Osborne on EDF nuclear charm offensive

The Chancellor George Osborne has personally written to the board of French energy giant EDF to express his commitment to the UK’s nuclear programme.The letter was in part intended to further negotiations with EDF over the proposed £14bn nuclear plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset.

The Sunday Telegraph understands that the purpose of the letter was to tell the company, led by chairman Henri Proglio, that the proposed Hinkley Point C reactor would be eligible for £10bn of financing guarantees.

The Chancellor’s intervention is said to have been well received by EDF, which had previously been frustrated by what it felt was an unreasonably tough negotiating stance adopted by the Treasury.

The guarantees scheme is key to the future of the project, and will see the Government act as guarantor if EDF were unable to repay its loans, thereby helping reduce risk for creditors, making them more willing to lend money to the project.

EDF remains locked in talks about the so-called “strike price” for electricity that the plant will generate, which will be guaranteed for more than 30 years.Whitehall is thought to be awaiting the next move from EDF. Both sides have described talks as “positive” but an agreement is understood to still be several weeks away. However confirmation of the strike price will not be enough to complete the deal. EDF will also need to attract partners to take up to a 49pc stake in the project.

Energy minister Michael Fallon held talks last month with China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, which has long been seen as a likely partner for EDF.

Ministers hope that China Guangdong will not only come in as a minority partner for the project but may also in future lead the construction of further UK reactors itself.

New study finds health kick can reverse the ageing process

The results of a study conducted by the University of California suggest that going on a health kick could reverse cell ageing, according to researchers.

The small pilot study, conducted by a team from the Preventative Medicine Research Institute, examined how telomere shortness in human beings acts as a "prognostic marker of ageing, disease and premature morbidity" .

Just as shoelace tips stop fraying, telomeres keep chromosomes stable and prevent mix-ups when cells divide.

But each time a cell divides, its telomeres shorten. In the end they can no longer ensure chromosomal stability and this is when genetic mistakes begin to occur.

Eventually the cell freezes and stops dividing, or destroys itself.

The speed at which telomeres shorten varies in individuals and biological ageing is faster in people who already have rapidly-shortening telomeres.

Short telomere length in white blood cells is especially associated with age-related diseases, including many types of cancer.

But the results of this study showed positive changes to diet and lifestyle encouraged longer telomeres.

Researchers followed 35 men who had suffered low-risk prostate cancer and had chosen to undergo active surveillance.

Twenty-five male participants placed in the "intervention group" underwent a series of lifestyle changes to their diet, activity, stress management, and social support such as counselling. Ten men in the control group did not undertake any life style changes and continued to live as they normally would.  

Blood samples were taken for analysis from both groups five years later.

Men in the intervention group who had switched to a strict vegetarian lifestyle, exercised and practiced yoga showed considerably genetically younger cells. Instead of the length of their telomeres shortening, they increased by ten per cent.

In contrast, the telomeres of men in the control group had shortened in length by 3 per cent.

It has been suggested as a trigger mechanism for the genetic scrambling associated with prostate cancer. Men with short telomeres in prostate cancer-associated cells are much more likely to die from the disease.

Professor Dean Ornish, from the Preventive Medicine Research Institute at the University of California in San Francisco, US, who led the team, said: “The implications of this relatively small pilot study may go beyond men with prostate cancer.

“If validated by large-scale randomised controlled trials, these comprehensive lifestyle changes may significantly reduce the risk of a wide variety of diseases and premature mortality.

“Our genes, and our telomeres, are a predisposition, but they are not necessarily our fate.”

“Our bodies often have a remarkable capacity to begin healing themselves, and much more quickly than we did once realize, if we simply make the lifestyle changes that are really the primary determinants of our health and well-being,” he said.

"It's not the fountain of youth, but it certainly is a step in the right direction. Until now we thought that only telomeres could get shorter. Now we found that they actually can get longer."

Results were published in the Lancet Oncology Journal on Monday. However, some experts are arguing that as the group were only monitored for a five year period, it was too soon to draw definite conclusions from the results.

Biochemist Dr Lynne Cox, from Oxford University, said: "This new study suggests that reducing stress, improving diet and increasing exercise have the effect of not only preventing telomere loss but also of leading to small but significant increases in telomere length, as measured in circulating white blood cells.

"It is perhaps too soon to judge whether this increase in telomere length will correlate with increased longevity or healthspan.

"There are two things to bear in mind here. Firstly, short telomeres that occur as result of chronic stress are highly associated with poor health, and studies in mice have shown improved tissue health when telomeres are restored experimentally. Secondly, by contrast, globally increasing telomere length in cancer-prone mice actually predisposes to more aggressive cancers.

"The small increases in telomere length in this new human study are more likely to correlate with improved health than cancer risk, though it is too early to be definite."

The studies authors also concluded that: "Larger randomised controlled trials are warranted" to confirm their findings. 

Exchange trip for nuclear industry heads

American chief nuclear officers have completed a week-long technical visit to Japan, learning from their counterparts' experiences of the Fukushima accident and recovery.

The trip to Japan was coordinated by the US Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) and its counterpart the Japan Nuclear Safety Institute (JANSI). Both bodies provide a forum for operators of nuclear power plants to share experience and learn from each other.

Some 24 chief nuclear officers (CNOs) from US power companies took part. With responsibility for nuclear safety, these board-level experts in nuclear operation have a leading role in ensuring the proper technical and cultural conditions are in place for safe operation. In total the group spent over ten hours touring the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the site of the accident two years ago. They also visited Fukushima Daini, which experienced an emergency but was able to avoid an accident, while a sub-group was able to visit the Kashiwazaki Kariwa power plant and see repairs after a 2007 earthquake as well as post-Fukushima improvements to tsunami defence and emergency response.The group heard from Japanese workers such as Takeyugi Inagaki, who was working in the control room of Fukushima Daiichi 1 and later in the plant's emergency response centre during the first 100 hours of the crisis. He and his colleagues remained at the plant site for long periods, unaware of the status of their families or homes and this caused the US delegation to consider the establishment of a protocol to communicate this important family information to US workers in a similar situation. Existing protocols, for example during hurricanes, are not immediately transferable due to the ability to forecast and plan for the event. The families of some Fukushima workers have also suffered harassment and bullying from embittered former neighbours.

On their first day in Japan the CNOs visited Tomioka on the coast about nine kilometres south of Fukushima Daiichi. The evacuated town now experiences annual radiation dose rates of 8-26 milliSieverts per year, compared to previous background levels of about 2 milliSieverts per year. The elevated doses are not high enough to be connected to any effect on people's health, but government rules allow people only to return during daylight hours to maintain their property and not to return on a permanent basis until after a clean-up operation that could take another four years.

John Keeley of trade group the Nuclear Energy Institute was travelling with the CNOs and blogging the groups experiences. He called the town a "sobering wreck of abandonment" and noted that the executives "wanted to see with their own eyes the ultimate consequences of a day gone very wrong at the plant." The NEI's own CNO, Tony Petrangelo, said, "Seeing the devastation in person provides a greater understanding of the significance of the event and its effects on people in the area."

The visit was the idea of Randy Edington, the CNO of Arizona Public Service's Pale Verde nuclear power plant. He said: "We came here to learn, to put eyes on the problem, to learn from each other and increase unity in the US but also to learn and share with our counterparts, the CNOs of Japan."

"The actions that we perform every single day at our plant can have US-wide or even worldwide consequences. I can't say enough about the importance of what we do, how important electricity is to all of our economies, to all our people. As we continue to learn and move forward in this industry, I'd like to re-emphasise our theme, which is: knowledge is fundamental; share it."

International links for African nuclear

African nuclear safety regulators are to step up their cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency as the continent makes increasing use of nuclear energy.

Only one nuclear power plant operates in Africa, at Koeberg in South Africa, but there are eight research reactors across the continent and major uranium mining operations. Radioactive sources are increasingly used for science, agriculture, industry, water management and healthcare.

A group counting 30 national authorities has been assembled by the African Union. Called the Forum of Nuclear Regulatory Bodies in Africa (FNRBA), it has the goal of enabling those countries to improve nuclear regulation, by dealing with outdated practices, gaps in legislation, gaps in compliance and ensuring adequate regulatory independence.

Yesterday at the IAEA General Conference in Vienna the FNRBA signed practical arrangements with the IAEA to step up their cooperation. Both the organisations agreed to "support efforts to enhance and strengthen radiation protection, nuclear safety and security, and regulatory infrastructure... and to harmonize best practices." They will "support capacity building and promotion of knowledge management... as a key to stimulating human resource development and knowledge transfer."The FNRBA is one result of the 1996 Pelidaba Treaty, in which African nations vowed to forego nuclear weapons, but affirmed their determination to "promote regional cooperation for the development and practical application of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in the interest of sustainable social and economic development."

Speaking late last year at the second conference of the treaty, FNRBA chair Augustin Simo noted "an increased will and political commitment by the African countries to advance the application of nuclear technology for power generation." Leading the continent is South Africa, which already operates two nuclear power reactors and is planning to vastly increase its capacity by up to 9600 MWe by 2030. Its National Nuclear Regulator has a leading role in the FNRBA. Africa's most populous country, Nigeria, is seen as making real progress towards the introduction of nuclear power, having started up its first research reactor at Ahmadu Bello University in 2004.

States that began to develop nuclear plans but have put these on the back-burner include Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Libya. Other African nations with rapidly growing power demand and a declared interest in nuclear energy include Kenya, Senegal, Ghana, Sudan and Yemen.

Thorium put to the test as policymakers rethink nuclear

Two years after the Fukushima disaster rocked the nuclear industry, the jury is still out in many countries on the role of atomic fuels.

Just two of Japan's 54 commercial nuclear plants are currently operational, while Germany has abandoned nuclear altogether. The price of uranium has also plummeted, making it unviable to get new mines off the ground.

But in the background, scientists are working on a cleaner, cheaper and safer alternative to uranium. It's even named after a god.

Thorium is more common in the Earth's crust than tin, mercury and silver - and three times more abundant that uranium. In fact, thorium, which is named after Thor, the Norse god of thunder, is so energy-dense that an individual can hold a lifetime's supply of electricity in the palm of their hand.

Around 14pc of the world's electricity is currently generated using nuclear power; in France, the figure is closer to 75pc. But with uncertainty over uranium prices, emissions targets to be met and a need to address post-Fukushima safety concerns, policymakers and the industry have been forced to think again.

There is also the issue of nuclear proliferation. In a traditional light-water reactor, plutonium-239 - a radioactive isotope that can be used to make weapons - is generated as a by-product of uranium-235/238 nuclear reactions. However, using thorium instead of uranium to kick-start nuclear fission produces less long-lived waste such as plutonium, reducing the security issues associated with nuclear plants.

Thorium is not a new discovery, and Britain led the way in the late 1960s and early 70s with tests in the Dragon Reactor in Winfrith, Dorset.

Thorium has huge energy potential but is in technical terms fertile, not fissile, meaning that it needs to be converted into uranium-233, another variant of the element, before it can be used to generate electricity. However, a lack of the vital spare neutrons needed to start this reaction, along with other difficulties, meant thorium was cast aside as a practical nuclear fuel, and instead uranium became the staple diet of reactors.

Today, it is just a by-product of rare earth mining. 3,200 tonnes of it are currently buried in the Nevada desert.

But countries are now waking up to the benefits of thorium, and it is once again being put to the test in Halden, a small Norwegian town with a population of less than 30,000. Thor Energy, with the help of Britain, the US and Germany, is testing thorium for commercial use. The company loaded its first fuel rods into a test reactor in April as part of a five year radiation programme designed to show the rest of the world what the company already knows: thorium is versatile, safe, and more efficient than uranium.

