Britain’s nuclear caretaker privatised in Babcock sale

• £50m sale ‘good value for taxpayers’, says Mandelson• Opposition warns against further decommissioning levies
Graeme Wearden
guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 September 2009 11.04 BST
The body responsible for decommissioning and cleaning up Britain’s fleet of nuclear power stations was sold today in the latest privatisation of part of the UK’s nuclear industry.
UKAEA, the commercial arm of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, has been bought by Babcock International Group for £50m.
Business secretary Lord Mandelson claimed the deal “generates good value for taxpayers”, but opposition politicians have previously voiced concerns over the sale.
UKAEA is currently carrying out decommissioning work at Dounreay in Scotland, Winfrith in Dorset, and Harwell in Oxfordshire. It also operates training programmes, and offers consultancy services to other countries. It has been on the market for almost six months.
Babcock, which is listed on the FTSE 250 index, already runs the UK’s only nuclear refuelling facilities for its nuclear submarine fleet, at Devonport in Plymouth.
“The high level of skills and expertise in UKAEA will further accelerate the growth of our nuclear business,” said Babcock’s chief executive, Peter Rogers.
Back in March, when Mandelson put UKAEA up for sale, the shadow energy secretary, Greg Clark, said it could be a short-term move to bring cash into the government’s books.
“The government has awarded contracts worth millions of pounds to UKAEA for decommissioning nuclear power stations and is reliant on the company to deliver them. The government must have cast-iron guarantees that any buyer will not hold the taxpayer to ransom for further payments for decommissioning Dounreay, Harwell and Winfrith,” Clark warned.
The task of cleaning up after more than half a century of nuclear power is expected to cost Britain at least £83bn. The size of the challenge was underlined last year when the firm operating the Sellafield nuclear site appealed for former workers to come forward if they remembered where they had deposited nuclear waste.
UKAEA’s waste management expertise could also be valuable when the next generation of UK nuclear power stations begins operating, possibly in 2017.
British Energy, which runs eight nuclear power stations, was privatised in 1996, but had to be rescued by the taxpayer in 2002. It was taken over in 2008 by France’s EDF, which plans to build four new reactors.

Green groups urge next government to make environment highest priority

WWF, Friends of the Earth and RSPB among those launching manifesto ahead of next year’s election
Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 September 2009 11.09 BST
Cutting carbon emissions and restoring the natural world must be given the “highest priority” by the next government, the UK’s leading environment groups urged today as they unveiled a manifesto for the coming election.
The green groups want the UK to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2020, higher than the 34% the government has signed up to, ban coal-fired power plants and end airport expansion.
The political parties are also being urged to commit to restoring the natural environment — including doubling the amount of woodland in the UK, providing green areas for people close to where they live and creating “high quality landscapes” which are rich in nature and able to cope with climate change.
The 10-point manifesto launched by the environmental groups today also includes measures on a nationwide housing re-fit to boost energy efficiency and calls on the UK to provide a fair share of money needed to help poor countries move to a low carbon economy, adapt to climate change and stop deforestation.
The green organisations want each of the political parties to back their “common cause declaration” which would make tackling climate change and environmental protection the “highest priority” of the next parliament.
It also commits the parties to taking action immediately on global warming, and to working to protect the UK’s natural environment.
Stephen Hale, director of Green Alliance, said on behalf of all the groups: “Action in the next parliament is critical if we are to simultaneously reduce our CO2 emissions whilst improving the resilience of our natural environment to avoid the looming crises of food, energy and water shortages by 2030.
“It’s now or never. Support for the common cause declaration will be the threshold for credibility at the next election on environmental issues.”
The groups making the call ahead of the party conferences are: Green Alliance; Friends of the Earth; the Woodland Trust; WWF; the Wildlife Trusts; the RSPB; the Campaign to Protect Rural England and Greenpeace.

Climate change campaigners should not have fixated on carbon dioxide

If climate negotiations 20 years ago concentrated on low-hanging fruits, the fight against global warming would have been more successful, argues Geoffrey Lean.

By Geoffrey LeanPublished: 7:45PM BST 18 Sep 2009
Here’s a heretical thought, one that might even further inflame the great global-warming slanging match. Has the world set out to tackle climate change in the wrong way? It’s not, I admit, the most tactful moment to put the question. On Tuesday the heads of the world’s governments meet in New York for the first universal climate summit. This is just the most important of a series of high-level get-togethers addressing the issue, which started on Thursday with a meeting of ministers from the most polluting countries, and continues to the G20 summit in Pittsburgh at the end of the week. But it has to be asked. For more than 20 years the world has been trying to negotiate agreements to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and felling forests. But they have gone on growing: indeed, their rate of growth has been accelerating.
Concentrating on carbon dioxide was understandable. It is, after all, the biggest single cause of climate change. Scientists have known for more than 180 years that it warms up the atmosphere, and – for more than 110 – roughly what the effects of increasing its concentration would be.

