to equip tanks with to be sent to Ukraine with DU ammunition (Wall Street Journal) , Many were deeply disturbed to read Baroness Goldie’s answer to a parliamentary question:

Alongside our granting of a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, we will be providing ammunition including armour piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium. Such rounds are highly effective in defeating modern tanks and armoured vehicles.

The government’s own website warns that if DU enters the body, it can potentially cause damage from the inside (internal exposure) either through irradiation or by chemical action. It can enter the body by inhalation (breathing in fine dust), ingestion via the mouth, contamination of an open wound, or, on the battlefield, by the embedding of shrapnel fragments

A paper from the World Health Organization (WHO) reports: “The health effects of natural and depleted uranium are due to chemical effects and not to radiation . . . Potentially depleted uranium has both chemical and radiological toxicity with the two important target organs being the kidneys and the lungs”.

The Institute of Medicine (above) has investigated the implication of preconceptional paternal irradiation as a causal factor in childhood cancer

“. . . the data indicate that there exists a route for transgenerational transmission of factor(s) leading to genomic instability in F1 progeny from DU-exposed fathers”. (Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Health Effects Associated with Exposures During the Gulf War (2010). Though this evidence refers to laboratory research on rats it should not be dismissed; their genetic, biological and behaviour characteristics closely resemble those of humans and many symptoms of human conditions can be replicated in mice and rats. (Live Science.)

The United States, United Kingdom, Israel, and France all opposed a United Nations resolution to document depleted uranium in war – and though the Ministry of Defence disputes the risks of DU, it recommends “ongoing surveillance” for veterans with embedded DU fragments. (Read the comprehensive article in the Harvard International Review by Sydney Young, left)

Instead of resting on the statements that there is no proven causal link between the damage to health, which may be dure to other factors, any truly civilised country would honour the precautionary principle.

“This principle, widely accepted in international law and policy documents, states that you do not have to wait for absolute scientific certainty in order to take action to prevent further deterioration of the situation at hand”

(Wouter Veening, President of the Institute for Environmental Security, The Hague, in the Financial Times)

 

 

 

 

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Double standards: Russia plans to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus – NATO countries have deployed them for years in Europe

Dr Kate Hudson (right) has been General Secretary of CND since September 2010. Having felt uneasy at the choice of the G7 venue, I read her recent article, ‘Hypocrisy in Hiroshima’ and summarise some points made.

Holding the recent G7 summit in Hiroshima raised her hopes that the leaders whose countries have significant nuclear arsenals would make a concrete initiative towards disarmament.

These hopes were dashed, though the G7 leaders had paid their ‘respects’ at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial and published, ‘in a solemn and reflective moment’, a document specifically focused on nuclear disarmament, reaffirming their commitment ‘to achieving a world without nuclear weapons’.

Kate pointed out that Russia is rightly taken to task for ‘irresponsible nuclear rhetoric’ and its stated intent to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus, yet most of the G7 leaders are already actively involved in the deployment of so-called tactical nuclear weapons by NATO in Europe.

The writer checked and – according to the US Council on Foreign Relations (CfR) – the United States has deployed nuclear weapons at NATO bases in Western Europe since the 1950s, when Cold War tensions were mounting with the Soviet Union. The weapons were first transferred to the United Kingdom in 1954, and later to Germany, Italy, France, Turkey, the Netherlands, Greece, and Belgium.

Today, CfR reports, U.S. tactical nuclear weapons remain at six bases in five NATO member countries, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. The UK and France have their own nuclear forces and no longer host U.S. weapons. Current U.S. nuclear stockpiles are classified, but security analysts Kristensen and Korda estimate that the United States has about one hundred nuclear bombs stored across the six facilities in Europe.

Kate Hudson reflects that the G7 leaders have called on Russia to ‘recommit – in words and deeds – to the principles enshrined in the 2022 Joint Statement of the Leaders of the Five Nuclear-Weapon States. She agrees that Russia must do this, but adds that so must all nuclear weapons states, ending:

“This is not a time for double standards. To preserve our planet and all forms of life, we must eradicate nuclear weapons, once and for all”.

 

 

 

 

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