Rob Edwards

Nuclear waste: don't hold your breath

from The House Magazine, 14 July 2008

Three times governments have tried to find a way to dispose of Britain’s nuclear waste - in 1981, 1987 and 1997 - and three times they have failed. Now they are trying again.

In a White Paper published in June, ministers have asked local communities to volunteer to host a repository for radioactive waste accumulated from 55 years of nuclear power and weapons. Despite offering multi-million pound incentives, they are not expecting to be knocked down in the rush.

Will nuclear power stop us freezing in the dark?

from The House Magazine, 14 July 2008

The last Prime Minister who attempted to do what Gordon Brown is now trying to do with nuclear power was Margaret Thatcher. Shortly after she took office in 1979, she announced a programme of ten new nuclear reactors.

They were to be built to avoid the risk of people in Britain freezing in the dark, recalled Tom Burke, a former advisor to three UK environment ministers. “Fifteen years later, one reactor had been built at two times its original cost,” he said. “She had been defeated by the economics of nuclear power. No-one froze in the dark.”

The women who suffer because of climate change

from Sunday Herald, 13 July 2008

When the weather turns bad, it’s the women that suffer. That, in essence, is the message of a new campaign being launched by Oxfam.

The international aid agency is highlighting how women around the world are hardest hit by storms, floods and droughts caused by global warming. And it is stepping up pressure on the Scottish government to agree tough targets to cut the pollution that is causing the problems.

Women produce most of the food in developing countries. As agricultural workers and as family providers, they are responsible for up to 80% of household food production in Sub-Saharan Africa and 65% in Asia.

UK plutonium stocks rise

from New Scientist, 09 July 2008

The UK's stockpile of plutonium from nuclear power stations has risen to 108 tonnes, according to the British government's latest submission to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. The stockpile at the end of 2007 exceeded the previous year's total by 1.1 tonnes, and is enough for 13,500 nuclear bombs. Most is stored at Sellafield in Cumbria.

Contaminated US site faces 'catastrophic' nuclear leak

from New Scientist, 09 July 2008

One of "the most contaminated places on Earth" will only get dirtier if the US government doesn't get its act together - clean-up plans are already 19 years behind schedule and not due for completion until 2050.

More than 210 million litres of radioactive and chemical waste are stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford in Washington State. Most are over 50 years old. Already 67 of the tanks have failed, leaking almost 4 million litres of waste into the ground.

Revealed: the Cairngorm railway 'scandal'

from Sunday Herald, 06 July 2008

Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) has been accused by the Forestry Commission of trying to hide the multi-million pound problems plaguing the controversial Cairngorm mountain railway.

Internal documents from the commission reveal that many of the facilities at the ski resort on the Cairngorm estate near Aviemore are badly in need of repair. Buildings are leaking, sewage discharge limits are being breached and the train’s undercarriage has not been properly checked.

Bringing the facilities up to scratch could cost up to £2 million of public money, the documents disclose. If the funicular railway has to shut, £6 million would have to be found to reinstate the land, and a £2.7 million grant from the European Union would have to be repaid.

M74 will undermine air pollution targets, ministers told

from Sunday Herald, 06 July 2008

The government’s plan to extend the M74 into Glasgow will undermine targets to cut air pollution and combat climate chaos, according to secret advice given to ministers.

A memo from officials to the former environment minister, Ross Finnie, in 2005 warned that building the five-mile, six-lane motorway would breach Glasgow’s air quality objective and significantly hamper plans to cut carbon emissions from transport.

But the M74 extension was still given the go-ahead by the previous Labour and Liberal Democrat coalition, and has been backed by the current Scottish Nationalist government. The groundbreaking ceremony to launch construction work in May was headed by the First Minister, Alex Salmond.

Ban on building wind farms on peat bogs is 'bad science'

from Sunday Herald, 06 July 2006

A high-profile campaign to ban wind farms from peat bogs has come under sustained attack in the wake of new scientific evidence on climate pollution.

The Scottish Conservative MEP, Struan Stevenson, has been campaigning for a moratorium on wind developments on peatlands. Damaging the peat causes the release of more carbon dioxide than wind farms save, he alleges.

But Stevenson’s claims have now been called into question by an expert report published by the Scottish government. And he has been accused of “bad science” by the wind industry and “showboating” by a fellow MEP - accusations he dismisses as “fatuous”.

Scottish civil servants take 36 flights a day

from Sunday Herald, 29 June 2008

Civil servants have failed to kick their flying habit. In the last year Scottish government officials have spent £1 million of public money taking 8,700 flights between Scotland and England.

On average they made 36 flights every working day, mostly between Edinburgh and London. They also flew regularly to Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Inverness.

As part of its bid to “go greener”, the Scottish government is urging members of the public to “choose not to fly when there's a suitable alternative”. The vast majority of the journeys made by civil servants can be easily done by train.

1,000 new waste plants planned for Scotland

from Sunday Herald, 29 June 2008

As many as a thousand new plants could be built to turn Scotland’s mountains of waste into heat and power for homes and businesses, according to a report for Scotland’s green watchdog.