"The thermal conductivity of thorium based pellets is known to be much better to be much better than uranium, says chief executive Øystein Asphjell. "We are now proving that it is this way."

Mr Asphjell believes in what he calls an "evolutionary" approach to thorium - using the material in existing light water reactors to generate electricity.

Together with the UK's National Nuclear Labroratory, it is developing a variety of thorium fuel pellets, some designed to destroy old nuclear waste, others blending uranium and thorium to make a more stable fuel. "Thorium addresses a lot of the accident fallout from uranium because it has a much higher melting point, it cannot be dissolved in water, and there's multiple safety parameters that are inherant in the material properties," says Mr Asphjell.

Politicians are also listening. Michael Fallon, minister for business and enterprise, met with the All-Parliamentary group on Thorium Energy for the first time last month to discuss its benefits.

Kevin Hesketh, senior research fellow at the NNL, says that after years of neglect, the Government is now taking nuclear research more seriously, and believes that a thorium fuel cycle could be established in the UK within 20 years.

"We're discussing things with [the Government] routinely now. At one point we weren't getting any interest in nuclear research.

"They recognise that if you want to achieve an 80pc reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, it's going to require some pretty drastic changes."

Thorium "revolutionists" argue that the benefits could be even greater if it is used in molten salt reactors, which can act as eco-cleaners to burn up old toxic waste. Radioactive fission products can also be re-added to the reactor for successive rounds of power generation, making energy generation cheaper.

Some even argue that these reactors could have prevented the hydrogen explosions seen in Japan. In the event of power-loss, a plug in the base of the reactor melts and the salts flow into a containment vessel to cool down, stopping the reaction and any radiation release.

But in an industry where it costs billions - rather than millions - of pounds to conduct research, Mr Hesketh says Britain is likely to be a follower rather than a leader when it comes to thorium.

China launched a $350m (£223m) thorium-fuelled molten salt reactor Research and Development (R&D) programme in 2011, and plans to build commercially viable plants in the 2030s, while India, which has around 16pc of the world's thorium reserves, hopes to build four new fast breeder reactors by 2020.

Despite all the excitement, safety concerns mean nuclear developments continue to move at a glacial pace. Research takes years, if not decades, and the word "nuclear" still stirs up strong emotions. Earlier this month, politicians exchanged punches in Taiwan's parliament after a debate on the completion of its fourth nuclear power plant escalated.

But for countries such as Japan, an energy solution needs to be found, and quickly. Trade figures this week showed its reliance on LNG and petroleum post-Fukushima meant its trade deficit doubled to more than ¥1 trillion (£6.7bn) in July.

Takashi Kamei is president of Kyoto Neutronics, which is developing an accelerated neutron source to prepare thorium for use in a reactor.

The month after Fukushima, Mr Kamei was rushed into Japan's economy ministry to explain the benefits of molten salt reactors and how it could address Japan's energy needs. With prime minister Shinzo Abe's pledge this month to "take effective measures to tackle the problem" of Japan's nuclear clean-up, the government is more involved in the energy debate than ever.

"I think they have already reported my vision to Mr Abe," says Mr Kamei, though he recognises that the subject remains delicate in a country that is still reeling from the 2011 disaster. "If the prime minister says that Japan is developing molten salt reactors, and that this is quite safe – this implies that existing commercial plants are dangerous."

Mr Asphjell agrees. "This industry is so policy and public opinion driven that by saying we need to introduce thorium, you're by default saying there's something wrong with uranium.

"The existing industry does not want to get the message out there that there is something wrong with uranium. If you go 15 to 20 years back with the gasoline car industry versus electric cars - they didn't want to say that there was something better because they might break the market for the existing product."

Thorium's biggest enemy is often its own supporters, Mr Asphjell adds. "There have been a lot of loud voices in the UK that have taken a very evangelistic perpective on thorium - that it's a green fuel that solves every issue, it's employable tomorrow, there's no waste and absolutely no risk. This evangelistic view is diluting the proper message of thorium in many ways [and] from our perspective is the biggest obstacle for thorium introduction."

