Rolls-Royce to build U.K.'s first small modular rectors
June 10 (UPI) -- Rolls-Royce was selected on Tuesday to partner with Great British Energy to build the country's first small modular reactors.
The British government made the announcement as part of its strategy to revive Britain's industrial background. The government is committing over $3 billion for the modular reactor program and the project is expected to create up to 3,000 jobs and give 3 million homes power.
It also announced plans to build a large Sizewell C power station in eastern England with an investment of $19 billion.
"Great British Energy with Nuclear has run a rigorous competition and will now work with the preferred bidder Rolls-Royce SMR to build the country's first ever small modular reactors - creating thousands of jobs and growing our regional economies while strengthening our energy security", said Energy Secretary Ed Millband.
"The U.K. is back where it belongs, taking the lead in the technologies of tomorrow with Rolls-Royce SMR as the preferred partner for this journey", said Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeve.
Rolls-Royce SMR is going through the final stages of the U.K.'s nuclear industry's independent regulators assessment.
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'Black boxes' from jet crash in India found; sole survivor doing well
1 of 10 | India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits the site of an Air India plane crash near the airport in Ahmedabad, India, on Friday. Photo by Indian Press Information Bureau | License Photo June 13 (UPI) -- Both of the "black boxes" were recovered from the wreckage of the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner in India after after all but one of the 242 people onboard died. The voice and data recorders may help investigators learn what caused the passenger jet to crash just minutes after it took off from Ahmedabad for London's Gatwick Airport on Thursday. "The Flight Data Recorder (Black Box) has been recovered within 28 hours from the accident site in Ahmedabad," Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu, the Indian Union Minister of Civil Aviation, said in a social media post. "This marks an important step forward in the investigation. This will significantly aid the enquiry into the incident." Hours later on Saturday morning local time, the voice recorder was found. The captain of the flight sent a distress call to air traffic control less a minute after take off, India's aviation authorities confirmed Saturday. The plane crashed just 33 minutes after takeoff. The recorders were recovered from on top of the medical college hostel where the jet crashed. Members of the U.S. Transportation Safety Board and British authorities are assisting with the investigation. More 50 of those killed from the plane are British nationals. The aircraft was made in the United States. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Thursday they haven't found any safety data that the plane model itself is unsafe. "They have to get on the ground and take a look. But again, right now it'd be way too premature," Duffy said at a news conference. "People are looking at videos and trying to assess what happened, which is never a strong, smart way to make decisions on what took place." It was the first fatal flight involving the 787-8. Boeing has manufactured 1,188 of the planes since they went into service in 2009. India's government is inspecting all Boeing 787s , the aviation minister just told reporters in a press briefing. Air India operates 33 Boeing 787s and rival airline IndiGo has one, according to data from Flightradar24. Rescue workers scoured the site for survivors and, miraculously, one man, British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, who had been in seat 11A on the Air India flight, right next to his brother. He walked away from the crash site with only minor injuries. The sole survivor is doing well in hospital but is "psychologically disturbed," according to the Civil Hospital medical director. The jet struck a hostel for B.J. Medical College and Civil Hospital students and relatives, a medical school. The total death toll is at least 290. The British national of Indian origin told the Hindustan Times it happened very fast. "Thirty seconds after takeoff, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed," Ramesh said. "I don't know how I'm alive, how I exited the plane." Ramesh added, "I don't know how I survived. I saw people dying in front of my eyes -- the air hostesses, and two people I saw near me. ... I walked out of the rubble." He was seated near a left-side window emergency exit in the economy section of the aircraft. He said he saw the exit, tried to get out through it and succeeded. Ramesh said he still can't believe he made it out alive. Prime Minister Narenda Modi visited him in the hospital. Modi said on X, "Met those injured in the aftermath of the tragic plane crash in Ahmedabad, including the lone survivor and assured them that we are with them and their families in this tough time. The entire nation is praying for their speedy recovery. A student said it was a "miracle" she missed the flight. Bhoomi Chauhan, 28, said she was angry after a traffic jam on the way to the airport meant she missed boarding the flight by just 10 minutes. Now she said is "numb" after learning a about the crash. In a statement on X Air India offered its deepest condolences to families of those killed and added, "The passengers comprised 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, 7 Portuguese nationals and 1 Canadian national. The FAIMA Doctors Association said on X that "The wife of one super-specialist doctor was found dead." Fifty MBBS students were hospitalized in stable condition while two or three were in critical condition and four or five students were missing. Three to four relatives of resident doctors also are missing, according to FAIMA.
