For all its troubles in recent years, Burma (Myanmar) is a country with an enviably low dependence on coal.

It currently has only three coal-fired power plants that generate just 3% of the nation’s electricity, with most of the power coming from hydroelectric dams.

But that’s all about to change. President U Thein Sein is convinced electricity from coal-fired plants represents the energy future of the country, and at least a dozen new coal-fired power plants are planned to generate a third of the country’s power by 2030.

Burma owns about sixteen coal deposits throughout the country. And the biggest of them, Tigyit coal mine open pit, in Shan State, show that any increase in coal mining and power generation is only going to bring conflict, disease and destruction to the country, already the poorest in the region.

Discovered in 1989, the Tigyit coal deposit is composed of ‘brown coal’ or lignite, high in ash and sulphur, but low in thermal energy, making it a highly polluting energy source. Nearby lies the Tigyit power plant, currently the nation’s largest, although small by international standards with two 60MW generation units, which gets its coal from the Tigyit mine.

It was forced to close in 2014 due to a series of mechanical breakdowns. But in February 2016, it will start up once again. Over 10,000 local people, most of them farmers, are already suffering from the harsh impacts of coal mining. Now they fear a further deterioration in their living conditions as fumes and ash from the plant begin to contaminate the air and surroundings once again.

And the impacts will be severe: dating from 2002, the power plant was built cheaply, without the filtering technology that would be required in most other countries to reduce emissions of ash and sulphur. When it was running some 150 tonnes daily of fly ash were being emitted from its chimneys to settle over local villages and farmland, bringing a toxic fallout of mercury, arsenic, cadmium and other heacy metal pollutants.

China to the rescue of dirty power

Since the 2014 closure of the Tingyit power plant the Burmese government has been keen to get the plant running again. In summer 2015 negotiations got under way with potential foreign investors, according to Pa-Oh ethnic activist Ko Kham Tee: “A Canadian and a Japanese company were interested in taking over the plant. But finally after some market research they decided not to go through with it.”

But now Chinese capital is coming to the power plant’s rescue, in the form of the China National Heavy Machinery Corporation (CHMC) – which is to refurbish and operate the coal-fired power-plant. We contacted CHMC to ask about their plans to mitigate its environmental impacts but it ignored our interview request.

According to Ko Kham Tee, local officials and residents are already being bribed and bullied into silence in order to prevent any complaints from emerging when operation recommences. This is not difficult, he adds, due to the legacy of fear from the days of formal military rule: even if the military officially renounced their power in 2012, they are still running things in the country.

“The villagers are still scared of the military anyway”, says Ko Kham Tee adds. So when they “come and ‘prepare the community’ for the company’s arrival”, that’s enough to quell dissent.

Situation worsened for the villagers

Although the power plant is currently inactive, coal mining at Tigyit continues, producing around 2,000 tones of coal a day, most of it transported to another nearby power plant. And that volume is now set to increase, says Ko: “Once the power-plant runs again, they will expand the digging in the coal mine.”

The mine has been a source of local problems ever since it opened in 2002 – noisy, dusty and a source of heavy fumes from diesel-powered mining machinery. The village pagoda even collapsed a few years ago, from the force of explosions coming from the open pit. The Buddhist temple was never rebuilt despite promises made by the company.

“And the smoke!” a farmer exclaims. “We can’t sleep at night because wind carries dust and smoke in our houses, we have to sleep wearing a mask. Also every day at around 4pm we hear explosions so loud that our houses shake!”

In 2011, the Pa-Oh activists published a report, ‘Poison Clouds‘ to denounce the situation, as reported on The Ecologist, however no improvements followed. Indeed, the chief of Tigyit village explains, living conditions actually worsened, while respiratory diseases, heart conditions or declining eyesight are becoming common.

“Twenty-one pregnant women lost their children since the excavation started”, he told us. A 62-year old woman who was also present added: “I have to take all these pills each week”, as she held a big plastic bag full of medicines up. Her neighbor, a woman aged 36, said she was suffering from asthma and chronic fatigue syndrome, and has to spend 120.000 kyats (around $120) per month on medicines.

According to the village chief, local medical staff are paid to keep quiet about the mine’s health impacts: “The company gives money to the doctors, nurses and the whole staff of the closest hospital. This way they stay quiet. But they know. Because the workers also suffer from respiratory diseases and they have to cure them.”

“I went to the hospital and the doctor said I should not breathe this poisonous smoke”, the older woman says. “How am I not supposed to breathe the air? I would like to leave, here, I feel sick every day.”

Land grabs for workers and power plant

When the excavation started, the company brought its own workers of Burman ethnicity, rather than employ local Pa-Oh workers, says the chief: “They confiscated lots of lands around the site and inside the village and gave some plots to the workers.”

A villager adds: “The place where the power-plant is located used to be our farming lands.” He told us that a total of 500 acres were confiscated from five different villages, including Tigyit, the closest one, in addition to another 2,000 acres of uncultivated land. Entire villages were displaced, further in the mountains where there is less cultivable land, forcing most of the young people out to seek work in Thailand.

Because of land confiscation, the villagers struggle to eat and feed their animals, which are also sick. “The pigs give birth to dead piglets and the buffaloes suddenly drop dead”, the chief’s wife explained.

“The authorities want to weaken the local people because they think the village is too close to the mine”, says Ko Kham Tee. “So they seize the land, they parcel it out and they sell the smaller lands to other people, at a price the villagers couldn’t afford.”

Without enough land to cultivate, ailing livestock, respiratory diseases, premature babies and miscarriages, the situation is already unbearable for local inhabitants. The mine workers are also suffering, adds the village chief: “The workers don’t want to lose their jobs but I don’t think they know what they’re doing or what they are exposed to. At least fifteen workers died already.”

Yet the village is divided roughly into two equal camps, says the chief, those who support the mine because they depend on it for their jobs, and the local farmers for whom it brings nothing but grief – and the situation is often tense between the two. Nonetheless he is determined to maintain their resistance to the mine, and the re-opening of the power plant: “We plan to protest or even sue the company. We already collected the money to do so.”

Whether he can make any impression on Burma’s rulers or the powerful companies that are profiting from the land grabs and pollution remains to be seen. As for his chances of winning  justice in Burma’s courts, that may also be an unlikely prospect in a country so recently emerged from absolute military rule.

Meanwhile conflicts such as these are set to be repeated elsewhere in the new ‘democratic’ Burma. If President U Thein Sein gets his way, the pollution, ill-health, poverty and misery now affecting Tigyit will only spread until the problems afflict the entire nation.

There is of course another way – to take advantage of the ever-falling costs of solar and wind power to increase the country’s electrical generation capacity, while refurbishing its existing hydroelectric dams to work as ‘pumped storage’ batteries just as Norway is already doing.

We can only hope that Burma’s leaders will see where a truly prosperous future lies – in clean, low cost renewable energy for all.

Carole Oudot & Matthieu Baudey are freelance journalists traveling around Myanmar and specialized in ethnic affairs and politics, mainly in Kayah and Shan States. Their work often appears on New Burma Chronicles.

Additional reporting by The Ecologist.

A peer-reviewed study published last year in the British Journal of Nutrition showed that organic crops and crop-based foods are 18% to 69% higher in a number of key antioxidants such as polyphenolics than conventionally-grown crops.

Numerous studies have linked antioxidants to a reduced risk of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases and certain cancers.

The research team concluded that a switch to eating organic fruit, vegetable and cereals – and food made from them – would provide additional antioxidants equivalent to eating between one and two extra portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

Moreover, significantly lower levels of a range of toxic heavy metals were found in organic crops. For instance, cadmium is one of only three metal contaminants, along with lead and mercury, for which the European Commission has set maximum permitted contamination levels in food. It was found to be almost 50% lower in organic crops.

Nitrogen concentrations were also found to be significantly lower in organic crops. Concentrations of total nitrogen were 10%, nitrate 30% and nitrite 87% lower in organic compared to conventional crops. The study also found that pesticide residues were four times more likely to be found in conventional crops than organic ones.