Mr Hesketh also sees the value in Britain doing more thorium research, but admits that only "market forces" will drive this forward. "Right now the support you need to get to the summit isn't there," he says."You haven't got the certainty of financial support to know that you're going to get to the summit, that would need to come at a later stage. But if you get yourself to base camp [by conducting research], you're in a much better position later."

For now, the world must look east for thorium developments, though Mr Asphjell is confident that slow and steady wins the race, despite the enormity of the task. "This is an elephant we're trying to eat," he insists. "We have to chew one piece at a time."

The good news- Earth can support life for 1.75 billion years. The bad news- Climate change could wipe us out long before that

The end of the world is coming – but not for a while yet. That’s according to a new study indicating that we have 1.75 billion years left until Mother Earth gives up the ghost.

Researchers from the University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences analysed other planets outside our galaxy in an attempt to work out how long it will be before our planet becomes uninhabitable.

The study, published today in the journal Astrobiology, examined seven planets, including Earth, to determine how their “habitable zones” will change as their stars get hotter and brighter over time.

The key factors in determining a planet’s habitability are whether it is the correct distance from its star to have liquid surface water and a temperature less than 50C.

“Within around 1.75 billion years conditions for human life will become impossible as the sun grows in size, temperatures soar and the world’s oceans evaporate,” Andrew Rushby, who led the study, told The Independent.

The research didn’t specifically account for man-made climate change or the “possibility that we’ll all be wiped out by an asteroid or a nuclear war”, he said. Climate change may well decimate humanity before the concept of habitable zones become relevant.

“Of course, conditions for humans and other complex life will become impossible much sooner – and this is being accelerated by anthropogenic climate change,” he said.

“Humans would be in trouble with even a small increase in temperature, and near the end only microbes in niche environments would be able to endure the heat.”

Even if some humans did manage to survive for another 1.75 billion years, the end would not come instantly.

“Even if you were alive at 99.9 per cent of the way through our habitable zone, you still wouldn’t have to worry about it,” Mr Rushby said. ”Life isn’t going to be extinguished at the flick of a switch.”

Instead, as the sun gets older, it will get hotter and temperatures on Earth will soar over the course of “perhaps one million years” as we enter a “hot zone” and seas evaporate, leaving the planet lifeless except for some forms of microscopic life.

“The optimist in me hopes we’ll still be around to see this,” said Mr Rushby. “Or that we’ll have migrated to Mars or developed the technology to spread out across the galaxy. But that’s getting into the realms of science fiction.”

The study has also allowed Mr Rushby and his team to make predictions about what stage life might be at in other parts of the galaxy: “There’s no point in studying a planet for signs of life if it’s only been habitable for a million years. That sounds like a long time, but in terms of geology and biology it isn’t. The most interesting planets in the search for alien life are ones that have been habitable for billions of years.

“Anatomically modern humans have only been around for the last 200,000 years – so you can see it takes a really long time for intelligent life to develop.

“Of course, much of evolution is down to luck, so this isn’t concrete, but we know that complex, intelligent species like humans could not emerge after only a few million years because it took us 75 per cent of the entire habitable lifetime of this planet to evolve.

”We think it will probably be a similar story elsewhere.”

In particular, the report points to the examples of Kepler-22b and Gliese-581d which have been habitable  for up to 6 and 54.7 billion years respectively.

“As it stands, we don’t have the technology to explore these planets to discover if there is alien life, but I’d certainly mention Kepler-22b and Gliese-581d as planets that we should keep an eye over the next two or three hundreds years of human existence as our technology develops,” said Mr Rushby.