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Starmer's latest freebie: British sovereignty in exchange for nothing
While we can't rely on the French to help police the Channel – despite paying them £500 million for the privilege, we can always trust our Gallic cousins to bear a grudge. We already knew that the Prime Minister's great EU 'reset' was a sham; that much was clear when all we got in return was the use of e-gates that were already operational in many European countries. Now, we learn that we may not even be granted access to the bloc's industrial defence programme, despite Sir Keir Starmer's insistence that defence and security was a central tenet of the deal. As he boasted last month after selling us out to Brussels: 'We've also struck a new defence and security partnership to strengthen our cooperation and strengthen our security – which is vital in this dangerous new era. 'And it will open the door to working with the EU's new defence fund – providing new opportunities for our defence industry, supporting British jobs and livelihoods.' Except, of course, the French have other ideas. In yet another example of just how bad Labour is at negotiating anything (see also the Chagos surrender and, more recently, the 'deal' to allow Spanish border guards to check passports on Gibraltar) we now learn that Emmanuel Macron is trying to shut out British arms firms from the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP). While different to the defence fund, which is known as SAFE (Security Action for Europe), EDIP will see cash pumped into joint procurement projects and the production of weapons, ammunition and other military hardware. It was created for the benefit of the EU and 'allies' but French diplomats have insisted the tool should be solely used to boost firms based inside the EU, as well as Norway and Ukraine – shutting out the UK. So much for Starmer's boast that the reset deal would put Britain 'back on the world stage' and give us 'unprecedented access to the EU market, the best of any country.' Labour is yet to reveal how many billions is being squandered on a reset that has already prompted another big fat 'non' from Paris. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
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Mark Carney's conversion from eco warrior to oil and gas champion
Once considered the Bank of England's greenest-ever governor, Mark Carney has seemingly undergone a Damascene conversion. During his time at Threadneedle Street, he called on the world to leave 80pc of oil and gas in the ground. But now, as Canada's new prime minister, he wants to pump as much as he can to protect the country's economy from Donald Trump's trade war. Canada is going to become an energy powerhouse, Carney told reporters last week. And he didn't mean just in renewables. 'When I talk about being an energy superpower, I mean in both clean and conventional energies,' he said. 'And yes, that does mean oil and gas. 'It means using our oil and gas here in Canada to displace imports wherever possible, particularly from the United States. 'It makes no sense to be sending that money south of the border or across the ocean, so yes, it also means more oil and gas exports – without question.' This embedded content is not available in your region. Credit: CTV news These comments are remarkable given they come from a man who repeatedly called for an end to drilling during his tenure as Bank governor between 2013 and 2020. One such call came in a 2015 speech at Lloyds of London, when he described 80pc of the world's known fossil fuel reserves as 'unburnable'. He said: 'The catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors – imposing a cost on future generations that the current generation has no incentive to fix.' Given Carney's influence, his dramatic warnings inevitably shaped UK government decision-making at the time, as he championed the cause of net zero to a total of five different energy secretaries. Claire Perry, who served as Tory energy minister between 2017 and 2018, recalls: 'Mark had a huge impact on global climate issues. 'He created all the momentum around carbon markets and energy transition investment.' Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader who served as energy secretary in the 2012-15 coalition government, echoes this. 'Mark Carney had a real understanding of where the wind was blowing globally on energy, and recognised the risks to the economy of over-reliance on fossil fuels,' he says. After leaving the Bank, Carney also wrote a book called Value(s): An Economist's Guide to Everything That Matters, where he advocated powerfully for the introduction of carbon taxes. 'One of the most important initiatives is carbon pricing,' he wrote. 