The Fanonite

As mentioned previously by Freeborn, the increase in oil prices may not be linked directly to peak oil.

Video: Matt Simmons, Bloomberg, February 01, 2007 | more

The End of Oil? An important question, worth exploring, although a rather dramatic approach from The Independent: using language such as doomsday, peakists, crackpots, conspiracy theorists and a new dark age. Like George Carlin I’m a fan of chaos and I look forward to a change in the world that will weaken the powerful and shake up societies built on wanton consumerism, greed and exploitation. I find it odd that the article doesn’t mention how we have an example of a country thats faced peak oil and survived - Cuba. Perhaps you’re not allowed to use Cuba as a good example? For a short introduction to this see Learning from Cuba’s Response to Peak Oil.

Aberdeen heliport is heaving. Dozens of rig men are waiting to board helicopters and begin a two-week stint in the middle of the North Sea. It appears that business out on the rigs, known simply as “the job” in these parts, is booming. Eventually, it’s our turn to board a cramped chopper, shoulder to shoulder with the solidly built workers who sit silently, psyching themselves up for a fortnight surrounded by cold, crashing waves.

Two hours later, we land at a rusting rig named Alwyn, 440 kilometres off the coast of Aberdeen. Ollie Bradshaw, the rig’s burly production supervisor, meets the new arrivals.

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With a nasty whiff of gas in the air Stuart Littlewood looks disapprovingly towards Tony Blair.  We all know he did it, that smell follows him everywhere.   Don Blair’s latest adventure is putting Gaza’s gas in Israel’s hands: presumably to create a new peace “by raping Palestine of its treasures and resources.”

Isn’t Gaza’s gas a home-grown source of energy of which the Palestinians should be in charge?

Yes, but the way things are shaping it’ll probably be stolen from them just like their lands, their homes and their precious water.

The Gaza marine gas field lies 25 to 30 kilometres off Gaza’s shore. In 1999 the BG Group obtained licences to Israeli offshore concessions, and shortly afterwards was awarded the Gaza licence, for a period of 25 years. BG holds 90 per cent equity in the licence, but this could reduce to 60 per cent if the Consolidated Contractors Company (its current 10 per cent partner) and the Palestine Investment Fund exercise their options.

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Noam Chomsky interviewed by Michael Shank.

Michael Shank: In December 2007, seven South American countries officially launched the Bank of the South in response to growing opposition to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other International Financial Institutions. How important is this shift and will it spur other responses in the developing world? Will it at some point completely undermine the reach of the World Bank and the IMF?

Noam Chomsky: I think it’s very important, especially because, contrary to the impression often held here, the biggest country Brazil is supporting it. The U.S. propaganda, western propaganda, is trying to establish a divide between the good left and the bad left. The good left, like Lula in Brazil, are governments they would’ve overthrown by force 40 years ago. But now that’s their hope, one of their saviors. But the divide is pretty artificial. Sure, they’re different. Lula isn’t Chavez. But they get along very well, they cooperate. And they are cooperating on the Bank of the South.

The Bank of the South could turn out to be a viable institution. There are plenty of problems in the region. But one of the striking things that’s been happening in South America for quite a few years now is that they are beginning to overcome for the first time, since the Spanish invasion, the conflicts among the countries and the separation of the countries. It was a very disintegrated continent. If you look at transportation systems they don’t have much to do with each other. They’re mostly oriented toward the imperial power that was dominant. So you send out resources, you send out capital, the rich tiny elite have their chateaus on the Riviera, and that sort of thing. But they have not much to do with each other.

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Today’s guest editorial from Alberto Cruz of Centro de Estudios Políticos para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Desarrollo (CEPRID) is an insightful look at the dilemma India is faced with as a consequence of its geo-political ambitions and the liberalisation  of its economy. [Note: This article was written on June 18]

India is the second most populous country in the world and at the same time one of the most unknown. While on the one hand China and Russia are courting India so as to create a real counterweight  to the United States (1), the country’s oligarchy want to break with that  proposed alliance and to do so are using the issue of nuclear power. Still, US proposals to share technology and nuclear fuel with India lack India’s agreement on a crucial matter : whether or not to carry out new nuclear tests. The US opposes them, while India thinks that agreeing to US demands would limit its right to process depleted uranium  fuel, a key step to obtain plutonium and, thus, would limit its sovereignty.

This is not only the official government position  but that of the opposition, on both Right and Left, and of scientists, who demand that the agreement not be ratified unless Parliament does so beforehand. On that, both the Communist Party of India (Marxist), with 44 seats of the New Delhi Parliament’s total of 543, and the right-wing Bharatiya Janata (138 seats) agree and without them it is impossible to get a parliamentary majority. The pressure is such that if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ratifies the agreement without parliamentary approval it would bring down his coalition government.  It is worth noting that the government is made up of a centrist three party alliance led by the National Congress Party of India (145 seats), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (21 seats) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (16 seats), supported from outside government by the Left Front ( Marxist Communist Party of India with 44 seats, and the Communist Party of India with 10 seats) together with other regionalist and ethnic parties.