The research was the biggest of its kind ever undertaken. The international team of experts led by Newcastle University in the UK analysed 343 studies into the compositional differences between organic and conventional crops.

The findings contradict those of a 2009 UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) commissioned study which found there were no substantial differences or significant nutritional benefits from organic food.

The FSA commissioned study based its conclusions on only 46 publications covering crops, meat and dairy, while the Newcastle University-led meta-analysis is based on data from 343 peer-reviewed publications on composition difference between organic and conventional crops.

The terrible worldwide toll of industrial agriculture

There has been for a long time serious concerns about the health impacts of eating food that has been contaminated with petro-chemical pesticides and fertilisers.

Over the past 60 years, agriculture has changed more than it did during the previous 12,000. And much of that change has come about due to the so-called ‘green revolution’, which has entailed soaking crops with petrochemicals. Coinciding with these changes has been the onset and proliferation of numerous diseases and allergies.

The global agritech / agribusiness sector is in effect poisoning our food and the environment with its pesticides, herbicides, GMOs and various other chemical inputs. Journalist Arthur Nelson has written that as many as 31 pesticides could have been banned in the EU because of potential health risks, if a blocked EU paper on hormone-mimicking chemicals had been acted upon.

Christina Sarich recently reported that there are currently 34,000 pesticides registered for use in the US. She states that drinking water it is often contaminated by pesticides and more babies are being born with preventable birth defects due to pesticide exposure. Chemicals are so prevalently used that they show up in breast milk of mothers.

Illnesses are on the rise too, including asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases and several types of cancer. Sarich says that their connection to pesticide exposure becomes more evident with every new study conducted.

In Punjab, India, pesticides have turned the state into a ‘cancer epicentre‘, and Indian soils are being depleted as a result of the application of ‘green revolution’ ideology and chemical inputs. India is losing 5,334 million tonnes of soil every year due to soil erosion because of the indiscreet and excessive use of fertilisers, insecticides and pesticides.

The Indian Institute of Soil Science, established by the  Indian Council of Agricultural Research reported in its 2011 Vision 2013 report that soil is become deficient in nutrients and fertility.

The global war against sustainable, small scale farmers

We can carry on down the route of chemical-intensive, poisonous agriculture, with our health and the environment continuing to be sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit.

Or we can shift to organic farming and investment in and reaffirmation of indigenous models of agriculture as advocated by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge Science and Technology (IAASTD) report. In this respect, botanist Stuart Newton’s states:

“The answers to Indian agricultural productivity is not that of embracing the international, monopolistic, corporate-conglomerate promotion of chemically-dependent GM crops … India has to restore and nurture her depleted, abused soils and not harm them any further, with dubious chemical overload, which are endangering human and animal health.” (p24).

Newton provides insight into the importance of soils and their mineral compositions and links their depletion to the ‘green revolution’. In turn, these depleted soils cannot help but lead to mass malnourishment. This is quite revealing given that proponents of the ‘green revolution’ claim it helped reduced malnutrition. Newton favours a system of agroecology, a sound understanding of soil and the eradication of poisonous chemical inputs.

Over the past few years, there have been numerous high level reports from the UN and development agencies putting forward similar arguments and proposals in favour of small farmers and agroecology, but this has not been translated into real action on the ground where peasant farmers increasingly face marginalisation and oppression.

According to Vandana Shiva, for instance, the plundering of Indian agriculture by foreign corporations is resulting in a forced removal of farmers from the land and the destruction of traditional communities on a scale of which has not been witnessed anywhere before throughout history.

On a global level, not least because peasant / smallholder farming is more productive than industrial farming and because it feeds most of the world, this is undermining the world’s ability for feeding itself.

It is also leaving to denutrification: not only in terms of specific items containing less nutrients than before, as described above, but because people are being forced to rely on a narrower range of foodstuffs and crops as monocropping replaces a biodiverse system of agriculture.

Time to end ‘parasitical farming’

The increasingly globalised industrial food system is failing to feed the world. It is also responsible for some of the planet’s most pressing political, social and environmental crises – not least hunger and poverty.

This system – not forgetting the capitalism that underpins it – and the corporations and institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO) that fuel it must be confronted, as must the wholly inappropriate and unsustainable urban-centric model of ‘development’ being forced through at the behest of these corporations in places like India.

Organic farmer and activist Bhaskar Save describes how this urban-centric model has served to uproot indigenous agriculture in India with devastating effect:

“The actual reason for pushing the ‘Green Revolution’ was the much narrower goal of increasing marketable surplus of a few relatively less perishable cereals to fuel the urban-industrial expansion favoured by the government.

“The new, parasitical way of farming… benefited only the industrialists, traders and the powers-that-be. The farmers’ costs rose massively and margins dipped. Combined with the eroding natural fertility of their land, they were left with little in their hands, if not mounting debts and dead soils …

“Self-reliant farming – with minimal or zero external inputs – was the way we actually farmed, very successfully, in the past. Barring periods of war and excessive colonial oppression, our farmers were largely self-sufficient, and even produced surpluses, though generally smaller quantities of many more items. These, particularly perishables, were tougher to supply urban markets.

“And so the nation’s farmers were steered to grow chemically cultivated monocultures of a few cash-crops like wheat, rice, or sugar, rather than their traditional polycultures that needed no purchased inputs.”

Why let science get in the way of propaganda?

Even if proponents of the ‘green revolution’ choose to live in a fool’s paradise by ignoring the ecologically and environmentally unsustainable nature of the system they promote and merely mouth platitudes about organic being less productive, they might like to look at the results Bhaskar Save achieved on his farm.

They might also like to consider this analysis which questions the apparent successes claimed by advocates of the ‘green revolution’. And they should certainly consider this report based on a 30-year study which concluded that organic yields match conventional yields and outperform conventional in years of drought.

That report also showed that organic agriculture builds rather than deplete soil organic matter, making it a more sustainable system.

But why let science get in the way of propaganda? These proponents have already paved the way for extending the the corporate control of agriculture and the ‘green revolution’ with their GMOs and further chemical inputs – all underpinned of course by endless deceptions and neoliberal ideology wrapped up as fake concern for the poor.

Colin Todhunter is an independent writer. Support his work here.

This article was originally published on Colin Todhunter’s website.

“China shows the way to build nuclear reactors fast and cheap.” That was the bullish headline in a Forbes magazine article last week.

It went on to praise the scale of the planned nuclear investment in China’s new Five-Year Plan that runs from 2016 to 2020. Under the plan the government is to invest over US$100 billion to build seven new reactors a year until 2030.

“By 2050”, James Conca wrote for Forbes, “nuclear power should exceed 350 GW in that country, include about 400 new nuclear reactors, and have resulted in over a trillion dollars in nuclear investment.”

Now Conca is pretty enthusiastic about this. But the reality is a potential nuclear nightmare in the making. Experience to date shows that we should, on average, expect a major nuclear accident to take place for every 3,000 to 4,000 years of reactor operation. And with over 400 reactors running at once, it doesn’t take long to clock up those 3,000 years.

In fact, you could reasonably expect a major Chernobyl or Fukushima level accident every seven to ten years – in China alone, if it pursues nuclear build on that scale.

Just how safe is China anyway

Now if China had a fantastic record of safety in its construction and other industries, maybe the odds shoold be made a bit longer. Swiss-style reactors might come in at only one big foulup every 10,000 years, for example.

But that’s not China. This August past we had the massive fire and multiple explosions at the Port of Tianjin, that killed almost 200 people and devastated several square kilometres of the industrial zone. 

It later transpired that over 7,000 tonnes of hazardous chemicals were stored there, among them sodium cyanide, calcium carbide and ammonium and potassium nitrate, many of them kept in breach of regulations. The owners had links to the highest echelons of the Chinese state – something that may have ensured very light touch regulation.

China has also experienced some recent high speed train crashes, the worst in July 2011. Two bullet trains collided head-on on a viaductin Wenzhou, Zhejiang province owing to faulty signalling, killing 40 people. The accident was blamed by the Chinese government itself on “design flaws and sloppy management”, according to the BBC.

