After mass desertions, Toshiba cancels its own nuclear project

First it was UK's SSE that headed for the exit. Then it was Spain's Ibderola who bolted. After that France's GDF Suez (renamed Engie) bowed out. Then KEPCO briefly entered and left. And today, Toshiba, the owner of the ill-fated nuclear power project in Cumbria, England, from which all companies fled, has shown itself the door.

Toshiba today announced it was canceling plans for what was originally intended to be a new three-reactor project in England's northwest. Not surprisingly, the company cited the unappetizing financial burden of nuclear power for the demise of the project, which had long been anticipated to fail.

'“After considering the additional costs entailed in continuing to operate NuGen, Toshiba recognizes that the economically rational decision is to withdraw from the project,” Toshiba said in a statement.

Toshiba's NuGen consortium, left with a membership of one -- Toshiba -- was to have managed the project. Perhaps Toshiba should have erected a sign saying "abandon hope all ye who enter here." Instead, they allowed their sign (left, photographed in 2017), to become overgrown with weeds, a portend of the collapse to come.

Read more details about the end of the NuGen project here at Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment. 

Radioactive Waste Is Coming through Your Town -- Unless YOU Help Stop It!

Rail-sized cask shipment of highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel.The nuclear power industry, and its friends in government, have proposed multiple dump-sites for high-level radioactive waste out West -- permanent burial at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, on Western Shoshone Indian land; "temporary" storage in southeastern New Mexico; and/or "interim" storage in West Texas. What can YOU do about this, given that when it comes to high-level radioactive waste transportation risks, we all live in Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas?!  If any one of these dumps opens, it would launch large-scale shipping of irradiated nuclear fuel, by truck, train, and/or barge, through most states, and countless towns, likely including yours.

Currently, there is a public comment opportunity re: the Texas scheme.

Please submit public comments to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) before its Nov. 19th deadline, expressing opposition to the centralized interim storage facility targeted at Andrews County, West Texas by WCS/ISP (Waste Control Specialists/Interim Storage Partners). Orano (formerly Areva, formerly Cogema) of France is the lead partner. Web forms you can use as is, or edit, as well as sample comments you can use to prepare your own -- along with instructions on how to submit them -- are posted at Beyond Nuclear's website.

To learn more, please see Beyond Nuclear's Centralized Storage website section, where info. about multiple speaking tours across the country are posted; as well as our Waste Transport Risk website section. Stop the Mobile Chernobyls, Fukushima Freeways, Dirty Bombs on Wheels, Floating Fukushimas, and Mobile X-ray Machines That Can't Be Turned Off!

A painter who sounds climate change and nuclear disaster warning through her art

Mary Lou Dauray is a California painter and world traveler who had specialized in landscapes. But melting glaciers, the site of coal-laden rail cars, and the news of the Fukushima nuclear disaster disturbed that tranquility. Her subject matter now reflects what she cares about the most -- preserving and protecting the future health, safety and beauty of our planet. More

The toxic legacy of Tummalapalle uranium mines in India

Villagers are suffering debilitating illnesses, animals die and crops wither. Yet tailings waste from the nearby uranium mine continues to be dumped into waterways. The toxic mess that is India's uranium mining industry has gone on for decades. Two journalists went to take a look for themselves and sound the alarm. More

French atomic tests in Algeria still leave their legacy

Algerians were not properly warned of the dangers after France’s misgoverned nuclear bomb-testing campaign of the early 1960s, which vitrified vast tracts of desert with heat and plutonium and left a legacy of uncontained radiation that is still crippling inhabitants. Estimates of the number of Algerians affected by testing range from 27,000 — cited by the French Ministry of Defense — to 60,000, the figure given by Abdul Kadhim al-Aboudi, an Algerian professor of nuclear physics.

Yet there has been little accountability for France’s disregard. A compensation scheme for victims of France’s nuclear tests exists, but it has made payouts to only 17 people. The majority of those were residents of French Polynesia, where France relocated its nuclear testing campaign after leaving Algeria and experimented with more than 190 nuclear bombs from 1966 to 1996. Read the full story on Beyond Nuclear International.