The Bush administration began the process of agreement with India on the nuclear issue in March 2006, at the same time as the beginning of the nuclear crisis with Iran.(2) That rapprochement consisted of the recognition by the US of India’s nuclear capacity, justified as part of an effort by Bush to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons, avoid an arms race between India and Pakistan and reinforce India-US ties. It put an end to the 30-year embargo on nuclear material imposed on India in 1974 when India — which is a non-signatory of the Nuclear Arms Non-Proliferation treaty, while Iran is — carried out its first nuclear test. In accordance with the agreement, which is up in the air for now, India would accept the presence of International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) inspectors in 14 of its nuclear installations and would clearly separate the civilian and military aspects of its nuclear programme.

But the agreement went even further : it sought to have India break off all its energy and military agreements with Iran. The US offer included stronger trade links with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, two Central Asian states with large energy reserves, especially gas, and likewise with Afghanistan and Pakistan to make good India’s energy deficit if it were to break with Iran.

Both India and Pakistan have signed an agreement with Iran to build an oil pipeline, “the oil pipeline of Peace” worth US$7bn, to distribute gas to the three countries and this is expected to be formally signed on June 30th. This is something the US is trying to avoid at all costs since at the end of June it intended to return to the UN Security Council  asking for a new set of harder sanctions against Iran for not halting its nuclear programme. Already early pressures are being applied by the US to the member countries of the UN Security Council so as to include gas companies within the sanctions.(3) As usual, US foreign policy carries an undeniable element of coercion and in this case more than usual : in exchange for the  signing of a nuclear agreement, the Bush Administration would support India’s entry into the Security Council as a permanent member, although without veto rights.

According to the UN reforms timidly initiated by Kofi Annan, the UN Security Council would be enlarged taking into account new global realities and would include as permanent members, without right of veto, Germany for Europe, Nigeria or South Africa for Africa, Brazil or Mexico for Latin America and India or Japan for Asia. The criterion used by Kofi Annan was demographic and economic weight, dressing it up with criteria  of greater representation in the UN’s executive body for different peoples and cultures.

Maoist Insurrection and the Struggle for Land

India aspires to become an unrivalled regional power by 2015. But, to achieve that, guaranteeing its energy needs (oil and, preferably, gas)  is vital and it is in this regard that nuclear energy plays an important role. Since its independence from Great Britain, India has tried to set out from what one might call “an economy of size”, taking advantage, in other words, of its geographic and population potential. However, despite enormous social differences revolutionary forces, or the Left, if you like, have had difficulty making progress given that capitalism has developed slowly but constantly. The explanation for this situation  is that since independence in 1947 India had relatively developed industry and a wealthy, powerful bourgeoisie very adept both at international politics (one should not forget India’s importance in creating the Non-Aligned Movement) and national politics, integrating social measures - although without abolishing the caste system - with outright capitalist ones.

However, during the last 18 years, India has implemented neoliberal policies, gradually dismantling its centralized economy and privatizing its main sectors under the wing of a battery of laws to protect Direct Foreign Investments, especially those from the United States that have now increased from US$76m to US$4bn. At the moment, India’s gross domestic product is about US$786bn, four times that of the rest of countries in South Asia.

This policy has led to an increase in the middle classes to around 300 million people, the Bollywood movie watchers, and migrants to Europe or the United States – people who are more and more isolated from disadvantaged classes, not only along traditional caste divisions but in economic matters too. It is reckoned that more than 700 million Indians live in the most absolute poverty. Almost all of them are rural workers who live on small plots of land of less than one hectare and who depend on big private businesses for supplies of seed, fertiliser and other inputs. Furthermore they have to survive amidst impressive industrial projects (especially mining projects) and water projects that flood their land or else expropriate them at absurd prices. To that one has to add the traditional oppression that lower castes have suffered since time immemorial and the ever-increasing presence of paramilitaries in the service of big landowners.

So it is no wonder then that a Maoist insurrection is spreading across India like an oil stain across paper, already affecting 14 of India’s 28 States (Chatisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Asma, Uttaranchal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra and Bihar). In figures, that means the Maoists are in control in 165 districts out of the total of 602 into which the country is divided. In fact in the last five states mentioned one can say that “popular new democratic power” is a reality, given that they are the ones who control the countryside, collect taxes from large businesses within their zones of influence, build dykes and irrigation systems, impart justice, decide land disputes among rural families and have suppressed, for example, child marriage. Prime Minister Singh recognised the Maoist advance on August 23rd 2006 when he declared solemnly to Parliament that the Maoists “have become the biggest internal challenge to security that India has.” (4)