But CO2 is only responsible for about half of the problem. The rest is caused by other pollutants. No worldwide attempt has been made to control some of them, even though doing so would be much less contentious and would reduce global warming far faster.
Take black carbon, which gives soot its colour. It is now accepted to be the second biggest contributor to climate change, responsible for between 10 and 25 per cent of it. Formed through incomplete combustion of wood, vegetation and fossil fuels, it lands a unique double whammy.
While in the air, it absorbs and releases solar radiation, helping to heat up the atmosphere. When it falls out on ice and snow, on mountains or at the poles, it darkens them, causing them to reflect less sunlight and melt more rapidly. And as they disappear they expose more dark land or water, which absorbs even more heat and so further warms the world.
A study by the United Nations Environment Programme concludes that the pollutant has played a major part in shrinking Himalayan glaciers, and helped disrupt the South Asian monsoon.
Then there’s tropospheric ozone – the gas when it is relatively near the ground rather than in the protective layer in the stratosphere miles above our heads. Largely formed as a result of emissions from car exhausts, it is thought to contribute between six and 15 per cent of the problem.
There’s compelling reason to tackle both, quite apart from climate change. Black carbon is one of the world’s greatest killers, largely responsible – in smoke from inefficient woodburning stoves – for at least 1.6 million deaths annually, mainly of children, in the Third World. And, together with ozone, it helps cause 800,000 more each year worldwide from urban air pollution.
Introducing better stoves, or solar cookers, dramatically cuts emissions of black carbon, as does cleaning up emissions from diesel vehicles. And boosting vehicle fuel efficiency – and reducing pollution from other sources, ranging from oil refineries to dry cleaners – will cause less ozone to form.
Taking such steps could have an immediate effect on climate change, as both pollutants disappear almost immediately from the atmosphere – as opposed to carbon dioxide, which lasts for centuries. And they should be comparatively uncontentious. Even Senator James Inhofe, the most outspoken global warming sceptic in the American Congress, has supported a Bill on black carbon, beating Al Gore to it by a few days.
Similarly, George W. Bush helped lead a successful bid to speed up the phasing out of hydrochlorofluorocarbons – up to 1,700 times more potent than carbon dioxide in heating up the planet – under the Montreal Protocol for protecting the ozone layer. Just this week, the American, Canadian and Mexican governments have called for this treaty to be extended to tackle yet another group of greenhouse gases.
This provokes my initial question. If the climate negotiations had set out 20 years ago first to pick these low-hanging fruits, surely we would have got very much further in bringing global warming under control, while building trust to tackle carbon dioxide.
Such a strategy is no longer an option. So much time has been lost and climate change has now progressed so far that big cuts in carbon dioxide are already overdue. But attacking black carbon and the other pollutants would have an immediate impact, and could buy us some desperately needed time.
As Durwood Zaelke, the president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, puts it: “It’s essential to cut carbon dioxide, but we can’t win if we only target half the problem.”

Will world leaders hear this global wakeup call?

Friday, 18 September 2009
Next week President Obama and more than 100 world leaders gather at the United Nations in New York for the Climate Summit, in what will be an intriguing precursor to December’s crucial climate talks in Copenhagen.
The backdrop to the New York talks paints a picture of intense public pressure as citizens around the world continue to call on heads of state to attend December’s climate change talks in Copenhagen. United under the banner of the TckTckTck campaign their message to world leaders is clear: secure a fair, ambitious and binding climate deal.
Throughout this weekend and into next week mass participatory global wakeup calls will be witnessed in more than 1,400 unique events in 962 cities spread across 103 countries across the world. Celebrities, political leaders and thousands of individuals concerned about climate change will be involved in more than 1,400 TckTckTck climate change events. In London, people will gather in Parliament Square on Monday to send a message to Gordon Brown. Around the globe some of the world’s best known NGOs, trade unions and individuals have organised similar events. Avaaz, Oxfam, WWF, Greenpeace, Christian Aid and others are working tirelessly with their members and through their spheres of influence to ensure next week’s global wakeup call will be heard.
The TckTckTck campaign is calling for developed countries to reduce emissions by at least 40% by 2020, and to enable and support poor countries to adapt to the worst consequences of the climate crisis and reduce their emissions and secure technology investment through the provision of sufficient public funds. It is asking heads of state to create a pathway to clean jobs and clean energy for all and to establish conditions for a sustainable and prosperous future for our planet. Not least, TckTckTck is asking heads of state to come to Copenhagen in person and agree to a legally binding international climate agreement that is fair ambitious and binding.
Reaching agreement on a strong deal in Copenhagen is urgent; the impacts of climate change are already being felt around the world. Floods, droughts, hurricanes, sea-level rise, and seasonal unpredictability – hallmarks of climate change – are affecting people’s rights to life, security, food, water, health, shelter and culture across the world. With an average temperature rise of less than 1C climate change already kills more than 300,000 people each year.
However, should heads of state choose to hear the global wakeup call there is still time to build a greener, safer world. But the clock is ticking. The massive mobilization of people across a broad cross-section of society is signalling to governments that they can and must go further than they have been prepared to do before.
Kumi Naidoo is chairman of the Global Campaign for Climate Action – coordinators of TckTckTck www.tcktcktck.org

