Tag: energy

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Trump to ape Starmer in scrapping ‘red tape’ for new nuclear power and put all our lives at risk

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Professor John Robertson OBA From The Hill two days ago: President Trump on Friday signed executive orders that seek to quadruple the nation’s nuclear power, including by cutbacks to health and environmental considerations.  In one such executive order, Trump laments that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) radiation safety standards are too stringent. https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5316211-trump-executive-orders-nuclear-power/ From From PM Starmer via GOV.UK on 6 February 2025: More nuclear power plants will be approved across England and Wales as the Prime Minister slashes red tape to get Britain building – as part of his Plan for Change. Reforms to planning rules will clear a … Continue reading Trump to ape Starmer in scrapping ‘red tape’ for new nuclear power and put all our lives at risk

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Dodgy British ‘think tank’ with links to British Labour, British Tories, Russia, and support the Nuclear Energy industry fabricates dodgy Scottish poll

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By JB Dodgy British ‘think tank’ with links to British Labour, British Tories, Russia, and support the Nuclear Energy industry fabricates dodgy Scottish poll. Who are they? Britain Remade, the name itself says it all.  Their plan is to ‘get Britain building again’. They want to ‘make Britain energy secure by 2030’ They back ‘Great British Nuclear’ From their ‘plan’ ‘Britain’s nuclear delivery body Great British Nuclear must be given full backing to buy sites and de-risk development for new fleets of SMRs. Government can play a crucial active role in shaping the market for nuclear energy. Targeted earlystage investment, … Continue reading Dodgy British ‘think tank’ with links to British Labour, British Tories, Russia, and support the Nuclear Energy industry fabricates dodgy Scottish poll

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Sellafield: full site remediation will take until 2125

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https://www.thesun.ie/news/370058/more-than-450-safety-lapses-have-occurred-at-sellafield-nuclear-plant/ stewartb We, our children, grandchildren and beyond will be living – and paying – for the legacy of past and. present nuclear power generation for a long time to come. Source: National Audit Office (16 October 2024) Decommissioning Sellafield: managing risks from the nuclear legacy – Department for Energy Security & Net Zero, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/decommissioning-sellafield-managing-risks-from-the-nuclear-legacy.pdf ) In the words of the NAO on Sellafield: ‘.. the NDA expects full site remediation will take until 2125.’ So 100 years! We learn that Sellafield spend in 2023-24 = £2.7 billion. And from Para 3.16 of the NAO report: ‘Sellafield spends the majority of its current … Continue reading Sellafield: full site remediation will take until 2125

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Mythbusting: “(Scotland’s) wind power is unreliable, inefficient and harmful to nature”

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By JB From Europe’s largest renewable energy producer Statcraft  2nd April 2024: “Wind power is often characterised by incorrect, inaccurate and misleading claims.” Six stubborn myths about wind power 1. “Wind power takes up large areas of land.”  If you count the entire area around and between the turbines in a wind farm, there is no doubt that a wind farm is the energy source that requires the largest area of land per MWh produced, even if the direct impact on nature is small. However if the land where the wind turbines are located can be used at the same time … Continue reading Mythbusting: “(Scotland’s) wind power is unreliable, inefficient and harmful to nature”

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Stanford research finds Labour’s preferred small modular reactors will produce even more highly radioactive nuclear waste

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By JB Stanford-led research finds small modular reactors will exacerbate challenges of highly radioactive nuclear waste Small modular reactors, long touted as the future of nuclear energy, will actually generate more radioactive waste than conventional nuclear power plants, according to research from Stanford and the University of British Columbia. A study published in May 31 2022 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has reached the conclusion. “Our results show that most small modular reactor designs will actually increase the volume of nuclear waste in need of management and disposal, by factors of 2 to 30 for the reactors in our … Continue reading Stanford research finds Labour’s preferred small modular reactors will produce even more highly radioactive nuclear waste

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They get the feast we get the crumbs, again – Labour’s GB energy projects ‘across the country….of England

