UK cancer patients may no longer be able to receive radiotherapy after Brexit, according to today’s Financial Times.

Or at least, to be able to import the crucial Molybdenum 99 isotope used for 80% of radiation treatments, the UK will have to negotiate new arrangements to replace EURATOM, the treaty that underpins nuclear regulation and cooperation across Europe.

The potential risk to cancer sufferers is just one small piece of the fallout from the UK’s decision to leave EURATOM as part of the Brexit process to leave the European Union.

The surprise decision was announced in a footnote to the Parliamentary Bill published on 26th January to authorise Brexit. Up until that point this was a grey area with disagreements over whether Brexit meant the UK would also have to leave EURATOM.

The balance of opinion seemed to confirm that, although EURATOM is legally distinct from the European Union, the UK would have leave both once Article 50 was triggered. (I wrote about this in November 2016 in Nuclear News No. 89.)

This was confirmed at a meeting I attended at the Scottish Government last September when most of the nuclear industry representatives and regulators appeared to be resigned to leaving EURATOM.

On the other hand, the European nuclear lobby group – Foratom – thought the UK could decide to negotiate to remain a member (or agree some form of associate membership). The EU has numerous association agreements with other countries. For instance Switzerland is an associate member of EURATOM and the Ukraine has joined the EURATOM Research and Training Programme.

A blog on the Euractiv website goes even further saying that the idea that EURATOM is included in the exit clause of the Lisbon Treaties is false. [2]

The decision has wide-ranging implications for Britain’s nuclear industry, research, access to fissile materials and the status of approximately 20 nuclear co-operation agreements that it has with other countries around the world.

The UK is going to have to strike new international agreements with all these countries to maintain access to nuclear power technology – crucially with the US because several of the UK’s existing and planned nuclear reactors use US technology or fuel.

A new bilateral agreement will also be needed with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nuclear co-operation agreements can take considerable time to agree and ratify. It may not be possible to complete them before Britain leaves the EU in 2019.

New reactors in jeopardy?

The concern now in the UK nuclear industry is that leaving EURATOM will complicate and delay the UK’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations.

“The new wave of British nuclear power stations was in jeopardy” said the Times. Withdrawal could cause “major disruption” according to the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) particularly for Horizon and Nugen, which are developing plans for reactors on Anglesey and in Cumbria because their plans involve co-operation with US nuclear companies.

Former Labour MP Tom Greatrex, now chief executive of the NIA, said: “The UK nuclear industry has made it crystal clear to the government before and since the referendum that our preferred position is to maintain membership of EURATOM.” [3] Although Horizon, whose reactors would use US nuclear fuel, says it is reassured by the government’s commitment to put new regulatory arrangements in place quickly. [4]

The Hinkley Point C station in Somerset could also face renewed problems. EDF has warned that Brexit could increase “the costs of essential new infrastructure developments and could delay their delivery”. EDF, which also operates Britain’s existing nuclear plants, has said it would prefer if the UK stayed within EURATOM and that if not it would be “essential that the UK establishes equivalent safeguards arrangements”.

“However, if the UK ceases to be part of EURATOM, then it is vital the government agree transitional arrangements, to give the UK time to negotiate and complete new agreements with EU member states and third countries including the US, Japan and Canada who have nuclear co-operation agreements within the EURATOM framework.”

EDF is also worried that Brexit will affect the movement of people and delay the delivery of Hinkley Point C [5]. It could also impact upon its costs. For the reactor builders, being outside the nuclear common market as well as the single market and having no freedom of movement may lead to higher prices if tariffs and customs checks are introduced or if restrictions are imposed on foreign nuclear scientists and engineers. [6]

Nuclear safeguards – the implications

Leaving EURATOM is also likely to add to the workload of the UK’s nuclear regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), which is busy assessing designs for new nuclear reactors including the Chinese Hualong One design.

And as nuclear engineering consultant John Large points out, “The main burden of the UK leaving EURATOM will be the need for it to cover its nuclear non-proliferation safeguards commitment and for this it will have to either set up a separate, independent agency or bring these treaty responsibilities into the Office for Nuclear Regulation.”

The Green Party’s only UK MP Caroline Lucas raised the safeguards issue in Parliament last August when she asked the business and energy secretary “what steps would be needed to replace EU Atomic Energy Community safeguards inspectors with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Inspectors to implement safeguards provisions.”

The reply did not address the fact that currently international inspections of UK nuclear plants and materials to ensure there is no diversion of materials to military misuse is verified by EURATOM on behalf of the IAEA. [7]

A quarter of all time spent on nuclear inspections throughout the EU is carried out in Britain, due to the scale of nuclear fuel fabrication and waste management facilities, such as Sellafield. Without EURATOM ONR will need to undertake many more inspections to meet IAEA requirements.

The Government will have to find extra cash, but it will also struggle to hire and train the necessary new staff especially when ONR is already struggling to keep up with the assessment of several new reactors designs (EPR, AP1000, ABWR and Hualong One). [8]

As proliferation expert Dr David Lowry puts it: “It is now time energy and foreign ministers and their advisors turn their attention to what they are going to do to ensure nuclear safeguards continuity in the UK post Brexit to avoid the UK becoming a nuclear rogue state.” [9]

Fusion – nuclear research scientists angry

Membership of EURATOM is also a condition for Britain hosting what is currently the largest nuclear fusion experiment in the world. Based at the Culham centre in south Oxfordshire, the Joint European Torus project involves some 350 scientists exploring the potential of fusion power, backed by funding from almost 40 countries in the EUROfusion consortium.

According to Nature, scientists are shocked and angry about the EURATOM exit. Depending on whether and how the UK negotiates a way back in to the organization, the move could endanger British participation in the world’s largest fusion experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France.

It could also curtail operations at the Joint European Torus (JET), a nuclear-fusion facility in Culham. The facility is a half-sized version of ITER which currently receives around €56 million annually from EURATOM. Steven Cowley, a theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford who until last year was director of the Culham Centre described the decision to leave EURATOM as “bonkers”. [10]

According to the Trade Union representing nuclear scientists, the Culham Centre signed a €283m contract in 2014 for running the Joint European Torus facility until 2018, with similar contracts expected in the future.

This sum accounts for more than a quarter of the overall European Fusion Programme budget over the same period – a budget funded in part by the EURATOM Horizon 2020 programme. The UKAEA also brings EURATOM money directly to the region and UK industry by winning ITER (global fusion project) contracts. [11]

Wider impact in Europe

The political impact in the EU remains equally unclear. Britain has been one of Europe’s most active supporters of nuclear power. Brexit could tip the balance of member states towards an anti-nuclear majority.

And what then? Just as the International Whaling Commission has become an essentially anti-whaling UN agency, might EURATOM states seek to use the treaty to block, not support, the construction of new nuclear power stations in Europe. Its main role would then be to supervise the sector’s long term decline.

The complications around the UK withdrawal from EURATOM could also put a spotlight onto the EURATOM Treaty itself, whose legal status and many of its functions are out of step with the modern EU and may once again lead to calls for it to be abolished. [12]

EURATOM Mark II?

The UK secretary of state for exiting the European Union, David Davis, told parliament on 31 January 2017 that the UK will seek an alternative agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if it fails to negotiate “some sort of relationship” with the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) during Brexit negotiations. [13]

The idea of a new pan-European nuclear group is also being floated, according to former conservative MP Tim Yeo who chairs the trade group New Nuclear Watch Europe.

The successor group is envisaged as a wider Europe-based pro-nuclear club including the 27 European Union member states as well as countries outside the bloc that are also developing new nuclear power plants. As well as the UK the group could include Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus and potentially Russia. [14]

Time for reform – or abolition

The UK nuclear establishment is going to have its work cut out to make sure that Brexatom does not add to the delays in its proposed new nuclear reactor programme already in prospect as a result of financial problems at EDF, Areva, Toshiba, Engie and Hitachi.

There will be widespread support for efforts to avoid any hiatus in the safeguarding of the huge quantity of fissile material in the UK. But as Hans-Josef Fell, president of the Energy Watch Group and a former member of the German parliament for the Greens points out the UK’s exit from EURATOM should be seen as an opportunity.

