Russia to build nuclear plant to meet Burkina Faso's energy needs

Burkina Faso's military leaders have signed a deal with Russia to build a nuclear power plant to increase electricity supplies.

It is the junta's latest move to align itself with Russia after falling out with most of its Western partners.

The junta has turned to Russia for economic and military support since it seized power last year.

Iran and Russia discuss ties, the Middle East, and nuclear deal

Tehran, Iran – Iran and Russia have held high-level talks on bilateral ties, the region, and Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers during Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s trip to Tehran on Tuesday.

In a meeting with Lavrov, President Hassan Rouhani said Iran wishes to expand regional cooperation with Russia on Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen in order to help establish stability and combat American interventions.

He also called for more defence and military cooperation, especially as a United Nations Security Council arms embargo on Iran ended in October 2020.

China's long game to dominate nuclear power relies on the UK

China wants to become a global leader in nuclear power and the UK is crucial to realising its ambitions.

While other countries have scaled back on atomic energy in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, state-backed Chinese companies benefit from the fact that China is still relying on nuclear energy to reach the country’s low-carbon goals.

Hungary’s Russian-built nuclear plant powered by politics in Brussels

The European Commission brokered a “global political solution” with Hungary over its controversial Russia-backed nuclear power station rather than escalate a fight amid already fraught relations with Budapest, according to internal documents obtained by an MEP and reviewed by POLITICO.

More than 200 pages of Commission memos, emails and meetings minutes from 2016 show that Commission officials expressed serious doubts about Hungary’s numerous attempts to justify awarding the contract to build the €12 billion Paks II nuclear project to the Kremlin-owned Rosatom without opening up the project for bids.

FBI uncovered Russian bribery plot before Obama administration approved controversial nuclear deal with Moscow

Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.

Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.

U.S. Nuclear Power Stations Targeted By Hackers, Government Report Says

Hackers have been targeting companies that operate nuclear power stations around America, prompting the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to issue an urgent warning about the severity of the threat, several media outlets reported on Thursday.

Both The New York Times and Bloomberg published details from a joint report released by the government agencies last month that described efforts by hackers to infiltrate the systems of nuclear facilities, including the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation. The report did not provide details of the cyberattacks, but the Kansas-based Wolf Creek said its systems were not affected, according to the Times.

New York Times Shills For Moribund Nuclear Power, Disses Renewables Revolution

Why does The New York Times keep pushing nuclear power, whose prices keep rising even as demand has collapsed in every market economy? And why do they keep dissing renewables, whose prices have dropped precipitously while demand has grown beyond expectation here and around the world?

This month alone, the Times managed to publish two pieces whining that the poor, neglected nuclear power industry is having trouble competing with renewables because solar and wind have become … so darn cheap.

Nuclear Costs Roll Onward and Upward

IGNALINA—When it was in operation in the 1980s and 90s, Lithuania’s Ignalina nuclear power plant had one of the most powerful reactors in the world. Today, the plant that was built to supply power to a large part of what was the Soviet Union’s Baltic region lies silent.

Lithuania joined the European Union in 2004, and one of the EU’s entry requirements was that Ignalina—similar in design to the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine, with no proper containment shell to restrict any escaping radioactivity—must be closed.

Indian Point nuclear facility operator reports ‘alarming levels’ of radioactivity in plant’s groundwater; some wells increase 65,000%

Radioactive water overflowed into the groundwater at the upstate Indian Point nuclear power plant, officials said Saturday.

Gov. Cuomo said the plant’s operator, Entergy, reported “alarming levels” of radioactivity at three monitoring wells, with one well’s radioactivity increasing nearly 65,000%.

The Buchanan plant reported that the contamination did not migrate offsite and does not pose a threat to public health.

RUNNING OUT OF NUCLEAR OPTIONS

A roomful of demanding taxpayers and interest groups can pose an awful inconvenience to a nuclear operator seeking to extend the life of its plant.

That's exactly what Ontario Power Generation (OPG) faced this week at licensing renewal hearings for its Darlington Nuclear Generating Station in Clarington as about 80 oral presentations and just as many written submissions filled the agenda.

 AIPAC Spent Millions of Dollars to Defeat the Iran Deal. Instead, It May Have Destroyed Itself.

It is hard to exaggerate the damage inflicted on AIPAC by the congressional defeat of its efforts to torpedo the Iran nuclear deal. It is not as if AIPAC won’t live to fight again, because it will, but this defeat has ruptured the status quo, possibly forever.

The extent of its efforts to defeat the deal was unprecedented even for a lobby known for its no-holds-barred wars against past White House initiatives it considered unfriendly to Israel, going all the way back to the Ford administration. AIPAC, and its cutout Citizens For A Nuclear Free Iran, reportedly budgeted upwards of $20 million for a campaign that included flooding the airwaves with television spots; buying full-page newspaper ads, arranging fly-ins of AIPAC members to Washington, organizing demonstrations at offices of AIPAC-friendly members of Congress who were believed to be wavering, and ensuring that problematic legislators were officially warned by precisely the right donor. Rank-and-file AIPAC members were largely irrelevant to the process. Money did the talking, and also the yelling and the cursing when necessary. As one congressional staffer put it to me, “Taking money from AIPAC is like getting a loan from the mob. You better not forget to pay it back. They walk into this office like they own it.”

GOP Presidential Candidates Are Really Unhappy About The Iran Deal

WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential candidates quickly criticized the nuclear agreement between the United States and Iran on Tuesday, saying that it posed a threat to American national security and would do little to limit Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The deal between Iran and six countries, including the United States, would curbIran's nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. It would also require the country to reduce its supply of low-enriched uranium and shut down centrifuges, significantly limiting its ability to produce a nuclear weapon for over a decade, The New York Times reported. The deal would also allow UN International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to request visits to military sites in Iran -- though those visits could be blocked, reported the Associated Press.

Doing the Unthinkable: Giant Gas Pipeline to Flank a New York Nuclear Power Plant

A very large gas pipeline will soon skirt the Indian Point Energy Center (IPEC), an aging nuclear power plant that stands in the town of Cortlandt in Westchester County, New York, 30 miles north of Manhattan. The federal agencies that have permitted the project have bowed to two corporations - the pipeline's owner, Spectra Energy, and Entergy, which bought the Indian Point complex in 2001 from its former owner.

A hazards assessment by a former employee of one of the plant's prior owners, replete with errors, was the basis for the go-ahead. A dearth of mainstream press coverage leaves ignorant the population that stands to be most impacted by a nuclear catastrophe, which experts say could be triggered by a potential pipeline rupture. I urge Truthout's audience to read an earlier article by Alison Rose Levy, which includes details I haven't space to recap here.

The Iran Agreement Is Historic. Will Congress Destroy It?

Just wait for the congressional freakout that comes if world powers and Iran sign a comprehensive nuclear accord this summer. Negotiations advanced on Thursday with a framework agreement between Iran and the P5+1—the United States, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany—that maps out the imposition of restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The sides will now begin to draft the final accord, due by the end of June. That leaves plenty of time for the most hawkish and recalcitrant members of Congress to try to scupper talks. And if the reaction to Thursday’s agreement is any indication, they most certainly will.

Iran Backs Away From Key Detail in Nuclear Deal

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — With a negotiating deadline just two days away, Iranian officials on Sunday backed away from a critical element of a proposed nuclear agreement, saying they are no longer willing to ship their atomic fuel out of the country.

For months, Iran tentatively agreed that it would send a large portion of its stockpile of uranium to Russia, where it would not be accessible for use in any future weapons program. But on Sunday Iran’s deputy foreign minister made a surprise comment to Iranian reporters, ruling out an agreement that involved giving up a stockpile that Iran has spent years and billions of dollars to amass.

Tom Cotton: 'No Regrets At All' Over Letter To Iran

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said on CBS’ "Face the Nation" on Sunday that he had “no regrets at all” over the letter he orchestrated to be sent to Iranian ayatollahs warning them that any deal struck with the Obama administration over their country’s nuclear program could be cancelled by a future administration or Congress.

Cotton and the 46 other Republican senators who signed his letter have come under severe criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for seeking to undermine ongoing negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran's Foreign Minister To U.S. Senators: 'The World Is Not The United States'

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday angrily dismissed an open letter sent by 47 U.S. senators to the Iranian government about Tehran's ongoing nuclear negotiations.

In the letter, the Republican lawmakers note they believe the Iranian negotiators "may not fully understand [the American] constitutional system" and claim that the next American president could "with the stroke of a pen" revoke any agreement with Iran that is not approved by Congress. The threat comes as representatives of Iran and six world powers, including the United States, are working to reach a deal about Tehran's nuclear program by the end of March.

President Obama, Cut Dirty Nuclear Power From Your Climate-Change Talks

President Barack Obama is getting serious about climate change, a challenge that "poses a greater threat to future generations" than any other, he said in last week's State of the Union. In July, his administration announced an EPA regulation to slash carbon pollution from power plants. In November, he struck a pact with China on long-term emission reductions. And recently the White House unveiled a plan to cut methane emissions nearly in half by 2025.

Addressing climate change means, in large part, stepping away from dirty energy sources like coal and oil and toward cleaner sources. That’s a good thing. But it requires developing more energy elsewhere, including from one alternative source that has gotten scant attention in the mainstream press: nuclear energy, which poses its own serious environmental risks.

South Korea Nuclear Plant Operator's Computers Hacked, But Officials Say No Risk To Safety Of Reactors

SEOUL (Reuters) - Computer systems at South Korea’s nuclear plant operator have been hacked, but only non-critical data has been lost and there is no risk to the safety of nuclear installations including the country's 23 atomic reactors, the company and the government said on Monday.

The attacks come amid concerns that North Korea may mount cyberattacks against industrial and social targets after accusations by the United States that Pyongyang was responsible for a devastating hacking assault on Sony Pictures.

South Korea is still technically at war with the North.

Europe’s Nuclear Giants Are Close to Collapse

LONDON—Plans to build two giant nuclear reactors in south-west England are being reviewed as French energy companies now seek financial backing from China and Saudi Arabia—while the British government considers whether it has offered vast subsidies for a white elephant.

A long-delayed final decision on whether the French electricity utily company EDF will build two 1.6 gigawatt European Pressurised water Reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset ? in what would be the biggest construction project in Europe—was due in the new year, but is likely to drift again.