To deal with the Maoist surge the New Delhi government put into practice the well known US strategy from Vietnam, later perfected in Central America during the revolutionary processes in El Salvador and, above all, in Guatemala : the creation of strategic hamlets and the formation of paramilitary patrols to defend them (in Guatemala, the Civilian Self-Defence Patrols). In India they are known as Slawa Judum (that translates as “Peace Hunters”) and have the status of “special police agents” in rural communities. They are especially active in Chatisgarh and it is against them that the guerrilla offensive is currently aimed. An ambush on March 15th killed 50 out of a joint force of police and paramilitaries.(5) The main activity of the paramilitaries is the forced displacement of rural families to “temporary camps” set up in the areas of Bhairamgarh, Gedam y Bijapur and in which 50,000 people are currently crowded. (6)

Paid by landowners and by the Indian government itself, the paramilitaries earn about 1500 rupees a month (about €26 or US$35). The counter-insurgency war, as in the Central American countries mentioned or in Peru or Colombia, uses terror to try and cut off the guerrilla advance. It is estimated  that Salwa Judum has 5000  members and the ideologue, just as with the Colombian paramilitaries protected by current President Alvaro Uribe during his time as governor of the Antioquia province, was the main Congress Party leader in Chatisgarh. This is the party of Prime Minister Singh. To those 5000, one must add about 2000 “anti-terrorist ” police who have undergone a similar training programme to that given to the Atlacatl battalion, in El Salvador, which committed countless mass murders, outrages, intimidation and forced displacements. In case this paramilitary force is insufficient to stop the guerrilla, the government also offers bounties of up to a million rupees (about €17,000 or US$23,000) for the betrayal of the main guerrilla leaders.

This strategy is favoured in the “red zone”, a category applied by the Indian government to the states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra y Bihar, although in the last few months an impressive guerrilla military campaign has begun in Chatisgarh which has made the new Delhi government focus on this state leaving its plans for the other states in abeyance. The reason the guerrillas are prioritizing Chatisgarh is that this state, along with Jharkand, is turning into the spearhead of the government’s neoliberal policies following the signing of juicy, million-dollar contracts with big national and multinational industrial corporations, on steel, iron, coal and electricity, which presuppose a new wave of rural families in exodus to wretched slums in the cities. In fact, the most recent guerrilla attack was on June 3rd against the electricity plant of Narayanpur, a district of Chatisgarh. (7)

The Maoists say little when they carry out their actions. It is a fact that guerrilla control in this state is almost complete, with 10 of its 16 districts in their power ( and that their military actions are more and more daring, including attacks against officials, police, politicians and strategic economic and industrial targets.

The government’s aim is to confine the Maoist presence to that “red zone” and avoid it spreading with equal force to the rest of the country. Once that objective is achieved, repression will centre on what can be called “support bases” or liberated zones. Nonetheless, it is the different States that have responsibility for security matters, not central government, which explains why police implement the repression rather than the army, and there are different opinions about the best way to confront the guerrilla. In Andra Pradesh the tendency is to negotiate directly, while in Chatisgarh the paramilitary phenomenon is used, to mention the most extreme examples. These positions are influenced by the role the moderate Left has in different State governments and even in the central government which would collapse without the Left’s support, as was pointed out earlier. This is the reason why timid agrarian reform is being advanced throughout India and which has as a pilot experience the one implemented in 2005 in the mother State of the guerrillas, West Bengal.

For the moment the guerrillas are ignoring the cities to focus on total control of the countryside, following the old strategy of surrounding the cities from the countryside. The strategy is to penetrate rural areas, consolidate in them and, once the bases of support are deemed secure, to go on building up effective and efficient links with different cells in other states. It is the classic strategy that has given such good results in Nepal. As with their Nepalese comrades, the Indian Maoists respect local officials - including the police - if the people think they are honest and not compromised by cases of corruption or repression. They also respect businesses established in their zones of influence but they collect from them a “revolutionary tax”, which varies between 15% and 20 % of their profits, to fund their operations.

History of the Naxalites

The Indian Maoists are known as Naxalites from the town of Naxalbari in West Bengal, where the first armed actions occurred of an organization called the People’s War Group, the armed wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) which, with the slogan of radical reform of land ownership, forced a stand-off through the 1960s with the Indian government. Although the rebellion they led - land occupations, burning of catastral property registers, forgiveness of rural families’ mortgage debts and execution of the most important oppressors and usurers - only lasted three months, it ended with a very severe repression that caused more than 100,000 deaths and the virtual disappearance of the organization’s members. But some groups carried on operating, although without mutual contact. This led to the fragmentation of the CPI-ML which lasted until 2003 when the Maoist Communist Centre and the Indian Revolutionary Communist Centre united to form the Maoist Communist Centre of India (CCMI) and, one year later in 2004, the integration of a tendency of the CPI-ML called “Popular War”. That is how the Communist Party of India (Maoist) came into being with its main slogan as “the fight against feudalism and imperialism”.