China also has a notoriously poor safety record in a range of industries from construction to coal mining.

If anything we should expect China’s nuclear industry to be rather less safe that the western average, especially given the cacophony of new reactor designs and variations thereof under construction simultaneously at multiple sites with absolutely no history of operation – safe or otherwise.

Another factor is the secrecy that surrounds nuclear contruction and operation in China. These matters simply are not reported on other than in glowing terms in the official press. And secrecy is all too often a cover for poor practice and cut corners.

So in fact there’s a good case for thinking that Chinese reactors might pop, not one in every 3,000 to 4,000 years of operation, but rather more often. Every 2,000 years perhaps? At that rate we could expect a couple of major nuclear catastrophes every decade.

Cheap? Some scepticism is in order

Where Forbes celebrates the wonderfully low cost of Chinese nuclear power we must also be a little sceptical. for example, “Six Chinese-designed 1000 MW reactors at Yangjiang will be a huge nuclear power base for China General Nuclear, and will cost only US$11.5 billion for over 6000 MWe, a third of the cost in western countries.”

Or at Changjang Unit 1, on Hainan Island, “The total cost of this first pair of Chinese-designed 600 MW units is only about US$3.15 billion.” While at Fangchenggang, “Six reactors are planned at this site at a total cost of about US$12 billion … It seems as though 5 years and about $2 billion per reactor has become routine for China.”

How do we know what these reactors really cost? The fact is, we don’t. With China’s nuclear corporations under the control of various organs of state including the Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army, official statistics and accounts can simply not be relied upon.

Nuclear construction in China must be cheaper than in the US and Europe due to lower labour costs. But if it really is that much cheaper it can only be at a huge safety penalty.

Take the construction problems and delays at the two current EPR sites in Europe at Flamanville, France, and Olkiluoto, Finland, both now running about three times over original cost estimates. Many of the delays have been caused by safety failures. Over, for example, the flawed metallurgy of the Flamanville reactor vessel and concerns over the reliability of key valves in the cooling system.

Now of course, if you simple ignore such problems and press ahead with construction to meet the targets set down a five-year plan, construction is a whole lot quicker and cheaper. But the chances of reactors popping in years to come is also considerably greater.

Tsunami risk – not if but when

It’s also instructive to look at the map of nuclear reactors scheduled for completion in the next decade provided by Forbes. The great bulk of them – 77 reactors in all – are built along China’s east and south coasts, for two reasons: that’s where the demand is, and that’s where the cooling water is readily available, from the sea.

But of course that’s just the ones due to be completed in the next decade. If the full plan for 400 reactors by 2050 is fulfilled, probably some 300 of them would be sea-facing.

There are, of course, nuclear hazards to inland reactors from flooding on the Yellow and Yangtse rivers and tributaries. But a much greater danger arises from the sea. China’s south and east coasts face out to seismically active waters. And as the Japanese discovered at Fukushima, nuclear power, earthquakes and tsunamis make a dangerous combination.

Interest in the danger of tsunamis on China’s south and east coast was stimulated by the two Hengchun Earthquakes off  Taiwan in December 2006, which damaged buildings and disrupted communications by severing undersea cables.

One recent study put the risk of a powerful tsunami greater than 2m in height striking Hong Kong or Macau at about 10% over the coming century, mainly due to seismic activity in the Manila Trench. But head further north and east and the chances go up significantly to 13.34% at Shantou in Guangdong province.

And it may be more than that, the authors note: “This probability estimate may increase with a recent rise in the earthquake activities, which started with the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake, because the Taiwan region has a earthquake cycle time of around 80-100 years.”

What is certain is that the tsunami hazard is real and substantial. Literature of historical seismic records of this region is “abundant”, the authors write. The northern Manila Trench near Taiwan is “is likely to have avery large earthquake in the future. In addition the regionis a volcanic belt. If volcano and earthquake occur in concert, a much larger tsunami disaster would develop.

“Although the southern part of the Manila Trench is far away from the coast of China, the local historical records of this region have many tsunami earthquakes up to the magnitude of around 8.0. Since the oceanic portion of the South China Sea is mostly deep, tsunamic waves generated in the Manila Trench region can reach the coast of China with little loss in energy.

“The wave energy can then be released in the shallow water region, and can impose a tremendous tsunami hazard to the coastal regions.”

The world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe

I have done no study of the tsunami vulnerability of all the 300 nuclear reactors that could end up being built along China’s east and south coasts. But at least one – the CANDU reactor shown in the photo (above right) at Qinshan, where seven reactors are currently operational, looks vulnerable in the extreme.

And the consequences of a really big earthquake and tsunami hitting China’s coastal array of 300 nuclear reactors would be catastrophic. Many dozens of reactors could be struck down, each doing their own ‘Fukushima’.

This would not just bring massive radioactive contamination to China’s most developed, prosperous, productive and populated regions, but spread around the world in air and sea currents to make the world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe.

The only good news in all this is that nuclear construction in China is not proceeding anything like as fast as Forbes magazine claims. Most of the more modern ‘Generation III’ reactors are well behind in their completion times, echoing the European experience with the failed EPR design.

We can only hope that construction difficulties persist and abound – and that China’s rulers realise that investments in solar, wind and other renewables are a quicker, surer, safer way to bring power to the masses – and one that poses no existential threat to their country, and the world.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

“China shows the way to build nuclear reactors fast and cheap.” That was the bullish headline in a Forbes magazine article last week.

It went on to praise the scale of the planned nuclear investment in China’s new Five-Year Plan that runs from 2016 to 2020. Under the plan the government is to invest over US$100 billion to build seven new reactors a year until 2030.

“By 2050”, James Conca wrote for Forbes, “nuclear power should exceed 350 GW in that country, include about 400 new nuclear reactors, and have resulted in over a trillion dollars in nuclear investment.”

Now Conca is pretty enthusiastic about this. But the reality is a potential nuclear nightmare in the making. Experience to date shows that we should, on average, expect a major nuclear accident to take place for every 3,000 to 4,000 years of reactor operation. And with over 400 reactors running at once, it doesn’t take long to clock up those 3,000 years.

In fact, you could reasonably expect a major Chernobyl or Fukushima level accident every seven to ten years – in China alone, if it pursues nuclear build on that scale.

Just how safe is China anyway

Now if China had a fantastic record of safety in its construction and other industries, maybe the odds shoold be made a bit longer. Swiss-style reactors might come in at only one big foulup every 10,000 years, for example.

But that’s not China. This August past we had the massive fire and multiple explosions at the Port of Tianjin, that killed almost 200 people and devastated several square kilometres of the industrial zone. 

It later transpired that over 7,000 tonnes of hazardous chemicals were stored there, among them sodium cyanide, calcium carbide and ammonium and potassium nitrate, many of them kept in breach of regulations. The owners had links to the highest echelons of the Chinese state – something that may have ensured very light touch regulation.

China has also experienced some recent high speed train crashes, the worst in July 2011. Two bullet trains collided head-on on a viaductin Wenzhou, Zhejiang province owing to faulty signalling, killing 40 people. The accident was blamed by the Chinese government itself on “design flaws and sloppy management”, according to the BBC.

China also has a notoriously poor safety record in a range of industries from construction to coal mining.

If anything we should expect China’s nuclear industry to be rather less safe that the western average, especially given the cacophony of new reactor designs and variations thereof under construction simultaneously at multiple sites with absolutely no history of operation – safe or otherwise.

Another factor is the secrecy that surrounds nuclear contruction and operation in China. These matters simply are not reported on other than in glowing terms in the official press. And secrecy is all too often a cover for poor practice and cut corners.

So in fact there’s a good case for thinking that Chinese reactors might pop, not one in every 3,000 to 4,000 years of operation, but rather more often. Every 2,000 years perhaps? At that rate we could expect a couple of major nuclear catastrophes every decade.