'The best approach is a revenue-neutral, progressive carbon tax.' The UK has since faithfully implemented that plan with a raft of carbon levies on consumers and industry, which many argue has left Britain burdened by some of the highest energy prices in the world. Jump ahead to 2025, however, and Carney – now a Canadian politician instead of a British bureaucrat – has adopted a wildly different approach. Immediately after succeeding Justin Trudeau as prime minister and winning Canada's election in April, he wasted no time in signing a directive cancelling Canada's existing carbon tax and confirming rebates for many of those who had paid it. He's now gone even further by pledging to build oil and gas pipelines, LNG export terminals, and to relax the emissions restrictions that have angered many of Canada's biggest fossil fuels producers. And his plans don't stop there. 'All this is not enough just to make Canada an energy superpower,' he said. 'It's not enough to build our full potential. 'It's not enough to truly get incomes growing across the country. We can do much more. We are going to be very, very ambitious. Build, big, build, bold.' Carney, who also previously ran the Bank of Canada, reconciles such ambitions with simultaneous pledges on green technologies that could theoretically reduce emissions, such as carbon capture and storage. But these will take years or decades to implement. According to experts, Carney's conversation has been driven by the economy, as oil and gas accounted for up to 7.5pc of the country's GDP in recent years. In 2023, crude oil exports alone were valued at $124bn, representing 16pc of Canada's total exports. That figure rises to 20pc if gas exports are included. What's more, Canada has about 171bn barrels of oil in recoverable reserves – far greater than America's 44bn. It means Canada can rely on oil for decades, whereas US production is expected to peak in the next few years. However, most of that oil and gas comes from one province, Alberta. That region alone holds billions of dollars, although its voters blame Carney's and Trudeau's Liberal party for climate restrictions that curbed economic growth. A recent opinion piece for Canada's Globe and Mail by Preston Manning, a retired politician who helped found Canada's conservative movement, warned that his 5m fellow Albertans had had enough of rule from Ottawa and were considering secession. Some go further. Alberta, they point out, shares a border with the US and perhaps has more in common with the likes of Texas than Toronto. These growing tensions have created a political opportunity for Alberta's conservative leaders. Less than 24 hours after Carney's election, Danielle Smith, Alberta's premier, introduced a bill to the province's legislature, making it much easier for a citizens' movement to trigger an independence referendum. The new rules slash the number of citizens' signatures required to trigger a referendum, from 600,000 to 177,000 and give petitioners 120 days to collect them rather than the previous 90. She has done so to pile pressure on Carney, handing him a list of nine energy-related federal laws she wants overhauled to unleash more drilling in Alberta. 'We cannot keep the over $9 trillion worth of oil wealth we have in the ground,' she said. 'Mark Carney has acknowledged that the federal government must address key policy barriers. 'That must include abandoning the unconstitutional oil and gas production cap, repealing the tanker ban, and scrapping Canada's net-zero power regulations. 'I believe in a strong and sovereign Alberta within a united Canada, but we cannot persist with the status quo. I won't allow that status quo to continue.' Smith is also exploiting the tensions generated by Donald Trump, the US president, whose talk of making Canada the 51st state resonates with some Albertans. This embedded content is not available in your region. She sees her demands as a test of the scale of Carney's commitment to oil and gas: 'Given his past actions, I've asked myself what version of Mark Carney are we going to get. 'Will we get the pragmatic Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney? Or will we get the environmental extremist keep-it-in-the-ground Mark Carney? 'I don't know the answer yet. He's saying some of the right things, but we need to see meaningful action.' Such tensions have been around for a long time. What Canada's politicians say and do are often very different things, says Brendan Long, a leading energy analyst and Canadian, whose new book Energy Shocks, compares the politics of energy in the UK, US and Canada. He points out that Canada has a long history of electing prime ministers with stridently green manifestos who then preside over huge increases in oil and gas production. 'While previous premier Justin Trudeau had explicitly anti-fossil fuel agendas, domestic Canadian oil and gas production grew dramatically under his leadership,' he said. 'Today, Canada is ranked fourth in terms of global oil production at 5.8m barrels of oil per day and growing.' By contrast, Long points out that the UK is the only large global oil producer to have deliberately cut its production in recent years, signalling the long-standing net-zero legacy left by Carney. 'It means that while Canada's oil and gas industry is ramping up production under Carney, the UK remains aligned with the anti-oil and gas ideology he promoted when he was the governor of the Bank of England,' he says. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
