27 May 2008 - France
— France’s nuclear safety agency today took
the commendable step of ordering construction
work to be halted on the concrete base slab
of the new European Pressurised Reactor,
Flamanville 3, in northern France. Over
recent months, the agency’s inspectors
have uncovered a string of chronic faults
in construction -- which only began in December
2007.
Issues seem to have
come to a head on 21 May. Maybe that explains
why Anne Lauvergeon, Chief Executive Officer
of AREVA, the French nuclear company aggressively
backing the European Pressurised Reactor
(EPR), ‘exploded’ when we handed her a copy
of the Greenpeace ‘EPR Survival Kit’ during
the European Nuclear Energy Forum on the
22nd.
Apparently, for nuclear
regulators in France, enough is enough.
We can only hope that their move is not
merely a temporary setback to construction
but the beginning of the end of a failed
experiment in building the world’s largest
nuclear reactors.
And as we pointed out
to Europe’s energy policymakers at the last
week’s European Nuclear Energy Forum, “Nuclear
power? Non, merci!” is the correct response
to anyone approaching you to buy an EPR.
French letters
The regulators' call
to halt construction follows a series of
letters from the agency to Flamanville’s
construction manager. In the letters, inspectors
highlighted a range of problems including
non-conformities in the pinning of the steel
framework of the concrete base slab, incorrectly
positioned reinforcements, inadequacy of
technical inspection by both the construction
companies and Electricité de France.
Inspectors also uncovered inconsistencies
between the blueprint for reinforcement
work and the plan for its practical implementation.
The incorrect composition of concrete had
been used, that may lead to cracks and rapid
deterioration in sea air conditions. Samples
of concrete were also not collected properly,
according to inspectors. Cracks have already
been observed in part of the base slab beneath
the reactor building. The supplier of the
steel containment liner reportedly lacks
the necessary qualifications. Fabrication
of the liner was continuing despite quality
failures demonstrating the lack of competence
of the supplier. As a result, one-quarter
of the welds of the steel liner of the reactor
containment building were deficient.
Déjà vu all over again
The new reactors Flamanville
3 and Olkiluoto 3, in Finland, are supposedly
the vanguard of a ‘renaissance’ in nuclear
power, leading to a whole series of these
type of reactors being built around the
world. (It certainly seems to be a renaissance
in the kinds of problems we hoped would
be relegated to history as the number of
a new nuclear builds declined in the 11000s).
Problems at Flamanville
echo those with the first EPR, Olkiluoto
3, which has been under construction for
three years but has been blighted ever since
the concrete was poured. Poor quality concrete,
bad welds on the containment liner and low-quality
reactor components are among its problems.
The schedule for completion has been put
back by more than two years and estimated
costs have nearly doubled to over Euro 5
billion.
Flamanville 3 is the
umpteenth example of the nuclear industry
failing to learn the lessons of history.
Cradle to grave
And if the problems
of an unbuilt reactor aren't enough of a
headache for the nuclear industry, the BBC
reports that in the UK the cost of cleaning
up old nuclear sites, including some deemed
"dangerous" will soar beyond 144
billion Euros (US$ 91 billion).
Greenpeace has consistently
argued that nuclear power is an unnecessarily
complex, risky and expensive way to boil
water, to raise steam, to generate power.
James Watt will be turning in his grave.
In defiance of all logic, enormous sums
of public money have been devoted to unsuccessfully
overcoming the technical obstacles inherent
to nuclear power.
It is time policymakers
and power companies realised that businesses
and citizens want clean reliable power at
an affordable price rather than new monuments
to the pursuit of technological folly. What’s
more, preventing dangerous climate change
means halving global carbon dioxide emissions
by mid-century. Energy efficiency improvements
and expansion of clean energy supply – not
more nuclear capacity – are the key to delivering
this energy revolution.
+ More
World's largest tuna
destroyer - caught!
27 May 2008 - Kiribati
— We chased it for 5 days, but as dawn broke
over the Pacific this morning we finally
confronted the biggest tuna fishing vessel
in the world. The Spanish-owned and flagged
tuna purse seiner "Albatun Tres"
is known as a 'super, super seiner' and
can net 3,000 tonnes of tuna in a single
fishing trip. This is almost double the
entire annual catch of some Pacific island
countries.
We caught this monstrous
tuna catcher deploying its net close to
the Phoenix Islands of Kiribati and witnessed
many tonnes of tuna being taken out of the
Pacific. We laid a 25-metre floating banner
reading "No Fish, No Future"’
across the inside of the net as it was being
hauled in.
We first found the Albatun
Tres on May 22nd and tracked her across
more than 1,000 nautical miles. Her crew
must have noticed us when we came within
visual range as they immediately steamed
away at high speed.
We managed to catch
up with them when they stopped to fish,
and as they pulled in their catch we showed
up in inflatable boats, a jet ski and helicopter
in order to expose their plunderous activities
to the world.
Purse seine vessels
surround schools of fish with curtain-like
nets to catch tuna. A rope along the bottom
of the net is pulled like a drawstring and
the whole catch is hauled onboard. These
vessels have increased their efficiency
enormously in the last decade through a
variety of technological innovations. While
targeting skipjack tuna, these vessels also
catch juvenile bigeye and yellowfin tuna,
as we witnessed this morning. This bycatch
is seriously threatening the already vulnerable
stocks of bigeye and yellowfin tuna.
Foreign fishing nations
including those of the European Union (EU)
are fishing unsustainably where Pacific
island countries depend on tuna for income
and food. The Albatun Tres arrived in the
Pacific from the Indian Ocean earlier this
year. It is owned by the Spanish tuna company
Albacora, which is part of OPAGAC, a powerful
association of Spanish tuna boat owners,
processors and traders.
No more fish at home
The Western and Central
Pacific tuna fishery, the world's biggest,
has been subjected to intense fishing by
fleets from Asia and the United States since
the 1960s. With declining tuna stocks in
the Atlantic and Indian Ocean, the European
Union has gained access to this Pacific
fishing ground as a reciprocal benefit for
giving aid to Pacific countries. With their
own waters fished out, the EU and other
foreign fishing fleets including Japan,
Korea, Taiwan and the US, are literally
sailing across the world to take vital fish
and income from people whose lives depend
on it.
The super seiners of
OPAGAC have a questionable history in the
region and some of the vessels which they
currently represent were pirate fishing
in the area last year. Just when the Pacific
fishing fleets need to be reduced we have
found evidence to show that OPAGAC is trying
to expand their fishing capacity here. This
group of companies has no shame and targets
the poorest and most vulnerable countries
in order to gain access to Pacific waters.
Greenpeace is urging Pacific island countries
to cease any future dealings with OPAGAC.
Vessels of this size need to be taken off
the water and scrapped immediately in order
to address the overcapacity of the world's
tuna fleets.
Our ship Esperanza has
been in the region for the last eight weeks
highlighting the overfishing of tuna. During
this time we have taken action against fishing
fleets from Taiwan, Korea, the US, the Philippines
and now Spain. At the same time, our ship
Arctic Sunrise has been taking action against
overfishing of tuna in the Mediterranean
as well.
