Nuclear 2.0 by Mark Lynas - Why a green future needs nuclear power

An opinionated review

Since you are reading this you will almost certainly have your own views about the future role of nuclear power.  So did Mark Lynas!  In the Introduction to his book he says that he was a convinced anti-nuclear campaigner until, whilst attending a 2005 Oxford conference, he realised that nuclear power provided 15% of global electricity (2005 figures) and that this reduced CO2 emissions by 2 billion tonnes/year.  As a parent, concerned for his children’s future, he had overlooked the potential of nuclear power to ameliorate climate change. 

His short 100 page book seeks to justify his view that without replacing the energy generated from fossil fuels with nuclear power, as well as renewables, we have no chance of stopping the rapid increase of atmospheric CO2 before it’s too late to prevent runaway climate change.    In my opinion, he succeeds but then I’ve thought the same and written about it for some time, even if not so concisely and factually as Mark Lynas does.  In Chapter 7 he calls this strategy “All of the Above”. 

Now read on?

So if you are more concerned with the potential risk of an early death due to a nuclear power station accident than you are with reversing the rate of increase of discharges of CO2 from burning fossil fuels, you need read no further.  Equally those people, who like some of my acquaintances, prefer coal burning power stations with the certainty of the premature deaths that will result from cancer and respiratory diseases caused by particulate air pollution and are not concerned about their uncontrolled release of radiation into the environment  can stop here and write their comments.

Those who are less dogmatic and more pragmatic about where they stand on this highly emotional subject are recommended to read Mark Lynas’ fact packed book.  It’s well presented and well argued.  He supports many of his statements with references, a total of 95 references or explanatory notes for seven chapters, and if you read the ebook version the references are in the form of active links. 

Other reviewers and commentators

Other reviewers like Jonathon Porrit and Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz make no attempt to demolish his central argument or dispute his calculations in any quantitative way.  Jonathan Porritt offers a series of put downs without actually refuting any of the facts carefully referenced in the book.  He also advances the familiar qualititative arguments, based on faith, stating that we will see a reduction in the costs of renewable power sources and increases in efficiencies that will square the circle, and make everything come right.  He ignores the enormous areas of land that will need to be made available (see below) for any impact to be made on reducing the global rate of discharge of CO2 with renewables.  He also doesn’t believe that there is any problem of intermittency/energy storage.

Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz on the other hand, in a more tetchy review, concentrates on picking at this or that element in an attempt to discredit Mark Lynas, and support his own fixed views. Both are avoiding having to face the uncomfortable truths that Mark Lynas presents to those environmental activists, who like his earlier self, have campaigned against nuclear power all their lives. 

Some commentators have taken issue with Mark Lynas’s selective use of references concerning, for example, the health effects of radiation releases from Chernobyl and Fukushima.  Others disagree with his dismissal of the Linear No Threshold model for calculating expected early deaths from radiation exposure in chapter 4 pages 49-53.

In a short 100 page book it’s not possible to present fully balanced and detailed arguments for every subject area which it addresses and it’s inevitable that he would be accused of being selective.

All of these criticisms are peripheral to Mark Lynas’ main argument that to reduce discharges of CO2, and prevent runaway climate change, it’s necessary to retain nuclear power and also develop it, together with renewables.  I haven’t yet found a dissenting reviewer or commentator who argues against this fundamental assertion with realistic facts and figures.

In this short BBC video Mark Lynas introduces his ideas.

Energy conservation is not enough

In Chapter 2 pages 24–26 Mark Lynas deals briefly with the history of the environmental movement and discusses Amory Lovin’s and E.F. Schuhmacher’s 1970’s idealistic view that humans should use less energy.  As a result of their philosophy European and North American environmentalists often say that what will solve the climate change problem is more energy conservation and a change in people’s lifestyles. 

I agree that we all need to do more to save energy, but as Mark Lynas points out in chapter 2, even if we did it wouldn’t be enough to make a significant global impact.  It’s totally unrealistic to expect the populations of developed countries to adopt the lifestyle of their great great grandparents, to heat only one room in the house, to travel in horse drawn vehicles, to wash their clothes by hand and to harvest crops with scythes.  Even if everyone did so, it still wouldn’t address the energy needs of industry. 

Furthermore just saving energy in developed countries would not be enough to moderate global CO2 emissions because it takes absolutely no account of the energy expectations of the rapidly growing populations of developing countries who all want to improve their lives and have washing machines and fridges.  Western environmental campaigners will be hard pressed to persuade the inhabitants of such countries that they don’t have the right to enjoy the benefits of economic development and the energy consumption that goes with it.  Have a look at Hans Rosling’s “Washing Machine” TED talk on this subject because he’s so much more eloquent than me. I guarantee that it’s worth ten minutes of your life and it will change the way that you think about energy conservation!

