Nuclear power is not the answer

Some so-called environmentalists are perceiving nuclear power as one of the solutions to providing energy that is climate-friendly. It is even grouped together with renewable sources of energy as a viable option, and recently there was a huge debate in the EU about whether nuclear power and natural gas should be considered climate-friendly. In the end, the pro-nuclear countries – notably France – won out (much to the disappointment of various environmental NGOs and countries such as Austria and Luxembourg) and both forms of energy came under the EU Taxonomy legislation, allowing investors to label and market investments in both types of energy as “green”.

In the EU Taxonomy legislation, various provisos have been set for considering nuclear power as suitable for “green investments”:

• The member state in which the project is located must have operational final disposal facilities for very low, low, and intermediate radioactive waste;
• The member state must have plans in place for an operational disposal facility for high-level radioactive waste;
• As of 2025, existing and new build projects must use accident-tolerant fuel, which has been certified and approved by the national regulator.

Ahem!

Nuclear reactors globally are suffering problems or building delays – which is laughable when some countries, such as Sweden, envisage the building of nuclear reactors as a way to solve the energy crisis. Sweden had originally decided to decommission all its reactors by 2010, but that changed in the 1990s and new reactors were allowed to be built but only at preexisting nuclear sites. That also changed when the current right-wing government took power in 2022, Prime Minister Ulf Kristensson presented the new government policy in the Swedish parliament, saying: “… the Government will propose credit guarantees for new construction of Swedish nuclear power plants, alongside legislative amendments to enable new nuclear power production via shorter permit processes and administrative fast tracks, for example. The prohibition of new reactors in new locations and of more than ten simultaneously active reactors will be removed from the Swedish Environmental Code.”

But nuclear power is not a viable option, either in terms of safety, military interventions, waste disposal, or the time taken to build nuclear reactors. Neither is it carbon neutral when uranium mining, fuel enrichment and the like are taken into account. The plants also require constant cooling, which requires electricity.

“Truth has rarely been a friend to nuclear power and for that reason it hasn’t always been easy
to find accurate information about the industry’s vital signs”, says Stephanie Cooke in the foreword to the most recent World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR), which was published in December.

Nevertheless, the WNISR is a wealth of information. In the UK alone, it says, 21 units are closed and awaiting decommissioning while only 9 units are operating. Meanwhile, construction costs for the two new reactors at Hinkley Point have escalated dramatically and the first reactor is not expected to come on line until 2027 at the earliest. Decommissioning nuclear reactors takes an average of 21 years, according to the report.

Small modular reactors, generally known as SMRs, are creating hope and optimism amongst nuclear power advocates. But, as the report points out, “… [I]n the western world, no unit is under construction, and no design has been fully certified for construction. The most advanced project, involving
NuScale in the United States, was terminated in November 2023 following a 75 percent increase of the cost estimate.”

Finland is a classic example of how building nuclear reactors is by no means straightforward. The report notes that the third unit at Olkiluoto was started in August 2005 and was supposed to become operational in 2009. However, it was not until March 2022 that it became connected to the grid. And that was not all. The unit “… continued to be hampered by ‘unexpected’ events like the untimely triggering of the boron pumps in April 2022″ and “foreign material issues observed in the turbine’s steam reheater” in May 2022”.

Olkiluoto reactor site. Credit: Wikipedia

Other issues hampered the plant’s operation, such as measurement errors in the voltage regulators, cracks in all the feedwater pumps and further delays, so it was not until April 16 2023 that the unit started producing power at full capacity.

Another reactor was supposed to be built with Russian technology in Finland, at Hanhikivi in northern Sweden, but – not surprisingly – this was cancelled in May 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine.

By 2035, Finland plans to have decarbonized its energy system, with greatly increased usage of wind and solar – from 12.41 TWh to 30 TWh for wind and 0.3 TWh to 3.4 TWh for solar.

I suspect they will be less problematic and quicker to build than unit 3 at Olkiluoto!

Note that much of the above has been set out in a position paper by CAN Europe.

Update, March 1: According to a new report (in Spanish) by the Spanish anti-nuclear umbrella organization Movimento Ibérico Antinuclear, there has been an average of one incident every 11 days between 2019 and 2023 concerning malfunctions or maintenance errors in Spanish nuclear power plants – 164 in total – primarily in the Ascó reactors in Catalonia.