In Somalia, U.S. Weapons End Up In al-Qaeda Arsenal

In Somalia, U.S. weapons end up in al-Qaeda hands

A new proxy war between the Islamist militants and the United States is not going Washington’s way

Nairobi — From Saturday’s Globe and Mail
Last updated on Friday, Sep. 18, 2009 07:32PM EDT

As the Somalia conflict spirals into a new proxy war between al-Qaeda and the United States, there is mounting evidence that U.S. weapons and Somali soldiers are ending up under the control of Islamic terrorists, Somali politicians say.

The warning comes after a week of heavy violence in Somalia, including a U.S. commando raid that killed a suspected terrorist leader, followed swiftly by a double suicide bombing that killed 17 African peacekeepers in revenge for the U.S. raid.

The United States has pumped at least 40 tonnes of weapons into Somalia in recent months to help the government fight the Islamic warriors who are linked to al-Qaeda. But the Somali army is so weak and ill-trained that its soldiers have begun defecting to the Islamists and their U.S.-supplied weapons are being traded to the insurgents, known as al-Shabab, the politicians say.

“The weapons have ended up mainly in the hands of al-Shabab,” said Awad Ahmed Ashareh, a member of Somalia’s official parliament and a Canadian citizen.

Washington’s attempt to prop up the Somali government with a flow of arms is a futile gesture because there is not enough training and support for its soldiers, the politicians said in interviews in Nairobi, where many have sought shelter because Mogadishu is considered too dangerous.

“Providing weapons without training and preparation is completely useless,” said former prime minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, who stepped down in 2007 but remains an MP. “All those weapons will end up in the hands of the terrorists.”

Mr. Gedi said he created 14,000 soldiers and 6,000 police officers during his term as prime minister, but they were undermined by a lack of training and support. “These forces have disintegrated totally,” he said. “Some of them may have even joined the terrorists.”

The government is currently defended by about 5,000 Burundian and Ugandan peacekeeping troops from the African Union, but this force is inadequate and needs a stronger mandate, the MPs said. The force is supposed to have 8,000 troops, but other African nations have failed to send their promised contributions so far.

A flow of foreign fighters, especially from Pakistan and Afghanistan, has dramatically bolstered the strength of al-Shabab in its battle against the government. Suicide bombings, a technique imported from Afghanistan and Iraq, have become common in Somalia in the past two years.

The United States, worried about the growing power of al-Qaeda in Somalia, is reported to be setting up a Central Intelligence Agency base in Mogadishu, in addition to sending weapons into the country.

This week, U.S. commandos in helicopters attacked a vehicle in southern Somalia and killed a top terrorist leader, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan. It was an escalation of the U.S. involvement in Somalia, where the Pentagon had previously limited itself to long-range missile strikes.

In retaliation for the helicopter attack, suicide bombers drove into an African Union base in two stolen United Nations vehicles. They detonated massive explosions that killed at least 21 people on the base, including a deputy commander of the peacekeeping force and 16 other peacekeepers.

The extremists vowed to launch more attacks, and a Somali official acknowledged that six more UN vehicles were missing.

The African Union admitted that it needed help in its struggle against the insurgents. “We need to get the international community to really come forward,” AU envoy Nicolas Bwakira told reporters in Nairobi Friday. “We don’t have sufficient capacity.”

Mr. Gedi, the former prime minister, said the government is unlikely to survive unless it is defended by a newly trained Somali force of at least 30,000 troops and 15,000 police officers.