The global growth of renewables

In spite of the recent massive global investment in renewable power in the form of wind and solar they still represent only a very small fraction of global energy consumption.  To paraphrase Mark Lynas in Chapter 2 pages 22 and 23,

“Solar’s meteoric 1200% growth over the last five years took it from producing 0.01% of global primary energy to 0.17%.  Wind, with its 200% growth went from providing 0.3% to 0.95% of global primary energy.”  Meanwhile, “between 2007 and 2012 coal added 7 times more to global primary energy than wind and 430 times more than solar.”

So the huge development of renewables in recent years, due to the encouragement given by subsidized buy-in tariffs for the energy generated, has failed to outpace the building of coal and more recently gas fired power stations.

The German experiment

In chapter 2 page 58 Mark Lynas refers to the German experiment. 

We tend to forget that more than 20,000 people died in the Japanese tsunami in 2011, because the world was gripped by the dramatic events and subsequent release of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.  As a direct result Germany decided on a policy of Energiewende (Energy Shift) to replace nuclear power with renewable energy.  Two years down the road, however, in spite of successfully installing major wind and solar power developments, these have not replaced all of the power generated by the nuclear plants that have been closed.  Germany has meanwhile opened two new 1,100MW  brown coal burning power plants at Neurath, and in 2012 they were importing more coal and gas than in 2011.  Furthermore they were forecast to add another 4GW of coal fired electricity to the grid in 2013.

This year (2014) Angela Merkel’s  Energy and Economics Minister (he has both portfolios) Sigmar Gabriel, has stated that the Energiewende  is on the verge of failure due to the ongoing cost of subsidised green electricity buy-in tariffs. 

So if you make replacing nuclear power with renewables your first priority, it’s just completely unrealistic to expect to lower the burning of fossil fuels at the same time.  But when you are capable of ignoring the figures and simply sticking to dogmatic orthodoxy, then anything can seem possible.

The real result of decades of anti-nuclear campaigning

In Chapter 3 Mark Lynas makes the case that, partly as a result of highly successful campaigning against new nuclear power stations by activists since the 1970’s, the burning of coal was guaranteed to grow in the decades that followed, as country after country cancelled their nuclear power programmes.

In Chapter 4 page 56, he quotes a 2013 paper in which “Hansen and Kharecha calculate that the use of nuclear power between 1971 and 2009 avoided the premature deaths of 1.84 million people thanks to its air pollution benefits”.  The extra air pollution over the same period from coal fired plants, built as a result of cancelled nuclear power station projects, could have been avoided and many more lives saved.

In addition environmental activists’ opposition to new nuclear power station research, development and construction means that we are now extending the operating licences on fundamentally unsafe 50 year old nuclear power stations instead of replacing them with much safer designs like those proposed by the Generation IV International Forum.

Furthermore an increasingly onerous regulatory environment has been developed which risks stifling new nuclear developments.  For example in the US, to gain licence approvals to build and operate a new nuclear facility the proposer of the design has to pay $800/day for each man-day of work done by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the proposer has no control over the amount of time spent by them.  As Bill Fox, chief executive of Generation mPower LLC recently said to the UK Parliamentary Committee on small nuclear reactors, it typically takes several years to prepare an application and then three or four years for the NRC to review it.

Inherently safe nuclear power plants

Some of the Generation IV designs are inherently safe and can’t explode, can’t meltdown, reduce their power output if they overheat and shut down safely when there is no power supply.  Mark Lynas  in Chapter 5 page 62, quotes the example of Argonne National Laboratory’s Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) in which, two weeks before the fire at Chernobyl, operators shut down the safety systems and turned off the coolant flow to the reactor in front of a group of international experts to prove that their design was safe.  The reactor shut itself down without operator intervention and the passive cooling system allowed residual heat to decay without any risk of a meltdown.

The EBR-II was part of Argonne’s Integral Fast Reactor Programme which was terminated by John Kerry of Clinton’s Administration in 1994.

Fourth generation nuclear power plant designs also burn their fuel more completely and thus reduce the quantity of waste generated.  Some reactors operating in the fast spectrum like the EBRII can use nuclear waste as a fuel.  

Much of this technology is still at the conceptual stage, although like the EBR II, a demonstration molten salt reactor was operating successfully at Oak Ridge National Laboratory ORNL as far back as the 1960’s. Not wishing to staff the project over the weekends the operators used to switch off the power and it would shut itself down, it was walk away safe. 

