UK Government gives go-ahead for nuclear plant development with EDF

Plans for the Sizewell C nuclear plant were approved on Thursday, with French energy giant EDF saying the plant would generate about 7% of the UK's electricity needs.

By Eric Albert (London (United Kingdom) correspondent)

Published on November 18, 2022

After a series of last-minute delays over the last two months in the UK, and the recent political instability in the country, an agreement now appears to have been reached between the British government and EDF to develop a new nuclear power plant.

While delivering the autumn statement on Thursday, November 17, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt announced the official decision to acquire a stake in Sizewell C, an EPR (European Pressurised Reactor, a nuclear reactor) project in the east of England, to be built and managed by the French electricity company.

"The government will proceed with the new nuclear power plant at Sizewell C," said Mr. Hunt. "Subject to final government approvals, the contracts for the initial investment will be signed with relevant parties, including EDF, in the coming weeks." The French utility company said it was "delighted" with the announcement.

Huge construction site

This agreement is not yet a green light for a new EPR to be built. One key element is missing: nearly €25 billion in financing. For now, the project for the plant, in which EDF and the British government will each hold a 50% stake, will be developed.

This will allow them to sideline the Chinese General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), which had been involved in Sizewell C for several years, and to bring in new cash to finance the cost of the development. The British government will contribute £700 million (€800 million) to the project.

EDF is already the operator of the UK's eight active nuclear power stations. It is also building Hinkley Point C in western England, two new EPRs with a total capacity of 3.2 gigawatts, the first of which is set to open in 2026. This huge construction site, on which more than 7,500 people work every day, was launched in 2016 and has been the subject of controversy.

At the time, the British government refused to pay a penny and EDF decided to finance the project with its own funds. However, the cost was prohibitive, and in January 2021, it was revised upwards to the cost of "£22 billion to £23 billion" (at 2015 prices; adjusted for inflation, it is close to £28 billion to £29 billion today). This decision led to the resignation of EDF's financial director, who felt that the risk was too great.

To soften the blow, the French company adopted a two-pronged approach. First, it signed an extraordinary contract with the British government, which guaranteed the sale price of electricity at £92.50 per megawatt-hour (at the time, double the market price) for 35 years. Second, it brought in CGN, which financed one-third of Hinkley Point C. At the same time, CGN took a 20% stake in the Sizewell C development project and was promised the opportunity to build a power plant using its own technology at Bradwell in northern England.

Finding investors

This all sounded brave during the "golden age" of UK-China relations proclaimed by then-Prime Minister David Cameron. Now, due to growing tensions with Beijing, the British government wants nothing to do with CGN. The Bradwell project will not see the light of day, and CGN is being asked to withdraw from Sizewell C.

To this end, the current agreement with EDF is to be signed, probably by the end of November. The British government and EDF will jointly oversee the development project, which alone requires a fairly substantial investment of around £1.5 billion.

All that remains is the trickiest part: finding investors. This time around, EDF does not want to – and cannot – finance the project from its own funds. The energy company has been trying for years to attract large North American pension funds or funds specializing in infrastructure projects which might be interested in an almost guaranteed return over a very long period, while the British government increasing its stake is an important gesture intended to reassure the French electric company. EDF hopes to conclude finance talks and make the final investment decision within 12 to 18 months.

Bolsonaro Supporters Lay Siege to Brazil’s Capital

Backers of former President Jair Bolsonaro ransacked government offices, denouncing what they falsely claim was a rigged election. Hundreds were arrested.

By Jack Nicas and André Spigariol

Jack Nicas reported from Rio de Janeiro and André Spigariol reported from Brasília. They have covered right-wing attacks on Brazil’s election systems since 2021.

Published Jan. 8, 2023Updated Jan. 9, 2023, 1:40 a.m. ET

Thousands of supporters of Brazil’s ousted former president, Jair Bolsonaro, stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices on Sunday to protest what they falsely claim was a stolen election, the violent culmination of years of conspiracy theories advanced by Mr. Bolsonaro and his right-wing allies.

In scenes reminiscent of the Jan. 6 storming of the United States Capitol, protesters in Brasília, Brazil’s capital, draped in the yellow and green of Brazil’s flag surged into the seat of power, setting fires, repurposing barricades as weapons, knocking police officers from horseback and filming their crimes as they committed them.

“We always said we would not give up,” one protester declared as he filmed himself among hundreds of protesters pushing into the Capitol building. “Congress is ours. We are in power.”

For months, protesters had been demanding that the military prevent the newly elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from taking office on Jan. 1. Many on the right in Brazil have become convinced, despite the lack of evidence, that October’s election was rigged.

For years, Mr. Bolsonaro had asserted, without any proof, that Brazil’s election systems were rife with fraud and that the nation’s elites were conspiring to remove him from power.

Mr. Lula said Sunday that those false claims had fueled the attack on the plaza, known as Three Powers Square because of the presence of the three branches of government. Mr. Bolsonaro “triggered this,” he said in an address to the nation. “He spurred attacks on the three powers whenever he could. This is also his responsibility.”

Late Sunday, Mr. Bolsonaro criticized the protests, saying on Twitter that peaceful demonstrations are part of democracy, but that “destruction and invasions of public buildings, like what occurred today,” are not. But he also rejected Mr. Lula’s accusations, saying they were “without proof.”

At his inauguration, Mr. Lula said that uniting Brazil, Latin America’s largest country and one of the world’s biggest democracies, would be a central goal of his administration. The invasion of the capital suggests that the nation’s divisions are more profound than many had imagined, and it saddles the new president with a major challenge just one week into his administration.

After Mr. Lula was inaugurated, protesters put out calls online for others to join them for a massive demonstration on Sunday. It quickly turned violent.

Hundreds of protesters ascended a ramp to the roof of the congressional building in Brasília, the capital, while a smaller group invaded the building from a lower level, according to witnesses and videos of the scene posted on social media. Other groups of protesters splintered off and broke into the presidential offices and the Supreme Court, which are in the same plaza.

The scene was chaotic.

Protesters streamed into the government buildings, which were largely empty on a Sunday, breaking windows, overturning furniture and looting items inside, according to videos they posted online.

The crowds shouted that they were taking their country back, and that they would not be stopped. Outnumbered, the police fired what appeared to be rubber bullets, pepper spray and tear-gas canisters, including from two helicopters overhead.

“Police are cowardly trying to expel the people from Congress, but there is no way, because even more are arriving,” said one protester in a video filmed from inside Congress and showing hundreds of protesters on multiple floors. “No one is taking our country, damn it.”

Eventually Brazilian Army soldiers helped retake control of some buildings.

Mr. Lula, who was not in Brasília during the invasion, issued an emergency decree until Jan. 31 that allows the federal government to take “any measures necessary” to restore order in the capital. “There is no precedent for what these people have done, and for that, these people must be punished,” he said.

The president, who arrived in the capital late in the day to inspect the damage, said that his government would also investigate anyone who may have financed the protests.

Mr. Bolsonaro appeared to be in Florida. He flew to Orlando in the final days of his presidency, in hopes that his absence from the country would help cool off investigations into his activity as president, according to a friend of the president’s who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. He planned to stay in Florida for one to three months, this person said.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.

Mr. Bolsonaro has never unequivocally conceded defeat in the election, leaving it to his aides to handle the transition of power and skipping the inauguration, where he was supposed to pass the presidential sash to Mr. Lula, an important symbol of the transition of power for a country that lived under a 21-year military dictatorship until 1985.

After the election, he said he supported peaceful protests inspired by “feelings of injustice in the electoral process.”

But before departing for Florida, Mr. Bolsonaro suggested to his supporters that they move on. “We live in a democracy or we don’t,” he said in a recorded statement. “No one wants an adventure.”

His calls were ignored.

The next day, thousands of his supporters remained camped outside the Army headquarters in Brasília, with many convinced that the military and Mr. Bolsonaro were about to execute a secret plan to prevent Mr. Lula’s inauguration.

“The army will step in,” Magno Rodrigues, 60, a former mechanic and janitor, said in an interview on Dec. 31, the day before Mr. Lula took office. He had been camped outside the army’s headquarters for nine weeks and said he was prepared to stay “for the rest of my life if I have to.”

One of Mr. Lula’s central challenges as president will be to unify the nation after a bitter election in which some of his supporters framed Mr. Bolsonaro as genocidal and cannibalistic, while Mr. Bolsonaro repeatedly called Mr. Lula a criminal. (Mr. Lula served 19 months in prison on corruption charges that were later thrown out.)

Surveys have shown that a sizable chunk of the population say they believe Mr. Lula stole the election, fueled by false claims that have spread across the internet and a shift among many right-wing voters away from traditional sources of news — problems that have also plagued American politics in recent years.

President Biden, who was visiting the southern U.S. border, called the protests “outrageous,” and Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser, said the United States “condemns any effort to undermine democracy in Brazil.”

“Our support for Brazil’s democratic institutions is unwavering,” Mr. Sullivan wrote on Twitter. “Brazil’s democracy will not be shaken by violence.”