Cheap? Some scepticism is in order

Where Forbes celebrates the wonderfully low cost of Chinese nuclear power we must also be a little sceptical. for example, “Six Chinese-designed 1000 MW reactors at Yangjiang will be a huge nuclear power base for China General Nuclear, and will cost only US$11.5 billion for over 6000 MWe, a third of the cost in western countries.”

Or at Changjang Unit 1, on Hainan Island, “The total cost of this first pair of Chinese-designed 600 MW units is only about US$3.15 billion.” While at Fangchenggang, “Six reactors are planned at this site at a total cost of about US$12 billion … It seems as though 5 years and about $2 billion per reactor has become routine for China.”

How do we know what these reactors really cost? The fact is, we don’t. With China’s nuclear corporations under the control of various organs of state including the Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army, official statistics and accounts can simply not be relied upon.

Nuclear construction in China must be cheaper than in the US and Europe due to lower labour costs. But if it really is that much cheaper it can only be at a huge safety penalty.

Take the construction problems and delays at the two current EPR sites in Europe at Flamanville, France, and Olkiluoto, Finland, both now running about three times over original cost estimates. Many of the delays have been caused by safety failures. Over, for example, the flawed metallurgy of the Flamanville reactor vessel and concerns over the reliability of key valves in the cooling system.

Now of course, if you simple ignore such problems and press ahead with construction to meet the targets set down a five-year plan, construction is a whole lot quicker and cheaper. But the chances of reactors popping in years to come is also considerably greater.

Tsunami risk – not if but when

It’s also instructive to look at the map of nuclear reactors scheduled for completion in the next decade provided by Forbes. The great bulk of them – 77 reactors in all – are built along China’s east and south coasts, for two reasons: that’s where the demand is, and that’s where the cooling water is readily available, from the sea.

But of course that’s just the ones due to be completed in the next decade. If the full plan for 400 reactors by 2050 is fulfilled, probably some 300 of them would be sea-facing.

There are, of course, nuclear hazards to inland reactors from flooding on the Yellow and Yangtse rivers and tributaries. But a much greater danger arises from tsunamis. China’s south and east coasts face out to seismically active waters. And as the Japanese discovered at Fukushima, water and nuclear power don’t mix well – specially when earthquakes and tsunamis are thrown in.

Interest in this topic was stimulated by the two Hengchun Earthquakes off the Taiwan coast in December 2006, which damaged buildings and disrupted communications by severing undersea cables.

One recent study put the risk of a powerful tsunami greater than 2m in height striking Hong Kong or Macau at about 10% over the coming century, mainly due to seismic activity in the Manila Trench. But head further north and east and the chances go up significantly to 13.34% at Shantou in Guangdong province.

And it may be more than that, the authors note: “This probability estimate may increase with a recent rise in the earthquake activities, which started with the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake, because the Taiwan region has a earthquake cycle time of around 80-100 years.”

What is certain is that the tsunami hazard is real and substantial. Literature of historical seismic records of this region is “abundant”, the authors write. The northern Manila Trench near Taiwan is “is likely to have avery large earthquake in the future. In addition the regionis a volcanic belt. If volcano and earthquake occur in concert, a much larger tsunami disaster would develop.

“Although the southern part of the Manila Trench is far away from the coast of China, the local historical records of this region have many tsunami earthquakes up to the magnitude of around 8.0. Since the oceanic portion of the South China Sea is mostly deep, tsunamic waves generated in the Manila Trench region can reach the coast of China with little loss in energy.

“The wave energy can then be released in the shallow water region, and can impose a tremendous tsunami hazard to the coastal regions.”

The world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe

I have done no study of the tsunami vulnerability of all the 300 nuclear reactors that could end up being built along China’s east and south coasts. But at least one – the CANDU reactor shown in the photo (above right) at Qinshan, where seven reactors are currently operational, looks vulnerable in the extreme.

And the consequences of a really big earthquake and tsunami hitting China’s coastal array of 300 nuclear reactors would be truly catastrophic. Many dozens of reactors could be struck down, each doing their own ‘Fukushima’.

This would not just bring massive radioactive contamination to China’s most developed, prosperous, productive and populated regions, but spread around the world in air and sea currents to make the world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe.

The only good news in all this is that nuclear construction in China is not proceeding anything like as fast as Forbes magazine claims. Most of the more modern ‘Generation III’ reactors are well behind in their completion times, echoing the European experience with the failed EPR design.

We can only hope that construction difficulties persist and abound – and that China’s rulers realise that investments in solar, wind and other renewables are a quicker, surer, safer way to bring power to the masses – and one that poses no existential threat to their country, and the world.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

“China shows the way to build nuclear reactors fast and cheap.” That was the bullish headline in a Forbes magazine article last week.

It went on to praise the scale of the planned nuclear investment in China’s new Five-Year Plan that runs from 2016 to 2020. Under the plan the government is to invest over US$100 billion to build seven new reactors a year until 2030.

“By 2050”, James Conca wrote for Forbes, “nuclear power should exceed 350 GW in that country, include about 400 new nuclear reactors, and have resulted in over a trillion dollars in nuclear investment.”

Now Conca is pretty enthusiastic about this. But the reality is a potential nuclear nightmare in the making. Experience to date shows that we should, on average, expect a major nuclear accident to take place for every 3,000 to 4,000 years of reactor operation. And with over 400 reactors running at once, it doesn’t take long to clock up those 3,000 years.

In fact, you could reasonably expect a major Chernobyl or Fukushima level accident every seven to ten years – in China alone, if it pursues nuclear build on that scale.

Just how safe is China anyway

Now if China had a fantastic record of safety in its construction and other industries, maybe the odds shoold be made a bit longer. Swiss-style reactors might come in at only one big foulup every 10,000 years, for example.

But that’s not China. This August past we had the massive fire and multiple explosions at the Port of Tianjin, that killed almost 200 people and devastated several square kilometres of the industrial zone. 

It later transpired that over 7,000 tonnes of hazardous chemicals were stored there, among them sodium cyanide, calcium carbide and ammonium and potassium nitrate, many of them kept in breach of regulations. The owners had links to the highest echelons of the Chinese state – something that may have ensured very light touch regulation.

China has also experienced some recent high speed train crashes, the worst in July 2011. Two bullet trains collided head-on on a viaductin Wenzhou, Zhejiang province owing to faulty signalling, killing 40 people. The accident was blamed by the Chinese government itself on “design flaws and sloppy management”, according to the BBC.

China also has a notoriously poor safety record in a range of industries from construction to coal mining.

If anything we should expect China’s nuclear industry to be rather less safe that the western average, especially given the cacophony of new reactor designs and variations thereof under construction simultaneously at multiple sites with absolutely no history of operation – safe or otherwise.

Another factor is the secrecy that surrounds nuclear contruction and operation in China. These matters simply are not reported on other than in glowing terms in the official press. And secrecy is all too often a cover for poor practice and cut corners.

So in fact there’s a good case for thinking that Chinese reactors might pop, not one in every 3,000 to 4,000 years of operation, but rather more often. Every 2,000 years perhaps? At that rate we could expect a couple of major nuclear catastrophes every decade.

Cheap? Some scepticism is in order

Where Forbes celebrates the wonderfully low cost of Chinese nuclear power we must also be a little sceptical. for example, “Six Chinese-designed 1000 MW reactors at Yangjiang will be a huge nuclear power base for China General Nuclear, and will cost only US$11.5 billion for over 6000 MWe, a third of the cost in western countries.”

Or at Changjang Unit 1, on Hainan Island, “The total cost of this first pair of Chinese-designed 600 MW units is only about US$3.15 billion.” While at Fangchenggang, “Six reactors are planned at this site at a total cost of about US$12 billion … It seems as though 5 years and about $2 billion per reactor has become routine for China.”

How do we know what these reactors really cost? The fact is, we don’t. With China’s nuclear corporations under the control of various organs of state including the Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army, official statistics and accounts can simply not be relied upon.

Nuclear construction in China must be cheaper than in the US and Europe due to lower labour costs. But if it really is that much cheaper it can only be at a huge safety penalty.