Wind farms twice the area of Spain

In Chapter 6 pages 78-81, Mark Lynas critically examines the Greenpeace and Global Wind Energy Council’s report published in November 2012 and takes a critical look at its scenario for 2030, which projects wind power generating 22 per cent of global electricity and solar 17 per cent. He calculates that this would require an area of land to be covered in wind farms which would be twice the size of Spain (or alternatively the combined areas of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Maine, South Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Rhode Island).  Solar plants would cover another 50,000 square km.  Even if such a massive scale up of renewables was technically, financially and politically possible, whereas this could displace 6.5 billion tonnes of CO2 generated by fossil fuel burning by 2030, under the Greenpeace scenario this falls to only 1.9 billion tonnes of CO2 if all nuclear power plants are all shut down, because wind and solar replace nuclear power rather than fossil fuels.  Furthermore this would still lead to an increase of CO2 emissions of 22 per cent by 2030 compared with a 2011 baseline as a result of the global increase in demand for energy.  It would be the German experiment on a global scale.

All of the Above

But Mark Lynas wants to finish his book on a positive note and at the same time set an ambitious target to limit climate change, so he accepts that such a scale up of renewables is feasible in order to create his vision for 2030.

In Chapter 7 Lynas recounts his involvement with a joint 2012 press release by Renewable UK, the Carbon Capture and Storage Association CCSA and the Nuclear Industry Association in which they call for a zero carbon target for the UK electricity system by 2030 to be included in the Energy Bill.  The Bill was passed with an overwhelming majority on 5 June 2013.

Lynas considers that this represents a clear “All of the Above” strategy, which allows for long term contracts to give renewables, nuclear and CCS the chance to compete against conventional fossil fuel power stations.

He goes on to rerun the Greenpeace and GWEC highly ambitious 2030 global scenario for renewables deployment but this time including a major scale up of nuclear to achieve 1000 nuclear plants as against 420 today.  This investment would generate 12,000 Terawatt-hours from solar and wind whilst nuclear would contribute 8,000TWh.

If all of this was possible, and dogma and old enmities could be put aside, then there is a 50% chance that global temperature rise could be limited to 2deg C.

Mark Lynas on Hard Talk

Nuclear Investment

So where are we with investment in nuclear power. Partly as a result of Fukushima Daiichi and the resulting public pressure to close nuclear power stations, attracting private investment funding for research and development in the developed world is difficult but Western governments in the US, France and the UK are, nevertheless, still committed to nuclear power and are funding research and development of various options.  These include small modular reactors, which should deliver significant cost reductions and timescale benefits.  By fabricating smaller reactors in a factory environment there are benefits of economies of scale and efficiency.  Time on site is reduced and the regulatory burden is also lessened.  Several countries and companies are promoting this promising approach.

China has enormous and growing energy needs.  At present China is coal and coal is China!  It’s choking itself on coal fired air pollution and is continuing to open 60 coal fired power stations per year.

But China is also highly committed to nuclear research and development and by 2015 it will have over 750 researchers working on new nuclear technologies, including molten salt reactors, with the target of having commercial plants available within 15 years.  At the same time it’s installing both renewable power and new nuclear power stations using current generation 3+ technologies.

It currently has 21 nuclear power reactors in operation and 28 more under construction.  By 2020 it plans an additional 58GWe of nuclear power generation, all of this development will still only raise nuclear’s share of power generation to 6% by 2020, but it also plans to build an additional 100GWe of nuclear power station capacity between 2020 and 2030.

So the scale-up of nuclear power at the rate proposed by Mark Lynas is possible when you have the political will and the money to do so.

Conclusion
It’s both a challenge and an opportunity for environmental groups to recognize the real priorities in this debate.  I congratulate Mark Lynas for writing this book and simplifying this complex issue so that it can be more easily understood.  What is at stake is your children’s future.

http://www.marklynas.org/

A Full Frontal Assault on Democracy - The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)

Karel De Gucht

No not by terrorists but as a result of a more sinister threat from within!

Under a secret EU mandate written by the EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht and dated 17 June 2013, an agreement is currently being negotiated between the USA and the EU to remove both tariff and non-tariff barriers to transatlantic trade. 

Why is the EU Mandate Secret?

The EU Mandate has only ever been released in English and the document is marked “EU Restricted”.  Previous trade negotiations have failed when the terms of a potential agreement were leaked.  Releasing it only in English will make it more difficult to circulate among the EU member countries and more difficult to leak it to the public.  The document has, nevertheless, been leaked and is available to read here. 

The mandate includes various clauses which aim to protect the interests and traditions of the EU and its member states, but all of these can be overturned by the "Investor-State" protection mechanism described below.