If one can believe reports of the Indian intelligence services, the country’s Maoists have been tempered in the revolutionary popular war in Nepal where they have won greater political training and military experience. The intelligence services reckon that the People’s Guerrilla Army (the Indian Maoists military wing) last year counted on 8000 combatants, 25,000 militia members - protecting support bases, carrying out intelligence work and logistic support for the combatants - and 50,000 political members. Small numbers if one considers that India is a country with 1bn inhabitants. But the rapid development of the Maoist movement has set off alarm bells  among India’s political elite.(9) The immiseration of two thirds of India’s people and their social oppression counteract elite desires to turn India into a regional power via nuclear weapons and an agreement with the United States. Today the Naxalites are a reality that has to be taken into account. Perhaps westerners looking to India have been able to learn  that “naxa” in the Indian vocabulary now means “rebel rural worker” and that the current and past struggles of the naxalites are part of modern Indian culture, even of its cinema.

Alberto Cruz is a journalist, political analyst and writer specializing in International Relations - albercruz (arroba) eresmas.com. Translation copyleft by tortilla con sal

Notes.
(1) Rajiv Sikri, “¿Are the leaders of India, China and Rusia ready for radical development?
(2) Alberto Cruz, “India e Irán: otra muestra de la hipocresía occidental “
(3) Asia Times, 1 de junio de 2007.
(4) Christian Science Monitor, 28 de agosto de 2006
(5) France Press, 15 de marzo de 2007.
(6) The Indian Express, 7 de junio de 2007.
(7) The Hindu, 3 de junio de 2007.
( Prensa Latina, 15 de marzo de 2007.
(9) The Pioneer, 27 de abril de 2006.

It appears some of Chavez’s defiance is rubbing off on Lula. For the first time since he singled out US citizens for strict visa controls in reponse to the harassment of Brazilian citizens at American airports, Lula is showing signs of a spine.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has flatly rejected President Bush’s proposals for parallel global negotiations to combat climate change, insisting that countries come to agreement at the United Nations, and not under US leadership…

“The Brazilian position is clear cut,” Mr Lula said. “I cannot accept the idea that we have to build another group to discuss the same issues that were discussed in Kyoto and not fulfilled.

“If you have a multilateral forum [the UN] that makes a democratic decision … then we should work to abide by those rules [rather than] simply to say that I do not agree with Kyoto and that I will develop another institution,” said Mr Lula…

The Bush administration has sought to cultivate President Lula as an ally, seeing the former trade unionist as a centre-left alternative in Latin America to the more radical anti-American socialism espoused by Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez…

However, on overall climate change policy, President Lula was dismissive of the Bush approach, calling it “voluntarism”, meaning a reliance on “coalitions of the willing” rather than establish global institutions and the pursuit of voluntary goals rather than binding commitments. “We cannot let voluntarism override multilateralism,” he said…

But Mr Lula, Brazil’s president since 2003, rebuked Mr Bush for seemingly sidestepping the UN and not taking its global responsibilities seriously. “I am open-minded about talking to President Bush … I will never refuse to discuss any idea, but we should respect the decisions made in the multilateral forums. It is the only thing we have all agreed on in a democratic way,” he said. “If the US is the country that most contributes with greenhouse gases, in the world, it should assume more responsibility to reduce emissions.”

The German hosts of this week’s G8 summit at Heiligendamm have also flatly rejected the idea of creating a separate process to deal with climate change. Chancellor Angela Merkel called it “non-negotiable”.

A Yelp in the Corner

Meanwhile in the periphery, a muted yelp was heard.

Tony Blair has been a lonely voice on the world stage, hailing the Bush plan as an “important step forward”.

The Bio-fuel Debate

[Lula's] promotion of bio-fuels has brought criticism from Mr Chavez, the continent’s leading oil producer and Castro, who has argued that growing bio-fuels is equivalent to taking food crops from the mouths of the poor and putting it in the petrol tanks of the wealthy.

Mr Lula picked his words on his fellow presidents carefully. “Its normal that those countries that have oil feel a bit strange about this idea of bio-fuels,” he said, but he suggested it was time for the Latin American left to move beyond its instinctive anti-Americanism. “A long time ago I learned not to put the blame for backwardness in Brazil on the US,” he said. “We have to blame ourselves. Our backwardness is caused by an elite which for a century didn’t think about the majority and subordinated itself to foreign interests.” …

The only more important issue in the world than trade, President Lula said, is climate change, and both are nearing a potential turning point.

“In the Doha round, I want to solve the issues of today and tomorrow,” the Brazilian leader said. “On the climate issue I have to solve the problem of planet earth, the only one we know of on which we can survive … So for God’s sake, let’s take care of planet earth.”

My response to John Lanchester’s plug for nuclear energy is in the London Review of Books.

John Lanchester endorses James Lovelock’s enthusiasm for nuclear power (LRB, 22 March). I presume he feels, as Lovelock does, that nuclear waste is so safe he would be willing to store it in his garden shed. Perhaps he also finds ‘persuasive’ Lovelock’s claims that the death rates from cancer of Hiroshima survivors were lower than in comparable populations, and that Chernobyl killed only 45 people. Lanchester appears to have fallen for the PR campaign conducted by the nuclear industry and the Blair government over the past year. He overlooks the environmental costs of uranium mining, which will only increase as reserves are depleted and the industry is forced to rely on progressively lower-grade ore. He doesn’t tell us how we will dispose of nuclear waste, says very little about the risks associated with running nuclear power plants, and ignores the costs of decommissioning. Nor does he take into account the amount of money the industry has already taken from taxpayers in the form of state subsidies, money which could have been spent on developing less risky alternatives.

