Misplaced jubilation as UK's old brittle nuclear reactors allowed to crack on

Joy and delight expressed by one corporate media outlet after another, as they report the announcement from (debt-laden) French nuclear company EDF that four UK nuclear power stations will be allowed to crack on, way past their use-by date.

"Crack" is the operative word here. Take for example, the Torness nuclear reactor in East Lothian - with 46 cracks in the nuclear core reported last July. It was scheduled to close in 2023, - but now joyously extended to 2030

Hunterston B, in North Ayshire is at long last to be decommissioned. In 2020 one of its reactors had an estimated 377 cracks, while the other had 209. The reactors were beginning to crumble, with cracks causing at least 58 fragments and pieces of debris to break off.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR has said that cracking could cause debris to inhibit vital cooling of highly radioactive reactor fuel. This can lead to a reactor meltdown, which can result in the escape of radioactivity to the environment.

Nobody in the prevailing establishment - corporate media, politicians, industry executives - nobody is facing up to the huge problem and huge cost of dismantling dangerous old nuclear reactors - so much better to pretend that it's the charitable thing to just keep them going, Then it's "jobs jobs jobs" and "community benefit" and "clean cheap energy" and "improved safety" "isn't it wonderful" So say EDF 4th Dec 2024, the BBC, and Business Green 4th Dec 2024, and New Civil Engineer 4th Dec 2024, and Independent 3rd Dec 2024, The Herald, Lancs Live 4th Dec 2024.

Nary a word about the costs and dangers of the transport of radioactive materials, the ever-growing piles on nuclear wastes, the risks of terrorist attacks - and the completely unethical postponing of problems - just leave them for future generations to cope with.

Not nearly as much fuss was made about the world’s largest liquid air energy facility to be built at Hunterston - to store renewable energy, and provide 1000 jobs in the construction phase and 650 jobs in the local supply chain by its completion in 2030.

I try to be polite - but I empathise with Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt, 2nd Baronet, CBE who has just got so fed up with the cheerful glowing stories about prolonging the lives of decrepit nuclear reactors - "the whole deep nuclear state working away behind the scenes – as well as the UK’s astonishingly gullible media which just goes along with all this nuclear crap, year after year after year."