Leaving aside, for the moment, any claims for economic benefits, and ignoring the clear cut advantages of the removal of import duties on both sides of the Atlantic, what will be the other effects of such a trade agreement? 

Removal of non-tariff barriers to trade

Non-tariff barriers to trade can be anything from product labelling regulations, to employment law, to state subsidies, to manufacturing standards - not forgetting Health and Safety requirements.  This Wikipedia article lists 28 different types.  

It would be virtually impossible to conduct multilateral negotiations in all of these areas and successfully remove the majority, or even a significant proportion, of such non-tariff barriers so the EU Mandate envisages a different approach.  It gives the power to private companies to identify non-tariff barriers, which adversely affect their ability to compete in a particular nation, and then to challenge the national government in an arbitration.  Clause 23 of the EU Mandate promotes the inclusion of "investor-state dispute resolution" clauses in the agreement which are intended to achieve this objective.

Investor-State Dispute Resolution Clauses

As the mandate currently stands any private company, which wishes to invest in another country in the TTIP trading bloc, will have the right to challenge national or local laws, regulations or standards if they consider that these put them at a disadvantage compared to the situation in their country of origin. This short video explains it well.

If you think that I’m exaggerating about the scope and power of this mechanism, it has already been demonstrated in the 20 year old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and is about to happen under the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

Examples of Arbitration Cases under the NAFTA

1. In Canada, the courts revoked two patents owned by the US drugs firm Eli Lilly, on the grounds that the company had not produced enough evidence that they had the beneficial effects it claimed. Eli Lilly is now suing the Canadian government for $500m under the NAFTA provisions, and demanding that Canada’s patent laws are changed.  
2. The American chemical company Ethyl prosecuted Canada for a 1997 law which outlawed a diesel additive containing manganese in the form of MMT, a neurotoxin. This compound is banned in all developed countries and 85% of all fuel sold in the USA is free of MMT.  Under the NAFTA provisions, Ethyl was awarded $13 million in compensation and Canada had to amend the law and make a statement to say that there were no known adverse health effects of Ethyl’s product. 
3. An ongoing case against Canada concerns a toll bridge owned by the Detroit International Bridge Company, which links the American and Canadian towns, both called Windsor, on either side of the river Detroit.  The original bridge, which carries 25% of the trade goods between the two countries, was saturated. Canada obtained an agreement with the State of Michigan to build another bridge with public funds.  The Detroit International Bridge Company is claiming $3,500 million in compensation because it considers that it has the sole rights to a bridge crossing in that location and any toll revenues that might be generated. 

Independent Arbitrators and their Role

If the TTIP agreement is passed, in a form which mirrors previous US trade agreements, the mechanism for ruling on such “investor-state dispute” claims will be by means of an arbitration by three international lawyers. Under agreements which the USA has already negotiated, such as NAFTA, there is no appeal process, the meetings are held in secret, judgements do not have to be published and are binding.  There are no checks and balances, there is no transparency and the arbitrators are lawyers who usually work for private companies. They are paid by the hour. There is no supra-national body overseeing the selection, standards of independence and conduct of arbitrators, nor the way in which they function. 

It’s also a one way process.  The litigants have all been private companies and the defendants have all been nations. Under such an agreement a litigant cannot sue the government in its country of origin.

During 20 years of the operation of the NAFTA agreement Canada has had 30 cases brought against it by private US companies and it has lost 30 times. Mexico has had 5 cases against it by US firms and has lost 5 times resulting in compensation payments of $204 million. Canada and Mexico have brought 22 cases against the US and the US has won 22 times.   All together it’s an outstanding record for so-called independent arbitrators.

Juan Fernandez-Ermesto

Here’s what one of the arbitrators, Juan Fernandez-Armesto, says about his role.

“When I wake up at night and think about arbitration, it never ceases to amaze me that sovereign states have agreed to investment arbitration at all … Three private individuals are entrusted with the power to review, without any restriction or appeal procedure, all actions of the government, all decisions of the courts, and all laws and regulations emanating from parliament.” 

The Effect on Policy Making

But there's another danger. To quote George Monbiot in his article in the Guardian - 

“Even if these suits don’t succeed, they can exert a powerful chilling effect on legislation. One Canadian government official, speaking about the rules introduced by the North American Free Trade Agreement, remarked, “I’ve seen the letters from the New York and DC law firms coming up to the Canadian government on virtually every new environmental regulation and proposition in the last five years. They involved dry-cleaning chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, patent law. Virtually all of the new initiatives were targeted and most of them never saw the light of day.” Democracy, as a meaningful proposition, is impossible under these circumstances.” 

What are the Consequences?

A Race to the Lowest Standards

So typically, between the USA and the EU who has the lowest standards?  Of course you already know! 