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Glasgow

Variant, number 28, Spring 2007 (with Leigh French, for NuclearSpin)

On February 15, Tony Blair’s plan to introduce a new generation of nuclear power stations suffered a serious setback when the High Court ruled that the consultation carried out by the government earlier was “misleading” and “seriously flawed”. Justice Sullivan’s ruling enjoins the government to canvass public opinion again, causing a likely delay in the publication of the energy white paper scheduled for March. The judgement is a significant victory for Greenpeace which, describing it as a sham, had applied for a judicial review of the consultation process.

The landmark ruling closed a chapter that started on January 23, 2006 when the government officially launched the 12-week consultation exercise on the UK’s energy needs, entitled: ‘Our Energy Challenge: Securing Clean, Affordable Energy for the Long Term’. The review officially ended in April, and on July 11, Alistair Darling, the Trade and Industry Secretary, gave the green light to a new generation of nuclear power plants extolling that: “nuclear power would make a ‘significant contribution’ to cutting carbon emissions and to securing Britain’s energy future.”

It is obvious why the Energy Review should have been seen as a cynical PR exercise that gave the appearance of a public debate, since Blair had reportedly made up his mind in November 2005, when he was said to be “convinced” of the pro-nuclear argument; and the pro-nuclear bias of his Cabinet was equally well known.

Nuclear revival in the rest of the world is being led by the G8 countries, that intend to resurrect fast breed reactors – which were earlier scrapped in the UK, France and Germany due to their astronomical costs. To be sure, there is scepticism within the ranks of the G8; Italy and Germany would rather dispense with the option. In the rest of Europe, Sweden wants to phase out its nuclear power plants; Austria and Spain are equally keen to diversify.

Failing to take into account any lessons learned from past mistakes, The Energy Review seemed to have “abolished history” according to an editorial in the Sunday Herald. The same editorial quotes Colin Mitchell, a manager of nuclear policy at the Department of Trade and Industry, saying, “in-depth research into the past performance of nuclear industry is not required to carry out the review.” Supreme disdain for learning anything from the past is evident throughout the report.

Only days prior to the High Court decision, British Energy – a company with a disastrous record and 65% owned by the government – was calling for partners to help build a new generation of nuclear plants by 2016. The company had been rescued from bankruptcy earlier by a government bailout, even as it raked in £622 million profit in the first nine months of the financial year and reactors at four of its sites remain out of action due to a lack of maintenance. While most of the proposed sites for new nuclear plants are owned by British Energy, the private financing approach ensures that in the end, while most of the profits remain private, the costs will for the most part be public. The real price of nuclear energy has never been properly disclosed, partly because the public has been saddled with the massive costs of decommissioning. In the UK alone these costs stand at £50 billion, and since the opening of the first civil nuclear power station at Calder Hall in October 1956, the nuclear industry has received global subsidies of around $1 trillion.

But government is now pushing nuclear power on the grounds that it would be impossible for it to meet its carbon emissions targets otherwise, and, invoking the spectre of terror, on the grounds of ‘energy security’.

Peak Uranium

The claims for carbon-free nuclear energy are undermined by the fact that the industry’s advocates want us to overlook the carbon emissions that are an inevitable part of the uranium extraction process. This is only going to get worse as the higher demand for uranium (both nationally and internationally) makes it necessary for it to be extracted in less refined forms, adding to the emissions. In reporting on energy security and uranium reserves, Jan Willem and Storm van Leeuwen, independent nuclear analysts at Ceedata Consulting, state:

A new generation of nuclear reactors will increase demand for uranium ore to produce reactor fuel. In 2005 the world nuclear fleet consumed about 68,000 tonnes of natural uranium, mostly from mined sources. At the end of 2005 the world known recoverable uranium resources amounted to about 3.6 million tonnes. These resources show a wide variation in ore grade and accessibility. … Uranium ore is not an energy resource unless the ore grade is high enough. Below grade 0.02% (U3O8 Uranium Oxide) more energy is required to produce and exploit the uranium fuel than can be generated from it. Falling ore grade leads to rapidly rising CO2 emissions from the nuclear energy cycle. Assuming world nuclear generating capacity remains at 2005 levels, after about 2016 the mean grade of uranium ore will fall significantly from today’s levels, and even more so after 2034. After about 60 years the world nuclear power system will fall off the ‘Energy Cliff’ – meaning that the nuclear system will consume as much energy as can be generated from the uranium fuel. Whether large and rich new uranium ore deposits will be found or not is unknown.