Some far-right provocateurs in the United States however, cheered on the attacks, posting videos of the riots and calling the protesters “patriots” who were trying to uphold the Brazilian Constitution. Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald J. Trump, called the protesters “Brazilian Freedom Fighters” in a social-media post. Mr. Bannon has had close ties with one of Mr. Bolsonaro’s sons.

At first, the rioters had a relatively easy time breaching the buildings. State police officers tried to hold them back, but they were far outnumbered. The demonstrations had been advertised widely on social media for days.

“It was scary, it was insanity,” said Adriana Reis, 30, a cleaner at Congress who witnessed the scene. “They tried hard, with pepper spray, to drive them off, but I don’t think the police could handle them all.” After protesters streamed in, “we ran away to hide,” she said.

Videos from inside Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential offices quickly filled social-media feeds and group chats, showing protesters wearing their national flag and trudging through the halls of power, not exactly sure what to do next.

They sat in the padded chairs of the Chamber of Deputies, rifled through paperwork in the presidential offices and posed with a golden coat of arms that appeared to be ripped from the wall of the Supreme Court’s chambers. Federal officials later distributed images and videos from the presidential offices that showed destroyed computers, art ripped from frames and firearm cases that had been emptied of their guns.

The protesters were ransacking buildings that have been hailed as gems of Modernist architecture. Designed by the celebrated Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer in the 1950s, the Supreme Court, for instance, features columns of concrete clad in white marble that echo the fluttering of a sheet in the wind. And Congress is known for being capped with both a dome, under which the Senate is located, and a sort of bowl, under which the House is located.

Outside the presidential offices, they raised the flag of the Brazilian Empire, a period in the 19th century before Brazil became a democracy, and they sang Brazil’s national anthem. Videos of the rampage showed many protesters with phones aloft, filming the scene.

“There is no way to stop the people,” one protester declared as he live-streamed hundreds of protesters charging onto the roof of Congress. “Subscribe to my channel, guys.”

Several news outlets said their journalists were attacked and robbed during the rioting. And Ricardo Stuckert, Mr. Lula’s official photographer, had his passport and more than $95,000 worth of equipment stolen from a room in the presidential offices, according to his wife, Cristina Lino.

By late afternoon, military trucks had arrived.

Armed soldiers entered the presidential offices through a back door to ambush rioters inside. Shortly after, protesters began to stream out of the building, including some escorted by law enforcement officers.

By 9 p.m., more than seven hours after the invasions began, Brazil’s justice minister, Flávio Dino, said the buildings had been cleared. He said officials had arrested at least 200 people. The governor of Brasília said the number of arrests had exceeded 400.

Valdemar Costa Neto, the head of Mr. Bolsonaro’s right-wing Liberal Party, criticized the protesters.

“Today is a sad day for the Brazilian nation,” he said in a statement. “All orderly demonstrations are legitimate. Disorder has never been part of our nation’s principles.”

The Brazilian flag draped around many of the rioters on Sunday includes three words: “Order and progress.”

Reporting was contributed by Ana Ionova, Yan Boechat, Leonardo Coelho, Laís Martins and Gustavo Freitas.

Can Stem Cell Meat Save the Planet?

Eggs, chicken and fish from the laboratory: Singapore is the first country in the world to approve the sale of meat produced from stem cells. Will it be enough to feed the world?

By Maria Stöhr

06.01.2023, 20.56 Uhrken from the laboratory: Is this the future of food?

For our Global Societies project, reporters around the world will be writing about societal problems, sustainability and development in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. The series will include features, analyses, photo essays, videos and podcasts looking behind the curtain of globalization. The project is generously funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Just imagine for a moment that you could save the world with chicken nuggets. All you would have to do is just eat them. Your teeth would sink into real meat, yet no animal would have lost its life for your meal. It will have been grown in the laboratory from a single chicken cell. Imagine that there would suddenly be enough meat from the laboratory to feed everybody in the world. Hunger would be a thing of the past. The land now used to grow corn for animal feed could be repurposed, perhaps even for a forest that could draw CO2 out of our atmosphere. Industrial livestock farming would no longer be needed.

To be sure, solutions that sound so simple should be approached with caution. But there is a place where the utopia described above isn’t as far away as it might sound. Where such laboratory chicken can be tasted and where the nuggets are being served up on real plates. That place is Singapore.

