French utility company EDF says operations in Somerset will start a year later as delay costs firm €2.5bn
Britain’s first new nuclear plant in a generation at the Hinkley Point C site will face further delay, at a cost of €2.5bn to the French utility company EDF.
EDF said the first reactor at the site in Somerset will begin operations in 2030, a year later than planned – almost 13 years after construction work began – after a series of delays to the project.
Continue reading...French government-owned company to receive funding for Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C
UK energy bill payers will hand over £2bn a year in subsidies to EDF, the French company building two new nuclear power stations, according to government figures.
EDF, owned by the French government, will be entitled to £1bn in annual payments as soon as Hinkley Point C, in Somerset, comes on to the grid in 2030.
Continue reading...Fallout from extraordinary briefing operation against Wes Streeting continues as calls grow for Starmer to sack his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney
Haroon Siddique is the Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent.
Five UN experts have written to ministers criticising the ban on Palestine Action as something that would be expected in an authoritarian regime rather than a liberal democracy.
In the work of UN experts in monitoring counter-terrorism laws globally, abuse of laws to proscribe organisations as terrorist that are not genuinely so has more commonly occurred in states that are authoritarian and lack legal and political cultures of respect for human rights, legality, due process and independent judicial safeguards, in order to target civil society organisations, human rights defenders, political dissidents and minorities.
It is deeply concerning that such practices appear to have spread to a number of liberal democracies. Organisations must never be listed as terrorist for engaging in protected speech or legitimate activities in defence of human rights.
We are concerned that proscription and its consequences result in unnecessary and disproportionate restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association, and the rights to take part in public affairs and to liberty.
The Scottish government’s tax decisions enable us to deliver higher investment in the NHS and policies like free tuition not available anywhere else in the UK.
Continue reading...Watchdog’s flagship report says rise in low-carbon electricity will make transition ‘inevitable’, despite Trump’s calls to carry on drilling
Renewables will grow faster than any major energy source in the next decade, according to the world’s energy watchdog, making the transition away from fossil fuels “inevitable”, despite a green backlash in the US and parts of Europe.
The world is expected to build more renewable energy projects in the next five years than has been rolled out over the last 40, according to the flagship annual report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Continue reading...If the US navy needs the subs, they cannot be sold to Australia, regardless of how much the president might wish it
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Even by the standards of the Trumpian promise, the unvarnished commitment to Australia on US nuclear submarines – “they’re getting them” – is entirely unreliable.
They are not the US president’s boats to give.
Continue reading...Satellite images of damaged area show no sign of shelling that Moscow says prevents repair
Russia has been accused of deliberately sabotaging the last remaining power line into the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, after satellite imagery of the damaged area showed no sign of Ukrainian shelling that Moscow says is preventing a repair.
Outside power, normally used for cooling, has now been down for a record eight days, forcing the Russian operators of the plant in occupied Ukraine to rely on back-up diesel generators to avoid a meltdown of its six reactor cores.
Continue reading...Ukrainian president says Russian shelling is preventing work to restore links to grid and that one of the plant’s diesel generators has failed
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday said the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been off the grid for seven straight days, warning of the potential threat of a “critical” situation.
It is the longest outage at Zaporizhzhia since Russia invaded and seized the nuclear plant, Europe’s largest.
Continue reading...Quantum sensing, satellite tracking and AI are part of an accelerating arms race in detection that should prompt a re-evaluation of Australia’s defence strategy
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Military history is littered with the corpses of apex predators.
The Gatling gun, the battleship, the tank. All once possessed unassailable power – then were undermined, in some cases wiped out, by the march of new technology.
Continue reading...Moscow says operating capacity of reactor at Kursk site reduced by 50% as Kyiv celebrates independence day
Moscow has accused Kyiv of launching dozens of drone attacks, including one that sparked a fire at a nuclear power plant, as Ukrainians marked 34 years since the country gained independence from the Soviet Union.
The drone attack on the Kursk nuclear power plant in western Russia, 37 miles (60km) from the border with Ukraine, caused damage to an auxiliary transformer and forced a 50% reduction in the operating capacity of a reactor, Russian authorities said. Ukraine did not immediately comment on the alleged attack.
Continue reading...Clear majority backs restarting Maanshan reactor but doesn’t reach legal threshold, as president says nuclear power may be reconsidered if it becomes safe
A referendum to push for the reopening of Taiwan’s last nuclear plant has failed to reach the legal threshold to be valid, though the president said the island could return to the technology in the future if safety standards improved.
The plebiscite on Saturday, backed by the opposition, asked whether the Maanshan power plant should be reopened if it was “confirmed” there were no safety issues. The plant was closed in May as the government shifts to renewables and liquefied natural gas.