It’s a clear sign that it is possible for anti-nuclear countries like Austria, Ireland and Germany to unilaterally leave the Treaty – even a unique chance to dissolve Euratom. He says the core task of EURATOM is to support the nuclear industry. After Chernobyl and Fukushima ending that support is long overdue. [15]

The UK Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) recently pointed out that it sees “the EURATOM Treaty as one of the most direct ways the nuclear industry has promoted nuclear power in Europe over the past 60 years. It has often been the inside track from which pro-nuclear governments have ensured support for nuclear power within the European Commission.” [16]

For instance, in 2014 the European Union’s Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager had less leeway in evaluating the UK’s Hinkley Point C financial support scheme than it would have done for a non-nuclear project because of the EURATOM Treaty, which is meant to support and encourage investment in nuclear projects where needed.

“This means that if member states choose to invest in nuclear energy, the EURATOM’s objective to facilitate that investment becomes an objective of common interest that the Commission should take into account in its state aid assessment”, she said. [17]

So the Commission approved the UK Government’s plans to subsidise Hinkley Point C despite the fact that even the UK government itself expects solar and wind power to be cheaper than new nuclear power by the time Hinkley Point C is completed. [18]

Not surprising then that the NFLA sees this as “an ideal time for a major and all encompassing reform of the EURATOM Treaty to take account of the changed energy market in the EU, where renewable energy is rapidly expanding and nuclear power is in decline.” [19]

Pete Roche is editor of the No2NuclearPower website which produces a free daily nuclear news service.

Sign up to receive No2NuclearPower Bulletin by e-mail here.

This article was originally published in Nuclear Monitor #838 and is reproduced here by kind permission of the author. This version includes some updates by The Ecologist.

References

1. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

2. Euractiv 16th June 2016 http://democracy.blogactiv.eu/2016/06/16/euratom-after-brexit-votes-uk-will-remain-a-community-member-for-nuclear-non-proliferation/

3. The Times 27th Jan 2017 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/britain-quits-european-nuclear-body-pgmq9m9fc

4. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

5. Guardian 27th Jan 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/27/uk-exit-eu-atomic-treaty-brexit-euratom-hinkley-point-c

6. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

7. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

8. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

9. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

10. Nature 27th Jan 2017 http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-shocked-at-uk-s-plan-to-exit-eu-nuclear-agency-1.21388

11. FT 5th Feb 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/d3d780bc-e7b5-11e6-893c-082c54a7f539

12. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

13. Nucnet 2nd Feb 2017 http://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2017/02/02/uk-could-seek-alternative-agreement-to-euratom-with-iaea-after-bexit

14. Telegraph 4th February 2017 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/04/britain-proposing-wider-europe-based-pro-nuclear-club-article/

15. Energy Post 5th July 2016 http://energypost.eu/brexit-offers-chance-finally-put-end-euratom-treaty/

16. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

17. Politico 11th January 2017 http://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-nuclear-approval-expected-thanks-to-uk-and-france-precedent/

18. Guardian 11th August 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/11/solar-and-windcheaper-than-new-nuclear-by-the-time-hinkley-is-built

19. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

UK cancer patients may no longer be able to receive radiotherapy after Brexit, according to today’s Financial Times.

Or at least, to be able to import the crucial Molybdenum 99 isotope used for 80% of radiation treatments, the UK will have to negotiate new arrangements to replace EURATOM, the treaty that underpins nuclear regulation and cooperation across Europe.

The potential risk to cancer sufferers is just one small piece of the fallout from the UK’s decision to leave EURATOM as part of the Brexit process to leave the European Union.

The surprise decision was announced in a footnote to the Parliamentary Bill published on 26th January to authorise Brexit. Up until that point this was a grey area with disagreements over whether Brexit meant the UK would also have to leave EURATOM.

The balance of opinion seemed to confirm that, although EURATOM is legally distinct from the European Union, the UK would have leave both once Article 50 was triggered. (I wrote about this in November 2016 in Nuclear News No. 89.)

This was confirmed at a meeting I attended at the Scottish Government last September when most of the nuclear industry representatives and regulators appeared to be resigned to leaving EURATOM.

On the other hand, the European nuclear lobby group – Foratom – thought the UK could decide to negotiate to remain a member (or agree some form of associate membership). The EU has numerous association agreements with other countries. For instance Switzerland is an associate member of EURATOM and the Ukraine has joined the EURATOM Research and Training Programme.

A blog on the Euractiv website goes even further saying that the idea that EURATOM is included in the exit clause of the Lisbon Treaties is false. [2]

The decision has wide-ranging implications for Britain’s nuclear industry, research, access to fissile materials and the status of approximately 20 nuclear co-operation agreements that it has with other countries around the world.

The UK is going to have to strike new international agreements with all these countries to maintain access to nuclear power technology – crucially with the US because several of the UK’s existing and planned nuclear reactors use US technology or fuel.

A new bilateral agreement will also be needed with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nuclear co-operation agreements can take considerable time to agree and ratify. It may not be possible to complete them before Britain leaves the EU in 2019.

New reactors in jeopardy?

The concern now in the UK nuclear industry is that leaving EURATOM will complicate and delay the UK’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations.

“The new wave of British nuclear power stations was in jeopardy” said the Times. Withdrawal could cause “major disruption” according to the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) particularly for Horizon and Nugen, which are developing plans for reactors on Anglesey and in Cumbria because their plans involve co-operation with US nuclear companies.

Former Labour MP Tom Greatrex, now chief executive of the NIA, said: “The UK nuclear industry has made it crystal clear to the government before and since the referendum that our preferred position is to maintain membership of EURATOM.” [3] Although Horizon, whose reactors would use US nuclear fuel, says it is reassured by the government’s commitment to put new regulatory arrangements in place quickly. [4]

The Hinkley Point C station in Somerset could also face renewed problems. EDF has warned that Brexit could increase “the costs of essential new infrastructure developments and could delay their delivery”. EDF, which also operates Britain’s existing nuclear plants, has said it would prefer if the UK stayed within EURATOM and that if not it would be “essential that the UK establishes equivalent safeguards arrangements”.

“However, if the UK ceases to be part of EURATOM, then it is vital the government agree transitional arrangements, to give the UK time to negotiate and complete new agreements with EU member states and third countries including the US, Japan and Canada who have nuclear co-operation agreements within the EURATOM framework.”

EDF is also worried that Brexit will affect the movement of people and delay the delivery of Hinkley Point C [5]. It could also impact upon its costs. For the reactor builders, being outside the nuclear common market as well as the single market and having no freedom of movement may lead to higher prices if tariffs and customs checks are introduced or if restrictions are imposed on foreign nuclear scientists and engineers. [6]

Nuclear safeguards – the implications

Leaving EURATOM is also likely to add to the workload of the UK’s nuclear regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), which is busy assessing designs for new nuclear reactors including the Chinese Hualong One design.

And as nuclear engineering consultant John Large points out, “The main burden of the UK leaving EURATOM will be the need for it to cover its nuclear non-proliferation safeguards commitment and for this it will have to either set up a separate, independent agency or bring these treaty responsibilities into the Office for Nuclear Regulation.”

The Green Party’s only UK MP Caroline Lucas raised the safeguards issue in Parliament last August when she asked the business and energy secretary “what steps would be needed to replace EU Atomic Energy Community safeguards inspectors with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Inspectors to implement safeguards provisions.”

The reply did not address the fact that currently international inspections of UK nuclear plants and materials to ensure there is no diversion of materials to military misuse is verified by EURATOM on behalf of the IAEA. [7]

A quarter of all time spent on nuclear inspections throughout the EU is carried out in Britain, due to the scale of nuclear fuel fabrication and waste management facilities, such as Sellafield. Without EURATOM ONR will need to undertake many more inspections to meet IAEA requirements.

The Government will have to find extra cash, but it will also struggle to hire and train the necessary new staff especially when ONR is already struggling to keep up with the assessment of several new reactors designs (EPR, AP1000, ABWR and Hualong One). [8]

As proliferation expert Dr David Lowry puts it: “It is now time energy and foreign ministers and their advisors turn their attention to what they are going to do to ensure nuclear safeguards continuity in the UK post Brexit to avoid the UK becoming a nuclear rogue state.” [9]

Fusion – nuclear research scientists angry

Membership of EURATOM is also a condition for Britain hosting what is currently the largest nuclear fusion experiment in the world. Based at the Culham centre in south Oxfordshire, the Joint European Torus project involves some 350 scientists exploring the potential of fusion power, backed by funding from almost 40 countries in the EUROfusion consortium.

According to Nature, scientists are shocked and angry about the EURATOM exit. Depending on whether and how the UK negotiates a way back in to the organization, the move could endanger British participation in the world’s largest fusion experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France.