Even according to the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee’s sixth report, “the history of nuclear industry gives little confidence about the timescales and costs of new build’; that “nuclear can do nothing to fill the need for…new generating capacity… by 2016, as it simply could not be built in time”; that “uranium mines can only supply just over half the current demand for uranium, and the situation is likely to become more acute”; whilst “nuclear power can justifiably be regarded as a low-carbon source of electricity….the level of emissions associated with nuclear might increase significantly as lower grades of ore are used”; and that “no country in the world has yet solved the problems of long-term disposal of high-level waste. The current work being conducted by CoRWM [Committee on Radioactive Waste Management] will not be sufficient of address the issue”.

If media saturation has been dominated by a crisis of reaching the peak point in oil production – that less oil is left to find than we have already used – the proponents of nuclear power are silent about the nuclear industry’s equally fragile dependency on uranium and the associated insecurities.

As Jan Willem and Storm van Leeuwen state:

“It is inevitable that replacements for uranium fuel will be sought within the lifetime of any new nuclear build in the UK. It is also inevitable that as high grade uranium supplies decrease, the cost of nuclear power will increase along with nuclear CO2 emissions.” And that: “Once high-grade uranium ores are no-longer available, the nuclear industry will rely on uranium and plutonium from military and civil stockpiles. These will last only a few years, and questions remain about the net energy gain from reprocessing these materials. In the future, it is likely that the nuclear industry and governments will look to MOXfuel – a mixture of uranium and plutonium dioxides. In time, the nuclear industry hopes to develop fast breeder reactors fuelled by weapons useable plutonium. The widespread use and production of either fuel has serious implications for nuclear weapons proliferation and the risk of nuclear terrorism.”

Toxic Freedom

While it strives to sell itself as the environment friendly energy option, the nuclear industry seems curiously keen on escaping government regulation. It already caused concern when it started lobbying to lift regulatory constrains through the creation of a new energy agency, independent of government influence, to oversee its operation if a new generation of nuclear plants is to be built. The creation of such a body would free the industry from any kind of enforceable responsibility and enable artificial price hikes. The industry is also shaken by the example of the plant in Olkiluoto, Finland – the first reactor to be built in Western Europe in the past two decades – causing financial losses to its builder Areva by running wildly over budget. The reactor caused losses of £180 million in the first half of the year alone, despite the government expediting its construction through a “streamlined” process that kept public consultation to a minimum.

More alarmingly for the UK, the idea of self regulation has been supported by Dieter Helm, of the Oxera consultancy, an advisor to the Blair government.

In most debate on the nuclear question, the toxic issue of radioactive waste is overlooked. The environmentalist turned industry shill, James Lovelock, has claimed that nuclear waste is so safe that he is willing to store it in his garden shed. (He also claims Chernobyl killed only 45 people, whereas 500,000 people are reported to have already died out of the 2 million people who were officially classed as victims. Moreover, there were some 50,000 abortion cases in Europe because mothers feared the effects of the radiation.) Serious scientists, on the other hand, remain far less sanguine about storing nuclear waste in back gardens. While all of it is dangerous, some remains toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. Further undermining the rush for nuclear expansion, The Guardian reported in January this year that scientists developing ways to dump Britain’s nuclear waste underground have discovered that ceramic materials proposed to seal high-level waste break down much faster than expected when exposed to the radiation.

Although Westminster and the Scottish Executive have recognised that the 470,000 cubic meters of toxic waste from nuclear plants and weapons needs deep disposal, planning for a new generation of plants when the mess from the last one hasn’t been taken care of seems ill advised at best. Around the world, except for one, all nuclear waste dumps are expected to open only after 2020. The opening of the Yucca Mountain project in the US, originally scheduled for 1998, has been pushed back to 2012. While John Ritch, director of the World Nuclear Association, claims the world needs a 20-fold expansion in nuclear energy, even a tripling of global nuclear capacity, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this would require a “new Yucca-sized dump to be opened somewhere every three or four years”. Sweden, a country that leads the world in research and development into deep disposal facilities, finds it unlikely that such facilities will be available for at least 20 more years – one of the reason why it has decided to phase out nuclear power.

Predictable Fallout

Two already well known consequences come hand-in-hand with the return of nuclear energy; the potential for nuclear proliferation and catastrophic accidents. According to MIT, if the global nuclear capacity triples, it would take the theft of just 0.00025% of the MOX manufactured every year to provide the plutonium for a nuclear bomb. Last year, the G8 leaders had announced their intention to resurrect fast breed reactors, causing controversy since they produce plutonium which is easily weaponised. The same uranium enrichment process used in civilian reactors, increasing the proportion of the U-235 Isotope by a few percent, can be used to reach 90% enrichment, required for weapons grade uranium, making the task of non-proliferation all the more difficult.

While the G8 pay lip service to non-proliferation, they intend to expand the nuclear energy option while keeping “the more sensitive nuclear facilities that can be easily diverted for making bombs within the G8.” Richard Dixon of WWF Scotland responded with dismay that:

“this rich boys’ club seems on course to peddle reactors to the Earth’s poorer nations, at the same time as they are warning us how terribly dangerous the world is.”