The government is currently so enfeebled that it lacks any functioning courts, Mr. Gedi said. “How can security forces operate without a judiciary? How can you detain criminals?”

Salad Ali Jeele, a former Somali deputy defence minister who is now an MP, said the government’s willingness to seek dialogue with the Islamic insurgents is a sign of weakness.

“The government needs to stop this false war of reconciliation, of talking to people who are not ready to negotiate,” he said.

“The government needs to put a higher priority on security, on fighting these people. Having talks with terrorist groups will not bring peace. We can’t just sit and talk to these people.”

Study Tracks Birds’ Movements Due to Global Warming

A recent study published by University of California at Berkeley researchers Monday analyzes the flight of birds from their natural habitats due to warming climate conditions.(Left: woodpecker)

The researchers tracked the breeding ranges of 53 bird species from 82 different sites in the Sierra Nevada mountain range over the course of the past six years.

More than 90 percent of local bird species in the mountain range have already relocated north of their previous habitats in efforts to find more favorable locations to build nests and raise their young, said Morgan Tingley, the lead author of the study and a doctoral student in the campus department of environmental science, policy and management. (Right: cedar waxwing)

The trend could endanger the diversity of species found in the state, he said.

“California’s bird communities are changing and will continue to change,” he said. “Climate change has not led any species to disappear from the state yet, but that may happen in the future.”

Don Rivenes, conservation chair of the Sierra Foothills Audubon Society, said the decrease of birds in the area could lead to broader consequences, including a loss in ecological services that some bird species provide, such as seed dispersal and pollination of plants and trees.

“Certain species of plants may not survive,” he said.

He added that the climate change could cause more species of birds and other animals to move north, further decreasing the biodiversity of the area.

Tingley said by understanding how bird species respond to climate changes, conservationists can take steps to prevent resident populations from leaving protected areas such as Yosemite National Park.

In addition, the study utilized data compiled by Joseph Grinnell, the first director of the campus Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. (Right: rufous hummingbird)

Grinnell’s surveys of birds from 1911 to 1929 aided the researchers in determining the extent of change in the species’ breeding grounds in a survey of the same area in 2003.

Tingley said the northward movement of the birds is not necessarily “a bad thing,” but efforts must still be made to ensure that conditions do not worsen. Our research provides strong hypotheses which we can use to guide our planning for conservation,” Tingley said. (Left: Mountain bluebird)

Source:
Daily Californian, “Study Tracks Birds’ Movements Due to Global Warming“, accessed September 17, 2009

From the Inbox - Don’t Let Big Coal Drown out Your Voice

On Friday, we wrote to tell you some great news: that EPA headquarters had recommended that none of the 79 mountaintop removal permits under their review be passed through for approval at this time. As we said on Friday, the EPA’s recommendation represents a tremendous victory for those of us who love mountains — and a huge setback for Big Coal. But the EPA’s recommendation isn’t final, and Big Coal is doing everything in their power to get the EPA to cave in during the 14-day public comment period that began last Friday. Don’t let Big Coal push the EPA around. Take a moment right now to email the EPA to thank them for taking a big step in the right direction — and ask them to stay the course. Contact the EPA today. The EPA’s recommendation demonstrates that the Obama administration has heard the voices of tens of thousands of people like you who have spoken up to demand an end to mountaintop removal coal mining. But the EPA needs to hear from you again. Faced with howls of protest from Big Coal, they need to know that the public supports the EPA’s more stringent review process for mountaintop removal valley fill permit applications. Please, don’t let Big Coal drown out your voice. Take action today: Click here to contact the EPA today. Thank you for everything you do. Matt Wasson iLoveMountains.org P.S. Please take a moment to submit an official comment to the EPA by clicking here.

Ahmadinejad Unwelcome at New York Hotel

Ahmadinejad was due in New York next week to attend the UN General Assembly, and his public appearances outside the meeting have generated controversy in recent years.

 

“As soon as Helmsley corporate management learned of the possibility of either the Iranian mission or President Ahmadinejad holding a function at the New York Helmsley Hotel, they immediately ordered the cancellation of that function,” hotel spokesman Howard Rubenstein said in a statement.

 
“Neither the Iranian mission nor President Ahmadinejad is welcome at any Helmsley facility,” the statement said without saying why.

 

A group called United Against Nuclear Iran told the hotel that Ahmadinejad was on the guest list, he said.

 

The New York Post reported the banquet was booked months ago by an Iranian student group.

 

Ahmadinejad on Friday called the Holocaust “a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim” in comments to worshipers at Tehran University