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Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors

1. SMRs are not more economical than large reactors.

2. SMRs are not generally safer or more secure than large light-water reactors.

3. SMRs will not reduce the problem of what to do with radioactive waste.

4. SMRs cannot be counted on to provide reliable and resilient off-the-grid power for facilities, such as data centers, bitcoin mining, hydrogen or petrochemical production.

5. SMRs do not use fuel more efficiently than large reactors.

Ed Lyman, April 30, 2024 https://blog.ucsusa.org/edwin-lyman/five-things-the-nuclear-bros-dont-want-you-to-know-about-small-modular-reactors/

Even casual followers of energy and climate issues have probably heard about the alleged wonders of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). This is due in no small part to the “nuclear bros”: an active and seemingly tireless group of nuclear power advocates who dominate social media discussions on energy by promoting SMRs and other “advanced” nuclear technologies as the only real solution for the climate crisis. But as I showed in my 2013 and 2021 reports, the hype surrounding SMRs is way overblown, and my conclusions remain valid today.

Unfortunately, much of this SMR happy talk is rooted in misinformation, which always brings me back to the same question: If the nuclear bros have such a great SMR story to tell, why do they have to exaggerate so much?

What are SMRs?

SMRs are nuclear reactors that are “small” (defined as 300 megawatts of electrical power or less), can be largely assembled in a centralized facility, and would be installed in a modular fashion at power generation sites. Some proposed SMRs are so tiny (20 megawatts or less) that they are called “micro” reactors. SMRs are distinct from today’s conventional nuclear plants, which are typically around 1,000 megawatts and were largely custom-built. Some SMR designs, such as NuScale, are modified versions of operating water-cooled reactors, while others are radically different designs that use coolants other than water, such as liquid sodium, helium gas, or even molten salts.

To date, however, theoretical interest in SMRs has not translated into many actual reactor orders. The only SMR currently under construction is in China. And in the United States, only one company—TerraPower, founded by Microsoft’s Bill Gates—has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a permit to build a power reactor (but at 345 megawatts, it technically isn’t even an SMR).

The nuclear industry has pinned its hopes on SMRs primarily because some recent large reactor projects, including Vogtle units 3 and 4 in the state of Georgia, have taken far longer to build and cost far more than originally projected. The failure of these projects to come in on time and under budget undermines arguments that modern nuclear power plants can overcome the problems that have plagued the nuclear industry in the past.

Developers in the industry and the US Department of Energy say that SMRs can be less costly and quicker to build than large reactors and that their modular nature makes it easier to balance power supply and demand. They also argue that reactors in a variety of sizes would be useful for a range of applications beyond grid-scale electrical power, including providing process heat to industrial plants and power to data centers, cryptocurrency mining operations, petrochemical production, and even electrical vehicle charging stations.

Here are five facts about SMRs that the nuclear industry and the “nuclear bros” who push its message don’t want you, the public, to know.

Continue reading →

May 2, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Reference, safety, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, spinbuster | Leave a comment

University Investments: Divesting from the Military-Industrial Complex

The salient warning that universities were at risk of being snared by government interests and, it followed, government objectives, was well noted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his heralded 1961 farewell address, one which publicly outed the “military-industrial complex” as a sinister threat.

The nature of this complex stretches into the extremities of the education process, including the grooming and encouragement of Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students.

Lockheed Martin Day, part of a sweeping national effort to establish defense industry recruitment pipelines in college STEM.”

May 1, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark,  https://theaimn.com/university-investments-divesting-from-the-military-industrial-complex/

The rage and protest against Israel’s campaign in Gaza, ongoing since the October 7 attacks by Hamas, has stirred student activity across a number of US university campuses and beyond. Echoes of the Vietnam anti-war protests are being cited. The docile consumers of education are being prodded and found interested. University administrators and managers are, as they always tend to, doing the bidding of their donors and funders in trying to restore order, punish the protesting students where necessary and restrict various forms of protest. Finally, those in the classrooms have something to talk about.

A key aspect of the protest centres on university divestment from US military companies linked and supplying the Israeli industrial war machine. (The pattern is also repeating itself in other countries, including Canada and Australia.) The response from university officialdom has been to formulate a more vigorous antisemitism policy – whatever that means – buttressed, as was the case in Columbia University, by the muscular use of police to remove protesting students for trespassing and disruption. On April 18, in what she described as a necessary if “extraordinary step”, Columbia President Minouche Shafik summoned officers from the New York Police Department, outfitted in riot gear, to remove 108 demonstrators occupying Columbia’s South Lawn. Charges have been issued; suspensions levelled.

Students from other institutions are also falling in, with similar results. An encampment was made at New York University, with the now predictable police response. At Yale, 45 protestors were arrested and charged with misdemeanour trespassing. Much was made of the fact that tents had been set up on Beinecke Plaza. A tent encampment was also set up at MIT’s Cambridge campus.

The US House Committee on Education and the Workforce has also been pressuring university heads to put the boot in, well illustrating the fact that freedom of speech is a mighty fine thing till it aggrieves, offends and upsets various factional groups who wish to reserve it for themselves. Paradoxically enough, one can burn the US flag one owns as a form of protest, exercise free speech rights as a Nazi, yet not occupy the president’s office of a US university if not unequivocal in condemning protest slogans that might be seen as antisemitic. It would have been a far more honest proposition to simply make the legislators show their credentials as card carrying members of the MIC.

The focus by students on the Israeli-US military corporate nexus and its role in the destruction of Gaza has been sharp and vocal. Given the instinctive support of the US political and military establishment for Israel, this is far from surprising. But it should not be singular or peculiar to one state’s warring machine, or one relationship. The military-industrial complex is protean, spectacular in spread, with those in its service promiscuous to patrons. Fidelity is subordinated to the profit motive.

The salient warning that universities were at risk of being snared by government interests and, it followed, government objectives, was well noted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his heralded 1961 farewell address, one which publicly outed the “military-industrial complex” as a sinister threat. Just as such a complex exercised “unwarranted influence” more broadly, “the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” The nation’s academics risked “domination … by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money.”


This has yielded what can only be seen as a ghastly result: the military-industrial-academic complex, heavy with what has been described as “social autism” and protected by almost impenetrable walls of secrecy.