It could also curtail operations at the Joint European Torus (JET), a nuclear-fusion facility in Culham. The facility is a half-sized version of ITER which currently receives around €56 million annually from EURATOM. Steven Cowley, a theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford who until last year was director of the Culham Centre described the decision to leave EURATOM as “bonkers”. [10]

According to the Trade Union representing nuclear scientists, the Culham Centre signed a €283m contract in 2014 for running the Joint European Torus facility until 2018, with similar contracts expected in the future.

This sum accounts for more than a quarter of the overall European Fusion Programme budget over the same period – a budget funded in part by the EURATOM Horizon 2020 programme. The UKAEA also brings EURATOM money directly to the region and UK industry by winning ITER (global fusion project) contracts. [11]

Wider impact in Europe

The political impact in the EU remains equally unclear. Britain has been one of Europe’s most active supporters of nuclear power. Brexit could tip the balance of member states towards an anti-nuclear majority.

And what then? Just as the International Whaling Commission has become an essentially anti-whaling UN agency, might EURATOM states seek to use the treaty to block, not support, the construction of new nuclear power stations in Europe. Its main role would then be to supervise the sector’s long term decline.

The complications around the UK withdrawal from EURATOM could also put a spotlight onto the EURATOM Treaty itself, whose legal status and many of its functions are out of step with the modern EU and may once again lead to calls for it to be abolished. [12]

EURATOM Mark II?

The UK secretary of state for exiting the European Union, David Davis, told parliament on 31 January 2017 that the UK will seek an alternative agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if it fails to negotiate “some sort of relationship” with the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) during Brexit negotiations. [13]

The idea of a new pan-European nuclear group is also being floated, according to former conservative MP Tim Yeo who chairs the trade group New Nuclear Watch Europe.

The successor group is envisaged as a wider Europe-based pro-nuclear club including the 27 European Union member states as well as countries outside the bloc that are also developing new nuclear power plants. As well as the UK the group could include Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus and potentially Russia. [14]

Time for reform – or abolition

The UK nuclear establishment is going to have its work cut out to make sure that Brexatom does not add to the delays in its proposed new nuclear reactor programme already in prospect as a result of financial problems at EDF, Areva, Toshiba, Engie and Hitachi.

There will be widespread support for efforts to avoid any hiatus in the safeguarding of the huge quantity of fissile material in the UK. But as Hans-Josef Fell, president of the Energy Watch Group and a former member of the German parliament for the Greens points out the UK’s exit from EURATOM should be seen as an opportunity.

It’s a clear sign that it is possible for anti-nuclear countries like Austria, Ireland and Germany to unilaterally leave the Treaty – even a unique chance to dissolve Euratom. He says the core task of EURATOM is to support the nuclear industry. After Chernobyl and Fukushima ending that support is long overdue. [15]

The UK Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) recently pointed out that it sees “the EURATOM Treaty as one of the most direct ways the nuclear industry has promoted nuclear power in Europe over the past 60 years. It has often been the inside track from which pro-nuclear governments have ensured support for nuclear power within the European Commission.” [16]

For instance, in 2014 the European Union’s Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager had less leeway in evaluating the UK’s Hinkley Point C financial support scheme than it would have done for a non-nuclear project because of the EURATOM Treaty, which is meant to support and encourage investment in nuclear projects where needed.

“This means that if member states choose to invest in nuclear energy, the EURATOM’s objective to facilitate that investment becomes an objective of common interest that the Commission should take into account in its state aid assessment”, she said. [17]

So the Commission approved the UK Government’s plans to subsidise Hinkley Point C despite the fact that even the UK government itself expects solar and wind power to be cheaper than new nuclear power by the time Hinkley Point C is completed. [18]

Not surprising then that the NFLA sees this as “an ideal time for a major and all encompassing reform of the EURATOM Treaty to take account of the changed energy market in the EU, where renewable energy is rapidly expanding and nuclear power is in decline.” [19]

Pete Roche is editor of the No2NuclearPower website which produces a free daily nuclear news service.

Sign up to receive No2NuclearPower Bulletin by e-mail here.

This article was originally published in Nuclear Monitor #838 and is reproduced here by kind permission of the author. This version includes some updates by The Ecologist.

References

1. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

2. Euractiv 16th June 2016 http://democracy.blogactiv.eu/2016/06/16/euratom-after-brexit-votes-uk-will-remain-a-community-member-for-nuclear-non-proliferation/

3. The Times 27th Jan 2017 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/britain-quits-european-nuclear-body-pgmq9m9fc

4. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

5. Guardian 27th Jan 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/27/uk-exit-eu-atomic-treaty-brexit-euratom-hinkley-point-c

6. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

7. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

8. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

9. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

10. Nature 27th Jan 2017 http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-shocked-at-uk-s-plan-to-exit-eu-nuclear-agency-1.21388

11. FT 5th Feb 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/d3d780bc-e7b5-11e6-893c-082c54a7f539

12. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

13. Nucnet 2nd Feb 2017 http://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2017/02/02/uk-could-seek-alternative-agreement-to-euratom-with-iaea-after-bexit

14. Telegraph 4th February 2017 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/04/britain-proposing-wider-europe-based-pro-nuclear-club-article/

15. Energy Post 5th July 2016 http://energypost.eu/brexit-offers-chance-finally-put-end-euratom-treaty/

16. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

17. Politico 11th January 2017 http://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-nuclear-approval-expected-thanks-to-uk-and-france-precedent/

18. Guardian 11th August 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/11/solar-and-windcheaper-than-new-nuclear-by-the-time-hinkley-is-built

19. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

UK cancer patients may no longer be able to receive radiotherapy after Brexit, according to today’s Financial Times.

Or at least, to be able to import the crucial Molybdenum 99 isotope used for 80% of radiation treatments, the UK will have to negotiate new arrangements to replace EURATOM, the treaty that underpins nuclear regulation and cooperation across Europe.

The potential risk to cancer sufferers is just one small piece of the fallout from the UK’s decision to leave EURATOM as part of the Brexit process to leave the European Union.

The surprise decision was announced in a footnote to the Parliamentary Bill published on 26th January to authorise Brexit. Up until that point this was a grey area with disagreements over whether Brexit meant the UK would also have to leave EURATOM.

The balance of opinion seemed to confirm that, although EURATOM is legally distinct from the European Union, the UK would have leave both once Article 50 was triggered. (I wrote about this in November 2016 in Nuclear News No. 89.)

This was confirmed at a meeting I attended at the Scottish Government last September when most of the nuclear industry representatives and regulators appeared to be resigned to leaving EURATOM.

On the other hand, the European nuclear lobby group – Foratom – thought the UK could decide to negotiate to remain a member (or agree some form of associate membership). The EU has numerous association agreements with other countries. For instance Switzerland is an associate member of EURATOM and the Ukraine has joined the EURATOM Research and Training Programme.

A blog on the Euractiv website goes even further saying that the idea that EURATOM is included in the exit clause of the Lisbon Treaties is false. [2]

The decision has wide-ranging implications for Britain’s nuclear industry, research, access to fissile materials and the status of approximately 20 nuclear co-operation agreements that it has with other countries around the world.

The UK is going to have to strike new international agreements with all these countries to maintain access to nuclear power technology – crucially with the US because several of the UK’s existing and planned nuclear reactors use US technology or fuel.

A new bilateral agreement will also be needed with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nuclear co-operation agreements can take considerable time to agree and ratify. It may not be possible to complete them before Britain leaves the EU in 2019.

New reactors in jeopardy?

The concern now in the UK nuclear industry is that leaving EURATOM will complicate and delay the UK’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations.

“The new wave of British nuclear power stations was in jeopardy” said the Times. Withdrawal could cause “major disruption” according to the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) particularly for Horizon and Nugen, which are developing plans for reactors on Anglesey and in Cumbria because their plans involve co-operation with US nuclear companies.

Former Labour MP Tom Greatrex, now chief executive of the NIA, said: “The UK nuclear industry has made it crystal clear to the government before and since the referendum that our preferred position is to maintain membership of EURATOM.” [3] Although Horizon, whose reactors would use US nuclear fuel, says it is reassured by the government’s commitment to put new regulatory arrangements in place quickly. [4]

The Hinkley Point C station in Somerset could also face renewed problems. EDF has warned that Brexit could increase “the costs of essential new infrastructure developments and could delay their delivery”. EDF, which also operates Britain’s existing nuclear plants, has said it would prefer if the UK stayed within EURATOM and that if not it would be “essential that the UK establishes equivalent safeguards arrangements”.