Take the construction problems and delays at the two current EPR sites in Europe at Flamanville, France, and Olkiluoto, Finland, both now running about three times over original cost estimates. Many of the delays have been caused by safety failures. Over, for example, the flawed metallurgy of the Flamanville reactor vessel and concerns over the reliability of key valves in the cooling system.

Now of course, if you simple ignore such problems and press ahead with construction to meet the targets set down a five-year plan, construction is a whole lot quicker and cheaper. But the chances of reactors popping in years to come is also considerably greater.

Tsunami risk – not if but when

It’s also instructive to look at the map of nuclear reactors scheduled for completion in the next decade provided by Forbes. The great bulk of them – 77 reactors in all – are built along China’s east and south coasts, for two reasons: that’s where the demand is, and that’s where the cooling water is readily available, from the sea.

But of course that’s just the ones due to be completed in the next decade. If the full plan for 400 reactors by 2050 is fulfilled, probably some 300 of them would be sea-facing.

There are, of course, nuclear hazards to inland reactors from flooding on the Yellow and Yangtse rivers and tributaries. But a much greater danger arises from tsunamis. China’s south and east coasts face out to seismically active waters. And as the Japanese discovered at Fukushima, water and nuclear power don’t mix well – specially when earthquakes and tsunamis are thrown in.

Interest in this topic was stimulated by the two Hengchun Earthquakes off the Taiwan coast in December 2006, which damaged buildings and disrupted communications by severing undersea cables.

One recent study put the risk of a powerful tsunami greater than 2m in height striking Hong Kong or Macau at about 10% over the coming century, mainly due to seismic activity in the Manila Trench. But head further north and east and the chances go up significantly to 13.34% at Shantou in Guangdong province.

And it may be more than that, the authors note: “This probability estimate may increase with a recent rise in the earthquake activities, which started with the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake, because the Taiwan region has a earthquake cycle time of around 80-100 years.”

What is certain is that the tsunami hazard is real and substantial. Literature of historical seismic records of this region is “abundant”, the authors write. The northern Manila Trench near Taiwan is “is likely to have avery large earthquake in the future. In addition the regionis a volcanic belt. If volcano and earthquake occur in concert, a much larger tsunami disaster would develop.

“Although the southern part of the Manila Trench is far away from the coast of China, the local historical records of this region have many tsunami earthquakes up to the magnitude of around 8.0. Since the oceanic portion of the South China Sea is mostly deep, tsunamic waves generated in the Manila Trench region can reach the coast of China with little loss in energy.

“The wave energy can then be released in the shallow water region, and can impose a tremendous tsunami hazard to the coastal regions.”

The world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe

I have done no study of the tsunami vulnerability of all the 300 nuclear reactors that could end up being built along China’s east and south coasts. But at least one – the CANDU reactor shown in the photo (above right) at Qinshan, where seven reactors are currently operational, looks vulnerable in the extreme.

And the consequences of a really big earthquake and tsunami hitting China’s coastal array of 300 nuclear reactors would be truly catastrophic. Many dozens of reactors could be struck down, each doing their own ‘Fukushima’.

This would not just bring massive radioactive contamination to China’s most developed, prosperous, productive and populated regions, but spread around the world in air and sea currents to make the world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe.

The only good news in all this is that nuclear construction in China is not proceeding anything like as fast as Forbes magazine claims. Most of the more modern ‘Generation III’ reactors are well behind in their completion times, echoing the European experience with the failed EPR design.

We can only hope that construction difficulties persist and abound – and that China’s rulers realise that investments in solar, wind and other renewables are a quicker, surer, safer way to bring power to the masses – and one that poses no existential threat to their country, and the world.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

“China shows the way to build nuclear reactors fast and cheap.” That was the bullish headline in a Forbes magazine article last week.

It went on to praise the scale of the planned nuclear investment in China’s new Five-Year Plan that runs from 2016 to 2020. Under the plan the government is to invest over US$100 billion to build seven new reactors a year until 2030.

“By 2050”, James Conca wrote for Forbes, “nuclear power should exceed 350 GW in that country, include about 400 new nuclear reactors, and have resulted in over a trillion dollars in nuclear investment.”

Now Conca is pretty enthusiastic about this. But the reality is a potential nuclear nightmare in the making. Experience to date shows that we should, on average, expect a major nuclear accident to take place for every 3,000 to 4,000 years of reactor operation. And with over 400 reactors running at once, it doesn’t take long to clock up those 3,000 years.

In fact, you could reasonably expect a major Chernobyl or Fukushima level accident every seven to ten years – in China alone, if it pursues nuclear build on that scale.

Just how safe is China anyway

Now if China had a fantastic record of safety in its construction and other industries, maybe the odds shoold be made a bit longer. Swiss-style reactors might come in at only one big foulup every 10,000 years, for example.

But that’s not China. This August past we had the massive fire and multiple explosions at the Port of Tianjin, that killed almost 200 people and devastated several square kilometres of the industrial zone. 

It later transpired that over 7,000 tonnes of hazardous chemicals were stored there, among them sodium cyanide, calcium carbide and ammonium and potassium nitrate, many of them kept in breach of regulations. The owners had links to the highest echelons of the Chinese state – something that may have ensured very light touch regulation.

China has also experienced some recent high speed train crashes, the worst in July 2011. Two bullet trains collided head-on on a viaductin Wenzhou, Zhejiang province owing to faulty signalling, killing 40 people. The accident was blamed by the Chinese government itself on “design flaws and sloppy management”, according to the BBC.

China also has a notoriously poor safety record in a range of industries from construction to coal mining.

If anything we should expect China’s nuclear industry to be rather less safe that the western average, especially given the cacophony of new reactor designs and variations thereof under construction simultaneously at multiple sites with absolutely no history of operation – safe or otherwise.

Another factor is the secrecy that surrounds nuclear contruction and operation in China. These matters simply are not reported on other than in glowing terms in the official press. And secrecy is all too often a cover for poor practice and cut corners.

So in fact there’s a good case for thinking that Chinese reactors might pop, not one in every 3,000 to 4,000 years of operation, but rather more often. Every 2,000 years perhaps? At that rate we could expect a couple of major nuclear catastrophes every decade.

Cheap? Some scepticism is in order

Where Forbes celebrates the wonderfully low cost of Chinese nuclear power we must also be a little sceptical. for example, “Six Chinese-designed 1000 MW reactors at Yangjiang will be a huge nuclear power base for China General Nuclear, and will cost only US$11.5 billion for over 6000 MWe, a third of the cost in western countries.”

Or at Changjang Unit 1, on Hainan Island, “The total cost of this first pair of Chinese-designed 600 MW units is only about US$3.15 billion.” While at Fangchenggang, “Six reactors are planned at this site at a total cost of about US$12 billion … It seems as though 5 years and about $2 billion per reactor has become routine for China.”

How do we know what these reactors really cost? The fact is, we don’t. With China’s nuclear corporations under the control of various organs of state including the Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army, official statistics and accounts can simply not be relied upon.

Nuclear construction in China must be cheaper than in the US and Europe due to lower labour costs. But if it really is that much cheaper it can only be at a huge safety penalty.

Take the construction problems and delays at the two current EPR sites in Europe at Flamanville, France, and Olkiluoto, Finland, both now running about three times over original cost estimates. Many of the delays have been caused by safety failures. Over, for example, the flawed metallurgy of the Flamanville reactor vessel and concerns over the reliability of key valves in the cooling system.

Now of course, if you simple ignore such problems and press ahead with construction to meet the targets set down a five-year plan, construction is a whole lot quicker and cheaper. But the chances of reactors popping in years to come is also considerably greater.

Tsunami risk – not if but when

It’s also instructive to look at the map of nuclear reactors scheduled for completion in the next decade provided by Forbes. The great bulk of them – 77 reactors in all – are built along China’s east and south coasts, for two reasons: that’s where the demand is, and that’s where the cooling water is readily available, from the sea.

But of course that’s just the ones due to be completed in the next decade. If the full plan for 400 reactors by 2050 is fulfilled, probably some 300 of them would be sea-facing.