According to MIT, traditional risk assessment suggests that there would be four core damage accidents by 2055. The fallout from many past disasters has yet to be taken care of. Only last month, the NDA was reporting delays in the clean up of the defunct nuclear complex at Dounreay in Caithness due to a lack of funds available for decommissioning. This has postponed a series of projects crucial for making Dounreay safe, including the emptying of the radioactive waste shaft on the shoreline which exploded in 1977 and was supposed to have been cleaned up by 2003. In 2005, a cementation plant at Dounreay was closed and an investigation started after the spillage of hazardous, dissolved spent fuel. According to The Times, “the discovery of nuclear particles on neighbouring beaches has led to calls for a full public inquiry into the scale of pollution at the site, while the [United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), responsible for the site] has been accused of a cover-up”. The prototype fast reactor at Dounreay was already shut down in 1994. This was the second scare in less than a year to hit the plant. According to the Daily Mail, a Dounreay spokesman “confirmed that eight workers were being tested for suspected plutonium intake”. The lab was already shut down the previous year “following a similar alarm involving 15 workers… In August, UKAEA started refresher courses following a number of radiation scares, during which contamination was detected on five workers in a week.” In February this year, the waste reprocessing complex was fined all of £140,000 for illegally releasing radioactive waste into the sea for more than 20 years. Radioactive particles from the plant will pollute beaches for decades to come and the environment will never be completely cleaned up, according to one expert study.

In Sellafield, in Cumbria, according to the Sunday Herald, a reprocessing plant has been closed because of a leak, and a plutonium fuel plant and ageing reactors are performing badly. Sellafield has been the site of numerous nuclear leaks, most recently at the Thorpe plant. According to The Guardian, workers ignored more than 100 warnings over six weeks that it had sprung a leak. On February 15, 2006, Sellafield was warned by the European Commission that it was in breach of EU rules. It was urged to tighten controls to ensure that nuclear materials “are not diverted from the peaceful uses for which they have been declared.” The warning followed European Commission inspections of Sellafield, which lead inspectors to conclude that “accounting and reporting procedures presently in place do not fully meet Euratom (EU) standards”. One of the most notable incidents came in 1999, when British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) admitted falsifying documents relating to uranium and plutonium mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel destined for Japan. The scandal was a major embarrassment for BNFL. Japan refused to accept a shipment of the fuel that was already en-route, which meant it had to be returned to Sellafield. The government’s Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment has consistently denied any link between Sellafield and a nearby cluster of childhood leukaemia.

And last summer, the laundry at Hunterston nuclear power plant in North Ayrshire sprung a leak with radioactive water escaping from a tank, causing it to be shut down…

Not-So-Public Relations

When the results of Labour’s long awaited energy review were published in July, the nuclear industry was enthusiastic about the outcome. Keith Parker, CEO of the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA), that represents 40,000 nuclear workers “warmly welcomed” the review’s findings that nuclear would make a “significant contribution” to securing Britain’s energy future.

“Nuclear power offers reliable, secure and affordable low carbon electricity for the benefit both of consumers and environment,” said Parker. The choice of words here is deliberate, and part of a carefully crafted PR campaign to repackage nuclear from its traditional image – dirty, dangerous and expensive – to one that is “secure”, “affordable” and “green” (“low carbon”). The industry’s PR strategy has centred around capitalising on the growing concerns with climate change by appropriating environmental rhetoric to sell its re-entry into the energy market.

The PR Company Weber Shandwick wrote a briefing paper called “The Case for Nuclear Energy” for British Nuclear Fuel (BNFL), the state-owned company that runs the controversial Sellafield site, arguing that nuclear power has become “essential” in combating CO2 emissions, the main cause of climate change.

Climate change features in a series of “Racecards” or key messages that the PR company, Strategic Awareness, developed for BNFL to promote nuclear. One is “CO2 Emissions = Climate Change = Irreversible damage to our environment.” The racecards, whose task is to make the issue of energy “personal” and “real”, also use another key selling point: energy security. “Without nuclear we will be reliant on other countries for our energy supplies”. (Despite this being the explicit outcome of policy to deregulate and globalise the energy market.) An October 2005 Strategic Awareness document notes that “without nuclear newbuild, renewables will not make a difference. Nuclear provides ‘always on’ electricity”. The paper also covers the safety angle by suggesting that “everyday emissions into the air are safe”. There is more radiation “in a bottle of mineral water”.