The nature of this complex stretches into the extremities of the education process, including the grooming and encouragement of Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students. Focusing on Lockheed Martin’s recruitment process on US college campuses in his 2022 study for In These Times, Indigo Olivier found a vast, aggressive effort involving “TED-style talks, flight simulations, technology demos and on-the-spot interviews.” Much is on offer: scholarships, well-paid internships and a generous student repayment loan program. A dozen or so universities, at the very least, “participate in Lockheed Martin Day, part of a sweeping national effort to establish defense industry recruitment pipelines in college STEM.”

Before the Israel-Gaza War, some movements were already showing signs of alertness to the need to disentangle US learning institutions from the warring establishment they so readily fund. Dissenters, for instance, is a national movement of student organisers focused on “reclaiming our resources from the war industry, reinvest in life-giving services, and repair collaborative relationships with the earth and people around the world.”

Such aspirations seem pollyannaish in scope and vague in operation, but they can hardly be faulted for their intent. The Dissenters, for instance, took to the activist road, being part of a weeklong effort in October 2021 comprising students at 16 campuses promoting three central objects: that universities divest all holdings and sever ties with “the top five US war profiteers: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics”; banish the police from campuses; and remove all recruiters from all campuses.

Demanding divestment from specific industries is a task complicated by the opacity of the university sector’s funding and investment arrangements. Money, far from talking, operates soundlessly, making its way into nominated accounts through the designated channels of research funding.

The university should, as part of its humane intellectual mission, divest from the military-industrial complex in totality. But it will help to see the books and investment returns, the unveiling, as it were, of the endowments of some of the richest universities on the planet. Follow the money; the picture is bound to be an ugly one.

May 2, 2024 Posted by | Education | Leave a comment

The Israel-US game plan for Gaza is staring us in the face

The western media is pretending the West’s efforts to secure a ceasefire are serious. But a different script has clearly been written in advance

JONATHAN COOK, APR 30, 2024, https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-israel-us-game-plan-for-gaza

One does not need to be a fortune-teller to understand that the Israel-US game plan for Gaza runs something like this:

1. In public, Biden appears “tough” on Netanyahu, urging him not to “invade” Rafah and pressuring him to allow more “humanitarian aid” into Gaza.

2. But already the White House is preparing the ground to subvert its own messaging. It insists that Israel has offered an “extraordinarily generous” deal to Hamas – one that, Washington suggests, amounts to a ceasefire. It doesn’t. According to reports, the best Israel has offered is an undefined “period of sustained calm”. Even that promise can’t be trusted.

3. If Hamas accepts the “deal” and agrees to return some of the hostages, the bombing eases for a short while but the famine intensifies, justified by Israel’s determination for “total victory” against Hamas – something that is impossible to achieve. This will simply delay, for a matter of days or weeks, Israel’s move to step 5 below.

4. If, as seems more likely, Hamas rejects the “deal”, it will be painted as the intransigent party and blamed for seeking to continue the “war”. (Note: This was never a war. Only the West pretends either that you can be at war with a territory you’ve been occupying for decades, or that Hamas “started the war” with its October 7 attack when Israel has been blockading the enclave, creating despair and incremental malnutrition there, for 17 years.)

Last night US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken moved this script on by stating Hamas was “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire… They have to decide and they have to decide quickly”.

5. The US will announce that Israel has devised a humanitarian plan that satisfies the conditions Biden laid down for an attack on Rafah to begin.

6. This will give the US, Europe and the region the pretext to stand back as Israel launches the long-awaited assault – an attack Biden has previously asserted would be a “red line”, leading to mass civilian casualties. All that will be forgotten.

7. As Middle East Eye reports, Israel is building a ring of checkpoints around Rafah. Netanyahu will suggest, falsely, that these guarantee its attack meets the conditions laid down in international humanitarian law. Women and children will be allowed out – if they can reach a checkpoint before Israel’s carpet bombing kills them along the way.

8. All men in Rafah, and any women and children who remain, will be treated as armed combatants. If they are not killed by the bombing or falling rubble, they will be either summarily executed or dragged off to Israel’s torture chambers. No one will mention that any Hamas fighters who were in Rafah were able to leave through the tunnels.

9. Rafah will be destroyed, leaving the entire strip in ruins, and the Israeli-induced famine will worsen. The West will throw up its hands, say Hamas brought this on Gaza, agonise over what to do, and press third countries – especially Arab countries – for a “humanitarian plan” that relocates the survivors out of Gaza.

10. The western media will continue describing Israel’s genocide in Gaza in purely humanitarian terms, as though this “disaster” was an act of God.

11. Under US pressure, the International Court of Justice, or World Court, will be in no hurry to issue a definitive ruling on whether South Africa’s case that Israel is committing a genocide – which it has already found “plausible” – is proved.

12. Whatever the World Court eventually decides, and it is almost impossible to imagine it won’t determine that Israel carried out a genocide, it will be too late. The western political and media class will have moved on, leaving it to the historians to decide what it all meant.

13. Meanwhile, Israel is already using the precedents it has created in Gaza, and its erosion of the long-established principles of international law, as the blueprint for the West Bank. Saying Hamas has not been completely routed in Gaza but is using this other Palestinian enclave as its base, Israel will gradually intensify the pressures on the West Bank with another blockade. Rinse and repeat.

That’s the likely plan. Our job is to do everything in our power to stop them making it a reality.

May 2, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How Israel violates International Law in Gaza: expert report

 https://mondoweiss.net/2024/04/how-israel-violates-international-law-in-gaza-expert-report/

The findings are illustrated by 17 specific, horrific “incidents” and 18 pages of additional incidents. This review of incidents is said to be “supported by both credible media and civil society reporting and statements by Government of Israel officials and IDF uniformed officers.” But the incidents identified are “just the most easily identifiable among a clear pattern of violations of international law, failures to apply civilian harm mitigation best practices, and restrictions on humanitarian assistance,” by Israel and the IDF, often using U.S.-provided arms.

An independent expert report lays out how Israel systematically violated U.S. and International Law in Gaza, concluding that Israel launched indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilian areas due to “extremely relaxed rules of engagement.”

BY STEVE FRANCE   

 Just days after the Biden administration showered the Israeli military with billions of dollars more in lethal aid, still with no apparent effort to restrict its use on non-military populations and structures, Palestinian solidarity activists were gifted with powerful ammunition to challenge Israel’s genocidal disregard for the International and U.S. laws and norms that protect civilians in war situations.