There are, of course, nuclear hazards to inland reactors from flooding on the Yellow and Yangtse rivers and tributaries. But a much greater danger arises from tsunamis. China’s south and east coasts face out to seismically active waters. And as the Japanese discovered at Fukushima, water and nuclear power don’t mix well – specially when earthquakes and tsunamis are thrown in.

Interest in this topic was stimulated by the two Hengchun Earthquakes off the Taiwan coast in December 2006, which damaged buildings and disrupted communications by severing undersea cables.

One recent study put the risk of a powerful tsunami greater than 2m in height striking Hong Kong or Macau at about 10% over the coming century, mainly due to seismic activity in the Manila Trench. But head further north and east and the chances go up significantly to 13.34% at Shantou in Guangdong province.

And it may be more than that, the authors note: “This probability estimate may increase with a recent rise in the earthquake activities, which started with the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake, because the Taiwan region has a earthquake cycle time of around 80-100 years.”

What is certain is that the tsunami hazard is real and substantial. Literature of historical seismic records of this region is “abundant”, the authors write. The northern Manila Trench near Taiwan is “is likely to have avery large earthquake in the future. In addition the regionis a volcanic belt. If volcano and earthquake occur in concert, a much larger tsunami disaster would develop.

“Although the southern part of the Manila Trench is far away from the coast of China, the local historical records of this region have many tsunami earthquakes up to the magnitude of around 8.0. Since the oceanic portion of the South China Sea is mostly deep, tsunamic waves generated in the Manila Trench region can reach the coast of China with little loss in energy.

“The wave energy can then be released in the shallow water region, and can impose a tremendous tsunami hazard to the coastal regions.”

The world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe

I have done no study of the tsunami vulnerability of all the 300 nuclear reactors that could end up being built along China’s east and south coasts. But at least one – the CANDU reactor shown in the photo (above right) at Qinshan, where seven reactors are currently operational, looks vulnerable in the extreme.

And the consequences of a really big earthquake and tsunami hitting China’s coastal array of 300 nuclear reactors would be truly catastrophic. Many dozens of reactors could be struck down, each doing their own ‘Fukushima’.

This would not just bring massive radioactive contamination to China’s most developed, prosperous, productive and populated regions, but spread around the world in air and sea currents to make the world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe.

The only good news in all this is that nuclear construction in China is not proceeding anything like as fast as Forbes magazine claims. Most of the more modern ‘Generation III’ reactors are well behind in their completion times, echoing the European experience with the failed EPR design.

We can only hope that construction difficulties persist and abound – and that China’s rulers realise that investments in solar, wind and other renewables are a quicker, surer, safer way to bring power to the masses – and one that poses no existential threat to their country, and the world.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

“China shows the way to build nuclear reactors fast and cheap.” That was the bullish headline in a Forbes magazine article last week.

It went on to praise the scale of the planned nuclear investment in China’s new Five-Year Plan that runs from 2016 to 2020. Under the plan the government is to invest over US$100 billion to build seven new reactors a year until 2030.

“By 2050”, James Conca wrote for Forbes, “nuclear power should exceed 350 GW in that country, include about 400 new nuclear reactors, and have resulted in over a trillion dollars in nuclear investment.”

Now Conca is pretty enthusiastic about this. But the reality is a potential nuclear nightmare in the making. Experience to date shows that we should, on average, expect a major nuclear accident to take place for every 3,000 to 4,000 years of reactor operation. And with over 400 reactors running at once, it doesn’t take long to clock up those 3,000 years.

In fact, you could reasonably expect a major Chernobyl or Fukushima level accident every seven to ten years – in China alone, if it pursues nuclear build on that scale.

Just how safe is China anyway

Now if China had a fantastic record of safety in its construction and other industries, maybe the odds shoold be made a bit longer. Swiss-style reactors might come in at only one big foulup every 10,000 years, for example.

But that’s not China. This August past we had the massive fire and multiple explosions at the Port of Tianjin, that killed almost 200 people and devastated several square kilometres of the industrial zone. 

It later transpired that over 7,000 tonnes of hazardous chemicals were stored there, among them sodium cyanide, calcium carbide and ammonium and potassium nitrate, many of them kept in breach of regulations. The owners had links to the highest echelons of the Chinese state – something that may have ensured very light touch regulation.

China has also experienced some recent high speed train crashes, the worst in July 2011. Two bullet trains collided head-on on a viaductin Wenzhou, Zhejiang province owing to faulty signalling, killing 40 people. The accident was blamed by the Chinese government itself on “design flaws and sloppy management”, according to the BBC.

China also has a notoriously poor safety record in a range of industries from construction to coal mining.

If anything we should expect China’s nuclear industry to be rather less safe that the western average, especially given the cacophony of new reactor designs and variations thereof under construction simultaneously at multiple sites with absolutely no history of operation – safe or otherwise.

Another factor is the secrecy that surrounds nuclear contruction and operation in China. These matters simply are not reported on other than in glowing terms in the official press. And secrecy is all too often a cover for poor practice and cut corners.

So in fact there’s a good case for thinking that Chinese reactors might pop, not one in every 3,000 to 4,000 years of operation, but rather more often. Every 2,000 years perhaps? At that rate we could expect a couple of major nuclear catastrophes every decade.

Cheap? Some scepticism is in order

Where Forbes celebrates the wonderfully low cost of Chinese nuclear power we must also be a little sceptical. for example, “Six Chinese-designed 1000 MW reactors at Yangjiang will be a huge nuclear power base for China General Nuclear, and will cost only US$11.5 billion for over 6000 MWe, a third of the cost in western countries.”

Or at Changjang Unit 1, on Hainan Island, “The total cost of this first pair of Chinese-designed 600 MW units is only about US$3.15 billion.” While at Fangchenggang, “Six reactors are planned at this site at a total cost of about US$12 billion … It seems as though 5 years and about $2 billion per reactor has become routine for China.”

How do we know what these reactors really cost? The fact is, we don’t. With China’s nuclear corporations under the control of various organs of state including the Communist Party and the Peoples Liberation Army, official statistics and accounts can simply not be relied upon.

Nuclear construction in China must be cheaper than in the US and Europe due to lower labour costs. But if it really is that much cheaper it can only be at a huge safety penalty.

Take the construction problems and delays at the two current EPR sites in Europe at Flamanville, France, and Olkiluoto, Finland, both now running about three times over original cost estimates. Many of the delays have been caused by safety failures. Over, for example, the flawed metallurgy of the Flamanville reactor vessel and concerns over the reliability of key valves in the cooling system.

Now of course, if you simple ignore such problems and press ahead with construction to meet the targets set down a five-year plan, construction is a whole lot quicker and cheaper. But the chances of reactors popping in years to come is also considerably greater.

Tsunami risk – not if but when

It’s also instructive to look at the map of nuclear reactors scheduled for completion in the next decade provided by Forbes. The great bulk of them – 77 reactors in all – are built along China’s east and south coasts, for two reasons: that’s where the demand is, and that’s where the cooling water is readily available, from the sea.

But of course that’s just the ones due to be completed in the next decade. If the full plan for 400 reactors by 2050 is fulfilled, probably some 300 of them would be sea-facing.

There are, of course, nuclear hazards to inland reactors from flooding on the Yellow and Yangtse rivers and tributaries. But a much greater danger arises from tsunamis. China’s south and east coasts face out to seismically active waters. And as the Japanese discovered at Fukushima, water and nuclear power don’t mix well – specially when earthquakes and tsunamis are thrown in.

Interest in this topic was stimulated by the two Hengchun Earthquakes off the Taiwan coast in December 2006, which damaged buildings and disrupted communications by severing undersea cables.

One recent study put the risk of a powerful tsunami greater than 2m in height striking Hong Kong or Macau at about 10% over the coming century, mainly due to seismic activity in the Manila Trench. But head further north and east and the chances go up significantly to 13.34% at Shantou in Guangdong province.

And it may be more than that, the authors note: “This probability estimate may increase with a recent rise in the earthquake activities, which started with the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake, because the Taiwan region has a earthquake cycle time of around 80-100 years.”

