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 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”?

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.

Black carbon from heavy fuel oils is a major polluter

Black carbon emissions from international shipping north of 60°N must be regulated in order to cut the pollutant’s impact on Arctic snow and ice, say the Clean Arctic Alliance(CAA), a group of 20 environmental organizations concerned with Arctic environmental issues.

Black carbon – also known as soot – is a potent climate-forcing pollutant possibly second only to CO2 and with a climate impact over 3,000 times that of CO2. Emitted by exhausts of ships burning heavy fuel oils, its black particles are deposited on snow and ice and accelerate melting by way of the albedo effect. This creates a feedback loop that further exacerbates local and global warming. In a report published in December 2017, the International Council for Clean Transportation say:

We found that ships emitted an estimated 67 thousand tonnes of black carbon in 2015, representing more than 20% of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from ships on a 20-year timescale, making black carbon an important contributor to the sector’s climate warming impacts. Container ships emitted the most black carbon, accounting for 26% of emissions. However, cruise ships accounted for a disproportionately large amount of black carbon and emitted an average of 10 tonnes of black carbon per ship in 2015, almost three times as much as the average container ship.

https://theicct.org/publication/black-carbon-emissions-and-fuel-use-in-global-shipping-2015/

The effect of black carbon is worse in the Arctic, partly because of the albedo effect.

In the lead-up to a meeting of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), Dr Sian Prior, Lead Advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance, said:

Reducing the impact of black carbon on Arctic snow and ice would have a rapid and dramatic reduction in the impact of shipping emissions on the planet’s climate – this is why action in the shipping sector to reduce black carbon emissions can and should start immediately, by simply switching to cleaner fuels and installing particulate filters…The IMO can regulate and reduce black carbon emissions by amending MARPOL Annex VI to require ships operating in and near to the Arctic (north of 60 degrees North) to use distillate or other alternative cleaner fuels.

https://cleanarctic.org/2022/12/12/mepc-79-slashing-black-carbon-emissions-would-cut-shippings-climate-impact-this-decade/

The Arctic is warming at a rate three to four times faster than the global average, due to a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. The use of heavy fuel oils that emit black carbon probably isn’t helping.

More talk than action at this year’s Arctic Circle Assembly

The article I submitted on whether anything concrete came out of the 2002 Arctic Circle in Reykjavík was perhaps more reminiscent of a blog than an article. The published article is here.

A few sentences that I thought relevant to the topic, but could perhaps be seen as critical of decision-makers, were taken out, like “Talk is one thing, action another. So did anything concrete come out of the Assembly that could be applied to the Arctic, or even globally?”

Another bit that came out was something said by Ester Alda Hrafnhildar Bragadóttir, from Ungir Umhverfissinnar – the Icelandic Youth Environmental Association – who is quoted here:

But she noticed that she kept seeing the same faces at the seminars she went to, and she was a little disappointed that “they were very seldom ‘famous’ faces, or people who obviously are involved with decision making or management”.

The Arctic Circle Assembly is a huge event (at least by Icelandic standards) and is described concisely by Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, instigator of the ACA and former President of Iceland, whose quote for my article included the following:

The nature of the Arctic Circle Assemblies is to create conditions and contacts which since its foundation has led to multiple actions and projects in many areas of importance to climate action, clean energy development, and a better understanding of the fast melting of the Arctic ice.

I have been to several ACAs in Reykjavik and the capacity for networking is indeed admirable. But whether any concrete action will ever emerge from this year’s event is still an unknown quantity.

Staggering use of chemicals in textiles

The textile industry is horrendous. A new report has just been published by the Nordic Council of Ministers on chemicals in textiles. Over the last 15 years, the textile industry has doubled and is expected to increase further.

Here is an excerpt of the stages involved in making textiles.

A typical textile garment production chain covers textile fibres which are grown or manufactured in one country and then shipped to another country for spinning before the yarn is shipped to a third country for knitting or weaving. The fabric is thereafter sent to another location or country for colouring, processing and finally the sewing of the final garment. When it comes to the chemical content of the final products, the complexity is increased due to products containing materials and chemicals from different suppliers with different legislative requirements^[10]

https://pub.norden.org/temanord2022-549/#111148

To some extent, the number of chemicals used depends on the fabric being produced and the processes used, e.g. whether flame retardants are added or whether wet printing is involved. Chemical use is staggering:

Each year in textile production it is estimated that 43 million tonnes of chemicals are used, covering more than 8000 different chemicals^[11]. The textile production is chemical-intensive as between 1.5–6.9 kg chemicals are used to produce 1 kg new textile.

https://pub.norden.org/temanord2022-549/#111148

Think about that.

The report itself covers the different types of chemical information exchange systems that are currently being used in the textile supply chain and goes into detail about indicators that can be used to track chemical information. So, for the general reader, that part of the report is less interesting.

Nevertheless, it DOES cover problems associated with the use of recycled fibres, saying that the chemicals used in the original product are not known and the use of recycled wool has turned out to be more problematic than recycled cotton and polyester. Less than 1% of material used in the textile industry is recycled and used in new clothing.

The environmental effects of textiles have received more attention over the last 10 years or so, from land and water use to pesticides to river pollution from dyes used in textile manufacture. And deservedly so.

I’ll definitely be washing new clothes before wearing them from now on.

Do blood mares and whaling detract from Iceland’s image?

Is a country’s image important? Of course it is. Since COVID restrictions have been lifted, tourists have been arriving in Iceland in droves.

But maybe there could be even more.

Some people have decided not to come, either because Iceland has just resumed the hunting of fin whales or because of the blood mare industry in Iceland, in which blood is taken from mares during summer, processed by a company called ÍSTEKA, and then sold as Pregnant Mare Serum Gonadotropin (PMSG), also known as Equine Chorionic Gonadotropin (eCG), a hormone that is primarily used to increase pig fertility.

Late last year, animal welfare campaigners from the German Animal Welfare Foundation and Swiss Tierschutzbund Zürich published a video in which they documented the horrors of the blood mare industry and showed footage of blood being taken from mares. This video sparked an outrage in Iceland and abroad.

Organizations such as the Association of Icelandic Horse Trainers, the International Federation of Icelandic Horse Associations (FEIF) and Icelandic Equestrian Associations are opposed to the blood mare industry – some prospective buyers from overseas have already said that they will not buy an Icelandic horse in Iceland because of blood mares. Organizations such as the Icelandic Vegan Society and Association for Animal Welfare in Iceland also oppose the blood mare industry due to animal welfare reasons.

Iceland is in reality the only European country in which blood is extracted from mares. The other countries doing it are Argentina, Uganda, Russia, Mongolia and China. After studying the results of a committee looking at the blood mare industry and whether it should be banned, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, decided to issue a (draft) Regulation, valid for three years, which would impose various requirements such as monitoring of the mares’ health, temperament assessment, procedures when taking blood, age of mares, and more.

There are over 115 farms which keep blood mares in Iceland.

An appendix to the report points out that keeping blood mares is not actually banned in Europe according to animal welfare laws of EU Member States and that there is no clause in the general animal welfare legislation of EU Member States in which a ban is put on taking blood from pregnant mares to produce PMSG. Which is a convenient loophole.

Prior to the publication of the committee’s findings, Svandís had said that it was questionable as to whether blood mares would damage Iceland’s image.

Svandís has also been the focus of attention in regard to fin whaling, which started again on 23 June. A recent survey conducted by Maskina for the Iceland Nature Conversation Association showed that 64.3% consider that whaling damages Iceland’s image and 52.5% consider that whaling only brings minor benefits for Iceland’s economy while only 21% consider whaling important for the economy.

CNN have just covered this issue, here.

Three organizations – the Icelandic Vegan Society, the Association for Animal Welfare in Iceland and Hard to Port, a German-based marine conservation and animal advocacy association – have sent an appeal to Svandís to stop whaling immediately and ban it.

Earlier this year, Svandís said she didn’t see any economic reason for whaling to continue after 2023, when the current fin whaling permit runs out and she would set up a committee to look into the matter, so it’s quite possible that it will indeed stop then. And Kristjan Loftsson, the man behind fin whaling, is, at 75, not getting any younger.

Fluoride levels high near aluminium smelter in West Iceland

Levels of gaseous hydrogen fluoride have never been higher in the vicinity of the Century aluminium smelter, Elkem ferrosilicon smelter and an aluminium recycling company, Alur Aluminium Processing which takes aluminium dross from the Century smelter and recycles it. The latest environmental monitoring report carried out by engineering company EFLA for the three companies shows that levels of both gaseous hydrogen fluoride and particulate fluoride had doubled between 2020 and 2021 at a monitoring station near the plants.

These three companies are located in the same industrial area, Grundartangi in West Iceland.

According to the monitoring report (in Icelandic), levels of trapped fluorides and sulphates in precipitation were also very high in two rivers near the smelter area, compared to previous years, and have never been recorded at higher levels since monitoring began. Along the same lines, acidity (pH) of all the rivers tested had never measured lower.

Levels of sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide were also some of the highest recorded, although under environmental limits.

The results for fluoride in grass showed increases in all monitoring stations, with the exception of one which was within the dilution area. In some areas, these were record highs. Fluoride levels in leaves showed a similar trend.

Fluoride in jaw bones of adult sheep also measured record highs. In five cases, fluoride levels exceeded those considered at risk of causing tooth damage in deer according to Norwegian research, and in one case exceeded levels considered to cause tooth damage in deer (2,000 μg F/g).

Fluoride accumulates in animals as they grow older so it is particularly alarming that at one monitoring station, the mean concentration of fluoride in lamb jaw bones was over the level considered to cause damage to teeth in deer.

Why deer, you may ask? Because there are no results for sheep or horses. It’s as simple as that.

I wrote an article for Al Jazeera in 2014 on fluoride pollution from an aluminium smelter in East Iceland and also blogged an update here. The latest monitoring report doesn’t show adverse effects for horses, though, apart from a degree of tooth damage in one horse.