Genetically modified crops; chlorine rinsed chickens and hormone treated beef and pigs are normal in the USA but have all been rejected by the EU.

So you might say we’ll choose not to buy US goods, but be aware that in March 2014 the Americans proposed that all markings of geographical origin should be removed from all consumer goods, including wines.

The Imposition of Fracking

Fracking to produce gas from schist is well developed in the USA, but following public pressure permits have been refused here in France. 
Under clause 37 of the Mandate, however, free and lasting access to raw materials, including sources of energy, must be granted to private firms.  In France everything from 100 metres below your property downwards belongs to the state, so one wonders how France and the EU will deal with this contradiction.

A US company Lone Pine is already suing Canada under the NAFTA investor-state protection clauses for US$250 million over a moratorium on controversial shale gas extraction (fracking) in Quebec. 

Health Services

Many US citizens consider the concept of the UK National Health Service (or the French Securité Sociale) to be dangerously socialist.  Remember the bitter fight Obama had with the Republicans when introducing his healthcare legislation?  
Public services are included in the scope of the EU Mandate. Under clauses 15 and 24, a private US healthcare company wishing to set up a hospital in the UK could demand central government funding on the same basis as an NHS hospital trust.  If this was refused they could launch a case for arbitration.

Alternatively they could demand compensation for unfair (subsidized) competition and demand that the state run institution be privatized.  Since health provision under the nationalized NHS in the UK costs around 5% of GDP and in the USA the total spend is estimated at more than 17% of GDP, it's clear that private companies would have a financial incentive to dismantle the NHS and push up fees and costs.

Fundamental US/European Differences Concerning the Role of Government

The US and Europe have very different ideas concerning the role of government. Reducing "BIG Government" is a rallying cry for Republicans. In Europe it is considered that governments and the EU are mandated to act in order to regulate and protect their citizens and the environment.

Retrospective Class Actions

In the US it’s up to individuals, after they have been adversely affected by a private company’s actions, to get together and mount a class action against the company.  They have to prove cause and effect to a jury, but when they do damages are colossal and can include a punitive element, which acts as a disincentive to similar companies to risk the same results.  The law firm, of course, takes their 40%.

Goodbye to the Precautionary Principle

In Europe we expect national governments, or the EU, to vet the safety of food and consumer goods before anyone has suffered injury or loss through inadequate testing or insufficient monitoring. 

Under the “Investor-State dispute resolution” clauses of the TTIP any such precautionary approach can be challenged and compensation demanded on the grounds that the risk of adverse effects is not proven. If the government loses, not only must it pay the compensation but also amend or repeal its laws. 

So because of its very dissimilar history and traditions Europe works differently from the USA and makes itself a soft target for any multinational US company seeking compensation under the “Investment Protection” clauses included in any eventual agreement. 

The Economic Benefits - London Centre for Economic Studies Report

So why would any government, not to mention the whole of the EU, give up their sovereignty and freedom of action in such a way?  Surely they must be expecting enormous benefits in terms of growth and employment!

Less than a 0.5% increase in GDP by 2027

In their comprehensive study report, prepared at the request of the EU commission, entitled “Reducing Trans-Atlantic Barriers to Trade and Investment”, the London Centre for Economic Studies in table 16 on page 46 predicts a 0.48% increase in Gross Domestic Product averaged across the whole EU by 2027 (the end date for the extrapolation of their economic model).  This is for the most ambitious scenario that they examined involving the removal of all tariff barriers and 25% of the costs of non-tariff barriers to trade.

Interestingly the EU Commission press release of 14 June 2013  quotes from 0.5% up to 1% of increased GDP (which don’t forget is not expected to be achieved before 2027). They seem to have added another speculative 0.5%!

Neither the LCES study nor the EU’s explanatory document “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership - The Economic Analysis Explained”,  issued in September 2013, attempt to quantify any overall employment benefits (see paragraph 2.2.3).  Although the LCES study does find that the disruption between employment sectors, i.e the transfer of employees from shrinking sectors to expanding sectors, will be well within the normal annual levels and not significant in a flexible labour market.

If you have the time listen to Karel De Gucht answer a few hard questions.

Conclusions

So the benefits from the EU’s own reputable economic study are minimal, representing less than 0.5% increase in GDP across the EU by 2027.  The risks to EU governments from arbitration claims and to European standards for the protection of its citizens and the environment are, on the other hand, high and these start from the moment the agreement is ratified.

Governments would hand over their rights to regulate and take decisions to private firms whose only concerns are profitability and which are only answerable to their shareholders.