In a sober but scathing 76-page report, publicly released on April 24, the Independent Task Force on the Application of National Security Memorandum-20 (NSM-20), details “multiple credible incidents constituting violations of international humanitarian law, military best practices, and [improper] restrictions on humanitarian assistance.” 

The volunteer and unaffiliated task force of prominent experts — including two recently departed senior State Department officials, legal scholar Noura Erekat, and a former senior “joint terminal attack controller,” Wes Bryant — was rapidly formed after President Biden signed NSM-20 on February 8, 2024. The memorandum tasked the Departments of State and Defense to report to Congress by May 8 on the compliance of Israel (and, nominally, other U.S. allies) with International Humanitarian Law and military best practices, as well as on whether it has impeded humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

Co-chair Noura Erekat said at a briefing that the task force report has two main goals: first, to “inform” State and Defense officials’ review with a selection of well-documented and assessed incidents of misuse of aid, and second, to put pressure on the agencies and the White House to act vigorously to curb the abuses. The pressure will depend on the report’s ability to focus the understanding of the media, the relevant experts, and activists on specific illustrative cases and to clearly explain the legal framework and standards that are supposed to apply.

The panel reported that its 

“aggregate analysis of credible reports involving U.S-provided weapons by Israeli forces indicates a context of systematic disregard for fundamental principles of international law, including recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian objects, wide area attacks without prior warnings in some of the most densely populated residential neighborhoods in the world, direct attacks on civilians…and attacks against civilian objects, including those indispensable for the survival of the civilian population.”

The experts further reported:

“Israeli intelligence sources cited by credible media reports indicate that these patterns of unlawful attacks reflect reliance on an unyielding and unconditioned supply of U.S. weapons, relaxed rules of engagement, application of collective punishment, and the use of artificial intelligence technology to generate thousands of targets (including civilian police and civil defense personnel), at maximum speed and with minimal human oversight.” 

The findings are illustrated by 17 specific, horrific “incidents” and 18 pages of additional incidents. This review of incidents is said to be “supported by both credible media and civil society reporting and statements by Government of Israel officials and IDF uniformed officers.” But the incidents identified are “just the most easily identifiable among a clear pattern of violations of international law, failures to apply civilian harm mitigation best practices, and restrictions on humanitarian assistance,” by Israel and the IDF, often using U.S.-provided arms.

Just as important for non-experts is the report’s outline of exactly how the U.S. and international legal systems are supposed to protect civilians from harm — and how they are flouted. Thus, the experts point to three “fundamental rules [that] govern targeting decisions in armed conflict”: 

1 Distinguish between civilians and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives, with a presumption that persons or objects are protected from attack unless the information available at the time indicates that they are military objectives.

2. Take all feasible “precautions” in planning and conducting attacks to avoid or at least minimize incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects. 


3. Respect “proportionality,” i.e., conduct no attacks that are excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. The greater the foreseeable harm to civilians and civilian objects, the greater the foreseeable military advantage necessary to justify a particular attack. International humanitarian law (IHL) gives special protection to hospitals, clinics, and ambulances, as well as to humanitarian relief operations, and UN premises.

The report outlines the basics of “civilian harm mitigation practices,” including U.S. Defense Department practices. A key concept is “no-strike entities” (NSEs), which DOD says “may include, but are not limited to, medical, educational, diplomatic, cultural, religious, and historical sites, or other objects that do not, by their nature, location, purpose, or use, effectively contribute to the enemy’s war-fighting or war-sustaining capability.” The task force charges that Israel has “routinely and repeatedly” targeted six fundamental categories of NSEs, plus a broad array of slightly less protected entities.

Proportionality ‘rendered meaningless’

A common excuse the Israelis advance for the death and wounding of civilians is that they are being used by Hamas as “human shields.” The report notes that “taking advantage of the presence of civilians or other protected persons with intent to shield a military objective from attack constitutes a war crime.” However, U.S. military rules “affirm that an attacker shares responsibility for civilian harm with its enemies if it fails to take feasible precautions” to avoid killing shields.

NSM-20 itself spells out that its allies must “facilitate and not arbitrarily deny, restrict, or otherwise impede . . . the transport or delivery of [U.S.] humanitarian assistance and U.S. Government-supported international…humanitarian assistance.”

Outlining the “context” of Israel’s “systematic disregard for IHL,” the report cites “recurrent attacks launched despite foreseeably disproportionate harm to civilians and civilian objects, wide-area attacks without prior warnings in some of the most densely populated residential neighborhoods in the world, direct attacks on civilians or otherwise protected persons…and attacks against civilians objects, including those indispensable for the survival of the civilian population.” A high-ranking former IDF officer is quoted as condemning Israel’s “reckless conduct,” which he says “reflects an absolute assumption that the U.S. will continue to arm and finance it.”  

“Extremely relaxed rules of engagement” inconsistent with IHL also explain much of the harm done to civilians. Thus, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Air Force, Omar Tishler, has stated that neighborhoods have been attacked “on a large scale and not in a surgical manner.” 

Such attacks are facilitated by an expansion of the concept of “military advantage” in its proportionality assessments to weigh civilian harms against the advantages of “an operation as a whole,” rather than against each individual attack. That move “renders the proportionality rule meaningless,” the report says, as it’s impossible to compare the harms of a single specific attack with all the military advantages allegedly achieved or sought by the whole Gaza operation, which has lasted more than six months. 

Similarly, former U.S. Air Force drone controller Bryant noted how Israel blurs the requirement of taking precautions to protect civilians “by employing precautions it knows are ineffective,” such as texting populations whose phones are not functional.

Also “relaxed” is Israel’s use of the term terrorist. Thus, a reserve officer told Ha’aretz, “In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate.” The extensive, open-ended imposition of “kill zones” is another way to disguise genocide, an Israeli intelligence officer has explained. With a “kill zone” lasting a month or two, “you could stick with an order that anyone approaching should be shot…But we’ve been there for six months, and people have to start coming out; they are trying to survive, and that leads to very serious incidents.” 

 Lastly, Israel asserts it can block humanitarian aid, if it has “serious reasons for fearing” that relief consignments “will be diverted from their civilian destination or otherwise provide a definite advantage to the enemy’s military efforts” — a position the task force says relies on a “defective rule” from 1949 that was modified in 1977 and superseded by a rule of customary international law. Recent UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions confirm that Israel “must allow and facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief and may not deny such relief based on fears that a small portion of aid may be seized by armed groups.”

