The nuclear power renaissance in the UK: democratic deficiencies within the 'consensus' on sustainability

This paper focuses on New Labour’s policy towards the nuclear renaissance. It places this policy in the context of wider discussions on the democratic implications of the new constellations of governance emerging from the drive towards more sustainable futures. The paper identifies two crucial developments within the nuclear renaissance: firstly, the controversy surrounding the consultative process in 2006 and 2007; and secondly, the creation of new ‘efficient’ and ‘streamlined’ planning procedures through the establishment of the Planning Act 2008 and The Infrastructure and Planning Commission (IPC). The article builds on work which seeks to bring together questions of ‘democracy’ and ‘the political’ within discussions on ‘sustainability’. It argues that an understanding of these moments can only be properly established through an analysis of the wider discursive frame of ‘sustainability’ in which nuclear has been reinvented, and the way it has been utilized as a strategic tool of governing. The apparent ‘consensus’ on sustainability appears to foreclose discussions on multiple and divergent political imaginaries into a single shared vision. This is symptomatic of the wider conditions of the post-political and the post-democratic, where debate is reduced to managerial and technocratic particularities in which, regardless of public engagement, nuclear power becomes an ‘inevitability

A global picture of industrial interdependencies between civil and military nuclear infrastructures

Noting the increasingly unfavourable economic and operational position of nuclear power around the world, this paper reviews evidence for a hitherto neglected connection between international commitments to civil and military nuclear infrastructures. Reviewing well established understandings of interlinkages associated with fissile materials and other nuclear weapons related substances, the paper surveys a distinct – and currently potentially more important – kind of interdependency that has up to now received virtually no policy attention. This relates to the national industrial supply chains necessary for the manufacture and operation of nuclear propelled submarines, that are deemed central to strategic military doctrine in a few states – and to burgeoning ambitions in a number of others. One of the most striking features of these interdependencies, is that evidence is so strong in strategic military literatures, but that the issue is typically so neglected in energy policy analysis. So the repercussions extend beyond specific domains of civil and military nuclear policy making in themselves – significant as these may be. Across a range of countries, arguably the most important implications arise for the rigour and transparency of mainstream academic and energy policy analysis and the quality and accountability of wider democratic processes – that are failing to give due attention to the evident force of these connections. With civil nuclear power now increasingly recognised to be growing obsolescent as a low carbon energy source, but key military capabilities evidently depending so strongly on its maintenance, a potentially important new window of opportunity may be opening up for robust measures to reduce global military nuclear threats

Phasing out coal, sustaining coal communities? Living with technological decline in sustainability pathways

In this short discussion paper, we discuss recent attention towards the phase out of coal in the UK and associated understandings derived from the field of sustainability transitions. While, the recent focus on destabilisation of unsustainable technologies in this field is important, we raise concerns that there is the risk of insufficient attention regarding the broader implications of such discontinuity processes around the impacts on local coal communities and future prospects of the workforce. We exemplify this, with a discussion of some concerns raised in the responses to the 2016 UK coal consultation, where issues surrounding the future of communities situated near coal facilities have been highlighted. In the final section, we discuss these kinds of issues in relation in the context of the ‘just transition’ advocated by parts of the trade union movement as well as perspectives on deindustrialisation and community cohesion and identity

Response to the DECC Consultation of the siting process for a Geological Disposal Facility, 2013

Several members of SEG (Matt Gross, Phil Johnstone, Florian Kern, Gordon MacKerron, and Andy Stirling) have participated in a written response to the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC) consultation of the siting process for a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) for nuclear waste. This consultation follows the rejection by Cumbria County Council earlier this year to hosting a Geological Disposal Facility. The government have therefore gone back to the national level to find a suitable location, and the issue remains a multifaceted and controversial one. Matt Gross and Phil Johnstone also represented SEG at the one day consultation on the same issue run by DECC at Centre Hall, Westminster, involving several round-table discussions with civil service, nuclear regulators, and local politicians on the various issues surrounding the siting of a GDF

Free-stream coherent structures in parallel compressible boundary-layer flows at subsonic Mach numbers

As a first step towards the asymptotic description of coherent structures in compressible shear flows, we present a description of nonlinear equilibrium solutions of the Navier--Stokes equations in the compressible asymptotic suction boundary layer (ASBL). The free-stream Mach number is assumed to be $< 0.8$ so that the flow is in the subsonic regime and we assume a perfect gas. We extend the large-Reynolds number free-stream coherent structure theory of \cite{deguchi_hall_2014a} for incompressible ASBL flow to describe a nonlinear interaction in a thin layer situated just below the free-stream which produces streaky disturbances to both the velocity and temperature fields, which can grow exponentially towards the wall. We complete the description of the growth of the velocity and thermal streaks throughout the flow by solving the compressible boundary-region equations numerically. We show that the velocity and thermal streaks obtain their maximum amplitude in the unperturbed boundary layer. Increasing the free-stream Mach number enhances the thermal streaks, whereas varying the Prandtl number changes the location of the maximum amplitude of the thermal streak relative to the velocity streak. Such nonlinear equilibrium states have been implicated in shear transition in incompressible flows; therefore, our results indicate that a similar mechanism may also be present in compressible flows.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figure

Independent Local Radio Drama: A Cultural, Historical And Regulatory Examination Of British Commercial Radio Drama.

BBC radio’s post-war years constitute a golden age of successful populist drama and situation-comedy, which was gradually usurped by television. Dramatists like Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter reasserted radio drama with ground-breaking, innovative and avant-garde plays, but by the 1970’s radio drama occupied a precarious position, not abandoned, but living on borrowed time. Its continued existence on Radio Four was deemed perfunctory or symbolic of the BBC’s public service obligations. What happened next was unusual by today's standards for commercial radio. Stations within the newly formed Independent Local Radio (ILR) sector began to produce their own dramatic content: original drama, adaptations, monologues, poetry, situation and sketch comedy. What follows is an investigation into this overlooked canon of work. The choice to include drama across various ILR stations was a response to cautious regulatory oversight that refashioned expectations for commercial radio into its initial independent form. ILR was local by design and case studies from ILR’s dramatic canon are shown to have relied on and reinforced vernacular culture in contrast to the perception of BBC radio drama and light entertainment. The ‘Manchester School’ ethos in broadcasting was evidently resurgent among its dramatists, highlighting the dichotomy between oral and literary cultures and their spatial or temporal modes. New creative voices, often without a theatrical background and unbeholden to established forms utilised their authentic naturalistic idiolects, in some instances taking atypical approaches to radio fiction, constituting a cultural shift in style and tone for radio drama. Original plays and comedies embraced their regionality, complementary to radio’s secondary position. This thesis comprises case study analyses, archival research, recollections of former practitioners and theoretical perspectives on radio drama. It addresses the following considerations: an examination of ILR dramatists and their production experiences; an application of key theoretical concepts to a selection of ILR fictional programmes; the BBC’s reaction to the competition posed by the commercial radio sector, and the extent to which ILR drama played a role in the wider impetus towards reform at the BBC

Anomaly Detection in the Molecular Structure of Gallium Arsenide Using Convolutional Neural Networks

This paper concerns the development of a machine learning tool to detect anomalies in the molecular structure of Gallium Arsenide. We employ a combination of a CNN and a PCA reconstruction to create the model, using real images taken with an electron microscope in training and testing. The methodology developed allows for the creation of a defect detection model, without any labeled images of defects being required for training. The model performed well on all tests under the established assumptions, allowing for reliable anomaly detection. To the best of our knowledge, such methods are not currently available in the open literature; thus, this work fills a gap in current capabilities