But the report - to be published this week by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) - will provoke anxiety in communities across the country worried about pollution from waste treatment plants in their areas.

Sepa, however, insists that the proposed new facilities will be clean and strictly regulated. They include up to 741 gas-producing composting plants and 228 small-scale incinerators, all of which could supply hot water and electricity.

Huge gaps exposed in Scotland's flood warning system

from Sunday Herald, 29 June 2008

People living in half of Scotland could miss out on vital flood warnings because of huge gaps in the country’s network of weather radars.

Some of the areas most vulnerable to flooding around the Moray Firth and in Dumfries and Galloway are not covered, putting their populations in danger from flash floods and sudden storms.

But now MSPs are calling for urgent action to plug the gaps, and bring the flood warning system up to scratch. They point out that radar coverage in Scotland is much poorer than in England and Wales.

Glasgow bids to go greener

from Sunday Herald, 29 June 2008

The Dear Green Place wants to get greener. Glasgow City Council has launched a bid to become one of Europe’s most environmentally-friendly cities.

The council’s leaders are trying to shake off the city’s image as one of the most polluted, most wasteful and most road-obsessed in Scotland by agreeing a series of initiatives aimed at making it more sustainable.

The council has set up a high-level consortium led by Strathclyde University to examine every aspect of life in the city. The objective is “to position Glasgow as one of Europe’s most sustainable cities within five to ten years”.

Nuclear bombs could explode 'like popcorn'

from New Scientist, 25 June 2008

If you thought that the clusters of nuclear bombs carried around the world in submarines were designed to ensure that they could never go off by accident, think again.

New Scientist reveals today that more than 1,700 nuclear warheads have design flaws that could conceivably cause multiple warheads to explode one after another. According to a UK Ministry of Defence safety manual, the effect known as "popcorning".

We target your cars and homes, says MoD

from Sunday Herald, 22 June 2008

Vehicles and buildings across large parts of rural Scotland are deliberately used as “practice targets” by low-flying military jets, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has admitted.

Cars being driven along quiet roads, boats cruising through lochs and people living in countryside homes can all be buzzed by fighter pilots rehearsing for war in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The admission has outraged rural communities, who lambast low-flying as “diabolical” and “dangerous”. And it has prompted a call from the Scottish National Party for the MoD to review its policy on low-flying in Scotland.

The green leaders who chose to drive

from Sunday Herald, 22 June 2008

They urge everyone else to leave their cars at home to help save the planet, then they jump into theirs.

The board members of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) made five times more journeys by car than by train last year - and claimed ten times more in expenses for them.

New website of walks through Glasgow

from Sunday Herald, 22 June 2008

An award-winning website encouraging people to walk instead of taking the car is being launched this week in Glasgow.

Walkit.com generates maps of how to get by foot between any two points in the city. It also estimates how long it will take, how many calories you will burn and how much pollution you will save.

Protest over plan to send nuclear waste to Sweden

from Sunday Herald, 15 June 2008

An unprecedented plan to export radioactive waste from old nuclear submarines in Scotland to Sweden is coming under fire from local authorities worried about accidents and pollution.

The naval dockyard at Rosyth in Fife has applied for permission to ship metal contaminated with radioactivity to a smelter run by the nuclear waste company, Studsvik, near Nyköping in Sweden.

The plan is for the metal, from the decommissioning of seven defunct submarines laid up at Rosyth, to be melted, decontaminated and reused. The contaminated slag will be then sent back to Rosyth to be disposed of at Britain’s low-level radioactive waste dump at Drigg, near Sellafield in Cumbria.

Backbench revolt on climate change threatened

from Sunday Herald, 15 June 2008

The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, could face another rebellion from his backbenchers if he fails to include aviation in his targets to cut the pollution that is warming the globe.

Two thirds of Scottish Labour backbenchers favour the inclusion of emissions from international air travel in Westminster’s forthcoming climate change bill, according to a survey by Friends of the Earth Scotland.

Advice on farm climate pollution 'flawed'

from Sunday Herald, 15 June 2008

Advice given to Scottish ministers on how to cut climate pollution from farming has been condemned as flawed and inadequate.

The Soil Association, which promotes organic food, has attacked a recent report to government by agricultural experts. The report fails to recognise the scale of the challenge posed by emissions from agriculture, the association says.

Revealed: the £18.5bn price tag for Trident

from Sunday Herald, 08 June 2008

Maintaining and developing the Trident nuclear warheads stationed on the Clyde is going to cost the British taxpayer a massive £18.5 billion over 13 years, according to the first official breakdown of defence nuclear spending.

New figures released by the UK government after pressure from MPs reveal that £12.7 billion of public money has been spent on nuclear weapons over the last ten years. A further £5.8 billion is planned to be spent over the next three years.

The amount of cash being poured into the UK’s weapons of mass destruction is also steadily increasing, from £1.1 billion in 2003-04 to a projected £2.1 billion in 2010-11 (see table below). A raft of new high-tech facilities are being built at the nuclear bomb factories at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire.