Ambient office = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 101 nanosieverts per hour

Mini cucumber from Central Market = 73 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 158 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 148 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 136 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 146 nanosieverts per hour

Green onion from Central Market = 115 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 82 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 69 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient office = 87 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 122 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 122 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 76 nanosieverts per hour

Dover Sole from Central = 114 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     In 2017, evidence was submitted to a parliamentary public accounts committee investigation of the deal to build Hinkley Point C power plant. On the basis of the evidence, the committee asked the then MoD head (who previously oversaw civil nuclear contract negotiations) about the military nuclear links. His response was:
“We are completing the building of the nuclear submarines which carry conventional weaponry. We have at some point to renew the warheads, so there is very definitely an opportunity here for the nation to grasp in terms of building up its nuclear skills. I do not think that that is going to happen by accident; it is going to require concerted government action to make it happen.”
     This is even more evident in government actions than words. For example, hundreds of millions of pounds have been dedicated to a nuclear innovation program and a nuclear sector deal which is “committed to increasing the opportunities for transferability between civil and defense industries.”
     Despite all this, military pressures for nuclear power development are not widely recognized in the U.K. On the few occasions when it receives media attention, the U.K. government has officially denied the link.
     Other nations with nuclear weapons are also striving to maintain expensive military infrastructures (especially around submarine reactors) just when the civilian industry is fading into obsolesce. This is the case in the US, France, Russia and China.
     Other countries tend to be more honest about it, with the interdependence acknowledged at the executive level in the US for instance. French president Emmanuel Macron stated that: “without civil nuclear power, no military nuclear power, without military nuclear, no civil nuclear.”
     This is one of the main reasons why nuclear-armed France is pressuring the European Union to support nuclear power. This is also why non-nuclear-armed Germany has phased out the nuclear technologies it once led the world in. Other nuclear-armed states are disproportionately fixated by nuclear power.
     These military pressures help explain why the U.K. refuses to acknowledge poor nuclear performance, yet is so supportive of general nuclear skills. Powerful military interests are driving this persistence with characteristic secrecy and active PR.
     Neglect of this situation makes it all the more disturbing. Outside defense budgets, off the public books and away from due scrutiny, expensive support is being dedicated to a joint civil-military nuclear industrial base mainly to help fund military needs. These hidden subsidies make nuclear submarines look affordable, but electricity and climate action more costly.
     The conclusions are not obvious. Some might argue military needs justify excessive nuclear costs. But history teaches that policies are more likely to go awry if reasons are hidden. In the U.K., nuclear realities have been strongly officially denied. However, the issues are not just about energy, or climate, but democracy.
     If nuclear weapons could be abandoned, then a great deal of public money would be released to spend on renewable energy sources. This would allow the mitigation of climate change to proceed much more quickly.

Ambient office = 90 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 129 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 136 nanosieverts per hour

Bannana from Central Market = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 69 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     The U.K. government has just announced the “biggest expansion of the nuclear sector in 70 years.” This follows years of extraordinarily expensive support for nuclear projects.
     Official assessments acknowledge that nuclear power generation performs poorly compared to alternatives. With renewables and storage significantly cheaper and becoming even cheaper over time, climate goals can be achieved faster, more affordably and reliably by diverse other means. The only new nuclear power station under construction is still not finished, running ten years late and many times over budget.
     Why does this questionable technology enjoy such intense and persistent generosity?
     The U.K. government has failed to even to try to justify support for nuclear power in the kinds of detailed substantive energy terms that were once routine. The last properly rigorous energy generation white paper was in 2003.
     Even before wind and solar costs plummeted to new lows, this report recognized nuclear as “unattractive.” The delayed 2020 white paper on power generation didn’t detail any comparative nuclear and renewable costs, let alone justify why this more expensive option receives such disproportionate funding.
     A document published with the latest announcement, Civil Nuclear: Roadmap to 2050, is also focused more on affirming official support than substantively justifying it. While supposedly a “civil” strategy, it contains multiple statements about addressing “civil and military nuclear ambitions” together to “identify opportunities to align the two across government.”
     These pressures from the military side are acknowledged by other states with nuclear weapons, but were until now treated like a secret in the UK. Civil nuclear energy generation maintains the skills and supply chains needed for military nuclear programs.
     Official U.K. energy policy documents fail to seriously justify nuclear power, but on the military side the picture is clear. For example, in 2006 then prime minister Tony Blair performed a total reversal to ignore his own white paper and pledge nuclear power would be “back with a vengeance.” Widely criticized for being based on a “secret” process, this white paper followed a major three volume study by the military-linked RAND Corporation for the Ministry of Defense (MoD) effectively warning that the U.K. “industrial base” for design, manufacture and maintenance of nuclear submarines would become unaffordable if the country phased out civil nuclear power.
A 2007 report from submarine-makers BAE Systems called for these military costs to be “masked” behind civil programs. A secret MoD report in 2014 (later released by freedom of information) showed clearly how declining nuclear power erodes military nuclear skills.
     In multiple parliamentary hearings, academics, engineering organizations, research centers, industry bodies and trade unions have urged continuing civil nuclear power generation as a means to support military capabilities.
     In 2017, submarine reactor manufacturer Rolls Royce even issued a report, marshaling the case for expensive “small modular reactors” to “relieve the MoD of the burden of developing and retaining skills and capability.”
     The U.K. government itself has remained reluctant to acknowledge this pressure to “mask” military costs behind civilian nuclear programs. Yet the motive is clear in the repeated emphasis on the supposedly self-evident imperative to “keep the nuclear option open” – as if this were an end in itself, no matter what the cost. Energy ministers are occasionally more honest, with one calling civil-military distinctions “artificial” and quietly saying: “I want to include the MoD more in everything we do”.
Please read Part 2 next