Tim Worstall

About giving up nuclear weapons: The North’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper rejected as groundless and unacceptable the US and South Korean condition that it agree to dismantle its nuclear weapons and suspend missile launches. “If the DPRK sits at a table with the US it has to be a dialogue between nuclear weapons states, not one [...]

[Read more →]

The Telegraph reports: The Swiss trading group had a barter agreement with the Iranian Aluminium Company (Iralco), under which Glencore provided alumina – used to make aluminium – in return for a smaller amount of the metal, sources told Reuters. Iralco itself had a contract to supply aluminium to Iran Centrifuge Technology Co (TESA), a [...]

[Read more →]

The latest report is that Irtan is now running a heavy water plant. According to the Institute for Science and International Security, a US think tank, if the heavy-water plant reaches full capacity, it would produce about 20lb of plutonium a year. No, just no. A heavy water plant produces heavy water. This can then [...]

[Read more →]

Gargantuan sums of money, yes. But then so are the promises being doled out to renewables. What’s really interesting though is the form: Under the proposed funding system, called contracts for difference, companies such as EDF that build and operate nuclear reactors would be guaranteed a minimum “strike” price for the energy they generate. If [...]

[Read more →]

So Hitachi is going to build nukes in the UK. Hurrah! Hitachi unveils £20bn plan to build nuclear reactors in the UK Japan’s Hitachi has revived Britain’s ailing nuclear power ambitions with plans to invest £20bn in building at least four reactors in the UK. Good. And now for the bad bit. Major obstacles remain [...]

[Read more →]

Russia offers to build Britain’s nuclear power stations Moscow has offered to help Britain build nuclear power stations in partnership with Rolls-Royce, Russia’s deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov has said. God alone knows what Rolls Royce is doing with this deal. But no, just no, for two reasons. 1) If you think the Russian oil [...]

[Read more →]

Is this the most polluted place on Earth? The Russian lake where an hour on the beach would kill you Lake Karachay was a dumping ground for one of the Soviet Union’s biggest nuclear weapons facilities A string of accidents and disasters has left the surrounding regime completely contaminated with radioactive waste Yeah, the place [...]

[Read more →]

One of these two numbers is wrong. The politicians of Cumbria County Council have cooled on the idea of burying hundreds of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste but a kilometre beneath their feet. Initially tempted by the huge economic benefits a £12bn nuclear research and disposal would bring, councillors now seem dismayed that the [...]

[Read more →]

Disastrous, nuclear power must obviously be banned immediately! Cesium-137 has a radioactive half-life of about 30 years, and traces of the isotope still persist from above-ground nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s and ’60s. But cesium-134, which has a half-life of only two years, “is inarguably from Fukushima Daiichi,” Stanford University marine ecologist Dan Madigan [...]

[Read more →]

The company is taking a significantly different approach friom ITER and NIF, both of which aim to drive turbines from heat created by neutrons that escape in the fusion process. Agreed that I don’t know much about nuclear physics but that really does look rather wrong to me. Umm, aren’t we wanting to drive turbines [...]

[Read more →]

All osrts of lefties keep telling us that interest rates are very low right now so the government should borrow to invest in infrastructure. Very much the same group of lefties tell us that we must decarbonise the energy production system in this country. The cost of nuclear power is almost entirely determined by the [...]

[Read more →]

The wildlife-rich wetlands of Romney Marsh in Kent could become a radioactive dumping ground for Britain Sounds a bit weird. Don’t you want some nice rocky area, not a low laying marsh? Some nice already radioactive chunk of granite perhaps? Some Cornish or Aberdonian mountain?

[Read more →]

The Japan Times reported on 29 March that radiation inside the vessel has reached 73 sieverts per hour – high enough to administer a lethal dose to a human in a matter of minutes, even to disable the robotic devices which are sent regularly into the reactor to monitor what is happening there. High radiation [...]

[Read more →]

Russia: we would build safe UK nuclear plants Russia’s state atomic energy agency has played down fears over its safety record as it confirmed its interest in building nuclear power stations in Britain. No, just no. Quite apart from anything else they’re possibly the most corrupt organisation I’ve ever dealt with. And yes, that includes [...]

[Read more →]

Nuclear power can’t happen without subsidy. So it shouldn’t happen. Facepalm. There is absolutely no argument where this is true of nuclear but not of renewables.

[Read more →]

Understandably, Japan too is now in crisis, with just two of its 54 reactors in operation. Its government is drawing up new energy plans, but the cities of Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe have already urged their main electricity supplier to cease its reliance on nuclear power. The report of the first independent, authoritative inquiry into [...]

[Read more →]

Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister, said that he was “very concerned about the latest report from the IAEA”, adding: “We think Iran should understand the key to ending sanctions is in their own hands: they have a duty to co-operate with the international community.” Well, yes, quite. You see, the thing is, they’ve signed [...]

[Read more →]

Oh yes, we see all the standard fallacies here. Although there is a scientific consensus that no exposure is safe, no matter how brief, No love, there isn’t a scientific consensus that says that there is no safe level of radioactivity. Forget hormesis for a moment and just concentrate on the obvious fallacy of the [...]

[Read more →]

Finding a self-confessed Green backing breeder reactors. But respek to Mr. Monbiot for (sometimes) following where the evidence leads him.

[Read more →]

Hurrah! “This proposal will lead to a subsidised plant creating subsidised fuel so that subsidised operators can produce subsidised electricity ….” That sticks it to those windmill and solar people! Yeah! Hmm, what? They were talking about Sellafield? Oh, sorry, mumble, mumble…..

[Read more →]