Nuclear power on the rise except in UN watchdog's home, Austria
The Russian captain of a cargo vessel involved in a fatal collision with a US tanker in the North Sea has pleaded not guilty to a charge of manslaughter in front of a UK court.
Vladimir Motin, 59, of St Petersburg, appeared via video link from custody at a pre-trial hearing at London's Central Criminal Court.
With the assistance of an interpreter, he denied gross negligence manslaughter over the presumed death of 38-year-old Filipino crew member Mark Angelo Pernia.
Motin was remanded in custody, with a trial date scheduled for 12 January.
The collision occurred on 10 March, when the Portuguese-flagged cargo ship Solong, travelling at approximately 28 km/h, struck the anchored US tanker MV Stena Immaculate roughly 19 kilometres off England's northeast coast.
The Stena Immaculate had been carrying jet fuel intended for the US military. The impact triggered a fire that burned for nearly a week.
Thirty-six crew members from both vessels were rescued. Pernia remains missing and is presumed dead.
British authorities have stated there is no evidence linking the incident to any national security threat.
Although initial fears of severe environmental damage have eased, thousands of plastic pellets, known as nurdles, from ruptured containers aboard the Solong have washed ashore along the east coast of England.
Conservation groups warn that while nurdles are not inherently toxic, they can pose a danger to wildlife if ingested.
From Belgium to Denmark, Bangladesh to Egypt, nuclear power is making a political and policy comeback and drew advocates from across the globe to the International Atomic Energy Agency's Vienna headquarters this week, though it remains less loved in the Austrian home of the UN agency.
With big tech looking at nuclear energy to power future AI operations and policymakers increasingly mulling the potential of small modular reactors – mini nuclear plants that could be factory-built and power a small town, the International Atomic Energy Agency has noticed more and more countries interested in its expertise.
That is why the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog invited representatives from across the globe to its headquarters this week for a convention to deep dive into the good, bad and ugly of what advocates call a very carbon-friendly fuel.
"At the IAEA, we're seeing a number of member states that have expressed interest in nuclear power for several reasons related to growing energy demands, climate change and other national considerations," Matthew van Sickle, a senior nuclear power engineer told Euronews.
The IAEA offers expertise to member states on all the main challenges from financing to human resources to communication strategies to garner public support.
But in Austria, where the IAEA has been based since it came about in 1957, a referendum in the 1970s resulted in the Austrian National Assembly passing a law prohibiting the use of nuclear energy in Austria.
The outcome was an outstanding win for participatory democracy, but a major loss for the Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant, which cost €1 billion to build and was ready to operate.
Situated in Lower Austria alongside the river Danube, today the plant has become a quirky Homer Simpson-inspired tourist attraction and the biggest nuclear training centre in the whole of Europe.
Peter Schinnerf, who works at the plant as a guide and trainer, told Euronews that the plant has more emotional than financial worth today. "This facility was never used," he said.
Since 2017, the plant has also been hosting the annual Shut Down festival - a massive techno festival attracting revellers from all across Austria and beyond.
EU Commissioner for the Environment and Water Resilience, Jessika Roswall, says "anyone who wants to join in solidarity with the LGBTQ community in Hungary should do so."
She was responding to the Hungarian government's decision to ban Gay Pride parades, a decision that has been heavily condemned by a majority of EU member states including France, Germany and Spain.
"The European Union is built on values, which, of course, we all stand behind, and this is the pressure we are in this union of – one of the key things is built of this precious value of people's freedom and loving whoever they want to, or rule of law and all these things," Roswall told Euronews.
"So I stand, of course, behind that and I myself have been to many prides, only in Stockholm though," she added.
Meanwhile, a European Commission source told Euronews that it's unlikely EU Commissioners will stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community as it could be seen to "provoke" Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and open the door to him accusing the EU of interfering in Hungarian affairs.
"I think it would play into Orbán's hands were senior people from Brussels to turn up," the source said.
However, law experts and some member states argue the European Commission is obliged to protect the rights and freedoms of EU citizens under Article 2 of the EU Treaty.
A group of 17 member states led by the Netherlands signed a declaration condemning the Hungarian decision.
We are "concerned by the implications of these measures on freedom of expression, the right to peaceful assembly, and the right to privacy," part of their statement read.
EU Commissioner of Justice and Rule of Law Michael McGrath has called freedom of assembly a fundamental right that must be protected.
He insisted that Pride marches do not constitute a threat to children, as the Hungarian parliament argued.
Meanwhile, Roswall says she does not want to make decisions for others but says that the issue is at the centre of her beliefs and the values of the 27-member bloc.
"I don't tell people what to do, but that's what I truly believe in, and that is also the core of the European Union," she explained.
The Budapest Pride event is set to take place on 28 June in defiance of the new law, and while several MEPs have indicated their intention to attend, no European Commissioners have.