In conclusion, the report warns that “the Task Force’s findings raise grave concerns regarding the Administration’s compliance with both U.S. and international law, particularly with respect to security assistance and arms transfers.” It then identifies the laws in question, as well as citing “obligations under customary international law to ensure respect for international humanitarian law and to cooperate to bring serious violations of peremptory norms of general international law to an end through lawful means.”

May 2, 2024 Posted by | Gaza, Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

Dead satellites are filling space with trash. That could affect Earth’s magnetic field

How could we possibly think that burning trash in our atmosphere 24/7 is going to be fine?

Sierra Solter, 16 Apr 24,  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/16/dead-satellite-space-earth-magnetic-field

Our ozone is pennies thick – and soon we’ll put at least an Eiffel Tower’s worth of metallic ash into the ionosphere every year.

Adead spacecraft the size of a truck ignites with plasma and pulverizes into dust and litter as it rips through the ionosphere and atmosphere. This is what happens to internet service satellites during re-entry. When the full mega-constellation of satellites is deployed in the 2030s, companies will do this every hour because satellite internet requires thousands of satellites to constantly be replaced. And it could compromise our atmosphere or even our magnetosphere.

Space entrepreneurs are betting on disposable satellites as key to a new means of wealth. There are currently nearly 10,000 active satellites and companies are working as fast as possible to get tens of thousands more into orbit – for a projected 1m in the next three to four decades.

“We could get to 100,000 satellites in 10 to 15 years,” Dr Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told me. Those satellites power hyper-connected internet services and may turn some billionaires into trillionaires – at the cost of shrouding the planet with toxic trash.

The problem is that space, contrary to popular belief, isn’t really a giant, self-cleaning void. Space holds systems like the magnetosphere that keep us alive and supplied with oxygen by protecting our atmosphere. The space around our planet is a plasma cocoon that is cradling life.

It is easy to assume that the magnetosphere is too vast and robust for humanity to ever have any impact on it, but I don’t think that’s true. I’m a plasma physicist at the intersection of aerospace and physics and the author of recent research in peer-review that found that the space trash generated by dead and dying commercial satellites could compromise our ionosphere or magnetosphere, also known as our planet’s plasma environment.

After studying the problem for over a year, I have no doubt that the sheer vastness of this pollution is going to disrupt our delicate plasma environment in one way or another. Yet few people are discussing this potential crisis – in part, I suspect, because so much scientific research about space is intertwined with commercial space ventures, which have a vested interest in avoiding these questions.

Upon investigating just how much dust in the form of satellite and rocket debris the space industry has dumped into the ionosphere during re-entry, I was alarmed to find that it is currently multiple Eiffel Tower’s worth of metallic ash. I wouldn’t have even been able to calculate that at all without a scientist’s personally run website. Our ozone is mere pennies thick, and soon we will be putting at least an Eiffel Tower’s worth of metallic ash a year directly into the ionosphere. And all of that will stay there, indefinitely.

How could we possibly think that burning trash in our atmosphere 24/7 is going to be fine? Although some study is being devoted to stratospheric loading – the phenomenon of satellite and rocket chemicals saturating the atmosphere with ozone-depleting alumina – humanity might also be forcing “magnetospheric loading” on our planet, as well. No one else is currently studying the pollution of the magnetosphere except for myself.

We don’t even have a clear estimate of the mass of all regions in the magnetosphere, yet we are going to load it with the wreckage of countless giant spacecraft. These SUV-size satellites will soon be burning in the atmosphere on an hourly basis. Unlike meteorites, which are small and only contain trace amounts of aluminum, these wrecked spacecraft are huge and consist entirely of aluminum and other exotic, highly conductive materials. And highly conductive materials can create charging effects and act as a magnetic shield.

If all of these conductive materials accumulate into a huge layer of trash, it could trap or deflect all or parts of our magnetic field. The Earth is a ball magnet that we’re surrounding with fast-moving metal trash. And so far, extrapolating from open-source data, the current trash in the ionosphere shows an apparent human-made electrostatic signature. It is known that individual spacecraft can perturb their environment with plasma wakes; imagine how 100,000 or more of them and their associated trash could perturb the magnetosphere.

Even if we only induce ionospheric perturbations regionally – say, in spaceflight regions – then it could cause holes above the ozone. This in turn, could allow atmospheric stripping, which could erode our atmosphere over time and put the planet at risk of losing habitability.

Low Earth orbit is being promoted as a “destination and economy” for satellites and even low-gravity space hotels (which seem to be perpetually “coming soon” and then canceled). People like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos repeatedly state that space is the key to human longevity. But what if it is the opposite? What if the space industry is the means to our pale blue dot’s demise? And what if all of this pollution that space entrepreneurs are creating is happening in such a multidisciplinary, inaccessible, un-studied way that we don’t even understand the risk?

Our magnetosphere keeps us alive. It should be protected as an Earth environment. Instead, we’re filling it with electronic waste so that billionaires can trade electromagnetic signals for dollars they really don’t need.

“Our technical civilization poses a real danger to itself,” Carl Sagan warned in his 1997 book Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium. The magnetosphere is our first line of defense against an otherwise lethal solar system, and any pollution of it should be intensely studied and monitored. Indeed, if an asteroid the size of a Starlink satellite was headed towards Earth, it would activate planetary defense monitoring. But since it’s a human-made object impacting the atmosphere, we don’t monitor it at all.

Space companies need to stop launching satellites if they can’t provide studies that show that their pollution will not harm the stratosphere and magnetosphere. Until this pollution is studied further, we should all reconsider satellite internet.

  • Sierra Solter is a plasma physicist, engineer, and inventor who studies the intersection of heliophysics and aerospace

May 2, 2024 Posted by | space travel | Leave a comment

France Increases State Funding for Advanced Nuclear R&D Project

by Jov Onsat, Rigzone Staff, Thursday, May 02, 2024

The French government has received clearance from the European Commission to provide Electricité de France (EDF) a further EUR 300 million ($321.6 million) for the front-end design phase of a project to develop small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).

The project by Nuward, the nuclear energy-focused subsidiary of state-owned EDF, aims to come up with a design that has a power output of up to 300 megawatts electric.