Robert Fisk in Damascus- In Syria's capital, Assad's troops may be winning this war untouched by Obama's threats

Dispatch from Damascus- The killing fields remain, and truth is as rare as hope And so the war goes on. Missile alerts may be over but the killing fields remain, untouched byObama’s pale threats or Sergei Lavrov’s earnestness. The Syrian army fights on in the rubble and the shells fly over Damascus and the road from Lebanon is still littered with checkpoints. Only when you reach the city do you notice how many people have now built iron guard doors before their homes and iron gates on car parks. The claim that 40-50,000 rebels surround the capital is probably untrue but there are up to 80,000 security men and soldiers inside Damascus and, on this battlefront, they may well be winning.

It’s a campaign that started long before the use of sarin gas on 21 August and continued long afterwards. But on that fateful night, the Syrian army did mount one of its fiercest bombardments of rebel areas. In 12 separate attacks, it tried to put special forces men inside the insurgent enclaves, backed up by artillery fire. These included the suburbs of Harasta, and Arbin.

I was chatting yesterday to an old Syrian friend, a journalist who used to be in the country’s special forces and he – quite by chance – said he was embedded with Syrian government troops on the night of 21 August. These were men of the Fourth Division – in which the President’s brother Maher commands a brigade – and my friend was in the suburb of Moadamiyeh – the site of one of the chemical attacks. He recalls the tremendous artillery bombardment but saw no evidence of gas being used. This was one of the areas from which the army was attempting to insert bridgeheads into rebel territory. What he does remember is the concern of government troops when they saw the first images of gas victims on television – fearing that they themselves would have to fight amid the poisonous fumes.

Frontline Syrian forces do carry gas masks but none was seen wearing any. “The problem,” my friend said, “is that after Libya there are so many Russian weapons and artillery pieces smuggled into Syria that you don’t know what anybody’s got any more. The Libyans can’t produce enough of their oil but they sure can export all Gaddafi’s equipment.” But that doesn’t necessarily include sarin gas. Nor does it let the Syrian government off the hook. The protocols on the use of gas and missiles are said to be very strict in Syria so, of course, we come back to the old question: who ordered those missiles fired during the awful night of 21 August?
Some questions are familiar. Why use gas when so much more lethal weaponry is being flung at rebel forces across the country? If the government wanted to use gas, why not employ it north of Aleppo where not a single government soldier or official exists? Why in Damascus? And why wasn’t gas used on this scale in the previous two years? And why employ such a dreadful weapon when the end result is that Syria – by giving up its stocks of chemical weapons – has effectively lost one of its strategic defences against an Israeli invasion? No wonder, another Syrian friend of mine remarked last night, that the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem had such a long and shocked face when he made his Moscow announcement. Wasn’t Israel the real winner in all this?Most probably Israel is also the winner inSyria’s civil war, as its once great neighbour is smashed and pulverised by a conflict which may continue for another two years. Syria was never a wealthy nation, but rebuilding its smashed cities and railways and roads is going to take many years. Rumours in Damascus are thicker than the smoke which envelops part of the city. Among the latest is an allegedly secret Western demand that a new Syrian government be formed of 30 ministers – 10 of them regime figures and at least 10 others independents – and that there must be a total restructuring of the army and security services. Since the West no longer has the means of enforcing such ambitious plans, all this sounds unlikely. Unless the Russians are also supporting the idea.North of Damascus, the Jabhat al-Nusra forces are now way back from the ancient, partly Christian town of Maaloula which was recaptured by the Syrian Third Armoured Division. But this poses another question. Why on earth did the Nusra fighters take Maaloula if they had no intention of holding it? Did they think that the Syrian regime would be so distracted by the thought of an American attack that it would lack the will to drive them out? Sadly both sides have ceased to care about the weapons they use or the immorality of using them. When an Islamist fighter can film himself eating the flesh of a dead soldier, all scruples have gone.

And here is one final thought. Not long ago, rebels in Damascus murdered a woman in Harasta. One of her sons is now serving in the Syrian army. He has never touched or fired gas in his life. But as a member of his family said to me, “if he was ordered to, he would not have the slightest hesitation. He would love to revenge himself on those who killed his beloved mother.”