David Bennett

The Jacobite Rebellions

James Francis Edward Stuart was just a few months old when his father, King James II of England and Ireland and James VI of Scotland, was sent into exile in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The king was exiled because he would not bow to a populace that wanted Protestantism and not Catholicism as the religion of the realm.

After King James’ exile, the country invited his Protestant elder daughter Mary and her husband William III (William of Orange) to be the joint monarchs of the United Kingdom. And so it went on until James Francis Edward Stuart, prompted by his cousin Louis XIV of France claimed the throne in 1715 in the First Jacobite Rebellion. He actually claimed the throne after his father’s death in 1701. Specifically, he claimed the English, Scottish and Irish crown as James III of England and Ireland and James VIII of Scotland. But he was not ready to make his move until the allies in Scotland were ready in 1715.

The rebellion was unsuccessful. And when he died in 1766, his son Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) tried again in the equally unsuccessful Second Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.

The Old And Young Pretenders

James Francis Edward Stuart was known by his opponents as The Old Pretender, and his son Charles Edward Stuart was known as the Young Pretender. Pretender to the throne has such a strong negative connotation that it is no wonder that the epithets stuck.

And with the clarity borne of this distance of time it is hard to imagine how the rebellions could ever have been successful. The country had split from Rome under Henry VIII in the late 1530s. Now, nearly two hundred years later, how could anyone think the country had a taste for returning to Catholicism?

The National Archives has a photo of an exhibit from the West Highland Museum in Fort William, It is a wineglass in clear glass decorated with a white rose and two buds in frosted glass. The white rose refers to the James VIII, the exiled Stuart monarch, the ‘King across the water’. And the two buds are his sons Charles and Henry.

Henry Benedict Stuart

Henry was Henry Benedict Stuart, a Catholic Cardinal and the last of the line to claim the throne. He went to France in 1745 to help his brother Charles prepare the Jacobite rising. And in France he was the nominal commander of a cross-channel invasion force of 10,000 men of the French army. But the group never left France, and Henry subsequently served under Maurice de Saxe at the siege of Antwerp.

On 16 April 1746, at what is called the Battle of Culloden, the Jacobite army was defeated by a British force under Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, on Drummossie Moor near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. And that was the end of the Jacobite rebellions.

After the defeat at Culloden, Henry Stuart returned to Italy and died there in 1807, aged 82.

So what do we learn? James Francis Edward Stuart suffered fits of melancholy until his death. Bonnie Prince Charles became an alcoholic.

So, if you are pushing a doomed project against the tide of history, it is better to be an ineffectual third son and die peacefully at a ripe old age.

The Revenge Of Galileo

Galileo is a global navigation satellite system. Hold that piece of information because it ties into something that happened recently, which is that the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia announced a deal about atomic submarine procurement that enraged President Macron of France. How are the deal about submarine procurement and Galileo related? This letter, reported in The Week, issue 25 September 2021, page 31, suggests an answer. Under the title ‘France can’t complain’, the writer of the letter makes this point:

To The Times
One suspects the origins of this rift over submarine contracts lie in the EU decision to exclude the UK from the Galileo GPS system as part of the Brexit deal. Not only was an investment of more than £1bn lost, but the UK will need to find another GPS system for military use. France should not be surprised if the UK becomes a competitor to the EU in military matters.
Roger Downing, Whitchurch, Devon

Is there substance to what Mr Downing says? It seems there is from what I read about the Galileo project in Wikipedia. This is a extract of the relevant parts from the Wikipedia entry for Galileo

Galileo in Wikipedia

“Galileo is a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) that went live in 2016, created by the European Union through the European Space Agency (ESA), operated by the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA), headquartered in Prague, Czech Republic, with two ground operations centres in Fucino, Italy, and Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.

In March 2018, the European Commission announced that the United Kingdom may be excluded from parts of the project (especially relating to the secured service PRS) following its exit from the European Union. As a result, Airbus will relocate work on the Ground Control Segment (GCS) from its Portsmouth premises to an EU state. British officials sought legal advice on whether they could reclaim the €1.4 billion invested by the United Kingdom, of the €10 billion spent on the project.

In a speech at the EU Institute for Security Studies conference, the EU Chief Negotiator in charge of the Brexit negotiations, Michel Barnier, stressed the EU position that the UK had decided to leave the EU and thus all EU programmes, including Galileo. In August 2018, it was reported the UK would look to create a competing satellite navigation system to Galileo post-Brexit. In December 2018, the then British Prime Minister Theresa May announced that the UK would no longer seek to reclaim the investment, and Science Minister Sam Gyimah resigned over the matter.”

