The first bottles of an “artisanal spirit” made using apples grown near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant have been seized by Ukrainian authorities. The Chernobyl Spirit Company said 1,500 bottles of Atomik alcoholic drink were confiscated on 19 March and taken to the Kyiv Prosecutor’s office. Officers took the shipment from a truck at a distillery in the Carpathians. The spirit, its producers say, is Chernobyl’s first consumer product since the 1986 nuclear disaster.

BBC 7th May 2021 read more »

Japan’s proposal to dump more than one million tonnes of contaminated water from the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station into the ocean off its east coast has been strongly opposed by neighbours including China and South Korea. But scientists say the risks are likely to be minimal if the release is carried out as planned. Japan revealed the proposal in April, causing South Korea’s foreign minister to initially express “strong regret and serious concerns”. According to China’s state news agency Xinhua, Chinese scientists have also objected to the proposal, with Liu Senlin at the China Institute of Atomic Energy in Beijing describing it as “extremely irresponsible”. But other scientists, and the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have countered that the radiation in the treated waste water will be very low, and that the water will be released gradually over several years to minimize any risk. “As a scientist I have to keep a cool view on all this, and look at the facts, and the facts are not telling me that this is something that we should be very worried about,” says Jordi Vives I Batlle, a scientist at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre in Mol, who studies the effect of radiation on marine ecosystems.

Nature 7th May 2021 read more »

China emits more greenhouse gas than the entire developed world combined, a new report has claimed. The research by Rhodium Group says China emitted 27% of the world’s greenhouse gases in 2019. The US was the second-largest emitter at 11% while India was third with 6.6% of emissions, the think tank said. Scientists warn that without an agreement between the US and China it will be hard to avert dangerous climate change.

BBC 7th May 2021 read more »

A deal to salvage the Iran nuclear accord is possible in the coming weeks before the Islamic republic holds elections in June, a senior State Department official said Thursday, a day before talks were due to resume in Vienna.

Daily Mail 6th May 2021 read more »

The Biden administration is signaling that Iran shouldn’t expect major new concessions from the United States.

Independent 6th May 2021 read more »

High-stakes talks to salvage the Iran nuclear deal with potentially profound implications for the Middle East will resume on Friday, in what the French foreign minister has called a “moment of truth” for relations between the west and Tehran.

Guardian 6th May 2021 read more »

Thirty-five years after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded in the world’s worst nuclear accident, fission reactions are smoldering again in uranium fuel masses buried deep inside a mangled reactor hall. “It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit,” says Neil Hyatt, a nuclear materials chemist at the University of Sheffield. Now, Ukrainian scientists are scrambling to determine whether the reactions will wink out on their own—or require extraordinary interventions to avert another accident. Sensors are tracking a rising number of neutrons, a signal of fission, streaming from one inaccessible room, Anatolii Doroshenko of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) in Kyiv, Ukraine, reported last week during discussions about dismantling the reactor. “There are many uncertainties,” says ISPNPP’s Maxim Saveliev. “But we can’t rule out the possibility of [an] accident.”

Science 5th May 2021 read more »

The European Commission has delayed until mid-July its presentation of a legislative proposal to boost renewables. A draft document indicates a 26pc target share for renewables in transport by 2030. A 312-page draft staff working document drawn up by the commission substantiates a forthcoming proposal to revise the EU’s renewables directive as part of a wider package of measures to reach a 2030 target to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) by 55pc. The document confirms a target share for renewables in overall energy consumption of at least 38-40pc in 2030, hinted at last year when the 55pc GHG cut was proposed.

Argus Media 5th May 2021 read more »

The Hague. Orano detects a falsification of the qualification level of welders. Job. The company Orano de La Hague spotted a falsification of the qualification level of three welders in December 2020. Checks were carried out on the welds carried out by the trio, which however had the level to exercise on the work requested.

La Manche Libre 5th May 2021 read more »

Preceding next year’s general elections, nuclear energy is once again a focal point of political debate in Sweden, after a television debate on Sunday made apparent that liberal-conservative Moderates, Christian Democrats, Liberals and Sweden Democrats would be ready to build new nuclear capacity once in power. The consumption of electricity is expected to increase by 75% in the next 30 years and next to wind and hydrogen, there may be need for additional zero-emission sources like nuclear. In a 1980 referendum 41 years ago, Sweden turned down the use of nuclear energy, proposing for all nuclear power plants to shut down by 2010. This decision was abandoned in 1997 however, and currently around half of the country’s energy is nuclear.

Euractiv 5th May 2021 read more »