Update, March 21: At a meeting of the IAEA, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, declared that nuclear power will become the “backbone of EU power production” by 2050. Oh dear! Luckily, not everyone agrees with her.

Fin whaling should not have been postponed in summer

Iceland’s Parliamentary Ombudsman produced his report on Friday on whether the Fisheries Minister, Svandis Svavarsdottir, acted lawfully when she prohibited the whaling company Hvalur from going out whaling a day before it was due to start. The prohibition was due to last until August 31.

Not surprisingly, her decision was not popular with some of her colleagues in the ruling coalition, nor was it popular to the company itself and its employees. The Chair of the trade union for the area called a meeting in the nearby town of Akranes at which a lot of Hvalur employees and local right-wing politicians spoke up angrily about her decision, saying amongst other things that it went against the principle of proportionality, which is when someone gives a ruling that goes beyond what is necessary to achieve the desired result. The measure in question must not prove a burden to the party concerned.

The Minister had, however, done her homework very well and said that she had to act on animal welfare grounds because the Food and Veterinary Association (MAST) had produced a comprehensive report on the 2022 whaling season, which showed that a sizeable proportion of whales did not die instantly and some took up to 2 hours to die. She had subsequently commissioned the Council of Animal Welfare Specialists to look into the matter further, with an eye to animal welfare. They produced a report that said that whaling was inhumane and the Minister then postponed whaling.

Note that if the CEO of Hvalur, Kristjan Loftsson, had not kept delaying his reply to MAST after their draft report was complete, despite repeated requests from them, Svavarsdottir’s decision could have been made up to three months earlier. And Hvalur could have altered its plans, like not employing workers from June.

Loftsson intends to put in a claim for compensation of lost income – which might be difficult as whaling has not been profitable, as appeared in a report on the economic impact of whaling.

Nevertheless, the Ombudsman said (in long-winded, Icelandic text) that she had NOT accorded with the Principle of Proportionality, because she had not weighed up animal welfare with the basic principles of constitutional law on the protection of employment rights and freedom of employment of the licence holder’s (Hvalur) economic activity.

Yet he was sympathetic to her stance on animal welfare. One of the main issues seems to be that the Act on whaling dates from 1949, when attitudes were quite different to those today and animal welfare did not rank highly in society, let alone in legislation. The word “velferð” (Icelandic for “welfare”) does not occur in the 1949 Act. “It was not unnatural for the Minister to look into hunting equipment…” when interpreting Article 4 of the 1949 law, said the Ombudsman.

He also pointed out that when Loftsson was granted a licence for the years 2019 to 2023 inclusive, he was supposed to use equipment that would kill whales instantly or within the least possible time, and which caused minimal suffering. This has obviously not been the case. Magnusson says that the ministry should commission a report into hunting equipment and hunting procedures.

In his report, Magnusson said that it could not be excluded that the minister should take into account animal welfare considerations in her implementation of the 1949 law. Indeed, it was always assumed that changes would be made to the 1949 law in light of changes implemented at meetings of the International Whaling Commission. But this was not done in Iceland.

Not surprisingly, reactions have been heated to the Ombudsman’s decision. There have been calls for the Minister to resign, calls for a vote of no confidence, and supposition that this issue might cause the government to collapse. However, it is probable that nothing definite will happen until the parliamentary Althingi resumes on 22 January. Ironically, it is primarily those who are against whaling who are calling for a vote of no confidence while the Minister’s colleagues in the ruling party are mostly pro-whaling but are likely to support her – though probably unwillingly – with the aim of holding the government together until the next elections, which are scheduled for next year. Support for all three parties in the ruling coalition has decreased markedly since the last election.

The Minister has stood her ground despite criticisms and has said, for instance, that changes are being made to the 1949 legislation in terms of animal welfare in light of Magnusson’s comments.

Note that Kristjan Loftsson has not applied for a renewal of the five-year licence to hunt fin whales, which ran out at the end of last year. So maybe the whole thing is an academic exercise and fin whaling won’t happen again.

Update 25 January: Hvalur has submitted a claim to the State Attorney for “massive loss of income” while the whaling ban was in place and wants the State to pay the wages to Hvalur’s employees while the ban was in place. (Note that he kept on at least 80 employees, who were trying to remedy “faults” during the whaling season when things didn’t work as they should.)

Update 7 February: Kristjan Loftsson has applied for another licence for whaling for the next years, on the basis that the State Ombudsman said that everyone had a right to practise whatever employment they want – which in the case of Loftsson means whaling. What happens now is anyone’s guess.

Hypocrisy, peace and war

“Growing geopolitical divides are putting multilateralism under extreme stress and strain. Our international institutions today are out of date, particularly the UN Security Council that reflects the world as it was 80 years ago but not the world of today,” said Amina J Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, when presenting the keynote speech at the Imagine forum in Reykjavik in October a few days after the Palestine–Israel conflict began. I wrote about the event in English and also in Icelandic.

The forum was primarily aimed at academics, students, stakeholders, government officials and diplomats, though NGOs were also represented. There was no lack of viewpoints on peace and war. Marko Lehti from the Finnish Tampere Peace Research Institute noted that Europe has been a blind spot in peace research, which has been more focused on the global south. “The Russian war with Ukraine brought the interwar situation back to Europe. Peace cannot be exported,” he stated. Jannie Lilja from the Swedish peace institute SIPRI picked up on this, saying: “We could have seen indicators if we hadn’t been concentrating on looking at the global south and the violence there,” referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Syrian-born artist activist Khaled Barakeh lives in Berlin. Speaking at the forum, he pointed out that Syrian refugees in Lebanon are only allowed out in public between 6:00 and 18:00, when they are usually at work. He also talked about ‘sustainable justice’ and asked: “Why is it OK for Blair and George W Bush to kill a million people [in Iraq] but not for Putin to kill them?” He also noted, “This is not my land, your land: this is our world.”

In my opinion, there is inherent bias in the use of language when describing the Palestine–Israel conflict. In Israel, Palestinians deprived of freedom called ”prisoners’ or ‘detainees” whereas those held in Gaza are ‘hostages”. I feel that people in general have become immune to the term ‘prisoner’ because it’s so normal and can be seen as positive, such as murderers being locked up, while ‘hostage’ denotes an element of fear. Which brings up another question: Why aren’t those who kill during wars or conflicts also called murderers?

There has been a lot of publicity about how young some of the hostages were, but young Palestinians were also kept prisoner by Israel – 33 out of 39 ”detainees’ released on day 3 of the truce were ”minors’. The first day that hostages and prisoners were released, 17 of the 39 were minors, with women making up the remainder. The Guardian reported that “[E]ach year, 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12 years old, are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system. The most common charge is stone throwing” and the “Palestinian Prisoners Society says that 7,200 prisoners are being held in Israel, among them 88 women and 250 children under 18”. One 24-year-old Palestinian woman was jailed 8 years ago, aged 16. While not justifying deprivation of freedom or life in any way, it’s clear that it isn’t only Hamas that is at fault, it is also Israel.

Otherwise it’s hypocrisy.

Update, November 29: Despite the truce, at least 13 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since it began and according to the human rights organization Addameer, 3,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned by the Israelis since October 7, when the conflict began.

Ups and downs of fin whaling in Iceland

Fin whaling was finally allowed to start in Iceland this year on Friday September 1, subject to stringent regulations although some of them would not be valid until today, September 18.

But whaling is not going as planned. Initially the weather conditions were bad so that the ships stayed in Reykjavik harbour over the weekend, with the plan of going out to the whaling station in Hvalfjordur on the Monday to pick up whaling equipment and then sailing out to hunt.

But that plan didn’t work either, as early on Monday morning, September 4, two activists – Anahita Babei and Elissa Bijou – climbed up the masts of the two whaling ships and stayed there for 33 hours. Within an hour of getting to the top, the police climbed up and took Anahita’s rucksack containing food, water, medication, sleeping bag and disposable adult nappies, so she was without necessities for the rest of the time. The police refused to give her water, on the basis that by denying her necessities, the occupation would be shorter. Elissa was safe as her boat was further out so was inaccessible to the police.

After eventually descending, they were taken to a police station and charged with squatting (!) before being released.

The whaling boats then sailed to the whaling station but did not leave there until late the following day.

On Friday, the boats came back to the whaling station. During the winter, Kristjan Loftsson from the whaling company Hvalur had got an electric fence put up all round Hvalur’s property – it’s actually debatable whether Hvalur owns the whole area that is fenced off – but a fence has not stopped protestors from the Paul Watson Foundation UK and Hard to Port from standing outside the station and monitoring the whales coming in.

When Hvalur 8 came back on Thursday morning with its first whale, they noticed immediately that the whale had two harpoons in it. Hvalur 9 came back later that day with two whales, one of which had two harpoons in it. Meanwhile, the manager of the whaling station boasted, when interviewed in the right-wing newspaper Morgunbladid, that whaling had gone well despite bad weather conditions and low visibility.

The new regulation stipulates that whaling must be carried out in good weather with good visibility, thus contravening the new regulation. Whales are also expected to die within one minute of being shot, which was obviously not the case with whales that had to be shot twice. A lawyer with the Iceland Nature Conservation Association immediately charged Hvalur with breaking the rules of the new regulation.

Thursday afternoon, however, brought welcome news – at least to those opposed to whaling. Iceland’s Food and Veterinary Authority, commonly known as MAST, declared that Hvalur 8 had to stop whaling immediately and return to the whaling station. They had looked at the video taken by a monitoring person from the Fisheries Directorate on board when the first whale of the season was killed and discovered that not only did it require two shots to die, but it took 29 minutes for the second harpoon to be fired and even then it took several minutes for the animal to die. This was clear violation of the animal welfare law. They also found that the first harpoon landed outside the designated target area, which also meant a breach of the regulation.

MAST say they have “suspended” operations of Hvalur 8 rather than stopping them. If Hvalur can demonstrate that improvements have been made which are convincing to MAST, it will be allowed to go out again. Unfortunately Hvalur 9 has not been stopped, even though one of its first whales had two harpoons in its body.

Meanwhile, September is ticking on and lack of light will become a limiting factor within the next two weeks, not to mention windy weather which also stops boats going out. And whether Loftsson can convince MAST that he has provided adequate training for crews is another unknown – that is something that comes into force today, September 18. So far, there has been no further news about this.

Th head of MAST has been quoted as saying that now they have something tangible to use when Hvalur boats breach the animal welfare law. Let’s hope that the Fisheries Minister decides at the end of the season to not give out a licence for the next five years.

Currently, 14 whales have been caught, 3 of them arriving on Friday.

Update, 30 September: The whaling season has finished and the harpoons have been removed from both boats. A total of 24 whales were killed, but one of them was lost at sea when the line broke. In addition, one whale that was caught had an almost fully developed foetus that slipped out when an incision was made in its mother’s belly at the whaling station.

The team from the Paul Watson Foundation noted that a vessel from the Icelandic Coastguard arrived at the whaling station 2 days ago and was tied up next to Hvalur 8. But this has not been reported in the Icelandic media so the reason for its presence remains unknown.

Fin whaling can resume in Iceland

Whaling can resume in Iceland tomorrow, September 1, but under more stringent conditions concerning whaling methods, equipment used and training. Fisheries Minister Svandís Svavarsdóttir says the regulation will take effect tomorrow. No decision has been taken on whether whaling will be permitted next year.

During the summer, whaling has been one of Iceland’s hottest issues.

Svavarsdóttir’s decision was based on several reports. Initially, the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority (MAST) had produced a report that was the result of videos taken on board ship and veterinary inspections on land and basically said that whaling was inhumane and the methods that whaling company Hvalur proposed to enhance the accuracy of whaling – the use of artificial intelligence and electricity to stun whales – were unlikely to remedy the situation.

On the basis of this situation, the Minister commissioned a report by a Council of Specialists to review the MAST report, which it did, producing a report two days before whaling was due to start and prompting the Minister to put a stop to whaling a day later until August 31. Besides confirming the views of MAST, it also pointed out that it was impossible to tell the sex of a whale and if it was milking or pregnant.

The trade union leader for the local town of Akranes held a public meeting to call on the Minister to review her decision, saying it was unfair on the Hvalur workers to miss out on their lucrative summer work. The atmosphere at this meeting was angry. However, it turns out that the Hvalur CEO, Kristján Loftsson, kept on all his staff at the whaling station, which I noticed when driving past it one day and noted vehicles onsite. Over the winter months he had also had another fence put up to deter protesters.

When announcing her decision to stop whaling, Svavarsdóttir said she would commission a working group to look more closely at issues raised by the Council of Specialists’ report to see if more humane whaling methods were possible, as animal welfare concerns were the main basis of her decision. The report was published at the beginning of the week (in Icelandic).

The report concluded that it was possible that the cumulative impact of the methods and tools tested during the summer could reduce the time taken for a whale to die, although the authors said they did not have enough time – or in some cases expert knowledge – to come to an informed decision on all the points in the report. It pointed out, amongst other things, that there was little incentive for companies to invest in better whale-killing technology and materials as so few countries – only Iceland, Japan and Norway – were engaged in whaling.

Note, however, that last year Norwegian minke whale specialist Egil Ole Øen had been invited to Iceland by Loftsson in August to try and improve the number of whales killed first time. He told MAST that various measures had been carried out which were designed to improve the time to kill – but they obviously didn’t.

It turns out that during the summer the Hvalur workers had been looking into issues that were covered in the latest report, such as how fast they could reload a harpoon gun if the initial shot did not kill the whale (albeit on land and not at sea) and gruesome issues such as using more explosive so it could actually damage a whale’s vital organs. They had also received training. And did maintenance work and prepared ships for whaling once again, as Loftsson assumed that they could begin killing on September 1.

At the beginning of the year, Svavarsdottir tasked the consultancy Intellicon to investigate the economic impact of whaling in Iceland. They produced their report a week ago, after looking into aspects such as whether there was a market for whale meat and whale products such as whale meal, whether there was an effect on outside trade with Iceland and the number of tourists coming to Iceland, and the effect on Hvalur workers who receive lucrative amounts of money for their work.

The only countries to which whale meat may be exported are Norway and Japan, and it turns out that whale meat consumption in Japan is minimal and has decreased by 99% over the last four decades. Whaling creates a negative image for Iceland which contradicts the image put forward by tourist bodies. Hvalur has lost money from whaling over the years and at its best, in 2016, whale meat accounted for 0.79% of total export value of fisheries’ products. Whale meal has been difficult to sell (as pig food) as it does not fulfil the conditions for that, while whale oil has been used as fuel for the whaling boats. Work has been carried out on making a food supplement to help with iron deficiency, which could potentially be sold in Japan and Norway.

The report also pointed out that whaling provided significant income for the 120 or so employees of Hvalur during the hunting season, and that this represented a significant proportion of total income for many of them.

Svandís Svavarsdóttir had been one of the members of the parliamentary Althing who had put forward a proposal to look at the overall economic effects of whaling way back in 2014 so it was no surprise that in February last year, soon after she became Fisheries Minister, she said that didn’t see any economic reason for whaling to continue and was unsure whether a whaling licence would be reissued when the current licence runs out at the end of 2023.

Meanwhile, opposition to whaling in Iceland has increased significantly since May, with 42% of the population opposed to whaling in August this year compared to 35% in May 2022. Men are more likely to be pro-whaling than women, but even so the proportion of men pro-whaling has decreased from 48% in May 2022 to 38% in August 2023.

Whaling has been stopped in Iceland

Whaling was due to start in Iceland today. But Iceland’s Fisheries Minister, Svandis Svavarsdottir from the Left-Green Party, yesterday put a stop to the hunting of fin whales. Well, officially she postponed it until 1 September, but that’s usually the end of the season anyway (though it wasn’t last year).

Various events led up to her decision.

Anti-whaling campaigners have monitored the whaling station intensively and provided images to the press.

Last year, Svavarsdottir decided that both whaling boats had to have someone on board monitoring the whaling and videos had to be taken when whales were killed.

Then about two months ago, on the instigation of Svavarsdottir, Iceland’s Food and Veterinary Authority – commonly known as MAST – produced a comprehensive report on the 2022 whaling season, which showed that a sizeable proportion of whales did not die instantly and some took up to 2 hours to die, while in one case a whale was chased for 5 hours with a harpoon sticking out of its back. The chase only ended when the boat suffered engine failure.

Svavarsdottir was horrified but said she was powerless to do anything as there were no legal grounds to stop whaling this year. She did, however, decide to appoint a Council of Specialists to look into the matter further. This group also took interviews with other whaling specialists, including the Norwegian minke whale expert Egil Ole Øen, who whaler Kristjan Loftsson had consulted. Their results were published on 19 June.

One of the main issues was whether whaling corresponded to a law on animal welfare, Act no. 55/2013 (in Icelandic). And it doesn’t. The group looked at issues such as whether it is possible to tell the sex of a whale before it is killed (it isn’t) or whether it is pregnant or milking (no in both cases) and pointed out that an orphaned whale has a negligible chance of surviving. They also looked at the “new methods of killing” devised by Loftsson, and didn’t think much of them.

After the Council of Specialists had produced their results, Svavarsdottir had enough information and power to put a stop to whaling, or at least postpone it until September 1. Campaigners are delighted, but leaders of the Progressive Party and Independence Party – the other parties in the coalition government – are less pleased.

Iceland has just had a change of Justice Ministers. Outgoing minister, Jon Gunnarsson from the right-wing Independence Party, said in an interview yesterday that it was difficult for the Left-Greens to be part of the coalition government as they disagreed on too many issues.

And that was before Svavarsdottir made her decision to stop whaling.

Vilhjalmur Birgisson, trade union leader for the nearby town of Akranes, is also furious at the decision, saying it’s unfair on the workers. But in fact, the local public health committee had only given the whaling station a licence a few days ago, and only until July 12, so he shouldn’t be complaining. Loftsson was supposed to make alterations to the working facilities at the whaling station, and hadn’t done so.

Nothing has been heard from Loftsson since the decision, but I’ll post updates if/when he reacts publicly.

It should be noted that soon after she became fisheries minister, Svavarsdottir announced that many factors pointed to quotas for whaling not being renewed after the current whaling quota runs out at the end of this year. And way back in 2014, she had been one of the members of the parliamentary Althing who had put forward a proposal to look at the overall economic effects of whaling. So it seems she has actually been anti-whaling for a long time, but could not state that publicly after she became Fisheries Minister.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised it there’s an election in September. And given the state of opinion polls at the moment, there’s no guarantee that either the Independence Party or the Progressive Party will be part of the next government.

Update, 22 June: There was finally an interview with Kristjan Loftsson today in Morgunbladid newspaper (the only newspaper/ media outlet that Loftsson will talk to). He called Svandis Svavarsdottir “a raging communist”, and said that the decision had come like a bolt of thunder. Vilhjalmur Birgisson also called a meeting tonight in Akranes to discuss how abruptly the decision to stop whaling had been made. Many in the audience worked with the whaling company Hvalur. What was noticeable at the meeting was that many points WEREN’T brought up.

Th fate of Tetra-Pak drink cartons and other rubbish

A long time ago, I knew that Tetra-Pak drink cartons were difficult to recycle but I presumed the technology had changed because drink cartons are listed as one of the items to be put in paper recycling containers in Iceland. I suspect the situation is the same globally.

But in turns out that the public in Iceland are being duped.

An Icelandic journalist specializing in waste issues, Bjartmar Oddur Theyr Alexandersson, has revealed that milk and juice cartons actually end up in an incinerator at a cement factory in mainland Europe as besides being very expensive, the technology to separate the various components of drink cartons – paper and plastic in milk and paper, plastic and aluminium in fruit juice – is only available at a handful of companies globally, and not the one that Icelandic cartons go to.

Again, this is likely to be the case globally.

But drink cartons are not the only form of packaging made up of composite materials.

Take coffee packets, for example. Some eco-conscious companies have packaging that looks like a mixture of paper and plastic but they say it is recyclable and should be sorted with “organic material” . Personally, I never know how to recycle it.