“However, if the UK ceases to be part of EURATOM, then it is vital the government agree transitional arrangements, to give the UK time to negotiate and complete new agreements with EU member states and third countries including the US, Japan and Canada who have nuclear co-operation agreements within the EURATOM framework.”

EDF is also worried that Brexit will affect the movement of people and delay the delivery of Hinkley Point C [5]. It could also impact upon its costs. For the reactor builders, being outside the nuclear common market as well as the single market and having no freedom of movement may lead to higher prices if tariffs and customs checks are introduced or if restrictions are imposed on foreign nuclear scientists and engineers. [6]

Nuclear safeguards – the implications

Leaving EURATOM is also likely to add to the workload of the UK’s nuclear regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), which is busy assessing designs for new nuclear reactors including the Chinese Hualong One design.

And as nuclear engineering consultant John Large points out, “The main burden of the UK leaving EURATOM will be the need for it to cover its nuclear non-proliferation safeguards commitment and for this it will have to either set up a separate, independent agency or bring these treaty responsibilities into the Office for Nuclear Regulation.”

The Green Party’s only UK MP Caroline Lucas raised the safeguards issue in Parliament last August when she asked the business and energy secretary “what steps would be needed to replace EU Atomic Energy Community safeguards inspectors with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Inspectors to implement safeguards provisions.”

The reply did not address the fact that currently international inspections of UK nuclear plants and materials to ensure there is no diversion of materials to military misuse is verified by EURATOM on behalf of the IAEA. [7]

A quarter of all time spent on nuclear inspections throughout the EU is carried out in Britain, due to the scale of nuclear fuel fabrication and waste management facilities, such as Sellafield. Without EURATOM ONR will need to undertake many more inspections to meet IAEA requirements.

The Government will have to find extra cash, but it will also struggle to hire and train the necessary new staff especially when ONR is already struggling to keep up with the assessment of several new reactors designs (EPR, AP1000, ABWR and Hualong One). [8]

As proliferation expert Dr David Lowry puts it: “It is now time energy and foreign ministers and their advisors turn their attention to what they are going to do to ensure nuclear safeguards continuity in the UK post Brexit to avoid the UK becoming a nuclear rogue state.” [9]

Fusion – nuclear research scientists angry

Membership of EURATOM is also a condition for Britain hosting what is currently the largest nuclear fusion experiment in the world. Based at the Culham centre in south Oxfordshire, the Joint European Torus project involves some 350 scientists exploring the potential of fusion power, backed by funding from almost 40 countries in the EUROfusion consortium.

According to Nature, scientists are shocked and angry about the EURATOM exit. Depending on whether and how the UK negotiates a way back in to the organization, the move could endanger British participation in the world’s largest fusion experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France.

It could also curtail operations at the Joint European Torus (JET), a nuclear-fusion facility in Culham. The facility is a half-sized version of ITER which currently receives around €56 million annually from EURATOM. Steven Cowley, a theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford who until last year was director of the Culham Centre described the decision to leave EURATOM as “bonkers”. [10]

According to the Trade Union representing nuclear scientists, the Culham Centre signed a €283m contract in 2014 for running the Joint European Torus facility until 2018, with similar contracts expected in the future.

This sum accounts for more than a quarter of the overall European Fusion Programme budget over the same period – a budget funded in part by the EURATOM Horizon 2020 programme. The UKAEA also brings EURATOM money directly to the region and UK industry by winning ITER (global fusion project) contracts. [11]

Wider impact in Europe

The political impact in the EU remains equally unclear. Britain has been one of Europe’s most active supporters of nuclear power. Brexit could tip the balance of member states towards an anti-nuclear majority.

And what then? Just as the International Whaling Commission has become an essentially anti-whaling UN agency, might EURATOM states seek to use the treaty to block, not support, the construction of new nuclear power stations in Europe. Its main role would then be to supervise the sector’s long term decline.

The complications around the UK withdrawal from EURATOM could also put a spotlight onto the EURATOM Treaty itself, whose legal status and many of its functions are out of step with the modern EU and may once again lead to calls for it to be abolished. [12]

EURATOM Mark II?

The UK secretary of state for exiting the European Union, David Davis, told parliament on 31 January 2017 that the UK will seek an alternative agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if it fails to negotiate “some sort of relationship” with the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) during Brexit negotiations. [13]

The idea of a new pan-European nuclear group is also being floated, according to former conservative MP Tim Yeo who chairs the trade group New Nuclear Watch Europe.

The successor group is envisaged as a wider Europe-based pro-nuclear club including the 27 European Union member states as well as countries outside the bloc that are also developing new nuclear power plants. As well as the UK the group could include Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus and potentially Russia. [14]

Time for reform – or abolition

The UK nuclear establishment is going to have its work cut out to make sure that Brexatom does not add to the delays in its proposed new nuclear reactor programme already in prospect as a result of financial problems at EDF, Areva, Toshiba, Engie and Hitachi.

There will be widespread support for efforts to avoid any hiatus in the safeguarding of the huge quantity of fissile material in the UK. But as Hans-Josef Fell, president of the Energy Watch Group and a former member of the German parliament for the Greens points out the UK’s exit from EURATOM should be seen as an opportunity.

It’s a clear sign that it is possible for anti-nuclear countries like Austria, Ireland and Germany to unilaterally leave the Treaty – even a unique chance to dissolve Euratom. He says the core task of EURATOM is to support the nuclear industry. After Chernobyl and Fukushima ending that support is long overdue. [15]

The UK Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) recently pointed out that it sees “the EURATOM Treaty as one of the most direct ways the nuclear industry has promoted nuclear power in Europe over the past 60 years. It has often been the inside track from which pro-nuclear governments have ensured support for nuclear power within the European Commission.” [16]

For instance, in 2014 the European Union’s Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager had less leeway in evaluating the UK’s Hinkley Point C financial support scheme than it would have done for a non-nuclear project because of the EURATOM Treaty, which is meant to support and encourage investment in nuclear projects where needed.

“This means that if member states choose to invest in nuclear energy, the EURATOM’s objective to facilitate that investment becomes an objective of common interest that the Commission should take into account in its state aid assessment”, she said. [17]

So the Commission approved the UK Government’s plans to subsidise Hinkley Point C despite the fact that even the UK government itself expects solar and wind power to be cheaper than new nuclear power by the time Hinkley Point C is completed. [18]

Not surprising then that the NFLA sees this as “an ideal time for a major and all encompassing reform of the EURATOM Treaty to take account of the changed energy market in the EU, where renewable energy is rapidly expanding and nuclear power is in decline.” [19]

Pete Roche is editor of the No2NuclearPower website which produces a free daily nuclear news service.

Sign up to receive No2NuclearPower Bulletin by e-mail here.

This article was originally published in Nuclear Monitor #838 and is reproduced here by kind permission of the author. This version includes some updates by The Ecologist.

References

1. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

2. Euractiv 16th June 2016 http://democracy.blogactiv.eu/2016/06/16/euratom-after-brexit-votes-uk-will-remain-a-community-member-for-nuclear-non-proliferation/

3. The Times 27th Jan 2017 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/britain-quits-european-nuclear-body-pgmq9m9fc

4. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

5. Guardian 27th Jan 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/27/uk-exit-eu-atomic-treaty-brexit-euratom-hinkley-point-c

6. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

7. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

8. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

9. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

10. Nature 27th Jan 2017 http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-shocked-at-uk-s-plan-to-exit-eu-nuclear-agency-1.21388

11. FT 5th Feb 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/d3d780bc-e7b5-11e6-893c-082c54a7f539

12. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

13. Nucnet 2nd Feb 2017 http://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2017/02/02/uk-could-seek-alternative-agreement-to-euratom-with-iaea-after-bexit

14. Telegraph 4th February 2017 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/04/britain-proposing-wider-europe-based-pro-nuclear-club-article/

15. Energy Post 5th July 2016 http://energypost.eu/brexit-offers-chance-finally-put-end-euratom-treaty/

16. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

17. Politico 11th January 2017 http://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-nuclear-approval-expected-thanks-to-uk-and-france-precedent/

18. Guardian 11th August 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/11/solar-and-windcheaper-than-new-nuclear-by-the-time-hinkley-is-built

19. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

UK cancer patients may no longer be able to receive radiotherapy after Brexit, according to today’s Financial Times.

Or at least, to be able to import the crucial Molybdenum 99 isotope used for 80% of radiation treatments, the UK will have to negotiate new arrangements to replace EURATOM, the treaty that underpins nuclear regulation and cooperation across Europe.