The front-end design is the third phase of the five-phase project. The Commission previously approved EUR 50 million ($53.6 million) in French state aid for the second phase, which focused on gathering new knowledge for SMR design and construction.

Under the measure, the aid will take the form of a direct grant of up to EUR 300 million that will cover the R&D [research and development] project until early 2027”, the Commission said in a statement announcing clearance for the new funding from European Union competition regulations. “The measure will support Nuward in sizing the modules and components of the SMRs and validating their integration in the SMRs by means of numerical simulators and laboratory tests.

“Nuward will also carry out industrialization studies relating to the modular design and mass production of SMRs. Finally, the measure will also support Nuward in the preparation of the required safety demonstrations for the approval of the project by the national nuclear safety authorities”.

The Commission recently launched an alliance to accelerate the development of SMRs, following moves by the United Kingdom and United States to commercially scale up the advanced nuclear generation technology.

The public-private coalition aims to come up with a working model by the 2030s. “The Alliance targets a wide range of SMR stakeholders including vendors, utilities, specialized nuclear companies, financial institutions, research organizations, training centers and civil society organizations”, the Commission said in a press release February 9 announcing the initiative…………………..

Earlier the UK government announced an investment of GBP 300 million ($376 million) for the domestic production of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), challenging Russia’s status as the only commercial manufacturer of the fuel for SMRs. The UK previously funded a program by Rolls-Royce PLCs to design an SMR model, which is currently awaiting approval for deployment in Poland, as announced by the company last week—though the product is still undergoing the regulatory design assessment in the UK.

The UK will become the first country in Europe to launch a high-tech HALEU nuclear fuel program, strengthening supply for new nuclear projects and driving Putin further out of global energy markets”, the UK Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said in a news release January 7 announcing the HALEU funding.

The DESNZ said GBP 10 million ($12.5 million) has also been allotted to develop sites and promote skills development for the production of other “advanced nuclear fuels”.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says HALEU is only produced in the U.S. and Russia but only the latter makes the fuel at a commercial scale. SMRs need HALEU, which contains five to 20 percent of uranium-235, beyond the five percent level that fuels most of today’s nuclear power plants, according to the United Nations nuclear watchdog.

The UK move was followed by an announcement by the US Department of Energy (DOE) offering contracts worth up to $500 million in total for HALEU production, besides funding offers for SMR design development. “Currently, HALEU is not commercially available from U.S.-based suppliers, and boosting domestic supply could spur the development and deployment of advanced reactors in the United States”, the DOE noted in a media statement January 9 announcing the funding offer.

Last year the U.S. Nuclear Regulator Commission issued the country’s first certification for an SMR design, that of NuScale Power Corp.  https://www.rigzone.com/news/france_increases_state_funding_for_advanced_nuclear_rd_project-02-may-2024-176607-article/

May 2, 2024 Posted by | France, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Australia: Critical worker shortage menaces nuclear-powered submarine workforce

INDUSTRY, 29 APRIL 2024, By: Liam Garman

The document, sourced through a freedom of information request from former independent senator for South Australia Rex Patrick, examined the civilian nuclear workforce required to maintain a nuclear reactor plant.

According to the document, Australia will require over 75,000 additional electricians, construction managers, metal machinists and welders in its “feeder workforce”, a term for Australia’s pool of workers that are eligible to pursue a career in the submarine workforce.

In particular, by financial year 2030–2031, Australia will require:

  • An additional 33,553 electricians;
  • An additional 19,364 construction managers;
  • An additional 11,753 metal machinists;
  • An additional 12,280 welders.

The figures were assessed by calculating the difference between the projected demand and supply of skilled workers.

The document warns that the total shortfall will be even larger than the initial figures, confirming that the totals do not include additional demand produced by the nuclear-powered submarine industry.

The report raises an alarm for policymakers, noting that Australia has neither a skilled nuclear-powered workforce to leverage for the construction and maintenance of nuclear-powered submarines, nor does it have a big enough pool of eligible candidates.

“There is no current Australian talent pool with the required mix of qualifications, skills, experience, and behaviours to fulfil the civilian nuclear workforce roles,” the document read……………………………………………………………

Defence may also face additional constraints with the decision to build the SSN-AUKUS at Osborne in South Australia and maintain the capability in Henderson in Western Australia.

The research found the greatest feeder workforce is located in NSW, followed by Victoria and Queensland, while the state with the fewest skills is South Australia.  https://www.defenceconnect.com.au/industry/13993-critical-worker-shortage-menaces-nuclear-powered-submarine-workforce

May 2, 2024 Posted by | employment | Leave a comment

Indigenous leaders decry lack of consent for nuclear waste on their homelands

OTTAWA, April 30, 2024 — Today, leaders of Indigenous communities in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario express their strong concern about the lack of Indigenous consent for nuclear waste, uranium mining and refining on their homelands.

Article 29(2) of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) states: “States shall take effective measures to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous materials shall take place in the lands or territories of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.”

The Government of Canada is promoting an expansion of nuclear energy across the country without the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Nations affected. Like the existing reactors, new nuclear reactors will leave a toxic legacy for all living things for thousands of years.

Already, dozens of communities have radioactively contaminated sites on their homelands, and they and others must carefully consider the impacts of proposed permanent repositories for nuclear waste on the next seven generations.

Hugh Akagi is Chief of the Peskotomuhkati Nation in Canada, whose homeland is the unwilling host of the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station on the world-renowned Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick. The reactor was built and later refurbished without the Nation’s consent. Now the federal and New Brunswick governments are spending public funds to develop two new nuclear reactors on the Point Lepreau site.

Chief Akagi has written several times to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, to express concerns about the proposed projects and ask questions about the high-level used nuclear fuel waste in temporary storage at the Point Lepreau site.

“The nuclear fuel chain – mining uranium, chemically processing the ore, fabricating the fuel, fissioning uranium in a reactor creating toxic radioactive waste remaining hazardous for tens of thousands of years – leaves a legacy of injustices disproportionately felt by Indigenous peoples and all our relations,” says Chief Akagi.

In 2021, the Wolastoq Grand Council in New Brunswick published a resolution on nuclear energy and nuclear waste on traditional Wolastoq homeland.

Grand Council Chief Ron Tremblay, says: “Wolastoqewi-Elders define Nuclear in their language as ‘Askomiw Sanaqak,’ which translates as ‘Forever Dangerous.’ That’s why we called for First Nation alternative energy solutions, including renewables and energy efficiency, as well as no more public funding for nuclear and the phasing out of the Point Lepreau reactor.”

The Blind River uranium refinery owned and operated by Cameco is located on lands which since AD 800 have been the site of vibrant Indigenous occupation and life, including as the ancestral lands of the people of Mississauga First Nation (MFN), and MFN’s access to these lands and waters has been barred by virtue of Cameco’s nuclear operations at the site.

Mississauga First Nation has never consented to the lands being used for nuclear activities nor as disposal grounds for radioactive wastes and there continues to be no equitable redress for this loss of access to their ancestral lands located on the Mississauga Delta.

 “The existence of nuclear operations on our ancestral lands has contributed to our loss of culture and spiritual traditions and has been detrimental to our health and well-being of our First Nation, said Mississauga First Nation Councillor Peyton Pitawanakwat. “Cameco has materially benefitted and continues to benefit, from the operations at Blind River, which remains the world’s largest uranium refinery. The proposal to now site radioactive wastes on our lands would perpetuate an existing environmental injustice and amount to environmental racism.”

The Kichi Sibi or Ottawa River, which forms the boundary between Ontario and Quebec, is another site of conflict. The Chiefs of Kebaowek and Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nations in Quebec last year made public their Indigenous-led assessment of a million-cubic-metre radioactive waste mound to be built at Chalk River Laboratories on the shores of the Kichi Sibi on unceded Algonquin territory. Their assessment covered the project’s impact on their culture, land, water and wildlife. An experimental nuclear reactor is also planned for Chalk River.

“The Kichi Sibi is sacred to our peoples and at the heart of our unceded homeland,” said Chief Lance Haymond, of Kebaowek First Nation. “The Algonquin peoples never consented to the Chalk River site being used for over 75 years for nuclear reactors and research, and now being the site for a permanent radioactive waste dump. Consultation was far too late and inadequate, and we reject the plan.”

In spite of the clear opposition to the project by ten Algonquin First Nations, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approved the Near Surface Disposal Facility in January 2024.  Two First Nations have launched a legal challenge to the decision, as have several citizen groups.

The federal government says that reconciliation is a priority. How UNDRIP will be respected by the Government of Canada – which signed it in 2016 and passed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in 2021 – remains to be seen.

May 2, 2024 Posted by | Canada, indigenous issues, wastes | Leave a comment

Rolls-Royce scales back plans to build nuclear factories in UK

Rolls-Royce has scaled back plans to build two new factories for its small modular reactor (SMR) programme in the UK, following delays to a government design competition.

The FTSE 100 company had originally proposed one factory to make heavy pressure vessels for its SMRs and another to make the building blocks of the reactors. 

It had drawn up a final shortlist of locations for the pressure vessels factory, including the International Advanced Manufacturing Park on the outskirts of Sunderland, Teesworks in Redcar and the Gateway industrial park in Deeside, Wales.

But on Friday Rolls confirmed it no longer intends to proceed with that plan because there is no longer time to build the factory and make the first pressure vessels for the early 2030s, when it hopes to complete its first SMRs.

It is still proceeding with work to build the second factory, however.

The company had been waiting for the outcome of an ongoing SMR design competition in the UK – first announced by the Government in 2015 – before it made a decision on the pressure vessel plant. 

But that competition has been repeatedly delayed, with the arms length body Great British Nuclear only formally created last summer and winners not due to be announced until this June at the earliest. 

Instead the engineering giant will now buy its heavy pressure vessels from a third party supplier.

The large, metal components sit at the heart of nuclear reactors and must be able to withstand extremely high temperatures and pressures. They are only made by a select group of companies, partly due to the need for specialist welding techniques.

Among their number is now Sheffield Forgemasters, which was nationalised by the Ministry of Defence in 2021.

Earlier this month, Sheffield became the sole UK company to gain the qualifications needed to make SMR reactor vessel components. 

Despite having shelved its plans for a heavy pressure vessel factory, Rolls is still pressing ahead with plans to build its second factory, which will build the modular units that make up its SMRs. 

It is understood that sites shortlisted for the pressure vessel factory will also be contenders for the second plant but no decisions have been made.

On Friday, a spokesman for Rolls-Royce SMR confirmed the company had now “prioritised work on our modules assembly and test facility”, adding: “Our efforts are focused on identifying the best site to support our deployment at pace.”

The company has also not ruled out reviving its plan for a heavy pressure vessel factory at some point in the future, so long as it manages to build up a healthy pipeline of orders. 

A Government spokesman said: “Our world leading SMR competition aims to be the fastest of its kind, helping secure billions in investment for the UK, meaning cleaner, cheaper and more secure energy in the long-term.”

May 2, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

Academic arrested for “statements against Zionism” as Israel intensifies anti-genocide crackdown

Jean Shaoul, WSWS, 1 May 24

This month, Israeli police arrested and detained for questioning Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a leading Palestinian legal academic, over comments made on a podcast weeks earlier. Shalhoub-Kevorkian holds a chair in law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and another at Queen Mary University of London.

The police said, “The detainee is suspected of making serious incitement against the State of Israel and for having said statements against Zionism and even claims that Israel is currently committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.” They added that they had found posters and pictures in her home depicting Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers as an occupying army.

Freedom of political expression in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been restricted and there have been widespread detentions of Palestinian citizens of Israel who have publicly criticised the war in Gaza. But this is the first time an academic has been targeted over opposition to Zionism, possession of posters against the occupation and claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza—statements that pose no “security threat,” let alone any “incitement” to violence, terror and racism. Since the attorney general’s office must approve all prosecutions relating to freedom of speech, Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s detention was greenlighted not just by the police but at the very heart of government.

Her detention is part of a broader crackdown on dissent and the targeting of Israel’s critics by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fascistic regime, aimed at intimidating and silencing Israel’s Palestinian citizens who make up 20 percent of the population. Netanyahu’s strategic goal of annexing Palestinian territory illegally occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and establishing an ethno-religious regime between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea means the “only democracy in the Middle East” eliminating even the tattered, democratic façade of the Israeli state.

The police confiscated books and posters from Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s home and questioned her extensively about her academic work, including articles published years ago, even though academic writing is afforded special legal protections in Israel. In her 60s, she was strip-searched, handcuffed so tightly it caused pain, denied access to food, water and medication for several hours, and held overnight in a cold cell without adequate clothing or blankets, conditions her lawyers described as “terrible” and designed to humiliate. While she was released on bail the next day, after a magistrate and a district court judge both ruled she posed no threat, days later she was summoned for further questioning.

Her lawyer, the director of the human rights organisation Adalah, Hassan Jabareen, said, “This case is unique. This is not only about one professor; it could be a [precedent] for any academic who goes against the consensus in wartime.” As he explained, “They could have asked her to come to the police station for two or three hours to discuss, investigate. To carry out the arrest like that, as if she was a dangerous person, shows the main purpose was to humiliate her. It was illegal, that’s why the magistrates court accepted my argument that she should be released and the district court confirmed it.”

Her arrest follows months of political attacks orchestrated by the Hebrew University, which likes to present itself as a model of liberalism and inclusion, in the run-up to her detention. The rector had called on her to resign in late 2023 after she signed a letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and describing Israel’s campaign as genocide, and she was briefly suspended over a podcast in which she discussed the tragic events of October 7 and the subsequent destruction, death, and starvation in Gaza. He had objected to her calling for Zionism to be abolished and casting doubt about some aspects of the October 7 attack, particularly reports of sexual assaults.

More than 100 academics at the Hebrew University published an open letter backing Shalhoub-Kevorkian, criticising the university for not supporting her. They wrote, “Regardless of the content of Nadera’s words, their interpretation and the opinions she expressed, it is clear to everyone that this is a political arrest, the whole purpose of which is to gag mouths and limit freedom of expression. Today it is Nadera who stands on the bench, and tomorrow it is each and every one of us.”…………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/04/30/dxoj-a30.html

May 2, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Legal, civil liberties, Education | Leave a comment

CNN Compares Campus Protesters To Nazis In Stunning Propaganda Segment

In contrast to this report about Dana Bash, I watched an hour of CNN coverage of mainly Columbia University.

I was impressed by the restraint and calm behaviour of the hundreds of protesters, and of the hundreds of police, as they arrested numbers of protestors. I felt that there was a bit of mutual respect in the air.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 02, 2024

In one of the most appalling propaganda segments I have ever seen in my life, CNN’s Dana Bash launched into a fire-and-brimstone sermon on Wednesday comparing anti-genocide university protesters to the brownshirts of Nazi Germany — doing so in defense of a fascistic police crackdown against those very same protesters.

After playing a clip of Zionist activist Eli Tsives theatrically claiming campus protesters at UCLA were blocking him from his classroom, Bash solemnly said, “Again, what you just saw is 2024 in Los Angeles. Hearkening back to the 1930s in Europe, and I do not say that lightly. The fear among Jews in this country is palpable right now.”

According to journalist Jeremy Lindenfeld — who happens to be Jewish — Tsives wasn’t even being denied access to his classroom, but was only being denied access to the protesters’ encampment which he’d conveniently decided he wanted to walk through in order to get there. Dana Bash makes no mention of this, framing this instead as a terrifying attack on Jews which could soon see them being loaded onto trains headed for extermination camps.

Bash played a clip of New York City Mayor Eric Adams saying “There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I’m not going to wait until it’s done,” as though preventing the spread of radical political opinions is something a mayor is elected to do in the United States. 

“They’re calling for a ceasefire,” says Bash. “Well, there was a ceasefire on October 6, the day before Hamas terrorists brutally murdered more than a thousand people inside Israel and took hundreds more as hostages.”

This is a brazen propagandistic lie. Israeli forces had been routinely murdering Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in the weeks and months preceding the October 7 attack. On October 6 2023, The New Arab published an article titled “2023 is ‘deadliest year’ for Palestinian children say human rights groups,” citing the Defence of Children International — Palestine along with other sources………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

It should here be noted that Dana Bash gets her surname from her first husband Jeremy Bash, who went on to serve as the chief of staff for both the CIA and the Pentagon. The woman is pure swamp.

It should also be noted that CNN’s own staff recently leaked to The Guardian that they have been pressured to report on the Gaza onslaught with an extreme pro-Israel bias, attributing the pressure to the network’s new CEO Mark Thompson. 

I for one think it’s great that the imperial media are becoming so transparently obvious about their propagandistic nature, and I hope they keep exposing mainstream westerners to the fact that the primary purpose of these outlets is to promote the information interests of the US and its allies. 

Propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you, so hopefully they keep going mask-off like this for everyone to see. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/cnn-compares-campus-protesters-to?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144226389&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

May 2, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Remember, All This Fascism Would Feel Way More Fascismy Under Trump

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 01, 2024

Okay, yes, police are currently in the process of violently stomping out political dissent on university campuses across America following multiple statements from President Biden attacking the protesters as “antisemitic” for opposing the genocide he’s been enthusiastically facilitating in Gaza. And okay, fine, bands of right wing thugs are currently going around terrorizing students who don’t align with the US government’s support for the state of Israel.

But before any of my fellow liberals get any wild ideas about ceasing their support for Biden during an election year just because of a little tyranny and genocide, I think it’s important to remind everyone that all this fascism would feel way more fascisty if Trump was president…………………………………………………………… https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/remember-all-this-fascism-would-feel?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=144202169&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

May 2, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Will this whistleblower be heard by anyone?

Date: June 28, 2023, Author: dunrenard,  https://dunrenard.wordpress.com/2023/06/28/will-this-whistleblower-be-heard-by-anyone/

RELEASES INTERNAL IAEA DOCUMENT PROVING COLLUSION WITH JAPAN OVER FUKUSHIMA RADIOACTIVE WATER RELEASE.
A whistleblower-released document created by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on June 1, 2023, shows that “the fix is in” – IAEA is not only is planning to approve the release of 1.3 million tons of radioactive water from Fukushima but to manipulate their communication to the world in support Japan’s position despite facts showing otherwise, eliminating anything that might “be viewed negatively by the public.”

This is outrageous and dangerous for the entire world. Japan, with the IAEA’s support – NOT protection – is planning to commit its own nuclear assault on the world through this radioactive water release.

We’ve suspected and accused the IAEA and Japan of working together in the past, and now we have the proof
Please, do what you can to get this word out – not just to our echo chamber, but to media.