At the Sorpa recycling centres in the Greater Reykjavik Area, there are now four different containers for plastic: one for plastic film (mostly from industry); styrofoam packaging that is used to package electrical equipment and the like; hard plastic, such as buckets; and plastic packaging around food, cleaning products and the like. Presumably they will all be recycled separately, but when I went there last time with my bag of mixed plastic waste, I baulked and went to the neighbourhood recycling spot instead where there is just one container for plastic. A new system is currently being implemented whereby each home/apartment block will have bins for paper, plastic, organic waste and general waste, but again the plastic is all lumped together.

There are many other problems too with Icelandic recycling, when for instance compost derived from waste treatment processes was found to be contaminated – more than once. Alexandersson also discovered that a lot of Icelandic plastic waste had been sitting in a warehouse for some years in Sweden, and glass that was supposed to be recycled was crushed and went to a site outside of Reykjavik instead of being recycled.

I am concerned that people will be reluctant to recycle, saying “What’s the point”?

Whaling is not humane

After a number of delays, mainly because of the long time taken for Kristján Loftsson of Hvalur to respond, the Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority (MAST in Icelandic) has finally produced its report (in Icelandic) on whaling. And it is damming.

The data was divided into two: one where a veterinarian from MAST examined dead whales after they were brought back to the whaling station, and the other after Iceland’s Fisheries Minister had stipulated that one crew member on board ship should monitor the killing of whales. In the first instance, 84 whales were examined of which 21 (25%) had received more than one harpoon shot. Five of these had received 3 shots and 2 had received 4 shots. Bear in mind that it takes 8 minutes to reload a harpoon.

One animal was chased for almost one hour and the other for a whole two hours. In addition, one whale was chased for 5 hours with a harpoon “in the wrong place” in its back. Eventually, the line broke and the whale swam away. The chase ended because of engine problems with the boat.

In the second half of the whaling period, 14 out of 58 fin whales were shot more than once (24%) and 2 animals were shot 4 times. Six whales were shot during this time – one of them twice – without an inspector from the Fisheries Directorate being present. In 5 instances in 4 whales, the harpoon did not explode and in one case it exploded too soon. Seventy-three percent of the whales killed were female.

A survey was also carried out in 2014, but last year the whales fared worse. According to the definition from the IWC, 59% of whales died instantaneously last year (instantaneous death rate) and the median time to death was 11.5 minutes in animals that did not die instantly.

Last year, in the first half of the whaling period, one female was recorded as milking and 11 were pregnant.

Descriptions with the whaling carried out in the second period are graphic. With one whale, “the grenade had gone through the liver but did not explode. The heart and lungs were unaffected. It was recorded that the whale had swum and blown for 11 minutes before it died. Only one shot was used.” Another whale swam, blew and dived for 19 minutes after the first shot, before the second shot killed it. Yet another whale was shot 4 times, but grenades 2 and 3 had not exploded. It took almost an hour for the animal to die.

Norwegian specialist Egil Ole Øen has a lot of experience in Norwegian whaling, though there the whales killed are minke not fin whales. He had been invited to Iceland by Loftsson in August to try and improve the number of whales killed first time. He told MAST that various measures had been carried out which were designed to improve the rate of first kill – but obviously didn’t.

A lot of the report consisted of Kristján Loftsson’s response. He said he wanted to see the videos on which the report were based, which he received in late February. And he insisted that the Act on welfare of animals did not apply to whales, producing for instance legal information from Norway – on minke whales – to prove his point. MAST disagrees with Loftsson’s views on this.

On p. 30 of the report, there is a graphic description in English of what happens when a projectile hits a whale. Not nice reading. More English can be read in Egil Ole Øen’s reaction to the MAST report that was sent to Loftsson for comments.

What is interesting is that Loftsson says that two new methods of killing whales have been developed during last winter. One is the use of artificial intelligence to assist the shooter, and the other is an improved “secondary killing method”. The latter is based on a method, albeit “improved”, which was originally used 70 years ago. MAST is also sceptical about this.

In news coverage of the report, MAST said that it was undeniable that whales had suffered, sometimes for a long time, and it is unacceptable in their view.

Pirate MP Andrés Ingi Jónsson today asked Fisheries Minister Svandís Svavarsdóttir whether whaling would be banned this year, in light of the report from MAST. She replied that Hvalur had a licence for this year so it would be complicated to renege on the licence. She did say, though, that in light of the methods used with whaling and the laws on animal welfare, “we need to look at whether this industry belongs to the past rather than the future”.