The potential risk to cancer sufferers is just one small piece of the fallout from the UK’s decision to leave EURATOM as part of the Brexit process to leave the European Union.

The surprise decision was announced in a footnote to the Parliamentary Bill published on 26th January to authorise Brexit. Up until that point this was a grey area with disagreements over whether Brexit meant the UK would also have to leave EURATOM.

The balance of opinion seemed to confirm that, although EURATOM is legally distinct from the European Union, the UK would have leave both once Article 50 was triggered. (I wrote about this in November 2016 in Nuclear News No. 89.)

This was confirmed at a meeting I attended at the Scottish Government last September when most of the nuclear industry representatives and regulators appeared to be resigned to leaving EURATOM.

On the other hand, the European nuclear lobby group – Foratom – thought the UK could decide to negotiate to remain a member (or agree some form of associate membership). The EU has numerous association agreements with other countries. For instance Switzerland is an associate member of EURATOM and the Ukraine has joined the EURATOM Research and Training Programme.

A blog on the Euractiv website goes even further saying that the idea that EURATOM is included in the exit clause of the Lisbon Treaties is false. [2]

The decision has wide-ranging implications for Britain’s nuclear industry, research, access to fissile materials and the status of approximately 20 nuclear co-operation agreements that it has with other countries around the world.

The UK is going to have to strike new international agreements with all these countries to maintain access to nuclear power technology – crucially with the US because several of the UK’s existing and planned nuclear reactors use US technology or fuel.

A new bilateral agreement will also be needed with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nuclear co-operation agreements can take considerable time to agree and ratify. It may not be possible to complete them before Britain leaves the EU in 2019.

New reactors in jeopardy?

The concern now in the UK nuclear industry is that leaving EURATOM will complicate and delay the UK’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations.

“The new wave of British nuclear power stations was in jeopardy” said the Times. Withdrawal could cause “major disruption” according to the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) particularly for Horizon and Nugen, which are developing plans for reactors on Anglesey and in Cumbria because their plans involve co-operation with US nuclear companies.

Former Labour MP Tom Greatrex, now chief executive of the NIA, said: “The UK nuclear industry has made it crystal clear to the government before and since the referendum that our preferred position is to maintain membership of EURATOM.” [3] Although Horizon, whose reactors would use US nuclear fuel, says it is reassured by the government’s commitment to put new regulatory arrangements in place quickly. [4]

The Hinkley Point C station in Somerset could also face renewed problems. EDF has warned that Brexit could increase “the costs of essential new infrastructure developments and could delay their delivery”. EDF, which also operates Britain’s existing nuclear plants, has said it would prefer if the UK stayed within EURATOM and that if not it would be “essential that the UK establishes equivalent safeguards arrangements”.

“However, if the UK ceases to be part of EURATOM, then it is vital the government agree transitional arrangements, to give the UK time to negotiate and complete new agreements with EU member states and third countries including the US, Japan and Canada who have nuclear co-operation agreements within the EURATOM framework.”

EDF is also worried that Brexit will affect the movement of people and delay the delivery of Hinkley Point C [5]. It could also impact upon its costs. For the reactor builders, being outside the nuclear common market as well as the single market and having no freedom of movement may lead to higher prices if tariffs and customs checks are introduced or if restrictions are imposed on foreign nuclear scientists and engineers. [6]

Nuclear safeguards – the implications

Leaving EURATOM is also likely to add to the workload of the UK’s nuclear regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), which is busy assessing designs for new nuclear reactors including the Chinese Hualong One design.

And as nuclear engineering consultant John Large points out, “The main burden of the UK leaving EURATOM will be the need for it to cover its nuclear non-proliferation safeguards commitment and for this it will have to either set up a separate, independent agency or bring these treaty responsibilities into the Office for Nuclear Regulation.”

The Green Party’s only UK MP Caroline Lucas raised the safeguards issue in Parliament last August when she asked the business and energy secretary “what steps would be needed to replace EU Atomic Energy Community safeguards inspectors with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Inspectors to implement safeguards provisions.”

The reply did not address the fact that currently international inspections of UK nuclear plants and materials to ensure there is no diversion of materials to military misuse is verified by EURATOM on behalf of the IAEA. [7]

A quarter of all time spent on nuclear inspections throughout the EU is carried out in Britain, due to the scale of nuclear fuel fabrication and waste management facilities, such as Sellafield. Without EURATOM ONR will need to undertake many more inspections to meet IAEA requirements.

The Government will have to find extra cash, but it will also struggle to hire and train the necessary new staff especially when ONR is already struggling to keep up with the assessment of several new reactors designs (EPR, AP1000, ABWR and Hualong One). [8]

As proliferation expert Dr David Lowry puts it: “It is now time energy and foreign ministers and their advisors turn their attention to what they are going to do to ensure nuclear safeguards continuity in the UK post Brexit to avoid the UK becoming a nuclear rogue state.” [9]

Fusion – nuclear research scientists angry

Membership of EURATOM is also a condition for Britain hosting what is currently the largest nuclear fusion experiment in the world. Based at the Culham centre in south Oxfordshire, the Joint European Torus project involves some 350 scientists exploring the potential of fusion power, backed by funding from almost 40 countries in the EUROfusion consortium.

According to Nature, scientists are shocked and angry about the EURATOM exit. Depending on whether and how the UK negotiates a way back in to the organization, the move could endanger British participation in the world’s largest fusion experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France.

It could also curtail operations at the Joint European Torus (JET), a nuclear-fusion facility in Culham. The facility is a half-sized version of ITER which currently receives around €56 million annually from EURATOM. Steven Cowley, a theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford who until last year was director of the Culham Centre described the decision to leave EURATOM as “bonkers”. [10]

According to the Trade Union representing nuclear scientists, the Culham Centre signed a €283m contract in 2014 for running the Joint European Torus facility until 2018, with similar contracts expected in the future.

This sum accounts for more than a quarter of the overall European Fusion Programme budget over the same period – a budget funded in part by the EURATOM Horizon 2020 programme. The UKAEA also brings EURATOM money directly to the region and UK industry by winning ITER (global fusion project) contracts. [11]

Wider impact in Europe

The political impact in the EU remains equally unclear. Britain has been one of Europe’s most active supporters of nuclear power. Brexit could tip the balance of member states towards an anti-nuclear majority.

And what then? Just as the International Whaling Commission has become an essentially anti-whaling UN agency, might EURATOM states seek to use the treaty to block, not support, the construction of new nuclear power stations in Europe. Its main role would then be to supervise the sector’s long term decline.

The complications around the UK withdrawal from EURATOM could also put a spotlight onto the EURATOM Treaty itself, whose legal status and many of its functions are out of step with the modern EU and may once again lead to calls for it to be abolished. [12]

EURATOM Mark II?

The UK secretary of state for exiting the European Union, David Davis, told parliament on 31 January 2017 that the UK will seek an alternative agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if it fails to negotiate “some sort of relationship” with the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) during Brexit negotiations. [13]

The idea of a new pan-European nuclear group is also being floated, according to former conservative MP Tim Yeo who chairs the trade group New Nuclear Watch Europe.

The successor group is envisaged as a wider Europe-based pro-nuclear club including the 27 European Union member states as well as countries outside the bloc that are also developing new nuclear power plants. As well as the UK the group could include Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus and potentially Russia. [14]

Time for reform – or abolition

The UK nuclear establishment is going to have its work cut out to make sure that Brexatom does not add to the delays in its proposed new nuclear reactor programme already in prospect as a result of financial problems at EDF, Areva, Toshiba, Engie and Hitachi.

There will be widespread support for efforts to avoid any hiatus in the safeguarding of the huge quantity of fissile material in the UK. But as Hans-Josef Fell, president of the Energy Watch Group and a former member of the German parliament for the Greens points out the UK’s exit from EURATOM should be seen as an opportunity.

It’s a clear sign that it is possible for anti-nuclear countries like Austria, Ireland and Germany to unilaterally leave the Treaty – even a unique chance to dissolve Euratom. He says the core task of EURATOM is to support the nuclear industry. After Chernobyl and Fukushima ending that support is long overdue. [15]

The UK Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) recently pointed out that it sees “the EURATOM Treaty as one of the most direct ways the nuclear industry has promoted nuclear power in Europe over the past 60 years. It has often been the inside track from which pro-nuclear governments have ensured support for nuclear power within the European Commission.” [16]

For instance, in 2014 the European Union’s Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager had less leeway in evaluating the UK’s Hinkley Point C financial support scheme than it would have done for a non-nuclear project because of the EURATOM Treaty, which is meant to support and encourage investment in nuclear projects where needed.