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By Liz S “Miliband said, “I’m not going to take a decision that is going to raise prices in some parts of the country. That is not what I’m going to do” Really ? Yet when he was interviewed by ITV in March of this year, where they reported that he said this (and he did , because he also tweeted this himself). ‘It’s going to make a difference to so many pupils and so many patients’ Ed Miliband says schools and hospitals will get ‘tens of thousands of pounds’ off their energy bills as they get new solar panels The plans … Continue reading They get the feast we get the crumbs, again – Labour’s GB energy projects ‘across the country….of England

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‘They didn’t know their backyard creek carried nuclear waste. Now, they’re dying of cancer’ – new evidence from the USA of how similar Sellafield waste and Scotland’s higher cancer deaths are likely to be connected

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Professor John Robertson OBA From CBS News and other US media yesterday: When Linda Morice and her family first moved to St. Louis in 1957, they had no idea they had anything to fear. Then, people started getting sick. “It was a slow, insidious process,” Morice said. After the death of Morice’s mother, her physician uncle took her aside and gave her a stark warning: “Linda, I don’t believe St. Louis is a very healthy place to live. Everyone on this street has a tumor.” Their neighborhood was bordered by Coldwater Creek, a 19-mile tributary of the Missouri River. It … Continue reading ‘They didn’t know their backyard creek carried nuclear waste. Now, they’re dying of cancer’ – new evidence from the USA of how similar Sellafield waste and Scotland’s higher cancer deaths are likely to be connected

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Eight months later BBC Scotland tries to undermine zonal pricing for Scotland with evidence and threats reminiscent of 2014 from companies based in England and Spain

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in July 2024 in the National: THE boss of an energy company has said Scotland could have “the cheapest electricity in Europe” if the UK Government introduces regional pricing. Eight months later BBC Scotland feel ready to acknowledge but to undermine the idea, with: Could Scotland have Europe’s lowest electricity bills? The boss of one of the UK’s biggest energy providers says people living in Scotland could have the cheapest electricity in Europe. Greg Jackson, who founded Octopus Energy, wants the electricity market to be reformed to introduce zonal pricing. He argues that if prices were based on local generation, the high … Continue reading Eight months later BBC Scotland tries to undermine zonal pricing for Scotland with evidence and threats reminiscent of 2014 from companies based in England and Spain

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Before Sellafield and before the nuclear submarines on the Clyde, how the Union gave Scotland the benefit of the Anthrax and the Black Death tests in our ‘less populated’ parts

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by the Government in 1952. It was stored offshore on a ship that had been converted into a laboratory. It’s purpose? The top-secret development of biological weapons. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001gn60/plaigh-air-bord Professor John Robertson OBA Thanks to Dottie for alerting me to this. BBC Alba this morning, re-broadcasting their 2023 documentary Plaigh air Bord (Plagues on Board), shocked Dottie and me. We all know about these less discussed benefits of the Union, such as Scotland’s highest cancer rates in the UK and in Europe, upwind and upstream of the Sellafield nuclear processing plant, the ‘most toxic site in Europe‘, carefully positioned as far … Continue reading Before Sellafield and before the nuclear submarines on the Clyde, how the Union gave Scotland the benefit of the Anthrax and the Black Death tests in our ‘less populated’ parts

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As energy prices loom thanks to Labour’s failure, how a Scottish Government call for closer energy links with Europe to cut bills was ignored by ‘Scottish’ media

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The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser closing on Friday, primarily to enable the recruitment of some research assistance, in order to take pressure off me [74 in June and tiring] and hopefully to further improve the blog, has made a good start. To contribute, only if you can (!) go to: Talking-up Scotland – a Politics crowdfunding project in Ayr by Professor John Robertson By Professor John Robertson OBA, former Faculty Research Ethics Chair, UWS  Posted just after midnight, on January 29th 2025, and so in plenty of time for consideration and publication, but there was none, the Scottish Government has called for closer … Continue reading As energy prices loom thanks to Labour’s failure, how a Scottish Government call for closer energy links with Europe to cut bills was ignored by ‘Scottish’ media