If it succeeds in its present form, and the investor-state dispute resolution clauses are based on previous “Trade Agreements” involving the USA, it will be a charter for private companies to impose their narrow commercial viewpoint on national governments. At the same time they would profit by doing nothing except launching a case for arbitration.

So forget the centuries of measured and cautious development, under a democratic process, of European legislation concerning environmental protection, consumer protection, working conditions and public services.  Say hello to a Europe in which the standards in all those areas are driven downwards to the lowest level by private multinational companies in the name of free trade and fair competition.

I agree with George Monbiot that the negotiation of a treaty based on the current EU mandate is “A Full Frontal Assault on Democracy”. 

What Can You Do About This?

Firstly, spread the word to all your active friends and contacts.  The more people who know about this, the less likely it is that an agreement will be signed in its present form without significant changes to the Mandate.

Secondly, find out the contact details for your European Parliamentary Election candidates.  Write to them asking what they think about the secret negotiations for the TTIP and wait for their replies.  If they don’t answer, or you don’t think that their answer is well informed and shows awareness of the issues, you will know what to do on Election Day!

It’s not a Done Deal!

Under recently granted powers the European Parliament has to ratify any such agreement, and the agreement itself must be passed unanimously by all EU Member States.

The European elections are programmed for 25^th May 2014.

Raoul Marc Jennar
Thanks to Raoul Marc Jennar who is busy touring France to alert people to the risks of the TTIP using public meetings.  He calls it "Le Grand Marche Transatlantique - GMT".  He has published a short book on the GMT in French and he will make his Powerpoint presentation, which is also in French, available to anyone who asks for it here.  He speaks good English so if you don't speak French don't worry.

IDA - A Polish Film (2013)

Poland in 1962; outside, in shades of grey, a convent is set in a bleak and snowy winter landscape.  Inside it is Ida, a novice nun, who has lived there all her life; a place where no talking is allowed and the only sound at mealtimes is the muffled clatter of spoons on soup plates.

She is about to take her vows, but the Mother Superior calls her to her room to tell her that she has an aunt that she has never known about and who has never answered letters from the convent inviting her to see her niece.  Since she is her only family, the Mother Superior tells her to go and see her before she finally commits herself to Jesus.

Ida’s aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza) is a judge who has fallen out of favour with her superiors and takes solace in alcohol, cigarettes and casual sex.  She gives Ida a frosty welcome and she is sent on her way, but before she has caught her bus, Wanda has a change of heart, finds her, and takes her back to her flat to tell her more about her mother.  Together they embark on a journey into their past in rural Poland and the events and encounters on the way affect both their lives.

In this film Pawel Pawlikowski has co-written and directed a quiet gem, a masterpiece of subtlety and understatement, where even the most surprising events in the narrative are almost thrown away or hidden from view. Unlike recent Oscar winners he has admirably resisted the obvious temptation to sensationalize and dwell graphically on dramatic events and their emotional consequences. 

I will resist the impulse to tell you more of the story and I urge you to see it yourself.



I have only a couple of criticisms, which might have improved the film still further.  Most importantly Ida, played by Agata Trzebuchowska, shows almost no emotion throughout. I think that this was probably imposed on her by the director and, whilst it is consistent with the style of the film and with her repressed life in the convent, it doesn’t help to explain her choices near the end of the story. Some small indications of emotional volatility here and there, as the film unfolds, would work better later. Sorry to be so guarded about that aspect of the narrative but you will understand that I can’t say more. 

Something else also distracted me. We take it for granted that anyone can travel around confidently and catch buses but if you have spent all your life in a convent it’s not so obvious. Perhaps a brief verbal or visual reference to Ida outside the convent travelling to a nearby town would have helped.  It’s a much less important point, however, and I can understand why the director didn’t deal with it.

If the film, visually, is in shades of grey, the music chosen for the soundtrack is certainly not. One of the characters plays the saxophone and we are treated to superbly played jazz pieces written by the likes of Coltrane. Joanna Kulig also sings Polish pop songs of the period with professional confidence.

Ida is Pawlikowski’s first film in Polish. It has been a worthy winner of several international film festival awards and is in the best traditions of European films. If you like European cinema don’t miss it. I saw it in Polish with subtitles. Full details are here.

Making a Rocket Stove from a Beer Keg

Ludi cooking sausages

If anyone isn’t familiar with rocket stoves take it from me that for cooking outside they are excellent!  I use one in summer in the garden and in winter in the courtyard outside the front door.  We also use it for preserving soft fruit by boiling a sterilizer full of Kilner jars on top.

You won’t get barbecue flavours but, for any sort of pan or griddle cooking, a rocket stove gives a high heat, reaches its working temperature very quickly and can burn any type of dry wood cleanly. We always have offcuts left over from construction projects but we've also used branches picked up in the woods nearby.