What is certain is that the tsunami hazard is real and substantial. Literature of historical seismic records of this region is “abundant”, the authors write. The northern Manila Trench near Taiwan is “is likely to have avery large earthquake in the future. In addition the regionis a volcanic belt. If volcano and earthquake occur in concert, a much larger tsunami disaster would develop.

“Although the southern part of the Manila Trench is far away from the coast of China, the local historical records of this region have many tsunami earthquakes up to the magnitude of around 8.0. Since the oceanic portion of the South China Sea is mostly deep, tsunamic waves generated in the Manila Trench region can reach the coast of China with little loss in energy.

“The wave energy can then be released in the shallow water region, and can impose a tremendous tsunami hazard to the coastal regions.”

The world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe

I have done no study of the tsunami vulnerability of all the 300 nuclear reactors that could end up being built along China’s east and south coasts. But at least one – the CANDU reactor shown in the photo (above right) at Qinshan, where seven reactors are currently operational, looks vulnerable in the extreme.

And the consequences of a really big earthquake and tsunami hitting China’s coastal array of 300 nuclear reactors would be truly catastrophic. Many dozens of reactors could be struck down, each doing their own ‘Fukushima’.

This would not just bring massive radioactive contamination to China’s most developed, prosperous, productive and populated regions, but spread around the world in air and sea currents to make the world’s first truly global nuclear catastrophe.

The only good news in all this is that nuclear construction in China is not proceeding anything like as fast as Forbes magazine claims. Most of the more modern ‘Generation III’ reactors are well behind in their completion times, echoing the European experience with the failed EPR design.

We can only hope that construction difficulties persist and abound – and that China’s rulers realise that investments in solar, wind and other renewables are a quicker, surer, safer way to bring power to the masses – and one that poses no existential threat to their country, and the world.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

In just two months, fire has consumed over 45% of the Amazon rainforest in the Araribóia Indigenous Reserve in Maranhão state – an area of protected forest that is home to thousands of people.

And despite their efforts, the fire continues to rage out of control (see map, right).

What’s worse, this no act of nature. The Indigenous Peoples of this area, the Guajajara, claim that the fires are caused by loggers in retaliation for the Guajajara’s work to combat their illegal logging activities.

The Guajajara monitor and patrol their lands to ensure that illegal logging doesn’t take place, and have managed to reduce timber theft in the Araribóia territory. But now they are facing serious reprisals.

The forest fire is shaping up to be one of the largest in the history of Brazil. It has already consumed about 190,000 of the 413,000 hectares that make up Araribóia – that’s larger than the entire area of Rio de Janeiro.

Last week the fire grew to gigantic proportions, registering an average of 560 new hot spots every day. The line of fire is over 100 km long.

What’s (not) being done

This fire is gigantic, but up until a couple weeks ago, the Guajajara were fighting it with hardly any resources from the Brazilian government. A team of 30 Indigenous firefighters were working day and night without the backup they needed.

Indigenous leaders of the Guajajara people sought to change this. Earlier this month, they protested outside government offices (see photo, above right), denouncing the government’s apparent indifference to the fire and drawing attention to the issue.

It wasn’t until government inspectors who worked in fire fighting were attacked by an armed group within Arariboia Indigenous Land the government began taking Guajajara requests for help more seriously. The Maranhão Fire Department yesterday sent 40 fire-fighters to the Araribóia Indigenous Reserve.  

The government’s slow reaction has come with heavy costs. When the Guajajara protest took place, 25% of Arariboia had been impacted by fires. Now, just over two weeks later, the impact area already accounts for 45% of the territory.

And this fire could lead to more fire in the future. Because fires like this deeply damage the rainforest and lower the humidity of the area, they actually increase the chance for future naturally-caused fires later.

What must be done

Illegal logging in Indigenous lands is happening all over Brazil. And as Indigenous Peoples take measures to stop it, retaliation – like violence or starting fires in the forest – grows.

In early September, Greenpeace Brazil was working with the Ka’apor people to support the independent monitoring of their territory using the latest technology as well as traditional methods. During that time, local reports indicated that loggers set fire to the edges of Indigenous lands and that some villages were already surrounded by flames.

There’s no doubt that the government of Brazil must do more to protect Indigenous Lands and the people living there from illegal loggers. They must also provide more support for fighting fires to Indigenous Peoples.

But the global community must also pay attention. Illegal timber from Indigenous Lands like Araribóia makes it to the international timber market all the time – fueling the violence and retaliation that led to these forest fires.

It is the responsibility of the international buyers of Amazon wood to ensure their supply chains aren’t connected to illegal logging. Only when illegal timber is too risky or no longer lucrative will it finally be extinguished.

Luana Lila is an Amazon Communications Officer at Greenpeace Brazil.

This article was originally published on the Greenpeace International Blog.

In 2009, faced with a likely multi-billion dollar verdict against it for massive, deliberate pollution at Lago Agrio in the Ecuadorian Amazon with oil spills and oil production wastes, Chevron began fabricating an elaborate story of bribery, corruption and ghostwriting to strike back.

Sure enough, the lawsuit went against Chevron. On 14th February 2011, the Ecuadorian courts ordered the company to pay $9.5 billion dollars and to offer a public apology for the damage – failing which, the compensation would double. The ruling was upheld in January 2012 and in November 2013.

In the end, the company failed to apologise, and Ecuador’s supreme court left the damages at $9.5 billion. But by then Chevron had fled Ecuador – and the problem was, how to collect the money. Ecuador resorted to the US federal courts in New York in its bid for justice.

Chevron had its story ready. It claimed everyone and everything against it was part of a scheme – the evidence, the contamination, the Ecuadorian villagers, all the environmental and human rights organizations – everyone.

The company spent millions to concoct its cover story. And it worked. In March 2014, New York federal judge Kaplan ruled that Chevron’s conviction in Ecuador’s courts was “fraudulent” – making the $9.5 billion uncollectable.

In his decision, based on violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, Kaplan found that the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Steven Donziger, committed mail fraud, engaged in coercion, and paid bribes in order to win the judgment.

There was only one big problem: the verdict hinged upon the testimony of a completely non-credible witness – who has now admitted on the stand that he lied about it in exchange for payments from Chevron.

It all looked like a slam dunk

Back in 2009, someone at Chevron was probably jumping up and down exclaiming ‘slam dunk!’ The company had found someone they could buy who was willing to say what they needed to pull together their fabricated fraud story in Ecuador.

How did they ‘find’ him? Easy, he came to Chevron asking for a bribe to help Chevron get out of its massive legal problems in Ecuador. That should have been a red flag, but fueled by their own arrogance and legal hubris Chevron moved forward with Guerra as their star witness.

It turns out that rather than a Bond-esque spy thriller with intrigue and a sophisticated plot, the story for Chevron is more like ‘Harold and Kumar go to White Castle’.

Alberto Guerra, who we explained before is a corrupt ex-judge, claimed that the legal team for the Ecuadorians offered him a bribe to ghostwrite the judgment against Chevron. Guerra said he asked Chevron for a bribe first, and they turned him down, so then he went to the Ecuadorians.

Despite the fact that Guerra was acknowledged by judge Kaplan himself to be less than credible, his testimony was allowed to stand. And yes, this is the same judge that forbade evidence of actual contamination.

The argument was that Guerra’s testimony fit the ‘circumstantial evidence’ against the Ecuadorian legal team. Except that evidence has also evaporated.

The lies unravelled as Chevron tried to sue Ecuador in a trade tribunal

The sweetest irony is how this has all come about. Chevron brought a separate case to the International Arbitration Tribunal in The Hague under the US-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty. In obvious forum shopping (which has been called out by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals) they were hoping to pin their financial liability on the Ecuadorian tax payer.

Only their entire effort is backfiring – like when that body recently denied Chevron’s claim that an agreement with the government of Ecuador released them from civil liability. Much like the actual evidence it presented in Ecuador, Chevron is hanging itself with the very action it hoped to use to escape justice.