“This means that if member states choose to invest in nuclear energy, the EURATOM’s objective to facilitate that investment becomes an objective of common interest that the Commission should take into account in its state aid assessment”, she said. [17]

So the Commission approved the UK Government’s plans to subsidise Hinkley Point C despite the fact that even the UK government itself expects solar and wind power to be cheaper than new nuclear power by the time Hinkley Point C is completed. [18]

Not surprising then that the NFLA sees this as “an ideal time for a major and all encompassing reform of the EURATOM Treaty to take account of the changed energy market in the EU, where renewable energy is rapidly expanding and nuclear power is in decline.” [19]

Pete Roche is editor of the No2NuclearPower website which produces a free daily nuclear news service.

Sign up to receive No2NuclearPower Bulletin by e-mail here.

This article was originally published in Nuclear Monitor #838 and is reproduced here by kind permission of the author. This version includes some updates by The Ecologist.

References

1. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

2. Euractiv 16th June 2016 http://democracy.blogactiv.eu/2016/06/16/euratom-after-brexit-votes-uk-will-remain-a-community-member-for-nuclear-non-proliferation/

3. The Times 27th Jan 2017 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/britain-quits-european-nuclear-body-pgmq9m9fc

4. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

5. Guardian 27th Jan 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/27/uk-exit-eu-atomic-treaty-brexit-euratom-hinkley-point-c

6. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

7. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

8. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

9. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

10. Nature 27th Jan 2017 http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-shocked-at-uk-s-plan-to-exit-eu-nuclear-agency-1.21388

11. FT 5th Feb 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/d3d780bc-e7b5-11e6-893c-082c54a7f539

12. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

13. Nucnet 2nd Feb 2017 http://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2017/02/02/uk-could-seek-alternative-agreement-to-euratom-with-iaea-after-bexit

14. Telegraph 4th February 2017 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/04/britain-proposing-wider-europe-based-pro-nuclear-club-article/

15. Energy Post 5th July 2016 http://energypost.eu/brexit-offers-chance-finally-put-end-euratom-treaty/

16. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

17. Politico 11th January 2017 http://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-nuclear-approval-expected-thanks-to-uk-and-france-precedent/

18. Guardian 11th August 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/11/solar-and-windcheaper-than-new-nuclear-by-the-time-hinkley-is-built

19. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

UK cancer patients may no longer be able to receive radiotherapy after Brexit, according to today’s Financial Times.

Or at least, to be able to import the crucial Molybdenum 99 isotope used for 80% of radiation treatments, the UK will have to negotiate new arrangements to replace EURATOM, the treaty that underpins nuclear regulation and cooperation across Europe.

The potential risk to cancer sufferers is just one small piece of the fallout from the UK’s decision to leave EURATOM as part of the Brexit process to leave the European Union.

The surprise decision was announced in a footnote to the Parliamentary Bill published on 26th January to authorise Brexit. Up until that point this was a grey area with disagreements over whether Brexit meant the UK would also have to leave EURATOM.

The balance of opinion seemed to confirm that, although EURATOM is legally distinct from the European Union, the UK would have leave both once Article 50 was triggered. (I wrote about this in November 2016 in Nuclear News No. 89.)

This was confirmed at a meeting I attended at the Scottish Government last September when most of the nuclear industry representatives and regulators appeared to be resigned to leaving EURATOM.

On the other hand, the European nuclear lobby group – Foratom – thought the UK could decide to negotiate to remain a member (or agree some form of associate membership). The EU has numerous association agreements with other countries. For instance Switzerland is an associate member of EURATOM and the Ukraine has joined the EURATOM Research and Training Programme.

A blog on the Euractiv website goes even further saying that the idea that EURATOM is included in the exit clause of the Lisbon Treaties is false. [2]

The decision has wide-ranging implications for Britain’s nuclear industry, research, access to fissile materials and the status of approximately 20 nuclear co-operation agreements that it has with other countries around the world.

The UK is going to have to strike new international agreements with all these countries to maintain access to nuclear power technology – crucially with the US because several of the UK’s existing and planned nuclear reactors use US technology or fuel.

A new bilateral agreement will also be needed with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nuclear co-operation agreements can take considerable time to agree and ratify. It may not be possible to complete them before Britain leaves the EU in 2019.

New reactors in jeopardy?

The concern now in the UK nuclear industry is that leaving EURATOM will complicate and delay the UK’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations.

“The new wave of British nuclear power stations was in jeopardy” said the Times. Withdrawal could cause “major disruption” according to the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) particularly for Horizon and Nugen, which are developing plans for reactors on Anglesey and in Cumbria because their plans involve co-operation with US nuclear companies.

Former Labour MP Tom Greatrex, now chief executive of the NIA, said: “The UK nuclear industry has made it crystal clear to the government before and since the referendum that our preferred position is to maintain membership of EURATOM.” [3] Although Horizon, whose reactors would use US nuclear fuel, says it is reassured by the government’s commitment to put new regulatory arrangements in place quickly. [4]

The Hinkley Point C station in Somerset could also face renewed problems. EDF has warned that Brexit could increase “the costs of essential new infrastructure developments and could delay their delivery”. EDF, which also operates Britain’s existing nuclear plants, has said it would prefer if the UK stayed within EURATOM and that if not it would be “essential that the UK establishes equivalent safeguards arrangements”.

“However, if the UK ceases to be part of EURATOM, then it is vital the government agree transitional arrangements, to give the UK time to negotiate and complete new agreements with EU member states and third countries including the US, Japan and Canada who have nuclear co-operation agreements within the EURATOM framework.”

EDF is also worried that Brexit will affect the movement of people and delay the delivery of Hinkley Point C [5]. It could also impact upon its costs. For the reactor builders, being outside the nuclear common market as well as the single market and having no freedom of movement may lead to higher prices if tariffs and customs checks are introduced or if restrictions are imposed on foreign nuclear scientists and engineers. [6]

Nuclear safeguards – the implications

Leaving EURATOM is also likely to add to the workload of the UK’s nuclear regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), which is busy assessing designs for new nuclear reactors including the Chinese Hualong One design.

And as nuclear engineering consultant John Large points out, “The main burden of the UK leaving EURATOM will be the need for it to cover its nuclear non-proliferation safeguards commitment and for this it will have to either set up a separate, independent agency or bring these treaty responsibilities into the Office for Nuclear Regulation.”

The Green Party’s only UK MP Caroline Lucas raised the safeguards issue in Parliament last August when she asked the business and energy secretary “what steps would be needed to replace EU Atomic Energy Community safeguards inspectors with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Inspectors to implement safeguards provisions.”

The reply did not address the fact that currently international inspections of UK nuclear plants and materials to ensure there is no diversion of materials to military misuse is verified by EURATOM on behalf of the IAEA. [7]

A quarter of all time spent on nuclear inspections throughout the EU is carried out in Britain, due to the scale of nuclear fuel fabrication and waste management facilities, such as Sellafield. Without EURATOM ONR will need to undertake many more inspections to meet IAEA requirements.

The Government will have to find extra cash, but it will also struggle to hire and train the necessary new staff especially when ONR is already struggling to keep up with the assessment of several new reactors designs (EPR, AP1000, ABWR and Hualong One). [8]

As proliferation expert Dr David Lowry puts it: “It is now time energy and foreign ministers and their advisors turn their attention to what they are going to do to ensure nuclear safeguards continuity in the UK post Brexit to avoid the UK becoming a nuclear rogue state.” [9]

Fusion – nuclear research scientists angry

Membership of EURATOM is also a condition for Britain hosting what is currently the largest nuclear fusion experiment in the world. Based at the Culham centre in south Oxfordshire, the Joint European Torus project involves some 350 scientists exploring the potential of fusion power, backed by funding from almost 40 countries in the EUROfusion consortium.

According to Nature, scientists are shocked and angry about the EURATOM exit. Depending on whether and how the UK negotiates a way back in to the organization, the move could endanger British participation in the world’s largest fusion experiment, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in southern France.

It could also curtail operations at the Joint European Torus (JET), a nuclear-fusion facility in Culham. The facility is a half-sized version of ITER which currently receives around €56 million annually from EURATOM. Steven Cowley, a theoretical physicist at the University of Oxford who until last year was director of the Culham Centre described the decision to leave EURATOM as “bonkers”. [10]

According to the Trade Union representing nuclear scientists, the Culham Centre signed a €283m contract in 2014 for running the Joint European Torus facility until 2018, with similar contracts expected in the future.