Perhaps the law can be changed.

Anti-whaling groups are going to make a concerted effort this year to get whaling banned.

Update: Two Hvalur crew members have charged MAST under the Personal Protection Act as they are recognizable in videos taken on board.

Eco-Business Park to be developed out of half-built aluminium smelter

Once upon a time, here was a plan to build an aluminium smelter at Helguvik in southwest Iceland. Similarly, a company called Thorsil planned to operate a silicon metal smelter (but never did), and opposite the proposed Thorsil site a silicon metal smelter was operated by United Silicon for less than a year until it was closed down by the Environment Agency of Iceland for a number of reasons. A holding company set up by Arion Bank, Stakksberg, tried for five years to sell the smelter but now say they will try to sell the equipment instead if anyone can use it.

Construction of the aluminium smelter started in 2006 and the smelter was supposed to be operational in 2010. Ahem! The years went by, there were disputed about where the energy was going to come from, and building came to a standstill. And nothing has happened since.

A few years ago, the huge fishing company Samherji (remember Fish Rot? That’s the same company) had plans to operate a fish-farming operation, but that never got off the ground.

Now, there are plans to turn the site into an Eco-Business Park. It’s a huge building, approx. 25,000 square metres in area but after changes are made it will be approx. 35,000 sq. m. The idea is that one company’s waste will become another’s raw material. Because it is predominantly one long building, interested parties can basically dictate what they want rather than modifying existing premises. The new development will work in close association with the Resource Park that is built around energy company HS Orka.

The development will be carried out in association with the Iceland Ocean Cluster, which has been deemed very successful.

Ironically, the key player behind the Ocean Cluster, Thór Sigfússon, is the brother of the ex-mayor of the municipality for Helguvík, Árni Sigfússon, who as mayor was a key player in the proposed development of heavy industry a Helguvík.

Gas cookers and indoor pollution

We’ve all heard of indoor pollution – melamine in floors and kitchen surfaces, household chemicals used for cleaning, chemicals used on furniture, PFAS compounds used on non-stick cooking utensils, etc. But did you know that gas stoves are also a source of indoor pollution?

Gas cookers have come under fire recently as they emit nitrogen oxides (NO2) and according to a new study by the European Public Health Alliance and CLASP Europe, the outdoor WHO limit of 25 mg/m3 NO2 might be breached several times a week in ordinary homes. The modelling in the study was done without the use of mechanical ventilation, but the authors point out that even with ventilation hoods, those that recirculate air (recirculation hoods) are mostly designed to eliminate odour, and even with “proper” ventilation (range hoods), the equipment is not always switched on or is inadequate.

Besides NO2, gas stoves also release benzene, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, ultra-fine particulates and methane. According to the report, gas cooking appliances release methane even when the appliance is not operating.

Gas cooking can cause asthma. In the Executive Summary, the report states:

The European Environment Agency recognises air pollution as the biggest environmental health risk in Europe. Over 700,000 children in the EU have suffered asthma symptoms in the last year due to cooking on gas. 12% of current paediatric asthma cases could be avoided if gas cookers were removed from EU homes. There is growing evidence linking combustion-related air pollution with adverse effects on brain development in young children. For adults, pollutants from gas cooking can lead to negative impacts on the brain, respiratory, and nervous systems.

https://www.clasp.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Gas-Report.pdf

That’s horrific. But there’s more to come. The more insulated and more energy efficient a building is, the worse the pollution – because of lack of ventilation.

Some cooking appliances are even worse than gas, though. “Kitchens in the EU that still burn wood or other solid fuels can experience even higher levels of indoor air pollution, including when emissions to the outside come back into the home due to air infiltration”, the report states, noting that in this type of situation, consumers are often recommended to switch to gas.

The report covers EU countries, so the UK and the EEA countries are missing. However, is shows that over 60% of the populations of Italy, Romania and Hungary use gas for cooking. Gas is rarely used in Iceland, and when it is used – particularly in the case of restaurant kitchens and summer houses – propane is the gas used. The report does not consider propane gas, but given it’s chemical similarity to natural gas, it could well have detrimental health effects.

This report is extremely interesting. Please read it!