Continue reading...‘Massive and unpredictable’ swarm entered filter drums that pull in water, Gravelines operator EDF says
The Gravelines nuclear power plant in northern France has been shut down after a swarm of jellyfish entered the filter drums that pull in cooling water, according to its state-owned operator, EDF.
The plant in northern France is one of the largest in the country and cooled from a canal connected to the North Sea.
Continue reading...Government’s deal with EDF, Centrica and other backers marks end of 15-year journey to win funding for project
The UK government has struck a deal worth more than £38bn with private investors to back Britain’s biggest nuclear project in a generation, at the Sizewell C site on the Suffolk coast.
The long-awaited multibillion-pound deal, which will be paid for through taxes and energy bills, gives the final go-ahead for construction of the nuclear project, which has almost doubled in cost from when it was first proposed.
Continue reading...Rafael Grossi says some of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile could have been moved before US attacks
The UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi says Iran likely will be able to begin to produce enriched uranium “in a matter of months”, despite damage to several nuclear facilities from US and Israeli attacks, CBS News said on Saturday.
Israel launched a bombing campaign on Iranian nuclear and military sites on 13 June, saying it was aimed at keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon – an ambition the Islamic republic has consistently denied.
Continue reading...Ed Miliband promises to ‘get Britain off the fossil fuel rollercoaster’ with new plant expected to create 10,000 jobs
The biggest nuclear programme in a generation will “get Britain off the fossil fuel rollercoaster”, the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, has said, announcing £14.2bn to build a new nuclear power station and a drive to build small modular reactors.
The multibillion-pound investment at Sizewell C on the Suffolk coast, which has been long expected, will create 10,000 jobs and power the equivalent of 6m homes.
Continue reading...Facebook and Instagram parent’s deal follows other big tech companies signing agreements with power companies
Meta on Tuesday said it had struck an agreement to keep one nuclear reactor of a US utility company in Illinois operating for 20 years.
Meta’s deal with Constellation Energy is the social networking company’s first with a nuclear power plant. Other large tech companies are looking to secure electricity as US power demand rises significantly in part due to the needs of artificial intelligence and datacenters. Google has reached agreements to supply its datacenters with nuclear power via a half-dozen small reactors built by a California utility company. Microsoft’s similar contract will restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, the site of the most serious nuclear accident and radiation leak in US history.
Continue reading...President aims to construct new nuclear reactors as he implements his own energy policies and undoes Joe Biden’s
Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders on Friday intended to spur a “nuclear energy renaissance” through the construction of new reactors he said would satisfy the electricity demands of data centers for artificial intelligence and other emerging industries.
The orders represented the president’s latest foray into the policy underlying America’s electricity supply. Trump declared a national energy emergency on his first day in office over and moved to undo a ban implemented by Joe Biden on new natural gas export terminals and expand oil and gas drilling in Alaska.
Continue reading...Government to analyse potential benefits of new generation of reactors
Denmark is reconsidering its 40-year ban on nuclear power in a major policy shift for the renewables-heavy country.
The Danish government will analyse the potential benefits of a new generation of nuclear power technologies after banning traditional nuclear reactors in 1985, its energy minister said.
Continue reading...More than 40% of voters say Labor’s large majority should encourage Anthony Albanese to get more ambitious with policies in key areas
Anthony Albanese’s personal approval rating has spiked off the back of his election win, as an overwhelming majority of Australians call on Labor to rapidly initiate health, housing and energy reform.
More than 40% of voters say Labor’s large parliamentary majority should encourage Albanese to set out an even more ambitious schedule of reform, according to the latest Guardian Essential poll. The prime minister’s popularity has risen to its highest level for a year, the poll showed.
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Continue reading...Number comes from the Smart Energy Council (SEC), a renewable energy industry group, almost six months before Coalition modelling
Labor’s campaign spokesperson, frontbencher Jason Clare, claimed on Monday that CSIRO had put a $600bn price tag on the Coalition’s plans to build taxpayer-funded nuclear reactors at seven sites.
“Have a look at the work that the CSIRO has done that proves that this will cost $600bn. It won’t turn a light on for 20 years. It’ll only produce about 4% of the energy that Australia is going to need,” Clare told ABC Radio National.
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Continue reading...Critical minerals, nuclear power and the ‘weaponisation’ of energy supplies were discussed at international conference
The UK and the International Energy Agency gathered ministers and high-level officials from 60 countries to Lancaster House in London for two days of talks on the future of energy security this week. The EU was out in force, the US sent a top official, but China stayed away. Here’s what we learned.
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