This sum accounts for more than a quarter of the overall European Fusion Programme budget over the same period – a budget funded in part by the EURATOM Horizon 2020 programme. The UKAEA also brings EURATOM money directly to the region and UK industry by winning ITER (global fusion project) contracts. [11]

Wider impact in Europe

The political impact in the EU remains equally unclear. Britain has been one of Europe’s most active supporters of nuclear power. Brexit could tip the balance of member states towards an anti-nuclear majority.

And what then? Just as the International Whaling Commission has become an essentially anti-whaling UN agency, might EURATOM states seek to use the treaty to block, not support, the construction of new nuclear power stations in Europe. Its main role would then be to supervise the sector’s long term decline.

The complications around the UK withdrawal from EURATOM could also put a spotlight onto the EURATOM Treaty itself, whose legal status and many of its functions are out of step with the modern EU and may once again lead to calls for it to be abolished. [12]

EURATOM Mark II?

The UK secretary of state for exiting the European Union, David Davis, told parliament on 31 January 2017 that the UK will seek an alternative agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if it fails to negotiate “some sort of relationship” with the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) during Brexit negotiations. [13]

The idea of a new pan-European nuclear group is also being floated, according to former conservative MP Tim Yeo who chairs the trade group New Nuclear Watch Europe.

The successor group is envisaged as a wider Europe-based pro-nuclear club including the 27 European Union member states as well as countries outside the bloc that are also developing new nuclear power plants. As well as the UK the group could include Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus and potentially Russia. [14]

Time for reform – or abolition

The UK nuclear establishment is going to have its work cut out to make sure that Brexatom does not add to the delays in its proposed new nuclear reactor programme already in prospect as a result of financial problems at EDF, Areva, Toshiba, Engie and Hitachi.

There will be widespread support for efforts to avoid any hiatus in the safeguarding of the huge quantity of fissile material in the UK. But as Hans-Josef Fell, president of the Energy Watch Group and a former member of the German parliament for the Greens points out the UK’s exit from EURATOM should be seen as an opportunity.

It’s a clear sign that it is possible for anti-nuclear countries like Austria, Ireland and Germany to unilaterally leave the Treaty – even a unique chance to dissolve Euratom. He says the core task of EURATOM is to support the nuclear industry. After Chernobyl and Fukushima ending that support is long overdue. [15]

The UK Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) recently pointed out that it sees “the EURATOM Treaty as one of the most direct ways the nuclear industry has promoted nuclear power in Europe over the past 60 years. It has often been the inside track from which pro-nuclear governments have ensured support for nuclear power within the European Commission.” [16]

For instance, in 2014 the European Union’s Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager had less leeway in evaluating the UK’s Hinkley Point C financial support scheme than it would have done for a non-nuclear project because of the EURATOM Treaty, which is meant to support and encourage investment in nuclear projects where needed.

“This means that if member states choose to invest in nuclear energy, the EURATOM’s objective to facilitate that investment becomes an objective of common interest that the Commission should take into account in its state aid assessment”, she said. [17]

So the Commission approved the UK Government’s plans to subsidise Hinkley Point C despite the fact that even the UK government itself expects solar and wind power to be cheaper than new nuclear power by the time Hinkley Point C is completed. [18]

Not surprising then that the NFLA sees this as “an ideal time for a major and all encompassing reform of the EURATOM Treaty to take account of the changed energy market in the EU, where renewable energy is rapidly expanding and nuclear power is in decline.” [19]

Pete Roche is editor of the No2NuclearPower website which produces a free daily nuclear news service.

Sign up to receive No2NuclearPower Bulletin by e-mail here.

This article was originally published in Nuclear Monitor #838 and is reproduced here by kind permission of the author. This version includes some updates by The Ecologist.

References

1. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

2. Euractiv 16th June 2016 http://democracy.blogactiv.eu/2016/06/16/euratom-after-brexit-votes-uk-will-remain-a-community-member-for-nuclear-non-proliferation/

3. The Times 27th Jan 2017 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/britain-quits-european-nuclear-body-pgmq9m9fc

4. FT 26th January 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/fe3b50a4-e3e1-11e6-8405-9e5580d6e5fb

5. Guardian 27th Jan 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/27/uk-exit-eu-atomic-treaty-brexit-euratom-hinkley-point-c

6. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

7. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

8. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

9. David Lowry’s Blog 27th Jan 2017 http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/how-brexit-britain-could-become.html

10. Nature 27th Jan 2017 http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-shocked-at-uk-s-plan-to-exit-eu-nuclear-agency-1.21388

11. FT 5th Feb 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/d3d780bc-e7b5-11e6-893c-082c54a7f539

12. Antony Froggatt in The Conversation 30th Jan 2017 http://theconversation.com/brexatom-the-uk-will-now-leave-europes-nuclear-energy-authority-72136

13. Nucnet 2nd Feb 2017 http://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2017/02/02/uk-could-seek-alternative-agreement-to-euratom-with-iaea-after-bexit

14. Telegraph 4th February 2017 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/04/britain-proposing-wider-europe-based-pro-nuclear-club-article/

15. Energy Post 5th July 2016 http://energypost.eu/brexit-offers-chance-finally-put-end-euratom-treaty/

16. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

17. Politico 11th January 2017 http://www.politico.eu/article/hungary-nuclear-approval-expected-thanks-to-uk-and-france-precedent/

18. Guardian 11th August 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/11/solar-and-windcheaper-than-new-nuclear-by-the-time-hinkley-is-built

19. NFLA Press Release 30th Jan 2017 http://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nfla-uk-decision-withdraw-euratom-could-halt-new-nuclear/

At the advent of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the human heart: one very reasonably invites a man to consider the nature of the peril and the means of escaping it; the other, with a still greater show of reason, argues that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man’s power to foresee everything and avert the general march of events, and it is better therefore to shut one’s eyes to the disagreeable until it actually comes, and to think instead of what is pleasant. When a man is alone he generally listens to the first voice; in the company of his fellow-men, to the second.

- Tolstoy, War and Peace.

There is a spectre haunting our society, our world, our common future: the spectre of a ‘slow’ anthropogenically-induced climatically-induced cataclysm. Why call it a ‘spectre’? Because it seems unreal to us. An air of unreality hangs pervasively over our situation. If climate change were really as bad as all that, then we’d really be doing something about it…right? Can it really be that we are on the verge of committing human civilisation to oblivion? Surely it would take a true ‘black swan’ event to accomplish (sic) that?

A ‘black swan’ is a radically unexpected event. Much of my work in recent years has concerned the impact of such improbable or rare events that can be ‘determinative’, wiping out the effects of decades or millennia of normality or ‘progress’. For instance, my work alongside Nassim Taleb, arguing this case vis a vis financial crises, or genetic modification: (report here). We’ve argued the same case vis a vis climate: Black Swan Report

For, thinking precautionarily is the best way to do a successful ‘end-run’ around the tedious obstructionism of the climate-denialists: one doesn’t need to prove with certainty or even beyond reasonable doubt that human action is causing dangerous climate change, in order to have at hand a watertight precautionary case for radical action to rein in climate-destabilisation.

But there is also a basic way in which the case of climate is very different from the case of finance, or that of GM (or that of nuclear, or that of ‘the singularity’; and so on). It is this: it has been shown beyond reasonable doubt that anything remotely like a BAU path puts us on course for climate-nemesis. See for instance:

Human Climate Link video

Beyond Dangerous Climate Change

De-growth Strategies

Global Warming Scientific Concensus

Ever-worsening man-made climate change (ever-worsening, that is, barring a system change, a radical and swift transformation in our attitude to our living planet: Shock Message ) is not a potential ‘black swan’ event. It’s a white swan, an expected event. It is, quite simply, completely what anyone with a basic understanding of the situation should now expect.

True, there are some significant grey-flecked feathers in the white plumage. We don’t know the exact climate-sensitivity of the Earth system (Harsh Realities) and we don’t know all the feedbacks that are likely to kick in, nor just how bad (or, if we’re very, very lucky, good) most of them will be. We don’t know how long we’ve got. Crucially, these uncertainties, properly understood, underscore the case for radical precautious action on climate (see Tackling Uncertainty, Climate Letter & Talking Philosophy ): for uncertainty cuts both ways.