The original rocket stove

In this family there are three rocket stoves which were bought from a charity. The original design was made from recycled small metal barrels and contains a right angle welded bend, in mild steel, to form the firebox.  They use wood ash as insulation, so they are heavy, especially if they are left out in the rain.  After three or four years of fairly regular use, and kindly neglect, the barrels and the bends of all of them have rusted away.

Click on any picture to enlarge it

For a long time I looked around to find something more durable to make replacements from.  I thought about a stainless steel rocket stove, which would be the Rolls Royce of outdoor pan cooking but I decided that cutting, shaping and welding stainless steel would be beyond my capabilities. Eventually I hit on the idea of using a 30 litre aluminium beer keg (37cm high and 39.5cm diam , 14.5 in and 15.5in) with a commercially bought 150mm (6 inch) stainless steel 90 degree bend to form the firebox.  After checking the dimensions it just so happens that they are perfect for the whole assembly to work well together. Via a family contact I was lucky to get two aluminium kegs for nothing from a small local brewery which has decided to switch to using only stainless steel.  

Beer kegs are pressure vessels so first carefully open the screw top to let out any residual pressure.  A beer keg has no lid, so to fit the bend inside it you have to cut the keg in half.  This is not very easy.  For any job like this you should always wear ear and eye protection.  After contemplating using a 9 inch angle grinder, I decided that cutting into a curved metal surface would be too risky with one of these dangerous machines. They have a nasty tendency to buck and jump and I’ve known several people injure themselves with them.  I settled on using a reciprocating saw and some aluminium cutting blades (10tpi).  You really need to make a jig to hold the keg steady but, however you do it, carefully consider the safest method of stopping the keg from moving around because the saw causes a lot of vibration.  For the cut I marked a line with a marker pen but it’s very difficult to cut it accurately, so it’s just for a guide.  As long as the two halves fit back together again it doesn’t really matter.

The holes for the bend are marked by holding the two halves of the keg together securely and drawing round the end of the bend.  Fabricated bends are rarely exactly circular and are often oval in section, so orientate it with the horizontal end pointing to the side where you want the firebox access. Then use a jigsaw to cut the 150mm holes out as accurately as possible.  Again this causes a lot of vibration and the saw often jumps, so don’t be surprised if you break a blade or two.  Use a file to shape the holes so that they fit the bend snugly.

The finished beer keg rocket stove

To fix the two halves of the keg together I bought a stainless steel hose clamping set (Ref Draper 55591).  For each keg there will be only a small length of the 3m of stainless steel banding left over. You could use any steel banding device but I used stainless because I hope that it will react less with the aluminium of the keg.

The bend needs insulation around it so make a two inch hole in the top of the keg, cut a flap like a keyhole cover and fix it to the keg with a bolt. Fill the keg through this hole with vermiculite.  This was chosen because it is resistant to high temperatures and chemically inert.  DON’T USE WOOD ASH because the highly alkaline residue will dissolve the aluminium if it gets wet.

The metal firebox grid was transferred from the old stove and it was lit.  We have a small oven which fits over the outlet pipe. 
This was bought from the same charity and, although it’s made from mild steel, it’s quite robust and hasn’t rusted.  Once the fire was burning I put the oven on the top and it reached 250 deg C in 10 minutes. You do, however, need to keep feeding it because it burns wood quickly!

For pan cooking, I use steel pans which I wash in the stream next to the garden.  They are sterilized before I start cooking by the high heat from the stove.  They sit on a grid which in turn sits on a steel ring supplied with the original stove.  This creates a gap around the pan which allows the fire to breathe.

I’m very pleased with the end result, which you can see in the picture above, it's light in weight, more stable than the original design, has built in carrying handles and should resist corrosion much better than mild steel.

Post Script
20th June 2016
The stainless steel bend gave up a few weeks ago and I have now replaced it with another of the same type.  It had holes in several places. It's interesting that 304 stainless is not very much better at resisting high temperatures than mild steel.  That's not what I expected.

Sumer is Icumen In

Our soprano is in Thailand for two and a half months, so we have been looking for three part songs that we can sing with Alto, Tenor and Bass.  Monteverdi’s Scherzi Musicali are well worth investigating, and of course there are also rounds that are entertaining and fun to sing with three voices.   

“Sumer Is Icumen In” was written in the early 13^th Century and the manuscript is in the British Library. On a misty January morning, summer seems a long way away but that doesn’t mean we can’t sing about it and just imagine what the coming of spring must have meant to the people of the medieval era.

The block of smaller text in black gives instructions on how to perform it.
The script in red is a sacred Latin text which is not a translation of the original.
.