Victoria To The Rescue

I wrote this in 2017, after the Brexit referendum but before COVID.

I was imagining a scene. It’s the grandees of the Conservative party, mostly men and older. They are watching television in the privacy of their club or a private room at the House Of Commons.

They are beaming. I can hear exclamations of pleasure at what is happening on the screen. It is an episode of Victoria, a dramatised series about Queen Victoria.

She is telling her beastly German in-laws not to try to treat her like a cow to produce children. She tells them off and they step back, abashed. Oh, she is magnificent even In her youth. And now she is on board the deck of HMS Trafalgar and she is telling the crowds how the defeat in Afghanistan is bad, but the Britain has the strongest army and navy in the world and will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Ah, so like Brexit. Germany is that horrid EU, and Trafalgar is to be our victory in the new trade alliances that our new (as yet unfound) partners are hungry for. The production of the TV programme is first rate with a big budget.

A thought crossed my mind that when the producers proposed the series, Victoria, that someone in a corridor of power thought it would be just the ticket to prop up the failing morale of the populace.

Coda

And now in September 2021, again defeat in Afghanistan is centre stage for a little while. Or a kind of defeat, but who knows. Certainly British MPs have made no friends in the Biden Administration with cries of outrage at the US withdrawal.

Taishan Nuclear Power Plant

Taishan nuclear power plant is near the coast in Guangdong Province in China. That’s about 60km west of Macau, and about 120km west of Hong Kong. It is 50km south of Taishan itself, a city with a population of 500,000.

On about the 15th June, various news sources reported on an incident at the plant. Fuel rods were damaged and gas released. The suggestion was that the gas was released as a way to deal with the problem. Or perhaps the release or escape of the gas was as part of the problem.

A New York Times article of 16th June states that “Nuclear scientists in the United States and Europe said in interviews this week that a buildup of radioactive gas in the water surrounding the fuel rods, while not uncommon at reactors elsewhere, was often a sign of poor design, manufacturing or management.”

Given the context, that comment at least raises the possibility that poor design, manufacturing or management is widespread worldwide.

That aside, which way do the prevailing winds blow in that part of Guangdong? An article as recent as the 13 May in the journal Nature states that “The region is influenced by the East Asian monsoon system, which is characterized by prevailing northeasterly and southwesterly winds in winter and summer, respectively.”

So if there was a major problem at this time of year, the wind would carry towards Macau and Hong Kong.

Update 20 June 2021

On 17 June, The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that “The China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA) informed the IAEA yesterday that a minor fuel cladding failure  had occurred at the Taishan Nuclear Power Plant.”

The article goes on to explain that cladding failures are not uncommon. But it doesn’t explain what the cladding is beyond the obvious that it clads the fuel rods.

The glossary in the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission website (US.NRC) states that cladding is “The thin-walled metal tube that forms the outer jacket of a nuclear fuel rod. It prevents corrosion of the fuel by the coolant and the release of fission products into the coolant. Aluminum, stainless steel, and zirconium alloys are common cladding materials.”

I guess that if the cladding is damaged then coolant can reach the fuel rods. If that happens, then the fuel rods can release fission products into the coolants.

I understand that Taishan has about 60,000 fuel rods in its construction. The reports state that ‘about’ five rods were damaged. Why don’t they know the exact number that were damaged?

What causes a cladding tube to fail? Is it a mechanical failure when it hits against something? Is it a chemical failure because the heat generated in the rod punctures it? And how much radioactive gas was released to deal with the problem?

Update 21 June 2021

A report on the incident on June 16 by Reuters mentioned that another incident was reported by the Chinese National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) in April. A burst of radioactive gas unexpectedly entered a pipe at Unit 1’s waste gas treatment system just as workers were trying to seal it, triggering an alarm.

Several outlets report that a Zhang Zhijian, a professor at the College of Nuclear Science and Technology at Harbin Engineering University died in what is described as mysterious circumstances. He is reported to have fallen off a building at 9.34 am on June 17, 2021. It is inevitable that some news reports will see his death as linked to Taishan incident, whether that is the case or not. What strikes me is Harbin University reporting the time of death so precisely.

Update 30 July 2021

The Financial Times reported on 30 July that the French nuclear operator EDF had recommended that the reactor be shut down because of a build-up of inert gases in the primary water circuit.

Also on 30 July, China General Nuclear Power Corp (CGN) issued a statement on its website at cgnpc.com that after consultation they had shut down the reactor to find the cause of fuel damage, and replace the damaged fuel and that the reactor is safe and controllable.

The Sunday Times on 30 July reported that following an increase in radiation levels that had prompted warnings from its French designers of an “imminent radiological threat”, the authorities had shut down the reactor.