South Korea's new president vows to 'restore democracy'
South Korea's new liberal president, Lee Jae-myung, pledged on Wednesday (June 4) to revive the economy and raise the country from the near destruction of democracy he says was caused by his predecessor's bid to institute martial law.
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Telegraph
42 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Miliband has got his nuclear plans wrong. Here's what we should do
Yesterday, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband announced a new 'golden age ' of nuclear energy. But with the wrong technology, unfit regulation and no real delivery plan, his golden age already looks tarnished. He's pinning his hopes on an already out-dated large-scale nuclear technology that has been plagued by construction problems in Finland, France and the UK and whose developer EDF is already moving on to a newer version. And while his commitment to small modular reactors (SMRs) is commendable, they are at best a decade away with no examples in existence in the West. While it is tempting to think you could simply hoist a submarine reactor onto a dock and call it a power station, this is unrealistic. Military reactors are designed for stealth, speed and war, not for civilian safety, grid connectivity or cost-efficiency. So Rolls Royce has had to develop an entirely new concept. In fact the current market leaders in Western SMR-design are GE-Hitachi whose small boiling water reactors recently began construction in Canada. However, given the imminent retirement of all but one of our existing large nuclear reactors, bigger is better for the nuclear ambition, and in this, Miliband's plan is woefully inadequate. Luckily, there is a solution ready and waiting: the Korean APR1400 design which has been successfully completed in both South Korea and UAE with eight units now in operation, built in an average of 8.5 years, at an average cost of $5-6 billion. Far cheaper than the £40 billion some analysts expect Sizewell C to cost. Around £6 billion is thought to have been spent already. The Korean design has been approved by both US and European regulators and should be a no-brainer for the UK: build what works. But to do this we need to take an axe to our overgrown thicket of nuclear regulation. The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) bizarrely reports to the Department for Work and Pensions, not the Energy Secretary, and sits beyond any meaningful strategic oversight. This well-intentioned separation has resulted in a regulatory regime akin to requiring 57 seat belts in your car – technically thorough, but practically unhinged. One requirement is that each new reactor design must expose workers to even less radiation than its predecessor. That might sound like progress, until you realise that radiation levels inside a modern nuclear plant are already so low they're hard to detect at all. The plant manager at one of our old Advanced Gas Cooled reactors (AGRs) once told me that the only time his radiation detector registered anything other than zero was when he left it on his desk and the sun shone on it. Nuclear workers are typically exposed to more radiation on the street than inside the plant. At this point, further exposure reductions offer no safety benefit. They just add cost, complexity and delay. The environmental regulators are as bad. The Sizewell C design is exactly the same as Hinkley Point C and the site is almost identical to Sizewell A and B. So why on earth were 40,000 pages of environmental statements required? This regulatory excess is expensive and draws out the process of approving new reactors beyond what is remotely reasonable. Britain risks running out of electricity. We had a near miss blackout event in January that was likely a factor in the renewal of the controversial biomass subsidies. We are also likely to see further small extensions to our ageing AGRs which are nearing the ends of their lives. But with a third of our fleet of gas power stations dating back to the 1990s and expected to retire in the next five years, Britain can ill afford delays to new nuclear plants. Particularly not the sort of avoidable delays our overzealous regulators have created. If Miliband is serious both about his golden age of nuclear, and more particularly, keeping the lights on in a decarbonised world, he needs to be far more ambitious. A truly serious plan would involve a programme of 5-6 large-scale reactors, and since the Koreans have the best track record, we should sign them up. He needs to get tough on the regulators. Abolishing ONR altogether and creating a new regulator, as part of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, with staff who are experts in risk management as well as nuclear safety, and severely curtailing the power of environmental regulators. One of the biggest benefits of nuclear power is its high energy density: it uses very little land to create a lot of energy. That should be taken into account, with regulators forced to look at the national picture rather than taking a strictly site by site approach. And he needs to stop wasting time with incentives for investors. They are not interested in the risk of our shambolic regulatory landscape. He should face this reality, and commit public money for the construction of the first two new reactors, re-financing once construction is completed. This would be a profitable strategy: the Government can borrow more cheaply than the private sector, the Korean design (with suitable regulatory restraint) can be built faster than the Hinkley design, meaning lower financing costs, and nuclear reactors are very profitable to run so investors will be very interested once the risky construction phase is over. He could even offer shares to the public in a 21st Century version of 'Just tell Sid' which remains the most successful public share subscription in UK history, and would perfectly align with Chancellor Rachel Reeves' ambition for UK savers to deploy their capital in the interests of national infrastructure.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Democrats plot to stop Trump from seizing more power amid LA riots