In 13^th Century England they spoke Middle English, the language of Chaucer. 

Sumer is icumen in,

Lhude sing, cuccu;
Groweth sed
and bloweth med,
And springth the wode nu;
Sing, cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calue cu;
Bulluc sterteth,
Bucke uerteth,

Murie sing, cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes thu, cuccu;
Ne swik thu naver nu.

Sing, cuccu, nu; sing, cuccu;

Sing, cuccu; sing, cuccu, nu!

Having heard, years ago, someone reading “The Prologue” to the Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English, I knew that its pronunciation was well understood and tried to find a pronunciation guide.  I found this.

But I quickly got lost in the plethora of scholarly explanations of how English evolved between the 12^th and 16^th centuries, including topics such as the Great Vowel Shift, as well as trying to read things written in the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA.  

Pausing to look at this interactive teaching resource from Harvard I eventually I found the version of “Sumer Is Icumen In” by the Hilliard Ensemble, which sounded absolutely right.  I then later discovered that next to the manuscript in the British Library there’s an audio post where you can hear them singing whilst you follow the manuscript. That recommendation was good enough for me!

It’s surprisingly difficult to learn a new phonology of vowel sounds.  Singing in Italian, a language that I don’t speak seems much easier, although I’m sure it could be much better.  It helps a lot if you have some knowledge of other languages however basic. 

In our quartet "Le Chant de la Cère" our bass speaks several European languages and is managing well in Middle English by imitating me.  Our soprano is Dutch but has lived in France for most of her adult life and also knows some German and English so, when she returns in February, I’m sure she will get to grips with it very well.  Our Alto, although she usually speaks English in received pronunciation, keeps reverting to her native West Country (Somerset), which even though “Sumer Is Icumen In” was written in the Wessex dialect of Middle English, is not right at all!

There are several versions of the sheet music and midi files on CPDL. 

We start it on C. You could of course sing it in a translated modern version but it’s so much less fun!  The text below is a translation of the original and is not intended to be sung!

Spring has arrived,
Sing loudly, cuckoo!
The seed is growing
And the meadow is blooming,
And the wood is coming into leaf now,
Sing, cuckoo!

The ewe is bleating after her lamb,
The cow is lowing after her calf;
The bullock is prancing,
The billy-goat farting,

Sing merrily, cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo,
You sing well, cuckoo,
Never stop now.

Sing, cuckoo, now; sing, cuckoo;
Sing, cuckoo; sing, cuckoo, now!

Claudio Abbado - A Legacy for Future Generations

I consider myself lucky to have been to several of Claudio Abbado’s concerts.  I never had the chance to meet him but he had the air of a modest and gentle person and, although he was a public figure, he valued his privacy.  In his later years, after treatment for cancer, he was a rather slight presence on the podium and not at all conventionally charismatic and outgoing like Bernstein or (dare I say it) Karajan but, when conducting and with his supreme ability to convey what he wanted to his players, he didn't need any of the mannerisms of the great conductors of earlier generations. 

He earned the appreciation of music lovers worldwide with his empathy with Mahler’s compositions. His generosity of spirit and his sensitivity in interpreting their many twists and turns, as well as his supreme musicianship, created unforgettable performances. Even music critics were bowled over by his later concerts with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Fortunately, recordings of these are available on DVD and Blu-Ray. 

He may have been sparing with his public pronouncements, but whilst conducting he was very generous with his emotions.  It was his ability to explore and communicate the emotional content of musical compositions that set him above many others of his generation and made him loved by the public and admired by the professionals. 

As he said in an interview for Medici TV, Hearing the Silence. 

"In the last few years I have realized one thing very clearly: The more you give, the more you get in return. This is as true of music as of anything else".

Although his global reputation allowed him to conduct the major American orchestras, he worked most extensively with the best European orchestras and he was able to build long term relationships with them so that they knew exactly what he wanted.  He also created youth orchestras such as the European Community Youth Orchestra and the Gustav Mahler Jugend Orchester and took them on tour.

He valued silence before and after performing a piece.  In 1994 I saw him keep the entire Albert Hall silent for more than twenty seconds at the end of Mahler’s 9^th Symphony.   It felt like twenty minutes and was followed by a standing ovation.

But it wasn't just Mahler that inspired him and he could bring his creative intensity to even the most well known pieces.



I was very sad to hear that he had passed away on 20^th January 2014, and I’m sorry that I’ll never have a chance to see him performing again, but he has left us a legacy of recordings and videos which will set the standard for interpreters of the late romantic repertoire for decades.

See also 
Mahler - A Trancendental Experience 
Two Reviews of Gustavo Dudamel's Mahler 9th