It may end up meaning that the fearful problem one was worried about turns out to be relatively tractable…Or it may end up meaning that it turns out even worse than expected ( From Bad To Disaster). There is an asymmetry here: for the worse the worst-case scenario for something potentially ruinous gets, the more strongly we need to guard against it. Uncertainty around climate means that we might well still be underestimating the scale of our exposure to ruin (and perhaps drastically so: Brave New Climate).

So, even the grey matter among the swan’s plumage changes the situation not one bit - except to underline how we not only (very probably) have a (broadly) predictable catastrophe facing us but furthermore one that may exceed most of our models and even our imaginations.

It is beyond reasonable doubt that we are driving ourselves over what is probably a cliff, maybe one with a fatally larger drop below it even than our best current science suggests.

Catastrophic climate change is a white swan; and even the odd grey or black feather only underscores how badly we are exposed to it. To catastrophe.

This raises deep questions…

Are we, as the great ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle claimed, rational animals?

How can we look our children in the eye, while we contemplate this cataclysm in the making? (Maybe this is why we typically don’t look our children in the eye, on this determinative issue. Why virtually all of us, and not just a fringe minority who we love to hate, are - in practice, most of the time - in climate-change-denial.)

How can we be woken up? How can we learn, as I’ve put it previously here on Medium (Why I Fear For Us All) to be ‘wise frogs’; how do we learn to jump out of the saucepan before we boil ourselves?

The coming cataclysm is bleedin obvious: how can we be enabled to see and to act to stop the bleedin obvious? Given that, apparently, it’s being obvious is not enough. To deny the bleedin obvious takes much more effort than to deny the unclear (and this of course is why for years now nefarious self-interested business interests and their shills and useful idiots have been trying to pretend that the climate situation is not clear: (Climate Memo Blog). And yet virtually all of us are complicit with such denial, much of the time…

The uncomfortable truth about anthropogenic climate change as a white swan, you see, is that it means that we almost certainly actually have much more in common with the relatively small minority of outright climate-denialists than we like to think.

The coming catastrophic climate change - inevitable unless we act rapidly, intelligently, together, in an unprecedented manner - is a white swan, an expected event. If, as at present seems likely, we let it approach and overwhelm us, no-one can say we weren’t plainly and straightforwardly warned. To not see this nemesis coming is akin to putting a telescope to one’s blind eye, or to mistaking black for white.

The likelihood of nemesis seems especially great given the awesomely-terrifying, literally-incredible fact that at this most pressing of moments in human history, a full-alt-fact denier (and his team of similarly-irrational denialist imbeciles) has taken occupancy of the White House (Trump The Climate Denier ). It is as if we were living a century ago, at the time of the infamous ‘Monkey Trial’ in the U.S. (Monkey Trial) when Darwinism went on trial for the right to be taught in school (and lost).

The differences are (1) A century has passed; have we learnt nothing?; (2) The ‘Monkey Trial’ concerned a benighted southern U.S. state government; while nothing less than the most powerful nation-state in the world is signed up to climate-denial; and (3) While it is unfortunate when evolution gets denied, it is catastrophic when climate-reality gets denied. This 3rd point is much the most consequential.

There is no scientific matter of more immediate import to humanity having a future, than the science of climate-change being acknowledged; or at minimum of a suitably precautious policy-line being taken re climate, even if one is not yet convinced (The Most Terrifying Video You Will Ever See).

As I set out above: when science involves us being exposed to huge hazard, then it is absurd to wait for or demand absolute proof. The rational thing to do - if we are rational - is to move much faster than that. And yet we are moving like snails, if that.

The situation we are in is an unprecedented one. It indicts us all, and indicts our ‘leaders’ perhaps most of all. We are staring now down the barrel of ecocide, which means a mass-suicide into which the voiceless and powerless and unborn future generations and most of our animal kin will be dragged down with us. It’s like Jonestown, only on a scale thousands upon thousands of times bigger. We’re all slowly drinking the Kool Aid, but this time it isn’t only those drinking it who are going to suffer or die. (And of course, to make the metaphor more accurate, it will tend to be those in ‘Third World’ countries who are as it were force-fed the Kool Aid on our behalf - they will, typically, suffer or die first.)

But yet…perhaps there are still grounds for hope in what I noted earlier. Perhaps some hope can be found in the very fact that (the truth is that) we ordinary people, we environmentally-minded normals, are much less different from climate-denialists than we tend to suppose. Perhaps, recognising our common failure thus far to face plainly the ‘white swan’ proceeding smoothly toward us bringing utter devastation with it, we might come together to confess our common failings, and then at last be in this together?

True, perhaps climate-criminals such as Exxon are beyond the pale; but perhaps the vast majority of us at least can seek to share our common fears (and failings, to date), and then start to rise to the occasion?

I have been making a habit of asking people over the past few years what they think the future will be like; I find many - most - who are somewhere between fairly and horrifically scared about it, so much so that they are overwhelmingly ‘primed’ to go into ‘denial’.

There are, I now firmly believe, millions upon millions of us quietly desperate about the future, feeling lonely in this desperation; but what if we were actually to risk starting to talk to one another about it, and what if we were then to find that we have more in common with each other than we’d realised? In particular in our terror, and the desire to do something with it rather than just suffer it. I think one of the things that we have to do now is to find more and more spaces where people can voice their suppressed anxiety about what we are doing to our planetary home, (and thus) to ourselves. This can be the first step, perhaps, toward a new sanity.

In a sequelar piece to come soon, I’ll be writing, along these lines, about how we might yet stop the slide into climate-cataclysm. How we can yet be wise; how we can rise to the awesome responsibility history has placed upon us - and inherit adequately the great gift of living at a time when humanity is in unprecedented peril. How is this a gift (and not just a curse)? Because it means we have the chance of being instrumental in building down that peril.

But for now I think I will leave this here. For first, we need to ponder. We need to reflect some on the extraordinary fact that the most likely future for humanity strongly appears to be not a steady progress - nor an unexpected destruction - but a steady, expected self-destruction.

The incipient climate chaos is a white swan. It would be the ultimate marker of sheer stupidity, as well as of shame and short-termist selfishness, if humanity succumbs to it.

This Author

Rupert Read is a Philosopher working and writing at UEA. He is also Chair @GreenHouse_UK think tank.

This being the age of public relations, the genteel term ‘public-private partnership’ is used instead of corporate plunder. A ‘partnership’ such deals may be, but it isn’t the public who gets the benefits.

We’ll be hearing more about so-called ‘public-private partnerships’ in coming weeks because the new US president, Donald Trump, is promoting these as the basis for a promised $1 trillion in new infrastructure investments.

But the new administration has also promised cuts to public spending. How to square this circle? It’s not difficult to discern when we recall the main policy of the Trump administration is to hand out massive tax cuts to big business and the wealthy, and provide them with subsidies.

Public-private partnerships are one of the surest ways of shoveling money into the gaping maws of corporate wallets, used, with varying names, by neoliberal governments around the world, particularly in Europe and North America.

The result has been disastrous – public services and infrastructure maintenance is consistently more expensive after privatization. Cuts to wages for workers who remain on the job and increased use of low-wage subcontractors are additional features of these privatizations.

The rationale for these partnerships is, similar to other neoliberal prescriptions, ideological – the private sector is supposedly always more efficient than government. A private company’s profit incentive will supposedly see to it that costs are kept under control, thereby saving money for taxpayers and transferring risk to the contractor.

In the real world, however, this works much differently. A government signs a long-term contract with a private enterprise to build and/or maintain infrastructure, under which the costs are borne by the contractor but the revenue goes to the contractor as well.

The contractor, of course, expects a profit from the arrangement. The government doesn’t – and thus corporate expectation of profits requires that revenues be increased and expenses must be cut. Less services and fewer employees means more profit for the contractor, and because the contractor is a private enterprise there’s no longer public accountability.

Public-private partnerships are nothing more than a variation on straightforward schemes to sell off public assets below cost, with working people having to pay more for reduced quality of service. A survey of these partnerships across Europe and North America will demonstrate this clearly, but first a quick look at the Trump administration’s plans.

Corporate subsidies, not $1 trillion in new spending

The use of the word ‘plans’ is rather loose here. No more than the barest outline of a plan has been articulated. The only direct mention of his intentions to jump-start investment in infrastructure is found in President Trump’s campaign web site.

In full, it states the plan “Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over ten years. It is revenue neutral.”

The administration’s official White House web site’s sole mention of infrastructure is an announcement approving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines without environmental reviews, and an intention to expedite environmental reviews for “high priority infrastructure projects.”