Trump has mobilized the National Guard and deployed Marines to Los Angeles after violence and destruction ensued over the last week. But the president has not yet imposed the Insurrection Act of 1792, which would give him even more power to use military action in the largest California city. He also didn't rule out the possibility of using the presidential power. Blumenthal is seeking to preemptively stop this action by overhauling the broad act and limiting presidential powers for deploying troops within the U.S. He and other Democrats are concerned that Trump will use the unrest as a 'pretext' for imposing Martial law. 'As Trump moves to expand military deployments, possibly using protests in L.A. as a pretext for more broadly silencing free speech or even imposing martial law, I'll be reintroducing reforms to the Insurrection Act that check potential abuse or overreach,' Blumenthal posted to X late Monday night. Meanwhile, one Democrat – Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania – is calling on his party to condemn the violence and the riots. 'I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration—but this is not that,' Fetterman wrote on X with an image of cars on fire with a masked rioter waving a Mexican flag. He continued: 'This is anarchy and true chaos. My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement.' Billionaire Elon Musk replied to the post with an emoji of an American flag. The protests against ICE raids and Trump's illegal immigration crackdown have descended into rioting, looting and attacks against law enforcement. So far in response, Trump has deployed more than 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 active duty Marines stationed at Twentynine Palms in Southern California, just 60 miles from Los Angeles. This deployment has flown in the face of liberal local and state leaders who have actively put in place laws and 'sanctuary city' policies that thwart federal immigration raids and any cooperation between law enforcement in California with ICE authorities. Trump says that California Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass – both Democrats – have lost control of the situation in Los Angeles. Newsom, however, says local and state authorities can handle it without interference from federal authorities or troops. He also claims that the troop deployment has only stirred more unrest. Blumenthal told Politico: 'The mainstream of America really believes deeply that our military should be used to defend our national interests and security, not to silence protest at home.'
Telegraph
3 hours ago
- Telegraph
One in five Afghans at risk from landmines
One in five Afghans is at risk of being killed or maimed by landmines and unexploded bombs, the world's biggest de-mining charity has warned. After 40 years of conflict, Afghanistan is second only to Ukraine in terms of its contamination with unexploded ordnance but risks becoming 'a forgotten humanitarian problem'. Some 6.4 million people – around a fifth of the country's total population – live in areas littered with landmines and unexploded ordnance, The Halo Trust has said in a new analysis of the threat facing Afghans. As a result, roughly 50 Afghans are being killed or severely wounded in explosive accidents every month. More than 80 per cent of victims are children, often sent to collect scrap metal that is subsequently sold-on in order for their families to make a living. The problem has been exacerbated recently by the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees from neighbouring Pakistan and Iran. Many of those arriving back in the country fled following the Taliban takeover in 2021, and often have few means to support themselves. The Halo Trust has cleared over 800,000 landmines and 11 million pieces of unexploded ordnance from Afghanistan since it began working in the country in 1998. But recent cuts to foreign aid spending – particularly USAID, the US's foreign aid agency which was a major funder of international demining programmes – has forced the organisation to cut its mine-clearing staff in Afghanistan by almost half, from 2,200 to 1,000 people. 'Afghanistan is now a forgotten humanitarian problem. The Afghan people have struggled for over four decades of conflict, displacement, poverty, and we need the international community to continue to support people to the end of this journey and not leave them stranded halfway through,' said Dr Farid Homayoun, the Halo Trust's Afghanistan Programme Manager. Earlier this year, the Halo Trust sounded the alarm after several European countries announced plans to leave the Ottawa Treaty, a landmark agreement introduced in 1997 that bans the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of anti-personnel mines. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland announced their intentions to withdraw in April, citing the threat of a Russian attack.