Singapore is the first and, thus far, the only country in the world where meat grown in laboratories can be marketed to and eaten by consumers. The government is hopeful that the country can become home to the technologies behind the food of the future. It is likely, after all, to become an extremely profitable industry, with investors around the world already injecting billions of dollars into the new food sector. Alternative sources of protein, including lab-grown meat, currently make up 2 percent of the global meat market. By 2035, that share is expected to be five times as high. And now that food prices have skyrocketed due to the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, adding to the hunger and environmental crises already afflicting the world, some experts believe that meat grown from stem cells could develop into a technological revolution.

Beyond that, Singapore is also dependent on food imports, with 90 percent coming from abroad. The country has hardly any of its own farmland. The government wants to change the situation by 2030 and is funding startups that might be able to help, such as one that is looking into ways to produce a replacement for eggs, and another that produces intelligent rooftop garden systems where heads of lettuce grow on self-watering, vertical columns. Much of the focus, though, is on stem cell technologies aimed at producing things like milk, fish and meat from stem cells.

In brief, the idea is as follows: Stem cells are taken from animals through a biopsy and are then frozen in liquid nitrogen to preserve them for several years. To produce meat, the cells are multiplied in a bioreactor. The technology isn’t quite yet ready for mass production, but theoretically, a single biopsy would be sufficient to produce hundreds of tons of meat.

The American startup Eat Just, based in Silicon Valley, is currently in the process of opening a laboratory in Singapore. The company’s focus is on producing chicken meat, which it plans to introduce to supermarkets in the coming years. In early November, the company invited a group of test subjects to the fancy Marriott Hotel in the center of Singapore to be served a dish of the future: investors, food technicians, company founders – and me.

The Dinner

During the meal, the lighting is dimmed, and a film is projected onto the wall about the climate crisis, damaged farmland, hungry populations and rising sea levels. The first three courses, all of which are vegan, even have names that recall the challenges our environment is facing: "Forest Floor," "Fields of Corn" and "Flooded Future."

We learn how people have spent millennia breeding fowl, resulting in the chicken as we know it today – one of the most important sources of protein for the global population. There are 23 billion chickens on Earth, and the video recounts how the process of feeding, slaughtering, refrigerating and transporting them requires a huge amount of energy and land, which is helping to fuel the climate crisis. All because people continue to want to eat excessive quantities of meat, even though it’s not necessary.

Finally, the course is brought in for which everyone has been waiting for this evening: chicken nuggets from the laboratory. The waitress serves the plates and presents the dish:

Throughout human history, advancements in food technology have had the power to change the way people live, things like fermenting fruit, baking bread, iodizing salt, controlling fire and domesticating animals. But for a new foodstuff, which may make sense in theory, to actually be accepted in practice, it must be affordable and available in large quantities. And more than anything, it has to taste good.

The Flavor

The knife slices through the breading and then through the meat itself. My first thought: It seems like normal chicken meat and can almost be cut through with a fork. I scratch off a bit of breading to get a better view of the meat itself. Its color is a bit lighter than normal chicken meat, a whitish-gray shade. The first bite: soft, not much resistance, a bit stringy and reminiscent of tofu. It’s a little watery. But it definitely tastes and smells like chicken.

One person at the table comments that there is room for improvement, while another says that if she had the choice, she would opt for a soybean schnitzel over one made from stem cells. They taste better, she says. But I find myself wondering, would people really be able to taste the difference on the street, given the way chicken nuggets are normally eaten – namely quickly, in large quantities and by hand? I give the meat a rating of five out of 10. Everyone at the table agrees that it’s not good enough yet. Innovation must grab your attention. Meat from the laboratory has to be better than the cheap chicken meat used by fast food chains.

But what about the other criteria? Price, availability and authorization? It’s time to head for the lab.

In the Laboratory

Serene Chng puts on a white lab coat. She is a biologist and works for Shiok Meats, a Singapore company that hopes to bring seafood made from stem cells to the market. It’s her job to find the highest quality cells to use as a starting point, those that reproduce the best.

Chng leads the way through the laboratory, where lobster, shrimp and crab stem cells are extracted and then examined. "We learn here what the cells like to eat and how often they must be fed," says Chng, referring to the nutrient solutions, full of carbohydrates, amino acids and minerals, that replace the blood that nourishes cells in living animals. "What you see here is the beginning of a revolution."

She leads the way past microscopes, UV lamps, centrifuges and devices for analyzing metabolism. The technology behind stem cell meat is borrowed from the processes used to produce certain medical drugs and vaccines. The corona vaccine produced by AstraZeneca, for example, is made using a similar process.