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"It is logical to expect that Russia will not interfere in what is happening, because it does not want to risk for the sake of Iran the aggravation of the situation with Israel and the United States," the expert says. Smagin notes that Tehran's decision not to request military intervention from Moscow before the US strikes is not surprising. "The Islamic Republic was built from the very beginning on the ideas of sovereignty," he says, adding that one of the driving ideas behind the restructuring of the Iranian state was to put an end to the interference of foreign players, primarily the US and the UK, in Iran's internal affairs. "In this sense, Iran has never turned to Russia for help and is not turning to Russia now because it is afraid of losing some sovereignty, of giving up some of its sovereignty to Russia, as was the case with Bashar al-Assad," Smagin says. But the situation could change. "If only because Putin drew attention to the fact that he does not even want to think about the assassination, the destruction of Khamenei, it is obvious that these issues are somewhat disturbing to him," the expert explains. 'The fate of authoritarian leaders hurts Russia' According to US President Donald Trump, Washington knows "exactly" where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is "hiding". Trump also said that the Iranian leader is "an easy target, but they will not kill him, at least not yet". If the Islamic Republic's regime falls or if it comes to physically destroying the Ayatollah, how will the Kremlin react to this? What would it mean for the Russian authorities? "In general, we see that the deaths in revolutionary processes, the destruction of heads of authoritarian states in general hurts the Russian side. We remember how Putin reacted to the assassination of Gaddafi," notes Nikita Smagin. 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At the G7 summit in Canada, for example, it was decided not to lower the price threshold for Russian oil so as not to further destabilise the market. Since the end of 2022, one of the key aspects of leverage on Moscow has been the establishment of price ceilings for Russian oil at $60 per barrel. Three and a half years into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the EU has proposed lowering the price ceiling to $45 per barrel, but it will have to wait for now. "If we take disintegration in Iran as a whole, or rather regime change, because disintegration (of the country) is already a concomitant, then, of course, it threatens Russia's interests in the long term," says Nikita Smagin. "The Kremlin, of course, expects to benefit from this in the short term: oil prices will go up very seriously. The worse the situation gets, the higher the prices will be and the easier it will be for the [Russian] budget to be drawn up - this year, by the looks of it, there could be problems with it," the analyst explains. According to Smagin, Russia will benefit in the current moment, but in the longer term, regime change and "turning Iran into some permanent point of instability threatens, of course, Russia's strategy in the Middle East, because a lot of effort has been invested in Iran." "Iran has been a reliable partner of the Kremlin on many fronts, " he says. "A lot of projects, and strategically important ones at that, were planned to be conducted through Iran, for example, the [transport corridor] North-South project, a possible gas hub. This, of course, is all for the future, but nevertheless, in the event [of the regime's collapse] there will be no possibility of realising it. In the long term, it will be a loss and a setback for the Russian side." 'The peak of Russia's military cooperation with Iran has long passed' In more than three years of full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has succeeded in "localising" the production of Iranian-designed drones. According to Nikita Smagin, Iran's importance as a supplier of Shahed-136 drones is in the past. The peak of military co-operation between the two countries came in 2022. As the expert notes, at the beginning of last year, up to 90% of components were not Iranian. "Only the engines were supplied from Iran. Everything else was made by Russia," he adds. "Even if localisation is not 100 percent now, it is very close to that. I think Russia will find ways to replace that, not to mention that the Shaheds don't play as big a role as they used to." "Still, there is a huge amount of in-house development. Russia has been investing in drones during this time," Smagin explains. "Moreover: even if we're talking about the Shahed specifically, it's not even strongly Iranian anymore. The Geran-1 and Geran-2 drones are very much redesigned, because the Iranian version was not as effective as many expected," he notes. In an interview with Kommersant, Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, describes the Shaheds' flight characteristics as "primitive" and "allowing them to be shot down en masse even with 7.62 mm anti-aircraft machine guns." He also writes of the "moped" engine sound, "alerting the entire neighbourhood to the drone's arrival." 'In Israel, Russia's role as a mediator is looked upon with no apparent antipathy' As Hannah Notte, a political scientist and expert at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies, writes, Russia has always had limitations on how far it can go in supporting Iran. "The Kremlin's obsessive anti-Western agenda has raised the Islamic republic's profile as a partner, but Putin has other interests in the region - such as a long-standing, albeit complicated, relationship with Israel and the need to coordinate oil prices with OPEC - so he has been mindful of Israel's and the Gulf states' red lines when it comes to defence cooperation with Tehran," Notte wrote in a column for US outlet The Atlantic. Nikita Smagin believes that in the current conflict between Iran and Israel, Russia is no longer an "indispensable" mediator. "When the nuclear negotiations were going on, when Trump was trying to sign a nuclear deal with Iran, here Russia could act as an indispensable mediator," he says. "It was actually the only party that had the technical capability and was ready to export surplus uranium from Iran, pre-weapons grade or enriched beyond the required minimum per cent. Now, apparently, this issue is off the agenda". At the same time, despite the fact that relations between Israel and Russia, which became the first country in the world to receive a Hamas delegation after the 7 October attacks officially, have deteriorated, according to Smagin, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem look at Russia's role as a mediator "without any obvious antipathy". As Smagin notes, even after Moscow's invasion of 2022 and the subsequent wave of immigration in an attempt to avoid mobilisation, "a large number of agents of anti-Russian influence have appeared in the Jewish state, people who moved from Russia and have a very negative attitude to the Russian authorities and are obviously the backbone of anti-Russian sentiments in Israel."