**************************************************

Few days ago a well-intentioned whistleblower has sent me an internal document of the IAEA.

In this IAEA’s internal document the IAEA is seen coaching TEPCO about what to tell and what not tell to the public regarding the « treated » water to be soon discharged into the Pacific Ocean.

One thing that can be drawn from that document’s content is that the IAEA and TEPCO have no intention to be fully transparent about the radioactive contamination of the said « treated water », only the one to cushion insidiously the real facts to the public eyes.

« Treated water » is quite an euphemism as it is public knowledge that in 12 years the TEPCO’s ALPs filtering system has never been capable to fully remove all the 64 radionuclides present in that radioactive water. Not even to mention the radioactive mud which has accumulated at the bottom of all those water tanks. For them to mention in their press releases only the tritium as being present in that “treated” water is their habitual lying by omission.

According to the news, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of IAEA, will visit Japan on 4 July. The IAEA’s final report will be published soon and the nuclear water will be discharged into the ocean after the report.

This internal document is quite certainly making us question their future transparency, and their intention to protect truly the marine life and the health of the people. Cheap expediency, lying by omission when not just plain lying, are part of their usual modus operandi.

This whistleblower, who wishes to remain anonymous for his own protection, took a real risk leaking this document out, ascting out of his conscience as he knows from the inside the dangers of such radioactive marine pollution. Will it be enough to wake up the consciences and stop such dumping of radioactive polllution into our ocean?

Time is crucial in this matter, as for sure soon after the visit of the director general of the AIEA TEPCO will start discharging that water, and then it will be impossible to have them to stop.

I am just a blogger blogging on this little blog, I am sending this message in a bottle out to the world in the hope that someone, some journalists will take up this information and use it to influence the various governments to pressure Japan to not use our Pacific ocean as its personal trash backyard. The Asian countries neighboring Japan and the Pacific nations should protect their population from such marine radioactive pollution.

With all my prayerful wishes, asking for your help. Please share this article widely so that document will be of some use.

Many thanks to the anonymous whistleblower who did his part, now it is our turn to do ours.

May 1, 2024 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties | 4 Comments

TODAY. The global nuclear industry – rotten to the core

“our nuclear weapons infrastructure is dangerously rotting & is tens of billions secretly in the hole, with huge knockon effects beyond its destructive effects on MoD which has got *even worse* & *even more lying* during the war” – Dominic Cummins, Substack, 31 Dec 2023

Well, Dominic Cummins is the former chief adviser to Boris Johnson, a controversial figure in the UK, and not one of my favourite people. And yet …and yet… Cummins has written extensively and insightfully about nuclear weapons, and the fallacies of our comfortable belief in nuclear deterrence.

Cummins’ political loyalties? They seem non-existent – “not Tory (Conservative), libertarian, ‘populist’ or anything else“, and certainly not Labor. But there’s something to be said for such a stance – from which one can scrutinise all sides impartially.

The global crisis of the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons threatens to destroy us all – partially by the ubiquitous ionising radiation from all “correctly” functioning nuclear facilities, and the multitude of leaks and slip-ups, the pervasive toxic wastes, such as the “undersea Chernobyl”, or more definitely and quickly by nuclear war.

In the background to this truly fearful situation is the natural human optimism of most people – “God’s in his heaven— / All’s right with the world!”

In the middle of this situation is the craven crookedness pervading the global nuclear industry. Few people are willing to crack the screen covering this intrinsic rottenness. At least Cummins did – whatever you think of him.

The UK Ministry of Defence assures that all is well – but The Ferret reports on the alarming safety situation at the Trident nuclear submarine base. Huge tax-payer expense, but not clear where the money goes.

And that is symptomatic of the state of progressive putrefaction of the global nuclear industry.

The secrecy, the lies – it’s hard to know where to start – from 1945 – the reasons given for the hasty bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the 2023 collusion between the IAEA and the Japanese government in planning the release of irradiated Fukushima water into the Pacific.

There’s the horror of the USSR’s completely irresponsible management of its nuclear industry – it’s “sacrifice zones” , and its deep sea dumping of high level submarine wastes.

Lots of corruption scandals – USA , South Africa, Canada, South Korea …………………..

Now – the prevailing lies – that the industry is “safe”, that it’s got nothing to do with weapons, and that nuclear weapons keep us safe.

Of course, the nuclear industry provides jobs, and profits for shareholders – but it is a truly vicious circle. The top few officials and CEO’s are are making a lot of money – so they’ll go on with the rottenness. If the rest of the world swallows their Koolaid, we are all of us rotten to the core, Maud.

May 1, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Rolls-Royce scales back plans to build nuclear factories in UK

Curtailing comes after repeated delays to an ongoing government design competition

Rolls-Royce has scaled back plans to build two new factories for its small
modular reactor (SMR) programme in the UK, following delays to a government
design competition. The FTSE 100 company had originally proposed one
factory to make heavy pressure vessels for its SMRs and another to make the
building blocks of the reactors.

It had drawn up a final shortlist of
locations for the pressure vessels factory, including the International
Advanced Manufacturing Park on the outskirts of Sunderland, Teesworks in
Redcar and the Gateway industrial park in Deeside, Wales.

But on Friday Rolls confirmed it no longer intends to proceed with that plan because
there is no longer time to build the factory and make the first pressure
vessels for the early 2030s, when it hopes to complete its first SMRs.

It is still proceeding with work to build the second factory, however. The
company had been waiting for the outcome of an ongoing SMR design
competition in the UK – first announced by the Government in 2015 –
before it made a decision on the pressure vessel plant.

But that competition has been repeatedly delayed, with the arms-length body Great
British Nuclear only formally created last summer and winners not due to be
announced until this June at the earliest. Instead the engineering giant
will now buy its heavy pressure vessels from a third party supplier. The
large, metal components sit at the heart of nuclear reactors and must be
able to withstand extremely high temperatures and pressures. They are only
made by a select group of companies, partly due to the need for specialist
welding techniques.

Rolls is still pressing ahead with plans to build its
second factory, which will build the modular units that make up its SMRs.
It is understood that sites shortlisted for the pressure vessel factory
will also be contenders for the second plant but no decisions have been
made.

 Telegraph 27th April 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/04/27/rolls-royce-plans-build-smr-water-vessel-factory-uk

May 1, 2024 Posted by | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

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