From the beginning, the industry has relied on the “third party” approach – a PR technique where propaganda is presented through someone seemingly independent, with more credibility – to get independent researchers, academics, parliamentarians, the media and trade unions to make its case. Philip Dewhurst, Public Affairs Director of BNFL, chair of NIA and a nuclear spin doctor, let slip during an interview with PR Week that BNFL was spreading its message “via third-party opinion because the public would be suspicious if we started ramming pro-nuclear messages down their throat”. The NIA has been central to BNFL’s multimillion pound PR campaign. With British Nuclear Energy Society and other partners in the PR business, the NIA conducted a behind-the-scenes campaign to cultivate sympathetic journalists and politicians. Last summer NIA and BNFL approached key academics and independent researchers to attend a “Media Training Workshop”, run by PR company Weber Shandwick, along with their staff. (Dewhurst has now joined Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, perhaps in a bid to help it gain access to the British market.) A Corporate Watch investigation revealed that Weber Shandwick monitors all relevant parliamentary processes for BNFL, such as the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, whose sixth report, published in March 2006, thoroughly refuted the nuclear argument.

BNFL has also been using Nuklear 21, a trade union lobby group, as a “front” organisation to make a case for nuclear energy on the grounds that it would prevent nuclear workers losing jobs. It also underwrites Supporters of Nuclear Energy (SONE) a pro-nuclear front group headed by well known anti-green campaigner Sir Bernard Ingham. Through NIA, BNFL channelled at least £21,000 to SONE. According to Corporate Watch, Ingham, on BNFL’s behalf, lobbied Digby Jones, the head of the Confederation of British Industry, who in turn promised to approach Blair personally and enlist support of the Energy Intensive Users Group.

While SONE claims to be a proponent of “informed debate”, a different attitude prevails when it is working behind the scenes. David Fishlock, one of its members told the Lord’s Science and Technology Committee, “the public should not be expected to have an opinion. There are many things for which quite legitimately the pubic looks to government to make up the mind of 56 million people. Nuclear energy is a matter that is largely in government hands and is a matter for government decision.”

Conflicts of Interest

The new push for a return of nuclear energy plays out over a landscape marked by a dizzying array of conflicts of interest. The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), set up by the government to resolve the issue of nuclear waste and supposedly free from industry or government influence, is closely intertwined with AMEC NNC, a nuclear company with a vested interest in both new nuclear build as well as decommissioning. A NuclearSpin investigation found that besides acting as CoRWM’s programme manager, AMEC NNC managed the discussions at its plenary meetings, organised its public consultation and procurements procedures, along with its PR company, Luther Pendragon. In fact, Luther Pendragon was contracted to AMEC NNC instead of CoRWM. When NuclearSpin put in an Freedom of Information request for all correspondence between CoRWM and Luther Pendragon, after much foot dragging, it was the latter (rather than the government) that chose the information that was eventually released. A similar request by Corporate Watch into the PR activities of BNFL and its relations with Weber Shandwick was finally vetted by Philip Dewhurst, BNFL’s head of PR.

Not too long back, CoRWM itself was accusing a government body, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), of a conflict of interest when it was appointed to oversee the deep disposal of 470,000 cubic metres of waste from nuclear power stations and weapons in the UK. Contrary to CoRWM’s recommendations of establishing an independent body to oversee the disposal of the radioactive waste, the government appointed NDA, a state agency with an interest in promoting short-term efficiency and a dual role as waste creator and waste disposer.

In Scotland, the parliament’s Cross Party Group on the Civil Nuclear Industry, despite declaring five separate items of funding from electricity generator British Energy (BE) from May 2005 to January 2006, does not mention that secretarial support for the parliamentary group is provided by BE, which includes drafting agendas and taking minutes of meetings, none of which is made available to the public. In a meeting with Nuclear Spin, John Home Robertson MSP, chair of the CPG even went so far as to declare, “I work for the nuclear industry”, only hastening to add afterwards that he isn’t paid to do so.

Effective Solutions

Despite an amply resourced propaganda campaign and active collusion of the Blair government, it appears that the nuclear industry has failed to convince the public of the desirability of nuclear energy. In Europe, nuclear power remains the most unpopular source of energy. A whole year of relentless propaganda has failed to rally more than 20% to its cause. Solar and wind energy on the other hand, have 80% and 71% support respectively. In the UK 19% favour nuclear, whereas support for wind power stands at 63%.

On October 5, 2006, Greenpeace launched its court action challenging the validity of the government’s Energy Review, which it claimed was “legally flawed” as “the government did not carry out the full public consultation to which it had committed itself before making its decision”. According to Sarah North, who leads the organisation’s nuclear campaign, “given that there are much more sophisticated, effective and safer ways than nuclear power to meet our energy demands and cut our climate change emissions, Greenpeace feels compelled to challenge the government on its irrational and unsubstantiated pro-nuclear policy.” It is a “dangerous distraction from real solutions to climate change,” she added. Climate change is indeed a serious issue, therefore it is important that the available resources are spent on the most viable an effective solutions.

Greenpeace claims their landmark success will mean that the government will be forced to carry out a much more comprehensive consultation that takes into account the full range of issues related to the introduction of a new generation of nuclear power plants: radioactive waste, financial costs and the design of the reactors. However, while the judicial review has disrupted the process, Blair was quick to declare that “this won’t affect policy at all”.

All references are archived at:
www.spinwatch.org
www.nuclearspin.org