Chng’s coworker opens the top of the cryotank, which contains the stem cells. Nitrogen steams out of it. The most potent stem cells are kept inside, cooled to minus 196 degrees Celsius. Just one of the cells can produce as much shrimp meat as you want, says Chng. That process takes place nearby in large, stainless-steel reactors, where the cells reproduce. I had imagined entire lobsters growing in the machines, but that’s not entirely accurate. Only muscle and fat cells are reproduced, growing in a kind of soup that gets thicker and thicker until it reaches the consistency of ground meat. The cell soup is ready after six to eight weeks before being enriched with plant fibers in a process that Shiok Meats prefers not to describe in detail. The result is a kind of meat paste out of which foodstuffs can be produced. In other words, the final product like the chicken nugget, is not 100 percent meat.

Criticism of Lab-Grown Meat

As promising as the technology might sound, criticism of laboratory meat abounds. The primary focus of such criticism is the amount of energy necessary for its production, particularly for the fabrication of large quantities. If a significant share of the global population is to be fed with cultivated meat, huge bioreactors, sophisticated machinery and complex production facilities will be necessary.

I have a few questions of my own. Is lab-grown meat actually meat?

The founder of Shiok Meats, Sandhya Sriram, a stem-cell researcher, says: "Yes. It is 100 percent meat. Just imagine it like vegetables that are grown in a greenhouse instead of in nature. The result is the same, but the route taken isn’t the natural one, but a technological one."

Can vegetarians eat it as well?

Sriram: "Vegetarians who refrain from eating meat out of concern for the well-being of animals and the climate crisis are extremely interested in lab-grown meat. In cruelty-free meat."

Why is there a need for yet another meat alternative? We already have burgers made from soy, mungo beans and chickpeas.

Sriram: "It is naïve to hope that a majority of people will soon switch to vegetarianism. The consumption of meat is rising, as is the global population. Our approach is: Let people eat their meat and fish, but let’s make it sustainable."

If meat produced from stem cells is supposed to solve so many problems, why can’t I find it in the supermarket?

Two terms are consistently used when discussing the problems faced by lab-grown meat: Scaling and price. They are concerns held by stem-cell researcher Sandhya Sriram as well: "We rely on extremely expensive technologies and devices from the pharmaceutical industry, and we are using them to produce food." It will take time before sufficient lab-grown meat can be produced to sate the appetites of billions of people, she says, along with larger, cheaper bioreactors. Progress has been made, she says, but only in tiny steps.

Several years ago, says Sriram, the price of a kilogram of shrimp meat from Shiok Meats was around $10,000. Since then, though, the company has been able to reduce the price to around $50 per kilo. More time is still needed before meat from the bioreactor can come close to competing with meat from industrial livestock farming. But she believes that lab-grown meat products could become competitive within the next decade. And they must then be approved for sale. But such a process could be difficult in the European Union, since individual member states must give their thumbs up, and it is unclear how many of them might decide to protect their domestic meat industries instead.

Singapore is funding alternative food technologies, such as the company Agritisan, which constructs intelligent rooftop gardening systems so that more people can feed themselves.

Founder Alexander Tan shows one of his prototypes. Heads of lettuce grow on these vertical gardens, watered automatically from the inside of the column and powered by a solar cell on the top.

When it comes to the approval of lab-grown meat, Asia could end up taking the lead. Many countries in Asia are far more open to the technology than European countries, says Sandhya Sriram. That could be a function of the greater challenges the continent is facing when it comes to hunger and climate change-related catastrophes. Every year, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issues a "code red for humanity." In 2021, more than a million people in Asia didn’t have sufficient access to food, with farmers struggling with their harvests and fishing boats returning to port with smaller and smaller catches. Forecasts indicate that the region, currently home to 4.7 billion people, will grow by another 600 million people in the next 30 years.

A new technology to combat hunger and which can fill up more stomachs with fewer resources? That is a bit of good news.

Back to dinner at the hotel in Singapore. After the chicken nugget, the chef comes out to the dining room with yet another course he has prepared. It is again lab-grown chicken, but this time it’s "the next generation," he says. Satay skewers with peanut sauce.

Again, the aroma of grilled chicken fills the room. I pull the meat from the wooden skewers, some of it sticking. This time, the texture of the meat is firmer.

Can the world be saved by chicken nuggets or grilled chicken skewers? Will people ever buy foodstuffs produced in a manner similar to a COVID vaccine? I don’t have the answers. I pick up the last of the three satay skewers from the plate and take a bite of the chicken that was produced in a cellular soup inside a stainless-steel vat. It is saturated in marinade and peanut sauce. I’ve certainly eaten worse chicken. Seven out of 10 points.

This piece is part of the Global Societies series. The project runs for three years and is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.