Guerra claimed that the bribe of $300,000 he was offered (at one point he also said it was $500,000) was to work with the presiding judge Zambrano to ghostwrite the judgment. When asked about it before the Hague Tribunal he said: “Yes sir, I lied there…I wasn’t being truthful.”

Zambrano has denied this from the beginning and all the forensic evidence backs it up. You see, also as part of Chevron’s Hague action, the government of Ecuador hired the world’s top computer forensic analyst to review the document. As Courthouse News reported this week:

” … forensic expert Christopher Racich testified that he found a running draft of the judgment against Chevron on Zambrano’s hard drives. Ecuador now argues that this forensic evidence – which Courthouse News reported exclusively early this year – proves Zambrano painstakingly wrote the ruling and saved it hundreds of times throughout the case. Chevron has not been able to produce emails between Guerra, Zambrano and the purported ghostwriters, Donziger and Fajardo, Ecuador’s forensic expert says.”

The seemingly never ending stream of Guerra lies doesn’t stop there. At first Guerra said that he had thumb drives with the judgment on it to prove his claim. Then later he admitted that he didn’t. Then he said he has calendar entries of his meetings with the Ecuadorian legal team. Then he admitted that he didn’t. Guerra also claimed he had agreed with Zambrano to cut him in for 20%. Now he admits that too was a lie.

Chevron claims evidence of meetings with Guerra and Zambrano backs up their claims. But no, Guerra now says no meetings he ever had with Zambrano had anything to do with Chevron. Oops.

As Donziger put it: “Chevron has now been busted by the lying testimony of its main witness. The latest iteration of Guerra’s testimony proves clearly that Chevron paid its star witness huge sums of money to present false evidence to frame the very people in Ecuador the company poisoned.”

The only bribe was the one that Chevron paid

Indeed there is evidence of a bribe – Chevron bribed Guerra to make up this story. And unlike the lie about ghostwriting, there’s actual evidence to back this bribe up.

Guerra, a man with less than $200 in his bank account at the time, admits that he said all these things to get more money out of Chevron. He and his entire family now live in a house Chevron bought for him, drives a car they gave him and live on $12,000 per month from the oil giant. How’s that for evidence?

At this point, I’m sure you are asking yourself: How on Earth did Chevron get this witness on the stand in a NY Federal Court in the first place, and what did they think would happen once his true story came out? (The Ecuadorians tried to save Judge Kaplan from the embarrassment.)

Well, they were certainly worried about how Guerra would do – which is why they coached him for 53 straight days before his testimony. It clearly wasn’t enough.

Chevron’s polluted house of cards has come crashing down around them. Guerra is a liar – and he freely admits it. Chevron can either double down and insist Guerra was “before it before he was against it” or denounce him now – in which case they can never argue he’s credible by any stretch.

There’s a lot of provably unethical and illegal behavior here – all of it from Chevron’s camp.

Now they should face racketeering charges

“We intend to bring these significant developments to the attention of the Second Circuit panel in New York”, said Deepak Gupta, appellate lawyer for Steven Donziger.

In addition to what he calls “overwhelming evidence of pollution on the ground”, Gupta believes the tribunal members “have also been presented with far more thorough evidence rebutting Chevron’s corruption allegations … There’s a very real possibility that the arbitrators will reject Judge Kaplan’s findings.”

The Federal Appeals Court should completely throw out Kaplan’s verdict. It depends entirely on Guerra’s false testimony and the judgement against Chevron has been conclusively proven to be legitimately written by Zambrano – as the Ecuadorian appeals court had already determined.

Chevron and their lawyers should be investigated and brought up on charges. They have intimidated judges in Ecuador, bribed others, falsified evidence, and coached Guerra to submit false testimony in US Federal Court and made a complete mockery of the our judicial system, not to mention the mis-use of a trade agreement to go after the government of Ecuador.

Amazon Watch will be calling for such an investigation. We know Chevron is never likely to admit they lied and schemed to create this false RICO attack. Nor will they stop trying to attack us and our funders. They need to be held to account.

Chevron: ‘We’re going to fight this until hell freezes over’

We look forward to the day they try to peddle this always preposterous and now utterly discredited RICO verdict in Canada, where Ecuador last month won the right to pursue its claim. Perhaps we will all get a chance to see Guerra take the stand once again. If so, it can only get worse for Chevron.

“This is no longer just a cause in Ecuador – this is a cause for any country where the same thing could happen. We have a responsibility beyond our own interests”, said Ecuador’s environment minister, Lorena Tapia.

“We know this isn’t an easy path, but we are very convinced of our arguments, and there is no way we will step down or stop doing everything we can to get the oil company to respond.”

A Chevron company spokesman once said that it would fight this case to the bitter end: “We’re going to fight this until hell freezes over. And then we’ll fight it out on the ice.”

That looks like what is about to happen.

Paul Paz y Miño is Director of Outreach and Online Strategy at Amazon Watch. Paul is also an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and served on the board of Peace Brigades International USA. Follow Paul on Twitter: @paulpaz

This article is an extended (by The Ecologist) version of one originally published on Amazon Watch.

Media and climate activists have concluded a successful 48-hour vigil and protest outside the London HQ of the Daily Mail in Derry Street, South Kensington.

The aim of the protest was to draw attention to the role of just five media-owning billionaires – proprietors of the Mail, Sun, Times, Express, and Telegraph – in setting a ‘climate change sceptic’, and anti-renewable energy agenda in public and political discourse, so paving the way for the government’s disastrous energy policies.

“While modest in numbers, this weekend’s Occupy the Daily Mail – Climate Crisis Vigil was big in effect”, said co-organiser Donnachadh McCarthy.

“We successfully established a tented Occupy and maintained it for the promised 48 hours over three days, with no arrests! Over 1,500 copies of the ‘Occupied Daily Mail’ were handed out to Daily Mail staff and members of the public.

“An amazing number of Daily Mail staff were very positive about the protest, saying that they fully agreed with us and that the Mail’s climate denialism was awful. One staff member who took the Occupied Mail, came back later to say it was brilliant and a number of staff had posted it up on their office walls!

“Another staff member reported that the senior management were forced by the Occupy Vigil to email all staff to claim that they were taking climate change issue responsibly!”

Private meeting with Mail’s managing editor

As a result of the protest the Managing Director of the Daily Mail, Charles Garside, invited McCarthy and Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett, a speaker at the event, into a private meeting to discuss the paper’s coverage of the climate crisis, together with the Mail’s environment correspondent Colin Fernandez.

During the meeting the two presented evidence of misleading and unscientific headlines, which the newspaper staff undertook to respond to. A candlelit silent vigil later followed to remember the people killed by climate change – which the UN currently estimates is nearly 500,000 a year.

“We believe this to have been an historic first time the managing editor of any national newspaper has invited Occupy to a direct meeting”, said McCarthy.

“We also believe it is even more historic in that we believe it was also the first time any national party leader has met with the editor of any national newspaper to urge them to be pro-active and responsible in their coverage of the climate crisis.”

Next – a ‘Climate Crisis Media Project’

On the final evening the ‘general assembly of protestors agreed that Occupy The Media Billionaires would continue staging actions tackling the billionaire owned press.

They also resolved to establish a ‘Climate Crisis Media Project’ to tackle the corrupt climate denialism endemic in all the newspapers owned by the five extremist right wing billionaires.

McCarthy’s concluding message: “The media are crucial in the run-up to the crucial Paris climate crisis summit in December. The fossil fuel lobbyists, oil corporations and corrupt politicians are destroying any hope of meaningful climate crisis action in Britain with impunity, behind the protection of the right-wing media billionaires.

“We therefore desperately need the editors / owners of the big four corporate media corporations to support urgent action on the climate crisis to save Britain and the wider global environment.”

“Huge thanks to everybody who helped organise and support and attend the Vigil, and especially to those who camped over-night and helped hold the space, in quite difficult circumstances. Yes We Did!! Yes We Can!!”

Video report by IndyRikki Media – ‘sporadic independent radical journalism from London’.

Facebook: Occupy The Daily Mail – Climate Crisis Vigil and Occupy The Media Billionaires.